Mr ABBOTT (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs)(9.31 p.m.) —It is my pleasure to sum up the bill and conclude the debate. It has been a long and interesting debate, especially given that the bill itself, at least in so far as divisions are concerned, has been uncontentious. I suppose there have been three issues that have been touched on in the course of the debate. The first is the abolition of the training guarantee levy. The second is the provision of further funds to the open learning initiative, and the third is the provision of an additional $20 million for capital grants to non-government schools.

There is bipartisan support for the abolition of the training guarantee levy. All of us, in a sense, have come here to bury that particular Caesar—except for the member for Batman (Mr Martin Ferguson), who came not so much to bury Caesar but to praise him. The member for Batman seemed to think the training guarantee levy was a great measure. It was so good that it was dropped by the previous government of which he was such a great supporter! The problem with the training guarantee levy was not the concept or the principle, but the practice. In 1993 the Good Weekend said:

Three years down the track, the act—

that is, the act establishing the training guarantee levy—

has spawned an industry in which absailing down a cliff is called team-building; in which cosmetics demonstrations are training for receptionists; in which gym membership is written off as a stress management program; and in which the definition of a corporate classroom is a five-star resort with a flying fox.

That was the training guarantee levy that the member for Batman praised so much. In 1992, the tax office released the results of a survey which found that 70 per cent of companies said that the levy had served only to create more administrative work; 63 per cent said that they were spending the same or less on training as a result of the legislation. This is the work of the former Labor government of which they are so proud.

A survey by Monash University's David Syme, Faculty of Business, found that after two years of operation only four per cent of companies had anything positive to say about the training levy; 60 per cent said the levy was not effective or hardly effective; and nine per cent admitted that they had undertaken unnecessary training just to fulfil the requirements. I guess the most outrageous example was that of the New South Wales Employers Federation, which planned a four-day training seminar on a luxury river boat with four-hour lunch breaks and piggyback races in the afternoon. That is the kind of thing that the training guarantee levy created. It is no wonder that members opposite are so anxious to see this embarrassment dead and buried.

There are many labour market programs that both sides of this House could support. Like the member for Batman and members opposite, I, too, have seen labour market programs in action. I have seen the participants. I have seen the new hope, the new joy and the new exuberance on their faces; and, believe me, it warms the cockles of my hard, conservative heart to see it. It is splendid. There are many labour market programs that no-one would want to touch. We do not want, on this side of the House, to eliminate labour market programs; we simply want to make them work better, and they can work better.

As my colleague and leader, the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, Senator Vanstone, said, under these programs we have people going in as pool attendants who cannot swim and who are allergic to chlorine. We have, under some jobskill programs, the cost of $76,000 to create a single job. This does not mean all the programs are bad, but it does mean that many of them can be improved.

Members opposite have talked a great deal about cuts. It is interesting, if we are talking about cuts in labour market programs, to see that the 1995-96 budget allocated $2.1 billion for labour market programs. Do you know what happened, Madam Deputy Speaker? Two billion dollars of that money was spent prior to the election; $2 billion of that money was spent trying to buy votes in marginal seats. We have had to borrow $30 million from next year's allocation to keep the existing slate of programs going.

We are all in favour of training. The difference between us and those on the other side of the House is that we are totally committed to on-the-job training; whereas, as the rorts associated with the training guarantee levy made clear, those opposite are more committed to off-the-job training. Under the regime of the training guarantee levy an employer got no recognition whatsoever for taking on 100 apprentices; but if he sent 100 of his executives to Hayman Island for a week, it was a tax deduction. That was the ridiculous situation that operated under the training guarantee levy. I am not saying that it was a complete failure. I am not even saying that it did more harm than good. What I am saying is that it was not worth all the trouble.

We want people to have faith in government on this side of the House; but we want people to have more faith in themselves. We want to build a better training partnership. We do not want to build a bigger training bureau cracy. We all know—because it happens to all of us every day in our constituencies—that people come to us and say, `I'm desperate; please help.' How can government refuse? It is so very difficult to refuse. But the tragedy is that if we always say yes, not only do we create a government which grows into a monster out of control but also, in the end, we totally destroy the self-respect of those people whom we are trying to help. Last week I went down to a youth conference at Mildura organised by the Sunraysia Area Consultative Committee of the Commonwealth Employment Service.

Mr Forrest —Hear, hear!

Mr ABBOTT —I hear the member over there, an excellent member who is well and widely regarded by his constituents. The slightly upsetting thing about all those lovely kids at that seminar was that kid after kid stood up and talked about how someone else had to help them. I agree that we do have to do something for those kids; but not a single one of them used the words of President Kennedy, who said—and they are words worth repeating—`Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.'

The problem with our young people and our labour market programs is not so much financial and it is not so much organisational; at the end of the day the problem is cultural. What this government needs to remind people of is that every single person in this country is good at something, that every single Australian can do well at something and that every single Australian should have a dream; but government cannot give it to them. A dream is the gift that each man or each woman gives to himself or herself. This government is determined to give the Australian people a hand up. But what we must do is break the handout mentality that the previous government, often with the best will in the world, did so much to foster.

The former government, now that they are in opposition, are obsessed with money—money that they constantly say we are not spending. But it is important to realise what money cannot do. Money cannot bring about a change of heart, a change of morale, which in the end is the best solution for our unemployment problems. I want to quote from a report to the federal government by the Schools Council. It said:

The Commonwealth government has never had any substantive evidence as to whether the resources which it has put into schools over the past 20 years have been effective in raising educational standards.

