Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I return, bunker fuel free, to acknowledge that, just every now and then, you see this incontrovertible evidence that you need to get rid of state governments. This time it is the South Australian government, who last week decided that they would effectively hack into 10,000 jobs and divert all of the state funding in training back to TAFE and kill off the private training sector. I know sometimes in politics it is all about protecting your mates' jobs in the unions, but sometimes you need to step back and just accept that private training providers do a pretty good job. Rod Camm, ACPET and all of those private training providers around this country offer a vibrant, capable alternative to TAFE that drives the quality in both. If we expect TAFE to evolve, the only way it will happen is if you invest equally and fairly in alternatives and let people decide. I know that is not a union philosophy, but let people vote with their feet and let the resources follow. It is so important to have private training, but that has effectively been killed off, with 45,000 of the 51,000 funded and subsidised places just being handed to TAFE—basically a lazy asset where only 27 per cent of their capital infrastructure is actually used through business hours and the rest of it just sits there idle. How is that efficient use of resources?

South Australia, no more brain explosions. I know you have already managed to kill off maths as a core subject in schools. I do not know why; we do not really understand why. You can be encouraging coding for kids and antenatal classes, but you are not looking after maths and you are not looking after training.