HANSARD EXTRACT
|
Ministerial Statements: Skills for the Future |
| 30 October 2006 |
Mr HAYES
(Werriwa)
(4.00
p.m.)—It
is telling that the Prime Minister has recognised his recent
contribution to the skills crisis and categorises it as better late
than never. That is a pretty good summation of how the Prime
Minister has considered the skills debate in this country for the
last decade that he has been in office. The government’s record on
training can only be characterised as appalling. It has long
neglected the need to adequately fund training courses, and
Australia is now suffering. The government’s denial of the crisis,
its willingness to try to paper over the cracks, has only allowed
the training system to deteriorate. Its unwillingness to look beyond
to the national interest means that, quite frankly, people in this
country, young people, have missed out.
A number of government members have contributed to this debate so
far, and many of them have focused on job creation. They have all
marched into this place and sprouted the government’s line about how
many jobs the government has created and how many more
apprenticeships there are. What they have not been gloating about is
how many young people have been turned away from TAFE in the last
decade. They have not been saying anything about the fact that,
under this government’s watch, over 300,000 young Australians have
been turned away from TAFE, while 270,000 skilled workers have been
imported to work in this country.
Also, they have not been crowing about the OECD’s Education at a
glance report, which shows that since 1995
Australia is one of the only countries that has reduced its public
sector investment in education. While other countries have increased
their investment by an average of 48 per cent over that period, this
country has cut spending in that regard by an average of seven per
cent. As a result, teenage unemployment in some areas is at a level
that, quite frankly, has not been seen for a lot of years. In
particular, in my region of Werriwa—but let us talk a little more
broadly and take in Macarthur as well—figures released in September
this year indicate that teenage unemployment is now at 27.9 per
cent, the highest it has been since April 2002.
In the Liverpool-Fairfield area, the figures show that nearly one in
four teenagers is unemployed. When we look further afield, we see
that teenage unemployment in the Illawarra is at a staggering 41 per
cent. These are people who need to be invested in. While I hope that
some residents in the south-west of
Sydney will be able to take advantage of the 30,000 vouchers that
the government proposes in its statement, I fear there are many
people who will simply be left behind. Many people will not have the
opportunity to gain further skills to assist them in finding secure,
long-term employment. While the actions of the government will be
welcomed by some, I know that there will be far too many people who
will remain out in the cold.
I was interested to hear the Prime Minister hold firm to his
commitment of 25 Australian technical colleges in his announcement
about his commitment to training in this country. It is on the
record that I have spoken out against these technical colleges in
the past and I have been of the very clear view that these technical
colleges are nothing but a poor facsimile of the existing TAFE
system. I know they are a poor facsimile because they are the same,
for all intents and purposes, as TAFE, the biggest difference being
the requirement for teachers and staff of the Australian technical
colleges to be engaged on Australian workplace agreements.
As members on both sides of the House realise, the government
introduced the Australian technical colleges solely as a means of
driving forward their industrial relations agenda. It was not about
training opportunities for the young; it was about making sure that
the tentacles of their extreme industrial relations laws extended as
far as they possibly could. They had no inhibition about hooking
onto everything from universities to the Australian TAFE system if
it would further the interest of their industrial agenda.
It seems that the tentacles are not extending quite as far as the
government would like, particularly in
Western Sydney. Recent reports indicate that the Australian
Technical College Western Sydney is in real doubt at the moment. On
16 October this year the ABC’s AM program reported:
The Federal Government’s plan for a network of technical colleges
for teenagers to finish school while completing apprenticeships is
in trouble.
The
Western Sydney College, which was supposed to begin operating next
year, now says it won’t be taking students, and there’s a question
mark over whether it will start up at all.
That means that training opportunities for
Western Sydney people are in real jeopardy. That is of considerable
concern as there are plenty of people in the western suburbs of
Sydney
who would like nothing more than a chance to get into training, get
a trade and target secure and permanent employment. Of course, the
Western Sydney college is not the only technical college that is
struggling to get off the ground at the moment. As AM
reported: ‘Only five of the colleges are operating.’
