Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Sustainable Development and Cities) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, colleague. What happens, though, on the ground is something that is even more interesting for my community. We regret that the Australian technical college that was to be established in the greater Frankston-Mornington Peninsula region is not to go ahead—that the incoming government has walked away from something that was thought to be fabulously important to the vast variety of students in the community that I represent, many of whom saw a skills pathway as most befitting their competencies and ambitions for the future. That is a lost opportunity.

I was quite interested to hear the Acting Prime Minister’s response to my question in question time today about the time frame for the national broadband network and how the promise of the Rudd government was that work would commence before the end of this calendar year. No-one is really convinced of that. I do not think that even the Rudd government itself is. You see its fellow travellers—that is, the state Labor governments—obviously completely impatient with what was an election promise: fibre connections to the schools. One hundred million dollars was to be made available to have broadband connections in Australian schools deliver speeds of up to 100 megabits per second. That was a lofty ambition, but progress certainly has not peaked early. There is very little sign of any progress on that—so much so that, earlier this month, the Victorian state government unveiled its own $89 million program to upgrade broadband to 1,600 government schools. Its partnership with Telstra was going to deliver a capacity of 10 megabits per second by June next year. So we are way off 100 megabits. Even state Labor governments are now realising that the Rudd government had great sound bites for the election but no sound public policy to actually implement the changes.

When you look back you will see that some of the state Labor governments, leading up to the last federal election, bemoaned the former, coalition government on broadband. They were wondering about the OPEL initiative—$958 million—that would have delivered metro comparable broadband to rural, regional and remote Australia. The Rudd government canned that project. To give an example of the impact of that, while regional and rural Australia waits for the Rudd government to sort out its shambolic NBN process, the students in those school communities are missing out. OPEL would have delivered metropolitan comparable broadband. If you started secondary school this year, you will probably be reflecting on schoolies week, after you have concluded your secondary education, before anything from the NBN delivers improved broadband to your school community—another example of an opportunity missed.

In terms of opportunities, we reflect on testing and how important that can be to identify educational disadvantage and the need for targeted remedial interventions. No-one bemoans that. But as I listened to Ray Hill, the Peninsula School’s principal speaker at the middle and senior school awards night the other evening, I was touched by the eloquence with which he pointed out that testing of those, I suppose, building-block education skills should not be the end of the game. They identify the need for numeracy and literacy improvements with the NAP, but they are building-block competencies so that people are in a position to learn. People can undertake their studies, and teachers and school communities can target the results if that is all that you are examining, but he cautioned us by saying that that cannot be all that we value in the education experience. He very eloquently pointed out that, of the intelligences, competencies and know-how that represent intellectual potential or potential activity in attainment and achievement of students, the areas that are being tested are just one part. A far more rounded view would pick up the importance of strong teachers in supportive school communities—not just identify areas of disadvantage but how to build on opportunities to advantage our students.

I look back at some of my work and advocacy from over a decade ago—and I will stick with the subject—about just how important it is to embrace work like Mayer key competencies. In 1992, Rick Mayer and his advisory committee advised all educational jurisdictions that it was time to incorporate key competencies into the school curriculum. These key competencies are the building blocks of opportunity. They are what provide for mobility in the workplace and they are the core ingredients of what I believe is essential lifelong learning. These are the things that help our kids deal with innovations in technology, the pace at which the economy is changing and the need to move between professions. Nowhere in this education revolution has the Rudd government mentioned any of these things.

The former, coalition government moved forward on this work under the banner of employability skills, but even in this area we ran into obstacles because all of the state jurisdictions thought their concept of employability skills was better than someone else’s. When it comes to communication skills, solving problems with technology, working in teams and the use of your skill set to solve problems that will vary and change over time, these workplace know-how and employability skills must be part of the forward agenda. This is about making sure that all of our students are advantaged in this dynamic world and that we not only put our energies into addressing disadvantage, as important as that is, but also build the capacity for our students to engage in this dynamic world and be part of this delicious world of opportunities. We need to tool them up as they sift through those opportunities, make choices about their lives and recognise there will be a number of different challenges they will confront. I call on the Rudd government to embrace Mayer’s work and inculcate that into the national curriculum. (Time expired)

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