Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2007 provides funding for three more Australian technical colleges. This implements a measure announced in this year’s budget. While Labor supports additional expenditure in the critical area of vocational education and training, it believes that the Australian technical colleges are a political, cynical, duplicative and inadequate policy response to the national skills crisis. I will move a second reading amendment to this effect at the conclusion of my remarks.

This bill provides an additional $74.7 million for three new Australian technical colleges announced in the 2007-08 budget, to be located respectively in Perth, Brisbane and Western Sydney. This appropriation takes the total cost of establishing 28 colleges to $548 million. Labor’s approach to these additional colleges is the same approach that it has adopted on previous occasions when legislation in respect of Australian technical colleges has been presented to the House. Labor does not oppose the implementation by the government of its 2004 election commitment. Labor does, however, express its very grave reservations about the public policy, public administration and financial effectiveness of the government’s election commitment and the measure to establish Australian technical colleges.

The government’s rationale behind the creation of the Australian technical colleges is twofold: firstly, to isolate and attack the states and territories in an area that has traditionally been the responsibility of the states and territories and, secondly, to try to find a political fix to a policy problem that the government has neglected over its 11 long years in office. The creation of the ATCs has followed successive Howard government funding cutbacks for the TAFE sector since 1997. After spending more than $500 million on a standalone network of ATCs that have not yet produced one graduate, the Howard government’s plan to build three additional colleges is again an inadequate response to the national skills crisis. The government’s own estimates show Australia facing a shortage of more than 200,000 skilled workers over the next five years. Again on the government’s own figures, the ATCs are expected to produce only 10,000 graduates by 2010. This is a crisis of the Howard government’s own making. Over the past decade the government has slashed investment in vocational education and training, and the TAFE system has been forced to turn away over 325,000 young Australians.

In 1997 the Howard government cut funding to the TAFE system, with Commonwealth revenues in vocational education decreasing by 13 per cent from 1997 to 2000 and increasing by only one per cent from 2000 to 2004. The amount of vocational education and training funding per student has decreased, and that has had an adverse impact on the quality of vocational education and training available to those students.

According to data from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research, since 1997 real expenditure per hour of TAFE curriculum has fallen by nearly 24 per cent. TAFE Directors Australia have also identified the fact that, in terms of revenue expenditure, vocational education has fallen behind other education sectors both in aggregate terms and on a per student basis, despite it being the area that will bear the greatest responsibility for the skills, vocational education and training development of our workforce.

TAFE is the major provider of vocational education and training in Australia, with more than 1.2 million students, which accounts for 75 per cent of all students and 85 per cent of all training hours. Yet the system is crying out for much needed additional recurrent funding and much needed investment in infrastructure—both of which have been neglected by this government. Instead of delivering good public policy to address Australia’s skills needs and investing in the TAFE system that provides the vast majority of training in this country, the Howard government has allowed itself to be blinded, firstly, by its own blind ideology against the TAFE sector; and, secondly, by its neglect and complacency so far as skills and training are concerned.

Instead of cooperating with the states and territories and investing in TAFE, the government is establishing a duplicative and stand-alone network of 28 Australian technical colleges across the country that will only produce their first qualified tradesperson in another three years and will only see approximately 10,000 graduates by 2010. The government has embarked on a costly project to essentially duplicate vocational education and training infrastructure that exists elsewhere across our vocational education and training system.

