National Skills Agreement

Mrs PEARCE (King) (12:45): I move:

That this house—

(a) welcomes the 12-month anniversary since the Malinauskas and Albanese Labor governments signed a new five-year National Skills Agreement on 17 October 2023;

(b) acknowledges the landmark investment in the agreement as the largest uplift in South Australia’s training and skills history; and recognises the strong commitment the Malinauskas and Labor governments have made to TAFE SA and VET providers to deliver the skilled workforce to meet South Australia’s future workforce needs.

As we experience a serious skills and labour shortage across just about all sectors in our nation, there are strong predictions in regard to a growth in demand for vocational education and training qualifications to be able to build the workforce we will need for tomorrow.

Since the Malinauskas government came into government, we have been working in close collaboration with the Albanese government to address these serious challenges, and this week now marks the 12 month mark since we signed the new five-year National Skills Agreement on 17 October 2023.

We on this side of the house value greatly the work that is undertaken by TAFE SA as our state's leading vocational education training provider, providing the skills and training to equip workers with the skills they need to undertake critically important and valuable work across our community, whether it be teaching the next generation of early childhood educators who are going to play an important role as we begin to roll out the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care to ensure children in South Australia are given the absolute best possible opportunities to thrive in life, or whether it be turning to TAFE to get the skills and training needed to work in aged care—workers who are there by our side as we grow older and undertake really valuable work with professionalism and utmost care to ensure that we can grow old with dignity.

Even when it comes to growing demand for skilled workers, such as those in disability support work, which we will be increasingly in need of as the years go by, it is TAFE who will be there for many to train them up and provide them with the skills they need and the experience to be able to undertake their invaluable role in our workforce, because disability support workers play a crucial role in elevating the quality of life for so many South Australians. These are just three areas that are examples of the amazing areas covered by TAFE SA that provide an overview of the work being undertaken on our campuses.

On that note, I would also like to remind the house that it was only because of the Malinauskas government overturning the decision made under the former Liberal government that we saw the return of these critically important courses to metropolitan campuses, which has now given more than 1,000 students access to TAFE SA courses that they otherwise would not have had access to.

We on this side of the house acknowledge that the work of TAFE is so important. It provides the workforce that our state requires to be able to operate, from the service industry through to technical trades, health care, IT and the arts. Acknowledging this, it was great to see that South Australia, under the Malinauskas Labor government, was first in line to ensure that we were signed up to the interim National Skills Agreement that would see the delivery of 12,500 fee-free VET places to South Australia, with 10,500 going to TAFE SA, with estimates that this would inject about $65 million into South Australia's skills and training sector.

This would see fee-free places open for courses in everything from agriculture, horticulture, health, community and youth services, aged care and disability support, construction, creative industries, early childhood education, hospitality, tourism and event management, and even cybersecurity. This initiative would then go to see a swathe of support and interest, with an increase in enrolments at TAFE SA in semester 1 compared with the previous year, up by 22 per cent.

Of course, this would not have been achieved without the backing and partnership with our colleagues in the Albanese government, who are seeing eye to eye with us on the importance of TAFE. Around the nation, we have seen fee-free places roaring with success, with 180,000 places filled within the six months since they opened and enrolments hitting over 214,300 six months earlier than expected.

We are now continuing negotiations with the commonwealth for a five-year National Skills Agreement to provide even more opportunities to grow and strengthen our state's vocational education and training system, with TAFE SA at its centre. This government is committed to rebuilding and strengthening TAFE SA, which is why it was good to see the extra 13,500 fee-free places from January 2024 until December 2026 as part of the National Skills Agreement.

When we have governments who are willing to listen, bring stakeholders from all sides together and work out solutions to shared problems and then act on that, we can see that we get positive change that benefits everybody. The Albanese government exemplified this with the National Skills Summit, which was held following their election, and I am proud that the Malinauskas government was straight there to sign up to a deal, leading the nation and ensuring that South Australians got the benefit of this collaboration.

Recent state budgets have continued our commitment to addressing the skills and labour challenge, such as through the investment of $10 million in a Regional Skills Development Fund to ensure that TAFE SA can offer more courses in rural and regional South Australia. TAFE SA has an essential role to play in our regional communities but, for a long time, the thin markets that exist across much of regional SA have often been used as the reason that courses have had to be cancelled or not offered at all.

This initiative demonstrates our commitment to the regions and our commitment to increasing access to quality vocational education and training for regional communities. It makes it clear that we have an expectation that TAFE SA, as the public provider, has a unique role in supporting regions to meet their workforce needs and regional communities to have access to skills training where they live so that more regionally based South Australians can get a job, have choices about which job and contribute to regional economies.

We are there to take this energy and build on it. That is why just the other month the Minister for Education, Training and Skills announced that we would be doing just that, with the biggest reforms to TAFE SA in over a decade. A common theme following our election to state government: we wasted no time in getting to work because we knew of the big challenges ahead of us. Rebuilding TAFE SA to be an even better institution was one of these challenges.

Having commissioned the Roadmap for the Future of TAFE SA and engaged with stakeholders from across industry, unions, government, staff and students of TAFE SA, feedback was sought on how we can best place TAFE SA for success into the future and deliver the workforce and skills that are needed. As we look to place TAFE SA back where it belongs, at the centre of our state's training system, the road map signals a renewed commitment to TAFE SA, and establishes clear goals and ambitions for TAFE SA over the next decade. It acknowledges the critical role TAFE SA plays and must continue to play in transforming our economy.

