Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This bill, the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006, is yet another example of how this government talks big and delivers very little. The first thing, of course, that the government did was deny that there was a problem with skills shortages in the economy. In fact, the first thing they did when they came to office was slash the money devoted to training people in the skills we now desperately need. Next they claimed it was the responsibility of the states and territories, that the Commonwealth had absolutely nothing to do with this. Then they blamed the states and territories—something we hear all too often in this place. Finally, during the election campaign of 2004, they said that they had a solution—they finally had a solution—to the skills shortage.

Their solution was the Australian technical colleges and that they would create 24 in various locations around Australia. Two long years down the track and the government have managed to open only five colleges so far—Gladstone and the Gold Coast in Queensland, Port Macquarie in New South Wales, one in Melbourne and the latest in northern Tasmania on 31 July. All 24 colleges were meant to be up and running and offering 7,500 places by 2008. At this stage, the minister is even saying that three of the areas previously considered—namely, Ballina, Dubbo and Queanbeyan—may in fact lose their colleges because of perceived shortcomings in their applications. In two years, that is five colleges and maybe a total of 300 students!

This amendment bill is before this place because the government wants to bring forward the funding. The best defence of that that the likes of Senator Ronaldson can run in this place is that it is the Labor Party that is delaying the legislation. This is the place where everyone in the Australian community knows the government has the numbers; the other place is where everyone in the Australian community knows the government has the numbers. Therefore, it can act at will—and the last time I looked there was actually a Manager of Government Business who scheduled the passage of legislation in this place. If that is the best excuse, when you have the numbers and you cannot run this chamber, then you really need to rethink your whole approach.

The approach of the government to this issue is a perfect illustration of how this federal government operates. In the lead-up to the 2004 election the issue of skills shortages had finally started to gather some momentum, an issue that the Labor Party had been concerned about for quite some time. The Commonwealth government, after sitting on its collective hands for years, realised that it really had to do something about this. Its solution, first, was to blame everyone else for the problem and then to create a policy of building 24 Australian technical colleges to demonstrate that it had a solution. Two years on and we have five colleges. By the time of the next election, at this rate we could have seven, if we are lucky. It is little wonder, then, that the Prime Minister, as recently as 31 May this year, at the Minerals Council dinner, announced that the Australian technical college in the Pilbara had been approved. I do not believe that the Australian people would accept that delivering only 25 per cent of an election commitment from the 2004 election is at all satisfactory. That is because it is not.

The essential thrust of the policy announcement in 2004 was that the states and territories, through the TAFE system, a system that is well known to all Australians, had failed to provide sufficient training places—mainly, you would have to say, because the federal government cut funding to it, but that is obviously not of concern to those over there. So the government announced that the new Australian technical colleges would increase competition in the training sector and that business would have much greater input. It is passing strange, then, that the government could tie itself to a policy, supposedly as one of the measures to overcome the chronic skills shortages faced by our economy, by starting from the ground up at a cost in excess of $300 million to fund an alternative training college system that may deliver its first apprentice by the year 2010—a long way from the 2004 election commitment.

Consider that. We are facing a skills shortage and, rather than dealing with it by working with the states and territories, rather than expanding TAFE colleges that are already able to offer trades training, the Commonwealth embarks on a completely different stream of training that will not see a graduate perhaps until 2010—all those wasted years. Two years since the policy was announced and not one apprentice has been delivered. So much for the government’s concern about the skills shortage: two years and only five colleges. This is a wasted opportunity for Australian industry, for the Australian labour market and, most importantly, for young Australians wanting to undertake an apprenticeship. The government has wasted millions of dollars and two years creating an alternative training system to that which is already out there and delivering apprentices. Rather than trying to strengthen or improve the current system it has simply thrown the baby out with the bathwater and started from scratch.

I have to admit that, even at the time of the announcement in 2004, there were those of us who could see where this policy was heading. It was clear that simply announcing that 24 Australian technical colleges would be created was a dangerous fiction. The problem with policy announcements like this one is that there is an expectation created, an expectation that these colleges would be up and operating as quickly as possible and helping to overcome skills shortages. It was clear that any policy that aimed to create new technical colleges from the ground up was going to take time—and, so far, we have seen just that: two years for five colleges. At this rate it will take about 10 years to deliver all 24. You cannot simply wish for these colleges to exist: there is land to purchase or lease, buildings to construct or hire, staff to hire and train, procedures and guidelines to be developed, tendering proposals to be drafted and so on. There was always going to be a significant amount of time and effort consumed in the setting up of these colleges—an entirely new system. In that sense they could be seen to be a bit like that most efficient hospital in Britain, in the Yes, Prime Minister series on television. The most efficient hospital was the one that had no patients. So far, we have 24 colleges on paper, with very few students.