James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to make a contribution today on National TAFE Day. I commend the previous speaker and the minister and shadow minister in the chamber who have already spoken to this motion. I take it as an opportunity to pay tribute the vocational education and training sector, particularly in my home state of South Australia. Of course, we have TAFE, like all the state jurisdictions have TAFE. I also pay tribute more broadly to the vocational sector. There are also RTOs that do excellent complementary training to supplement the TAFE institution proper, and there are some industries were having an RTO and group training makes a lot of sense. Obviously in South Australia—I suspect it's similar in other states—groups like the Motor Traders' Association operate an RTO so that they can provide training for the needs of their industry into the future, and often their members are very heavily engaged with the RTO through on-the-job training working alongside, undertaking an apprenticeship or other training opportunity so that people are being given a skill but also earning an income while they are doing that.

In South Australia we've got an enormous challenge that TAFE will be at the epicentre of, which is training a workforce to meet the needs of the future naval shipbuilding opportunities for South Australia. I think everyone in this country is aware of the AUKUS challenge/opportunity that is not just an excellent defence capability outcome but also, hopefully will be, an excellent Australian industrial sovereign capability outcome. But, for that to succeed, we've got an enormous training challenge for the workforce that will be required to ultimately build, as the government has strictly promised in my home state of South Australia, the AUKUS nuclear submarines. Obviously, there is a wide variety of skills that will be required towards that effort, with lots of very different types of capabilities and different levels of training required, and it's not just in the more direct jobs and roles in that undertaking but a lot of allied and collateral opportunity from undertaking such an enormous industrial task in South Australia.

TAFE will be at the absolute centre of that because we need to train thousands of people in a whole range of different skill sets. We will have to be quite lateral in our thinking around the delivery of that training. Some of it will be extremely explicit. It will be a new training capability that potentially, in some cases, won't exist in this country. We will have to bring people in who have the expertise to undertake that training, but TAFE will be a very logical partner in training for the sorts of skills that will be needed.

I have visited some of the training organisations overseas, particularly in Japan, with obvious skills in submarines, like welding and pressure hull welding, which is extremely specialised. We will need to advocate the ability to train a lot of people in those skills. Clearly, TAFE will need to be at the centre of that. The AUKUS submarine program is an exciting opportunity, but it's also one that we should all have a healthy degree of nervousness around the challenges involved in delivering, and workforce training will be at the centre of that.

Shipbuilding is much more broad than submarines in South Australia. People shouldn't forget that right here, right now, we have the Hunter class frigate program that is already attracting an enormous number of skilled jobs in South Australia, and a lot of those skills and that training is being delivered TAFE. Even in existing programs, such as the Collins class program and full-cycle docking, and now the life-of-type extension—some of these submarines need to have a life extension to fill the capability gap until AUKUS capability comes online—many of those workers at the Australian Submarine Corporation in Osborne have been at through the TAFE system, and many more will into the future.

I strongly endorse the sentiment of other contributions around the value, importance and significance of TAFE. Together, we need to make sure that we're working to support and equip TAFE with the capability they will need in future workforce training requirements. As per my contribution, naval shipbuilding is one of the significant ones, but there are many others. So we wish TAFE all the best on this day. We look forward to working with them and supporting them into the future to achieve those great outcomes for the Australian economy and for future Australian jobs.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 10: 27 to 10:44

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