Senator STEPHENS (1:58 PM) —I too rise to make a contribution to this debate on the Skilling Australia’s Workforce Bill 2005 and the Skilling Australia’s Workforce (Repeal and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2005, because they are two of the most important bills that we will be debating in this place. They reflect the real concerns that we have about the government’s total control of the Senate and the outcomes that they intend to bring as a result of that control. These bills bring to a head two great debates on our country’s future: first, the future of the Federation; and, second, whether our national vocational education and training system has any future at all. These bills are another manifestation of what is being described in public policy terms as the new centralism of the Howard government.

Senator Crossin just spoke very passionately about the hard and collaborative work, the cooperative federalism, that brought the Australian National Training Authority into existence. This great national project, ANTA, was established in 1992 to pull together a national approach to vocational education and training, reflecting the good research and the industry restructuring that took place in the eighties and acknowledging that we had to build and commit to our resource and skills base to underpin Australia’s economy. Good work has been done in the interests of Australia’s future and it is all about to be undone in these very destructive pieces of legislation.

Debate interrupted.