Capturing the moment, we find TAFE right now experiencing an energy pushed forward by both the Malinauskas government with the Albanese government's support for it, ensuring a modern TAFE continues to succeed well into the future.

TAFE is an amazing place, with opportunities for everyone who is willing to take them on. For some, it is a foot in the door to a lifelong career path equipped with the skills they need to take on any challenge in their line of work. For others, it is an opportunity to reskill throughout their career, for whatever reason that may be, and to provide them with a new and engaging career pathway. For some who may have missed out on following a dream to uni, TAFE can still be a part of their pathway to access their dream degree and career.

For many people throughout South Australia, TAFE has been a cornerstone in their life. They may have gone there, a family member may have attended, and for some they may have found their passion in teaching the skills they have accrued throughout their life. It is that passion to teach something they love doing and want others to succeed in that students can appreciate and learn from.

South Australians who are feeling the excitement of some of the major projects we have coming—whether it be getting involved in world-leading projects, such as our exciting Hydrogen Jobs Plan set to deliver jobs in our regions, or those who are looking to find employment in the historic AUKUS development—can begin that journey by taking their first steps by doing so at TAFE SA.

I am particularly excited to see that TAFE SA is experiencing this moment of energy, and I know that if we can capture what is happening now we are going to be set for the future. We have acted quickly in response to the skills and labour shortages facing our state with a clear plan to strengthen and rebuild TAFE SA. We are encouraging more students to benefit from the high quality vocational education and training that our state needs through the delivery of quality public vocational education and training delivered through TAFE SA. I commend this motion to the house.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (12:54): This is a good opportunity to speak on this motion, but I note that with five minutes left, when I resume my remarks should I get leave to do so at a future date, we will be seeking to move an amendment to the motion. I indicate from the first part of the motion it is indeed 12 months since the skills agreement was signed. The fact of the matter is that the second part of the motion, which is to do with the volume of the investment, and the third part of the motion, which talks about the Malinauskas and Labor governments having a commitment to TAFE SA, is all rather self-congratulatory and does not get us anywhere in advancing the case that we are seeking to develop.

To my mind that revolves around three things: what do our young people need, our students, our people who are in jobs that they want to improve, where they want to get new skills? What do our jobseekers and career improvers need out of our training system and our training sector? That is the first cohort of people who we are interested in.

The second cohort of people we are interested in are the businesses and the industries that need a skilled workforce in order to deliver their products to South Australians and all around the world, to deliver their services, if they be service providers, anything from nursing and personal care through to child care or any other early education, a range of other industries that are supported through training. Those employers need a skilled workforce and many of them, the majority probably in many sectors, have a shortage.

The third cohort of people who we need to deal with in this area is the entire state, because South Australia has enormous opportunities going forward. In business and industry, in defence through our AUKUS opportunities, in the opportunities that are created through agtech and cybersecurity, and AI, and these things that we can grasp hold of should we be able to deliver a future workforce profile that meets those opportunities.

The alternative is that we have tens of billions of dollars of defence contracts which will provide great job pathways and opportunities for South Australian students, if they take them, but if they do not then that will need to be met through more people coming in and a greater share of our migrant take in South Australia to fill those jobs that could be done by South Australians should we only train for them.

So, meeting those needs, has not been addressed by the member for King in any of her speech. Her speech struck me as a paean to a brand, a government department. Many, many good people work at TAFE SA and many, many good people have been serving TAFE SA, and many good people have been trained by TAFE SA. But it is a service provider, a delivery of training, indeed as are hundreds of other providers in South Australia. It is the largest, it is publicly funded, the conditions for its staff are significantly beneficial to those staff compared to any other provider, but everything that the member for King said seemed to be about how good the Malinauskas Labor government has been for TAFE SA.

I would be far more interested in this motion if it focused on the three groups of people I talked about before: our students and young people and jobseekers; how do we best meet their needs? The government's process of shifting money out of the private sector and into TAFE SA, the government department delivery, has made that delivery more expensive, and in some areas it is very, very questionable whether the quality has improved or deteriorated, in some areas it is arguable the other way. But are we getting more people in through training?

The member for King cites lots of statistics about how TAFE SA has more students but across the training sector the NCVER figures that came out just last week show a 13 per cent decline in apprenticeship and traineeships being trained in South Australia. In training and in commencements, those numbers are well down on last year and even more down on March 2022 when this government came to office. So, while TAFE SA may be benefiting from the member for King's motion, the people of South Australia, those young people seeking apprenticeships, the businesses seeking a skilled workforce, and our state that has future workforce needs, I would argue are suffering under this Labor government.

The numbers going up in TAFE SA are not in addition to the overall pool. The NCVER figures, the benchmark which everyone uses, suggests a 13 per cent decline in the last year on apprentices and trainees in training—indeed, a bigger drop since March 2022. Commencement is down 29 per cent compared to last year, from 13,000 to 9,200. Even more pronounced is a 48 per cent drop since Labor came to office. In our key AUKUS skills requirements, that drop has been from 785 commencements in 2022 to 395 in March 2023, and 240 this year.

Debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 13:00 to 14:00.