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

I rise tonight to remark on a terrific event that happened yesterday for the people of Wakefield. I had the opportunity to attend the opening of the Australian Technical College in Northern Adelaide. It was the first day for 106 young people to this college. These students have come as the first students in what is the rebirth of a focus on technical training around Australia, particularly in northern Adelaide. In the past, the northern part of Adelaide had technical high schools that were closed down in the seventies. It had Australia’s premier technical training centre, with the apprentice training centre at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, which was closed down in the early nineties. The whole focus on trades has been subsumed by a fascination by many people, particularly in the education sector, with getting people to university. With the growth of the economy we have seen a demand for skills, and whilst funding that has continued through VET courses and other things has increased the number of people undergoing traditional trades, we have not had that focus, so one of the election commitments of the Howard government in 2004 was to bring in technical colleges throughout Australia.

Some people ask me why I have the slogan ‘Working with you in Wakefield’. I think this is a good example where we had three different consortiums coming together and saying that they wanted to bid for a technical college in northern Adelaide. In working with them, we were able to get a degree of collaboration so that we had strong bid in northern Adelaide. I am pleased to say that, in the end, we were successful in securing a technical college which is a partnership between the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide and the Northern Adelaide Industry Group.

The good thing about this technical college and why it is a revolution for our young people in the way they are getting trade training is that it is a new model of school based new apprentices that is industry led. So, rather than an academic or educational institution training people in accordance with, perhaps, a syllabus or the equipment they have available and then hoping that at the end of that process somehow these young people might fit an employee’s expectations, this college is industry led. John Ats, representing Hirotec, is the chair of the board and we have other people such as Wayne Perry and Rod Keane, the national operations manager of GMH, on the board. They are leading and directing this technical college, saying, ‘These are the kinds of skills and this is the kind of knowledge we want young people to have so that we can bring them seamlessly into our workplace.’

The young people will still do academics leading toward their SACE—the South Australian Certificate of Education—but it will have a focus and it will be relevant to their workplace. So the maths they do is industrial maths and the communication or language they study is workplace communication. It helps them to understand how as an employee and, down the track, as a manager or owner-operator of their own small business they can effectively communicate. So we are wrapping up into one package the opportunity for these young people to gain traditional trades skills with the kinds of business skills and application they will need to be successful in their career as well as in any future aspirations they may have to operate their own business.

So these 106 people, which include young women, have enrolled in courses covering things such as commercial cooking, building and construction, electrotechnology, metals and engineering, and automotive engineering. They are starting that process now. In a few months time employers from around the electorate of Wakefield and beyond will be coming in to start having interviews with these young people with the object of signing them on as school based new apprentices by the middle of the year. That means that these young people will not only receive training but also build relationships with employers such that they have clear and effective pathways out of their training into the start of a career. This is a good model. It is a model that utilises existing resources so that we are seeing a partnership between TAFE and the technical college and so that we are getting the maximum benefit for these young people and for the employers in the electorate of Wakefield. This is an election commitment by the Howard government to work with people in Wakefield, and we have delivered.