Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The incorporated speech read as follows—

This Bill amends Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Act 2005 to increase funding in total for 2005 to 2011 by an additional $74.7 million.

This is largely to account for an additional 3 further colleges.

ATC’s are now located across the country with some 90% in coalition held seats.

The flaws of this policy and of ATC’s not withstanding, many of these colleges are now established and open, albeit with far fewer students than expected or desired, and at far greater cost per student than would have been the case if the existing TAFE system had been used.

In view of the continual attacks on all higher education funding by the Howard Government, Labor have accepted these colleges and supported the concept, albeit with reservations. Any additional funds for our higher education sector are welcome so this bill is supported.

The Howard Government has presided over ongoing cuts to VET funding that have seen hundreds of thousands of young Australians denied a place in college.

The Howard Government has, despite many loud and clear warnings allowed the number of trainees and apprentices to fall to the stage where we as a nation are now confronting a massive skills shortage which is severely hampering our productivity and growth.

They of course claim this is not so and that numbers of trainees have risen, but they ignore the fact that the bulk of any increase is in non traditional trade areas, such as retail or fast food outlet trainees.

They ignore too the fact that many of those commencing training are not actually finishing the course for whatever reason.

It is in the traditional trade areas, such as construction, manufacturing and mining that major shortages exist.

It is putting at risk our future productivity and prosperity.

These Australian Technical Colleges were devised as policy on the run, and announced with minimal planning or consultation.

They were devised as a means of competing against existing Labor state and territory TAFE systems with a requirement for staff to be on AWA’s. So they were governed not by any sound educational reasoning but pure Liberal ideology.

They were far too little and too late, and as so often happens with policy on the run they were established in a hurry, with inadequate planning and time.

A report by the ANOA, released in July, into these ATC’s found that too little attention had been paid to state and territory governments; initial tender processes and applications were weak and inadequate and that there had been limited choice among applicants.

In nearly half of the first 24 colleges there were as few as 1 or 2 applications. A fairly under whelming response from the business world.

The ANAO found that in one region the program had to address significant issues because of the co existence of a new college with existing State schools.

The ANAO found that the Commonwealth should have carried out greater risk assessments of organisations bidding to set up and run the colleges.

None of this should have been surprising as applications were largely from businesses or groups thereof who, with all the best will in the world, were totally inexperienced at submitting for educational facilities.

Additional work had been required with the Department on many applications in order to finalise them with proper costing or business plans.

The ANOA believed that many applications were so weak that a better option may have been to return to the market and try again. However, as usual with this complacent and arrogant government they refused to consider doing this.

While an average school may well be up to 4 years in the planning and establishment, four of these ATC’s were open within just 6 months of being approved. Again government claims this as a positive move—but the ANAO report held otherwise.

As a result these ATC’s, first announced as part of the 2004 election promises, have not produced one graduate—that is 3 years and nearly half a billion dollars down the track. Indeed there is no immediate sign of any graduates even this year.

The ATC’s have been at best a poor policy also badly executed and at worst a cynical political exercise

There are still well under 2000 students enrolled while the target was for some 7500. Again the Minister tries to put sufficient spin on this fact to claim they are well on target for enrolments. Sad for the government their spin doctors are running out of words.

Most of those colleges that are open have to outsource the bulk of their training to existing schools, TAFE’s or other Registered Training Organisations as only one third of them are actually registered training organisations in their own right.

Furthermore, to add insult to injury not all students enrolled have been able to find employers to give them apprenticeships, which was an essential part of this concept. Despite government claims of great acceptance by business of these colleges, this seems not be wholly true either.

Critics say that these colleges duplicated existing state programs, government estimates of enrolments had been over estimated and costs had blown out. All of these are of course absolutely true.

Many then are in effect “virtual colleges” with a staff only of administrators, but no teachers or actual facilities other than an office or so.

Despite this the government still try to blame the skills shortage on the states for past neglect and insist that these colleges are going great guns. This despite the fact that enrolments in traditional State and Territory TAFE colleges continue to rise while ATC’s struggle to get the numbers.

Just how out of touch with national needs and lack of progress can you get? How much spin can a government try to bamboozle the electorate? Fortunately for Australia it seems that the nation has ceased to believe or accept the vast amounts of spin put on reality by an out of touch and out of favour government.

The Australian Technical Colleges were a political fix for what was a long running policy failing, and so it is not surprising that they are nowhere near achieving a solution to our skills shortage, neither will they, with under 10000 graduates expected by 2010 while the government even admits to a skills shortage of 200,000 workers in the next 5 years.

In order to seriously address the skills shortage Australia must invest in the existing TAFE’s which continue to deliver the vast bulk of post secondary VET.

We need to put more resources into VET in schools and on the job training.

Only Labor has such a positive policy proposal for Trades Training Centres aimed at the one million students from year 9 up in our secondary schools.

This will give all secondary students a chance of working and learning in the traditional trades areas.

They will be assisted to access one day a week of on the job training, all of which will go towards their Job Ready Certificate.

Despite all the shortcomings of ATC’s as policy, Labor will not close any of them.

While the establishment of 3 more colleges in an election year could be seen just as a cynical political move, any TAFE funding increase is better than what has happened over the past decade.

Labor will support this bill but condemns the Federal Government for failing to act to address the growing skills needs of the national economy.

But this Government has failed to ensure that young Australians could get the skills training they need for skilled jobs.

It has cut funding to VET by 13% from 1997 to 2000 and only increasing by 1% from 2000 to 2004, and created an expensive and duplicative network of stand alone Australian Technical Colleges with little consultation or cooperation with the states and territories.

The best this government can do is appropriate half a billion dollars for 30 colleges that will at best produce only 10000 graduates by 2010 when the government itself estimates a skill shortage of 200,000 skilled workers and it’s record will show that it has put at risk the future of so many young Australians and our future prosperity.