Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Adelaide proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The Government’s failure to properly invest in Australian skills, training and education, and its impact on Australian jobs.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great disappointment that I rise today to outline to the House the gross failure of this government to properly invest in Australian skills, training and education and to outline the impact that that is already having on jobs across our nation.

I ask: what does it say about a government, when presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make every school a great school, that they simply turn away? What does it say when instead of stopping state education cuts, which are slashing the quality of education across Australia, and reforming our schools, the government choose to instead to turn a blind eye? And what does it say, when they are looking at rising youth unemployment, that this government decide that all they can do is cut the job programs that do exist for young Australians? Faced with mass job losses and economic changes, they do absolutely nothing to upskill displaced workers. Faced with declining international rankings, they have a minister who is more interested in schoolyard politics than he is in improving our schools. They have the opportunity to make sure that no child is left behind, yet they choose to revert to a broken funding system and a lottery of orders. They are prepared to leave every student and every school worse off. They say one thing and then they do another.

I will tell you exactly what all of those facts say about this government: those facts say that this government is out of touch. It does not understand what is important to Australians—a good job and a secure future. It says that it is lazy, it is too busy with petty politics to follow through on its promise to deliver once-in-a-generation reforms to every Australian school. It says that this is a small-minded government, a government that wants to drag our nation back instead of building the prosperous future that all Australians deserve. It says that it is heartless, that it will rip away the opportunity that education and skills training can deliver to every Australian—particularly to those Australians who might otherwise fall between the cracks.

But most significantly it says that this government are just nasty and deceptive. They made incredibly clear promises to the Australian people before the election, promises that they have wriggled out of, promises that they have thrown away—a betrayal of tens of thousands of students, of parents, of teachers, of educators. It shows that this government just do not get it, and they do not get it because they do not care. By failing to keep these promises and by walking away from Labor's Gonski reforms this government are setting their sights on a smaller future for Australia. They are setting their sights on a system which is not only impacting on jobs right now—we will be looking at the example in Western Australia today in just a moment—but will also impact on jobs for years and years to come. That is the real tragedy of what this government are doing when it comes to education and training.

Let us just refresh our memories: before the election there was a very different picture that was being painted by the now Prime Minister and the now education minister. Before the election they said:

So you can vote Liberal or Labor and you'll get exactly the same amount of funding for your school …

That is what was said on 29 August: 'exactly the same amount of funding for your school'. But what did we hear from the Prime Minister in question time today? 'You've got to look at the small print. You need to look at the asterisk. We mean exactly the same amount just for a few years, just from prep til year 3, but beyond that we don't really mind what's going on in the schools.' Before the election the now Prime Minister said:

As far as I am concerned, as far as Christopher Pyne is concerned, as far as the Coalition is concerned, we want to end the uncertainty by guaranteeing that no school will be worse off …

Well, isn't that great, before the election guaranteeing no school will be worse off—except that since being elected they have refused to repeat this guarantee. They will not stand up in this parliament and guarantee that no school will be worse off because they know that it is utterly false.

They know that the actions of this government in six months have already ensured that every school is worse off—but that is not what they were saying at the polling booth, this very mean and sneaky government. On 29 August the now education minister said:

We have agreed to the government's … school funding model …

That's funny, isn't it? I recall that after the election he stood in this parliament and said: 'Oh no, we're coming up with a whole new model. That's all been thrown aside; that's all been discarded.' It shows that this government have broken every single promise when it comes to education. They have broken every single promise that they made to teachers, to schools, to parents and to students across Australia. They were proud—there are members sitting opposite today shaking their heads at me who were proud to stand at polling booths saying, 'You will get the same amount of funding if you vote Liberal or Labor'. Well, we have seen those signs but unfortunately we have also seen that this government have torn them up already.

What an absolutely cruel joke this has become: whereas the now Prime Minister used to say, 'I am on a unity ticket with Kevin Rudd when it comes to education', what we can actually see now is that he is on a unity ticket with Colin Barnett when it comes to education, and it is a unity ticket which is aimed at nothing more than slashing school budgets and pulling money out of school services.

Let us have a look at what they promised compared to what they are giving. A unity ticket, where Labor's reforms would have delivered $14.65 billion in additional funding in our schools; just $2.8 billion under this government. Six years of guaranteed funding under Labor—which we are absolutely committed to, which we have always been committed to and which we will fight to ensure that the Australian public gets; just four years under this government. A fraction of the money and none of the reforms.

