Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006. This bill provides for the establishment and operation of 25 Australian technical colleges, which of course was the government’s election response to Australia’s skills crisis. The bill before the chamber amends the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Act 2005 to bring forward funding for the proposed 25 colleges from 2008-09 to 2006-07, within the same funding total for the quadrennium, and also to enable the Minister for Vocational and Technical Education to redistribute funds between particular years by regulation rather than by legislative amendment. The colleges are intended to provide high-quality tuition in both academic and vocational education for students in years 11 and 12. They are intended to be located in regions with skills needs, with a high youth population and that are supported by a significant industry base.

The government promised at the last election to build the 25 colleges to provide school based apprenticeship courses for 7,500 students. That is about 300 students to be enrolled in each college, and yet we are in the second half of 2006 and only five colleges are open for business—one of which is an existing school—enrolling a total of 350 students, which is hardly 300 in each college. One hundred and eighty-five of those students are at the existing school. The last of these schools, in northern Tasmania, commenced operations on 31 July 2006.

As I said, this is the government’s response to date to meeting the Prime Minister’s commitment during the election campaign, and I want to quote from the Prime Minister’s election campaign speech. He said that ATCs are ‘the centrepiece of our drive to tackle skills shortages and to revolutionise vocational education and training throughout Australia’. Some revolution! It is clear that this bill exemplifies the Howard government’s incompetence and its blind commitment to ideology over genuine educational need.

The opposition will not stand in the way of releasing urgently needed funding for students and for that reason we will support the bill. But, frankly, the government deserves to be condemned for its performance, and I foreshadow the second reading amendment that has been circulated in my name. The Howard government has been in office for 10 long years. Its legacy is a crisis in providing the skills the nation needs for ongoing productivity, low inflation and prosperity. The Howard government’s legacy is a failure to train Australians.

The Australian Industry Group estimates that Australia needs an extra 100,000 skilled workers. The five colleges that the Howard government has thus far produced and are now in operation will produce 350 additional tradespeople in four or five years at best. Almost two-thirds of employers surveyed by the AiG report that they have experienced difficulties in securing employees in the trades, compared with around 50 per cent of employers having difficulties in recruiting technicians, paraprofessionals and engineering professionals. Almost three-quarters of employers surveyed by the group report that an inability to secure skilled staff will be a barrier to their companies’ success. Eighty-five per cent of employers surveyed wanted help to reverse the skills shortage, yet hardly any will be helped by this bill and none will be helped until 2010 at the earliest. The government stands condemned for its failure to provide the training opportunities for Australians to get the skills they need and the skills our nation needs.

The Howard government also stands condemned for its refusal to give priority to funding vocational education and training. This year’s budget papers report that funding for vocational education in the budget for 2005-06 was $1.543 million. That is less than one per cent of total budget expenses—0.75 per cent. I will just put that in context: this is at a time when we have had numerous warnings by the Reserve Bank of capacity constraints in our economy, not only in infrastructure but in the lack of skilled workers, and when employers have continued to indicate their concerns about skilled labour supply. This government presides over a long-term decline in budget expenditure on vocational education. Commonwealth funding for vocational education is estimated to be $1.681 million by 2009-10. That is an increase on average of 2.2 per cent a year, which is well less than today’s inflation rate. In 2009-10 the proportion of the budget spent on vocational education will have declined to 0.67 per cent. This lack of investment reveals the government’s complacency and its indifference to skills training.

As I previously mentioned, in its election campaign the government promised 25 Australian technical colleges, enrolling 7,500 students. What do we have today instead? We have five colleges in operation, enrolling around 350 students in total; and, of these, 220 are enrolled in just one college in Port Macquarie, New South Wales—in the Deputy Prime Minister’s electorate. And this college already existed; it is St Joseph’s Vocational College, Port Macquarie. It is a highly successful school, providing education, training and employment opportunities for many young people in the area. The fact is that this college has been providing this training for many years now without being dubbed an Australian technical college. Consider for a moment the difference between what the government has actually delivered and what it said it would deliver. Twenty-five colleges enrolling 7,500 students was the promise; instead we have five colleges enrolling 350 students, of which the vast majority were enrolled in an already existing school.

We commend St Joseph’s and other schools that are involved in this, and we support St Joseph’s extension under this scheme. But the fact is that around 185 of the 220 currently enrolled students were already at the college last year; so more than two-thirds of the current enrolments in ATCs across the nation are in just one school in Port Macquarie. Not too far from Port Macquarie is a government high school in Ballina, New South Wales. This school is also a high-quality institution, working hard for its students and its community in the same way that St Joseph’s College has in Port Macquarie. Ballina High School won the 2004 national training award for VET in Schools. The school developed an application for funding under the ATC program to extend its services, analogous to what has occurred at St Joseph’s. It proposed to do this in partnership with local industry and with the Northern Institute of TAFE, which has also received national recognition for quality training; it won the 2004 national training provider of the year award.

So the school that wins the national training award for VET in Schools and the TAFE that wins the national training provider of the year award applied for Australian technical colleges funding. And what did the government do? The school was unsuccessful in its application. Why? Was it because the training was not good enough? No. Was it because the TAFE provider did not have a demonstrated record? No. Was it because there was a lack of industry support? No. The reason this school was denied funding is because it is unable to meet the Howard government’s industrial relations requirements.

The bill before the chamber does not mention these requirements. The guidelines for funding that underlie it, however, make the government’s intentions clear: Australian technical colleges must:

... offer the option of an Australian Workplace Agreement to all staff in accordance with the Workplace Relations Act 1996, which will provide rewards linked to excellent performance, including performance pay.

So the bill before the chamber is as much about industrial relations as it is about education, training or skills development. The outcome of this policy is that the bulk of Australian students in our public schools have been denied the opportunity to benefit from the ATC program.

The minister has announced 22 successful ATC proposals. Of these only two are stand-alone government schools, and one other is in a consortium with a Catholic school. Twenty of the 22 announced ATCs involve existing non-government schools or new independent schools. All of these colleges receive federal and state general recurrent funding for their ongoing operation. Some of the successful colleges have been flexible in meeting the industrial relations requirements. Some of them have been creative in meeting these requirements, and it is a pity that their creative energies have had to be directed to meeting these complex and onerous industrial relations requirements, rather than that effort being directed to developing education and training programs for their students. These schools will find they have to meet state curriculum and teacher registration requirements, including for non-vocational curriculum. They will need to charge their students fees, presumably at a reasonably high level, to provide the resources needed for a quality vocational and academic education at the expensive senior secondary level.

Setting up a new school, let alone a specialised vocational college, is not for the faint-hearted or for the inexperienced. We hope they can acquire these skills soon, for their students’ sake. What we do not want to see—and what appears to be fostered by the government—is a destructive competition for students, teachers and resources with other government and non-government schools. Some of the state governments have taken action to do something about the Howard government’s patent indifference to the students in their public schools. The New South Wales government has announced it will provide funding for a number of trades schools, including in some of the schools that the Howard government has refused to support. The Victorian government has announced that it plans to establish technical education centres to provide preapprenticeship and first-year apprenticeship training to students in years 10 to 12.

Minister Hardgrave, unfortunately, has not been backward in criticising these schools or in insulting the teachers and students in those schools. On 3 August the minister put out three media releases ‘announcing’ different aspects of the ATC program. First there was the announcement of a funding agreement for an ATC in Illawarra based at Wollongong but with shopfronts in Moss Vale and Nowra. This college will be established as a non-government school. Then there was the release about the starting of refurbishments at the North Brisbane ATC in Scarborough. This was more in the nature of a ‘re-announcement’, as the funding agreement was first announced in February this year. Again, this school will be a non-government school with the Scarborough campus located at the Southern Cross Catholic College. The final release on 3 August trumpeted that ATCs are ‘in a league of their own’, but all that could be announced was that ‘negotiations were in progress’ for colleges in Queanbeyan, Dubbo and Ballina. We could forgive a desperate minister for pushing a media story about negotiations, but we cannot forgive the disgraceful message to the students of the Queanbeyan trade school in New South Wales. The minister had the gall to describe the school as ‘second rate’ in his media release. What an extraordinary message for the minister responsible for training to send to the students and teachers at this school!

Queanbeyan High School will be the site of one of the 10 trade schools to be established by the New South Wales government. The Canberra Chronicle reported on 1 August:

The Queanbeyan Trade School will involve a partnership between Queanbeyan and Karabar high schools and Queanbeyan TAFE, and will specialise in metal and engineering and automotive trades. The new trade school will have a muti-purpose trade workshop, fitted with industry-standard equipment …

It goes on to report that the trade school will benefit from strong industry and community support, which will also link students with employers who will provide them with on-the-job experience. This is a school that should be supported, not subjected to statements from a minister of the Crown that the school is second rate.

Instead of national collaboration and the fostering of a shared responsibility for meeting the nation’s skills needs, we have a program that has promoted bickering, put-downs and a wasteful use of scarce resources. This is what the government’s technical colleges program has come to: a failure to plan properly, an inability to move away from an extreme industrial relations ideology and a putting-down of those who are not prepared to cooperate with a flawed policy agenda.

The minister is also very defensive about the lack of progress—as you would be when you look at the numbers compared to the election promise—and we have noticed through the Senate estimates a lack of clarity and helpfulness in providing information about that progress. I have been asking detailed questions at estimates hearings for over a year on how these colleges are operating. What we have met with from the government is stony silence on how the colleges are performing. For example, some of the questions asked by me and by other Labor senators were: how much funding is each college receiving; will this funding be adequate to provide high-quality senior secondary schooling and vocational training; what qualifications will the students graduate with; and how many of the expected enrolments will be additional to the current provision in existing schools? We have also been asking a range of questions about when we will see a number of these colleges opened. Unfortunately, many of the answers provided so far have focused much more on what the government hopes to achieve rather than what has actually been achieved.

As I said at the outset, the bill seeks to bring forward funding from 2008 and 2009. Funding for 2006 is increased by $62 million and for 2007 by $26 million. These increases are offset by the reduction in the allocations for the outer years—that is, after the next election—so that the funding for the quadrennium is unchanged at $343.6 million. The explanatory memorandum states that this change, or rephasing forward, of some of the funding reflects the ‘significant progress that has been made in establishing the colleges’. Frankly, if that is right, we are going to have to have a rush of activity in the months ahead.

The reality is that at the end of May this year $185 million had been committed to ATCs but only $18 million had been spent, out of a total budget of $343 million. If the money is not being spent that is usually a pretty good sign that the policy is not being delivered. Therefore, it is no wonder that the government is reluctant to provide information about the funding, operation and status of the proposed colleges. This country needs a systematic approach to promoting trades, science and technology education.

