George Campbell (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think about five—nowhere near 20, Senator McGauran. But as usual you open your mouth and all sorts of dribble falls out. They have had nearly three years since re-election to get these ATCs up and running, and that has been an absolute policy failure. But how typical is the response of the government? If they introduce something and it works, they accept the responsibility for it. If they introduce something and it does not work, they shift the blame back onto the Labor government—sometimes back as far as the early eighties. It is absolute nonsense. You have been here long enough to be able to take the blame for everything that happens in this country in the current time, for which you are responsible.

The reality is that the Howard government cannot escape its responsibility for the current skills shortages. You failed to identify the crisis early enough, despite the fact that as early as 2003 the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education References Committee produced a report called Bridging the skills divide. We identified some 52 recommendations on issues that needed to be addressed if we were going to urgently deal with the skills crisis—and you ignored it. You ignored all of the recommendations. You also failed to provide essential opportunities for Australians to access vocational education and training.

And what did you do when you came into office in 1996? What was one of the first acts of this government? To slice $240 million out of the TAFE sector—out of vocational education and training. It was one of your first acts in 1996. The lack of investment and the fact that that money was cut out of the system has seen something like 325,000 young people turned away from the TAFE system since you came to office. These young people have been denied an opportunity to get a technical education to be able to get into a trade and set themselves up for a proper and rewarding future. At the same time we have imported something like 300,000 skilled migrants. In fact, Australia is the only developed country to reduce public investment in vocational institutions and universities. According to the OECD, our public investment in education has fallen eight per cent since 1995. The OECD average is a 38 per cent increase. So, while other OECD countries have been increasing their expenditure on education, whether vocational or tertiary, what have we been doing? We have been cutting back: an eight per cent decrease against the 38 per cent increase for the rest of the OECD, and we are well behind in all of the international benchmarks.

Dr Peter Kell, from Wollongong university, has said:

A skills shortage is no accident when you underinvest for 10 years.

The numbers do not paint a pretty picture. The latest skills vacancy index produced by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations shows that vacancies continue to rise. From February 2006 to February 2007, skilled vacancies rose by six per cent—in the automotive trades they rose by six per cent, in the food trades they rose by 21 per cent, in printing they rose by 36 per cent and in the wood and textile trades they rose by 49 per cent.

The Australian Industry Group, or AiG, estimates the shortage of skilled labourers will be in the order of 100,000 by 2010. So we will be short of 100,000 tradespeople before even one tradesperson comes out of the Australian technical colleges. Even with this additional funding, these colleges will at best train a maximum of 7,500 tradespeople, who will not begin to graduate until between 2010 and 2012. The colleges will not deliver one single tradesperson until 2010. That is simply not good enough. It is simply not good enough when you know that we had an infrastructure in place in this country through the TAFE sector that was working collaboratively with the private sector—and I will come to a couple of examples of that in a minute—that could have been boosted and utilised and could have readily dealt with the skills shortages in an immediate sense. If resources had been put into that sector of the economy, then we would have many more thousands of tradespeople out amongst the industry now then we currently have. The ATCs are, at the very best, a case of too little too late.

Way back in 2003, in the Bridging the skills divide report, we provided the government with a set of sensible recommendations. Most of the recommendations were supported by both sides of the parliament. I think there might have been a reservation on one or two by some of the coalition senators, but in the main the report had the unanimous support of the committee. Recommendation 34 really was a pointer to what could have been achieved effectively at that time to deal with the skills issue. Recommendation 34 was that the government should consider the broader role that skills centres can play in delivering and boosting the number of skilled workers in our community. I have been to some of these skills centres and they are fantastic. The great irony is that two of the best in the country are in the electorate of the ex-minister. I do not think the ex-minister actually walked from his office around the corner to look at them or pay them a visit, because, if he had, that is the route he would have taken in dealing with the skills crisis. He would not have wasted his time trying to build something from the ground up that was going to take so long to put in place.

The Construction Skills Trade Centre in Brisbane is a terrific facility. It is supported by the Building and Construction Industry Training Fund in Queensland, the Queensland Construction Training Fund, the Building Employees Redundancy Trust, the Queensland Department of Employment and Training and the Queensland Department of Employment and Industrial Relations. Here is a great example of a collaborative effort between the private sector—that is, the building industry employers—and the TAFE sector. The TAFE college is actually located on the site where the skills centre is located, and it trains all of the apprentices for the building industry, whether they be bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers or whatever. But they go beyond that: they even train the independent contractors in how to run their businesses. They are operating an enormous facility which is servicing the skills needs of the construction industry in that area. And, as I said, it happens to be in the former minister’s electorate. Another body in the same electorate is Queensland TAFE’s terrific Skills Tech campus at Sunnybank. Skills Tech will be accommodating more than 11,000 students by the time the first tradesperson comes out of an ATC. That is all from one centre—because they built on the existing resources that are already located in the TAFE sector. They will have 11,000 students, almost double what we will get out of 25 ATCs.