And there is another side to all of this: not only are they not meeting their own funding commitments, but they are also letting the states off the hook. While those opposite would have us think that it has got nothing to do with Canberra, nothing to do with the Prime Minister and nothing to do with the education minister when states like Western Australia rip money out of their schooling systems, the truth is actually very different. Under the model that they told the Australian people they had signed up to, there were some very clear conditions. There were conditions of three per cent indexation each and every year. There were conditions that a co-contribution of $1 would be made by the states for every $2 that was invested by the federal government. But, importantly, there was another very simple condition: that, if you were to receive Commonwealth funding for your schools, state governments would have to guarantee that they would stop the cuts.

But what have we seen in Western Australia? In Western Australia we have seen over $183 million ripped out of their schools by their state government, by Colin Barnett, with the approval of Prime Minister Abbott and education minister Christopher Pyne. What we have seen in Western Australia is 342 fewer teachers at a time when the entire Western Australian and Australian public were told we were going to build up our education and our school system—342 teachers ripped from the system. We have seen 500 fewer support staff across the education system. This is what we have seen already, in just six months, because those opposite misled the Australian public and are now are too weak to stand up, meet their commitments and fight for education funding and the best future for all of our students.

But we know it is not just about schools. At a time when, on the one hand, over in Western Australia and elsewhere around the country, this government is out saying: 'We have a skills shortage; we have to increase the number of 457 visa holders—we simply have to, in order to meet the requirements for skills in our community,' what are they doing on the other hand? They are cutting the trade training centres—ripping out a billion dollars. They will not build a single additional trade training centre. So, on the one hand, we have skill shortages and, on the other hand, we are cutting a billion dollars so that we cannot train any Australian young people to fill those shortages. Shame on the government!

At a time of rising youth unemployment, we have a program: the Youth Connections program. It is operating in communities right across the nation. It is out there, specifically geared towards disadvantaged youths who are in danger of becoming unemployed in their youth. What is the government doing, at a time when they are watching youth unemployment increasing? They are threatening the funding and refusing to even acknowledge that this program should continue post the budget.

I tell you: we will all be watching—everybody in those communities will be watching—because we can see that this government has massively failed when it comes to the education system, when it comes to building the trade training centres and when it comes to the youth programs which are required to make sure that we are creating jobs right now and that our population is trained and skilled for the jobs of the future. The other thing we have seen—

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Those opposite ask me about job losses. Well, we have seen the job losses announced under this government. But what are you doing to retrain those workers?

Government members interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is too much noise on my right.

Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Go out to Holden. Go to Qantas. Go to Alcoa. Tell them one plan you are putting in place for those workers. (Time expired)

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to respond on the matter of public importance raised by the member for Adelaide. In 10 minutes of invective, nastiness, political jargon and rhetoric, the member for Adelaide has not brought to this parliament the real world experience of the trades and of training; she has not mentioned a single apprentice; she has not talked about a single RTO or the work that TAFE does; she has not understood. It is simply pure political rhetoric.

Mr Dreyfus interjecting—

Ms Kate Ellis interjecting—

I do want to address this matter of public importance in a sensible manner, in a way that looks at the issues that we are all facing in the country today, but I will start with the trade training centres because this is what is being thrown across the table at me.

In 2007, Labor committed to $2.5 billion for trade training centres in every single one of Australia's 2,650 secondary schools. Who can forget Kevin Rudd standing at this dispatch box saying: 'Every single school will have a trade training centre. There will be trade training, redeveloped, redefined, remade and remodelled in every single school in Australia.'

Ms Macklin interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Jagajaga is not sitting in her seat and may not interject.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Only $1.4 billion of that funding has been allocated for 511 trade training centres servicing 1,297 schools. So one of the problems with the whole system was not just that it did not work but also that it was so patchwork. And the activities that take place inside these trade training centres today often are not proper vocational educational training; are very rarely linked to industry; do not produce school based apprentices as often as they should, even though admittedly they do at times; and are insufficiently embedded in the training and industry work that is in the school community where these trade training centres exist.

So what Labor did was to borrow money under the stimulus funds, build infrastructure and not care about what happened inside these buildings. Once the trade training centre is there, the issue is: who maintains the infrastructure? Who makes sure that the training is modern and relevant to industry? And who develops the pathway for the young person from school into work?

So we did in fact honour the last round of Labor's trade training centres. We did in fact build 136 new centres. We have committed to the last round of 136 new centres to be known as Trades Skills Centres. The important difference here is that our Trades Skills Centres will forge closer links with business and industry as the Australian government strengthens its focus on vocational education and training in schools.

We saw a national partnership under Labor. Who can forget Julia Gillard and the April 2012 announcement of over $7 billion in vocational education to support the National Training Entitlement across Australia, signed up to by every single state and territory—except the sign-ups did not happen? The entitlement system is in disarray. It is patchwork across every single state; nobody has consistency; and courses are being pulled left, right and centre.

