Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the shadow minister for putting this matter forward as a matter of public importance today. I do that because it is not simply important that we debate Australia's skills, training and education, it is vital. And it is vital that we engage with this issue in a way that takes responsibility in this place for the decisions that we make that influence the communities we represent.

Over the course of the last two years, we have seen some very significant changes in the economy of Western Australia. From being the investment powerhouse not just of our nation but of the world, Western Australia has seen significant reductions in capital expenditure, new mine construction and new project construction. We have seen, in every community, our economy change. I do not say that from the point of view that that is terrible. Western Australia happens to be a blessed community. We have not suffered two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth—a technical recession—in Western Australia since 1969. We are a good part of the world. However, let's be real about the obligations that we have as a parliament to support our state governments and our communities in trades training.

The communities I represent—Rockingham, Kwinana and Mandurah—are communities where students go to school, get good grades and then go and get trades. As the member for Eden-Monaro would know, it costs about a million dollars to train a good trades technician in electrical skills to get them up onto a mine site. It was a pleasure to be with the shadow minister, Brendan O'Connor, at Southern Cross Electrical Engineering last week talking to apprentices being supported in their training by the training enterprise structure put in place by the Kwinana Industries Council. That structure provides practical job training for young men and women, for Aboriginal men and women, to work in our resources sector. As I said earlier, the resources sector is changing; investment is in decline and we are now moving to production jobs. We need to have people job ready for those production jobs on the mine sites and in the production facilities, for the sophisticated value adding that we now do to our minerals not just in Western Australia but around the entire country.

What Canberra really does not understand is that a lead mine does not mine lumps of lead; that a copper mine does not mine copper pipes; that in a nickel mine you do not pull out nickel by the tonne; that minerals processing in our modern minerals economy is sophisticated value adding, which requires people with high levels of technical expertise and skill. It requires people with the skills to deliver their particular service in a mine site in a remote location in a production train that keeps that productivity happening for the benefit of all Australians.

I am pleased that in the course of the last month the federal government has announced funding for the trades training centre of the Peron Alliance, the local alliance of schools in my electorate, in partnership with the Kwinana Industries Council, the CCI and Apprenticeships Australia. In a number of the high schools I represent, that will broaden the number of trades training centres that will cover hospitality, health, electrical, automotive—the jobs that the young people in my electorate want to do. It will cover the skills needs of the Kwinana industrial strip. It will cover the production needs of our nickel mines, our gold mines, our magnetite facilities and our iron ore mines. It will also cover the diesel fitting needs of the transport infrastructure in Western Australia to bring our grain crop harvest to a port.

These investments are not simply lost money and dead money. They are investments in people's lives, they are investments in skills, they are investments in the future that allow young people to take control of their lives. They allow our community to be what it aspires to be—that is, productive, wealthy and able to provide good jobs for future generations.

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