Mr CHARLES(3.59 p.m.) —I rise to join in this debate with some amazement. We have just heard a diatribe from the member for Batman (Mr Martin Ferguson) which would take us back to the Great Depression. He talks about everything that was wrong then and how wonderful everything was under a Labor government. He sat in office with the ACTU and did everything possible to prevent young people from getting jobs, from getting real structured training, from learning new trades and from learning to participate in the life of their nation. We have today one of the highest youth unemployment rates this nation has ever seen. It is an absolute disgrace. We know it is a disgrace, and this government is going to try to do something about it.

We have also just heard from the member for Lyons (Mr Adams). The member for Lyons seems to assume that this government, in attempting to make some changes that would benefit young people, is out to destroy them—we are going to beat up on them and we are going to force them into slave wages. Let me tell the member for Lyons something: people work for fair value. Employers in this nation well know that they are not going to get good productive work, nor are they going to improve their own employment situations, if they do not pay decent wages and offer people decent conditions. We all know that. It is axiomatic.

Our social safety nets in this country, applied through the social security department, allow people a living wage. If people cannot get enough income at work to support themselves, then they will live on the dole instead. What a nonsense to say that we will put up a proposal to try to disadvantage young people who have been so demonstrably disadvantaged under a Labor government over the last 13 years!

Let us talk about some of the problems we face today in vocational education and training. They are substantial, and I will tell you what: in the eight minutes that I have left to speak, I will not even come close to covering them. Let us start at years 9 and 10 in secondary schools. We have a demonstrable problem in that we are losing out of years 9 and 10 a number of students who are leaving school at that very early age—not to enter the job market and/or to go on the dole. We are just losing them. We do not know where they are going, but we know that they are disappearing out of the school system. They are bored because there is no structured work for them to do and there is no training that appeals to them. They are the ones who are going to wind up on the streets as the homeless and, ultimately, are going to wind up in the dole queues; they may be those who wind up on drugs or alcohol and with other problems; and they may wind up in the courts and in the justice system.

We have to do something for those kids. I am worried to death about them. It really frightens me. Under the Labor government, our school system has moved away from a concept that we once had—that there were two streams, if you like, to education. One of the streams was basically those who wanted a good general education, for whatever purpose, and then went on to CAEs or universities in order to get further education and further training. The other stream did both academic studies and vocational trade training at school. The member for Lyons knows that, but the government of the day did away with it. Some time in the 1970s they said that vocational training was second-class education for second-class kids, and they wiped it. Late in the piece, the last government finally started to catch on—after 13 years of failure—that the skills base was disappearing, that we were losing skilled tradesmen and that we were losing our capacity to attract people into vocational training. So you started to make some changes.

We need for those kids in years 9 and 10 a program that will offer them a couple of days a week at work in some structured training, including training in life skills—how to get up on time in morning, how to be at the job on time, how to brush your teeth, how to use deodorant, how to present yourself as acceptable to the rest of society, how to stay at work until finish time, how to produce some thing while you are there, as well as how to get on with your work colleagues and do something decent for the company in which you participate—and two days a week in general education at high school. We have tried a pilot program at Berwick High School in my electorate which has become so successful that we desperately need funding for it. They have heaps of kids that they believe are at risk of leaving the school system and being lost out there in the never-never, unrecoverable for a long time.

I will tell you another thing about this group of young people: they generally have very poor literacy and numeracy skills. That will follow them all the rest of their lives. There is a real link between non-attendance at school and lack of literacy. We find links between those who are abusive at school to their fellow students, whether it is violence or whether it is verbal harassment, and poor literacy skills. If you go and talk to the youth organisations, they say that there is a real link between those who are on the streets and need help and those who have poor literacy and numeracy skills. These are young people that needed to have a better go at primary school.

Beyond this, in years 11 and 12 we are trying to create some structural training, real vocational education and training, that gives the kids a certificate which they can use as part of their time already spent in TAFE or in a private training institution.

For instance, a young person who wants a career in the hospitality industry, as part of their VCE in Victoria, can go to school and take a hospitality course and they can get credit for having done that course which gives them time off in either an apprenticeship, a hospitality traineeship or some other courses they want to do at TAFE.

There is such a huge proliferation of training mechanisms, devices and authorities all over this country that nobody understands the system. I defy you to tell me one expert in Australia—be it a single official in the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, the minister herself, or the member for Goldstein, the Minister for Schools, Vocational Education and Training (Dr Kemp), who is now sitting on the front bench—who would be able to name all of the training programs in Australia. There are something like 89 or 90, maybe even more. Some of those are designed to help the unemployed, some are designed for training, some are designed to provide links between high school and tertiary qualifications and some are just mickey mouse courses to recycle unemployed people from one course to another so they can continue to get their unemployment benefits. And that goes on and on. What we need is a rational, structured and objective training mechanism in Australia. It needs to have some semblance of sense. And we will address that.

There has been some confusion in this debate about what the member for Goldstein had to say yesterday, and let me tell you. I will read you a little bit of his speech.

Mr Martin Ferguson —Have a look at the new bill.

Mr CHARLES —You talked about what he said in his speech on page 9. Read what he said on page 8. He said:

The Workplace Relations Act will provide an authority to be able to determine the proportions of time spent in productive work and training for particular traineeships and apprenticeships developed under the modern Australian apprenticeship and traineeship system. The involvement of an approving authority—

Are you listening to this?

Mr Martin Ferguson —I've got the definition. Have you seen it? Have a look at it.

Mr CHARLES —Just listen. Mr Deputy Speaker, ask him to listen. It states:

The involvement of an approving authority will ensure fairness—

understand that word `fairness'?—

for both the employer and employee.

That is what it is all about, is it not? We want to give young people a break. You talk about the apprenticeship system. Let me tell you that under the previous government apprenticeships and traineeships fell so dramatically that it was not even funny. That is one of the reasons why we have so many unemployed young people. If it were not for the group training scheme—fair dinkum—the number of apprenticeships in this country would be absolutely diabolical.

The Minister for Schools, Vocational Education and Training is trying to create opportunities for young people to participate in the training market, to get structured training off the job and to have jobs where they get paid equitably and fairly for what they do but to give them an opportunity to be employed. Really, if we go down the route of the member for Batman, we will have a commissar for education and training, a commissar for employment and we will put everyone into a box, tell them how to perform and tell them what to do. (Time expired)

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Jenkins) —Order! The discussion is now concluded.