Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank my colleague for his contribution. He was erudite, as usual. We agree on most things, but not everything—just as I agree on some things with you, Mr Deputy Speaker Haase, but not a lot. The Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2007 provides funding for three more Australian technical colleges. We have spoken about this in this chamber before. We support the additional expenditure in the critical area of vocational education and training, but the proposed amendments, as other speakers have said, highlight, among other things, the government’s complete lack of commitment to education within the broader Australian community. This ineptitude is felt most starkly in my own electorate of Lingiari but also, I am sure, in other regional and remote areas. In my case, it is particularly so, given the recent announcements of government intervention and a national emergency. I will come to that a little later.

This technical colleges legislation highlights a particular issue which I have spoken about before in this chamber on a number of occasions, and I am sure it reflects what is happening in your own electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker. This bill provides an additional $74.7 million for three new Australian technical colleges announced in the 2007-08 budget, to be located in Perth, Brisbane and Western Sydney. This appropriation takes the total cost of establishing 28 technical colleges to $548 million. That is a large sum of money—over half a billion dollars.

I want to express some grave reservations about the public policy aspects of these technical colleges and some concerns about the failure of the government, in looking at vocational education and training, to properly address the needs of my electorate. I think it is worth highlighting some of the comments that were made by the shadow minister for education and training, Stephen Smith, the member for Perth, in his speech in the second reading debate. He said that the government’s rationale behind the creation of the Australian technical colleges has been to isolate and attack the states and territories in an area that has traditionally been the responsibility of the states and territories themselves. Furthermore, he said that the government is attempting to find a political fix to an area of policy that has continued to be neglected over its 11 years in office. After spending more than half a billion dollars on a stand-alone network of ATCs, this is appalling.

I think this observation of itself is an example of the problems we are confronting—that is, that the ATCs have yet to produce one single graduate and the Howard government’s response is to build three additional colleges. The government’s own estimate is that Australia will confront a shortage of over 200,000 skilled workers over the next five years. These technical colleges are, we are told, expected to produce 10,000 graduates by 2010. That is a significant shortfall and it is hardly going to address the problem. It is like a pimple on the bum of an elephant—it will not show up. As for the impact it will have on the skills shortages across Australia, we know it will be farcically insignificant.

Over the past decade, the Howard government has slashed investment in vocational education and training. The TAFE system has been forced to turn away more than 325,000 students because of a lack of resources. There is one of these technical colleges in Darwin, which is not in my electorate but in the adjoining electorate of Solomon. It was allocated $8.265 million in the funding agreement and had a targeted enrolment of 50 in 2007. However, the actual enrolment was just a bit more than half—27. The Darwin technical college has already taken over three years to establish. The government only advertised for a college principal at the end of last year. It will take a number of years yet before it will be able to release skilled workers onto the labour market. It will not deliver enough tradespersons for Darwin’s needs, let alone for the needs of the Northern Territory generally. This further emphasises the policy failure in relation to addressing this very important national issue.

We have been told by the government that the technical colleges are located in regions with a high youth population and skills needs and which are supported by a significant industry base. Interestingly, my electorate has, I think, the highest birthrate of any electorate in Australia next to yours—Kalgoorlie—Mr Deputy Speaker Haase. Probably I am right in saying that it has the youngest population of any electorate in Australia. As in your electorate of Kalgoorlie, but not as significant in terms of the demand, there is a considerable skills shortage. As in your electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker, the mining industry is prominent in my electorate. The pastoral industry is prominent in my electorate. The tourism industry is prominent in my electorate. The fishing industry is prominent in my electorate. The housing and construction sector is prominent in my electorate, as are many other sectors. There is only a relatively small manufacturing base. Nevertheless, there is one. All of those sectors suffer from severe skills shortages. So we have a young population, a very high birthrate, severe skills shortages and a lack of educational opportunity. You do not have to be Einstein to work it out. It is a region where there is a young population, severe skills shortages and no investment at all by this government in vocational education and training. There is no technical college for Lingiari—nothing.

The Northern Territory government held a conference in November 2005 entitled 2015: Moving the Territory Ahead. It was told that regional economies were suffering as the Darwin economy boomed. In 2006 the Territory Construction Association stated that these skills shortages were leading to business closures, despite a booming economy. In addressing this concern, the conference delegates stated that there was a crucial need to involve Indigenous people. Mr Deputy Speaker, a little like your electorate—although it is a significantly higher proportion of the population—in my own electorate roughly 40 per cent of the population are Indigenous. Just shy of a third of the whole of the Northern Territory population are Indigenous. You would know, Mr Deputy Speaker, from the work which has been done by some of the mining industry players in your own electorate, how it is possible, working with local communities and education providers, to get skilled workers from the Indigenous population. Unfortunately, there is no indication from the announcements made thus far by the government in relation to technical colleges that they understand this priority for my electorate.

We know that the cost of providing one graduate from this exercise is very significant—$125,000 per student, which is not a bad sum of money. Imagine what you could do in your electorate, and certainly in my electorate, if someone offered to fund 50 or 100 kids at $175,000 each. You could build the Taj Mahal of all training centres and you would be guaranteed people to fill it. But that is not what is happening. Instead of investing resources in the TAFE sector, as Labor has suggested, and instead of investing resources in schools, as Labor proposes, what we have is a stand-alone system. We are discovering that this system is subletting or tendering the training back to the TAFE sector. So one asks the obvious question: what is the relative value of having this investment in technical colleges when we can see that it is at the cost of the broader community?