This is not the first time this parliament has dealt with additional appropriations for the Australian technical colleges. This occurred, firstly, when the government was forced to bring forward funding for the colleges as costs mounted up much earlier than expected and, subsequently, when there were further cost blow-outs and the funding was increased from the initial $343.6 million to $456.2 million. The additional appropriation we are debating here today will push the total cost of these colleges to $548 million. This was done without conversation, coordination or consultation with the states and territories. On the other hand, 2,650 secondary schools throughout the Commonwealth are catering for over 1.2 million students in years 9, 10, 11 and 12 alone, yet the ATCs have no relationship with the state and territory based secondary school systems and are out of reach for the vast majority of Australian students. On any measure, the creation of a stand-alone facility is expensive. Instead of cooperating with the states and territories and seeing whether existing facilities could be enhanced or refurbished, the Commonwealth unilaterally decided to go it alone. That is at the heart of the cost blow-out and the expenditure here. Instead of working in partnership with already established vocational education providers and tapping into the existing expertise there to maximise training outcomes, the Howard government has embarked upon a course of setting up its own stand-alone system. This has led to inherent inefficiency and additional cost to the taxpayer.

Aside from the cost blow-out, the establishment of the ATCs has been plagued with difficulties and low enrolments. The truth is that, after three years and more than half a billion dollars, the ATCs have not produced one graduate. They have only 1,800 enrolments. Only 21 out of 25 colleges announced to date are open. Just two out of the 21 colleges are meeting their 2007 enrolment targets. There is an average cost of nearly $175,000 per student. Only one-third of the colleges are legally registered to provide training, and many have outsourced the bulk of their training to TAFEs or registered training organisations. Despite this, the Minister for Vocational and Further Education told the ABC Insiders program on 15 June 2007 that the colleges were ‘going gangbusters’.

The Howard government deliberately established the ATCs as a stand-alone network outside existing training infrastructure. As a consequence, only one-third of the colleges are legally registered to provide training. The majority of students who are enrolled in ATCs have had their training outsourced to existing training providers. For example, in Victoria, five out of the six colleges have outsourced their training to TAFE—the same system that has suffered funding cuts under the Howard government. According to the Minister for Vocational and Further Education, only nine of the 21 colleges that are currently operating have no involvement with the existing TAFE system. Even though the ATCs cannot fill their enrolment targets and two-thirds of the colleges have been forced to rely on existing TAFE and training providers, the colleges have not been able to secure apprenticeships for all those students who have enrolled. For example, with an enrolment target of 50, the Illawarra ATC has been able to attract only 35 students to the college, and only 20 of these students are in apprenticeships. Ensuring students are enrolled in apprenticeships is supposedly one of the key features of the colleges.

The recent audit of ATCs conducted by the Australian National Audit Office—report No. 3 2007-08: Performance audit: Department of Education, Science and Training: Australian Technical Colleges Programmeconfirmed all these problems with the ATCs. The Audit Office found that insufficient attention was paid to state and territory governments; initial tender applications were weak and inadequate; and there was little choice among ATC applicants. The ANAO report is a damning indictment on the Howard government’s ATC program. The Audit Office found that the government had not given enough consideration to the role of state and territory governments when setting up the ATCs, noting:

In one region, the program had to address significant issues because of the coexistence of a new college with existing State Government secondary schools.

The report also found that, in many cases, there were delays in finalising funding agreements, as the ATC proposals that were deemed ‘successful’ still required additional work to bring them up to an appropriate standard for the Commonwealth to provide funding.

Additionally, the ANAO found that, in nearly half of the first 24 colleges, the tenders were awarded based on only one or two applications. Given this limited choice, the Audit Office reported:

... an option ... may have been to return to the market to develop more industry and community interest ...

This is despite the government’s ATC website noting that the colleges would be established in:

... areas where there are skills needs, a high youth population and a strong industry base.

What the government’s website or the government generally does not advertise is the fact that 90 per cent of the colleges are in coalition or marginal seats. While the government is only concerned about getting re-elected by building a network of ATCs in coalition and marginal seats, Labor wants to address the magnitude of the current skills crisis for all Australians.

We must focus on the areas of maximum impact, including TAFEs, which remain responsible for the substantial majority of post-secondary vocational education and training, vocational education and training in our secondary schools and on-the-job training. Labor has already announced a $2.5 billion trades training centres plan aimed at the 1.2 million students in years 9, 10, 11 and 12 in all of Australia’s 2,650 secondary schools. By contrast, the government’s own estimates show that a maximum of 10,000 students are expected to graduate from the ATCs by 2010.

