Mrs IRWIN (6:43 PM) —The Skilling Australia’s Workforce Bill 2005 is another nail in the coffin of what was once one of our proudest institutions. Few nations have had the advantage of having such a well-resourced system of technical education and training as Australia’s. While at times we may think of Australia as the lucky country, we as a nation have made most of our own luck. If you go back a century ago, two countries led the world in their standard of living: Australia and Argentina. While we may complain that we have slipped down that table to some extent, we are well in front of Argentina.

There are many reasons for those differences. One major factor that can never be ignored is that Australia’s state governments took the lead in developing the skills of our work force. While other countries have imported their skilled work force, Australia has been able to grow its own. These home-grown skills have been the backbone of Australia’s industrial and commercial development. Our skills base has not come about by accident or by a stroke of luck; it has been achieved by the planning and dedication of generations of visionary Australians who have guided the development of our education and training institutions for over a century.

In the case of New South Wales this began with the establishment of technical colleges in the 1890s. It is interesting to note in the light of this legislation why state governments stepped into the field of technical education. Those first colleges took over the role of the mechanics institutes, which had provided limited training in areas such as technical drawing. Apprenticeship training was totally on-the-job training, but special skills such as technical drawing could not be learned on the job and it was not always possible for a trade apprentice to gain all the necessary skills from one master. So the greater proportion of skills training was taken over by technical colleges. An added benefit of college based training was that new technology could be introduced and each apprentice could be exposed to the full range of methods and techniques.

From boilermakers to pastrycooks, Australia produced generations of competent tradespeople of a standard equal to that of anywhere in the world. Many of those highly trained people went on to start and build their own businesses or take on high-level management positions. Their trade training provided them with the foundation on which they developed their business skills. But technical colleges did not limit themselves to trade training. Even greater numbers of Australians learned accounting and business administration skills at our public and private colleges. One thing that seems to have escaped the government’s thinking on this issue is that the great majority of those who built our skills base through access to our technical and business colleges did it on their own time. It was not until the 1950s that daytime training of apprentices became the rule. And for well past that time students and trainees took themselves off to colleges for two or three nights a week to develop their skills. Many still do that today.

The structure and face of training today has changed a great deal. The increased role of the Commonwealth has had some positive effects—and national standards were well overdue—but the effect in some states has been to bring high standards down to the much lower levels of other states. While states such as New South Wales maintained high standards in their level of resources and facilities and in the training and accreditation of staff and while other states starting from a lower base have improved their systems to a degree, it remains fair to say that overall the standards in our training systems have fallen. That brings me to one of the requirements set out in this bill. Proposed section 13 of the bill calls for the complete implementation of competency based training. This will require the amendment of state legislation and awards to bring them into line with a competency based approach rather than a time based approach. This will result in major changes to the traditional apprenticeship system.

I can appreciate that the rigid application of apprenticeship training times can be a factor in deterring older people from undertaking a trade. While there is some element of allowing for increased maturity on the part of apprentices, we really need to question any supposed benefit in reducing the length of trade courses—and, for that matter, the concept of competency based training. The idea that competency based training includes something that does not happen in time based courses does not always prove to be the case. A good example of competency based training would be a motor vehicle drivers licence test. A lot of people are critical of these tests because they do not test the driver in a full range of situations—for example, emergency situations which may occur. We should also remember that in recent years states have changed driver testing to include the requirement for learners to complete logbooks to show the number of hours of driving practice they have had. Despite these changes there are often calls to improve driver training and testing. I should also add that over recent years we have seen an increase in the length of time required for the holding of provisional licences.

We should not see competency based training as the best or only option for many types of training. It does have its place but—and we should not forget this—true competency based training can extend the time taken to complete a qualification. We now have a situation where 40 per cent of apprentices do not complete their trade training. There are many reasons for this, but we should not assume that competency based training will shorten the time necessary to complete training or that it is a better program for the individual trainee. Another aspect of competency based training that should be considered is the cost. When talking about trades it is easy to forget that there are many small, specialised trades and that there may be as little as one class for each such trade in each state. Even trades with greater demand can have small classes when spread over a large state. Competency based training assumes that each learner proceeds at their own pace, but this can be quite impractical in smaller classes. For this and other reasons, competency based training can be more expensive than time based training.

One other reason that is totally overlooked is that trade training is more than just collecting a few skills; it represents an achievement worth recognising. The present Minister for Education, Science and Training is fond of saying that more young people should consider learning a trade rather than going on to university. There was a time when it was considered good advice for young people to get a trade, as they used to say, but in those days a trade was a rite of passage. A 15-year-old first-year apprentice would mature into a responsible 21-year-old adult journeyman, ready to face the world.

Two years ago I was in Zurich when I was passed on the street by two strangely dressed young men. They wore top hats and dress coats and carried small sacks. When I asked them what they were doing, they explained that they were journeymen carpenters and that to complete their trade training they had to leave their master and their home town to go out into the world to become master tradesmen. It may seem old fashioned and a waste of time, but if we are to give skilled trades their proper place in our society then we cannot pass off the respect that once existed for having the skill of a trade.

