Vocational Education and Training

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:20): A supplementary, sir: how can the Premier claim that WorkReady will revert to the pre Skills for All environment when in fact, in 2009, there were 86,561 training places in South Australia and, going forward, there are going to be 81,000—that's 5,500 fewer? How can you possibly stand in this chamber and tell us that it's going to go back to the pre Skills for All environment?

The SPEAKER: Again, the way the question is formulated gives the Premier a great deal of scope.

The Hon. J.M. Rankine interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Wright is called to order. Premier.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier) (14:20): I simply refer to the level of funding that existed prior to Skills for All. We are returning to that level of funding, in fact, slightly higher. The truth of the matter is that we are also engaged—

Mr Pisoni interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley is warned a first time.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: We are also engaged in a very substantial reform agenda of our training and further education system—a nation-leading reform agenda, one which has been demanded of us by the federal government. We have accepted the challenge—

Mr Knoll interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Schubert is called to order.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: —to actually corporatise our TAFE system, put it on the same footing as the private and non-government providers and actually have a first-class training and education system. As it happens, on the Report on Government Services (RoGS) data which analyses the training and further education system, our further education system consistently comes up at the very highest levels in terms of satisfaction of students, in terms of satisfaction of employers and in terms of the efficiency of the system, but we are driving reform further because we are a reformist government that has decided to look at every area of reform. Whether it be education, health, further education—

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The deputy leader is warned.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: —justice, corrections, planning, you name it, we are looking at making it better because we understand the nature of the challenge facing South Australia. We know that we cannot simply sit still and allow, if you like, the international forces—

Mr Marshall: Is that what you have been doing? You can't continue to sit still. You are the government for 13 years. You can't continue to sit still.

The SPEAKER: The leader is warned a second and final time.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: The counterfactual is those opposite who simply think that by changing—this was the proposition you put before the people at the last election: 'Pick me. I won't tell you what I am going to do, and things are going to be better.' Nobody was persuaded by that; nobody bought it. I must say, I did read carefully the review that was published the other day in the paper, but I realised I had seen it before. I saw it actually post-2002 when we did our review of our election, and it had a familiar—

The SPEAKER: Point of order.

Ms CHAPMAN: No. 98: relevance.

The SPEAKER: Yes, I uphold the point of order. Leader.