Labor’s plan will provide secondary schools with between $500,000 and $1.5 million to build or upgrade vocational education and training facilities in order to keep kids in school, enhance the profile and quality of vocational education and training in schools and provide real career paths to trades and apprenticeships for students. As well as providing infrastructure to improve vocational education and trades training in secondary schools, Labor has a plan for practical measures to enable schools to provide on-the-job training for their students. Labor will provide $84 million over four years to enable interested secondary school students participating in vocational education and training in years 9 to 12 to access one day a week of on-the-job training for 20 weeks a year. Payments of up to $10,000 will be made directly to individual schools to broker on-the-job training or work experience.

Labor also has a plan to introduce a job ready certificate for all vocational education and training in schools students. This certificate will assess the job readiness of secondary school students engaged in trades and vocational education and training. Students will obtain the job ready certificate through on-the-job training placements as part of Labor’s trades training centres in schools plan. The job ready certificate will be a stand-alone statement of a student’s readiness for work and will be in addition to a year 12 certificate and any separate vocational education or trades training qualification. The certificate will provide students who complete secondary school with an increased focus and awareness of the skills necessary in the modern workplace. It will also provide employers with a tangible reference, indicating whether students are capable and ready to work. The job ready certificate will demonstrate that students possess basic workplace skills, including communication, initiative, self-management, technology, teamwork, problem solving, planning and organisation.

At present, there is no requirement for education and training providers to formally issue a statement of employability skills. This has been an ongoing issue for industry, with repeated calls from the Business Council of Australia, BCA; the Australian Industry Group, AiG; and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, ACCI. As early as 2002, the Howard government in response to these calls developed an employability skills framework. Its implementation, however, has stalled. Labor is committed to making education and training more responsive to the needs of industry. Our ability to meet the growing need for skilled employees across the country is crucial to ensuring our future prosperity.

The job ready certificate is part of Labor’s 10-year $2.5 billion trades training centres in schools plan. It will be implemented in cooperation with industry, the states and territories and schools. By making vocational education and training a viable option for all our secondary students, Labor’s plan will make a real and significant dent in the current skills shortage. It will be a key plank in our goal to lift year 12 retention rates from 75 per cent to 85 per cent by 2015 and to 90 per cent by 2020.

While Labor’s trades training centres program will provide opportunities to all secondary school students, Labor will not close the Australian technical colleges. After more than half a billion dollars has been spent on this network of colleges, Labor will inherit 28 ATCs. We will not close any of these ATCs down. We will honour all their existing contracts. We will sit down with the interested parties and we will, over time, when contracts expire and when it is appropriate, after consultation with the interested parties, work out the best way of folding the management of the ATCs back into the state and territory government and Catholic and independent school sectors to improve the vocational education and training offered by schools nationally.

Labor does not oppose the appropriation of funds for the additional three ATCs provided for in this bill which will see the establishment of these additional ATCs. Again, in due course Labor will consult interested parties on the most effective way of integrating these new ATCs into the existing state and territory based educational systems. The ATCs are effectively secondary schools run by the Commonwealth for year 11 and 12 students. Unfortunately the Commonwealth has no history or expertise in establishing or running stand-alone secondary schools. It may well be, depending upon individual circumstances, that ultimately the management of the ATCs goes back into the state based education system. Depending on the circumstances of the college, this could be either the secondary school system or the TAFE system. Management of a college might equally go to the independent or the Catholic secondary school system.

It also might be the case that they continue to operate with management from private industry. For example, in the north-west of my home state of Western Australia there is the minerals and petroleum resources ATC, and it may be appropriate, for example, for part of the management of that ATC to rest with the relevant industry. Labor will respect contractual arrangements, but we do want to make sure that the ATCs are integrated into the overall trades and training effort, that what they are doing is complementary to what a TAFE down the road might be doing, what a secondary school down the road might be doing or what an industry based skills and training centre might be doing.

