Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the member for Robertson for that question. I am mindful of the time that we have at our disposal so I will be brief in my response. I very much appreciated the opportunity to visit Green Point Christian College with the member and to experience an extraordinary range of performances from students not only from Green Point but from Terrigal High and other schools in the area as well. There was some fabulous talent on the Central Coast that I heard on Friday last week.

If we are going to be serious with equipping young Australians for a lifetime of work and participation, they need to have the opportunity to develop those skills when they are still at school. The trade training centre program, which represents a $2.5 billion investment over 10 years by this government, is one of the most significant investments in vocational education and training that we have ever seen. At every single one of those centres that I visit I see firsthand what a difference it is making to students such as at the Southern Cross Catholic Vocational College that I referred to earlier. I was also able to visit the Bendigo trade training centre at Bendigo Senior Secondary College quite recently. These centres all show how the provision of first-class infrastructure and training facilities will enable kids to get on that trade training journey, whether it is in automotive, in electrical, in hospitality or in the creative areas. The fact is that these trades training centres provide the opportunity for us to meet the skills challenges that we will face in the future. In this budget we have significant investment in skills, including Building the Future Workforce, a $3 billion investment over six years. As well as that, we are equipping these young students with every opportunity to go out into a trade and build a fantastic life for themselves and their families and their communities. I very much applaud the approach that has been taken by these schools in making sure that they partner together and deliver a cooperative group to put in for a trades training centre. I appreciate very much the cooperation that we have seen from small business and the business sector generally in making sure that, when kids come from school and continue their training or go into employment, businesses have already been involved with the kids as they have been working and learning in the trades training centres.

In conclusion, as we develop the national trade cadetship we will see that we have a national cadetship which provides kids with every opportunity to think about how they want to train within a school, then go onto an apprenticeship, then go into a business and build a working career for themselves over their lifetime. We place a lot of focus on skills and participation in the 2011-12 budget, and that is because we know that the opportunities that come with training and learning are absolutely necessary and essential not only to make sure that Australian citizens have got meaningful, good, sustainable work but that we build prosperity in the future. We want to make sure that kids can gain skills that are relevant to the workplace when they are in these trades training centres, and the outstanding level of support that we have had from schools right around Australia tells me that this policy is one that is absolutely to be commended.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Debate adjourned.

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