Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

I resume my speech on the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment (Governance and Other Matters) Bill 2020. I'll tell you what these big talkers have done so far. They've brought out a fancy marketing campaign to try and hide the fact that they've taken a sledgehammer to our TAFEs. It's been happening for years under both majors. That's what they've been doing. They very quietly ripped $4 billion out of TAFEs last year. That's our government. That's supposed to be a party of the fair go, but apparently not for tradies and not for apprentices. No fair go for those guys. And the ALP, the supposed party of the worker, helped them do it. The hypocrisy of it drives me absolutely nuts and actually makes my blood boil.

Just imagine what we could have done with that money. It could have gone to desperately needed upgrades to the equipment that we should be training our kids on. That money could have fixed the holes in the windows, the leaks in the roof, the asbestos throughout those buildings. We could have used it to fund new courses so that students in the regions don't have to move away from home to get any choice in what they want to study. This is the situation that our TAFEs are in. This is the sad reality. They are getting by on the smell of an oily rag. I still can't wrap my head around the fact that my local TAFE is training students on machines that date back to the Cold War. Yet these guys are still supposed to be able to go straight into a new job with new machines that actually work off IT systems, not something from the Cold War. That's what the government are setting them up for—they are setting them up for failure. The majors have been letting the TAFEs struggle along for years, to the point of no return—God forbid! God help our children that don't want to go to universities. I tell you, Mr Acting Deputy President, there are a lot that don't.

Now that the government are in crisis, they turn around and expect TAFE to be able to help pull us out of this. Well, you're kidding yourselves. You've absolutely trashed them. You've trashed them for our kids, you've trashed them for our apprentices and you've trashed them for the teachers who want to teach our kids. You want to turn this around, saying we need it turned around before Christmas time. Come on. Be realistic. Be honest with yourselves. You've gutted the sector, you've turned a blind eye and you've put us in this mess. We aren't going to get out of it with a bunch of governance bills to make tiny changes to the way the sector gets regulated. I mean, hello! You are shifting the deck chairs on the Titanic. Our TAFEs are sinking under a weight they were never going to be able to handle, and the people who need TAFE are being let down.

I got an email last week from another young apprentice, just one of many, who can't finish his degree because—guess what?—he can't access the teachers to finish his course and start working. He can't go any further with his apprenticeship. How many more students end up at university because they know they won't have the support they need at TAFE? The support is no longer there. How many people are winding up on the dole queue because they can't get retrained? And yet the federal government announced they were fast-tracking 15 critical infrastructure projects, putting $1.5 billion—that's right—into the economy in July. In the last two weeks, Queensland, Western Australia and my own home state of Tasmania announced record spending on infrastructure. The government's HomeBuilder program is rolling out now and it's supposed to keep the construction industry going. But will the sparkies, the chippies and the scaffies be there to make those renos happen? I don't think so. There's your problem. The follow-through just isn't there. That's the problem with this whole government idea of yours. You are so out of touch. When it is election time, those politicians can't wait to get into some high-vis jackets. Let's be honest: you all love having cameras on you on high-vis day. But, when it comes to making sure our next generation of tradies have the equipment, the facilities and the teachers they need you actually don't give a stuff.

We need to get our TAFEs cranking for our kids—not next year, now. If you haven't started already you've failed, so I guess you've failed. This is not just about our kids. It is not just about our TAFEs. This is for the hearts of our communities. This is for our economy. This is why we need to get this moving. Properly sourced, we could make our TAFEs what they were a generation ago—community hubs that offered our young people trade skills that would actually get them good jobs, supporting them, their families and their communities for years to come.

Three generations of my family went through the Devonport TAFE. It got my mum off the factory floor, it got my son his tradie ticket and it got me a business degree. It was a place where we went to find a new future. It was the heart of the community. Everyone keeps saying we're in this together, but are we? Are we really in this together? Or is it just more lip service? For Australians who want to be able to upskill at their local TAFE, it sure doesn't feel like we're in this together. Devonport's TAFE is teaching student nurses on floorboards that let in paint fumes from the floor below. You guys have been very aware of that. Your Tasmanian Liberal counterparts have been very aware of that and still nothing has been done. I raised this with you guys well over 10 months ago. It hasn't been fixed. You are not showing any initiative; I can tell you that much.