Peter Hendy (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As the minister knows, my electorate of Eden-Monaro is a rural electorate in the south-east corner of New South Wales. In our electorate we have some 10,553 primary school students and we have some 911,000 secondary school students. We have heard from Labor that there have been cuts to expenditure on schools in New South Wales and across the country, but my understand is that we are actually boosting expenditure on schools. I would be interested to know, over the course of the next four years of the forward estimates, how much school expenditure will be increasing in New South Wales. I would also like a general assessment of the spending on independent schools and Catholic schools if the minister has that data to hand. My understanding is that, as opposed to what the Labor opposition have been saying, there has been an increase in spending on schools in New South Wales for both state and private schools.

I know that you well know, Minister, that I was formerly the chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. As such, I am particularly interested in skills and training issues. I note that ACCI put out a 2013 pre-election survey in which they canvassed the opinion of employers on the state of the vocational education and training market. ACCI found that, even though the unemployment rate was relatively higher in recent years, more than in four in five, or 82 per cent of, businesses remain concerned with recruiting employees with appropriate skills, while 68.9 per cent of businesses were concerned with recruiting employees with a good level of literacy and numeracy. Further, ACCI found that businesses rated employee productivity performance as their second highest concern, and they noted:

This finding is closely related to the Cost of Training Employees which is rated as the third highest concern.

That was a survey done in May 2013. That is a legacy that the former Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government left this government to fix.

I am interested to know the nature of the integrated policy framework that we are putting in place with regard to vocational education and training to deal with these problems. I note, for example, that we are introducing what I regard as an excellent program of trade support loans of $20,000 for apprentices. I would like to understand more fully from you, Minister, how that deals with the sort of legacy that we have had to fix in this budget for 2014.

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