The shadow minister should be aware that, in her own home state of South Australia, child care has now been pulled from the national entitlement system in South Australia, which means that a profession so much in demand and often emphasised by the member for Adelaide cannot be achieved at certificate III level under Labor's national entitlement system.

I want to briefly talk about Labor's record on employment, because they mentioned that many times. There are 200,000 more unemployed Australians than there were in November 2007 when the coalition was last in government. The number of Australians unemployed went from 492,000 in November 2007 to 694,000 in September 2013—an increase of close on 200,000 Australians unemployed.

From 2008 an average of 67 Australian manufacturing jobs were lost every single day under Labor. A manufacturing job was lost every 19 minutes while Labor was in government. In May 2011 Labor Treasurer Wayne Swan promised to create 500,000 new jobs over the following two years. Labor missed their own target by well over 200,000 jobs. The Labor legacy is 700,000 unemployed Australians, the highest number in 15 years. Under Labor the number of long-term unemployed nearly doubled. It went from 69,800 in November 2007 to 135,400 in September 2013.

All of us in this place are right to be concerned about youth unemployment, but the most critical time in a young person's life is the pathway from school to trades training, an apprenticeship or higher education. The 18 months between leaving school and possibly finding work are the most risky for a young person. We know that that person is at the highest risk of falling out of employment and a pathway into a meaningful life and a real place in the real economy. We should all be absolutely concerned about this. To this end, I convened a roundtable on vocational education in schools with state and territory senior officials in Melbourne a few weeks ago. There was no politics in the room and nor should there have been. What was really encouraging was the level of goodwill; the level of participation that states, regardless of their political persuasion, wanted to contribute; and the understanding that we do need to get a national system.

We have got a national qualifications framework that we all operate to, so we should have a national system of vocational training in schools. When you look at the fact that 40 per cent of our students are doing vocational education in schools but only nine per cent are actually in school based apprenticeships, we realise that that figure absolutely has to increase. While we recognise that there is a learning-for-life component in vocational education and it is good for students to do that, there very much needs to be an emphasis on a school based apprenticeship—the employer needs to find the student and vice versa and the job pathway needs to be articulated.

What employers tell us is that because Labor never invited industry to sit at the table with them, whether it be in the schools—

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Rubbish!

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Whether it be in the schools or in the apprenticeship centres, Labor never invited industry to sit at the table. The problem was that the graduates that came out of the training systems under Labor were not sufficiently linked to industry and were not useful for industry. So what we have said—and the entire focus of our policy in this area around apprenticeships and training, including vocational education in schools—is make sure that industry has that buy-in and that industry participates. In some school communities around Australia you do see that and it is done extremely well. You see school principals achieving in spite of the obstacles put in the way. The most important thing, again, is that the interests of the young person are front and centre of those considerations.

So when it comes to youth unemployment we are determined to do something. We do recognise that, with the streaming of students into two different pathways, we unfortunately see too often the recognition that, 'Oh well, if you are not going to university, you are going to the trades and training,' almost as if it is a secondary pathway—and that has got to stop. We have to recognise that it is an equally valid pathway for a student to take a job in trades training or an apprenticeship or go on to higher education. When you look at the figures for the first job for students that come out of universities and you see that huge numbers actually do not leave their university degree and find employment, you realise that, perhaps if they had considered something that maybe they were more suited to in the first place, they would actually have that job. It is not an either/or proposition, Deputy Speaker Scott, as you well know with your rural electorate and as I do in mine. Many people combine a vocational pathway and a higher education pathway over the course of their lifetime. What matters is that people participate in the real economy and that they find the right start and it leads wherever it may.

This MPI is not reasonable. It makes no sense for the opposition to bring this to the parliament today. The failures that the member for Adelaide points to are Labor failures. We are absolutely committed to a skills training and education system that links to a job. We are not interested in distinguishing between students who are good at higher education and not so good at training. We are absolutely committed to making sure that each and every young person has a pathway and a future.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to give points for effort, but I am not going to. One of the most significant issues facing the restructuring of our economy is the matching of skills to the emerging demands and the transformations of the economy. We have two senior ministers who are supposed to have direct responsibility for skills and education. Neither of them can even be bothered to be here. That is the reality of the significance that this government gives to the skills development that is needed in this nation to face the challenges that so many of our communities across the country, but in particular in Western Australia, face.

Previously as a member of some of the standing committees of this parliament when those opposite were last in government, the former Treasurer, Mr Costello, asked the committee to travel around the country and look at the pressures that would be on the economy post the mining boom. One of those that came out loud and clear from all of the visits that we did to Western Australian towns and into Perth itself was the lack of match between skills and emerging demands for training and where the new economy would create opportunities. It is a critically important factor.

