House debates
Wednesday, 5 February 2025
Bills
Free TAFE Bill 2024; Second Reading
11:17 am
Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source
Well, get onto him then. I'll wait for your order.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member for Petrie is entitled to be heard in silence, please. Thank you.
I'll get back to my experience. I did hospitality training back when silver service—for those people that might have gone to restaurants back in the late eighties and early nineties—was a big thing. I trained at the Bracken Ridge TAFE, which is still operating today within my electorate of Petrie. That's where I did my first training, before I went on to a career in sales and so forth. I then did a Diploma of Business through TAFE because I always wanted to run my own business, like my father. I did that Diploma of Business up at the Caboolture TAFE, which no longer exists. It's outside my electorate; it's in Longman. I'm not sure what is there now. It was part of the North Point training, and I also finished it down in Bracken Ridge. I want to thank the lecturers that gave me that training. It was good. After a successful career in wholesale sales, I went on to run my own business in the pest control industry, and then I went to TAFE to do a certificate III as well, so I've had quite a bit of training within the TAFE system. I want to give a shout-out to the Redcliffe TAFE and the Bracken Ridge TAFE, within the electorate of Petrie, for the work those trainers do there. I also want to give a shout-out to the Australian Trade College North Brisbane, which has remarkable trade training at Scarborough, within my electorate. It's one of the few trade training colleges where you can go to school—in grades 10, 11 and 12—and actually do an apprenticeship while you're training, and they're getting some fantastic outcomes. The former Prime Minister visited that trade training centre before the last election and gave it some recognition, which it rightly deserves.
Labor have been on the 'Save TAFE' and free-TAFE bandwagon for the best part of 20 years. As I said the other day, when I'm dead and buried in 100 years, they'll still be talking about saving TAFE, free TAFE, saving Medicare—these are the parrot lines that they roll out every election. Let me give you an example. The former Labor member Yvette D'Ath, who I defeated in 2013, slid into the state parliament at a by-election and, in 2015, went into that state election as the member for Redcliffe and said: 'We've got to save TAFE. We're saving TAFE.' That's what she went into that election on. Two years later, in 2017, she said: 'Good news: the Palaszczuk government has saved TAFE. We've saved it. It's been completely saved in Redcliffe.' But then, at the 2019 federal election, Corinne Mulholland, the candidate that ran against me—who's now sliding into the Senate ticket, I believe—came out and said, 'We've got to save TAFE.' Can you believe the rhetoric of the Labor party?
The member behind me gets it. So we've got a state MP in Redcliffe, entirely within the federal seat of Petrie, who was a former federal member for Petrie, saying, 'We've got to save TAFE,' in 2015 and, in 2017, 'We've completely saved it. It's brilliant. Thank you to the Palaszczuk government.' And then a Labor candidate in 2019 that had a seven per cent swing against her at that election said, 'We must save TAFE, and only Bill Shorten and that will be able to do it.' This is the hypocrisy of the Labor Party.
If they were that serious about saving TAFE and making it free, what have they done in the last three years? We've seen a massive skills shortage. The reality is that more trade training and funding for apprenticeships was done under the last government than ever before. We had an entire scheme under the former coalition government called Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements, where we actually paid half the wages of every builder, plumber and carpenter in the country. That's the reality. At the moment, it's clear that we are in a cost-of-living crisis. It's clear that we don't have enough tradies, due to the 600,000 migrants that this government is bringing in each year. This picking and choosing is the big problem that we have with this government. Because TAFE is somehow in the public sector and has unionised jobs, their donors say, 'Well, you must support the public sector; you must support free TAFE.' The deputy leader of the Liberal Party is right in the sense that having something free doesn't mean you value it more.
The reality is that people line up to go to university. If you look at the UQ or QUT campuses in Brisbane or even the USC campuses in the Leader of the Opposition's seat, you do pay to go to university. The government pays part of it, 80 per cent or so, roughly—depending on the course, it might be 40 to 60 per cent—and then the rest is HECS. There's no reason why TAFE, which is generally a cheaper course because it can go anywhere from six or 12 months to a maximum two years, couldn't have a small co-contribution like HECS does. If they were serious about giving everything for free, they would make the private sector free for VET as well. Those are the facts.