In stark contrast with the Howard government, Labor would work with states and territories to implement these changes in secondary schooling for the benefit of young Australians. Labor’s Skills and Schools Blueprint, released in September last year, outlines our program for improving the skills training in our schools. We will offer young people better choices by teaching trades, technology and science in first-class facilities. We will establish a Trades in Schools scheme to double the number of school based apprenticeships in areas of skills shortage and provide extra funding per place. We will establish specialist schools for the senior years of schooling in areas such as trades, technology and science and establish a ‘trades taster’ program so that years 9 and 10 students can experience a range of trade options which could also lead to pre-apprenticeship programs.

We will increase the number of young Australians completing apprenticeships, through incentives such as the $800 per year skills account which would abolish up-front TAFE fees. This money, which could be paid directly into a skills account for every traditional trade apprentice, could be spent on TAFE fees, textbooks or materials. We have also outlined a $2,000 trade completion bonus under which traditional apprentices would receive a $1,000 payment halfway through their training and a further $1,000 payment at the completion of their apprenticeship. These are practical and real reforms of the kind we need to develop Australian skills. The fact is that under this government, despite warnings not just from the Reserve Bank but also from industry and employers over many years, there has been a comprehensive lack of strategy, focus and priority given to training young Australians. Instead we have seen from this government an over-reliance on skilled migration. The legacy of this government is a failure to train Australians. We are experiencing a skills shortage now and all this government has to offer is an incompletely delivered and belated Australian technical college policy.

Nevertheless, given the lack of focus on technical and vocational training in this country, Labor will support the bill. We do want students to benefit from the program, despite our misgivings about the government’s ability to deliver this and its appalling record so far. However, this government should be held to account for its failure to train Australians. It should be held to account for presiding over a skills crisis in this country and it should be held to account for its failure to meet its responsibilities as the national government. I move Labor’s second reading amendment which has been circulated in my name:

At the end of the motion, add;

        “but the Senate condemns the Government for:

        (a)     creating a skills crisis during their 10-long years in office;

       (b)     its continued failure to provide the necessary opportunities for Australians to get the training they need to get a decent job and meet the skills needs of the economy;

        (c)     reducing the overall percentage of the Federal Budget spent on vocational education and training, and allowing this percentage of spending to further decline over the forward estimates period;

       (d)     its incompetent handling of the Australian Technical Colleges initiative as evidenced by only five out of twenty five colleges being open for business, enrolling fewer than 350 students;

        (e)     failing to be open and accountable about the operations of Australian Technical Colleges, including details of extra student enrolments, funding levels for the individual colleges, course structures and programs;

        (f)     denying local communities their promised Australian Technical College because of their ideological industrial relations requirements; and

       (g)     failing to provide enough extra skills training so that Australia can meet the expected shortfall of 100 000 skilled workers by 2010”.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is an interesting notion when the Australian Labor Party come in here, represented by Senator Wong, and give the impression to those listening that they are actually doing the government a favour by supporting this bill, the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006. The bottom line is that the Australian Labor Party, through their intransigence, actually held up the passage of the original Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Act. Indeed, they are responsible for any delays there might have been in its implementation.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You haven’t spent the money from the last budget.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The fact that we came in here today to bring forward money is a clear indication of the success of this program.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are a joke.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order, Senator Wong!

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Wong can yell as much as she likes, but the Australian Labor Party were responsible for holding up the passage of this bill and were responsible for denying young Australians the opportunities for training. So do not come in here and bleat about skills training, Senator Wong, when you were responsible for holding up the passage of the original legislation and you and your colleagues—

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You haven’t spent the money you’ve got!

The Acting Deputy President:

Order! Senator Wong, you were heard in silence for almost 20 minutes and I would ask you to observe the same courtesy for Senator Ronaldson.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You were the ones who held up the passage of the original bill. This bill is actually about bringing forward money—$343-odd million of training money—because the program has been such a success. With the way you have come in here today, you would think that you were doing the kids of Australia a favour by supporting this. The fact is that these Australian technical colleges—which are classic partnerships between young people, schools, industry and general business—have been and will be an outstanding success. The fact is that we are here today because the government and the minister have moved rock after rock, against the desires of the Australian Labor Party, to make sure that we get these ATCs up and running. That is a measure of this government’s commitment and it is a measure of the constant opposition of the Australian Labor Party to any attempt by this government at nation building through skills training. This has been opposed and delayed by the Australian Labor Party.

There were comments this morning about what needs to be done with the ATCs. The bottom line is that the government has identified a clear need to increase participation in traditional skills in this country. We have been forced again to take up the slack of state Labor governments, who have wiped their hands of any responsibility for this nation’s young people—totally wiped their hands of it. And then at the 11th hour, of course, Mr Bracks recently announced some convoluted process, only in response to this government’s initiatives.

Twenty-two of the 25 colleges have been announced. The $343 million of funding remains unchanged, appropriated until 2009. Five of those colleges will be operational this year, at least 20 colleges are expected to be operational in 2007 and, when fully operational, the 25 ATCs will have at least 7½ thousand students each year. That is a quite remarkable achievement. The fact that we are here today to bring forward funding is again a remarkable achievement, and not just of this government. The people who I want to pay credit to are the people in education, industry and business—community leaders who have worked hard to make sure that these colleges get up and running.

In my patron seat of Bendigo, the Bendigo ATC, which I will talk about further in due course, has been driven by a consortium of community leaders, across all industries and all sectors, who want to make this work. I am afraid that I really am staggered by the fact that the Australian Labor Party does not want to see this work. The Bendigo operation, which will be operational next year, was driven by Mr Don Erskine, who is well known to many in this chamber. He has a remarkable group of people who have worked very hard to make sure that the ATC will be up and running next year.

Mr Acting Deputy President, as you will be acutely aware, the issue of trade skills in regional areas, such as Bendigo, Ballarat and Geelong in my home state, is absolutely fundamental to the survival of those regions. Those from country areas will know full well that we cannot tell our young people to stay, live, work and raise their families in Bendigo. As parents and communities we cannot tell them that, but what we can do is give them the opportunity to remain in the regions in which they were raised. The best way of giving them a good reason to stay is to give them employment opportunities. The ATCs are pivotal in metropolitan areas, but they are both pivotal and fundamental to the survival of regional centres. That is why they have been taken up with such gusto by people across broad political spectrums and with broad community interests.

As I have said before, educators, people from industry and people from small business know full well that the survival of those regional centres can be guaranteed only if we are able to provide our young people with skills and the opportunity to work and live in their own areas, and with the ability for us to attract decentralised industry. Companies will only come to the Bendigos, the Ballarats and the Geelongs of this world if there is a skills base. They look at the skills base and make a decision about whether the local community can provide them with long-term, skilled employees that will sustain that business. The ATC in Bendigo will enable the community, whether it is the council or other organisations that are driving that great city forward, to sell to other industries the skills that we have, to attract them to Bendigo.

I think it is quite extraordinary that we have heard the Leader of the Opposition constantly talking in platitudes about skills training issues. One of his claims recently was that, with the Howard government, there had been 10 years of chronic skills shortage. It is interesting: when Mr Beazley was the minister there were 122,000 young people in apprenticeships or traineeships; there are now nearly 400,000 young Australians being given that opportunity for their future. Am I taking great credit on behalf of the government for that? Yes, I am, but what I am also saying is that good government provides good opportunities, and it is a bit rich for Mr Beazley, who did not provide those opportunities, to be attacking a government for doing what a government should be doing. Indeed, $10.8 billion over the next four years is going into vocational training and education—again, good government doing what good governments should be doing.

There was an interesting comment, again by Mr Beazley, about young Australians being turned away from TAFE. The federal government does not run or own any TAFEs, as you would be aware, Mr Acting Deputy President—not one of them. But his commentary was along the lines that the government has imported 270,000 extra skilled migrants. That is actually a blatant untruth, because the figures that Mr Beazley is talking about are the dependants of those primary skilled immigrants—they are dependants. Mr Beazley, to try and make a cheap political point, has rolled them all in together, but about 120,000 or 130,000-odd are actually skilled migrants and the rest are dependants. Mr Beazley’s shameful comment that 300,000 young Australians have been turned away from TAFE, at the same time that the government has imported 270,000 extra skilled migrants, is purely designed for domestic purposes: to say to the Australian community that the government has put skilled migrants ahead of its responsibility to train young Australians—a blatant lie, because they are not skilled migrants; they are dependants—

Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order, Senator Ronaldson! You know you must not use unparliamentary language. Could you please rephrase and withdraw.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I actually did not call Mr Beazley a liar; I said the comment was a lie, and the comment is a lie. But if there was any reflection taken—

Linda Kirk (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Kirk interjecting—

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Conroy interjecting—

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Would you let me finish? If there was any perceived reflection on Mr Beazley, I withdraw it, but the fact that there have been 270,000 extra skilled immigrants is a lie—a bold and bald lie.

The Acting Deputy President:

Senator Ronaldson, you are testing the chair.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My apologies. As I say, I withdraw any reflection on Mr Beazley. I thought it would be worthwhile going through the people who are associated with the Bendigo ATC. As I said, we have got Mr Don Erskine, who is the chairperson; Mr Michael McKern, who is the managing director of McKern Building Products and chair of the regional Australian Industry Group; Mr Coulter, CEO, Flowserve Pump Division; Terry Hurford, director of Morey and Hurford Builders; Graeme Sloan, CEO and director of Perseverance Corporation, a mining company; Ron Poyser, managing director of Poyser Motors; John McLean, CEO of the City of Greater Bendigo; Dr Louise Harvey, director of the Bendigo Regional Institute of TAFE—the TAFE is a partner in this; Elsie L’Huillier, executive officer of the Goldfields Local Learning and Employment Network; John Lynch, general manager of the Central Victorian Group Training Company; Darren McGregor, principal of the Catholic College Bendigo; and Helen Wee Hee, training manager of the Bendigo Sports and Entertainment Group. This very broad cross-section of people in Bendigo is committed to supporting the ATC and the Bendigo district’s young people.

The college will establish its central campus and administration centre at a high-profile site in the youth precinct of the Bendigo CBD. The programs will be delivered across the region—Bendigo, Echuca, Castlemaine, Maryborough, Rochester, Kyabram, Wedderburn, Boort and Charlton—and through subcontracting arrangements with existing schools, TAFEs, RTOs and other appropriate institutions. The college proposes to negotiate with the BRIT to extend existing hospitality facilities to the Bendigo campus. It comes at a cost of about $725,000. The TAFE has agreed in principle to enter into these negotiations, and the finalisation of that arrangement will require agreement with the Victorian government. Let us hope that they are a lot quicker in reaching those agreements than the Australian Labor Party was in the Senate in enabling this initial legislation to get through.

