Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Only $1.4 billion of that funding has been allocated for 511 trade training centres servicing 1,297 schools. So one of the problems with the whole system was not just that it did not work but also that it was so patchwork. And the activities that take place inside these trade training centres today often are not proper vocational educational training; are very rarely linked to industry; do not produce school based apprentices as often as they should, even though admittedly they do at times; and are insufficiently embedded in the training and industry work that is in the school community where these trade training centres exist.

So what Labor did was to borrow money under the stimulus funds, build infrastructure and not care about what happened inside these buildings. Once the trade training centre is there, the issue is: who maintains the infrastructure? Who makes sure that the training is modern and relevant to industry? And who develops the pathway for the young person from school into work?

So we did in fact honour the last round of Labor's trade training centres. We did in fact build 136 new centres. We have committed to the last round of 136 new centres to be known as Trades Skills Centres. The important difference here is that our Trades Skills Centres will forge closer links with business and industry as the Australian government strengthens its focus on vocational education and training in schools.

We saw a national partnership under Labor. Who can forget Julia Gillard and the April 2012 announcement of over $7 billion in vocational education to support the National Training Entitlement across Australia, signed up to by every single state and territory—except the sign-ups did not happen? The entitlement system is in disarray. It is patchwork across every single state; nobody has consistency; and courses are being pulled left, right and centre.

The shadow minister should be aware that, in her own home state of South Australia, child care has now been pulled from the national entitlement system in South Australia, which means that a profession so much in demand and often emphasised by the member for Adelaide cannot be achieved at certificate III level under Labor's national entitlement system.

I want to briefly talk about Labor's record on employment, because they mentioned that many times. There are 200,000 more unemployed Australians than there were in November 2007 when the coalition was last in government. The number of Australians unemployed went from 492,000 in November 2007 to 694,000 in September 2013—an increase of close on 200,000 Australians unemployed.

From 2008 an average of 67 Australian manufacturing jobs were lost every single day under Labor. A manufacturing job was lost every 19 minutes while Labor was in government. In May 2011 Labor Treasurer Wayne Swan promised to create 500,000 new jobs over the following two years. Labor missed their own target by well over 200,000 jobs. The Labor legacy is 700,000 unemployed Australians, the highest number in 15 years. Under Labor the number of long-term unemployed nearly doubled. It went from 69,800 in November 2007 to 135,400 in September 2013.

All of us in this place are right to be concerned about youth unemployment, but the most critical time in a young person's life is the pathway from school to trades training, an apprenticeship or higher education. The 18 months between leaving school and possibly finding work are the most risky for a young person. We know that that person is at the highest risk of falling out of employment and a pathway into a meaningful life and a real place in the real economy. We should all be absolutely concerned about this. To this end, I convened a roundtable on vocational education in schools with state and territory senior officials in Melbourne a few weeks ago. There was no politics in the room and nor should there have been. What was really encouraging was the level of goodwill; the level of participation that states, regardless of their political persuasion, wanted to contribute; and the understanding that we do need to get a national system.

We have got a national qualifications framework that we all operate to, so we should have a national system of vocational training in schools. When you look at the fact that 40 per cent of our students are doing vocational education in schools but only nine per cent are actually in school based apprenticeships, we realise that that figure absolutely has to increase. While we recognise that there is a learning-for-life component in vocational education and it is good for students to do that, there very much needs to be an emphasis on a school based apprenticeship—the employer needs to find the student and vice versa and the job pathway needs to be articulated.

What employers tell us is that because Labor never invited industry to sit at the table with them, whether it be in the schools—

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