Mr MARTIN FERGUSON (5:45 PM) —I raise in this grievance debate this evening the failure of the Howard government to accept responsibility for failing the Australian community on the issue of skills, both trade and professional. In doing so, I refer the House to the Skills for Work report. This report, released today, is an indictment of the government’s record and failures in the area of vocational education and training. The report reveals in a factual manner that most of the growth in apprenticeships has been in areas where there are no skills shortages and that the share of new apprenticeships in traditional trades, where we have an absolute shortage at the moment, halved from 25 per cent in 1996 to 13 per cent in 2003.

The report suggests that, after nine years of failure in training and skills, the growth of the Australian economy is now severely constrained because of skills shortages, particularly in the trades and engineering. Further, not one but two recent OECD reports have now highlighted the urgency for government and industry to respond to skills shortages in the Australian economy.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the resources sector. I saw this first-hand last week when I undertook a tour of major mining and oil and gas operations in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. That tour showed that Australian mining operations are rapidly responding to the major boom in demand for minerals, yet the major impediment identified by the companies is the lack of skilled and professional employees. On Friday it was reported that plans to reopen the Western Australian Bronzewing goldmine are to be abandoned because of acute skills shortages. How many more Bronzewings are needed before the Howard government starts to accept its responsibility for the need to do something real about training in the traditional apprenticeships area and for assisting industry with respect to some of the professional careers available?

The issue of resources is important. I say that because some reports indicate that $20 billion worth of major infrastructure and resources projects could be in jeopardy as a result of skills shortages primarily in the trades and engineering areas. This is a sector we as a nation must keep healthy. Over the decade to 2003-04, the value of exports from the minerals and energy sector grew by 95 per cent, reflecting just how important this sector is to Australia’s export performance. More than 25 per cent of Australia’s total exports now come from the resources sector. In addition, the sector contributes $34 billion gross value-added and 4.6 per cent to Australia’s total GDP, and over $4 billion to government revenue through royalties alone. Surely it is about time for the Howard government to get real about trying to assist this sector of the Australian community with trade training. In that context, late last year there were nearly 22,000 unfilled vacancies for tradespersons in Australia, and it is estimated that skills shortages could cost the Australian economy $9 billion in lost output over the coming decade. While both industry and state and federal governments have a role to play in addressing these issues, it is the Howard government that has been spectacular in its failure to plan for Australia’s future. Tens of thousands of young Australians have been turned away from TAFE each year. The failure by the Howard government to rise to the challenge of vocational education and training has left Australian industry stranded.

There are, however, some outstanding examples of innovation by the states and by industry in addressing the skills shortage. I refer the House to the Gladstone Schools Engineering Skills Centre in Queensland. This is a partnership between three local high schools and industry, notably NRG’s Gladstone power station and the Comalco Community Fund. NRG has supplied an engineering workshop on site at the power station for a peppercorn rent, and the Comalco Community Fund has invested in transport for the students and in funding for a full-time project officer. Teaching staff come from all the schools involved. The program is targeted at year 11 and 12 students and exposes them to a real industrial environment, using industrial standard latest technology tools, for 1½ days a week. The students are treated as adults in the workplace. They are trained in workplace health and safety, are required to wear uniforms and personal protective equipment and are exposed to enterprise and business skills as well as physical hand skills and light-engineering skills. The students also undertake practical work experience with an employer on one day per week.

At the same time, and this is important, the students are required to spend 2½ days in the school environment, mixing with their peers, playing sport or being involved in other school activities and continuing to learn fundamental language, social and mathematical skills. This is in stark contrast to the suggestion by the Prime Minister today, a policy issue determined on the run, that in order to advance skills training in Australia we should encourage our young to leave school at years 9 or 10. It is about time the Howard government realised that you can both stay at school and successfully commence a real apprenticeship. That is about having a rounded education, something which the Labor Party aspires to for all Australian youth.

I note that at the end of the program the students are awarded a Certificate I in Engineering (Manufacturing) qualification, a nationally accredited qualification allowing them to enter trade apprenticeships and the TAFE system. In essence, they are job ready. By staying at school and completing this program they are more attractive to employers. The last thing we need in Australia is for the Prime Minister to have his way and force our young people out of school at years 9 or 10. In fact, these students leave the program with all the underpinning knowledge for certificate II and are often awarded this qualification very soon after entering the TAFE system because of their success in initially undertaking this type of training. But, perhaps more importantly, because of the effort being put in by local schools, industry and the Queensland government, the program has 100 per cent employment outcomes, with 90 to 95 per cent of students going into apprenticeships and the other five to 10 per cent going into tradesmen’s assistant roles. That is what success is about—where you get a cooperative approach to trade training in Australia.

I therefore say to the House that the program is a credit not only to the state governments and the companies involved but also to the individual teachers, tradespeople, engineers, managers and parents who personally invested their time and social vision in making it happen. But, obviously, it all costs money. It adds to the cost of traditional secondary education and places an additional burden on the education system. This is where the Howard government should be concentrating its activities. It should not be taking a hammer to ANTA, suggesting that it should be reabsorbed into the Department of Education, Science and Training—which would involve more bureaucracy and red tape. Perhaps more importantly we should be trying to work out how the private sector, schools and state, territory and Commonwealth governments can work in a cooperative model to actually make real progress on the apprenticeship front. I suggest that, rather than going down the alternative technical college route, it is about time the Prime Minister put additional money into the existing system. We need $289 million spent on delivering training today, not on bricks and mortar in four years time.

The government’s proposal for a new system of technical skills will create unnecessary duplication, inefficiencies and competition for scarce resources. Tasmania is a prime example of how we can cooperate. The coalition’s election policy on technical colleges was designed on the run, based on a mainland template that does not exist in Tasmania. Tasmania’s emphasis on workplace vocational education and training, akin to the Gladstone model, is something which we need to work for as opposed to the school based VET system, which is in some ways also important. There is no demand for a greenfield site to build a separate college.

While the government now wants to blame the states for skill shortages, the facts show that the Commonwealth government’s failure to match the state increases in VET funding since 1997 has reduced VET spending by $832 million. Since these massive cuts in TAFE funding, we have gone backwards on trade training. It is about time we actually spent our money wisely. I call on the Commonwealth government to get real about doing something about traditional trade training, to work out a cooperative model—not one based on conflict and confrontation—because it has failed on trade training since 1996. The Australian economy will now suffer because of this lack of investment. (Time expired)