Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

No. The Australian industrial landscape has been changing for decades. Industries like textiles and footwear have all but gone. Many of these industries used to train and take on many apprentices. The national challenge has been to orientate the Australian workforce towards industries with a much brighter future; that has been the idea anyway. But as we have seen old industries close down, has Australia invested enough in the education of the workforce so that people are able to invest themselves in industries and produce goods and services that will take up a greater share of the nation’s GDP as we work our way through this century? The record is clear and the conclusions are obvious. Australia is the only country in the OECD where public investment in tertiary education, universities and TAFEs fell in the last decade by seven per cent. The rest of the OECD countries increased their investment by an average of 48 per cent in the same period.

The record is abysmal. It is a national embarrassment. Worse than that, it is almost as if the government has already decided that our next generation—or at least those from places other than Kings College and similar places—are just as likely to be in the ship-breaking industry, no doubt soon to come to the outskirts of Australia’s major cities. Again, we get back to the reality: 300,000 people turned away from TAFE and only one in 10 getting a call back. Australia is crying out for much more than this, and I hope that next year’s Labor government will deliver much more than this.

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