The college will also negotiate with the Central Victorian Group Training Company to develop a training facility for plasterers at a cost of about $125,000. Up to $455,000 has been requested for a mobile classroom, a prime mover and a trailer to enable on-site teaching and learning resources in some trades and utilising state-of-the-art technologies.

There will be the establishment of 29 centres of excellence. MOUs will be developed with employers in two industries in each of the 10 trade areas located in Bendigo and the three in Echuca, Maryborough and Castlemaine. An amount of $1,000 per rural student per year has been included to offset the cost of travel for students in outlying areas to attend work and vocational training placements. An amount of $1,000 per rural student per year is included in the cost of outsourcing delivery of the academic curriculum to small rural schools, reflecting the additional cost and limited flexibility in those schools where extra classes may need to be conducted to fit in with the student school based New Apprenticeships commitments. That is nearly $11 million of hope in the future for these kids in Bendigo.

Those 25 ATCs are about making sure that as a nation we are prepared to back the undoubted ability of our kids and young people. It is not rocket science. Why would the opportunity be taken in this place to play cheap, domestic politics with such an important issue? Why would this nation’s young people be subjected to the Australian Labor Party’s view that anything is worth a crack at? It does not matter what it is; it will be opposed.

At the end of Senator Wong’s contribution, almost as a throwaway line, she said, ‘Oh well, we’re going to support it.’ Of course they have to support it, because it is bringing money forward from out years to enable these schools to be set up now. If she thinks she will get any credit for supporting something that is quite logical, then I think she is going to be unpleasantly surprised. She will not get any support for it. Why she will not get support is the fact that these schools could have been up and running even earlier if it had not been for the intransigence of the Labor Party about allowing this initial bill to go through.

This bill is exciting because it provides opportunities. It is in the very truest sense of the word one of those great Australian partnerships. It is a partnership with Australia’s young people, who want to carve out a career for themselves and who want to make a contribution to this great nation of ours. While they are pilloried in some quarters, we should be proud of these kids. We should be proud of their ambitions and we should be supporting them at every single turn. Part of our contribution to them is to make sure they have the very best skills to ensure that their contribution can be maximised. I commend this bill to the Senate. I commend what underpins this bill to the Senate, because a nation built on skills is a nation that, in my view, is making the single biggest contribution it can make—that is, to the future of our young people.

Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This bill, the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006, is yet another example of how this government talks big and delivers very little. The first thing, of course, that the government did was deny that there was a problem with skills shortages in the economy. In fact, the first thing they did when they came to office was slash the money devoted to training people in the skills we now desperately need. Next they claimed it was the responsibility of the states and territories, that the Commonwealth had absolutely nothing to do with this. Then they blamed the states and territories—something we hear all too often in this place. Finally, during the election campaign of 2004, they said that they had a solution—they finally had a solution—to the skills shortage.

Their solution was the Australian technical colleges and that they would create 24 in various locations around Australia. Two long years down the track and the government have managed to open only five colleges so far—Gladstone and the Gold Coast in Queensland, Port Macquarie in New South Wales, one in Melbourne and the latest in northern Tasmania on 31 July. All 24 colleges were meant to be up and running and offering 7,500 places by 2008. At this stage, the minister is even saying that three of the areas previously considered—namely, Ballina, Dubbo and Queanbeyan—may in fact lose their colleges because of perceived shortcomings in their applications. In two years, that is five colleges and maybe a total of 300 students!

This amendment bill is before this place because the government wants to bring forward the funding. The best defence of that that the likes of Senator Ronaldson can run in this place is that it is the Labor Party that is delaying the legislation. This is the place where everyone in the Australian community knows the government has the numbers; the other place is where everyone in the Australian community knows the government has the numbers. Therefore, it can act at will—and the last time I looked there was actually a Manager of Government Business who scheduled the passage of legislation in this place. If that is the best excuse, when you have the numbers and you cannot run this chamber, then you really need to rethink your whole approach.

The approach of the government to this issue is a perfect illustration of how this federal government operates. In the lead-up to the 2004 election the issue of skills shortages had finally started to gather some momentum, an issue that the Labor Party had been concerned about for quite some time. The Commonwealth government, after sitting on its collective hands for years, realised that it really had to do something about this. Its solution, first, was to blame everyone else for the problem and then to create a policy of building 24 Australian technical colleges to demonstrate that it had a solution. Two years on and we have five colleges. By the time of the next election, at this rate we could have seven, if we are lucky. It is little wonder, then, that the Prime Minister, as recently as 31 May this year, at the Minerals Council dinner, announced that the Australian technical college in the Pilbara had been approved. I do not believe that the Australian people would accept that delivering only 25 per cent of an election commitment from the 2004 election is at all satisfactory. That is because it is not.

The essential thrust of the policy announcement in 2004 was that the states and territories, through the TAFE system, a system that is well known to all Australians, had failed to provide sufficient training places—mainly, you would have to say, because the federal government cut funding to it, but that is obviously not of concern to those over there. So the government announced that the new Australian technical colleges would increase competition in the training sector and that business would have much greater input. It is passing strange, then, that the government could tie itself to a policy, supposedly as one of the measures to overcome the chronic skills shortages faced by our economy, by starting from the ground up at a cost in excess of $300 million to fund an alternative training college system that may deliver its first apprentice by the year 2010—a long way from the 2004 election commitment.

Consider that. We are facing a skills shortage and, rather than dealing with it by working with the states and territories, rather than expanding TAFE colleges that are already able to offer trades training, the Commonwealth embarks on a completely different stream of training that will not see a graduate perhaps until 2010—all those wasted years. Two years since the policy was announced and not one apprentice has been delivered. So much for the government’s concern about the skills shortage: two years and only five colleges. This is a wasted opportunity for Australian industry, for the Australian labour market and, most importantly, for young Australians wanting to undertake an apprenticeship. The government has wasted millions of dollars and two years creating an alternative training system to that which is already out there and delivering apprentices. Rather than trying to strengthen or improve the current system it has simply thrown the baby out with the bathwater and started from scratch.

I have to admit that, even at the time of the announcement in 2004, there were those of us who could see where this policy was heading. It was clear that simply announcing that 24 Australian technical colleges would be created was a dangerous fiction. The problem with policy announcements like this one is that there is an expectation created, an expectation that these colleges would be up and operating as quickly as possible and helping to overcome skills shortages. It was clear that any policy that aimed to create new technical colleges from the ground up was going to take time—and, so far, we have seen just that: two years for five colleges. At this rate it will take about 10 years to deliver all 24. You cannot simply wish for these colleges to exist: there is land to purchase or lease, buildings to construct or hire, staff to hire and train, procedures and guidelines to be developed, tendering proposals to be drafted and so on. There was always going to be a significant amount of time and effort consumed in the setting up of these colleges—an entirely new system. In that sense they could be seen to be a bit like that most efficient hospital in Britain, in the Yes, Prime Minister series on television. The most efficient hospital was the one that had no patients. So far, we have 24 colleges on paper, with very few students.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Conroy interjecting—

Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I say, so too with the Australian technical colleges. The amount of effort and money that had to be expended to get going always meant that we were heading towards the situation we currently face: two years, five colleges and very few students. A policy announcement at election time is one thing. The implementation of that policy when you are in government is how you will be measured. It is clear that the government was far too optimistic about how Australian technical colleges would be implemented. There is now a huge deficit in this country when it comes to skills, a deficit that those of us on this side have been concerned about for quite some time.

The Australian technical colleges that were meant to be turning out 7,500 students each and every year are so far delivering fewer than 100. Even if all the colleges are up and running within the next two years—which, you would have to say, is a big ask considering it took two years to get five of them going—the Australian labour market will still be waiting three or more years before an appreciable number of trainees will be entering the labour market. That is simply not good enough. If the government were serious about overcoming skills shortages then they would have worked with the states and the territories to overcome the problems that they perceived with the TAFE system. If they were serious, they would have developed policies that would not require waiting years and years for a single graduate to appear. If they were serious, they would have opened more than five colleges within two years.

This is an election policy announcement that may have garnered support back in 2004 but so far has failed to deliver. It is clear that it was seen as one of the key policy announcements from the last election campaign and was mentioned by the Liberal Party director in his address to the National Press Club back in 2004 as one of the key policy initiatives of the Howard government. The director of the Liberal Party actually claimed that it was a well thought out policy that had been worked on for 12 months prior to the election. If that is the case, it is even more scandalous that, two years after the election, we are still waiting on the delivery.

I suspect, actually, that that work was all about where the 24 technical colleges would be sited for the greatest political advantage, rather than being constructive work on meeting the skills shortages needs in our economy. It is clear, to me at least, that sufficient time was spent on this aspect, but that they failed to do all the other work that was required. The reality is that the Australian people have been sold a three-legged horse; it looks like it will run until such a time as it actually has to. For all of the fanfare and the rhetoric, most of the colleges will not be operating until next year—all things being equal, that is. It is an interesting policy: it announced in one election year that most of the colleges would not start operating until the next election year and that no graduates would be delivered until the election year after that.

So the Australian people get a policy announcement in 2004 that, by 2007, most but not all of the technical colleges will be up and running, all things being equal; and, finally, by 2010, there will be some tradespeople. What a nonsensical implementation of what should be a straightforward approach to fixing a crisis in our economy! This was all brought about because the Commonwealth government had to go and set up their own system. Rather than working with the states and territories, the Commonwealth government thought they knew best. They would rather expend over $300 million to set up yet another system that, at its peak, will only deliver just over 7,500 students.

It is interesting to consider what the current shortfall of tradespeople in Australia is. Figures suggest that even at the present time we are short by something in the order of tens of thousands. At the rate that these technical colleges will be graduating people, we will never, ever address that shortfall. Little wonder then that there are over 40,000 holders of temporary work visas in Australia—there is an exercise in window-dressing going on. At most, when all 24 technical colleges are up and running, we will get, as I say, 7,500 students. We have over 40,000 skilled workers from overseas at the current time, not counting the 45,000 people who are overstaying their visas, of course—that is another issue. So we have a situation where, as a bare minimum, the Australian government know that the skills shortage amounts to something like 40,000 people as of this moment; their answer to that is to create these technical colleges that will train, at best, 7,500 students per year.

That is the same ridiculous situation that we have with doctors in this country. When the government came into office they slashed the number of training places. Years down the track we end up with—guess what?—shortages of doctors. The government’s solution was to increase the number of training places for doctors. The knock-on effect from that was reported to me during a discussion with the Perth and Hills Division of General Practice recently. The knock-on effect from the influx of students is that someone actually has to train them. So doctors, who are already in short supply, are now expected to spend valuable time training all those new medical students—yet another crisis we did not have to have.

