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

I am trying very hard to direct my remarks through the chair, Mr Acting Deputy President, but the constant interjections from the other side are too good to ignore. The reality is we have a crisis and that crisis is well identified. We know why the crisis is there. It is because of the lack of attention the former government gave to building a training environment that would provide long-term solutions to the training needs of this country. It is not as if it crept up on us. It has been known about for quite some time. They were belated converts to the issue and, because it had become acute, they tried to address it with quick fixes.

My understanding of the Skills Australia Bill 2008 is that it is about establishing Skills Australia, a body that will put in place the building blocks and the infrastructure to address the skills needs of the nation in the longer term. It will also ensure that we are forward looking in terms of the policies and the framework we put in place to provide the skills that will be required to meet the needs of the Australian economy into the future, and not be confronted again with a set of circumstances where we cannot provide those skills out of our own environment. In fact, many thousands of young Australians have been running around on the dole begging for the opportunity to get a trade and get into the workforce to set up a long-term career for themselves so that they can provide security for their future family lives. None of that has been available.

Some innovative training mechanisms were put in place; for example, I know of the Hunter Valley Training Company, which provides group training in the Hunter Valley. It is based at the old railway workshops in Midland. They had a scheme going with the local high schools under which they would bring in year 9 and year 10 students who were in danger of dropping out of school to teach them basic skills like how to use a hammer. It might seem that there is no technique to hitting a nail into a piece of wood, but let me tell you that when you have hit your thumb a few times you find out that there are some good techniques for hammering a nail into a bit of wood. I learned very early on in my apprenticeship that those techniques were very useful.

They also taught them other basic skills such as how to use an oxyacetylene cutter and how to use a welder. Why did they do it? It was not because they were going to train these kids for five years. They did it to convince the kids that they should go back and complete year 10 because they needed mathematics at that level to provide the grounding for getting into a trade. Many of the young kids who were picked up in that environment are now serving apprenticeships around the Hunter Valley.

Those are the sorts of basic things that are being done all around the country by training companies and industry groups. Some of the schemes are being run by industry. In Cockburn Sound, for example, the aluminium shipbuilders there are running a school based apprenticeship system in conjunction with the local secondary schools—a FETS scheme—for bringing apprentices into the aluminium shipbuilding industry to help meet the skills needs of the industry in that state. Alcoa runs a similar scheme which again is with the local secondary colleges in the area in which they are located—I think it is in Rockingham or in that area, but Senator Sterle can correct me if I am wrong.

So there were real examples in place all around the country showing what needed to be done to provide a skills base. Most of it was simply ignored for quick fixes. People were more ready to deskill, to semiskill and to break down the skills, particularly in the building industry in Western Australia, in order to meet the shortages in the short term rather than looking at how to build skills that would last into the longer term and would provide workers with a skills base that gave them flexibility in the labour market. That is one of the ways in which you can address skills shortages.

Then we had the debacle of the 457 visas. That finished up as a mess and a fiasco in terms of its use in dealing with skills shortages. In reality, it was used by many employers around this country to exploit foreign workers. That is essentially what the program has done, in the main, since its inception.

I believe that the Rudd government is committed to addressing the issue of skills shortages over the longer term. This bill is the first step in building an infrastructure that will meet training needs, not just in the immediate sense but it will enable us to identify what new skills will be required by our economy in the longer term. I believe that that is the correct way to approach the issue of skills development in this country or in any other country. I look forward to watching with interest how the Skills Australia proposal evolves and the types of infrastructure that will grow out of this process. I also look forward to seeing many thousands of young Australians, both male and female, coming out of those centres with a diverse range of skills making them capable of operating effectively and flexibly in the labour market.