That is a very sad situation. There we have the Schools Council telling us that for all our spending we cannot be sure it has actually raised educational standards. The trouble with the union-dominated approach of members opposite is that they are always telling us that standards are rising when the union members in the schools and the universities are calling for a wage rise, and they are always telling us that standards are falling when they are asking for more money to employ more teachers or academics. The fact is that money is not the answer—a better attitude is. That is something which no amount of money by itself can solve.

We cannot have training for training's sake. I applaud the fact that policies of the previous government helped to raise retention rates from about 30 per cent to about 70 per cent. That is a very significant achievement, and the previous government deserves considerable credit for it. But let's be honest. If those kids leave school to go on the jobless queue, does it really matter whether they leave at year 10 or year 12? I applaud so many of the labour market programs that the previous government put into place. But, if at the end of them there are no jobs for those kids to go to, are we simply raising their expectations only to dash their hopes?

Sadly, notwithstanding so much good work by so many tens of thousands of people—some in the private sector; some in the public sector—at the end of 13 years of Labor government we have so many programs doing so much good work but we also have, at the heart of it, an alphabet soup of muddle. There are something like 80 separate programs administered by the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs. We do not know just how much good most of them are doing. There is a blizzard of acronyms that people must wade through to try to understand exactly what is going on. I want to stress the good work that is being done by the department, by state governments, by local governments and by people in private business—many of whom are giving up hours of their time to help our people. What this government wants to do is ensure that there is a better return for all that good work.

The sad thing about much of this debate is that speakers opposite have been living in the past. They have been trying to defend the record of the previous government. There was some good and some bad in that, but it has gone. It is a government which has gone. This government has hardly begun, yet listening to members opposite you would think that the world as we know it has come to an end. We have not had time for that. The fact is that we are getting on with the job of trying to ensure that the money we put into these programs is getting the result the Australian people deserve.

A few particular points were made by speakers opposite, which I would like to take in turn. Wages policy is one example. The member for Batman, leading off for the opposition, attacked the wages policy of the new government. We all know what the wages policy of the previous government was. The former Prime Minister boasted day after day at the dispatch box that he had kept wages down. That is no answer to the Australian people. Our policy is to allow people to earn the best wages of which they are capable. It is to allow people to strike the best deals they can between themselves and their bosses.

Members opposite, such as the member for Calwell (Dr Theophanous), talked about university cuts. There have been no university cuts. Let me just refer you to some facts. Here I have Macquarie University announcing today an $8.8 million surplus or profit in 1995. That is not a bad result, and I applaud them for their work. I also have, from one of today's newspapers, North Queensland's James Cook University admitting that it is $20 million in the red. That is no good at all but, notwithstanding that, they say that they could manage a federal funding cut of up to seven per cent. I am not saying there are going to be cuts; I am not saying that at all. What I am saying is that, whatever happens, it is hardly going to be the end of the world as we know it for those universities.

The member for Batman talked a lot about wages policy. I have great hopes for the member for Batman. He is a fine man, but even the previous Prime Minister had a certain basic honesty. The previous Prime Minister knew that the real author of the 1982-83 recession was not John Winston Howard; it was George Campbell. It was George Campbell of the metalworkers union who had those 700,000 unemployed people hanging around his neck. What is the Labor Party doing to George Campbell? They are making him a senator. That is what they are doing. That is how they reward the author of the 1983 recession.

We all know that wages fell under the ALP. We have all heard their claims about an unprecedented explosion of jobs. Yes, there was a great splurge of job creation. The tragedy is that most of it was part time.

I heard the member for Batman attack at the beginning of his speech what he described as coalition plans to amalgamate the department of social services and the Commonwealth Employment Service offices all around Australia. I am sorry the member for Hotham (Mr Crean) is not here to hear this, but the Manly CES office in my electorate is closing down. An announcement, if such be the word, was made just the other day by way of a letter from the CES area manager to local members of parliament. Do you know what it was about, Madam Deputy Speaker? The Public Service made a decision to rationalise that office late last year. They did not give a brief to the then minister because they knew that he would be too embarrassed to make a decision in the run-up to the last election, and the Public Service have closed it down. I do not want to stand up here as some kind of poor man's Bagehot, but that strikes me as a grave dereliction of normal Westminster principles and it is something that needs to be sheeted home to the previous government.

The member for Batman talked about the rich mates of the coalition. That was a bit rich. Obviously, he is just a bit jealous that Bill Kelty never invited him along to Solly Lew's place. The fact is that the member for Batman's contribution, wordy in parts all too often, sounded like an election speech, which no-one believed even before the election.

The open learning initiative, which is to be supported by this bill, involves a $30 million investment by the Commonwealth. As a result of that money, we have about 9,000 equivalent full-time student places. That is a good value initiative in anyone's language. I am pleased to say that 75 per cent of those students are passing their courses. It is a splendid way of making degrees available to all.

Finally, the capital grants for non-government schools are, I suppose, the latest chapter in a long Australian saga known once upon a time as state aid—something that was first given in this country by the Menzies government. State aid has been a magnificent social development. It has been, if you like, the final solvent in the Anglo-Irish divide which for so long bedevilled our country. In conclusion I would like to say that, if there is more money to be had, it should go on such a good cause.

Mr Latham —Madam Deputy Speaker, with legislation like this, there should be more members in the House for the second reading vote. I call your attention to the state of the House.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mrs Sullivan) —A quorum not being present, ring the bells. I remind the honourable member that it is not necessary to make a speech when calling a quorum.

Mr Latham —I like to give my reason.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER —I like to give you my reason too: it is not necessary to make a speech when calling a quorum. In fact, it is disorderly. I suggest you do not argue.

(Quorum formed)

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.