Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As my colleague, the member for Griffith, has said, Labor supports the Education and Training Legislation Repeal Bill 2017 because it tidies up a number of acts that are obsolete. But I would like to start by saying that vocational education and training works. It works for students, it works for employers, it works for the economy and it works for the community. I have said before in this House that not everybody needs to go to university, not everybody wants to go to university and not everybody should go to university. With that in mind, we really should pay heed to the fact that a comprehensive education system in Australia that affords the opportunity for every Australian to participate fully in our social and economic life should include, at its heart, a strong and robust training framework.

A strong economy requires a skilled workforce. Currently Western Australia is facing increased unemployment rates as the mining boom winds down. We need to make it easier for people to get new skills. We need to support vocational education and training, and public vocational education and training at that, to ensure that students walk away with high-quality education that gives them the best opportunity for meaningful employment. Vocational education and training is, indeed, an important pillar of our community.

From my personal perspective, starting off in the VET sector first as a teacher and then as a policymaker at what was then the department of training within the WA state government has given me an appreciation of just how key the VET sector is, not as a gap-filler for those who can't attend or don't need university but as a critical component of our broader education sector. The importance of vocational education and training makes it critical to highlight the coalition's past, present and ongoing failures to support vocational education and training. In short, the coalition has demonstrated time and time again that it can't be trusted to deliver a strong public vocational education and training sector.

This bill repeals the now obsolete Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia's Skills Needs) Act. That legislation was introduced by the coalition in 2005. Its intent was a noble one—it was to provide trade training pathways to years 11 and 12 students while they simultaneously completed their secondary certificate of education. That meant students who were in years 11 and 12 who did not want to or did not need to or had no desire to go to university could complete a trade certificate alongside completing their high school education certificate. The problem is that this legislation was a failure—the provision was a failure. It suffered from low enrolments, there were problems sourcing staff and the colleges contributed very little to filling the trade shortages they were funded to reverse. Australian technical colleges were yet another attempt by the government to undermine TAFEs and undermine public schools. They wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on poorly thought through actions while at the same time underfunding the public provision of vocational education and training.

The need to repeal this now-obsolete act, as the bill before the House does, serves as a stark reminder of the coalition's past and current failure to really support training. But it also serves as a caveat—a caveat reminding us that this government's track record on training has been quite appalling. Those opposite don't respect vocational education and training, they don't know how to support vocational education and training, and it shows. Whether it is the Howard government of 2005 with its failed Australian technical colleges experiment or the Abbott-Turnbull government's ripping $2.75 billion out of TAFE, skills and apprentices, this much is clear: this government, the Liberals, do not care about Vocational Education and Training and I would go even further to suggest that they don't even know how to care about it. There are around 148,000 fewer apprentices and trainees in training across Australia since the Abbott and Turnbull governments took office, including 46,900 fewer trade apprentices. That is a drop of 22 per cent in trades training. Yesterday I met with a group of train builders and they told me that recently one company received 1,100 applications for only 10 apprenticeship places. That's a startling ratio—10 places and 1,100 applications. Under the WA Liberals, if I can return to the situation in WA, some TAFE fees have increased by more than 500 per cent, and dozens of courses have been cut. I have met time and time again with young people who simply can't afford training anymore. There was one time when Australia's training framework was held up as one of the best in the world. Now we have a situation where training fees have increased by more than 500 per cent, courses have been cut, and the whole sector is in absolute disarray, having been undercut and undermined by this government.

While the government is busy repealing these obsolete education and training acts, the fact is that the real business of ensuring ongoing skills development in Australia is being ignored. As it currently stands, the government still has no agreement with the states and territories to replace the National Partnership Agreement on Skills Reform, which expired at the end of June. There is no sense of urgency here from this government about addressing these issues with the provision of training and the availability of training in different states.

One of the other things that this bill does in relation to that is to repeal the Skilling Australia's Workforce Act. That act provided grants to the states and the territories to support the national training system. The act was superseded in 2009 through the National Agreement for Skills and Workforce Development. But funding under the Skilling Australia's Workforce Act depended on a range of ideologically driven reforms that were, in their essence, designed to damage and undermine TAFEs and education unions. Here's the thing: even today, the government continues to place ideology above pragmatism, effectiveness and outcomes. They continue to pander to minority interests and ideological divisions within their own party, instead of putting the needs of Australians first. Those needs seem to come a shoddy second to dealing with the party's own divisions.

I'm approached almost daily by parents and young people who are unable to secure training, unable to take training opportunities, unable to afford training qualifications and unable to find an apprenticeship or a traineeship that suits their needs. As a mother, as a parent, let me say this: there is nothing more disheartening than watching your child's dreams disintegrate and feeling absolutely powerless to do anything about it. There is nothing that touches me more than listening to a father whose 16-year-old son wants nothing more than to become an electrician, and hearing the story of how he has had to give up that dream because he can't access the training that he needs. I feel it as a parent, and I have seen my own children being unable to find jobs in the areas that they were trained or educated in. As a parent, it breaks your heart. It breaks your heart when you see that your kids' dreams can't be fulfilled.

The Liberal Party really do need to leave this damaging ideology of privatisation at the door. They need to realise the importance of vocational education and training to create jobs, to support communities, to build our community and to build our economy. Give our young people hope. Give our young people some hope for their futures. Go and talk to these young people, these young people who are unable to access training, and watch their faces as they tell you how they've had to let their dreams go because they don't have those opportunities. As somebody who has been blessed with opportunities for education and training, I speak from experience: it can be very life changing.

We need to start paying attention to the fact that some our manufacturing industries—some of our very iconic manufacturing industries—are at risk of disappearing here in Australia because of the failure of this government to deliver effective reforms in the vocational education and training sector. We're losing skills; they are dying with generations of tradespeople who are no longer able to pass on their skills through an effective training apparatus. Years ago I did a study looking at the building trades in Western Australia. I spoke to builders of the baby boomer generation who had gone on and were training young apprentices. They were expressing to me then that some of the artisan qualities that they had learnt were not being handed down or passed on, because of the disintegration and the undermining of our training sector. So I really want to make this point strongly: we need to ensure we recognise that vocational education and training is at the heart of keeping our manufacturing industries strong, and it's at the heart of ensuring sustainability for our manufacturing. It's important to ensure we have skilled tradespeople, and that the tradespeople who are out there now are able to pass on their skills to future generations.

I will end by making this point: young people are—I hear it every day—missing out on opportunities; they're missing out on opportunities for education; they're missing out on opportunities for training, and it's impacting on them. It's impacting on their wellbeing, it's impacting on their self-esteem, it's impacting on their hope for the future, it's impacting on our community more broadly and it's certainly impacting on our economy. The government needs to get its act together on vocational education and training reform and make some meaningful changes in this area. It's all very well and good to start by repealing these obsolete acts—and that is why Labor supports this bill—but let's get a move on. Let's make some real impact in the VET sector, and let's recognise just how important this sector is.

Debate adjourned.

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