Stuart Henry (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

and one million people unemployed while you were president of the ACTU and the member for Throsby beside you was vice president and assistant secretary. That is an indication of how much support there was for people in the workplace and working families—one million people unemployed, $96 billion worth of debt, over 300,000 long-term unemployed and 34.5 per cent youth unemployment—over the period of the Labor government. It was very much a case of not really understanding where they were or where they were going.

That is certainly the case with the Labor Party’s policy with respect to including vocational training in 2,650 schools across Australia. They are throwing money at vocational training without any structure, purpose or proper process for ensuring that there are properly skilled, adequate and qualified industry trainers to be able to address the real skill needs in this country, unlike the Howard government with the development of specialised Australian technical colleges. Certainly, I am a long-term advocate for apprenticeship training, trade training, post-trade training, training for new careers, no matter what your age, and upskilling to ensure the current skill sets are relevant to industry needs.

I do have some knowledge and understanding of these challenges, having spent some time involved with industry training. I was responsible for the development of MPA Skills, one of the first industry training centres in Australia, which now boasts three training campuses in Western Australia. I was also involved in group training at both an operational level, placing apprentices with employers for both short- and long-term training opportunities, and as a director of Group Training Australia.

In this year’s budget the Howard government announced increased funding for the establishment of three more Australian technical colleges to be located in the Penrith area of Western Sydney, in Brisbane’s southern suburbs and in north Perth, including the City of Swan. It is no secret that I am totally committed to the next Australian technical college in Western Australia being built at the Midland railway workshops in the northern part of my electorate of Hasluck. I have been strongly advocating Midland to the government and to successive ministers as the most suitable and logical site for the next technical college, particularly in light of the criteria established for the selection of these particular regions. The criteria are that the region must have a high youth population, a strong industry base and local skills shortages in skilled occupations. Midland is the major centre of Perth’s rapidly expanding north-eastern corridor. My efforts to secure Midland as a site for an Australian technical college have been extensive and unrelenting. Along with the Swan Chamber of Commerce, the City of Swan, the North-Eastern Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and the Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council, I have been working hard to ensure the objective of having an Australian technical college in Midland is realised.

In all, 11 major organisations covering local government, local business, local industry and local education are supporting Midland as the best site. The catchment area of the proposed college takes in the metropolitan municipalities of Bassendean, Mundaring, Kalamunda, Bayswater, Belmont and Swan. This accounts for some 13.3 per cent of the metropolitan population of Perth. In addition to this catchment are the surrounding areas that use Midland as a regional centre. They are the shires of Toodyay, Northam, York, Chittering, Beverly, Gingin, Victoria Plains, Goomalling, Cunderdin and the town of Northam. Combining both the metropolitan and country areas gives a total catchment of 15.7 per cent of the Western Australian population.

As an outer area that has experienced rapid urbanisation, the population growth is estimated at nearly three per cent per annum. I have written directly to some 14,000 homes in the northern part of my electorate seeking their support for the Australia technical college at the Midland railway workshops. There has been a huge response by mail, email and phone, and people have been coming by the electorate office to pledge their support for this initiative.

The Perth airport and the Kewdale and Forrestfield marshalling yards involve all facets of the transport sector, with companies in the area involved in heavy industry, including the construction and resources sector. The northern and central part of Hasluck is the point where all key transport nodes meet, including air, road and rail, servicing a rapidly developing industrial hub, which is the home of businesses such as WesTrac Pty Ltd, the Caterpillar Training Institute, Midland Brick Company, Boral Ltd, Hanson Australian Construction Materials, Toll Ipec Pty Ltd, GEMCO Rail, South Spur Rail Services, Hoffman Engineering Company, BlueScope Steel Ltd, BGC and many others.

Many local construction, engineering, resource and transport companies have pledged to support young people in school based apprenticeships at the Australian technical college in Midland—if established—guaran-teeing the success of such an initiative. Local education and training bodies see the Midland technical college as the ideal venue for providing school based apprenticeships and traineeships. The Perth eastern region, and Midland in particular, has a culture of trade training and will adapt very quickly to embrace the development of the new culture of school based apprenticeships, which builds on the old apprenticeship training system.

