Senator CARR (5:38 PM) —This year's budget was greeted by the press with some relief in terms of education. The view expressed was that education had emerged relatively unscathed. That relief was predicated on the assumption that education in this budget had received relatively few new cuts. The real story is much more serious than that, because the real damage has been done over the course of this parliament.

The amount of $4.2 billion has been ripped out of the education budget by this government, and those cuts are continuing in the foundations of this current budget. The forward estimates highlight that between the period 1996-97 to 2001-02 there will be a drop of six per cent in real terms in education expenditure in Australia; a 20.6 per cent cut for higher education; a 3.2 per cent cut for vocational education and training; a 1.3 per cent cut in real terms for schools, particularly public schools; and a reduction of 5.9 per cent for student assistance.

Those simple statistics, as horrific as they are, highlight that this government has no strategic vision for investing in this country's education and training. It has no view of what should occur in the future for education in this country other than to say that the Commonwealth will retreat from its responsibilities, will abrogate its responsibilities, to Australians and future generations of Australians in terms of Commonwealth expenditure on education across all sectors.

What this government has done is focus almost solely on lowering costs, regardless of the implications for quality. This is no more apparent than in the case of TAFE and, in particular, the vocational education and training sectors more generally. The coalition platform before the last election said that a national plan for TAFE—I want to emphasise that it was for TAFE, not for VET—would be produced by this government. Now that we are on the eve of yet another election, we are entitled to ask: where is that plan? It is nowhere to be seen. In the meantime, thousands of Australians have missed out on places at TAFE colleges, and Commonwealth expenditure will fall by almost eight per cent between 1997-98 and 2001-02 in real terms.

The Australian vocational education and training system has undergone significant changes since the creation of the Australian National Training Authority. The move towards a greater national emphasis in planning and policy is one that I personally welcome. It is obviously superior to the regime that occurred prior to the creation of ANTA. In recent times this government has not been able to meet the challenges that are required to develop a truly national vocational education and training regime in this country. This government does not have the breadth of vision that is required to steer the vocational education and training system through to the next century. The lasting legacy of this myopic approach will be confusion amongst employers, workers and prospective students.

In recent times, we have seen the release of yet another national strategy for vocational education and training. On this occasion, a strategy was agreed to on 22 May 1998 at the Brisbane meeting of the ministerial council. What I understand to be the situation is that, while this national strategy was agreed to by ministers, the government has yet to release it. It remains still a secret strategy. What I am looking forward to is the public release of this national strategy. What we are waiting for is a commitment from government to actually support such a strategy with adequate funding. I think we will be waiting in vain for that.

We have seen a strategy outlined by various leaks in the press. Quite clearly, the minister himself has sought to leak his own secret strategies, according to reports last week in the Australian dated Wednesday, 24 June. He is obviously concerned about the level of public debate and the concern that has been expressed regarding the fact that the government has failed to formally and publicly release this document.

Despite the drawn out process of developing this strategy, despite the fact that there have been complaints about the exclusive nature of some of those consultations and despite the fact that public educational institutions, particularly in the case of Canberra, have missed out on the opportunity to put their views, essentially we have seen an attempt to rebottle old wine, to recommit previous policies in a new format which does not address those basic questions that I referred to earlier, that is, the lack of resourcing to back them up.

The equity objective, originally `to overcome the skill development and recognition problems for target groups', was changed to `achieving equitable outcomes in VET'. That is a much less specific objective, which will no doubt be used by governments to avoid placing too much emphasis on equity and access issues in terms of future vocational educational policies.

The objective that related to increasing industry's contribution started in the consultation process as an attempt `to increase investment in training by industry'. By the time ministerial approval was granted, it had become `increasing investment in training'. That is a substantial difference which, I might add, significantly reduces the obligation upon industry—even as it is narrowly defined by this government—to meet its obligations to facilitate the national vocational education and training agenda of this country. Running through this document is a commitment by government that everybody else should pay except employers and the government, particularly the Commonwealth government. When it comes to the government's friends in business, particular protections are made.

In general terms, the future direction of vocational education and training boils down to some simple issues. The first question is whether adequate funding has been provided by governments. The KPMG report into the costing and resourcing of new apprenticeships early in the life of this government highlighted that this program was substantially underfunded, and there has been no recourse through this budget to alleviate that problem. The government has not sought to provide substantial additional money, but it has reduced the real expenditure for vocational education and training. We have a government with the expectation that the states will provide additional moneys. While some 400,000 additional places are required, it is expected that the growth for TAFE, in particular, will be funded through efficiencies.

That leads to the second question that I will raise in this area—that is, the impact that such underfunding has on the quality of services provided by vocational education and training providers, be they public or private in the current regime. That equally leads to my concern about the level of skilling—and deskilling, in particular—that may arise with the new regime that has been imposed by this government. That has seen a movement away from traditional apprenticeship training and a movement towards new forms of training packages. That highlights a limited and more narrow focus on traineeships, rather than the broadly based apprenticeship models we have seen in the past.

The third area that arises from these considerations is the extent to which this government is prepared to privatise the TAFE sector in this country and undermine the capacity of communities to enjoy the benefits of a publicly funded social infrastructure. The fourth issue relates to the question of management and priorities. The strategic vision, if you want to call it that—and I use the term loosely—is predicated on the assumption that industry led models should be applied, by which it is meant that employer led models should become the norm.

No matter how you look at the national strategy, it falls down on these basic questions, especially in view of the fact that so much has been cut from the budget over the lifetime of this government. That has undermined the capacity of our public institutions to meet their obligation to provide high quality public education in the vocational education and training arena.

