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

This is now the third go I have had at speaking on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2007.

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why don’t you quit while you’re ahead?

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

I thank the member for Batman for his interjection, because he encourages me incredibly to highlight issues in this bill which I am sure he will agree with. As he knows, we need a skilled workforce in this country. In the current climate in Australia we have 4.3 per cent unemployment. With an unemployment rate of 4.3 per cent we need as many skilled people as we can get, because we have a growing economy requiring a growing workforce. We have an economy that requires skilled people to work in jobs which for so long have been considered menial; they are now highly valued. We know that these people are being paid incredible wages for jobs which were essentially called blue-collar jobs before. Now these so-called blue-collar workers are the nouveau riche of this country because they attract enormous salaries in the industries in which they work. For example, it is not uncommon for a plumber to receive $120,000 a year—whether they work for themselves or for somebody else. These are the skilled workers that the Australian technical colleges will produce.

I will not go back over the speech I made in the previous 10 minutes I had in this debate because that would just be repeating myself and I want to move forward. But what I was leading up to when we rose on Thursday was the fact that the Australian Education Union in particular and the unions in general are trying to sink the Australian technical colleges. Why are they trying to do this? It is because these colleges are not their idea. It is because they do not wish to have people in the industry who they did not train and who they cannot control through their unions. This is what is happening in this case. For example, Anne Gisborne from the State School Teachers Union of Western Australia and Pat Byrne—who is from Western Australia but is now the head of the Australian Education Union—are people who do not like the Australian technical colleges.

I will give an example from my own electorate. A constituent, who was a principal of one of the local high schools but who has now retired, came to me and said: ‘Don, I hate to tell you this, but we’ve been told to go slow on these technical colleges because the local office of the education department in Western Australia have told us that they do not want us to help. They actually don’t want us to help these Australian technical colleges get off the ground because they have been told not to by their masters in head office.’ We know who puts the senior bureaucrats in head office in the state education department: it is the union masters. Who does their preselections? Who is coming into this House shortly? Most of the union hacks from all over the country. This place is going to be full of union inspired careerists. So they say, ‘Whatever you do, don’t allow people to go into these Australian technical colleges; they are not things we allowed to go forward because we cannot control them.’

I want to refer to a flyer from a member of the Labor Party. Because I have a certain agreement with this local member I will not mention his name. He has put out a flyer in Western Australia which is obviously generated by Labor Party head office. It says, ‘The local member and Kevin Rudd will build a new trade training centre in local high schools.’ If you turn to the policy side, you see that it says: ‘Australia has a serious skills shortage and skills have become a core economic challenge for the nation. This is particularly the case in the traditional trades.’ Yes, we all agree with that. The flyer continues, ‘That’s why Kevin Rudd and I have plans to give every local secondary school the opportunity to be a first-class provider of technical education.’ It is funny that they have only found this to be an issue in the last year or so before an election. The flyer says, ‘We want every child in X electorate to get the best chance in life.’ And it is signed off, ‘Yours sincerely, your local member.’ It rabbits on. There is a picture of the local member and the Leader of the Opposition. ‘Trades training in every local high school,’ it says. ‘Rudd takes fight to PM on skills crisis,’ it says. ‘Labor pledges $2.5 billion for training,’ it says. Again it says: ‘Australia has a serious skill shortage and skills have become a core economic challenge for the nation. That is why Labor has a plan to give every secondary school the opportunity to be a first-class provider of a technical education.’ I suspect that members opposite have put this flyer out in their own electorates, because it is generated by Sussex Street.

The fact is that you cannot go now to secondary schools and say to them, ‘We’re finally going to do something about putting in place a decent apprenticeship trade skill training regime in your secondary school.’ Until now the state secondary schools have been quite cynical about any training in this area. You had manual arts in schools where kids learned to put a couple of dove tail or tongue-and-groove joints together—or where they did metalwork and learned to make a compass or make something they had turned on the lathe as an exercise. That is not real training for a trade. What the Labor Party are now saying is, ‘We’re going to put a few lathes and a few extra things in schools and try to turn out skilled apprentices.’ It cannot happen because, to start off with, there are no teachers to do this in schools. We have a shortage of trained skilled personnel in secondary schools. Yet the technical colleges that have been established already are staffed with highly competent, trade trained teachers. I will now talk about this in my electorate and the adjoining electorate. In the Perth South area there is a technical college which I, along with the member for Hasluck, worked very hard on securing—and I am sure the member for Hasluck will be in here shortly to talk about the campuses in our area.

In the Maddington campus, for example, there are students studying the auto mechanics and auto electrical trades. In the Armadale campus there are students studying carpentry and joinery, brick and block laying and steel framing. These are real, genuine trades—no flower arranging, no aroma therapy, no transcendental meditation. These are real transportable trades.

