Industry Skills Councils

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (14:55): Supplementary: could I ask the minister which part of my explanation wasn't true, the bit about them not being able to set their own agenda, or the bit about them not being able to give you useful advice?

The Hon. D.G. PISONI (Unley—Minister for Innovation and Skills) (14:56): Both of those are completely untrue, and I know where it is coming from. I am not going to embarrass that person by naming them, but I know where it is coming from. They are on their own—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, members on my left!

The Hon. D.G. PISONI: —with this view. They are welcome to contribute, and I invite them to do so, but I can tell you now, Mr Speaker, that never before have we had an industry so passionate about being involved in their own training. Industry in South Australia are taking advantage of the federal government incentives to buy capital to improve their businesses, and guess what? They are also taking advantage of the incentives and the support they are getting from the state government to increase their skills in their industries and their businesses.

It is no good buying new equipment with new technology if you don't have the skills to operate it. South Australian businesses have worked that out, and they've got behind the government's program to train their staff, and they appreciate the support. They appreciate for the first time that this government doesn't believe that they owe people something for being businesspeople here in South Australia.

We believe that there is a genuine partnership the business community has with this government to support South Australians into skills. We recognise that there is a cost to training apprentices and trainees, and we have supported businesses in their transition to becoming responsible employers that are supporting their own skilled labour.

Our Skilling South Australia program has 150 different bespoke designed programs specifically for industry. We haven't designed buckets of money and then asked businesses to change their business to suit those buckets of money. That is the Labor model. What we have done is we have said, 'Tell us what your problem is. What is stopping you from taking an apprentice on? What can we bring to enable you to make that job easier?' That is where we put the money, on advice from industry and advice from businesses.

We have even developed Skilling South Australia programs for individual businesses. I was very pleased to see that Outside Ideas was a winner in the Australian Training Awards—the national Australian awards. This is a company that is very passionate about taking on apprentices and trainees, but the owner identified that there was a problem in his company. His supervisors felt that they weren't qualified to manage the off-the-job training, and so there was resistance with his own staff to taking on apprentices and trainees.

Do you know what the government did? We supported the owners of the business and we paid for the training of those supervisors so they could be up to speed and actually be comfortable to train those apprentices and trainees. And guess what the company did, Mr Speaker? They doubled the number of apprentices and trainees they were taking on. This is what true engagement with industry delivers. It delivers outcomes for industry.

Don't take my word for it: read the NCVER figures—a 12 per cent increase from March to March. Where did the rest of the nation go? Nearly 8 per cent backwards. The only other state that had a positive figure in apprentices and trainees in that 12-month period was Tasmania with a 0.4 per cent increase. The People's Republic of Victoria, a 14 per cent decline over there because they have ignored the needs of industry and business.

We are proud of the work we have done with skills development here in South Australia. We will keep doing it and we will keep delivering job opportunities for South Australians by making sure they have the skills that industry need to grow.