All this demonstrates that it was the initial decision that was flawed—and so it is with the skills shortages in Australia. As I have said on numerous occasions, skills shortages do not appear without warning or lead indicators. The government’s decision back in the nineties to slash funding to TAFEs is a major contributor to the problems we now face. The solution of developing a new system from the ground up is not going to seriously address the shortages for years to come, if at all. Even blind Freddy knows that to create a completely new training system takes time—time that in the heat of an election campaign is not important but which in dealing with skills shortages is critical.

I know that the organisations that have tendered to operate the colleges will do an excellent job. My criticism of the Australian technical colleges is not a criticism of the organisations that will operate them. In fact, TAFE is involved in operating the one in the Pilbara—even though the government decided they did not want to fund the TAFE system, they are happy to work with it to establish the new technical college. Nor is my criticism of the students who will choose to enrol at the colleges. My criticism is directed fair and square at the Howard government.

This policy was always going to be difficult to implement. This policy was always going to be time consuming. It was never about delivering a real solution to the skills shortages that are being experienced in our economy. This policy was for an election campaign. It was to tell the Australian people that the government had a plan and was going to deliver. Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say. Two years on and there are only five colleges open. Two years on and three locations are now being told that they may lose their technical colleges because the minister is not satisfied with the proposals that have been lodged. For the young people of Ballina, Queanbeyan and Dubbo the policy has so far absolutely failed to deliver. We can all hope that the remainder of the technical colleges are up and running as soon as possible and that they contribute to overcoming the skills shortages. However, based on progress to date, the Australian people are right to be concerned about this policy. Given that there is going to be an election next year, if the government comes out and announces the creation of additional technical colleges, at least the Australian people will then know what time it will take before the system is up and operating.

Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Science and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to this debate on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006. Before commencing, I really should declare my interest, which is the fact that I spent 10 years in the TAFE system. So I do understand that TAFEs used to be resourced and had the capacity to very flexibly respond to industry needs. That is not the case any more. I have to say, I think the whole Australian technical colleges scheme is one of the great examples of the incompetence of this government because, despite the skills shortages that the country faces, we can see, as we saw in the May budget this year, that there is absolutely nothing to address the skills needs.

There was no money for TAFE—why were we surprised? There was an overall reduction in the percentage of the budget spent on vocational education and training. There was a $13.7 million cut from a program to encourage apprenticeships in rural and regional areas, and there was the abolition of the $38½ million program aimed at getting more women in non-traditional apprenticeships such as construction and automotive trades. There was no extra money allocated in the next four years for the National Skills Shortages Strategy. So why are we surprised? It beggars belief that this government can neglect Australia’s skills development during a time of such unprecedented prosperity. This government is so out of touch that it has no idea about the hurt that Australian families are feeling now.

Labor supported the original technical colleges bill last year, and we are supporting this amendment bill in order to allow the money to be spent more quickly. But it remains the case that establishing 25 Australian technical colleges is the only answer that the Howard government has to address the chronic skills crisis that Australia is experiencing. It is important that the government seriously addresses the problems that we face now, and will face in the future, in providing the required skilled workforce. Senator Webber focused a little in her remarks on the issues in Western Australia.

Unfortunately, the Howard government has taken a long-term and very problematic approach to the issue. The act proposed establishing 25 technical colleges that would cater for up to 7½ thousand year 11 and 12 students. The government nominated 25 regions across Australia where the colleges were to be placed. In my home state of New South Wales, they were to be located in Gosford, Dubbo, the Hunter, the Illawarra, Lismore, Ballina, Port Macquarie, Queanbeyan and Western Sydney.

Since I started my term in the Senate in 2002, I have observed the Howard government incompetently administer a number of programs, but this one takes the cake. This program has been a dog’s breakfast from the start, and once again we have seen a minister making policy on the run. If we look at progress to date, of those 25 proposed colleges, five have commenced operation. On 31 July, the fifth—the Northern Tasmania College—opened. But, as Senator Webber said, most of them are scheduled for 2007.

There is a difference between having these colleges opened and actually having students attending. During the budget estimates hearings, it was revealed that some of these technical colleges are not exactly enjoying full levels of enrolment. In fact, one—Gladstone Technical College in Queensland—has a grand enrolment total of two students. During Senate estimates, Senator Wong asked Ms Johnston: ‘How many students are currently enrolled at Gladstone?’ Ms Johnston replied: ‘There are only one or two I think at the moment.’ That reflects exactly what is going on in the technical colleges process. At the time of the last election campaign, the Prime Minister said:

The technical colleges are the centrepiece of our drive to tackle skills shortages and to revolutionise vocational education and training throughout Australia.

Heaven help a revolution that has two students enrolled at one of these colleges. The Prime Minister might be good at flowery rhetoric, but the reality of the technical colleges comes nowhere near matching that rhetoric.

The concept of Australian technical colleges is another step in the government’s assault on industrial relations and education. The Australian technical colleges further privatise our education system and potentially they will damage enrolments and available courses at nearby high schools. Individual contracts and performance pay appear to be the modus operandi of the colleges.

The government talks about the fact that local industry and communities will have a leadership role in the governance of the colleges. The colleges will teach the skills required by local business. There is a real danger that the courses will become enterprise rather than industry focused, resulting in young people gaining qualifications that cannot be transported across industries. The real ideological attack is on public education and the government’s underhanded attempt to deregulate the national training system. In abolishing the Australian National Training Authority, the government is increasing the already heavy influence of peak industry bodies such as the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Business Council of Australia.

The prospect of AWAs being forcibly inflicted upon public sector agencies, enshrined in the agencies’ very existence, and upon more Australians betrays the government’s belief that the creeping advance of AWAs is a higher political priority than training our kids for work and providing the economy with the skilled workforce that it needs.

Australia needs a more systematic approach to promoting trades and science and technology education than the government’s 25 technical colleges. If this is the best this government can do, I have no doubt Australians will look to Labor’s plan. Labor will work collaboratively and constructively with the state and territory governments, not start a federal versus state slanging match—as we have seen—to tackle the problem. Labor will provide sound training opportunities to increase the take-up of such training that establishes long-term careers and benefits to industry.

The government should have been spending the last 18 months getting the technical colleges up and running. Instead it has wasted time. It has wasted the past 10 years standing idly by as the looming skills crisis brewed right before its eyes. I am sure it is no surprise to anyone on this side of the chamber to learn that Australia is the only developed country which has actually reduced public investment in TAFEs and universities—in fact, by eight per cent since 1995. The OECD average is an embarrassing 38 per cent increase, yet the best that this government can manage when it comes to investing in knowledge is an appalling eight per cent overall decline.

On budget night we saw yet another wasted opportunity. The Treasurer could have used his $17 billion surplus to invest in the skills of our workforce. Instead he did nothing. The budget was all about the Howard government giving up on increasing productivity by not acting on this skills crisis. It was the Howard government believing that an adequate response to the skills crisis is to have some technical colleges graduate a ridiculous 350 students in 2010. It was the Howard government saying that an eight per cent decrease in public investment in universities and TAFEs is an adequate response. And it was the Howard government saying that stripping the rights of workers through its extreme industrial relations regime is an adequate response.

The Howard government would know this if some of them lived in the real world and asked some real people about it. They should, for example, start by asking the 300,000 Australians they have turned away from university and TAFE whether it is an adequate response. Or they could ask all those workers around Australia who have been sacked and then rehired on less pay and worse conditions whether it is an adequate response. The answer is clearly no. It is not an adequate response; it is a pathetic response.

A real response would be to take up Labor’s proposals to promote skills training in our schools. Under Labor, trades technology and science would be taught in first-class facilities; a Trades in Schools scheme would double the number of school based apprenticeships and provide extra funding per place; specialist schools would be established to teach trades technology and science in senior schools; and a Trades Taster program would allow years 9 and 10 students to experience a range of trade options. We need to give our kids a go at trades in our schools. We need to get them involved early. Labor’s skills-in-schools plan would get them in and Labor’s plan to overhaul the New Apprenticeships scheme would keep them in.

Many senators would be aware that just such a scheme was announced in New South Wales recently. The New South Wales Premier, Morris Iemma, and education minister Carmel Tebbutt announced an initiative that will allow HSC students to complete school based apprenticeships one day a week. Under the plan, 10 stand-alone trade schools will be established over the next 12 months and will create hundreds of apprenticeships and traineeships and tackle local skills shortages. Students will be able to undertake industry standard training in subjects such as hospitality, health care, construction, automotive and engineering. In this way students will gain a trade qualification while completing their HSC.

The plan will see an expansion of vocational education and training programs in schools. Currently, at least 30 per cent of New South Wales HSC students choose at least one VET course for their HSC. Under Labor’s apprenticeships plan, a range of initiatives would be offered to increase the number of young Australians completing their training. These would include an $800 per year skills account, which would help to abolish up-front fees. They would also include a $2,000 trade completion bonus under which apprentices in traditional trades would receive a $1,000 payment halfway through their training and a further $1,000 payment at the completion of their apprenticeship. This scheme will aim to bolster the Howard government’s pathetic 40 per cent apprenticeship completion rate to at least 80 per cent. Labor is also committed to abolishing the Howard government’s skilled migration visa so that young Australians are given the opportunity to train first. Labor’s plan recognises that young Australians are crying out for opportunities and that Australian businesses are crying out for skilled workers, tradespeople, chefs and childcare workers.

This government has deliberately denigrated learning, particularly under the former Minister for Education, Science and Training and now Minister for Defence, Dr Nelson. He developed this technique of appealing to people who have not been to university, particularly less educated older people who grew up in a different era when very few people went to university, and sending out a message saying, ‘All you hardworking Aussies are paying for all these people in universities who don’t really contribute very much to the real world anyway.’ That message from Dr Nelson has been very overt. It has been supplemented by statements from the Prime Minister to the effect that leaving school after year 10 is perfectly reasonable.

In some cases, it is not unreasonable. Of course, in bygone times most people did. There is nothing wrong with that and there is nothing wrong with people who, 20 or 30 years ago, did leave school after year 10 and in many cases went on to develop skills on the job. But that is in the past. It certainly does not make us a productive country, and it is the wrong message to be putting out now to 15-year-olds. It is appalling that government ministers are sending out these powerful signals that are saying that learning does not matter and is really for those pointy-headed types who are not practical. As someone who recently completed a doctorate, I find that an appalling message and it is something that the Howard government will be condemned for.

If there is one thing that is going to ensure that Australia prospers and that we have a broadly based, diverse economy with a strong manufacturing sector and a strong services sector that will continue, it is going to be a profound national commitment to learning in all its forms: learning on the job, learning in TAFE colleges, learning through apprenticeships, learning in universities, learning in schools and learning in preschools. We need a national campaign to instil a much stronger commitment in our community to the values around learning.

