TRADE SCHOOLS

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (15:20): I am pleased the member for Giles has been talking about tertiary opportunities because I want to pick up on the announcement by the Minister for Education and Children's Services, a few days ago, on some trade schools around the state, and relate that announcement back to my own electorate. As members in this place would well know, since I have been in here I have been agitating and grumbling long and hard about the failure by the Rann government to provide a new TAFE facility in my electorate, a TAFE facility which was in the budget of the Liberal government in 2002 and which was chopped off at the knees by the Rann government when it came in some five years later. We still have not got it and the government has now failed to supply my electorate with a trade school.

I find it to be absolute neglect, quite frankly. The minister was on the radio talking about the fact that they were having a trade school at Christies Beach. Well, whoopee! Fine. I have no problem whatsoever with a trade school at Christies Beach, in fact I am sure that it will be advantageous to those young people in that area who wish to use it. However, it is simply not accessible for students from my district, particularly the Goolwa/Victor Harbor area. There is no public transport. It is a nightmare for young people to get to Adelaide and back, to attend TAFE courses which they wish to progress or, indeed, to attend trade schools. They have to leave their homes and families and travel up to Adelaide. Even if they can stay up during the week, if they have got somewhere to stay, it is an enormous expense. Nine times out of 10 they have not and they have to flat, which without much income is difficult.

So it is totally ludicrous to suggest that the trade school at Christies Beach will be of much use to those on the lower Fleurieu, it is just not. I have constant complaints about the fact that there is no public transport on the South Coast back to Adelaide. So, it is hardly surprising that I wring my hands in despair over the fact that five years down the track we have got no TAFE. The minister and I have had long conversations about that subject, and will continue to. The announcement on the trade schools and the lack of facilities for young people down in the South Coast area is most disappointing. There are a multitude of young people down there who would like to do trade school type activities. They would like to be mechanics; they would like to be plumbers. They have to come up to Adelaide for all of those things. They have to come up because the trade school is in Adelaide. So, once again, the apprentices have to do all this.

If we had a trade school facility down there they could stay at home, they could actually go home at night. They would not be faced, on miniscule incomes, apprenticeship wages, with having to travel to Adelaide and stay. As a parent myself, and with one of my children doing an apprenticeship, I know that apprenticeship wages are not great. At the end of it they do develop a trade, but we are constantly supplying our younger son with money to get him through, and I am sure that that is no different from many other parents, possibly in this place. However, I think the government has missed the boat on this. It had the opportunity to do something. It had the opportunity to advance the cause of youth in the Southern Fleurieu Peninsula and to give those young people the opportunity to develop their skills, based at home—stay at home and be involved. But no, they have dropped that.

I know that the minister responsible for TAFE is supportive of the new TAFE facility at Victor Harbor, but I think he has been dudded a couple of times and I am very hopeful that we can get this thing over the line in due course. It is with a great deal of disappointment that these announcements were made earlier this week and the forgotten people of the Southern Fleurieu Peninsula—in this case, the young—are simply forced to find large amounts of money to go to the metropolitan area to continue their studies, their trade school courses, and to go to TAFE to advance their skills to be useful members in the local community of the Southern Fleurieu and to continue their chosen profession.

Time expired.