Mr BRENDAN O'CONNOR (6:17 PM) —I am happy to rise after the member for Deakin's contribution. I am happy to also acknowledge his interest. He is one of the very few government members who show an interest. Of course, he was Chairman of the House of Representives Standing Committee on Employment and Workplace Relations and I was a member of that committee, and I think it is fair to say that, as chair, he certainly conducted himself well. He certainly showed—

Mr Barresi —Was?

Mr BRENDAN O'CONNOR —I am hoping he is back for this term, but certainly last term he was chair. He showed an interest. So I suppose it therefore makes it all the more difficult for him to have to get up and defend the government. Because for him to actually get up and boast that one of the great things about this government is that it has abolished ANTA, that it has not supplied the TAFE places required, is an unfortunate thing. It is an unfortunate thing for someone who I believed had a passionate and sincere interest in vocational training. Therefore the government has really placed the member for Deakin in an unenviable position: to have to get up and justify these very crude decisions by this government.

However, I rise to lament, as I know other Labor members have lamented, the decline in skills in this country—the skills that have certainly declined since 1996. I accept the contention by the member for Deakin that there were shortages during the Hawke-Keating period. There were shortages, and I will refer to some of those shortages. But I think, when they win four elections in a row, it is about time the government accept that not only are they the government for this term but they take some responsibility for the preceding three terms. It seems to me that they want to carry on and continue to blame—

Mr BRENDAN O'CONNOR —Indeed. As the member for Denison suggests, they clearly consider all things good to be of their own design, whereas of course we know that they are the beneficiaries of many of the policies of the Hawke-Keating period. When the government are in their fourth term, I think it is important for them to start to accept some responsibility for their failures. On occasions in this place I have criticised, with qualification, I accept, some of the deficiencies of the Hawke-Keating period because there were some. I think, in general, there were more better things done than worse things. There were mistakes, we made them and we have acknowledged them. But this government fail to ever accept any responsibility or acknowledge their own failings.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 6.20 p.m. to 6.38 p.m.

Mr BRENDAN O'CONNOR —Before the suspension, I was making mention of the fact that governments and government members have a responsibility to accept mistakes and failings and to try to rectify them. Unfortunately, it seems that this government wants to continue to blame any fault or any problem with the system, including vocational training, on Labor governments that ended their time in 1996. I think it is important that the government owns up to its own failings. There is no doubt there is a major skills shortage in this country, and it is something that we have to rectify. As we know, before the election, Labor was promoting the idea of increasing TAFE places in order to meet some of those shortages. Unfortunately, the fact that Labor failed to be elected meant that that was never going to occur. But I think it is now important for the government to announce what it wants to do to sort out some of these major problems.

As I said earlier, there were skills shortages in the Hawke-Keating period, but the shortage trend has continued over the last eight-year period. The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations estimates trade shortages in construction, engineering and automotive trades, but also indicates that there are many shortages in the area of specialised skills. Some trade occupations have remained consistently in shortage for long periods of time. The department says that trade occupations which have been in short supply for a number of years include pastry cooks, chefs and motor vehicle mechanics continuously from 1994; tool makers and upholsterers continuously from 1995; boilermakers, fitters and turners, metal machinists, pressure welders and sheet metal workers in all but one or two years since 1995; refrigeration and airconditioning mechanics continuously from 1998; panel beaters, vehicle painters and automotive electricians continuously from the end of 1998. We have many skills shortages in our labour market. I will add another. I think the Deputy Leader of the Opposition raised this and it has been raised in question time. We have a critical shortage of bricklayers. I suppose one could say it is nice to see a bricklayer make $100,000 a year. We are probably in the wrong game, Mr Deputy Speaker! But I think that points to a real problem in the workplace; it points to a real shortage.

Two of the occupations which have not been mentioned perhaps as often and for which I think demand is going to grow exponentially over time are those of child carers and aged carers. Whatever the occupational description, those caring and learning industries represent large areas and involve particular skills. We do have a shortage of child carers. One of the reasons for that is that it is market driven. The wage or salary of a child carer is so low that many qualified child carers choose to just get out, because a career in that field is just not worth pursuing if you want to pay for a mortgage—increasingly a more expensive mortgage relative to income—or to do other things. There are real problems in child care. As we know, there is an increasing demand for aged care workers. Again, I think that is a very low-paid occupation commensurate with the skills and responsibilities required of those workers. We really have to turn our minds to that.

In the Australian Industry Group's recently released skills policy statement, entitled World-class skills for world-class industries, which was presented in August this year, it was highlighted that Australia faces a skills crisis in the next five years as the existing work force retires and the number of new tradespersons is insufficient to fill the gap. Labour supply problems are being experienced in many industry sectors but those that have heavily relied upon the traditional apprenticeship system as the major means of recruiting and skilling new entrants have experienced greater difficulties in sourcing skilled labour.

In a survey of more than 760 manufacturers, entitled `Australia's skills gap—costly, wasteful and widespread', the AiG found that one in two firms were experiencing difficulties in obtaining skilled labour. The greatest difficulties were in metal based sectors, particularly for transport equipment manufacturers. High levels of difficulty in finding skilled labour were also evident in the machinery and equipment, fabricated metals and basic metal manufacturing sectors. Across manufacturing overall, there were 21.8 vacancies per 1,000 workers. The highest vacancy rates for skilled labour were in the wood, wood products and furniture sector, which had about 45 vacancies per 1,000 employees, and in the machinery and equipment sector, which had nearly 38 vacancies per 1,000 employees. All other metal based sectors had very high vacancy rates. What that report points to, in quantifiable terms, is that there is a major skills shortage in many occupational groups in this nation.

