Grievance Debate

Training and Skills Funding

Mr BOYER (Wright) (15:09): What another vintage performance we saw today from the Minister for Innovation and Skills, a classic performance from the member for Unley: evasive, combative and completely unwilling, as per normal across his entire—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Education!

Mr BOYER: —parliamentary career, to give any facts. There must be a reason for that. It surely has to be one of two things. It is either because the facts do not suit the minister in any way, or he simply cannot retain the information in his head. It is one of those two things.

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: Imagine being the Labor Party talking about TAFE—

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: —after your record.

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Education is warned.

Mr BOYER: By way of example, this government's flagship policy in the skills and training portfolio was 20,800 new training and apprenticeships to be created between September 2018 and September 2022, but when we asked the minister—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: It's better than ruining TAFE, which is what you did.

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Education is warned for a second time.

Mr BOYER: —and I might add that it is the second time in 24 hours that I have asked the minister this question because I asked it yesterday on the Auditor-General's Report as well—what is the baseline figure upon which the 20,800 new places were to be created, he did not know or could not say. How is the commitment tracking? How many of the 20,800 places have been created now? He could not answer the question. Why?

This is a $200 million commitment shared by the state government and the commonwealth government. The minister in this state who is responsible for delivering it cannot answer the most basic questions about how it is tracking, and we know why. It is because it is miles and miles behind because they have failed, because this government's strategy around skills and training is failing. The minister kindly referred to this in some of his answers today—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: Fixing your mess.

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Education will cease interjecting.

Mr BOYER: Things are going so badly in this minister's portfolio that, at the end of last year, he had to write—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr BOYER: It's alright, Mr Speaker, I am used to the Minister for Education being sent in to defend the Minister for Innovation and Skills. It happens all the time. Things are going so badly in this minister's portfolio that he recently had to write to private RTOs—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Wright will resume his seat.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Wright is entitled to be heard in silence. Interjections on my right and on my left will cease. The member for Wright has the call.

Mr BOYER: Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your protection. As I was saying, things are going so badly in the Minister for Innovation and Skill's portfolio that toward the end of last year he had to write to private registered training organisations and ask them to send a letter to the Leader of the Opposition because we were being mean to him. Unbelievable!

What he has actually done is a classic trick from the Marshall Liberal government: he has outsourced it. He has outsourced justifying his logic behind cutting courses from TAFE and giving them to the private sector, to those private RTOs, because as we saw this afternoon, while he was on his feet, the minister is incompetent and completely incapable of explaining his logic and justifying these cuts.

There is a strategy in the way in which these portfolios have been divided up. There is a very good reason why we have the Minister for Innovation and Skills, who has almost all the portfolio, and the Minister for Education, who I might say is a bit better on his feet than the Minister for Innovation and Skills, although I do not think that is really a compliment.

You cannot have the Minister for Innovation and Skills going out to defend the cuts to TAFE, but the Minister for Education, on the other hand—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner interjecting:

Mr BOYER: —is regularly sent out—

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Education will leave for 15 minutes according to standing orders 137A.

The honourable member for Morialta having withdrawn from the chamber:

Mr BOYER: —into the community to sprinkle a bit of fairy dust around and pull a few Jedi mind tricks on the sector to make them think that everything is going really well, to make them think that this government in some way actually values TAFE and think there is a future for TAFE in this state.

But behind the scenes, in his office, away from public view, the Minister for Innovation and Skills has taken the knife to TAFE, but he will not come in here and tell us what he is doing. He will not come in here and tell us whether he is meeting any of his commitments to add apprenticeships and traineeships to this state.

Earlier this week we had the Report on Government Services. If we want an indication as to whether or not the government's strategy around skills and training is actually working, between 2017 and 2019, the number of students and school leavers moving on to further education or into jobs dropped by 22 per cent, from 77.3 per cent to 53.3 per cent, which makes you wonder why they are continuing with this attack on our public training provider.