If this is the commitment of this government to training—if this is
the level of commitment they will bring to introducing their Skills
for the Future package—then, quite frankly, they should not have
bothered. The government’s ‘better late than never’ and ‘she’ll be
right’ attitude to skills has got us where we are today.
Australia is suffering from a skills shortage because of this
government’s inactivity in looking to the future and training young
Australians.
So far under the Australian technical colleges program we have spent
$18 million on 281 students. Those students must be getting some
really good training because that works out at $64,000 each. The
most glaring oversight in the Prime Minister’s statement is that
there is nothing to help young people who want to get into training
and use that training to get a job. There is nothing in his
statement which will address rising levels of teenage unemployment
in the south-west of
Sydney. Once again, the government has abandoned the needs of the
people and the businesses of Western Sydney. What makes matters
worse is that it has tried to simply paper over the cracks which it
has allowed to appear in its system, and the young people of
south-west Sydney are paying a huge price.
Labor has plans for skills, and unlike the government’s plan, you
will not have to wait until you are over 25 to participate and take
advantage. Labor has responded to the need to promote economic
growth and secure prosperity into the future by investing in its
people. We have been talking for a long time on our side of the
House about the need to invest in the future of our young people and
in the economic growth of this country. For some time now we have
known that there are not going to be enough people to fill the
demand for skilled labour into the future. We recognise the problem.
We realise there is going to be a handbrake on growth because we
have a shortage of skilled labour.
Our plans are trying to develop that and making provisions to assist
economic growth through the training and education of our kids as
they attempt to enter the workforce. Labor realises that it is about
time that the trend of taking money away from education is reversed.
Every other advanced economy in the OECD knows that to be the case.
Simply investing in kids is not something we should be doing on the
basis of seeking an immediate return in the next budget period. This
is all about investing in generational growth and long-term economic
security. That is why we have set up a program for investing in
education right through from skills to higher education in this
country—the very things that this government, 10 years ago, set
about reversing once it got involved. This government set us on the
path of reversing the trend that had occurred—that it had inherited
from the Hawke-Keating government.
We know that it is important to invest in our children while they
are at school and to fast-track them through apprenticeships. We
outlined that in the skills blueprint in September. I have had some
personal experience in this. One of my sons was able to be
fast-tracked through trade training through his education while he
was at school. He was able to achieve the first year of a trade
apprentice training while he attended college. It took one whole
year off his TAFE training as an electrician once he left school and
I think it reduced his actual apprenticeship by a further six
months. We know we can do these things, but we do not need to leave
it to a school to do in isolation. This is something that we can
actually plan to do in such a way that all kids are able to
participate, not simply the lucky ones who have a headmaster who is
sufficiently farsighted to think that this is a good way to assist
people into vocational education.
Labor has announced that when in government it will address the
fundamental skills issues: to get people back into traditional
trades; to encourage them to see their apprenticeships through to
the end, and to do that through a trade completion bonus; to scrap
TAFE fees for traditional trades; and to get school students, like
my son, to look at trades as a viable option while they are still at
school. This is something that we on our side of the House are
committed to,
Mr Deputy
Speaker Jenkins, as you are well aware. This is our policy. It is
what our country needs if we are serious about addressing skills
shortages into the future and if we are serious about productivity
growth in our economy.
It is not enough to stand in this place, announce some big spending
proposals and forget about everyone who is not 25 years and over.
This government has consistently sneered at the public contribution
to education. Its approach to cutting rather than contributing began
in 1997 when it implemented massive budget cuts to TAFEs and
universities. And that has continued ever since. In 1998, this
government actually abolished the national skills shortage strategy.
Just today we saw a report by
Monash
University that indicated that, unless the government acts on
university education, gaps are set to emerge among managers,
professionals and associate professionals—now and into the future.
One of the authors, Professor Bob Birrell, is reported as having
said today:
There’s been a decade of neglect of higher education on the part of
the Coalition, and this is now showing up in serious shortages in
the output of graduates from the higher education system ...
Now in a mad rush and flurry to spend—including, of course, for the
obligatory advertising that is attached to this—we have a government
that is out there simply attempting to cover up its 10 years of
neglect of education, higher education and vocational training.
(Time expired)
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