Gavan O'Connor (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in this House to support the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006. But, like other members of the opposition, I have some grave reservations about the way in which this commitment has been made by the government and how it has been executed. I think it is very important for the Australian public to understand the context in which this commitment was made by the Howard government. This initiative was a knee-jerk response to the government’s own policy failure in the skills development of Australians. That is it, pure and simple. This commitment was made in the context of an election campaign after years of neglect by the Howard government in this area.

I say this to the Australian people: the mark of a government’s sincerity on a particular issue is evidenced by its long-term commitment to the idea before it. In this case, we have the record of the Howard government very plain for us all to see. This government’s lack of public investment in vocational education and training has seen 350,000-odd Australians denied access to TAFE. The real context in which this initiative was made was an election campaign and declining public investment in vocational education and training by the federal government which has seen Australians denied the opportunity to improve their standard of living through skills development.

This is a government that says it is okay at the boardroom level, at the stroke of a pen, for corporate executives to get an increase of tens of millions of dollars in their salary through no increased skill effort at all—merely the circumstance of the particular corporation they work for—yet it denies ordinary Australians an opportunity to develop their own personal and economic skills, to get a better shot at the title and to get a better standard of living for themselves and their families. That is the real mark of the government. If the government had come to the table with this proposal—a well-thought-out, planned proposal—I think the Australian public would have accepted the sorts of amendments we are dealing with here today as an indication of its sincerity and honesty.

But the crux of this bill here today is an increase in funding because of the failure of government policy, the failure to plan correctly to meet the skills needs of Australians. The minister may well come to the dispatch box and say, ‘Here is evidence of a government that is increasing funding because of its commitment to skilling Australians.’ The government made the commitment in the context of a political campaign, in response to its own policy failure, and it cannot now claim, when it has botched the implementation of its own initiative, that the increase in funding that is evidenced in this bill is a demonstration of the Howard government’s commitment to skills formation in Australia.

This is a government that can find a billion dollars for a misadventure in Iraq—a failed policy in Iraq—yet, when we look at the statistics here in Australia, the decline in public investment in the skills formation of Australians is absolutely appalling. I say that because the government ministers are all very happy to come to the dispatch box and quote the OECD as evidence of their great economic management—and I will deal with that in a minute. But the OECD has documented the failure of this government in this area. Public investment in technical and further education in Australia has declined over a period of time by some seven per cent while our competitors have ramped it up by some 50 per cent. Those are appalling statistics. Everybody in this House knows that the cutting edge in economic competitiveness is the capacity of your economy to innovate, the capacity of your workforce through its skills to translate ideas into products and services that will enable the Australian economy to keep on growing and Australians to achieve a better standard of living. So let us not have another minister go to the dispatch box and claim that this increase in funding is evidence of any real commitment to skills formation in Australia.

The skills shortage that Australia is experiencing has occurred on the watch of the Howard government, pure and simple. If there is a responsibility for the skills shortages faced by industry, it is because the national government of the day took its hands off one of the most important tillers that has motivated economy after economy to achieve improved growth and economic performance. So ministers need to be very, very careful in this debate. Although in my electorate we are recipients of some of this funding, I will explain some of my reservations about how this has occurred.

We have seen here, in the skills formation area, planning and administrative incompetence on a grand scale—and I brook no criticism of state Labor governments. I say to ministers opposite: you may well go to the dispatch box and try to score some base political points over the fact that Labor in government had and Labor in opposition have some fetish for university education over technical and further education. That is not so; it has never been so. It was not the case when Labor was in government and it certainly is not the case now.

I see at the dispatch box the honourable member for Jagajaga, who has been intimately involved with these issues over a long period of time. Anybody who knows the honourable member for Jagajaga knows of her commitment to working people and to the skills formation of families so that they can enjoy a better standard of living throughout their working lives.

The minister may argue the toss about Labor’s commitment, but where is your commitment to lifting technical and further education public investment to the levels experienced in our comparative trading partner countries? We know you have a knee-jerk migration response to the skills shortage that you have created, and you are deliberately using that to try and break down wages and conditions through a very weak policy designed at the end of the day to see working people get less for their labour rather than more. It is all very fine for members opposite to construct a taxation system that says that people can enjoy capital gains from changes in the marketplace, movements in the market prices of houses or other assets—and nobody is begrudging that—but what we want on the deck is a core commitment by the national government to the skills formation of ordinary Australians so that through the dignity of their work they can achieve a better standard of living for themselves and their families.

The essence of this bill is to increase the funding appropriated under the act to the task of setting up and operating these 24 Australian technical college facilities. The funding has been increased from $343.6 million to $456.2 million over the period 2005 to 2009. This is an increase of $112 million. In my home state of Victoria we have the Liberal opposition whingeing, carping and complaining that the Bracks government can never bring a project in on time and on budget. That is not so. What about your own here in the federal parliament? Your knee-jerk reaction was to a problem that was brewing under your watch. Then, when it blows out, you claim some sort of credit for the increase in expenditure under the bill. It is planning administrative incompetence on a grand scale, as well as a lack of vision. This particular problem must be rammed home to the Howard government because if Australia has any break in its prosperity it is because it had a national government obsessed with fighting wars rather than skilling its own people.

