Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this, the honourable member for Cooper has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted, with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I will state the question in the form that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question. I call the member for Bruce.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to acknowledge the remarks of previous speakers but emphasise my view that, above all else, ASQA must focus on ensuring quality to protect the consumers of vocational education, students, and on ensuring also that the significant public investment in the training system actually achieves outcomes for the industry and the nation, and on maintaining our reputation globally for quality. I say that with a great degree of affection. In a former life I spent some years helping to promote Victoria's international education sector across the world. I've led trade missions to many parts of the world with TAFEs and quality private providers, and I think it's fair to say that in recent years it's been devastating for those who've valued Australia's training system to watch the decline in quality, when they really understand what's going on.

To ensure that reputation for actual quality, then, a strong and productive relationship with the sector, the providers, is so important. In many instances, a collaborative and educative regulation can be appropriate. But reports of heavy-handed approaches for minor administrivia or paperwork breaches are not appropriate and not helpful. But, of course, there's a balance there and care needs to be taken—because I know there's been pushback from parts of the private training industry to perceived overreach—that the pendulum doesn't swing too far the other way, where real quality issues are uncovered. Then firm action does need to be taken. Australians should expect that the governance changes proposed in this bill will assist with that.

I want to turn my remarks to the proposed second reading amendment. The government have damaged the quality of Australia's world-class vocational training system by cutting TAFE and training by more than $3 billion. They're in their seventh year with $3 billion of cuts accumulating, coupled with the simultaneous crisis of youth unemployment and skill shortages that we're seeing break out. It's really quite an achievement, isn't it? We have skills shortages and at the same time they're cutting the training system by $3 billion and, in some cases, relying on overreach of temporary migration to fill the gap because they've stuffed up the training system. And, of course, they're failing to tackle completion rates.

This is not a genuine reform package; this is a minor little tweak to governance arrangements, which might be fine in itself. But, in their seventh year in government, with the crisis in the skills training system, this not a genuine reform package. These are serious and important issues. Indeed, it would be fair to say that the Liberals have conducted a war on TAFE, a war on public training, with their obsession with creating the market. I say right up-front: I think the former Labor government overreached in some areas in that regard. People have said so, and we've corrected that. But the government has had six years—and are now their seventh year—to address these issues, and there is nothing. A few weeks ago the Prime Minister said, 'We're going to have a look at the vocational training system.' He couldn't bring himself to say, 'We're going to fix the TAFE system,' could he? He said, 'We're going to have a look at the vocational training system.'

The COVID crisis makes it even more urgent that the government acknowledge this crisis and actually get a plan to overhaul the sector. We were already having skill shortages in critical areas of the economy before COVID. We've seen a 73 per cent drop in approved apprenticeships. We cannot lose the pipeline of apprenticeships right now, when migration into the country is stalled. It'll create a double whammy, so we have to see action from the government to restart the apprenticeship system and get it back on track. It's not rocket science, is it? You'd think that, in a recession, even this government would understand that now is the time to let people engage in the skills and training system and in the education system. Actually put some money back into TAFE to let people get back into the training system and incentivise them to do so now—not in six months or 12 months or at the next election when they come up with some nice-sounding policy, but now. Get young people back into the training system and back into apprenticeships. Uncap the university places. The universities are reporting that they can't accommodate the demand they're now seeing. Funnily enough, in a recession, people think, 'What am I going to do? Maybe I should upgrade my skills. Maybe I should go and get another qualification.'

Of course, we hear a lot about manufacturing. You can say 'manufacturing'. Yes, we want to see the resurgence of manufacturing, but it's not just going to happen. There are three critical ingredients, at least in my view: reliable, cheap power, and we know that renewable energy, which the government is so hostile to, is the cheapest reliable form of power; innovation and research, which the government is presiding over multibillion-dollar cuts to right now; and skills. They're the three ingredients, and the training system is so important.

I also want to turn some of my remarks to another important part of ASQA's function, which is the oversight of VET providers who deliver to international students. International education is this country's fourth-biggest export overall and our biggest services export. It is now worth $40 billion to the economy, and that includes significant VET delivery. It's in crisis at the moment. I've remarked elsewhere that the government needs to get its act together. It's the only top-10 export sector that the government is not only not assisting but actively harming, with the Prime Minister out there telling students just to go home. They are astounding comments that are damaging future prospects to our biggest services export industry.