The system is facing a critical shortage of funds, and that has been identified in consultancy after consultancy by this government. In fact, it is consultants who are relied upon these days because so much has been cut from the Public Service. Some 83 per cent of the department's public servants have been removed as a result of the various budgetary decisions of this government.

The objectives around quality, equity and industry contributions have been compromised. The government's projections as to what it believes will be the Commonwealth's budgetary objectives have been reduced as a result of relying upon a reduction of the unit cost of the provision of training to the lowest common denominator, as determined by its various benchmark studies which highlight that Victoria has the cheapest training available in Australia. Despite the fact that Australia is a very diverse society in terms of both its demography and geography, the government expects that all costs can be reduced to that of Victoria, no matter what consequences such actions will have on the quality of services provided. I think the reliance on the cheapest and nastiest form of provision will have serious long-term implications for the quality of education provision across Australia. What we have is the Commonwealth relying heavily upon its capacity to inflict upon the states its agenda and its obsession with the reduction in cost at the expense of the provision of a broadly based training regime.

Equally, in terms of the provision of education, the government has a very narrow view of what should be undertaken within our public institutions. For instance, with the introduction of user choice, the Commonwealth has removed the standard and widely accepted convention that governments do have an obligation to fund infrastructure, equipment and staff for public vocational education and training institutes and an obligation to ensure that there are opportunities to achieve economies of scale—but not at the expense of providing support for smaller regional colleges. That is particularly important in the so-called outlying states—that is, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.

Measures have now been adopted by state governments to follow the direction as set by the Commonwealth, whereby there is an amalgamation of institutes and universities, with the consequent loss of choices available for people in the state of Victoria. That is a model that will be followed inevitably by conservative governments around the country if this government is re-elected, because that is the policy direction that this government will force all states to follow simply because it is relying upon a funding model which assumes that the lowest cost equals the best process by which one should deliver educational services. As I said, Victoria has a different demography and geography and that logic does not necessarily apply on all occasions.

Equally, you are seeing an attempt by governments to introduce, by way of their user choice models, measures to actually undermine those public institutions, particularly in places like Victoria. So not only are TAFE institutes facing the threat, the challenge, of having to cope with reduced overall resources, the prospect of having to combine with universities, which effectively undermines their capacity to provide their unique services, but also are having to meet the prospect of competition from smaller, private providers who do not have an obligation to provide those community service obligations such as libraries, student counselling facilities and a range of other programs that public institutions have to provide.

In due course, this will be a cost which all of us will have to bear because there will come a point where those public institutions will be required to recapitalise. If you go to institutes such as the one in Wodonga where they have massive capital investments in terms of industry programs designed to facilitate employment in the timber industry, you will find that huge amounts of public investment have been provided over the years by governments.

If under this government's policy, or the logical conclusions drawn from this government's policy, those programs are wound down over time, one has to ask, `Who will provide that infrastructure, that capital investment, that is required to replace the resources that were once provided by public institutions?' You can be certain that private providers operating on a much lower unit cost, but at a much cheaper cost structure with much lower quality, will not be interested in providing a range of facilities that has broader application in any particular community.

You will see that the facilities provided by fly-by-night operators will move into areas that were once regarded as the exclusive terrain of a regional college. It may well be the case that, in the short term, regional colleges believe they have a monopoly in terms of services provided in their particular locality. Increasingly, universities are moving into the vocational area, and fly-by-night operators are moving into the vocational area a long way from where they are based.

Equally, it is only a matter of time before we will see more of the sort of `ship of fools' example being exposed. In south Queensland, a cruise ship company went broke operating in conjunction with a private provider from Melbourne. The cruise line training program operating out of Melbourne was not providing adequate infrastructure to support people undertaking courses in that particular entity. They were left high and dry when they found that the training provider did not have the proper credentials and that the jobs that were supposed to be available were not available at the conclusion of any particular training package.

In reality, over 90 per cent of vocational education and training is still provided by public institutions in this country. This government is doing its level best to undermine the capacity of public institutions to provide that. While many very good courses are offered it is unfortunate that too often complaints are made about what I regard as cheap and nasty training packages. I notice in the second reading speech of the accompanying bill that is to be introduced to this parliament that the overwhelming bulk of training packages are still in the developmental stage, despite the fact that a whole new training regime had commenced on 1 January this year.

In the evidence that is coming to me, I am noticing that there has been an increasing trend for unscrupulous employers to use the new training agenda, the new training packages as we see them, as cheap forms of labour substitution. A new device is being developed by unscrupulous employers to see that fully qualified, fully trained, workers—often mature age workers—are being directed into training programs at a much lower rate of pay, a training wage, than they would be entitled to be paid under any reasonable award.

That sort of scandal will be exposed, and it will bring great discredit to our national training infrastructure in this country. Quite clearly, it is a direct result of the decline in the quality of services provided as a result of this government's policies to move away from a genuine national commitment to ensuring that all Australians have access to high quality educational services.

I am particularly concerned about the impact that such measures have on individual workers. It is all very well for business to talk about its responsibilities. We have yet to see large sections of Australian industry actually putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to training in this country. The larger employers still remain committed. BHP and the other big corporations still remain committed. But all too often, particularly in the building industry, we are seeing a decline in the commitment to what should be a public obligation to ensure the protection of a national skills base of any particular industry and of the Australian economy. For individual workers, the question of deskilling that results from poor policy decisions is of critical importance and ought to be a matter that this parliament takes very seriously as well.