The region has a 100-year history of trade based training, which in the past was very much underpinned by the Midland railway workshops, with literally thousands of Perth tradespeople having completed their training at this site in the past. However, with the closure of the railway workshops some years ago, the trade focus for the area has fallen away, in spite of significant industry growth in the surrounding area. The eastern metropolitan region has a higher proportion of young people aged under 20 than the Western Australian and Perth populations. These young people, as with similar age brackets across the state, are twice as likely as the general population to experience unemployment. Young people in the region are also less likely to participate in education, with only 20.3 per cent continuing with some form of education, compared to the state average of 23.7 per cent.

I have led delegations to the relevant federal ministers and I would like to thank them for their time and for giving the case for Midland due and proper consideration. There is already a very successful Australian technical college operating in Western Australia—the Perth South ATC. It is spread across two campuses—one at Maddington and the other at Armadale in the electorate of Canning, which is held by my colleague Don Randall. The Maddington campus trains students for the automotive trades, while the Armadale campus trains students in the building and construction industries. This and other Australian technical colleges across Australia are already an outstanding success due to the quality of the facilities, the industry-qualified training staff and the very close guidance and involvement of industry and local employers in the areas of specialisation that these colleges focus on. It is not quite the quick fix the member for Calwell wanted us to believe. These specialised training areas are going to provide very positive outcomes for students being trained in those areas. They will have an excellent opportunity to complete their apprenticeship training at TAFE colleges because Australian technical colleges work in partnership with the TAFE system and the industry training system that we currently have.

The commitment made by the Howard government at the 2004 election to fund and develop 24 Australian technical colleges is already a strong reality, with some 20 colleges up and running at 33 campuses across Australia. Nationwide, a significant number of students are benefiting from being able to complete high school—getting their year 11 and year 12 certificate—and starting a school based apprenticeship at the same time. It is expected that over 8,400 students will be attending these colleges each year once they are fully operational across Australia in 2009. That means these students will finish their two years at the Australian technical college having completed their high school education and already being two years into their chosen trade or vocational training.

Given that most colleges have only started up in the last 12 months, the claim by Labor that they have not produced any qualified people yet is somewhat spurious—to say the least—because it does take two years to complete high school. Of course, the apprenticeship is part of that training process in those two years as well. With a school based apprenticeship they can come out and articulate into trade training delivered through TAFE or through an industry based training centre to complete their qualification. This gives them an important head start for their careers. From there they can continue their on-the-job training with their existing employer. This initiative will very much streamline the apprenticeship training system by reducing the time required for trade training once the students have left school. It will meet employer need for job-ready young people who need only a short time to complete their trade training following their schooling.

One of the keys to the success of these colleges is the close involvement of local industry and employers who know what skills they need and when they need them. The other is to have trainers with technical skills that industry wants and needs. Again, I think this is a dramatic difference between what the Howard government is doing with vocational training and what the Labor Party wants to do by introducing vocational training in schools. Labor has made no commitment and there is no industry involvement in that process. I have seen schools where state Labor governments have tried to introduce vocational training in the past. School teachers have told me that they could train kids to certificate III level in vocational training. I have asked what industry involvement there has been and the answer is none. How do they know what competencies industry needs without industry involvement? There is exactly the same problem with what Labor has proposed.

Australian technical colleges are an effective and simple solution to increasing the skills of school leavers and meeting the skill needs of employers in traditional and other trade areas. Local industry knows what to look for in technical skills, and local students get the benefit of that knowledge. Three decades ago, this nation wrongly turned its back on the old style technical high schools—I think that was a Labor initiative—closing them down and dumping students with good technical skills and real potential in the trades into schools interested only in an academic outcomes. There was a big push to send everyone to university. We have seen that that did not work. This suited about 30 per cent of school leavers; the other 70 per cent were left on their own, with some gaining an apprenticeship or traineeship and others tragically becoming the long-term unemployed of the Labor governments of the 1980s and early 1990s. I quoted earlier the youth unemployment rate of 34.5 per cent back in those years. This cost Australia a lost generation of tradesmen, and we are paying the price now at a time when we can least afford it, particularly in the states of Western Australia and Queensland. It was Labor policy that promoted university education above all else—at the expense of trade training. It was under a Labor government that we saw apprenticeship numbers decline from 151,000 in 1991 to 122,600 by 1993. It was under Labor that we saw teenage unemployment at a record high of 34.5 per cent, because there were no opportunities for either education or employment. In the early nineties the opportunity of finding an apprenticeship was as rare as hen’s teeth.