As I have said, the Howard government in the most recent budget cut $13.7 million from an incentive program to encourage rural and regional businesses to take on apprentices. This is holding back our regions, where communities are struggling to retain trained people. Australians deserve better than this half-hearted attempt to fix our skills crisis. They deserve a coordinated effort. They deserve COAG—every state premier and the Prime Minister of this nation—getting together to fix the problem.

There is a clear choice before the electorate. There is a distinct point of difference between the do-nothing approach of the Howard government and the Labor Party’s commitment to improving young Australians’ access to and success within the workforce. It is clear this government cannot fix the skills shortage and it is obvious they have given up on it. We in the Labor Party want to see young Australians have access to affordable training, to incentives to work hard and complete their training, to employable skills and to a great future serving their own communities and taking pride in that work and the contribution they make.

That is not what we are seeing from the Howard government. We will only see it from a Labor government, and we have seen it from the New South Wales Labor government, which announced the new trade schools where each trade school will specialise in the trade skills shortages areas identified for the state. Students have the option of undertaking a school based apprenticeship, and apprentices continue their training beyond school for up to three years so they can work in licensed trades such as construction or automotive. Students will have access to specialist industry-standard facilities such as electronic calibrated lathes, commercial quality stoves and modified, safe, construction work sites. School based apprentices and school based trainees will be on the job for approximately one day each week. For the rest of the week, these students will be completing the off-the-job component of their training as well as completing their HSC subjects.

Students will get recognition for all the work they complete. A school based apprentice or trainee who undertakes part-time training in years 11 and 12 will get their qualification a year earlier. They will have access to new industry support services which will place them in jobs to complete their training. We can see that that is a practical approach that will allow industries and local economies to benefit from having more job-ready graduates to take on work in key skills shortage areas. That is not what the Australian technical colleges are going to deliver. They will deliver a paltry number of apprentices, perhaps by 2010, and that is a disgrace.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The main purpose of the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006 is to bring forward funding for the establishment and operation of the proposed 25 Australian technical colleges. Funding will be brought forward from the 2008-09 years to meet expenditure in 2006-07. This amendment also includes regulation-making power for situations where funding needs to be carried forward or moved to another calendar year, thereby removing the need for amendments such as this. The total amount of the funding committed to these colleges by this government will remain the same.

The government claim the need to bring forward funding is due to the significant progress made on setting up these colleges. One, of course, would question the use of the words ‘significant progress’ in this policy area. Of the 25 proposed colleges, successful applications or agreements have been completed on only 22. Even slower is the progress on actually having them open, with only five having actual students, making up a total of under 350 students. The government’s original proposal was for 300 students at each of the colleges, not in total. I said in my speech last year on the Australian technical colleges bill 2005 that I thought it would be difficult to find 300 students for each college—supposedly doing, as they would be, both trade and Higher School Certificate studies. It would seem likely the numbers will remain below the original estimates.

Remember these are the colleges which represent a part of the government’s answer to our long-term, growing and ever-increasing skills shortage. The other part is letting in thousands of skilled migrants, where minimal requirements for checking their qualifications are imposed. Only five colleges open with only 350 students seems somewhat less than significant progress.

The proposed Australian technical college in Darwin, in Solomon, in my own electorate, seems to have had not significant progress but significant problems in putting together a proposal and getting its act together. This has been put back and back, and it seems that business involvement in education may be a bit outside of their area of expertise or ability. I understand any progress made has been largely due to the involvement of Group Training NT. I am certainly aware that Minister Gary Hardgrave had to make a flying visit to Darwin some time in the last couple of months to urge them to get their act together—probably because he wanted to save face over this announcement.

Furthermore, according to information from officers at estimates, as at 30 May 2006 only $18 million had been spent—so why the need to bring forward funding? Little enough seems to have been spent to date. It is worth noting that any financial information was not easy to draw out at estimates. DEST refused to provide any information on individual colleges. Government departments seem to be getting much more adept at hiding information from scrutiny, with the backing, of course, of relevant government ministers. The Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Legislation Committee opposition senators’ report into the provisions of this bill expresses concern at the lack of financial transparency surrounding these colleges. They comment that DEST have refused to give any funding details of the contracts actually signed to date but have provided only the overall, total figures.

So here we are with a government commitment to fund 25 colleges to turn out tradespeople to lessen our ever-growing skills shortage—a skills shortage which the Howard government knew about for years and did nothing about except complacently watch it grow and grow and get worse year by year. In fact, even worse, while they sat and watched and refused to increase funding, hundreds of thousands of young people were turned away due to a lack of TAFE places. They were told loud and long and warned about the skills shortage by industry groups and by TAFE Directors Australia and, just as now, with much legislation, they failed to listen. In their complacency or arrogance they said they knew better.

The government refused to provide any growth funding in the vocational education and training area for six of the past nine years. All they did was blame the states and territories or the workers—anyone but themselves. They are ever ready to claim any credit for any success but never, ever prepared to accept any blame for any failure in this policy area. They claimed to be having great success with traineeships and apprenticeships—unfortunately, not in the right places. Traineeships in retail trades were the main areas to get the numbers, along with hospitality, but many of these starters also failed to finish. The traditional trades languished with declining numbers over the years. This is a government that has steadfastly followed their rigid ideology of cutting funds to public education and/or attaching funding to extreme industrial relations requirements. These are then pushed through by nasty, bully-boy tactics.

We now see the results, with industry struggling to find skilled workers in the trades area. My latest information from my own city of Darwin is that the waterfront project desperately needs up to 50 more concreters and they are just not available. Again, the government reaction is not to greatly increase funds for education and training in order to upskill our population and value add to our primary production. No—what they want to do is simply import tens of thousands of overseas workers while at the same time ramming through workplace legislation that will see Aussie workers’ pay and conditions slide downhill. They think cheaper labour is the answer, not more skills and training.

We saw a recent OECD report for 2006 commenting on the low priority that the government put on training, but then this is not the first year that they have done so. For several years now the OECD has commented critically on Australia being the only developed nation to have continually reduced public spending on education and training. The Howard government’s record in spending on public education and training is, in fact, a disgrace. Public spending on higher education and TAFE has fallen in Australia by eight per cent since 1995 in real terms. The OECD average is an increase of 38 per cent.

We do not oppose the Australian technical colleges as such, as with such a mean-minded government any spending on education and training is an improvement—albeit far too little and far too late. Any additional resources going into trade training and skill development are welcome. Urgent action is needed to address our national skills shortage. However, the whole decision about the technical colleges appears to have been made initially on the run and with no consultation—another thought bubble from the Prime Minister. Ever since, it seems that neither the bureaucracy nor the stakeholders have been able to catch up in the implementation of the idea in any really organised or convincing way.

The implementation is just like most of the changes in Indigenous education funding: poorly thought out and poorly executed. Here we are, months down the track, with only five colleges open and 350 students enrolled nationally. These students are years away from a trade and being qualified, and then there will only be a handful compared to the need. These colleges are most definitely too little and too late. The first qualified tradespeople from these colleges will not be turned out until 2010. By then the demand for skilled workers will have grown still more, so these few hundred qualifying from these colleges will scarcely be more than a drop in the ocean.

This is certainly not a sign of a successful policy idea. Had the appropriation of $343.6 million been given to already existing state and territory training bodies we could be fairly certain that a lot more than 350 additional students would be enrolled already. But, as I have said, ideology has played a major part in this whole process—the ideology of privatisation, of keeping out unions and of workers being on AWAs. There should be no room for blinkered ideology in education, which is an investment in our national future. But unfortunately that has not been the way of this government, and all education funding has been tainted with their ideology, from schools right through to tertiary education. The result is the massive skills shortage that is a major threat to our economic growth and productivity.

Australia must invest in skills training, and Labor will do that. The government have already failed badly in this area. While Labor support this bill we do so only to help, in any small way, a seriously stricken aspect of our education system. We do so to at least enable a few more young Australians to get a sound training for the future. We can only condemn the Howard government for failing to acknowledge and act earlier on the skills crisis; for reducing expenditure on vocational education and training; for the incompetent implementation of these technical colleges; for the apparent secrecy about the funding and operations of these colleges to date; for their complete failure to provide enough extra skills training to meet the future demand; and for the forecasted shortfall of 100,000 skilled workers by 2010.

We believe that a far more cooperative approach with the states and territories is needed, and far more than these 25 colleges are needed. When the Labor government is elected we will work with the states and territories. Our blueprint outlines our proposals for getting skills into schools. A Labor government would bring trades into schools in a similar way that these technical colleges do, but into all schools and not just a handful of private colleges. Students would have the opportunity to experience a range of trades in years 9 and 10 before making any final decisions. We would have specialist schools for certain trades.

We would overhaul the struggling New Apprenticeships system, or Australian apprenticeship system, as I understand it is now called. At present at least 40 per cent of apprenticeship starters do not complete their courses. Imagine if we could get those young people to complete their training. Labor would turn that around by offering a $2,000 trade completion bonus so that we would give young people an incentive to finish their trade. We would pay the TAFE fees of traditional trade apprentices and childcare trainees to encourage them into trades and childcare work. Labor’s priority is all about training Australians first and training them now—not, by contrast, doing what this government is doing: going for a quick-fix approach and bringing in tradesmen or women from overseas with minimal checks on their actual qualifications. Unlike this government, Labor would give priority to education and training and see it as an investment in our future, not as an ideological plaything to be messed around with.

While we support this bill—it gives some crumbs of funding to vocational education and training—we condemn the government for a decade of failure in this area; for creating a skills crisis during its 10 long years in office; for its continued failure to provide the necessary opportunities for Australians to get the training they need to do a decent job and meet the skills needs of the economy; for reducing the overall percentage of the federal budget spent on vocational education and training, and allowing this percentage of spending to further decline over the forward estimates period; for its incompetent handling of the Australian technical colleges initiative as evidenced by only five out of the 25 colleges being open for business, and enrolling fewer than 350 students; for failing to be open and accountable about the operations of the Australian technical colleges, including details of extra student enrolments, funding levels for the individual colleges, course structures and programs; for denying local communities their promised Australian technical college because of their ideological industrial relations requirements; and for failing to provide enough extra skills training so that Australia can meet the expected shortfall of 100,000 skilled workers by 2010.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the Labor Party’s amendments to the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006. For 10 long years the Howard government has failed to provide young Australians with the training they need to get a decent job. For 10 long years the Howard government has failed to invest in the skills Australia needs to raise productivity and sustain economic growth. For 10 long years the Howard government has continued to reduce the overall percentage of the federal budget spent on vocational education and training, and it stands condemned for the skills crisis it has created. Neglecting Australia’s skills development is an act of gross incompetence by the Howard government that will hurt the Australian economy and hurt it hard.

