Cameron Caldwell (Fadden, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the Free TAFE Bill 2024 not because anyone is against TAFE or against vocational training but because this particular bill is emblematic of a completely shambolic approach by this terrible Labor government to any policy implementation. I will explain for those couple of viewers perhaps tuning in at home why I say that this is such a clear example of this government's incompetence.

Effectively, this is an untested and uncosted experiment with Australian taxpayers' money. That was set out in the documents that were tabled by the minister when the bill was presented to this House. I wonder if there is any sort of financial competence that could be displayed on that side of the House when on page 3 of the explanatory memorandum the comment under 'Financial Impact Statement' says:

There is no financial impact resulting from the Free TAFE Bill 2024.

It would seem that they were either prepared to sign a blank cheque or not being upfront and honest about what the real cost of this will be to Australian taxpayers. Later in the day, we found out that the minister does in fact have some concept of what the cost might be. The Minister for Skills and Training, Minister Giles, has today said it could cost at least $253.7 million a year. Again, when we are talking about financial competency or ministerial competency, what are the unfortunate chances that the Prime Minister will have shifted this particular minister out of one botched portfolio over into an area where you would think he probably just could not muck it up—and yet here we have documents that have completely omitted a fundamentally important part of it: the cost.

I don't hold a great deal of faith in Minister Giles, as I'm sure the House is well aware, based on his track record of delivery in other portfolios. I'll tell you who I do have some faith in, and that's our shadow, the member for Farrer, who I think had a pretty good grasp of this whole thing of higher education and this particular sector of higher education. She spoke on this particular bill earlier, and I'm going to quote some of why I believe what we say on this holds more credibility than what Minister Giles says. She said, for example:

I understand that skills is a critical area of policy for the future of our nation and the future of our young people. When I finished school, I couldn't think of anything worse than sitting in an office, so I went to my local training provider and pursued a vocational qualification in aviation. And it changed my life. That's why I love skills.

Contrast that with the absolutely shambolic approach taken to policy by this minister and this government.

I also found, in the legislation, what could actually prove to be a cruel joke and a cruel hoax on Australians. I looked at the definitions, and it says, for example:

FT place

'FT' is short for 'free TAFE'—

means a free place in a course at a TAFE institution or a course provided by another VET provider.

Note: An FT place may not be free of all fees.

I just wonder whether this minister is across the detail of what's going to be required to deliver on this corflute campaign that's being constructed at the expense of every Australian taxpayer. This is not free. Every Australian is funding this untested experiment by this Labor government. You might wonder why it's worthwhile pausing to test and measure whether this program could or should work, and I'm going to point out one particular thing that is critically important in understanding where this funding is directed. Again, to quote our shadow minister: 'TAFE is not all vocational educational training. TAFE is just the state government run public training provider. Labor's approach to skills is akin to only funding state run public schools and then refusing to fund non-government schools. We should not accept that, and, quite frankly, we just wouldn't.' But this government is so keen to chase the election-winning headline. We heard the member for Chisholm earlier. She's right on message. She's in a marginal seat, and she will be chirping this stuff constantly—free TAFE, free TAFE. This is, make no mistake, a corflute campaign for the next election that's being funded by every Australian taxpayer.

Most people won't benefit from it, but I can assure you one thing: we are all going to pay for it. Perhaps at the next election when you walk into a polling booth those corflutes shouldn't say 'Free TAFE under Labor'; they should say 'Taxpayer funded TAFE provided by Labor because we decided that was the form of vocational education and training that we supported over and above all others'. That is effectively what is being done here. This Labor government are taking a gamble on one single form of vocational education and training, being the state run provider—a completely inflexible ill thought out approach—and it completely defies the logical application of thought to how training outcomes are achieved in reality.

I know that those opposite make much fun around what the coalition thinks of Australian skills, and I might just point this out before I forget. I've identified where there is a real skills shortage in Australia. It's on that front bench over there. So it may well prove that that's where the training should be headed. I think it's worthwhile reflecting on the coalition's track record in this area, because we actually back vocational education and training. We don't just back one part of the sector. We want to back the whole sector.

The coalition handed this Albanese Labor government a skills and training system that was not just trending up but powering ahead on the back of record investments, guaranteed by a strong economy. The policies that the coalition invested in were over $13 billion in skills in the final two years of the government alone, representing the most significant reforms to Aussie skills in over a decade. The number of trade apprentices in training hit record highs in the final months of the coalition government, and as of June 2022 there were 429,000 apprentices and trainees in training and 277,900 commencements.

Data released by the National Centre for Vocational Education and Research confirms that Australia has lost almost 85,000 apprentices and trainees from the national training pipeline since this Labor government took office—about one in five. That effectively means there are over 100,000 fewer apprentices and trainees starting a trade or a skill, or a drop of almost 40 per cent, since Labor took office. We know that, under Labor, Australia is building fewer homes, skill shortages have worsened and we have lost one in five apprentices and trainees across this country. All of that is adding to increased inflation and higher prices.

As I said earlier, the problem with Labor's TAFE-only approach is that we should be supporting every student, not just some. We want to back all of them, regardless of whether they're at a training TAFE or at an independent provider. The problem with this Albanese government's approach is that they've undertaken a skills policy that directs funds to just one part of the training sector rather than all of it. We're not anti-TAFE; we are pro-TAFE as part of a mix of training and vocational education opportunities that should be available to Australians. That means we should be allowing access to all of those options, not just one pathway.

The Prime Minister and Minister Giles have repeatedly dodged questions about how many Australians have completed or dropped out of the 500,000 fee-free TAFE courses. We know that their own talking points state that just 13 per cent of the fee-free TAFE enrolments have resulted in a qualification being completed, at a whopping cost of $1.5 billion. Labor knows that they're hiding the failure rate, because they know that fee-free TAFE is not keeping pace with training outcomes for other training pathways, including industry training providers.

While fee-free TAFE is delivering a completion rate of only 13 per cent, industry led training providers have completion rates as high as 80 to 90 per cent. Labor are trying to pass off the low completion rates as being due to the length of courses, and that is completely misleading. They don't want you to know the detail; they just want you to see the headline.

Departmental officials confirmed last night that the courses with the highest enrolments include—just so we can use some examples here—Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care, Certificate 3 in Individual Support, Certificate IV in Training and Assessment and Certificate IV in Cyber Security. These courses take 12 months at most. Industry sources suggest free TAFE fail rates could be as high as 55 to 60 per cent across many courses, and some in the training sector have indicated that some courses could have failure rates as high as 70 to 90 per cent. So we've got to ask ourselves this question: is this policy and is this legislation a good idea?

Those opposite, including the member for Chisholm, will continue to parrot on about access to education—blah, blah, blah. Can I tell you: they are all over to shop on education, skills and training. There is an incoherent mess going on in all of those sectors. Why? Because they're trying to chase the coreflute headline. If you compare what's going on between TAFE, which they want to make free; private VET providers, which are not free; uni fees, which are very high under the government—maybe they're going to offer 20 per cent off to a group of people next year, if the wind's blowing from the south-east or whatever the case may be. None of this makes sense. No actual thought has been put into a coherent reform package to make skills and training more accessible, more efficient and a good use of Australian taxpayers' money. Ultimately, that's what we need to be worried about. This is really nothing more than an election slogan that's being funded by everyday Australians. They've taken away the ability for them to use a price signal to try and encourage certain courses. They haven't reviewed what's been going on, and this, I reckon, will be a failure for Australian taxpayers.

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