Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Education and Training Legislation Repeal Bill 2017 tidies up legislative instruments which are currently obsolete. The Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia's Skills Needs) Act 2005 underpinned the Australian Technical Colleges Program. I was in schools when this program was rolled out under the Howard government. In fact, it was a moment in time that I will never forget when I first heard Prime Minister John Howard use his talent for harking back to better times when everything was simpler and easier, and 'If only we could turn back the clock, the world would be a better place.' He made the statement about technical skills not being appreciated in this country and used images of a time when we had tech schools across the country. He forgot to mention that it was also a time when we had very, very strong unions across the country, we had a public sector involved in railways and we had lots of workers, hundreds of workers, employed in one space with apprenticeships for many, many young people.

I will never forget that day when Prime Minister John Howard said that we needed to turn back the clock to those times—completely ignorant of the fact that the world had moved past those times. I remember it so clearly because I was teaching in Victoria, where we had set targets of 80 per cent retention to year 12, and I had to deal with parents across the next month telling me that it will be okay: 'Johnny can go and get one of John Howard's new apprenticeships. He can now leave school in year 10.' That was after years of work, talking to parents and talking to children about the fact that their life chances would be improved if they finished school. I was working in a school in Melbourne's west, where most children were from families whose parents had not finished year 10. Building aspiration into those cohorts of children was my day-to-day job. I did not thank John Howard for his words. I believe that now, if I went and had a beer with the students I was teaching at the time, those who chose to leave school after that great moment wouldn't thank him either. Nor do I thank him for the Australian technical colleges that he declared then that he would build, because what we ended up with was $500 million spent on 24 campuses that were to be the new wave of schools.

It was the first time in history that the federal government built a private school. It was meant to be a disruptor of state education and TAFEs. It failed dramatically. It failed to attract the students it needed. It failed to attract the teachers to this new system—this vision that John Howard had, which was really acting on a populist sentiment that was never going to deliver trade training in the way he suggested to the Australian public that it would. Twenty-four Australian technical colleges were to be set up at 24 different sites around Australia. Then another one was added and another three were added, so we ended up with a vision for 28 at a cost of $585 million—$473 million from the federal government, $20 million from the department and another $91 million from other sources which, of course, included state governments. In that $91 million there were fees that parents were going to pay to have their children attend these, because obviously they were going to be set up by consortia which could have include included not-for-profits, states and other sector schools.

I was on the ground in schools when the Australian Technical College opened in Sunshine, and I was working in the west when a second one was mooted for the western suburbs of Melbourne. So I can reflect thoroughly on what a waste it was for my part of the world. The announcement was that Sunshine would have it and that it would be great, it would be wonderful and it would fix all our issues, because all of the young people who thought they might want to do a trade would be magically subsumed into an Australian Technical College. Of course, what happened was that the students didn't go there and neither did the teachers. If you do the maths, it ended up to be $70,000 per student. Imagine what they could have done in a school with $70,000 per student! Imagine what they could have done in Yirrkala with $70,000 per student. It was an incredible waste of money. It never attracted the appropriate numbers of students.

One of the intentions of this, as it happened—because there were some things that were written about these—was that all the employees would have to be on an individual worker's contract. So every teacher that was going to be employed in them would be offered an AWA. I looked at the conditions that were set up around those AWAs. In schools, there were 40 weeks of curriculum and, in the ATCs, and they could give 47 weeks. I'm not saying that that's necessarily a bad thing, but then you get to the working conditions. At the time, 36 hours and 45 minutes was a week's work in a school, with 19 hours of tuition. In an ATC, it was to be 38 hours of week with 28 hours of tuition. So, in a school, that gave teachers 17 hours and 45 minutes for yard duty, planning, meetings and preparation. These were going to be technical colleges, teaching technical skills, using technical equipment, and they were going to have 10 hours for yard duty, planning, meetings and preparation. So the quality of the education was under pressure from the outset. And there is no getting around the fact that that was a deliberate attempt to undermine the teachers' unions at the time. It was a deliberate attempt to undermine teaching practice in every state in this country. It was meant to be a disruptor. It was a resounding failure.

The Australian Technical College in Sunshine is still operating as the Harvester Technical College as part of Sunshine College. So the site hasn't been wasted, because the Victorian state government stepped in and subsumed it into a new amalgamation of schools for Sunshine. So it's still operating on the ground, and the facility hasn't gone to waste. So that's a saving grace. But, ultimately, the program didn't bring about the change that it was intended to bring about.