A more appropriate name for this bill would be the Australia Technical Colleges (Sorry, We Buggered up the Costings on the First Act) Amendment Bill 2006, because all it does is bring funding forward for the proposed Australian technical colleges from 2008-09 to 2006-07. This bill does not create one additional training place or apprenticeship or even increase the level of investment in Australia’s skills base over the forward estimates by one cent. All this bill does is allow the Howard government the opportunity to address the fact that it botched the costings in the original act. The skills shortage Australia faces is the biggest barrier to future economic growth and improved productivity, but the Howard government has botched its one and only policy response to this problem.

But do not take my word for it. In the Australian Industry Group’s overview of the Howard government’s last budget, Heather Ridout had this to say:

... it is disappointing that more progress has not been made on the big nation-building goals of skills and innovation.

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... investments in skills, innovation and infrastructure are required to build the competitiveness of Australian business and to assist in rebalancing the economy as the current minerals boom begins to fade.

Everybody knows that Australia’s economic prosperity will not continue without investment in skills; everybody knows that we must invest in Australian skills through strong and effective education and training programs; and everybody knows that the Howard government’s record in addressing this vital public policy need is nothing short of a disgrace.

Under the Howard government, Australia is the only developed country in the world to reduce public investment in TAFEs and universities over the last decade. Public investment in our TAFEs and universities by the Howard government has fallen eight per cent since 1995. The average public investment in postsecondary education for the rest of the industrialised world over that time shared an increase of 38 per cent. We are the only country in the OECD where public expenditure on postsecondary education in universities and TAFEs has been falling. To think that government members and senators have the hide to come into this parliament and bang on about what a wonderful job the Howard government is doing! This is not just a disgrace for the Howard government; it is a tragedy for Australia and, unless we dedicate a greater effort and priority to learning, we will continue to fall behind the rest of the world.

But the focus and investment has to be genuine, constructive and engaging. It should not be about simply playing politics, which sadly is what the Howard government is guilty of with these technical colleges. It appears that the main reason for the Howard government establishing these colleges is to force workers into Australian workplace agreements. Because the Howard government is obsessed with smashing unions, it has created these greenfield sites to prevent collective bargaining. Why else is it that the only reference to an industrial instrument in the entire summary of employment arrangements for Australian technical colleges is the reference to individual contracts? The Howard government will set up these colleges and effectively force teachers to enter into Australian workplace agreements, whether or not they want to. So much for freedom of choice! At the Howard government’s insistence, all staff employed at an Australian technical college must be offered an individual contract. If a local college does not want to implement the government’s extreme industrial relations agenda then it will be cut off from the program.

The minister has failed to explain what enforcing an extreme industrial relations agenda has to do with training our future tradespeople. If it is not to ideologically pursue Australian workplace agreements, why not just provide the funding to institutions already in place, which are mainly TAFE colleges? It could be that, if the Howard government simply invested what it should in the TAFE system, it would not make for nearly as effective photo opportunities for marginal backbenchers.

When the Prime Minister announced the creation of the Australian technical colleges in his speech on 24 September 2004, he said that they would be ‘the centrepiece of our drive to tackle skills shortages and to revolutionise vocational education and training throughout Australia’. Let us examine this so-called revolutionary centrepiece against the numbers. At best, when all of these colleges are up and running at full capacity, which will not be until around 2010, they will produce approximately 7,500 tradespeople a year. If we put that figure into perspective, 7,500 students represent only two per cent of all Australian students in years 11 and 12. That is 20-odd colleges to cater for only two per cent of the relevant student population.

There is another figure we can compare this so-called revolutionary centrepiece to. According to the Howard government’s own Department of Education, Science and Training, 34,200 young Australians were turned away from TAFE in 2005 alone and 34,100 were turned away in 2004—the year of the Prime Minister’s policy speech—and yet the Howard government’s so-called revolutionary response to turning away 34,000 young Australians from TAFE in one year alone was to establish a parallel system of colleges that may produce 7,500 tradespeople by around 2010. To make matters worse, according to figures from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research, 33,500 new apprentices quit their courses in the September 2005 quarter while only 33,100 completed them. Far from being revolutionary, this is a totally inadequate response to a crisis which everyone acknowledges is imposing severe constraints on our future economic capacity.

It seems amazing to me that the government can find the funds to create a parallel system of TAFE colleges when we know that for years there has been a huge underspend in the technical and vocational education area, particularly on enabling our TAFE system to meet the unmet demand. Wouldn’t this money be better spent on projects that are already working on the ground instead of trying to establish an alternative, parallel TAFE system? After 10 long years, you would think the Howard government would have had the time to develop a more detailed plan than this to address Australia’s skills needs. It appears to me that it is making it up as it goes. This is policy on the run—just a paragraph in a campaign speech for the Prime Minister with no real planning for our future.

Australia deserves better than this. That is why the Australian Labor Party have already released a series of policy initiatives to give Australia’s skills base the investment it deserves. Last September Kim Beazley put out Labor’s skills blueprint. Labor have announced that we would overhaul the failed new apprentices scheme, and we will not import foreign apprentices while Aussie kids are being turned away from training. Labor have also announced that we will return fairness to IR laws and the shop floor.

Labor knows that action must be taken now to encourage people to complete their apprenticeships. That is why Labor will invest $170 million to abolish up-front TAFE fees and create a trade completion bonus of $2,000 per apprentice. This bonus will encourage more apprentices to complete their training in the traditional trades by paying them $1,000 halfway through their training and a further $1,000 at the completion of their apprenticeship. If this policy is successful in only halving the current drop-out rate, it will put an extra 10,000 qualified tradespeople into our workforce each and every year—far more than the Australian technical colleges will produce. Unfortunately, by contrast, we have a government that is incapable of implementing the one policy it has.

But Mr Stuart Henry, the member for Hasluck, does not seem to think so. In his speech in the second reading debate on this bill in the other place on 21 June 2006, he had this to say:

This bill is sheer good news. It does not affect the overall budget of $343.6 million for the program; it merely brings forward funding which had been allocated to the 2008-09 financial year so that it can be available in 2006-07.

So according to the member for Hasluck it is good news that the Howard government would introduce a bill into parliament about training that contains no additional funding—none at all! The member for Hasluck is easily pleased. The source of the member for Hasluck’s delight might better be found later in his speech when he said:

... in my own electorate the Australian technical college Perth South is set to commence in February 2007 and proposes to operate as a multicampus, non-government senior secondary college in Maddington and Armadale with a satellite campus based in Rockingham. My colleague the member for Canning and I were very pleased to be present for the signing of the Perth South ATC funding agreement by the Minister for Vocational and Technical Education, the Hon. Gary Hardgrave, at the ATC site in Maddington earlier this month—a great occasion for the local community.

I am sure I will see the photo of this event in his next newsletter. You would think from the member for Hasluck’s rapture that this college will be the only training centre in the region. It is not. The member for Hasluck’s photo opportunity buddy, the member for Canning, did make such claims in his second reading debate speech on this bill in the other place on 15 June. In that speech, the member for Canning claimed:

... the industrial strip in the Kwinana region is calling out for a technical college in that area ...

Mr Randall appears to be completely unaware that the Howard government’s Perth South Australian Technical College will overlap the area covered by Challenger TAFE.

Challenger TAFE has 11 industry training centres, including the WA Applied Engineering and Shipbuilding Training Centre and the WA Wool Technology Training Centre, with campuses and centres at Fremantle, Henderson, Murdoch, Peel, Rockingham, Heathcote Cultural Centre and Kwinana. The centres are closely aligned to the needs of industry. They are focused on targeting their training and employment services for the wider community, including for diverse and in many instances disadvantaged groups. Challenger TAFE’s Peel Campus is located on the site of Western Australia’s first co-located school, TAFE and university campus, in Mandurah. Challenger TAFE offers skills training in over 140 careers, ranging from aquaculture to welding. And yet the Howard government has decided that it needs to create a separate Australian technical college that duplicates some of the functions of Challenger TAFE and overlaps its geographic area.

I am baffled as to why the Howard government would want to set up an institution in competition to Challenger TAFE, which is an excellent institution. It must be that the Howard government has no respect for the good work that Challenger TAFE does. I am sure that if the Howard government provided the funding for the Perth South Australian Technical College to the Challenger TAFE it would not make for as good a photo opportunity. The headline would only read ‘Howard government provides long overdue investment to TAFE to meet unmet demand’, which does not make for nearly as good propaganda.

If we look at the comments made by Mr Don Randall, the member for Canning, in his speech in the second reading debate on this bill in the other place on 15 June, we can get an appreciation of the government’s logic in introducing this bill. In that speech Mr Randall made the bold claim:

The 24 Australian technical colleges will concentrate on skills, not alternative type arrangements such as we cop in the TAFEs now—aromatherapy, flower arranging and transcendental meditation courses.

Now, I searched through the Challenger TAFE website and I could not find a single reference to transcendental meditation courses. What I found were references to certificates courses in aluminium fabrication, electrotechnology and wool classing. To be fair to the member for Canning—and I must be fair—I did find a reference to flower arranging in Challenger TAFE’s certificate in floristry course. But if Mr Randall wants to denigrate the small business owners who struggle to make a living for their families as florists in his electorate—hardworking people like Barbara who runs Barbara for Flowers in the suburb of Byford in the heart of his electorate—then be it on his head. What a tool! Mr Randall further disgraced himself by claiming:

As a result of the states having dropped the ball on training in their TAFEs, the federal government has had to fill the vacuum. The 24 Australian technical colleges will fill this vacuum in training.

As I explained earlier, 34,200 does not go into 7,500. I have tried many times but I cannot make it go in. If the member for Canning honestly believes that the 7,500 tradespeople these colleges will produce in 2010 in any way makes up for the 34,200 young Australians that were turned away from TAFE last year alone, then I suggest that the only vacuum is the one inside the member for Canning’s head. But wait, there is more. The member for Canning finally stuffed his other foot into his mouth when he said:

… teachers in the local TAFEs in my area tell me that there are more teachers and more administrators in the TAFEs than there are students …

and, wait for it—

… they get paid exorbitant wages and generally end up with a car …

What an absolute drongo! If it is too many staff getting paid too much money that the member for Canning is worried about then I am sure the Howard government’s insistence on the use of AWAs will ensure that the few teachers in these new colleges will be paid very poor wages. The travesty is that pork chops like the member for Canning were ever allowed near a classroom. At least in the parliament he is not doing damage—

Jeannie Ferris (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. I think that Senator Sterle just used comments about the member for Canning which were unwise and, I suspect, outside standing orders. I know that you were speaking with the Clerk but I ask you to have a discussion with the people at the table and ask Senator Sterle to withdraw those remarks.

