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

Tonight I rise to speak on the Skills Australia Bill 2008, which is currently before the House. This bill highlights the determination of the Rudd government to tackle Australia’s worsening skills crisis, a crisis that has been compounded by a decade of inaction under the previous government and one that has significant economic and social implications for limiting Australia’s ability to meet its future challenges. The purpose of the Skills Australia Bill 2008 is to establish an independent statutory body, Skills Australia, whose role will be to provide the government with high-quality advice about the current, emerging and future skills needs of Australia. The establishment of Skills Australia is an important part of this government’s commitment to safeguarding Australia’s long-term prosperity. This includes making sure that the right conditions are in place to guarantee Australia’s continued economic development. Among other things, this depends heavily on our capacity as a nation to produce a skilled workforce and to lift Australia’s flagging productivity rate. It also requires a more sustained focus on social inclusion, a term which describes a society where all have an opportunity to participate fully and meaningfully in the workforce and in community life.

The establishment of Skills Australia will help to identify specific skills shortages in our economy. It will also help identify and plan for the relevant pathways to address these shortages. Comprised of seven members drawn from a range of backgrounds including economics, industry, academia and training providers, its mandate will be to match more closely the range of skills training available in Australia with the needs of our changing economy, especially when it comes to those areas where skills shortages are most acute. Skills Australia will help industry and business plan for a future where people with the necessary skills and training will be available to take them forward. It will help us inform young people of job market openings and optimum training options. It will help us advise existing workforce participants who are looking to retrain, take advantage of new pathways or, indeed, return to the workforce following redundancy or other interruptions to their working lives and it will help schools, universities and TAFE colleges tailor the courses they offer to suit the needs of both students and local employers.

We know that Australia faces a shortage of more than 200,000 skilled workers over the next five years. Within eight years that figure is likely to reach 240,000. The need to combat Australia’s skills crisis has never been as immediate or as pressing as it is now. This crisis has been building for a decade, but the previous government simply ignored all the warnings. The net result is that today’s skills shortages have already started to hold this country back. The situation was made worse by the Howard government’s decision to slash funding to the TAFE sector, the largest single provider of training in Australia, and by the abject failure of its Australian technical colleges program. More than 325,000 people were turned away from the TAFE system during the years of the previous government. Skills Australia will provide important information to this government, which is committed to turning the situation around as quickly as possible.

The commitment to matching up the demand for skills and training with an increased skills capacity in the workforce will benefit the whole nation, but it will particularly be important for the people and industries in my electorate of Calwell. Currently, large numbers of the people I represent in Calwell depend on the manufacturing industry for their jobs and wellbeing. Indeed, statistics for the northern region of metropolitan Melbourne, of which Calwell is a part, show that employment in manufacturing accounts for over 60,000 jobs. Many of our local industries, however, face an uncertain future. A number have closed altogether, others have drastically reduced in size and made long-serving workers redundant, and others are busy restructuring and downsizing in a desperate bid to stay viable. We have many experienced and well-trained workers who face employment uncertainty, while we have an economy limited by a lack of people with the necessary skills for the future. We have an obligation to avoid the terrible waste of such a situation.

A complete lack of interest at the national government level in local manufacturing over the last decade—in procurement policies which favour home-grown manufacturing, in nurturing innovation or in actively encouraging research and development—has left local industry exposed to the onslaught of global competition with little to defend itself. Australian manufacturing has a proud tradition. We cannot compete with low-wage countries when it comes to old-style mass production. Where Australia’s future lies is with high technology creation and innovation. We need to utilise the brains and creativity of our community, and that is where skills development and training become crucial. We can compete internationally by investing in skills and training and by looking to new products, new markets and new methods of production. To do this, we need specialised skills, we need targeted training and we need creative minds and forward thinkers.