In relation to vocational education, I say clearly that our future success will rely on three things. The first is ruthless enforcement of quality, which is where ASQA comes in. We are a higher-cost, high-quality provider. That's our market niche. We can't compete with low-cost providers and destinations elsewhere in the world, so we have to maintain that reputation for quality and be ruthless about it. The second is that we need a great student experience. One of our competitive advantages with other places in the world where young people can choose to go to study is that, overall, we have a good student experience. People can have an English-speaking experience, living in and working part time in the community. The third ingredient, of course, is positive word of mouth. That is where the Prime Minister's comments telling students to go home are so damaging. They set social media ablaze. People are rightly hurt, upset and, indeed, confused. Providers are despairing. I've spoken to them. The debate about student experience and marketing is for another time, but the government needs to act.

There's one thing I want to put on the record. I think the government could use this short window of time—I hope it will be short—when we don't have incoming students to actually fix a few problems in the vocational training system in relation to quality regulation by ASQA. This issue affects both domestic and international students, but I think it is a particular problem for international students. Australia's consumer protection system for international students and its legislative framework, despite the problems we've seen emerge in quality, was a world first and remains among the world's best. We should be proud of it. Indeed, our bureaucrats, trade officials and providers still spend time overseas—probably in Zoom at the moment—explaining to other systems how our system is run and the regulatory architecture around it. That commitment to the highest quality standards must be accompanied by strong and effective monitoring and compliance mechanisms. This is necessary to ensure quality teaching and services to international and also domestic students. Most providers seek to do the right thing, private providers included, but there remain some who do not. So, despite efforts over years, we're told, under this government to crack down on dodgy providers, serious concerns continue to exist in the community and also in the sector.

If you talk to the long-term reputable high-quality private providers, they share these concerns, probably more than anyone because it's them who get squeezed by the bottom feeders in the market that keep cutting costs. These bottom feeders are effectively a visa factory, selling work rights to students with very little regard to quality. They're concerned about the effectiveness of the current quality regime to catch these providers. I stress again: most quality TAFE providers do the right thing. But some of these bottom feeders are catering for a small minority of students who are not in Australia to study and are really treating the student visa as a work visa. It's a very small percentage of a very big number of students here, but that very small percentage is the part of the market that brings the whole into disrepute. Indeed, I would venture to say, based on evidence that we've seen and some of the work by fair work, it's those students right at the bottom of the market who are not here to study who are undercutting wages and pushing domestic residents and young people out of a job because they're not here to study and are therefore not adding to the economy.

Those students are recruited directly by dodgy agents, and, as a result of the COVID crisis and the government's failure to provide assistance, there's been a bonanza for onshore education agents who are hanging around outside the universities, hanging around outside the quality privates and saying to the students: 'Come to me. I'll find you a cheaper course. You'll still get your visa, but I'll find you a cheaper course. I might happen to get a great big kickback, but I'll give you a thousand bucks as well. How's that?' You can see what that does, of course, to the quality. How can you actually deliver a quality product if the students are paying four grand? You can't. It's cut teaching with no attendance, and the spiral goes down.

Dodgy courses and providers catering to that minority of students also risk our reputation and undermine community confidence. The problem is, in my view, ASQA's current regulatory regime—and this is the sort of thing that should be thought about if the government had a proper reform package instead of this piecemeal little governance thing and a few little marketing slogans, which seems to be most of their policy. The problem is ASQA's current regulatory approach doesn't identify these providers and shut them down, and the government changes in this bill wouldn't do it. The government's focus, they say, is building training provider capability through education and a quality improvement approach to address sector concerns, but it doesn't touch the real issues. In my strong view—and this is one suggestion—it's time to consider and trial a more fundamental shift in our regulatory approach to weed out, finally, those dodgy few VET providers who harm the reputation of the rest who try and do the right thing.

An additional thought for considering is that in Australia all VET providers are registered as both training and assessment providers. Once you get registered with ASQA, you're a training and assessment provider. In plain English, this means that, when you're registered, you do the training and you also do the exams and practice assessments and grade the students, which is fine in the good providers, but in the dodgy ones it opens up an enormous rort. It doesn't matter whether the student of the cooking class can actually cook, it doesn't matter whether the student in the aged-care course can actually look after senior citizens in a competent way, as long as they're paying the fees, you give them the mark and they keep the visa and keep working. But some countries separate the training and assessment functions to varying degrees, providing some measure of external assessment and independent validation of the student's competency. In the extreme, you'd think of year 12, where someone else marks the exam from the students at that school and there's a bit of moderation and so on. I'm not proposing we go to that extreme, but there's a strong case to at least trial external moderated assessment for the higher risk courses and the higher risk providers.

