Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I want to follow on from Senator Barnett’s comments on the Australian Vocational Education and Training system, and also to support his comments on Australian technical colleges. I have mentioned in this chamber many a time before the magnificent Australian technical college in Townsville, which has done so much to help young people wanting to have an education in the trades—principally those trades that support the mining and manufacturing industries and mining support industries in Townsville. It is an organisation that was set up some years ago and opened, as I recall, by the then Prime Minister, John Howard.

I want to pay tribute to the member for Herbert, Peter Lindsay, for the work that he did in getting that Townsville Australian technical college up and running. I am shattered by the suggestion that the Rudd government will not be continuing funding of the ATC in Townsville. The genesis of the technical college was the skills shortage in the mining and mining support industries. There was a desperate need for it. Unfortunately, the Queensland College of Technical and Further Education, the TAFE, was not providing the sort of training that was required and so the Australian technical college was set up in Townsville. It had an independent board—a board of businessmen, people involved in the industry who understood what was needed. It had engaged very good staff. The technical college taught not only the trades but also subjects, like English and mathematics, that enable young people to get a trade and make their way in the world.

I cannot understand what ideology would encourage Mr Rudd not to fund that group again. I know they have been seeking outside funding, and no doubt they will have some assistance there, but it is a college that has proved its worth and should be continued by the Rudd government. It can only be a matter of ideology that Mr Rudd is not going to continue it. I know he said that the TAFE systems run by the states can do the work and that we should be putting money into that, but it has been proved clearly over a number of years that the TAFE system in Queensland was not providing the sort of training and assistance that was needed. So I urge Mr Rudd, the current government and the relevant minister to put aside politics and ideology and not to ignore the facts that it was a good initiative of the Howard government and a college that Mr Peter Lindsay was instrumental in getting up and running. Mr Rudd should be statesmanlike, be a real Prime Minister and continue funding of a college that was really assisting young people to get into their chosen trades or jobs. Let those young people continue to have access to the sort of training they need to make a worthwhile contribution to Australia in the future.

Question agreed to.