Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Labor have always held up year 12 retention rates as something to be proud of and as an indicator, in themselves, of the health of our school system. Last week, Labor ‘middle-bencher’ Craig Emerson advocated going further. He advocated that completion of secondary education—completion of years 11 and 12—should in fact be mandatory; it should be compulsory; you should have to continue years 11 and 12 to completion. This is precisely the mindset that this government has been trying to undo—the view that there is virtue in and of itself in completing year 12 and that year 12 completion is some sort of educational Holy Grail. This mindset is based on three false premises: first, that the longer students stay at school the better; second, that it is more important to do years 11 and 12 than to get a trade and a job; and, third, that as many people as possible should go to university.

This is an approach that has done a lot of damage to a lot of people in Australia by denying them the opportunities that best suit them. Labor’s approach, at both state and federal levels, has led to a stigmatisation of the traditional trades and an elevation of university study over and above all other post-school options. This side of the chamber has been seeking to undo that mindset and to establish an environment where a good trade qualification is as highly regarded as a good university education.

In Dr Emerson’s commentary, he cited the current mining-driven jobs boom as a cause for concern. The fact that you actually have a lot of people getting a lot of good jobs is, for him, a cause for concern. He predicted that, when the resources boom ends, those currently employed in those industries in that sector will find themselves jobless and lacking the skills to seek further work. He must be assuming that Labor will one day win office, kill the economy and kill those industries and that people will be out of work. I guess I can understand his point of view, taking that view as to what a Labor government might do.