Just briefly I'll outline how this could work. Informal industry feedback that I've sought from quality public and private providers, coupled with data from regulatory enforcement action—ASQA probably has a reasonable idea, but, if you talk to the proper private providers and the decent agents in the sector, they will tell you who the dodgy providers are. They know to whom they lose the students for lower fees; they know who these providers are. This data combined with actual intelligence could suggest certain courses in the VET sector. I'd highlight cooking and aged care and security which pose a much greater risk of quality concerns and breaches. I propose that ASQA trial an independent training validation assessment—it's not a catchy acronym; the bureaucrats won't love it!—in identified high-risk courses. ASQA could accredit a limited number of high-quality providers—probably the TAFEs, as they do in other countries—and register them to undertake independent training validation assessments of students from other providers delivering the high-risk courses. In plain English, if there's ongoing evidence of concern regarding some of the dodgier cooking course providers, ASQA could force those providers to send their students, once a semester, for instance, for some independent assessment of skills. 'Go on, cook a cake for me. Go on, cook some peas. See if you can cook.' My mum failed cooking peas at nursing—that's where I got the peas from. She only passed her nursing degree because she stole some peas from one of the others. Cooking wasn't her forte. Anyway, that would identify the schools where most—

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Pardon? Give peas a chance! That would identify the schools where most of the students actually can't cook, which would then give ASQA the evidentiary basis to shut those courses down. At the moment, the random enforcement model of ASQA turning up and checking if the paperwork is in order is not working; it doesn't work. Even the dodgy providers can get their filing cabinets sorted and make sure the students have signed the right forms, but it doesn't actually find the schools that aren't training people and providing any quality. I think it's worth a try. The payment could be from the student or the training provider. It's a relatively small amount of money in the scheme of the fees paid and the market. It would be a few hundred bucks, I guess, per student, and different models could be designed with industry. But political leadership is needed to force this change in policy and model.

This concept is not something I thought up. I think it was in a report from around 2007 or 2008 that the Rudd government was looking at. I think it was some work by Professor Peter Noonan at that point, and it included a range of other changes. They were pretty good changes, which the government could well look at going back to, if they're looking for inspiration. Some of that quite rightly was put on hold during the global financial crisis—not wanting to impose any extra regulatory burden—and was never revisited. I think there are more creative ideas that the government really needs to look at if they're going to be serious about improving the quality of regulation through ASQA, because these piecemeal little governance changes are not actually going to do anything significant to address the quality concerns. Aside from that, I'm sure the bill's great.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I indicate at the outset that I support the amendment moved by Labor and also that I don't oppose the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment (Governance and Other Matters) Bill 2020 that is before us today, just as Labor doesn't oppose it.

As has been outlined by many speakers, the bill's intention is to amend the governance structures of ASQA, the Australian Skills and Quality Authority, and also to enhance its information sharing with the National Centre for Vocational Education and Research. These are both commendable intentions in and of themselves. The bill seeks to do this with two key amendments. The first one revises ASQA's governance structures, replacing the chief commissioner, chief executive officer and two commissioners with a single independent statutory office holder—a CEO. Secondly, the bill establishes the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Advisory Council, which I'll just refer to as the advisory council, which is intended to provide ASQA with access to expert advice regarding the functions of the regulator.

On that particular aspect, the Labor Party more broadly is very conscious of the value of TAFE and also of union representation. We would argue that those views and voices should be heard when it comes to developments in the VET sector. For this reason, in the Senate we will seek to move amendments to ensure the public provider does have seats at the table. It is always a sensible and a useful option for government to set up forms of advisory councils bringing together key stakeholders in a sector to provide feedback and advice to government. Indeed, for a period of time under the Labor government, when I held both parliamentary secretary and ministerial responsibility for this sector, the thing that struck me was that, particularly in vocational education—maybe more so than in almost any other sector of policymaking that the government deals with at a federal level—there was a profound commitment by stakeholders to the sector and to improvements in the sector.

And there were many bodies, significant numbers of which I think were—in a very short-sighted and foolish manner—dismantled by the first Abbott government when it came to power. They were bodies that brought together industry, government and the trade unions in the sector to sit around the table and develop a range of advice to government. It might have been on areas such as the need for skills advice—what's happening in industry, what's happening in the economy and how our vocational education sector should be adjusting to address emerging demands, such as new levels of skills needed or indeed skills for which there is declining demand because of change in technology and so forth. There may have been advisory bodies around the actual implementation of skills training—the development of the training packages themselves.