The former speaker, the minister, made the point that it is important to have industry on board. Throughout the Labor government, industry—ACCI, the AiG—consistently stood side by side with the government to give priority to skills development in this nation. We put in place the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency; we put in place the Australian skills quality assurance framework to make sure that training was not available but was also quality and that it matched the needs of industry. We put in place a program, as the shadow minister outlined, through our school system. We were building trades training centres in schools and we were linking that to the pathways through things like the—

Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Small numbers.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a 10-year program!

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not small numbers! I challenge members opposite. I cannot believe that the minister had actually ever visited a trades training centre. Look at them across electorates. They were being built. Schools were keen to have them. They were great success stories and local businesses were working with them. And if those opposite are seriously complaining that there were not enough of them, take it up with your own minister because you have just cut a billion dollars out of the program. Every school that was waiting to get on to that program has now—

Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They have been waiting six years.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You claim that under us they have been waiting six years? They are never getting them under you. They are not getting them at all. So for all of the talk, all of the concern and all of the crocodile tears about youth unemployment and creating pathways for young people, you are cutting the program that provided those opportunities for schools across the entire region.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Cunningham might resist using the word 'you' because I will not have any authority on the subject.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I understand. I would never cast that aspersion on you. The reality is, for those on the other side, there actually is a real skills challenge facing this nation. When we look at what those in government said in their policy papers leading up to the election about skills, it is deafening in its silence. You took one policy to the election: to provide some income loan support to apprentices. That was it; that was your whole skills plan. So it would not surprise you that we are extraordinarily anxious about what cuts to this sector are hiding in those 900 pages of the Commission of Audit. I know some of the junior ministers have not seen it, and I am only presuming that the ministers in the cabinet who are directly relevant for this area have seen it. I would say go and grab them and have a quick talk to them.

In government we put in place programs—working in co-investment models with business—like the National Workforce Development Fund and the Workplace English Language and Literacy Program to raise the skills of existing workers, to match the needs of emerging industries and to make sure that we lifted the productivity of our population. Those programs had better not be on the table for cuts. Those skills that industries need in areas where we are seeing the transformation of industry—for example, in the mining industry in WA—and those skills in affected industries moving to a production model and relying on a new set of skills for workers along the supply chain had better not be on the cutting board under the Commission of Audit. (Time expired)

Peter Hendy (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I must admit, with no disrespect to the speaker who just finished and who I think talked very coherently and measuredly, that the gall of the Labor Party to put this MPI forward beggars belief. It never surprises me what they are up to. Look at this matter of public importance: the government's failure to properly invest in Australian skills training and education and its impact on Australian jobs. I did not hear a fact or a figure from the other side. I heard a lot of empty rhetoric. I am going to give you a few facts and figures.

You were talking about the impact of unemployment on Australians jobs. What happened over the last six years? When you guys came into office, the unemployment rate was four per cent. It is now six per cent. The fact is that Treasury forecast that at the end of your term it would go to 6.25 per cent—that is a 200,000 jobs net increase over what it was. Two hundred thousand jobs have been lost under Labor over the last six years. That is your record. The Leader of the Opposition was an employment minister in the last government. During his watch, the unemployed rate, the number of jobs that were lost, went up 80,000. That is his record.

You guys talked about manufacturing. How many jobs were lost in manufacturing under your watch? A discrete 129,000 jobs were lost under you. So the fact is that you guys have decimated the small business community and the manufacturing community. In small business, it is lucky that some jobs were created in other parts of the economy because 412,000 jobs were lost in small business under the Labor government in six years. That is shameful. Small business, which is the engine of our economy, has been hit. Rather than the 53 per cent of the employed workforce it was employing in 2007 when you got in, it is now 43 per cent—a 10 per cent drop. There are 3,000 fewer small businesses employing people. That is the employment record of you guys. It is just disgraceful when you consider a couple more statistics.

The number of long-term unemployed—that is, unemployed for more than 52 weeks or a year—nearly doubled and went from 69,800 in November 2007 to 135,400 in September 2013. That happened under you guys. The youth unemployment rate—that is, persons aged 15 to 19 and looking for full-time work—went from 19.6 per cent in November 2007 to 27.3 per cent in September 2013. That is an extraordinary result.

You should be ashamed to put a motion into the parliament today to talk about the government and its jobs program. We are fixing the problem you guys created. As a former CEO of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, I spent a lot of my time on skills and training. In 2007 we produced a report, a blueprint in fact, called Skills for a nation: a blueprint for improving education and training. I think the coalition has picked up a lot of the points that the ACCI put forward in that comprehensive blueprint and is now starting to implement that.

