Private Training Providers

The Hon. S.G. WADE (14:47): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Employment, Higher Education and Skills a question regarding private training providers.

Leave granted.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Officers of the minister's department have claimed that private training providers have always been aware that expanded competition and subsidised funding to them had a limited time frame. However, the officers were unable to cite a document or quote an announcement containing this advice. I ask:

1. Can the minister advise the council where and when private training providers were advised that their access to training funds would be provided for only three years?

2. Will the minister provide this council with a copy of the documents in which that advice is contained?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Employment, Higher Education and Skills, Minister for Science and Information Economy, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for Business Services and Consumers) (14:48): I thank the honourable member for his question. The information about the once-off additional funds, unprecedented funding, that was made available for South Australia's training needs was announced as part of the target to meet an additional 100,000 training positions. That was made clear at the time through public announcements, that the additional money was made available to enable us to achieve that target, so I doubt that there is a particular document. There may be, but if there is I am not aware, to the best of my memory, of seeing it. However, I know that through general announcements that expectation was communicated.

As I said, we set ourselves the objective of meeting 100,000 additional training positions. We in fact set a target over six years and we achieved that in a much shorter time period: it was over three to four years, I think, and we exceeded that target. We have spent all of that once-off additional funding. We are now contracting back to more sustainable levels of spending, as I have indicated in this place before, and even with that we are still spending more on subsidised training here in South Australia than we were just prior to the delivery of that once-off additional funding.

We are certainly training more. I think it was something like 65,000 subsidised training positions just prior to Skills for All being introduced, and something like 81,000 training positions are being subsidised this year. So we have been able to incorporate a number of efficiencies, particularly throughout the TAFE and VET sectors, and we have been able to streamline our operations, reduce duplication and replication and produce significant efficiencies. I think that has enabled us to deliver more training within those constrained budget parameters.