Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

The incorporated speech read as follows—

On Tuesday this week Tim Colebatch wrote an article in The Age which clearly identified the way in which the Howard Government has ignored the looming skills shortage for the past decade and is now scrambling to make up for its lack of attention to the future needs of Australia.

Tim Colebatch drew on the latest report from the Dusseldorp Skills Forum in collaboration with the Australian Industry Group.

The Report called It’s Crunch Time: raising youth engagement and attainment reveals that in May this year 526,000 young Australians aged 15 to 24 years were neither in full-time work nor full-time study.  By August this was down to 492 000.

But that’s still half a million young Australians with no full-time job or full-time course of study.

That’s 1 in 6 young people.

These young people were not all unemployed, although many of them were.

221,000 were working part-time but half of those wanted full-time work. 

And 173,000 were outside the labour force but many were wanting to work.

Each year 45,000 to 50,000 early school leavers are not going into full-time work or learning or a combination of these.

Rates of school completion in Australia have barely shifted over the past 15 years.

The Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs estimates that Year 12 completion in Australia in 2005 was 67 percent.

As Tim Colebatch points out the lack of a skilled workforce is in large part a problem of the Howard Government’s own making.  Back in 1996 they cut more than $1 billion a year from labour market programmes.

And the initiatives they brought in to replace the network of training schemes they got rid of, had little or no training content. 

They relabelled trainees as ‘new apprentices’ and for years covered over the fact that trade apprenticeships were stuck at low numbers.

They used work for the dole extensively—a programme that has no training.

And while commencement rates for apprenticeships and traineeships have at long last improved, the pay is still lousy and completion rates poor.  Half of those who start don’t finish.

The Government has spent money recently in an attempt to belatedly tackle skills shortages but—as in so many cases—it is not spending money well.

They have not targeted areas of skill shortages.

Choosing instead to give equal priority to training regardless of if it is an area of demand or not.

Nor is the Government using its funding for schools to direct resources where they are most needed—to those schools that are doing the heaviest lifting.

Crunch Time is concerned with those young people who drop out of education early, who lack motivation, can’t get a place in further education or training or can’t get a job.  

It argues that our strong economy means we have a golden opportunity to make the lasting education and training reforms needed to skill and engage all young Australians.

And it proposes a raft of recommendations to provide young people with skills that they and the country need.

As the report points out achieving higher levels of youth engagement and skill attainment are worthy goals in their own terms.

But they are vital if Australia is to successfully cope with a demographic squeeze resulting from ‘baby boomers’ embracing retirement; the need to increase the rate of participation in the workforce; and to raise productivity levels to points where they match or exceed our competitors.

Skilling young Australians through university and vocational education offers the greatest potential source of additional skilled workers, and is the most efficient and productive policy approach.

In 2005, Access Economics analysed the economic impact of increasing the retention of young people in education and training. They estimated that boosting the proportion of young people completing school or an apprenticeship to 90 percent by 2010 would increase workforce numbers by 65,000, boost economic productivity, and expand the economy by more than $9 billion (in today’s money) by 2040.

They also estimated that increasing school and training retention rates among 15-24 year-olds to 90% would:

• have the same positive impact on the economy as increasing Australia’s total migrant intake by 180,000 over the period to 2040;
• have a similar economic impact as increasing the workforce participation rates of older workers by 6.6 percentage points—from nearly 53 percent to 59.5 percent; and
• boost annual GDP by 1.1 per cent by 2040—representing an extra $500 a year per Australian in today’s money.

Crunch Time puts forward numerous recommendations across all levels of schooling to engage young people in learning.

They want to see all students make a successful transition from primary to secondary schooling and provide schools with incentives to assist transitions.

They argue for skilled personnel to improve student’s literacy and numeracy and individualised learning plans.

They want to see more teachers for schools in disadvantaged communities and new teaching methods to fit the needs of struggling students.

The report proposes that this is accompanied by an expanded range and depth of pre-vocational education in schools, linked to local employers and TAFEs—with incentives for retired tradespeople to become teachers and mentors of apprentices.

They want guaranteed places for early school leavers to return to study to complete Year 12 or a Certificate III qualification.

The report argues for mentoring and support for apprentices and incentives for those who complete their training and they want a review of the traineeship scheme with a an aim to restructure it so that there are two streams—one that meets future technical, para-professional demands and another that provides transitional labour market opportunities for disengaged young teenagers, young adults and other only marginally connected to the labour force.

And they want more and better trained and supported indigenous education workers in schools and TAFE to work with indigenous children and young people.

There are many more recommendations in Crunch Time.

It presents a vision and a plan for improving the skills levels of our young people and meeting the future needs of the Australian economy.  It’s a pity the Government doesn’t have such a plan and can do little more than propose yet another ATC.