Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I hear the member for Batman, as a former President of the ACTU, saying, ‘This is true,’ and good on you. We want real trades for real blue-collar workers. We do not want Mickey Mouse schemes coming out of these technical colleges. So thankyou, Member for Batman, you are on the page in terms of real skills and real trades. You told me once you actually got your hands dirty doing real trades yourself. So good on you. I am pleased to see that you are supporting people who are learning real skills in the blue-collar area. I know you will back them and I know you will support people who are going to get skills in this area. So congratulations and thanks for your support.

There is a whole line of state education ministers coming out and bagging these technical colleges. They have to because you are what you are because of what you have been. You were put there by your union bosses and your unions and, at the end of the day, you have to come and destroy anything that is not part of the Labor union regime. For example, I think I have mentioned previously the poor kids at the Welshpool Training Centre in Perth where businesses are charged $15 a day for each kid on the job and it goes into the Welshpool Training Centre and they end up with millions of dollars a year to train people in trades. But what do they do? They hardly train anyone. This needs to be investigated. They borrow about $1 million a year from the executives and trouser the money and do not pay it back. I think this is a disgrace and it should be investigated. Come the next parliament you can be assured that I will take that on.

Getting back to the Perth South campuses in Armadale and Maddington, we have so much support and the reason they are so successful is that the local businesses support it—the local trades people. As I said, Teresa Gambaro, the member for Petrie, told me that in her area there are over 150 places and they are full. These are in the same areas of skill that I talked about. Next year they are going to have 300. So much for not being able to fill these places!

Capacity at the campuses is 45 and it will be 75 next year. For example, Maddington currently has 41—31 auto mechanics and 10 auto electricians. Armadale has 32, which is made up of eight carpentry and joinery students, 11 brick and block laying students and 13 steel framers. These people have been supported by the local government authorities and they have received scholarships. Their fees are something like $1,550 per semester. This is unlike the state technical colleges which in some cases in New South Wales increased their fees by 300 per cent. In places like Victoria it was 25 per cent. They jacked up the fees so these poor kids could not join in. No wonder they went off to the mining industry and got jobs at about $1,200 a week. I would like to say what a success the Australia technical colleges are. They are going to continue to be a success and the only detriment to them is the Labor Party putting them back in the hands of these—(Time expired)

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