Australian technical colleges are being established to cater for those students who possess strong technical and creative talents and want to have a go at a trade. This reinforces for them that they are as highly valued for their special talents as someone with academic talents. Indeed, learning by doing, developing manual technical skills by actually learning through a hands-on approach, is something that the majority of us do easily. The critics of this great initiative to establish Australian technical colleges accused the government of duplicating the TAFE system. Quite clearly these colleges do not duplicate TAFE colleges; they are high schools designed to deliver years 11 and 12 according to the high school curriculum, to deliver high quality vocational and technical training relevant to the needs of industry and employers, and to create fast-track career opportunities for these young students keen to take up a trade when they leave school. TAFE delivers vocational and trade training at a post-secondary level to students who have completed their schooling. Indeed, it could be said that in some cases TAFE has lost its way and dropped the ball on trade training in trying to be all things to all people.

However, it should be noted that the Howard government has provided a record level of funding—$12 billion since 1996—to state and territory governments for TAFE and vocational education. State and territory governments have failed miserably in their responsibilities to their communities and industry by failing to deliver the skill needs that Australian industry so desperately needs. In Western Australia it is now a requirement that all students stay at school until year 12. This was an edict of a state Labor government, but they failed to provide the sort of learning environment that these vital, dynamic and energetic young people need. I do not think it would be going too far to say that the Western Australian government has made a real mess of education in my state. Labor have turned education into an absolute disaster area. I read recently that, because of a shortage of teachers, it was proposed that class sizes be increased to 75 students. There is much confusion amongst teachers and parents about the on-again, off-again OBE—outcomes based education. Teachers are still battling to make sense of a chaotic system, with morale so poor that they are leaving the profession in droves.

It is only since the advent of Australian technical colleges that high schools have started to focus on and provide effective and structured vocational training delivered by trainers with industry skills and knowledge. This has come about through state governments following the lead of the Howard government and working towards their own models of technical schools and colleges. It is worth putting on the record federal Labor’s blind opposition to these colleges, which we heard from the member for Calwell earlier. So much for the ALP being the so-called champions of the Australian worker—they would seek to deny the very measures that give talented and bright young Australians the opportunity to begin a career in a trade in industry sectors crying out for such trainees. Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to review a discussion paper called ‘It’s Crunch Time: raising youth engagement and attainment’, which was published by the Australian Industry Group and the Dusseldorp Skills Forum. It is a very interesting report. It states:

We can no longer afford significant levels of disengagement among Australian youth.

The 34.5 per cent youth unemployment of the early 1990s can never be repeated. The report further states:

There should be simple, clear but compelling objectives driving federal and state policy. These are that, subject to their ability, every young person:

• will attain Year 12, or, over time, a vocational equivalent at AQF Certificate III level
• will be engaged in full-time work or learning, or a combination of these
• will be provided with the resources, and facilitated with relationships and integrated pathways needed to achieve these outcomes.

Australian technical colleges go a long way towards achieving this sort of integrated pathway.

There is much in the report that I agree with. The challenge, of course, will be to ensure that state and federal governments are on the same page, that political expediency and point scoring are left behind, and that the real needs of Australian youth are focused on, including educational and training pathways, the quality of workplace and institutional learning, training opportunities, career advice and guidance, transitions from schools to vocational tertiary learning and training centres and to workplaces.

The Realising Our Potential initiatives in this year’s budget recognise that the university and vocational education training sectors are becoming increasingly interlinked. I strongly support the proposal for a new trade diploma, which will provide an excellent transitional opportunity from trade qualifications to university qualifications. There should be no reason why a qualified licensed plumber, for example, cannot apply to a university to obtain a mechanical engineering qualification. By breaking down these barriers we will provide Australians with a greater choice and opportunity to enhance their careers and working lives. Taking a trade as a career pathway should not be a barrier to university but, rather, another pathway.

Clearly, the Australian government has made some significant progress and developed a leadership role in all of these areas, but there is more to be done. Australian technical colleges are a model for transitional arrangements from school learning to industry learning and training to workplace learning and skill application. In addition, they start to really facilitate industry and employer involvement in education at an earlier stage. In my view, over time, this will improve the understanding for more quality on-the-job training. (Time expired)

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