Opposition members interjecting —

I will give you an example. The fact is that Labor made $2.8 billion of cuts to universities, which they announced last April. (Time expired)

Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the shadow minister for putting this matter forward as a matter of public importance today. I do that because it is not simply important that we debate Australia's skills, training and education, it is vital. And it is vital that we engage with this issue in a way that takes responsibility in this place for the decisions that we make that influence the communities we represent.

Over the course of the last two years, we have seen some very significant changes in the economy of Western Australia. From being the investment powerhouse not just of our nation but of the world, Western Australia has seen significant reductions in capital expenditure, new mine construction and new project construction. We have seen, in every community, our economy change. I do not say that from the point of view that that is terrible. Western Australia happens to be a blessed community. We have not suffered two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth—a technical recession—in Western Australia since 1969. We are a good part of the world. However, let's be real about the obligations that we have as a parliament to support our state governments and our communities in trades training.

The communities I represent—Rockingham, Kwinana and Mandurah—are communities where students go to school, get good grades and then go and get trades. As the member for Eden-Monaro would know, it costs about a million dollars to train a good trades technician in electrical skills to get them up onto a mine site. It was a pleasure to be with the shadow minister, Brendan O'Connor, at Southern Cross Electrical Engineering last week talking to apprentices being supported in their training by the training enterprise structure put in place by the Kwinana Industries Council. That structure provides practical job training for young men and women, for Aboriginal men and women, to work in our resources sector. As I said earlier, the resources sector is changing; investment is in decline and we are now moving to production jobs. We need to have people job ready for those production jobs on the mine sites and in the production facilities, for the sophisticated value adding that we now do to our minerals not just in Western Australia but around the entire country.

What Canberra really does not understand is that a lead mine does not mine lumps of lead; that a copper mine does not mine copper pipes; that in a nickel mine you do not pull out nickel by the tonne; that minerals processing in our modern minerals economy is sophisticated value adding, which requires people with high levels of technical expertise and skill. It requires people with the skills to deliver their particular service in a mine site in a remote location in a production train that keeps that productivity happening for the benefit of all Australians.

I am pleased that in the course of the last month the federal government has announced funding for the trades training centre of the Peron Alliance, the local alliance of schools in my electorate, in partnership with the Kwinana Industries Council, the CCI and Apprenticeships Australia. In a number of the high schools I represent, that will broaden the number of trades training centres that will cover hospitality, health, electrical, automotive—the jobs that the young people in my electorate want to do. It will cover the skills needs of the Kwinana industrial strip. It will cover the production needs of our nickel mines, our gold mines, our magnetite facilities and our iron ore mines. It will also cover the diesel fitting needs of the transport infrastructure in Western Australia to bring our grain crop harvest to a port.

These investments are not simply lost money and dead money. They are investments in people's lives, they are investments in skills, they are investments in the future that allow young people to take control of their lives. They allow our community to be what it aspires to be—that is, productive, wealthy and able to provide good jobs for future generations.

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to be speaking in this debate today because, quite frankly, if this is the worst gripe that those members opposite can come up with today then our government is clearly doing a lot of things right. Seriously, this MPI beggars belief, coming from those opposite who have spent the last six years in government. For the member for Adelaide to be suggesting that a lack of investment in skills and training is now impacting on jobs is surely a much greater reflection on the poor policies of the former Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments. In simple and very practical terms, most trade training courses have a duration of much longer than six months. So the reality is that it will take some years to repair the damage that the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments did to the trade training sector. It will certainly take much more than six months to address the skills shortage that our nation does indeed face as a result of Labor's totally ineffective policies in this area.

Those policies included the spectacularly forgettable Productivity Places Program, which, like many of Labor's thought bubbles, was an expensive and astronomical failure. It was designed to train over 711,000 people. This $2.1 billion program was so badly administered that, according to documents obtained through FOI, evaluators could not even determine who had received training. The program failed to provide tangible employment outcomes, with more than half of the participants not finding a job and only 20 per cent finding a job in the area they had received training for. Then, in 2007, Labor committed $2.5 billion to build trade training centres in every single one of Australia's 2,650 secondary schools but, once again, they failed to deliver. Through the course of their term, only $1.4 billion of that funding was allocated for 511 trade training centres, and just 320 of these centres have actually commenced operation. This is Labor's track record. This is how they approached the need to train and upskill Australia's workforce when they were in office.

On top of bad policy, they also inflicted increased costs on registered training organisations, with some fees rising by 400 per cent. In the 12 months leading up to the last election, Labor stripped $600 million of employer incentives for many vocational education programs. They piled more red tape and regulation on the sector, which acted as a disincentive.