I was very critical, when I had shadow responsibility for this area, of the fact that the government re-formed advisory bodies from the industry to talk and provide advice on skills packages and specifically excluded the trade union representatives. At the time I said to government—and I still, in the context of this bill, would say—that that is a short-sighted, stupid decision. There are people across the trade union movement—and I've dealt with many of them over the past 10 years—who have a deep and profound understanding of the vocational education and training sector. They sat, when Labor was in government, on many of these advisory councils and are very well regarded and respected by the industry representatives who sat on those bodies. And I have to say, many of the industry representatives were also profoundly knowledgeable and committed to vocational education and training. It was one of the few places where you would see all the other arguments and disagreements that might be expected between industry and union representatives left at the door and very constructive work done in a cooperative manner, and the government benefited from that. It made a significant difference to the quality and the outcomes that we saw in the vocational education sector.

So, I would say to government that when it looks at this advisory council it should be looking at tapping in to that deep expertise in the union sector about the vocational education sector across the board. In particular I'm thinking about representatives from the more traditional trades, particularly organisations such as the Electrical Trades Union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union and the Australian Workers' Union—a range of those unions that have a long history of working with apprenticeships and with skills training. People in those organisations take significant pride and have significant knowledge about how the system has developed over decades. They're not coming to the table with just a couple of years of experience; they're coming with decades of experience and a commitment to and priority of the outcomes for the students. Their priority is: how do we get a quality worker out of a training system, somebody who is deeply and broadly qualified in the skills that they are being trained in?

I would argue that that has been a national asset for Australia for many decades. People talk about the international standing of this sector. There was a period when we rivalled Germany. Internationally, other countries that are looking at developing their vocational education sectors would look at Australia and Germany. We were seen as the two leading lights internationally. I well remember, on the change of government—when the Abbott government came in—we had people in India at the time, as India looked deeply at replicating our training sector, doing that work for Australia.

Unfortunately, what we've seen in the seven years since is an absolute decline in that situation. While this bill talks about quality in the vocational sector, it is remiss of government not to get its head around the fact that for seven years they have not really, deeply and meaningfully dealt with the vocational education and training sector. What is the evidence for that? Why do I say that? Because we have significantly fewer people engaging in the vocational education and training sector. We have significant—in fact, alarming—drops in the number of people engaging in the apprenticeship system. We've seen lost opportunities to address this issue during the COVID period, when the country has required government to step up with what would not be natural for them—interventionist-type policies.

During the global financial crisis, the government was very conscious that one of the first groups of workers that would be hit were apprentices. When the sectors that employ apprentices are particularly hard hit, one of the first decisions they often take is to lay off their apprentices—and that was one of the first responses. In an unprecedented manner, the way in which that the Labor government tied its investment and stimulus to the employment of apprentices meant that we actually did not see a drop in apprenticeship numbers during the global financial crisis. That was an extraordinary thing. What is really important about it is that it tells this government that they can do it. They can ensure that those connections remain in place through their policy settings.

Instead what we have now seen is a report from peak bodies that we're looking at losing 100,000 apprentices in this year alone as a result of COVID-19. We've already lost over 140,000 over the last seven years of Liberal governments. But this year alone; that's a crisis. That means that we will completely destroy the pipeline of skilled tradespeople, whether in plumbing; carpentry; electricians and electrical goods; hairdressers; chefs; mechanics; bricklayers; or trainees in the IT sector. The breadth of coverage of the pipeline of workers that we're going to need in the future in these industry sectors which will be impacted by that sort of loss is a serious issue that government needs to have a policy response to.

I eagerly watch every press conference and read every media release—and I have done since the Abbott government was first elected—when governments pre-empt the fact they're about to do a big announcement on vocational education and training or apprenticeships. On each and every occasion, I have, unfailingly, been massively disappointed in what they've announced. It's a marketing opportunity only: there'll be tweaks, 'We'll have someone to do a review; we will tweak this particular bit of regulation; we'll wag our finger at the states.'

Opposition Member:

An opposition member interjecting—

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Start a culture war, exactly! A whole lot of things are put out there as a massive response; that only they understand the problems in the vocational education sector and they're going to do something about it. There's no detail, definitely no funding and no outcomes that they're ever held to account for in any of those announcements. It was no different when the Prime Minister stood at the National Press Club the other day and said that one of the key things he was going talk about was skills and the vocational education sector. Again: a massive disappointment, 'Let's just move on—we'll move on to the next announcement and no-one will notice that we actually didn't make any difference at all to the number of people being able to access vocational education, or the numbers of people engaged in apprenticeships and traineeships.'

It's simply not good enough. It's not good enough for the young people who need those pathways into good careers across so many industry sectors—in growth areas such as aged care, child care and disability care—and the opportunity to have meaningful traineeships in those sectors and create careers for people. It is not good enough for young people. It's not good enough for mature-age workers, who could take up apprenticeships and traineeships as an opportunity to restructure their own careers if they're in industries that are in decline. Labor at the last election and the one before had policies about getting mature workers those opportunities. But we hear nothing but crickets from this government.