One such innovation that the Rudd government will nurture is the development of green cars. Automotive manufacturers in Calwell will benefit from a $500 million green car innovation fund. This measure will help generate $2 billion in investment to secure jobs and tackle climate change by manufacturing low-emission vehicles in Australia. Calwell has a number of companies in the automotive sector. If we can match existing industry and existing skills with a properly targeted program for skills development and readiness to meet the growing demand for environmentally sustainable transport, we will achieve a great deal for the future of our local and national economy as well as improve our air quality. It is precisely this sort of integrated policy development that we need in the 21st century.

In Calwell, we also need housing, infrastructure and a range of human services—all areas which suffer from the crisis in skills shortages—yet we have higher than average unemployment and underemployment and not enough training places for people who want them. Here is a typical picture of mismatch between supply and demand, between willingness to participate and the opportunity to do so.

Most importantly, Calwell’s manufacturing history means that we have a plentiful supply of the most valuable asset a healthy economy needs—namely, our people. The people of Calwell, like those of so many other multicultural urban communities of working people around Australia, are resourceful, hardworking, resilient and very adaptable. We have a diverse community with an enormous range of existing skills and great potential for the acquisition of more skills. We speak a wide range of languages—surely one of the most overlooked skills in this country, especially in an increasingly globalised economy. We have a wonderful TAFE college, Kangan Batman TAFE, which is giving its students excellent training and support to enter the workforce as well as practical experience in the workplace. We have Victoria University’s Sunbury campus, serving tertiary students in that community and beyond.

Our local schools in Calwell are producing some wonderfully bright, enthusiastic, ambitious and dynamic young people. I recently hosted a reception for the highest achieving VCE students of 2007 in my electorate. Looking around at the kids in the room that day, I felt proud that in this part of the world we are producing Australia’s future leaders, thinkers and creators. A number of schools in my electorate have introduced some very innovative programs to give their students every possible chance of going out into the world with the intellectual tools to engage with technology, inquiry, knowledge and problem-solving. The Rudd government is committed to encouraging such programs and to boosting the federal government’s investment in education.

The work of Skills Australia in identifying short-term and longer term needs in the economy is just one component in the overall plan to reskill Australia. Investing in Australian schools to ensure that today’s students are able to successfully tackle the challenges of a rapidly changing workforce is another complementary component. Providing our children with a world-class education system is crucial not only to their future success but also to Australia’s ability to compete globally. The National Secondary School Computer Fund is one such component of the government’s plan to meet this challenge head-on. Enabling schools to provide their students with new or upgraded information and communications technology as well as improved access to high-speed broadband internet is central to ensuring that students develop computer literacy, greater independence in learning and problem-solving and familiarity with up-to-date technology. These skills will form an important foundation for students who move on to more specialised education, training and work.

Trades training centres are another important initiative that this government is introducing. In 2001, the Northern Melbourne Area Consultative Committee initiated research to identify the causes of skill shortages in northern Melbourne. One of the major findings of this research was that most schools were aiming to prepare students for university education but were failing to adequately cater for those students who were not considering a university pathway. These students were not receiving information or exposure to opportunities in trades training areas aligned with regional industry needs, such as manufacturing, engineering, furnishing, construction and the automotive sector. This lack of information was compounded by negative perceptions about the nature of jobs available in these industries. For instance, many students and their parents still saw trades jobs as menial, dirty and often dangerous, despite the enormous changes in computer and other technology, safety and career prospects in so many of the trades.

The new trades training centres supported by this government, in partnership with the states, will have a major impact in reducing skill shortages across Australia. In Calwell, this policy provides us with a unique opportunity to establish a number of trades training centres in strategic locations across the electorate and to align these centres with the skills base sought by regional industries in areas like manufacturing, engineering, construction and the automotive sector.

By building stronger partnerships between local industry and local education providers, a core aim must be to make sure that these training centres are relevant to the local context so that students in Calwell who do not opt for university have the sorts of skills and training that local employers are looking for. This is one way to ensure the long-term viability and success of trades training centres. It also means providing strong employment opportunities and a seamless transition to apprenticeships for local school leavers whilst making sure that local industry has access to the skills it needs to grow. I congratulate the Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations and Social Inclusion for introducing this important bill and I commend the bill to the House.

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