That reminds us so clearly about this government's record around apprentices and vocational education and training. Of course, we don't have to go far to follow this great record from the Howard era. In Lalor, from 2013 to December 2016 there was a drop of 42 per cent in the number apprenticeships for young people in my electorate. And the record continues. We've got a billion dollars worth of cuts around vocational education and training. There are now only 265,000 apprentices in training in this country, compared to 413,000 when this government took office.

So I'm pleased that we're here to dispose of bills that we no longer need. But we should take the opportunity to learn from history. I think that's important this week. I've been thinking a lot about the teaching of history this week, in light of some of the events that happened in the US, and it’s important that we in this place look at our history too. It is important to look at our legislative history and our program history and, in this instance, we need to take a good hard look at the Auditor-General's report on the Australian Technical Colleges Program, which saw the waste and counted the waste. It's all in there in that document. It shows the absolute waste that this was. We can't forget that before the next election Prime Minister Howard promised to build 100 of these. So he was going to take the disruption right into the TAFE sector, build 100 of them and change the way we fund schools in this country. The federal government were not just going to fund private schools; they were going to found them. They were going to create them.

An opposition member: Pioneers!

They were going to pioneer private-sector, not-for-profit education facilities in vocational training and apprenticeships. So we shouldn't be surprised that we have continued attacks on TAFE. We shouldn't be surprised about anything that happens there.

I want to take this to what we're seeing happening at the moment. We've got cuts to schools across the country on what schools would have had if Labor were in government. And we're supposed to celebrate those cuts because they are more than what the former Prime Minister would have given, since we came back from the election. That's supposed to be a celebration for people in this place. Well, it's not a celebration for me because I know what's going on in schools and I know what schools need. They need the resources so that they can do their jobs.

In lieu of that, we've got a new review of regional education happening under this government. It's worth taking a look back, historically, at the Australian Technical Colleges to see what's being learnt or what's not being learnt. I'm very suspicious. The fact of the matter is that the discussion paper around the review into regional, rural and remote education states quite clearly where most kids are educated in rural and regional areas-and it's in public schools. Eighty per cent of them are educated in public schools.

I had a bit of a look at the discussion document. It cites that there will be $1.4 billion in location loading going to regional and remote schools under the government's new funding arrangements for schools. Well, of course, we would need a review, because we can't possibly be seeing $1.4 billion going into state schools in regional areas! So we're having a review. I had a bit of a look at the review, besides looking at the discussion paper. I also had a look at the terms of reference, and alarm bells started ringing loudly. One dot point is:

So aspiration and access issues? As far as I can see, there are no access issues in state education in rural and regional areas across this country. State schools are there; children have access. Another dot point is:

I've got alarm bells ringing. I'm worried about that $1.4 billion and where people might see that might be better spent than in state school classrooms in regional and remote communities. I'm very concerned about it.

I'm not concerned that there's going to be a review. Clearly, we know that kids in regional and remote areas are not doing as well as they could be. We know that. That's why they need more resources. We know that. That's why Labor had the plan that it had. But I'm worried that this discussion paper highlights that $1.4 billion and lists in here, in an idea in terms of regional and remote education, boarding. I'm worried that this review may actually be targeted to find new and exciting ways to use that $1.4 billion which don't include the funding of state schools in regional and remote communities—off the back of the Australian Technical College debacle that we're here today to bury.

I will take the time remaining to me to go from there and the notion around this government's failure in skills and training, this government's attacks on TAFEs and this government's failure to pull in and wind back the provisions that were allowing for shonky registered training organisations to continue to profit at the expense of students—and, in fact, were found to be exploitative in nature and to be using enrolments to fill their own coffers rather than organise for the education of young people in this country.

I am worried. I'm worried that, rather than making a commitment to invest in vocational education and training and apprenticeships, we're rolling out these PaTH internships that will see young people picking up glasses in nightclubs for $4 an hour while the Hotels Association reaps the benefit—a thousand dollars per internship, with more money coming down the line if they get a permanent job, and you've actually undermined casual workers and workers on penalty rates now.

The Australian public are not silly. They can see the landscape. They can see what's happening here. They can look back in history and see that a Liberal-National coalition government will always be looking to find a way to change the landscape that's going to undermine middle- and lower income people—and now we're undermining education as well. (Time expired)

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