It's not good enough for our economy. It's simply lazy to think that you can continue to use temporary migration programs to fill skills gaps that you're doing nothing about addressing in the first place. Those programs are good programs designed to give this nation the time and space it needs to train Australians up for the industry sectors that might be emerging or where we've got shortages. That's a sensible thing to do. It is not sensible—in fact, it's a dereliction of duty by a national government—to use that program simply to keep papering over the problem and never do anything about it. Over $3 billion has been either taken out of or underspent in vocational education and training by the federal government. Let's not exempt state governments. I certainly think many of them could pick up their acts as well. But the federal government has a national responsibility for economic diversification, for economic development, for participation and for productivity.

All of these big issues are underpinned by a vocational education and training sector that delivers for people and for the economy and it was never treated that way until the Abbott government. The Turnbull government was no better. The Morrison government, I would argue, is even worse, because it cynically seeks, at so many opportunities, to do the photo op, to do the marketing spin, to do what looks like a big announcement and then to walk away and actually deliver nothing. It is time they were held to account. This bill is a very minor tweak to the quality system. It is good that it's being done. But, I tell you what, there's a whole lot more they need to be doing.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to follow the member for Cunningham today, because she has an unrivalled history in this space in this place. There are few people in this building with a deeper knowledge or understanding of this sector—what it needs and the history of it, the mistakes that have been made and the way we should move towards fixing them. So I welcome her contribution today on the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment (Governance and Other Matters) Bill 2020 and the amendment moved by the member for Cooper, who is seated in front of me today.

I welcome the amendment from the member from Cooper because I welcome the opportunity to talk about vocational education and training—and the sector itself—because we are in a desperate, desperate state. That fact is only highlighted further by the economic impacts of the COVID-19 health crisis and what's coming at us now, which is the recession, and what that's going to mean in terms of both industry pipelines and, as the member for Cunningham so eloquently demonstrated for us, the pipeline of workers that we are going to need.

I had a conversation last week with a young person in my electorate who said that they were looking to do a civil construction certificate IV. As part of that course, they would get heavy machinery certification and their truck driving licence. Do you know what they said to me? They said that they were going to be working with pilots in Victoria who were retraining to get jobs as truck drivers. That's where we are. Highly qualified people are seeking to retrain wherever there is a shortage. My heart breaks at that point for the pilot who is not working and for their family, but also for the young person who walked away thinking that they weren't good enough to compete in that space and that it didn't matter what qualifications they pursued, because they wouldn't get employment in this tough market. That's what this government should be addressing.

As the member for Cunningham said, this is a tweak. Yes, we need quality. Yes, we need changes to ASQA, and this process may be part of improving quality in TAFE. But, let's face it, since this last decade, not a lot of people in the community have a lot of faith in this sector anymore. That's because of bad headlines but it's also because of bad administration in this sector by this government, which continues to go for the sugar headline and fail on the substance, and which continues to grab the good-news story at the front end with no accountability and no outcomes at the back end. This space is no different: all spin and no substance. This legislation is a small tweak. We're in here talking about vocational education and training, and this government hasn't sat and talked to the peak bodies and hasn't been out on job sites time and time again to talk to people in the training sector.

In my electorate, it is absolutely clear where the issue rests. As an educator for many, many years, who worked in techs a long time ago, let me tell you that the private sector will go hard in this space where delivery is cheap, where equipment is cheap and where you can make a profit. That leaves our public sector to do the heavy lifting where the equipment is expensive. Do you know how long a lathe lasts on the ground in our tech schools—the John Howard tech schools or ours? It's about five years before a lathe is out of date. Do you know what they cost? That's why public TAFE has to be public TAFE. This is expensive, and the private sector doesn't want to pay for it. The private sector doesn't want to be involved in our licensed trades where accountability is high and there are exams at the end of it that are externally assessed.

I listened to the member for Bruce's contribution earlier and I thought he had some terrific ideas. Lo and behold: they are not new ideas. How do you get integrity into this sector? You separate the provider from the assessment; that's how you get integrity into this sector. You do not rely on a tick-box exercise to deliver quality; you make sure it is connected at the hip to the industry that it is serving and to the community that it is serving. These are the things that this government needs to address—not tweaks, not doffs of the hat to the shortages that are being created. As the member for Cunningham said, there were 140,000 fewer apprentices before COVID. As the member for Sydney said just last week at that dispatch box, the projections at the moment are that we're losing 2,000 apprentices a week. Everyone in my electorate knows how this works. They all know. They can't figure out how we can have shortages. We've got no bricklayers. That's a skills shortage. We've got no bricklayers, yet we have unemployed young people. How is it that we can't put these two things together and fix it? It's not that hard: focused delivery.

