Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006. The purpose of this bill is to provide additional funding of $112.6 million over the years 2005 to 2009 for the establishment and operation of the Australian technical colleges, as costs for the colleges have blown out beyond expectation.

The Australian technical colleges provided the Howard government with the political cover it needed to create the perception that it is addressing the skills crisis in Australia. Fixing the skills crisis is essential if the Australian economy is to continue to prosper and grow; however, the reality is that the Australian technical colleges are yet to train one young Australian in a traditional trade.

Coming from an electorate that has a teenage unemployment rate of over 20 per cent, I see first hand the very human costs as well as economic costs of the Howard government’s failure to address Australia’s skills crisis and to train young Australians in traditional trades. The failure of the government to come up with an effective policy response to Australia’s skills crisis is increasingly impacting on skills training, innovation and industry, particularly manufacturing, in my electorate. We cannot rely on the resources boom indefinitely. To compete globally, Australia must become a skilled and highly trained economy.

While the government is more than happy to take the credit for the economic good times, it is doing nothing to assure Australia’s economic strength will continue into the future. The government has been in office for 10 years, but what has it been doing to address these issues? It has failed to provide the required opportunities for Australians to access training that will ensure their future employment and ensure that the future skills needs of this country are met.

Nothing better highlights the Howard government’s ineptitude than its management of the Australian technical colleges. As a policy, the Australian technical colleges are much more about providing political cover than about providing a practical policy solution to the skills crisis. The ATCs were announced in the context of the 2004 election campaign and they were pretty much a political quick fix rather than an actual policy solution. The reality is that the Howard government announced a policy that sounded good in the context of an election campaign, largely in response to Labor’s criticism over its lack of action on skills, but for which there was no policy work done and little idea as to how to implement it.

The policy has limped along ever since. The demise of the former minister responsible for this area largely reflects his failure to implement the Australian technical colleges—a failure that is to some extent not really his fault. It is a policy that has been destined to fail from the start because, instead of working cooperatively with the states on the existing longstanding system of trade training provided via TAFE, the Howard government has set up an alternative system—talk about creating duplication, wasting scarce resources, failing to use federal funding to build and leverage additional funding from states and other registered trading organisations, introducing inefficiency and failing to maximise opportunities for trade training for young people!

Australian technical colleges were billed as a solution to the projected shortfall of 100,000 skilled workers by 2010. Of the proposed 25 Australian technical colleges, how many are actually open and operating today? There are five of them. Of the promised 7½ thousand students to be enrolled and working towards their trade in a school based apprenticeship, how many are actually enrolled today? It has been more than two years since the ATC policy was first announced but, as at December last year, there were only five colleges up and running. That is the advice from the government’s own website advertising the college system. Those five ATCs, the Gold Coast, Gladstone, Port Macquarie, Eastern Melbourne and Northern Tasmania, account for fewer than 350 enrolments. This figure looks even more pitiful when the Port Macquarie ATC—which is really a rebadged vocational college that had existing enrolments—with 205 enrolments is taken into account. Even if the implementation of the Australian technical colleges had not been bungled and could meet its target of 7,500 students by 2010, it would be too little and far too late to address Australia’s skills crisis.

I supported the original bill in this place which introduced the colleges because investing in trades and technical education is of critical importance both to the individuals involved and to the Australian economy. I supported the original bill to establish the colleges despite the lack of detail available and despite the flaws in the government’s proposal because, frankly, on this side of the House we were relieved that the government was at least trying to do something about the skills crisis.

We will support this bill because getting more money into the system of technical education is critical to addressing our skills crisis, but the government has taken entirely the wrong approach. I believe this money could be spent to far greater effect if it was channelled into existing state structures and registered training organisations. There has been continued criticism from the sector about the Howard government’s decision to not use the TAFE network or even other existing registered trading organisations as the basis of the Australian technical colleges system. The state governments and TAFE have tried and tested structures already established with the experience to make use of any additional funding immediately. Instead of establishing an opposing structure, it would have been more practical and effective to work within existing and more established structures. If the government has criticism of TAFE then why doesn’t it work to improve it instead of bypassing it by creating an opposing system?

In Ballarat we were pretty disappointed to see that we were not considered for one of the Australian technical colleges in the original allocation—not because we desperately wanted one of the government’s ATCs but because we would have been grateful and grabbed with both hands the opportunity to access federal funding to address our skills crisis and our high teenage unemployment rate. We have been screaming for assistance on this issue in Ballarat for some time. The skills crisis is a particular concern to the Committee for Ballarat, the Central Highlands Area Consultative Committee and the City of Ballarat, who have been working on this issue for some time. There are simply not enough individuals in traditional trades and there is a high youth unemployment rate, which is running at around 20 per cent in my electorate, particularly for those young people aged 15 to 19.

In our region we would welcome federal funding to assist us with trade training, but the government needs to take into account that the Bracks Labor government has already stepped up to the plate in the federal government’s absence in this respect. Working within established and existing structures, a new Ballarat Technical Education Centre, funded by the state government, will commence operating from the University of Ballarat’s SMB TAFE Division midyear. Implementation is already well under way and a structure, curriculum and enrolment system has already been developed with local schools and businesses. There will be an initial intake of 75 students, who will use the SMB campus’s existing facilities at Lydiard Street South. I also note the $12 million commitment to the new building and construction facility at that campus, which is just about completed and due to be opened, and was again funded by the state Labor government.

The Ballarat TEC will initially offer courses in building and construction and automotive and engineering before moving into a new purpose-built facility on the campus in 2008, and work is already underway on building that campus. The intake is expected to rise to 300 students when the new facility opens.