The shortage of skills in the Territory is exacerbated by the growth in the level of economic activity that the Territory is experiencing. Access Economics’ five-year Business outlook released last month predicts strong growth in the Territory economy of between five and 6.5 per cent per annum over the next three years. You know what that means in your own electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker Haase, in terms of driving demand, but, most significantly, it is driving demand for labour. We know that little effort has been made by the government to address the skills needs of industry by tapping into the untapped resource—in the context of my own electorate and no doubt in yours, Mr Deputy Speaker, and certainly in other parts of Australia—that is, the Indigenous labour force. There has been no attempt. I think it is worth reflecting just for a moment on some important information about the Northern Territory’s labour force. The Workforce NT report notes:

Over 83 per cent ... of the Indigenous population aged 15 years and over—

in the NT—

reside in remote areas. This existing and potential labour force is characterised by:

• High rates of disengagement from the labour market;
• High rates of employment through Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP);
• Declining mainstream employment ...

Dr John Taylor, author of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research report Indigenous economic futures in the Northern Territory, has stated:

• The only growth in census-recorded Indigenous employment since 1996 has occurred in the Community Development Employment Projects scheme, with Indigenous numbers in mainstream (non-CDEP) employment actually falling
• The CDEP scheme has thus overtaken mainstream employment as the primary employer of Indigenous people in the Northern Territory.

The CDEP program was a response to the calls of Indigenous Australians for an alternative to passive welfare—that is, sit-down money—that would meet the requirements of community development. I will come back to that in a moment.

To date, the thrust of Commonwealth policy aimed at reducing welfare dependency and raising economic status has been towards increasing mainstream employment, especially in the private sector. This has not been achieved in the Northern Territory. The underlying determinants of the skills shortage in the Territory and the inability of many in my electorate to fully engage with the labour market remain focused on the themes of disadvantage and the historical legacy of exclusion from the education and training sectors.

I want to spend a bit of time on that. You will have heard me talk about it here before, because I have flapped my gums about it so often in this place that I am getting sick and tired of doing it. But there are, in my estimation, somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 young Aboriginal Territorians between the ages of 13 and 18 who have no access to any education services to speak of, no access to a normal high school and certainly no access to any vocational education and training—none.

We know that the significant proportion of these people, once they reach the age of 16, end up as CDEP workers. Some of them undertake very important work in communities. They might engage in major programs; they might be engaged in working in the local store, in school, in aged-care programs or childcare programs. There are a range of programs that you see in communities, Mr Deputy Speaker, about which you are aware.

We have seen, as a result of the intervention by the Commonwealth government in the Northern Territory, the sacking of 8,000 workers, effectively, by removing CDEP. As of the end of this current financial year, it will no longer exist in the Northern Territory. So the 8,000 people who are currently on CDEP will be off it. Remember what I said earlier: CDEP is about Aboriginal people themselves saying that they are sick of passive welfare and they want to actually make sure that people do something for the money that they get from the Commonwealth.

I think the first CDEP scheme operated in 1976 or 1977. I recall doing a review of the scheme when I was working for the Australian National University between 1979 and 1981. I know how it operates. What we have seen in the Northern Territory, as a result of the government’s intervention and a change in the way in which they administer labour market programs and the removal of the remote area exemption, is that Aboriginal people are going to be moved from CDEP, where they are actually doing work, onto sit-down money.

The reason for this is, of course, so that the Commonwealth can garnish or get hold of by quarantine some of the income of Indigenous people. Leaving aside the merits or otherwise of that debate, the point to be made here is that the government have taken people off a work program and put them onto the dole equivalent or into a training program and this is already causing major concern in the community. There is major concern for a number of reasons, not least of which is that we are seeing an increasing number of people relocate. They are relocating from their home communities, because of these changes, to towns like Alice Springs, Katherine and Tennant Creek. This of course places increasing pressure upon those towns and increasing pressure upon the services that they currently provide and are able to provide. Unfortunately, it is one of the negative effects of the government intervention and something which was highlighted in evidence last Friday to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs by the Mayor of Alice Springs Town Council, Her Worship Fran Kilgariff, and the Mayor of Katherine Town Council, Her Worship Anne Shepherd. They both highlighted this issue.

When we look at the recommendations of the report on which the government’s intervention is based, we see that one of the most significant recommendations is about education. The report points out clearly the things that I have observed over many years—that if you want to provide people with an effective capacity to be participants in the community and to take the responsibility of every other Australian citizen, you provide them with an opportunity for a job. But, to provide them with an opportunity for a job, you have to provide them with access to training or an education. We have historically seen in the Northern Territory a failure by successive governments to do just that, and we are seeing a continuation of that by this government.

So instead of seeing any expenditure at all relating to technical colleges, which will assist in the training of Aboriginal people to address their skills needs, there is no money—not a red cent, not a zack—for the provision of vocational education and training or indeed educational services in these communities. Even in the government’s response, which is currently being debated in the Senate, there is no mention of this. The government have spent over half a billion dollars, but they cannot find any money to address this crucial issue. In the context of this bill that we are currently discussing, I ask one thing: what benefit has the establishment of these technical colleges had for people in remote Australia? I say that it is nil, zilch, zero. There has been no benefit whatsoever. (Time expired)

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