When it comes to talking about an impact on Australian jobs, Labor introduced the job-destroying carbon tax that added to the cost of all businesses through increased energy prices. I am quite gobsmacked that the member for Adelaide has the gall to put forward such a—quite frankly—lame MPI, given her party's track record.

When it comes to skills shortages, traditional trades and engineering are the most serious areas of concern in this country. As an engineer by profession, I take every opportunity I can to encourage young people into engineering and to study maths and science at school. Sadly, these two disciplines have faltered under the Labor government and their national curriculum. I hope that the review that we are currently conducting can help reverse the trend and restore the value of maths and science in order that we have more students going into science and also into engineering. I note that this week many members of this House have met with scientists as part of the Science meets Parliament program, which is just terrific. There certainly should be much greater engagement between individual MPs and senators, scientists and the scientific community.

When it comes to traditional trades, it is a sad fact that completion rates for apprenticeships in this country fell to just 48 per cent under the Labor government. In contrast, the coalition has announced positive plans to boost apprenticeships. As promised during the last election, we will introduce a trade support loan initiative. It is a practical plan to help young people who are completing an apprenticeship in much the same way our higher education loans system helps young people who go to university. I am happy to note that we are on track to implement those loans from July this year. Additionally, the government is engaging with the vocational education industry and the community through a specially formed VET review task force that is seeking stakeholder input through workshops around the country. The government is committed to a strong and robust Australian apprenticeship system that meets the needs of employers whilst delivering skilled workers.

Unlike Labor, the coalition government is committed to consulting stakeholders and ensuring that the money we invest in the trade training sector achieves results. This will, of course, take some time, but it is important to make the time to get it right.

Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government asked us to recite some facts. I will give you a very salient fact. Today, there are 84,000 people in Western Australia that are unemployed—that is 5.9 per cent. That is the highest rate of unemployment in Western Australia since the days of the Howard government, when it peaked at that height in December 2003. So we have a very significant problem in Western Australia that we need to deal with.

I will mention a few more facts. The Assistant Minister for Education came to Western Australia recently. She was being interviewed about apprenticeships. John McGlue, the journalist, asked her: 'Why are apprenticeships now just not as popular as they used to be …'. Do you know what she did? She blamed the schools. She said:

Look, there's lots of reasons and to some extent I blame careers advisors in schools … there's not enough “try a trade” for those kids in school so they can see what it is they want to do.

There is not enough 'try a trade'—that is the fundamental problem, she says. She has blamed the school teachers, she has blamed the advisers and she has blamed the lack of the opportunity for students to try a trade. It is really important to have a try-a-trade capacity within our schools to give children, students and young people the opportunity to have a go at these trade skills, to see whether they are suited to them. Indeed, that was absolutely what this program was all about. Today, we have seen her saying, 'This has been a failure. You have only delivered 320 across Australia.' I actually think that is a great achievement. To say that we are going to cut the money because you have only delivered 320 of these seems to me to be absolute madness.

We have 49 trade training centres operational in Western Australia, and they are affecting around 150 schools that are involved in clusters. They are absolutely delivering. The sorts of nonsense that I heard coming from the government today really are not borne out by our experience in Western Australia. I want to talk about two centres that I know well, one in my old electorate of Armadale, which has been operational for around three years. They have got programs being delivered by Polytechnic West, and there is absolutely no doubt that it is attracting far more kids into the trade. I am also talking about Morley Senior High School, which is in a cluster of five schools and is delivering through its trade training centres. It has become very competitive to get a place at Morley Senior High School. We even have parents who have taken their children out of private schools in the area and put them into some of the cluster schools so they can gain entry to the automotive program, so highly sought after is it. Private enterprise is represented on the panel that selects the students. Industry is deeply involved in these programs. This has been an excellent program and it is absolutely bizarre that we are cutting it.

At the same time that we are cutting down our base of skilled people we are loosening the reins on 457 visa class. We have already seen the start of that. We have 21 per cent of people on 457 visas in Western Australia. They have played an important part. We did recognise last year that this scheme was getting a little bit out of control and that there were many people coming into Western Australia when there was growing unemployment. We need to ensure the 457 visa class has community support, and we are not going to do that if we are systematically loosening the reins on it, as is underway now with the government, and allowing people of very modest skill levels coming in when we have got 84,000 people in Western Australia that are unemployed. Here we have a government that is saying we have to unleash the 457 visas, that we are going to take off the restrictions so we can bring in more skills from overseas, and at the same time dumbing down our education system and taking out that very, very successful plan. (Time expired)

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In addressing this MPI we cannot look at the last six months in isolation. Certainly we can talk about—and I will talk about—what we have done in the last six months and what we are going to do over the next 2½ years. But I think everyone in this chamber should be a little sobered by the report from the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which shows that Australian academic standards have been slipping since 2009. They say that the latest results are a serious wake-up call for Australian education, showing a downwards trend since 2009 to late 2012 in Australia's student performance relative to other countries across mathematics, reading and scientific literacy. Surely if we are going to discuss this, we—and the previous government, with all due respect—need to acknowledge that academic standards slipped for four years of their six-year rule in this country, and they slipped in the three areas that are obviously very important to every student in this country.