In Ballarat we already have a strong VET and VCAL in-schools program. Our schools have been working closely with TAFE on the implementation of the technical education centres. We have terrific secondary colleges. Sebastopol College, which used to be Sebastopol Technical School, after years of declining enrolment now provides a huge range of options for the young people who go there. Whether the kids from there go into university, stream into TAFE, go into arts or go into their own businesses, there is room for everyone at Sebastopol College. It is seen as one of the most desirable schools in my electorate. Sebastopol College, Mount Clear College, Ballarat Secondary College and Ballarat High School have for some time been offering pathways into trade and vocational education and training. These colleges are working closely with the TAFE on the technical education centre.

They have specialised in areas where they know that they have strengths. There is transportability of kids between the four secondary colleges if they do not have the equipment or the training for a particular trade, and our non-government schools are also taking advantage of the vocational education experiences offered by our government schools.

Our schools, TAFE, registered training organisations and the state government have invested in upgrading equipment for vocational training, and they provide that training to many private schools in my electorate. We of course could always do with more, and again it would be a more appropriate use of ATC funding in our district if it were directed toward the upgrading of technical facilities within our existing secondary system rather than establishing a duplicate system.

One of the other criticisms that many of the people who have been involved in technical education for a long time is that the Australian technical colleges take young people way too late. They really need to start capturing young people at a much earlier age, and all of the evidence suggests that that is what they should be doing. Certainly, one of the issues that the technical education centre is addressing with schools is how it can work within the VCAL and VET systems. It is also looking at how we can actually stream people at a younger age than that offered by the Australian technical colleges.

Our schools have been working very closely with the department of education, the local TAFE, other training providers, local industry and the local learning exchange—another fantastic facility that we have in Ballarat that is used by both government and non-government school students. It allows people to train in areas such as film, sound and lighting, and office management. If anyone gets the opportunity to come to Ballarat they will see it really is a shining example of a learning centre that provides technical education to government and non-government schools.

All of these schools have been working very hard. In the announcement I understand that the government will make on Monday about 15 new technical education centres, I hope that Ballarat is considered by the government for ATC funding. However, the government would be entirely wasteful and inefficient if it did not put that money into existing structures such as the technical education centre and our vocational education system. If on Monday the government decides to put the money there rather than attempting to introduce a complicated new system of technical education to Ballarat, we will certainly welcome that and I will be one of the first people out there welcoming the funding into Ballarat. But if there is to be a completely new, duplicate structure within Ballarat, I can tell the government now that it will fail. It will not actually improve training and technical education in my community if it is not able to work cooperatively with the existing system and complement the large amount of funding that has been allocated to our technical education centre from the state government.

I also want to mention two other training initiatives operating in my electorate. In my own electorate—and, I know, in many other electorates—we have been running the Mindshop Excellence program for some time. It is in essence a trade taster program, but it is quite unique. It has actually been running as part of the Australian Industry Group’s ‘Manufacturing 31 Days’. It used to be ‘Manufacturing Week’. The Mindshop Excellence program is a great example of what you can do. It takes young people into the manufacturing sector, and they get to experience not just trades across the manufacturing sector but also the real-life problems that are faced by the manufacturing sector. They are asked to workshop and come up with innovative solutions for those problems. These young people are integrated absolutely into the businesses and learn what manufacturing can offer them.

They get to come away, provide a presentation to leaders in the local community and present the solutions to companies such as FMP, McCain and MasterFoods. It provides people with a real taste of what it is like to be in a trade but, more specifically, in a trade in manufacturing. I certainly think the program is worth looking at as a trade taster program. It provides an excellent base for young people, particularly in terms of manufacturing, and it is certainly something that Labor will look at very seriously.

I think this, alongside our TAFE’s active participation in the World Skills program, puts Ballarat at the forefront of technical education across Victoria. We are very proud that many of our young people have gone on to represent our area in state, national and international finals and also that they are fantastic tradespeople in our local community.

While I support the additional funds going into technical education that are represented in this bill, all this bill really does is draw attention to the spectacular policy failure of Australian technical colleges and the woeful response to our skills crisis that has characterised the 10 long years of the Howard government. The policy was totally bereft of substance in the first place. It failed to address important issues relating to incentives for students to complete training or to gain meaningful employment following training. We are now seeing the results of that.

Where was the foresight to ensure that enough young people were supported to fulfil their training requirements in the first place and to graduate as skilled workers? Where was the government’s policy on enhancing relationships between employer groups and trade training colleges to ensure appropriate employment at the end of training? Where was the commitment to work with states and territories to achieve the skilled worker goals that this nation must have to compete with the rest of the world? Where was the commitment to work with the states and territories and to build upon the funding that was available from the states and territories for technical trade colleges for the VCAL and the VET programs that are being implemented? Where was the idea to use federal funding as a bit of leverage to increase state funding and the availability of what is on the ground in local areas? Where was the acknowledgement that our young people need and deserve better choices, and that our current education system needs and deserves better facilities and better structures for vocational and educational training?

We will not find any of these things in the Howard government’s Australian technical colleges policy and, because of that, we now see only five of the colleges up and running. Policies like the Australian technical colleges and the amalgamation of traineeships into the New Apprenticeships scheme have provided a political smokescreen for the government’s complacency and neglect when it comes to skills. We can do much better in this country in relation to improving trade skills but the government is unfortunately only capable of finding political solutions to what it sees as political problems. It is incapable of providing real solutions to long-term problems, whether they be the skills crisis, climate change or even water policy. The Australian technical colleges are unfortunately yet another classic example of the Howard government pursuing a political solution to what they see as a political problem and failing to address the real issue behind the skills crisis.

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