Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

In February this year I again visited the TAFE campus in Mount Barker in my community. Both the focus and the funding for vocational education in South Australia has been under sustained pressure for many years. The three TAFE sites in Mayo—Mount Barker, Victor Harbor and Kangaroo Island—work hard but with incredibly limited resources, facilities and equipment. I was impressed with how much TAFE was able to do with so little, but significant additional investment is clearly needed. Higher education continues to rise in importance. Not everyone is cut out to be a university student and not everyone should be. Quality investment in vocational education leads to quality, worthwhile jobs. This is why before the federal election I made a commitment to the people of Mayo that I would advocate strongly for additional investment in Mayo's TAFE campuses. Briefly, I will summarise the more prominent benefits additional investment in local TAFE could achieve across hospitality, age and disability care, and building and construction.

The Adelaide Hills region is well known as the destination for food, wine, hospitality and tourism. The region is home to over 35 recognised wineries and cellar doors, complemented by a number of restaurants, cafes, microbreweries, hotels and accommodation. Demand for skills and labour across the tourism and hospitality sector continues to grow in the region. The challenge is that it is incredibly hard for our young people to get the skills needed to provide a career pathway and ongoing opportunities. Additional investment would allow the establishment of a true centre for excellence in front-of-house hospitality and tourism training and a move towards the possibility of developing a fully functioning training cafe, which would see students able to provide live service to students, community members and small business start-ups attached to the new community centre and business incubator.

Mount Barker and the surrounding region contains more than 30 residential aged-care and disability facilities. Victor Harbor and its surrounding region contains more than 15 residential aged-care and disability facilities. The move towards individualised and specialised service provision through individual care plans and the National Disability Insurance Scheme has created an unparalleled shortage of new workers. Refurbishing the existing skills labs at both campuses would create a significant expansion and deliver a greater capacity for training.

There are no fewer than 18 different building and housing developments underway across my region of the Adelaide Hills, in close proximity to Mount Barker, with many more set to start. Mount Barker is projected to grow to 55,000 people by 2036 and become South Australia's second biggest city. Despite that enormous growth and despite that being one of fastest-growing areas of South Australia and a major construction hotspot, the Mount Barker TAFE campus is currently unable to deliver genuine live training in building and construction. It makes no sense. The development of a wet-trades specific training space and the procurement of heavy plant equipment would provide this capacity and allow local would-be workers to be locally trained and employed. At the Victor Harbor campus, the purchasing of racking and liftable materials would enable the campus to locally deliver fork-lift licences to the Fleurieu Peninsula, instead of requiring trainees to travel 70 to 90 kilometres to Mount Barker or to Tonsley. And I have not even detailed the benefits that can be secured in the automotive and IT programs as well as in early childhood education and care.

In short, we have seen a slow eroding of funding for vocational education and a slow eroding of value. We have members in here saying how important it is. I agree with them: it is important. But you've got to put your money where your mouth is. We need to properly fund vocational education. We are not doing it now and we can do better. I will continue my advocacy to the state government and to the federal government until they too share a vision that recognises that we need to invest now in vocational education if we want to find the one million workers that we are going to need in aged care. If we want to ensure the NDIS is a properly funded and workable model, we need to have the skills set now. We can do it. It is time to get out the chequebook.

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