Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the Prime Minister’s Skills for the Future statement. In doing so, I have to say I am very disappointed that it took so long for the government even to acknowledge that we have such a chronic skills shortage here in Australia. The promises and commitments that the Prime Minister made when he made his statement are a start, but they are nowhere near enough.

Before I get to the actual substance of my speech, I would like to pick up on one thing that the member for Mackellar spoke about. It is in relation to the programs that have been put in place to address unemployment. I go back to the early eighties, when unemployment under the Fraser government peaked and it sought to introduce a program to address that unemployment. The program that they introduced was a program called wage pause. Wage pause necessitated all people employed by the Commonwealth having their wages frozen, and the difference between what they would have received and what they were actually paid was used in job creation programs. When the government lost power in 1983 and the Hawke government came to power, there was CEP and the other programs that have already been spoken about. Unemployment was not just a child of the Hawke era or the Keating era. Unemployment had been simmering for a very long time. Its seeds were to be found in the time of the Fraser government.

Turning to the matter that we have before us today, I would like to state, as have previous speakers before me, that Australia is facing a chronic skills shortage. The Howard government’s solution has been to import workers from overseas, and we have been the only OECD country to reduce investment in universities and TAFE—and I will be concentrating quite a bit on TAFE. Australia’s investment has fallen by eight per cent since 1995 whilst that of OECD countries has increased by 38 per cent.

I think it is an absolute disgrace that 16 per cent of young Australians aged between 15 and 19 are looking for work—and it is higher in areas like the area that I represent in this parliament. The area that I represent has traditionally supported the trades. When young people left school, they aspired to be tradespeople. I think the member for Blaxland touched on the fact that businesses and industry no longer employ people in traditional apprenticeships. The tradespeople that we have still working in industry were skilled in the seventies and eighties. I think the change in the way businesses operate and the change in the way governments and government departments employ and make a commitment to training apprentices have also impacted, the simple fact being that we do not have enough tradespeople.

BHP in Newcastle used to employ a massive number of apprentices each year. Its demise has also seen the end of those apprenticeships. Whilst young people coming through the schools in the Hunter aspire to become tradespeople, opportunities for them to undertake trade training are very limited. There are limited opportunities for them to access training through TAFE colleges and limited opportunities to access training with employers.

One of the good things that has happened in recent times has been the expansion of the group training scheme. In a letter I sent out to my constituents recently, I highlighted the stories of a number of young people in my electorate who had chosen to train as apprentices through a group training scheme with Delta Electricity. Delta Electricity previously employed a massive number of apprentices. Now they take only a few through the group training scheme. That is one area, removed from government to some extent, that has caused problems with our skills shortage.

But I am afraid that the Howard government cannot escape the blame for where we are today. We on this side of the parliament have raised issues time and time again with respect to industry, the traditional trades, the doctor shortage, the nurse shortage and the shortage of allied health professionals that exists in all of our electorates to some extent. The government have, up until very recently, ignored the fact that there were problems.

Even when you recognise that a problem exists, there is always a lag time. The government have adopted the cheap approach of bringing people in from overseas, and I would have to say that that was very much a stopgap approach. What they should have been doing was investing in young Australians and also in a group that I think is an untapped resource within Australia—mature workers. I think that if we had programs, particularly in the area of technology, that were structured around targeting and upskilling older and more mature workers, it would be a great benefit to our nation. I have heard Professor Saunders, from the right-wing think tank, say in this parliament that mature age blue-collar workers would never work again. I object to that. I think that if you give them the proper training, if you give them the skills they need to work in industry today, they will be a worthwhile asset in our workforce.

Earlier this week, teachers from TAFE came to visit me, and I am sure that they visited a number of members in this parliament. They highlighted to me how vocational education had suffered under the Howard government. There were the funding cuts in 1996 and 1997, which reduced the funding base for the 1998 ANTA agreements. That really had an impact and that was the first slash into the TAFE system. I could see how that was having an impact within my local area. From 1998 to 2000, there was the Commonwealth funding freeze, growth through efficiency and deregulation of the training market. I think that the quality trainer of our young people is TAFE. In our TAFE colleges we have experienced people in trades and highly educated, professional people who teach courses in our TAFE colleges. I think that the fact that this government has absolutely ripped money out of our TAFE colleges throughout Australia is unforgivable. What it has done is rip apart the infrastructure that provides the basis for quality training for all our young people.

Once you deregulate to the extent where a number of the new apprenticeship courses that are not in the traditional trades, that are very soft courses, are taken up and counted as part of the training and the skilling of the nation, that is a real distortion of fact. I share with the House an example of one young person in one of those new apprenticeship schemes who came to see me. He was employed to do floor sanding. He did part of the certificate III course—when his employer would actually allow him to leave his employer’s home, which was where the young new apprentice worked. The jobs that the person did while he was doing this new apprenticeship scheme were cleaning his employer’s car, sweeping the floors and tidying up around his employer’s home. He went to TAFE. He did part of the certificate III course and, once the employer received the payment, he sacked the young new apprentice.

His father was able to negotiate a real apprenticeship for him in the area of plumbing, and he had his trial period. The new employer was very happy with him but, when he went to sign him up, he found that he could obtain no benefits, simply because the apprentice had done this mickey mouse certificate III course that had led nowhere, where he had been exploited and where he had learnt nothing. There he had an opportunity to do a real apprenticeship where he would be setting himself up for the future, and he could not do it because he had done this mickey mouse course. They are the kinds of apprenticeships that the Howard government talks about when they talk about how they are training all these young Australians. I would argue very strongly that the training that they are providing is second class.

Between 2001 and 2003 there has been limited growth funding restored to TAFE colleges. In 2004 there was a rollover from 2003. When ANTA was abolished in 2005, I believe that really impacted on the nation’s ability to assess what skills it needs for the future and to determine the direction and the needs in the area of training. In TAFE it has led to larger classes and a reduction in courses. I know that it is very difficult for young people to do pre-apprenticeship schemes. There is definitely concern about the quality of some of the VET courses and it has been very detrimental to young Australians. It makes me quite upset when I hear that something like 40 per cent of the people who start the new apprenticeship schemes do not even complete their training.

Labor’s skills blueprint, which I am sure most members of this House have looked at and appreciate the benefit of, addresses this issue and looks at ways to prevent this dropout that occurs with the new apprenticeship schemes. We want to give traditional apprentices $2,000 on completion—a $2,000 trade completion bonus. In addition, we believe that we should not be bringing 2,700 skilled workers in from overseas. We should not be bringing apprentices in from overseas; we should be training Australians for those positions. We should certainly be creating opportunities for all those young people in my area and in other areas throughout the country who would desperately love to train as a tradesperson and would desperately love to obtain an apprenticeship.

We need as a nation to really address this issue properly—not in a half-baked way, like the Prime Minister did. We need to recognise the issue and make a real investment in the training of our young people and a real investment in upskilling our mature workers who would be only too willing to obtain the skills that are needed—skills that have been identified by industry as lacking in our economy. Once we have done that, we will take our economy into the 21st century and we will be able to compete much more effectively in the global market. The Prime Minister should look at the Labor Party’s blueprint and adopt the recommendations and the programs that are set out in it.

Debate (on motion by Mrs Bronwyn Bishop) adjourned.

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