Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2007 provides additional funding for three more Australian technical colleges in line with measures the government announced in the 2007 budget. This bill commits an extra $74.7 million over the next four years to build three additional Australian technical colleges that will cater for approximately 900 students.

Tackling Australia’s worsening skills crisis and investing in quality education and training for young Australians is about securing Australia’s future prosperity and ensuring that young people in this country have the best opportunities when it comes to building their own future and choosing their own individual career paths. Making sure that we get the policy right in these areas should be one of our highest priorities in this place, and that is why I am keen to speak in the debate on this bill.

I also want to pick up some of the comments that the member for Dobell made. Skills shortages and the need to provide young people with an opportunity in this area are very important. I take the matter very seriously; I know my colleagues on this side of the House take it very seriously. It is a myth that government members like to perpetuate in this place that the Australian Labor Party talks down trades and has a very low opinion of young people who choose a profession in the trades. That is absolute nonsense and it is untrue. We on this side of the House are supportive of all the choices that young people make. If they choose to pursue a career in the trades, we will provide whatever support we can to ensure that they get the best-quality opportunities to pursue such a career.

By the government’s own reckoning, Australia faces a shortage of 200,000 skilled workers over the next five years. The fact that this shortfall of 200,000 skilled workers exists shows the extent of the Howard government’s failure when it comes to investing in vocational education and training in this country. Skilling up the Australian workforce is absolutely crucial if we want to see Australia continue to grow and prosper, and if we want to make sure that Australia is ready to meet the many challenges that inevitably lie ahead in today’s very fast changing world. This figure of 200,000 skilled workers also highlights the mammoth task ahead of us in reversing Australia’s skills shortage.

Today we are debating the merits of the Howard government’s proposed solution to Australia’s skills crisis. This solution comes in the form of Australian technical colleges—an initiative that the Howard government first introduced during the 2004 federal election. Since then, the government has portrayed Australian technical colleges as if cumulatively they were the golden goose, destined to solve all our problems when it comes to Australia’s worsening skills crisis. Indeed, we again heard this very same message from the federal Treasurer during this year’s federal budget. The key question here is whether Australian technical colleges will actually solve Australia’s skills crisis.

Revisiting that figure of 200,000 additional skilled workers needed in Australia over the next five years, the government estimates that Australian technical colleges will produce no more than 10,000 new graduates by 2010. Ten thousand new graduates by 2010 is a far cry from the 200,000 skilled workers Australia is in desperate need of now. By any stretch of the imagination, this does not even come close to solving Australia’s skills crisis, and I doubt that it will be seen as a real solution to Australia’s skills crisis by those living in my electorate of Calwell. So much for the goose laying the golden egg; rather, Australian technical colleges are more about providing the Howard government with leverage to pretend that they are addressing Australia’s skills crisis than they are about solving the problems we face.

The Howard government’s hope is that somehow we will all forget this shortfall of 190,000 skilled workers in Australia if they incessantly talk up their Australian technical colleges every time someone utters the words ‘skills crisis’. Given the seriousness of the crisis that Australia now faces, I doubt very much whether this is going to happen, for this is a skills crisis that not only affects the future competitiveness of Australia; it also robs young Australians of work opportunities, because the government have neglected to invest in their education and training.

The government not only lacks a solution to Australia’s worsening skills crisis; it is largely responsible for creating it in the first place. TAFE colleges have long been one of the key providers of vocational education and training in Australia, and they have long played a central role in skilling up Australia’s future workforce. But the Howard government in its wisdom—or lack of wisdom—has decided to slash federal government funding to TAFE in Australia.

Since 1997 Commonwealth funding for TAFE has decreased by approximately 26 per cent and the amount of government funding per student has also fallen dramatically. As a direct consequence, TAFE colleges have been forced to turn away over 325,000 potential students—that is, 325,000 potential skilled workers. It is estimated that in one year up to 40,000 Australians who apply for TAFE will miss out on a place in vocational education and training or VET, in part due to government funding cuts.

So is it any wonder that Australia faces a skills crisis of the magnitude we see today, given the current record of this government? The Howard government’s underfunding of education in Australia is not just peculiar to TAFE. Rather, its policy of neglecting education is something that you will find across the board. This is a government that has shown little interest in and little regard for the needs and interests of young Australians when it comes to education and the opportunities it provides. That is why government spending on education has fallen by seven per cent under the Howard government, at the same time that it has increased by 48 per cent in other developed countries over the last decade. Similarly, that is also why higher education spending per student has gone up on average by six per cent in these same countries, while in Australia it has fallen by six per cent. Under John Howard’s watch, Australia has tumbled to last place among developed countries when it comes to investing in preschool education. These figures speak for themselves. They highlight a decade of neglect, a decade of complacency and a decade of contempt when it comes to the education of our children. Australia’s current skills crisis is but one of the effects of this legacy.

Australian technical colleges are an attempt to find a quick political fix for what amounts to a massive policy failure on the government’s part. The member for Dobell, who let the cat out of the bag when making reference to the Australian technical colleges, said that they were very popular and tried to imply that the New South Wales government was quick to jump on that bandwagon. In saying that they are popular, he has admitted that the government is looking for short-term, popular fixes to a long-term problem that requires serious thoughtfulness and serious commitment from the government to address the issues. It is a popular fix, as admitted by the member for Dobell.

Australian technical colleges are an attempt, as I said, to find a quick political fix for the government’s massive policy failure and short-term vision in addressing the current skills crisis. For the Howard government, decreasing the amount of Commonwealth funding allocated to TAFE colleges and establishing Australian technical colleges have always been about bypassing Australia’s state and territory governments in an area that has traditionally been their responsibility. Instead of cooperating with state and territory governments and investing in TAFE, the Howard government chose to go it alone by establishing Australian technical colleges. Of course, the political payback in this is that it allows the Howard government to blame state and territory governments for the very problems that it has created and, at the same time, to masquerade as the can-do saviour of education in Australia. The Howard government is the master of the quick fix on all issues; education is no exception. It is a scenario that we see played out once again today in many areas—in particular, in the area of health.

The government’s decision to ignore TAFE colleges, to bypass state and territory governments and to go it alone with its Australian technical colleges has not exactly been without its problems, of course. Originally, the government announced that 24 Australian technical colleges would be established that could, together, accommodate up to 7,200 students from years 7 to 12. In July 2005 the Howard government added an extra college to its itinerary, to be built in Adelaide, bringing the total number of planned Australian technical colleges to 25. This bill provides funding for three additional colleges, bringing to 28 the number of technical colleges the government has promised to build. The $74.7 million set aside in this bill brings the total cost of establishing these 28 technical colleges to some $548 million. But, after three years and more than half a billion dollars in funding, only 21 colleges have opened and to date they have produced not one graduate.

Just two out of the operating 21 colleges have met their enrolment targets. Collectively, there have only been 1,800 enrolments registered for Australian technical colleges. Only one-third of these colleges are legally registered to provide training, with many outsourcing the bulk of their training to TAFEs or registered training organisations. Of the six Australian technical colleges operating in Victoria, where my electorate of Calwell is located, five colleges have outsourced their training to TAFE. The average cost per student is $175,000. Not all colleges have opened, not all colleges are legally registered to provide training, not one graduate has been produced and there have been only 1,800 enrolments so far. That hardly sounds like a well thought out and well-executed plan to solve Australia’s chronic skills shortage.

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