HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Subject Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-02-17 Daily Xml
Contents
Pdf Xml

TAFE SA

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:27): Today, I would like to bring to the attention of the house the Marshall Liberal government's policy towards TAFE, which involves cutting, closing and privatising most of TAFE. In my view, TAFE is under attack from this government to the extent that I believe this government, particularly the minister, is committed to dismantling TAFE on the altar of ideology.

The Marshall Liberal government closed campuses and then started cutting funding and now it is effectively privatising large batches of courses that TAFE previously offered. In fact, TAFE has been banned, and I will repeat that—TAFE has been banned from running a number of programs in metropolitan Adelaide. For example, the business studies programs are not allowed to be offered in metropolitan Adelaide. In fact, my young trainee now has to travel from Gawler all the way to Henley Beach to access training through an RTO in the private sector, whereas previously it was available in Gawler, Elizabeth and Adelaide. A number of other programs have been banned, which I will mention in a moment.

This has been under the policy of contestability. The minister goes around and talks about contestability. I am not sure how contestability works if you only have one player, if you knock out a player. For example, if TAFE has been banned from offering courses in metropolitan Adelaide, who is the contest between? What they are effectively doing is trying to undermine TAFE and actually dismantle it course by course, campus by campus, right across the state.

In fact, this minister has gone one step further. One of the programs, I understand, window glazing, which is now an online program, is actually being offered by an interstate RTO. Not even the private RTOs in South Australia are good enough for this minister, and obviously there are jobs that go with that. The results of this campaign to undermine TAFE speak for themselves with big falls in the number of commencements. Latest numbers show that there has been a 41 per cent drop in apprenticeships/traineeships, leaving the government well short of its promise of delivering 20,800 new apprenticeships and trainees.

The Marshall Liberal government is set to axe a subsidy for a very popular Certificate III in Retail, currently offered at the Adelaide city campus of TAFE, and it cost $1,250 after state government subsidy. Removing the subsidy will increase the cost for students to more than $2,000, which will put a lot of basic training and skills development out of the reach of ordinary young people. This follows the decision to cut funding for other courses, including courses for early childhood education, aged care, disability care and business, as I have already mentioned. The Tea Tree Gully, Parafield, Port Adelaide and Roxby Downs campuses had been closed.

More than 150,000 South Australians who are unemployed or underemployed require investment, and this cutting of TAFE funding does not help. Another reason the minister gives for cutting TAFE is as follows: he does his comparison. He says that in the years 2019-20, TAFE delivered five million hours of training for $231 million, then he says the private sector provided six million hours for $52 million.

Well, it is a case of not comparing apples with apples. If the popular low-cost courses that TAFE is not allowed to provide go to the private sector, of course they are going to be able to be more efficient. It is like comparing a university that offers a medical course and a legal course: the cost of one is much more than the other and the comparison is quite erroneous and irresponsible. So he is actually comparing this and using these stats to undermine TAFE.

In terms of Gawler and the northern Adelaide areas, cuts to TAFE will force students in my electorate, in Gawler and the northern Adelaide suburbs, studying carpentry and joinery at the Elizabeth campus to travel more than 100 kilometres a day in addition to their normal travel. They will have to go to Tonsley to undertake their studies in carpentry. I wrote to the TAFE CEO about that and the minister wrote back saying that it is better for the students, program-wise, to actually do it at Tonsley—as I said, 100 kilometres away from their home on a return trip.

The matter came up in the Budget and Finance Committee, and the CEO of TAFE had to acknowledge that this policy actually puts additional cost and imposes additional burdens on young people even to the extent that they could lose part-time work. He has promised now to support these young people. I am now looking for the detail of how TAFE and this government will support young people so they can stay in TAFE and develop the skills they need for our economy and their careers.

Time expired.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT