David Fawcett (Wakefield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to draw to the attention of the House a fantastic event that has occurred in the last week and which will benefit the people of Wakefield. I refer to the two public information nights that were held to talk about the technical college in northern Adelaide. This was one of the election commitments of the Howard government, and certainly I committed myself to working with the government and the people of Wakefield to bring one of these technical colleges to the northern suburbs of Adelaide and the neighbouring regions.

The local support was fantastic, and the reason for that is the economy there is growing and the demand for labour is growing at an exponential rate. This is due in large part to a number of federal government initiatives: the air warfare destroyer, which is going to be built there; support for the automotive sector; the defence precinct, which is benefiting from a large government investment in the defence industries; and also the burgeoning local high-quality manufacturing sector that is supporting the construction sector and also the mining sector.

The need is also there because trade training is something that our community has lost focus on over the past couple of decades. For whatever reason, people have said that, to succeed, you have to go to university and get a degree. Part of this initiative is trying to put trade training back there as a first choice for our young people. The mindset that saw us lose that focus saw the state Labor government in the seventies close down the Elizabeth Boys Technical High School and the current Leader of the Opposition take the decision to close down the apprentice training school at DSTO in 1987. Combined with the CSP, this saw trade training for a lot of young Australians through the armed forces take a huge nosedive—and that is something that is still hurting us to this day.

On the other side, the local support has come because employers have realised that they need to establish a relationship with young people who want to have a trade and so they have given strong support for the school based new apprenticeships, which will be running at the Australian Technical College Northern Adelaide. This will open in February 2007 as a non-government senior secondary college in Elizabeth West. This has been established in a partnership between the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide and the Northern Adelaide Industry Group, which comprises a number of leading manufacturers and industrial companies such as Steel Building Systems, LR&M, Hirotech, ZF Lemforder and others.

The college has a number of people on the board, and I wish to particularly thank those industry members who have come onto it. This is one of the strong points of these colleges—that is, they will be led and guided by industry. The chair is Mr John Ats of Hirotek, the deputy chair is Mr Howard Montgomery of the Weeks Group, and members include Wayne Perry of Perry Trade Services, Brian Peel of Kaz Technology, Rod Keen from General Motors Holden, Gary Kirkham from WeldFab, Max Davids from the Northern Area Innovation Network and Tony Bernardo from Australian Aerospace. On the education side, we have members of the Catholic archdiocese, including Alan Dooley, Helen O’Brien, Madeleine Brennan, Darryl Hicks, Lincoln Size and Sarah Taylor from the Young Christian Workers and Paul Kilvert from the state department of education.

This college has been broadly welcomed. In fact, at the second public information night, the number of people who were there meant we had to use overflow seating. In the first week since that public information night, we have already received 150 registrations for the 100 places available in 2007. I would particularly like to thank Mayor Marilyn Baker from the City of Playford and the City of Playford staff who have worked with us to make sure that we can find the site for 2007 as well as working with the Land Management Corporation to get approval for the permanent site, which will be opening at the start of 2008.

With such a fantastic initiative, you would think that everyone would be happy to see this occur. But I have to say there were a few people who came along to the evening to protest. In fact, I welcomed the members of the AMWU and the AEU who were there with their various signs talking about rights at work, because I believe in rights at work. As the Prime Minister of the UK famously said, ‘Rights at work start with a job’. There have been 159,000 new jobs in 165 days since Work Choices was introduced—that is 1,000 jobs a day. And salaries are going up. In the quarter since then, salaries have gone up across Australia by two per cent versus the previous two quarters of 1.2 per cent and 1.8 per cent. People have the right to have the flexibility to work with their employer.

It is important to note that this is an important initiative which is continuing with ongoing investment by the Howard government, which has seen $10.8 billion committed over the next four years, and we have seen an increase from 1995 of $1.1 billion by the Labor government to $2.55 billion committed this year by this government to give our young people a future in the trades.