The states have had longstanding responsibility in this area. In my view, the sensible way of moving forward is to do this in cooperation and in conjunction with the states and territories and industry, so that the Commonwealth can apply its own priorities through an integrated system.

The Minister for Vocational and Further Education argued in this place on 6 February this year that, if the colleges were to be folded back into the states, employers involved would be shown the door. He went on to say:

As a consequence, the unique and innovative role of training students with skills that are highly tailored to the needs of local employers will collapse. The colleges will disappear if they are handed back to the states. If Labor were to hand back these colleges to the states, history would repeat itself and the status of technical training would be reduced once again to that of a second-class career.

Now he says that the states are copying the Commonwealth. He said in June:

... the state Labor governments around the country have proceeded to follow suit.

In other words, they have proceeded to follow the ATCs. He cannot have it both ways. I certainly do not believe that vocational education and training or a technical career is second class. Labor makes no apologies for valuing a vocational education or trade qualification as highly as a university degree. Secondly, that analysis by the minister defies the existence around the country of very strong partnerships between local TAFE colleges and industry. In my own state of Western Australia, the Challenger TAFE, in Fremantle, is a very good example.

The government has been exposed here. In the 2004 election campaign, it tried to effect a political fix. It might well have had some short-term political benefit for the government, but we have been left with a long-term public policy problem that will only be resolved by a much greater investment in vocational education and training generally. That investment must be on behalf of the Commonwealth but made in conjunction with the states, using facilities that are currently available—refurbishing and enhancing them.

The longer the government pretends that a few technical colleges will make up for more than 11 years of complacency and neglect in vocational education and training, the more damage it will do to the prospects of our children and our economy. We need agreement between the states and the Commonwealth about priorities, and agreement with industry about what the skills needs will be down the track. That is the only sensible way forward, and that will be the approach that Labor adopts in opposition and in government, if we are successful in the election. My remarks are reflected by the second reading amendment which has been circulated in my name. I move:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House recognises that the Government has failed to act to address the skills needs of the Australian economy by:

(1)

its continued failure over 11 long years in office to ensure Australians get the training they need for a skilled job and to meet the skills needs of the economy;

(2)

slashing funding to the existing TAFE system, with Commonwealth revenues in vocational education decreasing by 13 per cent from 1997 to 2000 and only increasing by one per cent from 2000 to 2004;

(3)

failing to make the necessary investments in existing vocational education and training infrastructure to create opportunities for young Australians to access high quality vocational education and training in all our secondary schools and in the TAFE system;

(4)

creating an expensive, inefficient, and duplicative network of stand alone Australian Technical Colleges, without cooperation or consultation with the States within the existing Vocational Education and Training framework;

(5)

appropriating more than half a billion dollars for 28 Colleges that will produce 10,000 graduates by 2010 when by the Government’s own estimates there will be a shortage of 200,000 skilled workers over the next five years;

(6)

failing to provide opportunities for young people interested in pursuing vocational education and trades training who do not live near the 28 Australian Technical Colleges; and

(7)

not recognising that a broad approach covering all of Australia’s 2650 secondary schools and the 1.2 million students in Years 9, 10, 11 and 12 is needed to meet Australia’s future skills needs.”

I commend the amendment and the bill to the House.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to speak to the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2007 today in the short period before question time. I will conclude my comments later in the day. The purpose of this bill is to amend the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Act 2005. In effect the act provides funding for colleges over the period 2005 to 2009. This bill is providing further funds for three more technical colleges to be placed around Australia. Those colleges are to be located in Penrith, Western Sydney; north of Perth, which I will come back to shortly; and south of Brisbane.