I can't talk about this sector without adding to talk about government services and the jobactives and their interaction with the sector. It is often the case that young people are getting certification in spaces and are then applying for positions only to find that they actually haven't done the OH&S training that they needed to do. Without that card in their pocket, they're not going to get past first base. When I first became a member and I sat with my local jobactives, I saw that the people who were giving guidance to the young people who found themselves unemployed didn't know about the white card and didn't know you needed one. They were pushing kids out and sending them to interviews. The kids couldn't get past the first hurdle because, although they had done a VET subject, they didn't have a white card.

This is not difficult, but currently we've got a government that doesn't want to do the heavy lifting, doesn't want to do the hard yards and doesn't want to sit and talk to the peak bodies, the unions or the people providing the training. Worse than that, in the development of this legislation, they have not asked for the views of the trainers and the educators. They have not sat with them. They haven't spoken to the people who actually deliver this training to find out what they think would work.

I'm pretty sure most of the trainers out there would be pretty keen to get around a table and tell a government how to fix this system. I know that trainers, teachers and educators in the public TAFE sector are desperate to get that system back up and running. There is nothing more satisfying than working with someone in an education program and watching them walk out the door to their first day of work. There's nothing more satisfying. There's nothing more satisfying as a teacher than connecting a young person with an employer. People talk to me a lot about these things. Obviously I spent a lot of time in secondary schools. Obviously I was a senior level coordinator before I became a principal. Obviously I used to organised for young people to go and do their work experience.

We've got some terrific people and some terrific businesses in my electorate. We've got a plumbing company that has two kids a week from our local schools doing work experience with them—two kids a week. It's no surprise they're getting a lot of business. Every one of those families tells all of their friends, if they need a plumber, to ring that company. They say, 'They're good guys; they're training our kids.' It also means that that company gets the pick of the kids. They've seen them all on the job site, they've had a chat to them, they've had them in the van and they know who's keen so they get the pick of the kids. This is not difficult, but what it requires is goodwill. What it requires is a community based response. What it requires is that the jobs and the shortages out there are connected in.

I've listened for years and years and years to people saying, 'I'd really like to put an apprentice on but there's nobody out there who wants to be an apprentice.' It's really simple: ring your local high school and talk to the careers teacher. They'll have them lined up at your door tomorrow for an interview. This is not hard, but we've corporatised it. We've created a pool up here for the private sector to say they're going to give certification, but they're not connected to give anybody a job. This government needs to address these things. The member for Wannon, as the minister, should know this. He's from regional Victoria. He grew up in Victoria. He watched these things. It's really not that difficult.

What we do know about this government is that they're not interested in talking to educators—not in any sector. We saw that last week when they said, 'We'll just make a cross-the-board decision and get the sugar-hit line that we're giving free child care and a couple of weeks later we'll rip that away, we'll rip jobseeker away, we won't talk to educators, we won't talk to the service delivery people, we won't talk to the small centres in communities and we won't ask them, "At what level do you become unviable in terms of capacity?"' Do we talk to them? Do we talk to the educators? Does this government bother? No. They just make broad sweeping statements. They come in with a policy and walk away, and it's the same with this piece of legislation.

I welcome anything that muscles ASQA up. I welcome it because in my community I've seen a lot of young people pay for training and then have it questioned, or, worse, pay for training and not have a certificate delivered even though they were told they completed the training. They're paying off loans for things that have no value for them. This piece of legislation muscles up ASQA, and I'm all for that. But how on earth is it going to be self-funded? How on earth are you going to get quality but not give the funding for ASQA to do the work that they are doing? How is that going to make sense? How is it going to work?

Again, to the member for Wannon, the minister in this space: it's a broad portfolio and it goes to your government's value of education that one person is to oversee all levels in education, making them an expert in nothing. It means they can't get their head into the detail in any of these sectors. I feel for the member for Wannon. It's a big job. It's an extraordinarily big job, and he works inside a government that has cut and cut and cut and cut this part of his responsibility out of his whole portfolio. The poor minister gets to walk in here and front us and the cameras every day to explain how we're supposed to, in a crisis and in a recession, fill these skills shortages and match up the unemployed with the skills shortages when there is no funding to do it. How are we supposed do that if we're not all working together? How can we on this side work with a government that devalues education and training at every level? Do you know how I know it's devalued? It's easy: if you value something, you fund it. If you value education, you see it as an investment and not as a cost. This government's failed on every measure since I came to this place in 2013, and this piece of legislation is no different.

