Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

'By 1990 no Australian child will be will live in poverty.' 'Climate change is the greatest moral challenge of our time.' 'Every child in an Australian school will receive a computer.' 'We are going to build 2,650 trades training centres in every high school in the country.' Labor love an announcement, but they were unable to follow through. Australian children in 1990 were still living in poverty. Labor walked away from climate change. My kids are still waiting for their computer. And they built 250 trades training centres.

The member for Kingston and I are both on the House Standing Committee on Education and Employment. We have both been through the TAFE inquiry. We both understand the challenges in relation to VET. We both understand the challenges about the efficient use of resources—that TAFE and VET, especially trades training centres, are very capital intensive in the way we use these things. We must make sure that those resources are being used efficiently. So, when we are rolling these things out, we must make sure that they are not locked up for 10 weeks over Christmas and that they are not locked up for two weeks here, two weeks there and another week here. These things have to be used day and night.

The trades training centre model, as far as I was concerned, and every time I look at it, was flawed. What did work were the Australian technical colleges. They were tied up as separate organisations where kids could finish off years 11 and 12 and come out ahead on their apprenticeships. What I hated most about when Labor came to power was not only that they took out the practical challenge of delivering 2,650 trades training centres and did not deliver on any of them but also that they went out of their way to philosophically destroy what John Howard had put in place with these technical colleges. The Australian technical college at Townsville was one of the fantastic ones and is still operating today, but what Labor did—what Kevin Rudd did—was to make them spend $50,000 changing their logo, their name, all their letterheads and everything, and then to pull all funding from them, leaving them stranded. That to me, more than anything to do with the promise of 2,650 and the delivery of 250, was the sin here. That is the mortal sin.

What we must do as a country is make the most of our resources. What we must do is to make sure that TAFE, VET and schools training centres are delivering what we need to do. If you are going to spend a lot of money and work really hard in this area then you have to make sure that those resources are being used to their maximum, and they are not.

We had the member for Perth in here recently speaking on this motion. We were over in Perth talking about vocational education and training, and TAFE in particular. She got the people from the trades training centre to come in. The thing does not work. The model does not work. They spent an awful lot of money on this thing, and it does not deliver the results. We have kids coming through these things who are being passed through without having to be responsible for what they are actually trying to do here. We have kids getting through these things, and they are turning up at jobs without any skills whatsoever. That is the problem we have here, and that is what you cannot walk away from. The Australian technical college model, where they go in and actually sign up for an apprenticeship with an employer, get their higher school certificate and get delivered through the thing, is the model which actually works. So what we have to do—

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