It is amazing to come into this place and find the opposition saying, ‘We support the bill,’ while subliminally they are out there trying to trash the whole concept of technical and further education in this country by saying that they will hand it back to the union bosses. I will demonstrate this shortly. It is what has happened in Perth in technical education.

In terms of the argument that the opposition raise about skills not being provided, the Prime Minister did the right thing in 2004—realising that Australia needed a shot in the arm to enhance the skills level of our young people, he created the opportunity for Australian technical colleges because the state governments, along with the previous federal Labor government, had dropped the ball on this issue. To demonstrate this, before we took office in 1996 the Australian Labor Party had driven down the level of apprenticeships in this country to just over 100,000. What did they replace them with? They replaced them with these so-called short training courses. You might recall Bill Hunter on those very expensive ads saying, ‘We now have all these people that are job ready and ready to go to work.’ They were not. They were only trained for three months. If you really want a bricklayer slapping up your house for you after a three-month training course, you are going to have a very teetering edifice some time later. These three-month, mickey mouse courses that were being run by the previous Labor minister, the member for Hotham, were a shame.

What have we done? We have put into place greater emphasis on and funding for apprenticeships. The proof of the pudding is that the number of apprenticeships has gone from 105,000 in 1996, when the Howard government took over, to well over 400,000 now—four times the number of apprenticeships are available to young people in Australia now, compared to what the Labor party offered. And they say they are the friend of the workers. It is cant and hypocrisy for the Labor Party to talk about supporting the workers. They do not support the workers; they were the ones who gave them record unemployment. What has this government done? Given 30-year record levels of employment. The best thing you can do for a worker is give them a job. If you really want to look after the workers in this country and not just talk about it—not use weasel words but really do something for a worker—make sure they get a job. They have a greater chance of getting a job if they have a skill.

In this case the Australian government realised that the state governments, through their technical colleges, had dropped the ball on apprenticeships in this country. So, correctly, the Prime Minister identified areas of greatest skills shortage. The Labor Party bang on, saying, ‘They’re not up to capacity and they haven’t graduated anyone.’ Of course they have not graduated anyone—they have only been going for a couple of years. We do not run three-month mickey mouse courses like they did. Of course it is going to take a few years for them to get through. It is for students in years 11 and 12, and it takes two years for them to get through the system in any case, so of course it is going to take more than three months to get through these training schedules.

At the end of the day, these courses are producing real jobs because they provide real skills. For example, in my own vicinity, the Perth South technical college is providing real technical skills for the construction industry, such as carpentry, and in auto-electrics and mechanics. These will lead to greater jobs. At the moment, if you are a young person with an apprenticeship in mechanics and you end up in the Pilbara, you are going to end up with a job paying far greater than my job in this House today. The real rich of this country are the young people who have a transportable skill and are using it to its best effect to access high-paid jobs, not only in the mining industry but throughout Australia.

What is the alternative? The Labor Party want to take these well-constructed colleges and put them back into the hands of the state governments. By doing that, they would be putting them back into a hole in the ground, because we know that the technical colleges at a state level at the moment are top heavy with administrators and short of good-quality teachers. Teachers are in short supply all over Australia. They say they will put money into secondary schools, but they cannot even fill the schools with teachers at the moment. How are they going to put all these extra trade teachers into secondary schools when they cannot even provide enough teachers for schools in Western Australia at the moment?

This is hypocrisy at its worst. The Labor Party are saying one thing and trying to do another. With their mates in the state governments they are trying to collapse Australian technical colleges by going to the schools and saying: ‘Whatever you do, don’t you talk to the people involved in running the Australian technical colleges. We don’t want you to have any of your students go into those colleges, because we can’t control them. We like to control the supply of blue-collar and trade-skilled workers. If these students go through your system, the union bosses will have no opportunity to grab them and dragoon them into their industries and unions and to control them that way.’ I will continue my comments after question time because I have greater information on the state governments and federal Labor trying to subvert the success of the technical colleges.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 2 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 97. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.