Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. The issue I would like to raise with the minister relates to the Australian technical colleges. I would like to get an assurance from the minister that the situation that existed in the Hunter will not be allowed to exist under her watch. It was a situation where an Australian technical college was brought into operation before the program was ready to go.

I will share with the House what happened in the Hunter. Students were enrolled in the Australian technical college and, whilst they were enrolled and the places were there, there were no tools for them to use, no benches for them to operate on and no work experience available for them. This caused enormous stress for the parents. I had a number of parents come to see me because their children—their young adults—had left school and enrolled in the Australian technical college. On the advice of the previous government, they were led to believe that their sons in these cases, by enrolling in the technical college, would have a better chance of getting employment and that it would lead into an apprenticeship and a worthwhile career.

What actually happened? The parents visited the industries in the area and managed to scrape together some donations of tools. Rather than the government buying the tools and having them in place before the students started, the parents had to find the tools. The second aspect was the benches they had to work on. Believe it or not, the parents had to go into the Australian technical college in the Hunter and build the benches so that their sons could undertake the training in the college, which was established before it had the tools or the benches it needed.

It does not stop there. These young boys were promised that they would get work experience, but no work experience was organised. No employers signed on to offer the work experience that these young boys expected. On the days that they were supposed to do work experience, they had to go home. They sat at home and watched TV or, if it was a good day—Shortland being the electorate it is—they were able to go to the beach. They could go surfing but, whilst that is a pleasurable activity, it did absolutely nothing—

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