Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am not going to spend the five minutes that I get here talking about whether or not we have a skills shortage. It is quite clear to everyone that we do, including the government. I am not even going to spend my time talking about how that has been caused, because I think that is quite clear too when you look at the nearly $2 billion that would have gone into the TAFE sector if this government had not changed the funding formula in 1997 to take away the growth funding that was provided for vocational education and training, under which the more students you got in, the more funding you were provided with. I think that is there on the record for everyone to see.

What I want to talk about is the way in which the government should be responding to this situation. Just last week we had the announcement by the government of their so-called Skills for the Future package, which was about providing people with $3,000 vouchers that they could use at any range of providers, particularly the vast number of new small private providers that this government has encouraged to flourish in the vocational education and training sector. These small providers can go nowhere near competing with the strong public system of TAFE that exists throughout our country and that provides so much value to the Australian community.

It is worth mentioning the TAFE futures report that has been launched today by Dr Peter Kell, which talks about the way in which the Australian community values the TAFE sector in this country, which recognises that two-thirds of employers want training done through the TAFE system. I have just had in my office a number of TAFE teachers from across the country—from Western Australia and from New South Wales—who spoke with me about an example of where private providers had been set up in Perth. Apprentices had done their full training course with the private provider. Alcoa had to send the whole cohort of apprentices back through the TAFE system because, under the private provider, being run by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, they had not learned the skills they needed to do the job. Alcoa had to put them back into the public system that this government has taken $2 billion out of in the last 10 years so that they could get the quality education and training that they needed in order to be able to do the job. That is what we have seen in this government’s approaches. Rather than recognising the value of the public system that exists through TAFE, they have supported the propagation of all these private providers that simply cannot provide the same quality of training that exists in our TAFE sector. The $3,000 vouchers that were announced last week are a further example of that.

If you get a $3,000 voucher from the government, clearly you can only spend that somewhere where you are going to be charged $3,000 worth of fees. For example, if you are a Sudanese refugee who has recently arrived in the town of Goulburn and you want to gain some English language skills and you go to the public TAFE in Goulburn, you will find that the TAFE does not charge for its English language courses. So you can do the course there, but that $3,000 does not go into providing support to the public education system through the TAFE in Goulburn that teaches you English language skills. So this system that the government is introducing encourages people to charge fees for the courses they are currently running that do not require fees in order for them to be able to get any support from the government. That $3,000 for that Sudanese refugee studying an English language course at Goulburn TAFE could have gone into Goulburn TAFE. But, no, this government has decided it wants to put that $3,000 into a private provider who will all of a sudden up their fees to $3,000 to get that money and who just cannot provide the same quality of English language courses that the TAFE sector can provide.

Through DIMIA funding, Goulburn TAFE have the contract to provide the AMEP program that exists there and other programs because they are recognised as a quality provider. But they cannot get the $3,000 referred to in the Prime Minister’s announcement, because they do not charge the fees. What his announcement does is encourage them to charge fees. What the government should be doing is investing in the quality vocational education and training system, the public system that already exists in our country—the TAFE system—that desperately requires support. This study, TAFE futures, indicates that the greatest problems the TAFE system across this country face are underfunding and under-resourcing from the federal government and, indeed, state governments, who are failing to ensure there is a quality educational service that will fuel the economy in regional sectors of this country. Those economies suffer because they are not supported. (Time expired)