The AiG estimated that the national skills shortage was 21,000 positions and that filling these positions would deliver a fivefold increase in the number of new people employed in manufacturing over the last 12 months. The largest numbers of skills shortages were in the areas of chemicals, petroleum and coal products; transport equipment; and machinery and equipment—each with estimated shortages of at least 3,000 positions. One report after another confirms the assertion I am making—indeed the contention that the opposition is making—that we have a fundamental problem. It is not being acknowledged by the government. I do not know how they work this out, but they believe there is a nexus between the Hawke-Keating period and the skills shortage in 2004, and they do not want to turn their minds to fixing the problem.

There is a further report. A discussion paper was commissioned by the Dusseldorp Skills Forum amidst concerns over the growing shortage in trade skills. It was presented at a round table convened in July 2003 by Group Training Australia. It presents new data on long-run apprentice training rates by broad occupation groups. The data show a significant and sustained decline in the training rate over the last 10 years. The author of this report discusses the implications of this decline and provides an overview and assessment of the key explanations. I would advise members who have not come across that report to do so because it does provide some of the reasons why there have been these shortages and suggests policy recommendations to address the decline. In short, these recommendations include training levies, an increase in public sector training, changes to employer incentives, improving the quality of operations of group training companies, re-establishing pre-apprenticeship programs, improving VET in Schools, improving multiemployer coordination, increasing innovation intensity of industry and improving marketing of apprenticeships. Those are some of the things the author of that report points to as what we could be doing to fix the problem of the critical skills shortages we have in the labour market.

Instead of looking at some of these things, this government has been blaming others. It has been blaming the states—and, as we know, a favourite hobby of the Commonwealth government is to blame either previous federal Labor governments or, indeed, current state Labor governments for the Commonwealth's failing. It is either doing that or not making much headway in this area. If announcing the abolition of ANTA is supposed to be some sort of beneficial reform, I do not see it. What it does say to me is that it is perhaps a symbolic exercise in what this government really thinks about vocational training.

We in the Labor Party were the creators of ANTA in 1992. We were the ones who supported ANTA and promoted the idea of vocational training. This government have paid lip-service to the notion of vocational training. There are shortages of training places. As a result, there are shortages of skills in the labour market. The government need to focus on those deficiencies. If they do not listen to the ACTU then they should listen to the employers, if that is what they wish to do. If they are not willing to look at a survey that might be commissioned by the ACTU, because of their ideological blindness to the reality of what is going on, they should listen to the employers. The major peak employer bodies are saying there are major skills shortages. Most employers are not sitting around talking about the need to make laws unfair for employees in the areas of termination; they are talking about skills shortages and asking what the government will be doing to fix them.

There is not a great amount of detail on the duplication of technical colleges, which was announced during the election campaign. I do not want to be negative, but it seems to me that it was an announcement for election campaign purposes. On the face of it, it does not seem to be particularly practical. We are going to have a TAFE system and, standing beside that, these Commonwealth technical colleges. Instead of funding the TAFE system that exists, the Commonwealth is now going to divert energy into a separate system so that they will run concurrently but separately. That does not seem, on the face of it, to be a very wise thing to do. As I understand it, it is going to be some time before those colleges are up and running.

As I understand it from the proposal of the Prime Minister during the election campaign, one of those colleges is proposed to be in or around my electorate, in Sunshine. I share the suburb of Sunshine, a great working-class suburb of Melbourne, with the member for Maribyrnong—I am not sure which one of us is supposed to be the beneficiary of this college. It will be a learning institution and, if it is at all effective, constituents of mine and, indeed, of the member for Maribyrnong and of other members will obviously be able to use it. I have to say that my electorate and surrounding electorates do need more places. There needs to be more support for many of our constituents.

If you look at the average levels of unemployment or of skills, I think the electorate of Gorton probably is not as well favoured as other places. It is a great place, it has a great pride and it is a great community to represent, but perhaps it has not been afforded the same opportunities as other places. People do not complain—they get on with it—but it would be great to see money funnelled in there to provide the wherewithal to ensure that my constituents and their children will be able to be properly trained up for full-time employment. Having said that, I am not convinced that the way to go about it is to set up this separate system which will not rectify the fundamental problems we have. Indeed, it will detract from the focus that I think the Commonwealth needs to have upon the TAFE system.

It seems to me that it is going to be robbing TAFE to fund these `you-beaut' tech colleges. I will accept whatever works. As the member for Gorton, representing people who I am sure would delight in more resources going into the area, I am not ideologically predisposed to one particular design or the other. But I do think that the system has to be coordinated, and I do think the Commonwealth have to start being a little bit more mature in the area. Instead of blaming the states, they should be working with them. Instead of failing to reach agreement on ANTA with the state governments, they should be showing some leadership, moving forward and reaching agreement. If they were to do that, they would have my respect—if not my entire agreement on the way in which they proceed.

So there are some significant problems, as I have outlined over the last 20 minutes or so. In so many areas and occupational groups there are deficiencies, and those deficiencies have been cited by employer groups. I would have thought the government would listen to those employer groups when they shout from the rooftops that they have major problems employing people in particular areas because of those skill shortages.