The government says: 'We want to muscle up ASQA. We'll write some pretty lines here about how it's all about quality. We're going to improve the quality of the sector by muscling up ASQA to help them to do that. What's the fine print? ASQA have to do it with no funding. In fact, we're going to change the funding model and they're going to have to become self-funded.' Who's going to pay? Young people in my electorate seeking certification so they can get a job—that's who is going to pay. When we are confronting a recession and when we are going to be trying to rebuild our economy, we are going to have skills shortages with a lack of apprenticeships. We have temporary migration, on the one hand, suddenly not available for this skills shortage. What is the government doing? The government's saying, 'Well, ASQA will have to do that, but they'll have to find the money to do that from the clientele.' Are they going to go out to business and ask them for money? Why would business give ASQA money? No, they are going to pass on the cost of this to the young people in my electorate needing a job. They are going to pass on the cost of this to the recently unemployed pilot who is trying to retrain. That's who's going to pay for this self-funded improvement in quality in our vocational education and training sector.

I complete my remarks by reminding this government and by appealing to this minister. You want to muscle up ASQA? Well, all I want you to do, Member for Wannon, is muscle up in cabinet. Can you muscle up in cabinet? Can you be a force in cabinet? Can you walk through those doors, look the Prime Minister in the eye and say, 'You cannot fix the things you are trying to fix until you value education and fund education properly in this country'?

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to follow the member for Lalor in this debate on the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment (Governance and Other Matters) Bill 2020. I, too, whilst not opposing the legislation, speak in support of the amendments moved by Labor. The Morrison government has a shameful track record on supporting skills and vocational training in this country. Its abandonment of skills training since coming to office in 2013 will be looked back on by future generations as one of the catastrophic failures of the Abbott, Turnbull and now Morrison governments. It has left Australia vulnerable. It has left Australia unprepared.

First, it was the rorting of the VET sector by shonky operators, where we saw millions of dollars paid out to crooked training operators for training that was never delivered or delivered to non-existent trainees or for courses that did not meet relevant training standards and ultimately undermined the reputable TAFE system. These were scam operators who were able to exploit the VET system under this government's watch even after what was going on had become very clear. Simultaneously, the government white-anted the public TAFE system by cutting $3 billion of funding or simply not spending the funds allocated. Over the last five years, the underspend has been around $919 million. The result has been a training sector in crisis, a national skills shortage, a closure of TAFEs around Australia and a reliance on overseas skilled migration.

The facts speak for themselves. Between 2013 and 2019, apprenticeship numbers across Australia fell by almost 140,000—from 412,000 to 276,000. Those figures are now over a year old. The numbers would very likely be much worse today, but the government doesn't seem to want to release those latest figures. I ask: why not? I suspect it's because they will tell an even more damning story. The number of apprentices didn't fall because of a skills glut in Australia. There was not an oversupply of apprentices or tradies. It was because the funding and the training places were simply not there.

At the same time, industry sectors were facing skills shortages. What was the Liberal government's response to that? It was to bring in skilled migrants from overseas. In 2018-19, Australia recruited 110,000 skilled permanent migrants and 41,000 skilled temporary migrants to fill skills shortages. The government has been doing that year on year for several years now. Those are all skills shortages that could have been filled by Australians had they been trained. Skilled migration has dominated Australia's migration intake. Of course we should be grateful for those skilled migrants who came to Australia and filled job vacancies, enabling productivity or services to continue. However, the flip side of that is that I often speak to young people or to their parents about the difficulty that they have in getting an apprenticeship in a vocation in which Australia has a national skills shortage.

In my own state of South Australia, the apprenticeship situation is even worse. Apprenticeship numbers in South Australia have more than halved since 2013, from around 33,000 to around 16,000. Again, those figures are a year old, and I suspect the numbers are much lower today. When the South Australian Liberal government took office, it added to the demise by closing TAFEs, including three in my own region at Tea Tree Gully, Port Adelaide and Parafield, again, not only closing the ability of people in South Australia to skill up but closing opportunities to young people in that part of Adelaide—young people who don't always have the money to drive from one side of Adelaide to the other in order to get the training that they need. The Marshall government also cut TAFE funding from an average of about $441 million over the last decade to $347 million in 2018, and it seems that there will be a further $15 million cut in this financial year. Those cuts will inevitably result in job losses and fewer courses available.

Not all people want or are suited to university study, but they may be attracted to a trade career if they are given the opportunity. Yet federal and state Liberal governments cut back those opportunities by cutting the funding. They seem to have this view that it's up to industry to train the people that they need. And, whilst I don't have a problem with industry doing that, the government equally has a responsibility to ensure that we have sufficient training places and opportunities for people in this country—so much so that industry sectors like the Civil Contractors Federation South Australia are establishing their own apprenticeship and group training organisation in order to overcome skills shortages. In other words, they can't rely on the government, so they have to do it themselves. Now, I applaud them for doing that, because I know that industry led training organisations do a good job. It's in their interests to do so. They want the people that come out of the training to be trained up to the standards that they want them to work at once they become employees.

