Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of the Greens to speak to the National Skills Commissioner Bill 2020. The bill before us today implements one of the key recommendations of the Joyce review, which is to set up a skills commission at the core of the skills system. The Joyce review examined Australia's vocational education and training system to strengthen skills and reported in March 2019. The National Skills Commissioner Bill 2020 establishes a new statutory office to be known as the National Skills Commission, which is to be headed by the National Skills Commissioner. The bill also specifies the commissioner's functions and enables the establishment of an advisory committee to advise the commissioner. I flag upfront that I will be moving an amendment to ensure that the advisory council is somewhat balanced, with at least one TAFE representative on it. We know the Liberals' agenda on vocational education and training is one of massive privatisation. We simply cannot have an advisory council that is fully stacked with business interests and private providers.

The Greens support this bill. But I also want to talk about how all of this is merely window-dressing so the Liberals and Nationals can hide their decimation of our incredible public TAFE system. A publicly owned and properly funded TAFE system plays an essential role in building an economically and socially just society by offering lifelong educational opportunities and skills development across the country—in regional, rural and metropolitan areas. But, in typical Liberal-National fashion, they manage to continue to degrade TAFEs and ignore the rot at the heart of their conservative approach to education.

The bill in front of us, sadly, does nothing to address the destruction the Liberal-National government has wrought on public VET in Australia. Skills and training have been underfunded by tens of millions of dollars in the last year alone. It was only recently that we saw Labor and the Liberals team up to abolish the $4 billion Education Investment Fund. Combined with a chronic underspend in skills funding, the result is that TAFEs, TAFE teachers and their students are being starved of resources. What is entirely missing from this piece of legislation, and, indeed, from any vocational education and training legislation the government have on their agenda, is any sign that they intend to cease their slow but purposeful destruction of our public TAFEs.

People who go to TAFE perform incredible work that is socially important. If the COVID pandemic has taught us anything, it is that vital work such as nursing, child care, early childhood education, social work and community services is central to how we organise as a society and how we care for each other. The benefits of the hands-on experience and technical skills that students acquire in TAFE are unmatched. The cuts by the Turnbull government a few years ago to arts courses across the country pretty much wiped out vocational arts education. These skills and others become even more vital as we work to rebuild after the bushfires and the pandemic. Failing to fund them properly is incredibly short sighted, and it's destructive. Yet we've seen TAFE being slowly destroyed by the government's neglect, by a lack of funding and by privatisation. Skills and training are, of course, vital for the future—a future where we set ourselves up to be a renewables powerhouse; a future with a just transition from polluting fossil fuels to long-term, sustainable and life-making work.

Most importantly, we cannot forget our regional and rural communities. Not only do TAFEs have strong relationships with their rural and regional communities; they can play a leading role in education, training, skills development and the economy. Yet this bill neglects focusing on this important need. I will be moving an amendment that was moved by the member for Indi, Dr Helen Haines, in the other place, which inserts into the commissioner's role a much-needed focus on regional areas.

Skills and training will also be essential for the resurgence and recovery of Australian manufacturing. That, in turn, is fundamental to addressing the twin challenges of growing inequality, and environmental and climate crisis. Just and sustainable manufacturing with decent jobs that value workers is fundamental to a future that is livable for all of us. That's what workers deserve, and that's what we're working on as part of the Green New Deal.

We can't talk about this future and not talk about vocational education and training. Over the last decade, we have seen a decimation of our world-class TAFE, with massive funding cuts, increasing fees and the privatisation of the sector which saw the entry of shonky providers. In the last fortnight alone, we've seen further decline in apprenticeship numbers, news that the government has now been forced to repay more than $1.2 billion in student loans because of the rorting of Labor-Liberal VET privatisation, and yet even more alarming language about even more marketisation coming out of the Productivity Commission. As Maxine Sharkey from the Australian Education Union said last week of the Productivity Commission report:

The report's recommended options, including voucher schemes and increasing income contingent loans, are extremely risky, and open the sector up to a repeat of VET-FEE-HELP style rorting by unscrupulous private operators.

This disaster needs to be reversed and it needs to be reversed now. Our TAFEs are vital for people to be able to gain the skills needed for transition and transformation. This is good for individuals and even better for the whole of society.

On vocational training, the government says one thing and does another. They say they want to encourage people into trades, but then they underfund skills training by tens of millions of dollars. The motivation for the deliberate undermining of TAFEs by state and federal governments is no mystery. They are ideologically opposed to the very principle of lifelong public education, particularly when there's a buck to be made for their friends and donors in the for-profit education corporations by directing public funds their way.

The Greens are and always will be the party of public education, and we are proud to support our TAFEs. We have a plan to rebuild TAFE as the vocational training provider of choice for students. We will remove the Gillard-era contestable funding requirements and make TAFE and uni free for all, remove private for-profit providers entirely from federal funding of vocational training and make TAFEs first priority for all federal funding for vocational education and training. This is a bold vision, and we need that vision for VET in Australia, not the piecemeal and destructive approach that the government has taken.