This is a practical solution by the Queensland government, building on existing infrastructure. Unlike the federal government, they recognise what has worked and they built it. As I said, Minister Hardgrave could not even look around the corner from his electoral office to learn from the facilities that were there. If he had looked, that is the route he would have taken. When you see those facilities, compared to the mess of the ATCs, you can understand why Gary Hardgrave was sacked as a minister and is now sitting on the back bench of the House of Representatives. That is a reflection of the failure of the government’s policy in this area.

Another facility is the Hunter Valley Training Company. They have something like 1,300 apprentices on their books. They have links to 800 companies in the region. They have a completion rate for their apprentices of 70 to 75 per cent, while the latest NCVER report shows the national average running at just 45 per cent. They are another collaborative operation between industry and unions and are getting results in the field. But they were also ignored. That specific example was also ignored. It was treated as though it did not exist. The view was that you had to build on a greenfield site.

Australian technical colleges were the most wasteful and inefficient solution that the Howard government could have dreamt up. The original proposal for the ATCs committed $289 million over the first three years. It was meant to deliver 25 colleges in areas of acute skills shortages with large youth populations. By the end of last year they had spent only $53.5 million and only five colleges were open, and at those colleges only 305 students were enrolled. One hundred and eighty of those students were enrolled at the Port Macquarie ATC before it became an ATC. So they were existing students at another facility that was given the title of ATC.

Let us look at what else the government have spent some of the cash on. They spent $20 million on advertising the ATCs. That $20 million could have trained 5,000 apprentice carpenters. They are also spending $24 million on changing the name of the failed New Apprenticeships program to Australian Apprenticeships—a really terrific policy announcement! That equates to another 6,000 apprentices that could have been trained in the field. So that is 11,000 apprentices they could have trained with the money they spent on advertising the existing system. Instead of consulting with states and industry, the government simply decided to go it alone. They announced the ATCs as a quick political fix, they established them outside the existing framework, they duplicated the TAFE infrastructure and they undermined the existing TAFE structure.

The increase of $112 million is a significant cost blow-out. During the last election campaign the Prime Minister announced: ‘The technical colleges are the centrepiece of our drive to tackle skills shortages and to revolutionise vocational education and training throughout Australia.’ Revolutionise it—well, they have certainly done that. They have demonstrated what a policy failure they are and how bereft the government are of any ideas for dealing with the challenges that this country currently faces.

Your answer to dealing with the skills shortages has been nothing short of a disaster and a monumental failure, and now you are demanding another $112 million of taxpayers’ money to put into this failed policy initiative. This brings the total to $456 million, and what is there to show for it? Virtually nothing: 300 young people being trained at five colleges right across the country. That would not even scratch the surface of the problem. That almost half a billion dollars could have been spent on improving and enhancing the existing VET framework, which would have been able to generate additional tradespeople relatively quickly within the existing structure. That is nearly 500 million wasted opportunities in schools, TAFE and industry partnerships.

It is time this government went. The lacklustre enrolments and delays in implementation show this policy for what it is: a political fix to a crucial issue of public policy. The estimated skills shortage by 2010 will be in the order of 100,000 people, according to the AiG, and these colleges, even with the existing funding, will at best train a maximum of 7,500 people. The political fix was announced in 2004, but we know that it will not deliver a single tradesperson until at least 2010. That is simply not good enough. It has done nothing to deal with what is a crucial issue for this country.

We have seen the government having to rely on importation of skilled labour through their temporary 457 visas and other mechanisms to try and deal with the skills shortage. You can deal with it in the short term in that way, but over the longer term it will simply bounce back and bite you. Labor does have positive policies to help overcome our nation’s skills crisis. We know that Australia’s economic prosperity cannot continue without extensive investment in the vocational education and training system. We need a systematic approach. Labor recognises the need for cooperation between the federal government and the states and territories. We also recognise the need to consult with industry to determine our skills needs for the future. Labor has always been and will continue to be committed to real investment in the vocational education and training sector. Our commitment to education at all levels has never wavered. Australia needs to be prepared for the challenges of the future. (Time expired)