At the beginning of this year there were over 4,000 registered training organisations in Australia. I'm not convinced that they were all needed or that they all provide value-for-money training, so I'm hoping that this legislation will raise confidence in the VET sector. The legislation makes two structural changes to the oversight of VET training in Australia. It replaces the current Australian Skills Quality Authority hierarchy of three commissioners with one single CEO, and then there will be a 10-person-maximum advisory council appointed to provide advice to the CEO. Other members on our side have already raised the concern about the selection process. We don't know how it's going to take place or who will be appointed. I assume that, if there are nine people on that panel, there will be at least one from each state, but even then it doesn't give me confidence that it will be a properly representative panel. That is going to be critical to how effective this whole legislation is. Having said that, I have to say the legislation in itself and that change are not going to make the drastic changes to skills training in this country that the country urgently needs. I see it more as something that the government is doing in order to pretend that it is an issue that it has on its agenda and to pretend that it is making advancements in respects of skills training across Australia. Nevertheless, it is something we don't oppose. But it will be interesting to see in two or three years time what effect that advisory panel and having a single CEO has had in the system across Australia.

Ultimately, its effectiveness will be dependent on the competence of the CEO and the members of the advisory council, so it is important that we have the right people in those positions. I do note, however, that the advisory council will not provide advice to the regulator in relation to particular registered training organisations or particular VET accredited courses. Whilst the advisory council is there to oversee the regulator, I would have thought that, if we pull together a panel of nine people who have expertise in VET training, the regulator might want to take advice from them about all sorts of matters relating to VET training in Australia. Why waste the experience that these people will supposedly have? Regardless of whether it's simply to do with the regulator's position, or whether it is to do with actual courses or, indeed, other training organisations, I would have thought that that panel should be there to provide all kinds of advice. It doesn't mean the regulator, or the government for that matter, has to take the advice, but they should at least consult the council wherever an issue arises where its advice could very well be useful.

As I said earlier, this legislation tinkers around the edges of the skills crisis in Australia. Like so much of what this government does, there is a lot of spin over substance with respect to it. There's been much fanfare and big announcements by this government, but often very little delivered. I refer to the announcement by the government in March of this year that up to $21,000 would be allocated between 1 January and 30 September for each apprentice or trainee employed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Again, that was a measure that I welcomed, and I think it was the right thing to do. At the time, the government claimed that the measure would support up to 70,000 small businesses employing around 117,000 apprenticeships. What we don't know, and what we haven't heard since—and I've certainly never heard any statistics with respect to this—is: what was the take-up rate of that support? It seems to me that, because the government hasn't been using the statistics, perhaps the take-up rate wasn't very high. If it was, I'm happy to be corrected. It's a matter that I've got an interest in and I would certainly like to know. As I say, it's a matter where I suspect it was a case of the government putting spin over substance once again. There have been debates in this House time and time again with respect to skills training across Australia. There is no doubt in my mind that it is an important issue. And there is no doubt in my mind that over recent years this country has done badly with respect to skills training.

Recently in South Australia we also had commentary that the naval shipbuilding work that is proposed for South Australia might hit a stumbling block because we simply don't have enough skilled people in that state. I suspect that a lot of the skilled people we did have may have left the state because of the work winding down the way it did—again, under this government. If that is the case it's a sad indictment on this government that it allowed the situation to get to that point. I would certainly hope, given that much of that shipbuilding work hasn't started yet, that in the years ahead and in the immediate years ahead we will recommit to training people so that, once the work does start and the employment is there, it is South Australians, and Australians for that matter, who take up that work, rather than what we're seeing elsewhere which is people coming in from overseas in order to fill the skills shortages.

I'll finish on this note: over recent months I have had discussions with several people who have come to me because they have a son or a daughter who hasn't been able to get work and, in particular, hasn't been able to get work in a trade that they were pursuing. They can't get the work because the employers find it impossible to take them on when there is not enough support for them. Again, it is the industry itself, the people that would otherwise say, 'I would take on an apprentice if I was given more support from the government.' But they won't. Again, I think it's high time that this government understood that there are opportunities there, that there are young people who would like to enter a trade or a career of one kind or another but they are simply blocked out because for too long this government has cut the funding—as has the state government in my state of South Australia—that would enable those people to pursue the career or the vocation they would like to.

Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.