John Watson (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, it is true, I was speaking to the Clerk, because I think the honourable senator is going very close to offending standing orders and I draw his attention to that.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I do not disagree that money should be brought forward in the budget to provide training for young people. However, I have to challenge the motives of the government and the lack of preparation and consideration of the needs of young Australians it has shown with this policy. If there has been a need to provide greater training, why has it taken 10 long years after the election of the Howard government to do anything about it? Australia will only continue to prosper on the basis of genuine skills, knowledge and capability. When governments consider the photo opportunity needs of marginal members over the needs of those who are marginalised in our society, democracy fails.

The Acting Deputy President:

We may have to review Hansard, because I think you referred to a member in the other place as a ‘pork chop’ or something, which is unfortunate and outside standing orders—

Jeannie Ferris (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Rude and crude and quite unnecessary!

Honourable Senators:

Honourable senators interjecting—

The Acting Deputy President:

Order! I think the matter is such that I might have to refer it to the President.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Even for someone of Senator Sterle’s limited ability, that speech was really an embarrassment to all of us in this chamber. To use words like ‘drongo’ and ‘pork chop’ to advance his argument simply reflects more on the speaker than on the people he was accusing. Mr Randall, to whom he was referring, leaves Senator Sterle for dead when it comes to representing his constituents and doing a good job for the people of Western Australia. Senator Sterle’s speech was obviously written by the union to which he is beholden for his position here and he could not even say his jokes without reading them from the text prepared by the union. Totally in contravention of standing orders, Senator Sterle read every single word of his speech, even the jokes that one would have hoped anyone with a modicum of wit could have done spontaneously.

I do not want to spend my speech reflecting on the embarrassment of the speech before mine but I just highlight Senator Sterle’s argument against the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006. Do you know what his argument is? It is that all the teachers that work there will be forced into AWAs. That is what Senator Sterle says this bill is about. It is to force teachers to take AWAs. There was nothing about the skills shortages in Australia which desperately need attending to. I am sorry that Senator Sterle is leaving, because if he were to stay and listen he might learn something about the bill and the skills shortages.

He might want to reflect on when this skills shortage started. It was in those 13 long years of Labor control of this country when unemployment rose and when it was made so difficult for employers to take on apprentices. That is when the skills shortage that we currently have started. It was never a big issue in Labor days because unemployment was so high that there were a lot of skilled people unemployed in those days. Labor simply could not get it right. Business was strangled by the unions, and inept government at federal level and the unemployment level meant that there was no shortage of skilled labour. You were very lucky if you could get a job, whether you were skilled or otherwise. That is Labor’s legacy when it comes to skills and workplace relations.

We are in a position now where, because of the great work of Peter Costello and John Howard, we almost have over full employment in this country. Business in all forms is booming and there is a definite employment shortage in most parts of Australia and certainly a huge skills shortage—and I want to highlight a couple of those later on. Senator Sterle’s commentary seemed to be an attempt to attack the Western Australian Liberal members of parliament in the House of Representatives. If that is the best that the Labor Party can do—to try to attack the great work that all of those Liberal MHRs from Western Australia are doing—then I feel for the Labor Party. Not only will they make no inroads against the sitting Liberal members, I predict, but my understanding is that there will be a couple of Labor seats in Western Australia that will fall to the Liberal Party again at the next election. When they put up people like Senator Sterle to try and run the battle we know they are running up the white flag.

This bill is a wonderful news bill. It is all about bringing forward the funding for the Australian technical colleges from the 2008-09 funding year to 2006-07. What a wonderful thing to have an amending bill for. The whole process has gone much more quickly and smoothly than was even anticipated by the promoters and those who initiated this wonderful program of the Howard government. We have to bring forward the funding because the technical colleges have progressed at such a great rate and we need the money earlier. To date, the Australian government has announced 21 successful technical college proposals. Four of them—in Gladstone, Eastern Melbourne, the Gold Coast and Port Macquarie—have already commenced operations. Another, in northern Tasmania—your state, Acting Deputy President Watson—will open this month. Most of the others are scheduled to open in 2007. Australian technical colleges will be up and running in North Brisbane, Adelaide South, Bendigo, Bairnsdale-Sale, Perth South and, I am delighted to add, North Queensland.

I am concerned, as are all others on this side, about the lack of skilled labour in Australia. As I said, the lack of skilled people really relates back to the Labor days, when they did nothing about this and discouraged apprenticeships and employment opportunities. Recently, my Liberal Party Senate colleagues from Queensland and I were in Charleville, in south-western Queensland—a little town with 3,000 or 4,000 people, right out in the west. If you go a bit further, you reach Cunnamulla and then Birdsville, so it is really right out there. Would you believe the big problem in that town is the lack of skilled people in the meat processing industry? That little town has two wonderful meat processing factories in operation. The first is operated by a group called Western Exports. They slaughter goats. They cannot keep up with the demand for goat meat around the world. They export all of their product to the USA. Exports to the USA are tariff free—another benefit of the free trade agreement with the USA.

Of the goats that are processed through that factory, 70 per cent are farmed and 30 per cent are feral. That processing plant suffers for only one reason: they cannot get labour to work in the factory. They have advertised everywhere. They currently employ 150 people; they need another 50. Of the 150 people currently working there, 10 families are from Vietnam. They are in Australia under section 457 visas. The meat processing plant management want more people. From memory, they have arranged for another 10 employees to come to their town. Regrettably, because of spoilt-brat unions’ operations, I think you would say—unions very closely scrutinise all of the section 457 invitees to Australia—the process in dealing with the ones who are desperately needed to keep this processing plant going has been very slow. I have spoken to the minister about it. She understands the need, and her department is working through the applications. It is a slow process because the checking has to be very careful.

All of the people coming in are skilled people, because we do not have skilled meat processing workers in Australia who are able to do the job. The section 457 visa holders are paid the standard wage that all of the, you might say, home-grown Australian processors, whom they work with side-by-side in this factory, are paid. They get something like $37,000 a year. It is a great industry, a great employment generator for south-west Queensland, a great Australian enterprise, and it is harmed because we cannot get people to actually work in the processing factory.

In my inspection of the plant not only did I see a few Vietnamese people—of course, there are mainly Australian born and bred workers—but I was delighted to see a significant number of Indigenous people working in the factory as skilled boners and slicers. Some of the product is slaughtered so that it is halal and can be used in Islamic communities in the United States, where the product goes. It is a great industry, suffering only because we cannot get the labour from within Australia to those places.

I congratulate the owner of Western Exports, Neil Duncan—a guy who had a vision, some enthusiasm and a bit of courage and took the step of building this new processing plant. I wish him all the best. I will certainly be doing what I can to help him get the additional labour that he needs. These Australian technical colleges may, in time to come, help with his problem. The ATCs are a good initiative of the government and will perhaps into the future help us with this skills shortage.

The good news story from Charleville does not stop there. Almost right next door to the Western Exporters processing plant is another processing plant, operated by United Game Processors and a Mr John Burey. They process kangaroos and wild pig—boars. Again, they cannot keep up with demand. They have orders mainly from Europe. Germany is their biggest customer in the wild pig area. A lot of the kangaroo meat goes to Europe. Would you believe, Mr Acting Deputy President, that Russia is Australia’s No. 1 kangaroo meat importer and they imported over $11 million worth of Australian kangaroo meat in 2004, making it, according to the Moscow Times, the largest recipient of Australia’s exports? I am told the majority of this meat was sold in eastern Russia for use in sausage processing.

Exporting kangaroo meat has been going on since 1959 in response to interest from the European game meat industry. Kangaroo skins and furs are exported in large numbers to markets in Europe, the United States and Asia. We export kangaroo meat to 21 countries around the world. I love kangaroo meat. It is very healthy. It is lean and, when cooked properly, it will surpass in my humble opinion any other meat product. My wife is one of those who always object to, as she says, eating the national coat of arms; she will not eat kangaroo or emu. But kangaroos are at times of the year in plague proportions. They are very carefully regulated by the Queensland environment authorities, supported by the Commonwealth environment authorities. It is a great industry. There is no problem with the sustainability of the kangaroo population. Not only does it provide a very healthy meat for Australians but it also employs a lot of people in western Queensland.

I have mentioned that there are 150 people employed in the processing plant in Charleville, but there are many more employed in other areas of the industry. I am sorry—150 in the goat factory and about 50 in the kangaroo and pig factory at the moment. But Mr Burey suffers, as does his neighbour, from the inability to get qualified, skilled people working for him. His constant problem in operating his business is how to say very nicely to people who want the product: ‘Sorry. I can’t supply you.’ It is a great problem to have, and his other problem is getting the skilled labour so he can supply the product that is needed from his area.

In addition to the people employed in those processing plants—the wild pig and kangaroo one and the next-door one processing goats—and the labour created in that small western town, there are any number of shooters, transport operators and other people involved in that business which creates employment in western Queensland. Because I think, as a nation, we need to help as much as we can those small country towns so they remain in existence, I totally support the work being done there. I congratulate both of the processors. I wish them all the very best for the future. They are great Australian enterprises that we need to support. I think this bill deserves support. It is a great bill to be supporting—one that has shown we made a mistake about when we would need the money. We have to bring forward the money that is needed, and I urge senators to support the bill.

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

I also want to make a contribution in relation to the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006 before the chamber. I must say it is not surprising to hear at least one of the senators on the other side of the chamber get up and make the accusation that the Hawke-Keating government is to blame for our skills crisis. After all, the government have made a feature out of blaming the Hawke and Keating governments for everything that has gone wrong while they have been in government, despite the fact they have been in government for 10 years. If something goes wrong it is still the fault of the Hawke-Keating government. I did not hear Senator Ian Macdonald go back to 1983 and tell us about the contribution the current Prime Minister made to unemployment in this country when he was the Treasurer—11½ per cent unemployed, and with a much smaller labour market than today.

I did not hear Senator Macdonald talk about the contribution the Hawke and Keating governments made in the eighties to structurally changing the nature of our economy and our workforces that made the workforces more productive, created greater flexibility, and provided the opportunity for our manufacturing sector to get into export markets and grow exports of elaborately transformed manufactures from something like about three per cent at the end of the eighties to some 18 per cent in 1996 when this government came to power. I did not hear Senator Macdonald tell us that those ETMs have now dropped back to about 3½ per cent under this government. All of the sacrifice the workforce made in the eighties and nineties to change the nature of the Australian economy has been sacrificed under this government. We have gone back virtually to where we were in the mid-eighties. He was very keen to blame the Hawke and Keating governments for the skills crisis. Anyone with any modicum of commonsense would know that that is absolute nonsense.