It is all very well for the Prime Minister to talk about overalls and navy blue singlets, but it is something else to give proper recognition to the skills of our tradespeople, and watering down the content of trade courses does nothing to achieve that. Introducing mickey mouse trades in hamburger flipping does nothing to enhance the status of skilled trades. Competency based training has its place, but it is only when you see skills training in a very narrow sense that you insist on competency based training being the only model.

As I mentioned, many trades have small numbers of practitioners and the demand for courses in such trades is spread widely over the country, so it is surprising that this bill calls for an expansion of user-choice policy without allowing for difficulties that may be faced by some states and regions. State TAFE systems have undergone radical rationalisation over the past decade, and that has often meant that courses are available in only one centre in each region. The expansion of the user-choice policy in this bill will lead in many cases to the costly duplication of courses, making it harder for centres to meet the national unit price bands which are also part of the deal. The only outcome from this policy will be a race to the bottom in standards and facilities. The losers will be not only those young people who look to those centres for training but, in the long term, industry and our economy, as skills training becomes less and less accessible.

Three weeks ago the Wall Street Journal lamented the shortage of skilled workers in the United States. The article stated: ‘While skills strapped companies often blame schools for not providing proper skills, some executives say outsourcing jobs abroad and eliminating training programs to cut costs made the problem worse.’ And yet this bill is trying to bring to Australia a US-style skills training system. It is a system that has failed in the United States of America, but it is to become the model that we are to adopt here in Australia.

But behind all this is what comes down to a lack of respect for working Australians and a lack of respect for those with skills, and it has been that way on the conservative side of politics for more than a century. It was not by accident that the first trade unions in Australia were craft unions. They were able to represent the skilled trades in industrial disputes and they were resented for their bargaining power, so it became the goal of employers to break the bargaining power of the skilled trades. The way that was done was by reducing the level of regard that skilled trades were given. Today we are paying a price for that in skills shortages throughout many industries.

But what is the government’s response to those shortages? It seeks to make up for its failure to ensure our supply of skilled workers by increasing levels of skilled immigration. Instead of growing our own, we are importing skilled workers. Instead of providing training opportunities for young Australians, we are attempting to buy skilled workers on the world market. That is the stage we have reached through the savage cuts already made to TAFE funding in Australia. These measures will, as I say, be another nail in the coffin of our once proud TAFE colleges.

Related to that is the government’s requirement for Australian workplace agreements and other individual contracts to become the standard in TAFE, and this is part of the same process. Instead of recognising the value of our teachers in our colleges, this government is doing everything it can to reduce the status of teachers. We saw what happened in TAFE in Victoria when the Kennett government slashed the TAFE system there. We saw wages reduced and we saw qualified and skilled teachers driven out of the system. This is not the way to attract and train the best teachers for the colleges which will provide our skills training. We will pay a high price in future years for this government’s short-sighted policy.

Some other measures in this legislation are also of concern to me. Proposed section 19 prohibits the payments being used to provide education or training for private recreational pursuits or hobbies. The minister likes to poke fun at these courses, referring to yoga classes and the like. There have already been big reductions in these types of courses in state systems. The days are long gone when every country town had an active fashion class. There was some criticism of the ladies of the town spending two nights a week creating their latest wardrobe with the benefit of the college sewing machines and the expert assistance of a qualified teacher. In locking out the fashion ladies and those who took the class in French cookery, we might have given TAFE a strictly vocational outlook but at the same time we overlooked what we were doing with these courses: we were building the overall skills base of the community. I know a gentlemen who did a French cookery course a decade ago, and he is now running a bed and breakfast. The link between skills and employment is not always as direct as an apprenticeship implies.

A generation ago when tertiary education, including TAFE training, was made free of charge the thinking was that everyone was entitled to tertiary education. It was not the exclusive preserve of the academically minded or those already in a line of employment. One of the biggest reasons students give for undertaking training is that they want to change their job; they are looking for something different. But under this bill they will be locked out. Training is for industry only, not for individuals. At a time when many people are looking to retire from the full-time work force, there are fewer opportunities to build on the skills that can provide them with the opportunity to contribute to the economy through their hobby or other interest.

We are locking many people out of useful and rewarding employment. We say that skills training should be subsidised but only for those courses that industry thinks are useful. I can think of one former member of this House—and it is not the former member for Fowler—who some years ago, before retiring, undertook a short course at TAFE in small farm management. He now successfully breeds goats on his small property. I would not describe it as a great commercial venture but it is productive and it keeps him occupied. I know that he learned a lot in his TAFE course and he found much of what he learned very useful.

As the Treasurer keeps urging older people to keep working, he should not forget that many older people would much prefer to work in an area that interests them. At their stage of life they do not want to work for a boss anymore and they often have interests or hobbies that they would like to continue, but this minister wants to lock them out of the system. Unfortunately, that may mean locking them out of making a positive contribution to the economy in their retirement. We once had a fine and effective system of skills training in Australia. It served us well in the past. But this government is trying to destroy that. (Time expired)