The reality too is that, as Assistant Minister for Youth and Employment Services in the previous government, I know the previous governments were spending about 80 per cent of VET training on TAFE but only getting 20 per cent of the outcomes, and the private sector was getting 20 per cent of federal funding and delivering 80 per cent of the outcomes. Under the Albanese Labor government, do you know how many people are completing the free TAFE courses? The deputy leader is right when she says that people say that if it's free they don't value it. There's a 13 per cent completion rate for free TAFE. The ministers opposite get up and say, 'We need a bit longer, another 12 months, to see if it improves.' Well, let's say we triple it to 39 per cent. Do you still think that's acceptable with the amount of money?
The reality is that this plan from Labor is a shambles, like most of what they have delivered over the last term of government. The coalition believe the VET sector is very important. I'm a product of it. It's very important. We encourage people to get into carpentry, building, plumbing, electrical and other trades, whether it's hairdressing—whatever it might be. We think that is very important. We will continue to make sure that VET is funded well, but we're not going to give all of the money to free TAFE. We'll also make sure that the private VET sector receives funding as well, and that's very important.
The government has a problem with anything to do with the private sector, because it's not just TAFE and those private VET providers. If you look at the Leader of the House, when he was in charge of workplace relations one of the things he did was destroy the NESM, the new employment service model, for people wanting to help train people on the dole—JobSeeker, as it's called—and that industry is completely struggling. He took away all the mutual obligations for people on JobSeeker to actually get some training and to enrol in different courses. He took away all of that. The government and many opposite have an ideologically opposed position to the private sector. That is what we're seeing here with the bill, and that is why we are opposed to the it; 80 per cent of the jobs are in the private sector. Whilst a lot of trainers are very good, I have heard from builders and carpenters that some of the students that have just come out of TAFE haven't actually had good training. That's not at every TAFE but at some of them. And the private sector training, which this government will pretty well give very, very little to, is often better training.
Like most of the government's policies, this only sounds good, but the devil is in the detail. It's $1½ billion of taxpayer money—it's your money, people in my electorate—for a 13 per cent completion rate through TAFE; a significant decrease in the number of apprenticeships; and no increase in total VET enrolments. That is important. The Prime Minister talks about a skills shortage, so how's that no increase going to help the country? They're doing free TAFE, absolutely ripping the guts out of the private VET sector, and there's no increase in total VET enrolments. This is an election ploy from a desperate government that has Australians in a cost-of-living crisis, with rents through the roof, mortgages through the roof and electricity prices up by 50 per cent—doubled for most businesses.
Australians deserve choice, and free TAFE denies everyday Australians choice. When a student chooses a university degree, they also get to choose the university that suits them. Maybe they make a choice because of the lecturers or the reputation and location of the uni, but the important thing is that they have a choice. Free TAFE has robbed tens of thousands of Australians of that choice. The Albanese government has created a significant social disadvantage and entrenched marginalisation with free TAFE. Not everyone has easy access to a TAFE college, and many regional towns don't have a TAFE college at all. Free TAFE makes the cost of living and housing affordability worse. Free TAFE means fewer apprentices, fewer houses and more expensive trade services due to a lower supply of qualified tradespeople. The two largest costs when building are the wages to the workers and the materials. When we don't train enough apprentices, because this government ideologically opposes VET training in the private sector, the cost of available workers goes up, putting upward pressure on prices.
The Albanese government has presided over the collapse of the skills and training college, not the former coalition government. As I said before, we had half the wages paid for every apprenticeship in the country. It's their government that has a 13 per cent completion rate. This destruction of the skills pipeline will only get worse year on year on year on year without diversifying and resourcing the skills supply system across the board. When we don't train enough apprentices in any given year, we have to train double the following year to make up the shortfall and to build the numbers required in the following year. The problem with free TAFE is that, unlike private RTOs, who are paid only on completion—private sector VET RTOs are paid only on completion—TAFE are paid regardless of whether they produce an outcome or not. That's how they want to spend your money. So this money we need this year to catch up is already spent. This delivers very poor value for Australia. This is a bad policy from a bad government and the coalition won't be supporting it.
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