The reason we have a skills crisis in this country today is that when this government came to power in 1996 it introduced a series of what can only be described as mickey mouse responses in trying to deal with getting people into apprenticeships. We had traineeships. We had New Apprenticeships. They changed the rules every couple of years or every 18 months. They destroyed the stability of the apprenticeship system over that period of time. We know that you cut funding to TAFEs by some eight per cent and that 300,000 fewer people now are able to access our TAFE system than was the case in 1996. It was a deliberate strategy by the government to cut funding to TAFE when they came to office in 1996 which has resulted in TAFE not being able to accommodate those people.

The reality is that we know we are going to lose something like 150,000 tradespeople out of the industry over the next 10 years, and we know under this current government there will be around only 30,000 new tradespeople trained to replace them. Those are the facts of life. That is the crisis that has been bubbling away in our economy for a considerable period of time. This government sat around on its hands for three or four years knowing this situation was developing and it did nothing to address the issue. Belatedly at the last election we got this proposal for 25 technical colleges, of which I understand only five are up and running. We made the point at the time the announcement was made by the Prime Minister that, even if they got all the colleges up and running in the first year, no tradespeople would come out of them until 2010-11. Even in terms of the proposal before the Senate, the impact on our economy and on the skills shortages will be minimal in the short term.

I understand this bill is to bring forward the funding, to get these colleges up and running much quicker, and the Labor Party has indicated it will support it. In terms of the contribution that these technical colleges are going to make to dealing with our skills crisis, no-one in the Australian economy should hold their breath waiting for it to happen quickly, because it will not. There are plenty of examples around of other facilities that could have been utilised that would have got skills training up and running much more quickly than this proposition that was put before the people by the current Prime Minister.

The reality is we have a skills crisis in this country today which can be sheeted home to this government for its neglect of a critical issue and the deliberate cut to the funding of the TAFE system, which was the best placed of all to deal with the rapid training and skilling-up of young Australians. What have we seen emerging as a result of this? The advent of section 457 visas, supposedly to bring skilled migrants into the country to try and deal with the skills crisis. On this side of the chamber, we have raised numerous issues with the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Senator Vanstone, about the fact that many of these migrants are not skilled. They are not being brought in to deal with skills shortages. They are being used as an additional labour force. Many of them are being employed in low-skill jobs and unskilled jobs, despite the fact that we are being told they are here to deal with the skills crisis.

I would be the last one to stand up in this place and oppose migrants coming to this country. I was a migrant myself back in 1965. With the goodwill of the government, they paid the £10 to get me here, so I cannot complain at all. I think they got a reasonable return on their investment over the years! I have nothing against migrants coming in. It is a question about the rules under which they come into the country and how they are processed, and whether they are being used in order to build our society or whether they are being used to supplant people in this country getting access to training, picking up skills and being able to fill those jobs. I suspect it is the latter.

We have already seen the scramble that the minister for immigration is in at the moment over the section 457 visas. They are trying to make policy on the run to deal with the myriad issues that have been raised in relation to the way in which those visas are being exploited by unscrupulous labour hire companies to get cheap labour into this country and to exploit labour from other countries to deal with our skills crisis. That is also denying young Australians the opportunity to get training in the skills area, to get apprenticeships and to get themselves onto a career path that will sustain them in the longer term.

There has been very little or nothing done about developing policies and strategies that will substantially increase the pick-up of young people—and I am talking about young people in the 16- to 20-year age group—into the apprenticeship system and skill them up for jobs in sustainable industries. All the focus again, as is always the case with this government, has been on short-termism. These technical colleges, in my view, will not radically alter those sets of circumstances. And we will again condemn a whole generation of young people to having to operate at the bottom end of the labour market, when they could have had the opportunity of being trained in skills that would have equipped them for much more rewarding, satisfying and higher paying jobs.

The issue of skills is a critical one for our economy. But this government could not even introduce the technical colleges proposal, albeit with the deficiencies it has, without playing politics with it. They had to tag on industrial relations requirements for the staff of those colleges as part of the deal. They had to use the introduction of the colleges to get out there and force their ideological agenda on industrial relations on the poor unfortunates that are going to be employed in those colleges training young people. They could not resist the opportunity to do that. They had to take the opportunity to whack the potential employees of those colleges, in order to try and promote the take-up of their industrial relations system, and turned them into a battleground. Instead of giving primary focus to getting people employed in those colleges, to getting the colleges up and running and to getting our young people trained, the government had to go back and use the process of introducing them as part of the elements driving their industrial relations agenda. That is unfortunate because I think it has, in a number of areas, retarded the ability to get some of those colleges up and running faster than they otherwise would have been.

As I said, the Labor Party have indicated that we will be supporting this bill. But I want to make a number of points about what Labor have said we will do in this area—because we actually have some credibility in the area of training and development of skills. We are committed to creating a modern TAFE system. We are committed to making the TAFE system work and ensuring the system works in the best interests of all those people in our community who need access to that training. Labor’s blueprint will offer some real solutions. We will be offering young people more choice by teaching trades, technology and science in first-class facilities rather than in Dickensian workshop environments. We will be establishing a Trades in Schools scheme to double school based apprenticeships in skills shortage areas. We will be establishing specialist schools for senior years in trades, technology and science. We will be establishing a Trades Taster program for year 9 and 10 students to experience a range of trade options. We will be introducing a trade skills completion bonus to ensure that young people are encouraged not just to enter into the trades but to complete them and to walk away with their papers. And we will be opening up a skills account for them to assist them with their fees, their books and their equipment for the traditional trades.

Labor actually does have policy solutions in hand that will address the skills crisis. Unfortunately, the problem has been allowed to wander on so long that it is not capable of being addressed overnight; it is not capable of being addressed in the short term. It is going to take a considerable amount of resources and energy being put into this sector—first to reverse the trend and then to see the development and growth of skilled workers coming out of that process. This government’s agenda, through the technical colleges, will not go anywhere near addressing those issues. Labor’s program will reverse the trend that is occurring now, will start the process of seeing growth in the development of skilled workers and will eventually resolve the skills crisis that currently faces this country.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is normally my practice to thank senators who have made a contribution to the debate. But I think today, given some of those contributions, I can merely acknowledge them—particularly the contribution of Senator Sterle, which would be one of the most embarrassing presentations that I have seen in my time in this place. It was on a particularly embarrassing day for the Labor Party, when their leader does not have the self-discipline and strength to ignore a jibe from a government backbencher. It shows poor leadership, and that was followed by Senator Sterle today.

The presentations by opposition senators here today really demonstrate that they just do not understand what the Australian technical colleges are all about. The opposition are more about the process of the system than they are about the students within the system. One of the reasons that I am so enthusiastic about an Australian technical college is the opportunities that it will provide for students who go through that system into the future. I am one of those who completed an apprenticeship in the 1970s. I went through trade training, through the traditional TAFE process, with people who had generally left school at grade 10. A lot of those people never had the opportunity to complete grade 12 to get that additional qualification that would give them access to tertiary or higher education into the future. They would have to go back and do that subsequent to their trades.

It really is a new innovation in education. And for Labor in particular to be so steadfastly stuck in the past in relation to traditional trade training—and trade training is what this is all about—is quite a significant thing. The Labor Party wants to stick with the old way of doing things through TAFE. It is interesting to note that in most states TAFE is in fact a significant partner of the Australian technical colleges. The Australian technical colleges are buying services from the TAFE system. What this is about is a new way of doing things. It is about providing the training that industry wants and also providing opportunities for students into the future so that once they have completed their trade training, once they have moved into their trade, they have the opportunity to move on to further education. It is about real opportunities for students, not just about the system.

It is also a pity that Labor are not prepared to accept—and I can understand them not being prepared to accept—the role that the Keating government played in the current skills shortage. They cannot deny that that is the case. The ‘recession that we had to have’ put a lot of people out of work and took a lot of work and business away from industry and businesses around the country. Once the economy started to turn up, the demand for labour started to increase and, of course, the demand for trainees and training then started to increase.

I can give a very good example of that. The construction industry in Tasmania was decimated through the nineties, partly through the actions of the Field Labor government, which cut the government construction budget significantly; it took $40 million out of that budget when it came to government in the early 1990s. But, to give it credit, the Field Labor government was looking at dealing with a significant budget problem. The ‘recession that we had to have’ absolutely knocked the life out of the construction industry in Tasmania. It was not until late 2002 or early 2003 that the construction industry in Tasmania started to revive, on the back of the economic growth of the country and the decision to purchase some new ships to ply the Bass Strait trade which was supported by the Australian government with the Bass Strait Passenger Vehicle Equalisation Scheme. The impact of that growth in demand is clearly demonstrated by apprentice numbers in the carpentry and joinery trade in Tasmania. In 2002, there were 150 apprentices being trained in carpentry and joinery in Tasmania. Last year there were 700. That is a 450 per cent increase in the number of apprentice carpenters and joiners. The demand that came out of the industry has driven the growth in demand and training for apprentices. Carpentry and joinery is one of the trades that will be part of the Australian technical college based in northern Tasmania.

At this point, I will pay tribute to the efforts of Michael Ferguson and Mark Baker, who did enormous work in supporting the introduction of an Australian technical college in northern Tasmania. In fact, without the work of Mark Baker the likelihood is that there would not be a campus of the Australian technical college on the north-west coast in Burnie. That is a significant achievement by one member of the government in grasping the nettle. As a trained apprentice carpenter himself, Mr Baker understood the need, he understood the process and he grasped the opportunity. He went out and created for the north-west coast of Tasmania a campus for an Australian technical college. Mr Baker deserves the credit, and the congratulations of his constituents, for doing that.

Given what the opposition speakers have said, one might have thought that nothing was happening as far as the Australian technical colleges go. The reality is that this is all about bringing forward the funding for the legislation—

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Wong interjecting—

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, Senator Wong, I am watching the time. There are a few points I have to make yet; I am sure you understand. This is about bringing the funding forward for the Australian technical colleges. I think that needs to be recognised. As I said, this is not a duplication of existing arrangements. It is about providing opportunities—except, might I say, in New South Wales, since the New South Wales government has actively refused to be involved in the Australian technical colleges. That refusal is reflected in the trade training in Australian school based apprenticeships in New South Wales: since 1996, there has not been one Australian based apprenticeship commencement in New South Wales.

The Labor Party talk about politics, but they might also talk to their state colleagues who have been actively working against the introduction of the Australian technical colleges. Then, when the Labor Party start talking about the rate at which the colleges are being rolled out, they might understand that there is a real opportunity for the Labor state governments to come on board and assist the rollout of the technical colleges, which will make a difference not only to trade training but also to the opportunities for students who go through the system in the future. I think that is probably one of the most important elements of this whole process. This bill is a reflection of the government’s commitment to providing opportunities for young Australians choosing to take up a traditional trade and a long-term response to the needs of industries and regional communities. I commend the bill to the Senate.

John Watson (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that Senator Wong’s amendment be agreed to.

Question negatived.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.