Mr CHARLES (3:13 PM) —My question without notice is to the Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Could the minister please inform the House of government initiatives to increase the training levels and numbers of apprentices in traditional trades, and could he tell us something about the trends in this area compared to past trends? Minister, while you are at it, are you aware of any alternative plans for training apprentices?

Dr KEMP (Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) —I thank the member for La Trobe for his question. I recognise the great contribution that he has made to the training system. The latest estimates suggest that there are around 140,000 new apprentices in traditional trades. That is growth of around 15 per cent since this government has been in office. We are very keen to see more of these apprentices in traditional trades, which have modernised and which offer really good starts to careers for young people. The government is working with the manufacturing, electrical and automotive industries to find ways to grow these numbers to further alleviate skills shortages in the traditional trades.

This is a very significant turnaround from the time when the Labor Party was in office, and indeed from the time when the Leader of the Opposition was education minister for two yearstwo dead, wasted years in educational policy. When he was minister for education, the numbers in traditional apprenticeships collapsed. He was a disaster, as we know, in every portfolio he held. Before he moved on to the ministry of finance and pumped up the budget deficit, and fresh from concluding the Collins class submarine contracts, he paused for a couple of years in education. What did battleship Beazley achieve in education? He sank 20,000 traditional apprenticeships. His record in education was to destroy traditional apprenticeships. He has no credibility on education. He has no policy on education, and as the Sydney Morning Herald wrote in its editorial yesterday, he will not be credible as long as he relies on `uninformed populism rather than an informed reform agenda'.