Another salient fact that we need to acknowledge—because we cannot look at the last six months in isolation—is that the number of 15- to 19-year-olds commencing apprenticeships or traineeships fell by four per cent between 2011 and 2012. So from 2009 to 2012 we had falling educational standards and falling traineeship and apprenticeship take-up in this country. That is the context that we took over. We took over an education system where we were falling down the ranks. We took over an education system where apprenticeships were being taken up less and less. So let us look at what we are going to do about that. As the assistant minister very eloquently stated earlier on, we are opening 136 trade skill centres, and I have visited some of those that are going to open in my electorate. We have five. The Alstonville High School will be building a million-dollar primary industry centre—an agricultural centre. I went and had a look at that the other day. That is going to be built. We announced that funding recently. There will also be a million-dollar hospitality centre at the Evans River School and centres at Grafton High School, South Grafton High School and Trinity Catholic College.

So we are not abandoning that—we are running out 136 of those centres. But nothing stays still, so if we are going to be training and educating our high school students to join the vocational educational part of the workforce, we have to look at other ways as well. The assistant minister also mentioned that. For a period of time I was a high school teacher, and I was also involved in giving career advice to high school students and saw different methods work in different ways. One way that worked very well—and one we will certainly be encouraging—is school based apprenticeships and traineeships. Certainly there is a space within a high school where you can be taught different vocational education, but there is a big push for–and a lot of room for—students being at high school but also spending a period outside that high school at a school based traineeship or apprenticeship where they get on-the-job training. We certainly will not be abandoning that system; we will be encouraging it. As was previously said, we have established the VET reform task force, because we want to design a system that is flexible and will create results. So we have planned that as well.

We say this a lot, and I almost always get derision from the other side when I mention it, but we are going to cut red tape and all the compliance costs and everything else that those training providers and employers have to do. That is important. We are also talking about higher education as well. We know that the previous government cut $2.8 billion from education, so we have seen falling results in most measures—(Time expired)

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the matter of public importance brought before the House by the member for Adelaide. Before commencing my remarks, I think I should acknowledge the previous speaker, the member for Page, because he did something quite extraordinary in this parliament: he talked about some things the government is actually doing. So I congratulate the member for Page in taking about two minutes of his contribution to talk about the responsibility of this government. At least he believes in no excuses.

It is disappointing that we have to have this debate, because before the election—as everyone in this place knows—we had a unity ticket on education funding, which goes to the core of the challenge that the member for Adelaide is putting forward today and which is at the core of Labor's agenda. It is very disappointing that we have to have this debate, because while it relates to many cuts and many broken promises, at the core there is one: the unity ticket on schools funding. But this is a government that said one thing before the election and quite another after. Yesterday I spoke about the government's neglect in the area of skills in the legislation that is presently before this House. We have a very, very thin agenda that goes nowhere near creating the high-skilled high-wage jobs of the future, whereas skills, training and education and their impact on people's ability to secure meaningful employment is of vital concern to the people I represent in the Scullin electorate and indeed Australians everywhere. This goes to the heart of meeting our productivity challenge. But opposite us we have a policy-free zone.

Today I was proud to walk out the front of parliament with many of my colleagues on this side of the House and stand with the Gonski vans, which have conducted a road trip around Australia. I did not see members opposite, but I am proud to stand up with advocates for public education in support of needs based education funding. From there I came into the parliament to meet with children from St John's Primary School in Thomastown. They were thrilled to see Bill Shorten, Australia's next Prime Minister, and they were very excited to hear from him. They were also very interested to hear that we would be debating education and skills, and I think their teachers were interested too, to see if this parliament can chart a pathway to better productivity, and to the high-wage, high-skill jobs of the future.

