Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Cameron, I am glad you're in the chamber. Page 1 of our dissenting report goes to the fact that vocational training is incredibly important, and we all know that in this place. It is incredibly important that it meets the needs of students and of industry so that our young people are appropriately trained, with important skills that our nation and our industries need, to go on to full careers within their chosen industry.

What was so disappointing and so typical is that this inquiry is about an issue that concerns state government jurisdiction. It is epidemic within the Greens political party that we are continually conducting inquiries into issues that quite properly belong within area of control of the state governments simply so that Senator Rhiannon or Senator Di Natale can get their press releases out into the media—even though they are issues that, as a federal parliamentary body, we cannot do anything about. At the moment we have got several inquiries going on, and the first page of our dissenting report goes to the fact that the integrity of the Senate committee process is fabulous. We are very lucky in this nation to have a committee system that is the envy of other chambers throughout the world. I want the reports that we produce in this place, from both references and legislation committees, to be well-researched reports that can be cited by other bodies that contribute to the public debate—rather than just a replication of evidence provided because the staff within the Senate are overworked, as are the senators. Our committee report says it beautifully:

Senate committees are not political footballs. They have scarce resources that should be employed to produce substantial, high quality reports based on extensive and comprehensive evidence gathering. Senate reports should be reputable, with high quality reference material that everyone in the policy arena can access with confidence.

Unfortunately, this particular inquiry was conducted in such a way that we were running around the country, hearing similar evidence time and time again. I think those of us on the committee can agree that we got a certain amount of evidence quite quickly and then it was simply repetitive so that certain media opportunities could be obtained by certain senators. I think that is a great disappointment, because the education and employment references and legislation committees have an important role to play in policy discussion and debate within the wider population.

One of the recommendations of the majority report goes to the quality of teaching and support for teachers within the TAFE system to participate in the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group and perhaps make a submission around that. I particularly enjoyed some of Senator Rhiannon's commentary around increasing support for pathways into higher education, and I look forward to her support for some of our budget measures in that light.

A lot of the critique of the majority report goes to issues concerning state governments—particularly coalition governments but not all; South Australia followed Victoria's lead in terms of restructuring and refocusing their vocational education sector so that TAFE remains a very key part of the mix but not the only part in delivering vocational education in this country. I commend the report and the dissenting report to the Senate.