Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In recent weeks the Australian government has secured COAG support for a $1.75 billion package to support lasting reforms to the national training system. This is a welcome development. This is in addition to the base agreement with the states and territories on skills funding, worth $7.2 billion, and, in the recent federal budget, an additional $101 million over four years to support and build on the reform agenda.

This funding for vocational education and training to drive productivity and lift workforce participation only highlights just how short sighted and incongruous the Baillieu government's recent budget is, where $300 million in grants was slashed to Victoria's 18 TAFE institutes. Premier Baillieu said enrolments in the uncapped vocational education and training system had 'exploded' from 350,000 to 550,000 in just two years. He said that that was 'an unsustainable growth rate' and was the reason the budget cuts were necessary.

I cannot see the problem. It is encouraging to know that people are embracing training to learn a skill and enhance their employment and career prospects, to say nothing of the productivity dividend that this will deliver. The Liberals like to talk about improving productivity but always take the low road of lower wages and fewer workers doing more.

Then when we have funding cuts to skills training business lobbies call for ever greater numbers of migrant workers. In the recent federal budget we have increased visas by another 4,000 in 2012-13, taking the total to over 129,000. Net overseas migration is now going to rise to over 194,000 people—an ever-increasing percentage of the net overseas migration over the past decade being migrant workers.

The Australian Education Union's Acting Vice-President for TAFE, Greg Barclay, says the latest cuts follow a $40 million reduction last October in preferential funding for the eight metropolitan TAFEs. This led to the loss of 300 ongoing teaching positions and the axing of 'an untold number of contract and casual positions'. He said:

The situation now is that the Baillieu government will not provide enough money to meet the costs of all the courses that now exist and is effectively saying to the institutes, 'If you want to run them you will have to make up the differences'.

Just today, data from the Victorian TAFE Association was released showing the impact of the Baillieu government's decision to cut $300 million from the Victorian TAFEs, and this analysis shows that more than 550 Victorian jobs will be lost by July, there will be a loss of around 200 TAFE teaching and support jobs across regional Victorian and 350 in metropolitan TAFE institutes and dual sector providers. In January next year more than 1,320 further positions are on the line, including up to 400 positions across regional TAFE providers and a further 950 metropolitan and dual sector providers.

The biggest job losses identified so far are sadly in my area. At the Kangan Institute $3 million will be cut in 2012 and $25 million cut in 2013, involving 205 projected job losses by 2013 and at least 52 courses to be cut. At the Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE there are cuts of $25 million for 2013 with projected job losses of 50 jobs by 2013 and course cuts expected. RMIT has not been spared, with $20 million being cut in 2013 and, again, course cuts predicted.

TAFE directors estimate cuts to student subsidies and other budget savings could result in the loss of 1,500 teaching and support staff across the state, the closure of hundreds of courses and even campus closures at rural TAFE institutes or the merger of smaller colleges. The Victorian TAFE Association Executive Director David Williams said the government had inflicted the biggest funding reduction in the sector's history and would force amalgamations. Mr Williams said the cuts contradicted a pledge to support TAFEs as 'vital public bodies'. He said:

Premier Baillieu has broken his promise. Frontline TAFE staff will need to be retrenched in significant numbers.

The government has slashed funding for up to 80 per cent of courses—some from $7 to as little as $1.50 an hour—and abolished extra funding to cover TAFE's obligations as public providers.

At a time of significant job losses in Victoria, the Victorian Liberal government budget cuts represent a slap in the face to those who are trying to retrain and get new skills in order to find new employment. (Time expired)