Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to condemn the Baillieu government for their savage attacks on the TAFE sector in Victoria. Late last week a highly damaging cabinet document was leaked to the Age and the ABC in Victoria, which highlighted the consequences, TAFE by TAFE, of these very savage cuts. Down in my electorate, the Gordon TAFE has been providing vocational training to people across the vast western district for some 125 years. The Geelong Advertiser reported some of the details of that cabinet document in its Saturday edition. What it highlights is that to date some 43 courses are at risk, including the highly competitive manufacturing program, which is about upskilling and innovating and providing skills to people in the manufacturing sector. Of course, Geelong is a very proud historic manufacturing town, and this will have severe consequences for our economy down the track.

This highly damaging Baillieu government cabinet document also reveals that the Gordon TAFE will not be able to provide VET training to our secondary schools across Geelong from 2014. This will again be highly damaging to our economy. The Gordon TAFE provides a very significant program to assist schools in providing students with skills, particularly vocational skills and particularly for those students who do not wish to go to university. This will again create severe consequences for our economy.

Importantly, though, the Gordon submission within the highly damaging cabinet document did indicate that it needed assistance from the Baillieu government to remain viable. I call on Ted Baillieu and the Victorian coalition to withdraw the $300 million TAFE cuts and to ensure that TAFE can continue to provide a strong vocational education role in our area. Gordon has been a very significant institution in the Geelong economy for 125 years and the savage TAFE cuts must stop.