Why is Australia facing a skills crisis in 2007? This problem did not happen overnight because the Chinese economy started booming and started demanding more coal, iron ore and other resources. That is a nonsense. When you get down to the ground level in communities such as Geelong and the electorate of Corio, you see that the skills shortage has little to do with those sorts of developments in the wider economy—and I will explain a little more about that later. This is a problem that has been brewing for over a decade. We have the crisis because of a lack of investment in skills formation by the federal government and underinvestment in skills formation by Australian industry. You can prattle on all you like about the failure of the states in this regard but, at the end of the day, look in your own backyard, Minister, because the government has failed to keep a hand on one of the most important tillers of growth in the Australian economy.

Since the Howard government came to office, some 325,000 Australians have been turned away from TAFE because of the failure of this government to properly finance public technical and further education—325,000 people have been turned away because this government has failed in its duty of care to Australians in this very important area.

The minister and his colleagues come to the dispatch box, as I said before, and make these cheapjack political points about Labor being obsessed with university education and not having its eye on technical and further education. The minister had better come down to Geelong and we will show you the Gordon TAFE, which was refurbished by a Labor government after years of neglect by state and federal Liberal governments. I am very proud of the fact that in East Geelong we have a campus called the Geelong Manufacturing Industry Training Centre, courtesy of a federal Labor government in cooperation with a state Labor government—not exactly evidence of a lack of commitment to working people and skills formation in the Geelong region. So, Minister, be very careful. I know you will say, ‘We’ve allocated some $20 million to a technical college in Geelong’—and for our part we have worked hard to make your incompetence work in our electorate—but guess what? Where it is going to be located? It is going to be located in a Labor facility, in the manufacturing industry training centre. It was due to open in early 2006 but it opened in early 2007, and the recruits will not be coming out trained and ready to take their place in Geelong industry and the Geelong economy generally until 2009. Yet in my community we have a skills crisis, as we speak, like other regional communities throughout Australia.

Once again, I pay tribute to the Victorian government, a Labor government, for the fact that it provided funds to conduct a regional skills shortage survey for the Geelong and Colac regions. It was very important for that survey to be done. It has assisted local businesses in Geelong to identify skills shortages so that we can better plan to meet the skills needs of Geelong industry over time. It makes interesting reading. Remember, this is the output of a Labor government that the Howard government constantly accuses of not having its heart in skills formation in the Geelong area. As I have said, the survey was done by the Labor government. The technical college will be financed by the Howard government but it will be located in a Labor funded technical and further education facility in the Geelong region. It is a very interesting survey because it is comprehensive. It is very simple but gives industry some very good pointers as to where their skills shortages are in a broad sense. It gives educators, planners and others in the Geelong community very valuable guidance as to what we need to do to meet the very practical needs of industry in the region.

As far as the trades are concerned, the survey shows that there is a lack of metal fitters and machinists, bakers and pastry cooks, roof slaters and tilers, bricklayers, electricians and cabinet-makers. In the professional and associate professional areas, registered nurses, real estate associate professionals and welfare associate professionals are in strong demand. In the category of labourers and intermediate production and transport workers there is a lack of cleaners, mobile construction plant operators and road and rail transport drivers. In the clerical, sales and service workers area there is a shortage of general clerks, sales representatives, dental assistants and sales assistants. We can go to some other areas as well where there are decided skills shortages. It is very important that people in a region, and commerce generally, have an opportunity to plan to meet the needs of their region.

A lot of cooperation has gone into the planning of this initiative that is being funded by the government. We did not rush to judgement; we wanted to at least get something right, even if the government could not. Yes, we welcomed the fact that it made the initial decision, but we wanted to make sure that things were not rushed onto the ground for political reasons. We needed to make sure that we got it right.

In recent times we have had skills conferences to determine what we need in a regional sense. John Hansen, the Executive Officer of the Geelong Area Consultative Committee, has documented the output of the skills conference that was recently held in Geelong. The issues have been narrowed down. It is very important that any future response to the skills needs of the region is based on these propositions. A need for better links between industry and schools, involving parents and pupils as well as industry, was identified. Also identified was the need for an audit of government programs, because there is a lot of activity at the federal and state levels and there is a need to avoid duplication. Further needs that were identified were: industry specific forums designed to inform and educate business owners, employer training in workforce planning, the promotion of apprenticeships and traineeships in schools and colleges, campaigns to market Geelong as the place to work, and ongoing research to measure the impact of the strategies employed.

Hansen made the comment that there is no silver bullet for our region. Indeed, nor is there one for the other great regions of Australia or for the nation. We all appreciate that this is a complex area for government as well as industry. But—for heaven’s sake!—you cannot compete over the long term, you cannot innovate over the long term and you cannot raise the standard of living of your people over the long term if you do not have a strong core commitment to funding in the vocational and training area. (Time expired)

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