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Martin Ferguson interjecting

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

I hear the member for Batman, as a former President of the ACTU, saying, ‘This is true,’ and good on you. We want real trades for real blue-collar workers. We do not want Mickey Mouse schemes coming out of these technical colleges. So thankyou, Member for Batman, you are on the page in terms of real skills and real trades. You told me once you actually got your hands dirty doing real trades yourself. So good on you. I am pleased to see that you are supporting people who are learning real skills in the blue-collar area. I know you will back them and I know you will support people who are going to get skills in this area. So congratulations and thanks for your support.

There is a whole line of state education ministers coming out and bagging these technical colleges. They have to because you are what you are because of what you have been. You were put there by your union bosses and your unions and, at the end of the day, you have to come and destroy anything that is not part of the Labor union regime. For example, I think I have mentioned previously the poor kids at the Welshpool Training Centre in Perth where businesses are charged $15 a day for each kid on the job and it goes into the Welshpool Training Centre and they end up with millions of dollars a year to train people in trades. But what do they do? They hardly train anyone. This needs to be investigated. They borrow about $1 million a year from the executives and trouser the money and do not pay it back. I think this is a disgrace and it should be investigated. Come the next parliament you can be assured that I will take that on.

Getting back to the Perth South campuses in Armadale and Maddington, we have so much support and the reason they are so successful is that the local businesses support it—the local trades people. As I said, Teresa Gambaro, the member for Petrie, told me that in her area there are over 150 places and they are full. These are in the same areas of skill that I talked about. Next year they are going to have 300. So much for not being able to fill these places!

Capacity at the campuses is 45 and it will be 75 next year. For example, Maddington currently has 41—31 auto mechanics and 10 auto electricians. Armadale has 32, which is made up of eight carpentry and joinery students, 11 brick and block laying students and 13 steel framers. These people have been supported by the local government authorities and they have received scholarships. Their fees are something like $1,550 per semester. This is unlike the state technical colleges which in some cases in New South Wales increased their fees by 300 per cent. In places like Victoria it was 25 per cent. They jacked up the fees so these poor kids could not join in. No wonder they went off to the mining industry and got jobs at about $1,200 a week. I would like to say what a success the Australia technical colleges are. They are going to continue to be a success and the only detriment to them is the Labor Party putting them back in the hands of these—(Time expired)

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to make a few comments on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2007. As has been indicated, the opposition will support this bill. However, we in the opposition suggest that it falls a long way short of what needs to be done to address Australia’s crisis in skilled labour, particularly in traditional trades. Australia has arrived at this point because of more than a decade of neglect by the Howard government.

Perhaps the member for Canning ought to have a look at the facts. The government’s figures show a shortfall of 200,000 skilled workers in Australia over the next five years. The figures also suggest that the government’s technical colleges will turn out fewer than 10,000 graduates by 2010. We are therefore debating a bill that invests in bricks and mortar when there is plenty of existing vocational education and training infrastructure that this government could simply invest in in partnership with the private sector and state and territory governments—a cooperative way forward. The problem is that the Howard government will not invest in the existing secondary schools or the TAFE system around Australia. These are schools and colleges that are convenient to local communities and would greatly benefit from better resourcing and a cooperative approach to training between the Commonwealth, state and territory governments and, importantly, the private sector.

What we have got is an ideological war by the Howard government with state and territory governments. The government also lacks an understanding of the needs of the private sector—the people who actually employ apprentices. Alternatively, unlike the coalition, a federal Labor government would invest $2.5 billion in all Australian secondary schools to promote vocational education—an across-the-board approach. That investment would be supported by programs targeting stronger links between schools and industry and it would improve student access to on-the-job training, which is fundamental to success in trade training. Nevertheless, I am sure that the communities getting these new technical colleges—for example, in Penrith, north-eastern Perth and southern Brisbane—will be pleased to get them. What they need more than bricks and mortar are new ideas and initiatives that encourage kids to take up trades in the first place, to finish their apprenticeships, to use their trades in the workforce and to then go on and develop further skills throughout their working lives. I refer to a local initiative in my electorate of Batman—the Northland Secondary College, which is a huge success story. I have an electorate in which there are still young people who do not even finish years nine and 10, let alone start an apprenticeship or go to university, because of some of the social problems that we confront locally. But I have a local secondary college that I am exceptionally proud of—a college that is trying to do something about this in its existing structure. It is a model we should all have regard for—the cluster model. With the assistance of local employers, we have created a skills centre—the Manufacturing and Technology Centre—for school students. This centre offers years 11 and 12 young people VET certificate courses in engineering, automotive and furnishing in the northern suburbs of Melbourne—skills that are required by local industry.

The initiative was made possible by a grant from the Victorian government, supported by ANTA, an organisation unfortunately abolished two years ago on the watch of this government. It was about working and achieving at a local level, drawing in a national organisation made up of the state and territory governments and the Commonwealth. ANTA was therefore about a national approach, whilst bringing into play the role of the Victorian government with a grant of $750,000. That school is actually producing trained young people today, not in 2010. I saw some of them undertake their training only a couple of weeks ago.