The urgency and importance of this debate is heightened for me and for many of my colleagues by the recent major job announcements, which impact on many people in the northern suburbs of Melbourne—most recently at La Trobe University, building on from Golden Circle, Ford, Holden, and all the other auto-related jobs. The government still does not have a jobs plan, but it is much worse than that. The failure to invest in education and skills will cause profound damage to our future prospects. This challenge is about productivity, but it is also about equity. That is why Labor took the Better Schools Plan to the last election. We acknowledge the critical role education plays in giving children the best possible chance of getting good jobs. Labor's plan, of course, was not the no-strings, bucket of money approach. It was a targeted, equitable allocation of funds based on individual student needs. It provided certainty to schools, something they never had under the SES model of the Howard government.

I heard yesterday from representatives of the Catholic Education Office, who are keen to emphasise these very points. They discussed their noble aim, and tradition, of assisting students in need, but they highlighted the massive financial disincentives the Howard era funding model created. For example, it costs about $13,000 to educate a child, but $64,000 to educate a child with special needs. Under the coalition's funding model, schools had a perverse incentive to turn away children who cost more to educate—this was needs based funding in reverse.

All schools and school communities desire certainty, and Labor gave it to them. That this government saw fit to walk away from that certainty, or perhaps to weasel out of existing arrangements, shows the contempt that the coalition has, not only for students and staff but for schools themselves, for Australia's future and for the job prospects of the kids at St John's Primary School in Thomastown, and many kids like them.

The coalition liked to engage in motherhood statements about education. We have heard some of them today, but their instinct is to cut it. As the member for Isaacs knows, one of the first acts of the Baillieu government in Victoria was to slash funding for TAFE. One of the first actions of this government was to break its core promise of a unity ticket for education funding.

As the member for Adelaide put it, at the core of the government's agenda is a smaller future—an end to needs based school funding, cuts to trade training, cuts to Youth Connection, and no skills agenda. It is neglect that must come to an end.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like a number of other speakers on this side, when I saw the MPI I thought we must have put it up. It is about the 'government's failure to properly invest in Australian skills training and education, and its impact on Australian jobs'. In 2007, the then Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd declared a war on skills shortages. He announced $2.5 billion for Trades Training Centres in all of Australia's 2,650 secondary schools. The problem is they only spent $1.4 billion of that money, which is over half, and they started the allocations for 511 of these Trades Training Centres—servicing 1,297 schools—but only 320 of these are actually up and running. So they have spent over half the money for 25 per cent of the actual number of Trades Training Centres, but only 12 per cent of them have actually been operating. So where will the rest of the money come from?

When we are talking about properly investing in education and training in this country, and allocating the right amount of funds, they have fallen at the first level, in the same way they have with so many things, whether it is the Early Childhood Learning Centres or the GP Super Clinics, which we have been hearing so much about. At every level the previous Labor government came out and made these grand promises about delivering all these magnificent things, yet when it came to implementation they have fallen at the very first hurdle.

The problem with the previous Labor government is that they think that writing something on paper actually delivers it. It does not. You have to actually employ the tradespeople to do it. When Labor came to office in 2007 Australia had a perfectly good technical college system. We had a fantastic one in Townsville for instance. The best part about what this government did to it—and it shows you what their commitment to education is—is that they made the Townsville technical college change their name from the Australian Technical College North Queensland to Tec-NQ, at a cost of $50,000. And then they just pulled their funding. That was their commitment to school based education. Tec-NQ is still providing these quality services; they are still working as an RTO. Those are the sorts of things the previous government did. They just pulled the funding out, proving they just do not get education when it comes to these things.

We are shifting the VET sector out of education and into industry, because we believe that is where the focus should be. The focus should be on outcomes and on jobs. All the way through we have seen the previous government get up and talk about what their commitment has been. Last week I heard an absolute cracker about how the former government was working on bettering education and on job placements. During a Certificate II in Active Volunteering, you did not have to volunteer. Part of the course on active volunteering was that you did not have to volunteer. All the way through a Certificate II course on active volunteering you did not have to volunteer. Only Labor could do that.

The Education and Employment Committee is going to actually finish off the work of the 43rd Parliament, because we want to make sure that TAFEs in particular are not being hurt. TAFEs have to do a very big job when it comes to the capital work, and to the big trades. We want to make sure all the other RTOs are not just taking the cream off and making TAFE a stand-alone facility where the capital cost is high, making them a target for cuts. This is because we believe in the TAFE sector, and we believe in the VET sector.

We have real challenges in youth unemployment, and they are not all related to training, skills and education. The member for Brand spoke earlier about refining. One of the key things to making sure that refining works is to make sure that your input costs are low. The one thing you do if you want to make sure that you keep jobs in manufacturing and refining is keep your electricity costs low, and you do not introduce a carbon tax. That makes people shift refining, and other energy intensive occupations and practices, overseas. The Abbott government is committed to real job growth; the Abbott government will deliver on jobs and education. We are a good government.

Fiona Scott (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The discussion is now concluded.