Ms KATE ELLIS (2:57 PM) —My question is to the Minister for Vocational and Technical Education. Does the minister support special levies or taxes to fund industry strategies dealing with the acute national skill shortage?

Mr HARDGRAVE (Minister for Vocational and Technical Education and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister) —I thank the member for Adelaide for her question. The short answer is: no, we are not going down the pathway that the Australian Labor Party had in place where they were taxing businesses in order to try and drive a training agenda. In fact, this government is instead going down the path of encouraging good partnerships with industry to take some of the responsibility, along with the state and territory governments, for the business of ensuring that more people are involved in taking up trade based apprenticeships around Australia. We have had quite a deal of success in this. We have seen enormous numbers of new apprenticeships developed over the last few years. Under the Australian Labor Party, the number of trade based apprenticeships plummeted from 160,990 in 1990 to 107,000 in 1994. Today there are 146,400 trade apprentices in training. We are driving an agenda that is undoing a lot of the mess of the previous government's neglect. Unfortunately, what we are finding—

Mr HARDGRAVE —The member for Jagajaga is interrupting, but there has been a 250 per cent increase in the number of new apprenticeships in her own electorate. The other key point is that all around Australia today we have state governments driving up TAFE charges—charges up front. The up-front fees that are charged to new apprentices are going up all around the country. For instance, there has been a 50 per cent increase in South Australia and a 300 per cent increase in New South Wales. The Victorian government has driven them up as well. But the latest insult to injury has happened: the Bracks Labor government in Victoria now wants to charge apprentices $30 to receive their completion certificates. So here we have people who have put it all on the line, worked hard and gained an apprenticeship and, in order to get the piece of paper to say they have done the job, the Bracks government wants to charge them $30 for that certificate.

I therefore welcome the member for Adelaide's question, because it does raise the question—it is another one of those the Treasurer would call a `Kylie', I suppose. It is time for the Leader of the Opposition to pick up the phone and ring Steve Bracks, the Premier of Victoria, and tell him to ease the squeeze on apprenticeships and to end the `Bracks whack'. But of course the Leader of the Opposition probably cannot pick up that phone and guarantee he will get put through, so maybe a certain Labor senator from Victoria, Senator Conroy, can do it for him.