Just as the Northland Secondary College is supported by local employers, so is the Gladstone Schools Engineering Skills Centre, in Queensland, which was established in 2003 in one of Australia’s major resource and export centres. The Gladstone Schools Engineering Skills Centre is a unique training and learning environment, co-located within the NRG Gladstone power station and focused on preparing year 11 and 12 students for a smooth transition into the workforce as apprentices or trainees in the engineering fields. I have also visited this centre.

Existing educational institutions and the private sector got together and established their own technical centre on a real worksite where kids could learn about and experience real-life occupational health and safety procedures and standards, learn to operate industrial machinery and, in essence, get exposure to the real world of work. The centre mirrors the expectations, ethics, safety standards and discipline of engineering and manufacturing workplaces. Students strive to develop competency in certificate I in engineering and manufacturing, focusing on both theory and practical components. Working industry hours, in industry clothing and using personal safety equipment, students undertake 1½ days of training at the centre, a one-day work placement and two days of study at school to obtain a senior certificate. Since the centre began operating, 90 per cent of year 12 students who have completed the program have been successful in gaining an apprenticeship or traineeship in the engineering trades.

The program itself is based on the ACCI employability skills framework. It is producing the goods. It is avoiding duplication, inefficiencies and competition for scarce resources out there in the Australian community. See how the private sector, Queensland TAFE and the University of Central Queensland, along with the local secondary schools, are working together to produce results—practical, local training in Gladstone. They did not need an offer of more bricks and mortar from the Commonwealth, which is what they got. I am sure it is welcome, but a better approach would have been to sit down and work with the local community, business, the schools, the TAFE and the university and ask them how they could best build on the successful local initiative to take it to the next level.

There are similar examples in Tasmania. The coalition’s election policy on technical colleges was designed on the run, based on a mainland template for a situation that does not exist in Tasmania. Tasmania’s emphasis on workplace vocational education and training, as opposed to school based VET, is quite different from that of most mainland states. The reality is that the money allocated to this policy in Tasmania should have been spent on adding to and expanding the current VET training system within the existing framework for skills development and training in Tasmania. That is because Tasmania has decent senior secondary colleges, with a number of independent schools also providing relevant VET courses, in addition to TAFE and private providers. Why duplicate it? Why create a mess?

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like Kevin Harkins? Is Kevin Harkins your mate?

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unfortunately, this is not an inclusive government that is prepared to consult and take local communities, state and territory governments and the business community with it; it is one that seeks to divide the community and exploit any political opportunity it can find. The government has forgotten to govern by making the tough policy decisions that need to be made for this country. It is governing to hold and win marginal seats by showering largesse in the form of new technical colleges, new swimming pools or new roads—you name it; you will get it in a marginal seat, without any regard to the fiscal parameters. All communities would welcome new technical colleges, but good policy requires new ideas and tough decisions, not just bricks and mortar.

This aside, there are real problems with the government’s technical colleges program. The Australian National Audit Office has raised concerns about the establishment and operation of Australian technical colleges, but here we are debating a bill to fund three more—in Penrith, north-eastern Perth and southern Brisbane—so that the government can announce them during the election campaign.

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear! Great idea!

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Costs of operation have blown out, and $112.6 million in additional funding was provided in 2006. At the end of March this year, half the 20 Australian technical colleges then operating were significantly below their 2007 enrolment targets. Only two out of 20 actually met or exceeded their targets. The total planned expenditure on ATCs, which is more than $530 million from 2005 to 2011, is very expensive, and the number of young people that will benefit—8,400 students per year once all ATCs are fully operational—is very low compared to state and territory VET systems. By comparison, in 2005 there were approximately 1.2 million publicly funded VET students, and total government revenue to the VET sector from the state and territory and Commonwealth governments was approximately $4 billion. The cost per student at the 21 Australian technical colleges now open averages out at nearly $175,000, according to the government’s own figures. The cost per student at the 21 Australian technical colleges is therefore clearly not money well spent.

In conclusion, this is a program that will be expensive because it is duplicating infrastructure and bureaucracy and because it is being run in isolation from local communities and existing education and business networks.

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s total rubbish!

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a recipe, as the former Minister for Vocational and Technical Training knows, for failure and inefficiency—

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just total rubbish! You don’t know what you’re talking about.

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and reflects his own neglect of his portfolio when he was the minister.

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He is misleading the House.

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is why he was sacked by the Prime Minister in the recent ministerial reshuffle as a non-performer and someone unworthy of re-election at the forthcoming federal election.

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You won’t even get a look in, so don’t talk about that.

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

While the opposition will support this bill—despite the ramblings of the former minister, the member for Moreton—there are many more important measures that need to be taken to improve Australia’s trade training outcomes. One of the most important initiatives was the Prime Minister’s sacking of the member for Moreton as the minister responsible for this portfolio. We need to see sustainable trades for the future of the national economy. But let us be clear: the former minister, by his ramblings in the House this evening, has proven he was inadequate to the task. He failed to put a system in place to produce the goods, and Australian technical colleges and employers are thankful that he was sacked.