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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-05-26 Daily Xml
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Motions

TAFE, Regional Boards

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (11:30): I move:

That this house—

(a) recognises the importance of TAFE as a major education provider in regional South Australia;

(b) moves to establish regional TAFE boards, similar to the model used for regional health boards, with financial and course autonomy; and

(c) ensures that these boards be accountable and responsive to their communities.

In preparing for today's private member's motion, my mind was drawn back to 27 October 2016—a fair while ago now—when the Statutory Authorities Review Committee held inquiries into TAFE. Members on that committee included the Hon. Rob Lucas and the Hon. Stephen Wade, both MLCs. When reading through the contribution I made back in 2016, it is quite interesting that many of the things I talked about have actually come to fruition.

Whilst I am talking about TAFE, it could easily be broadened out to vocational education in regional areas. I see TAFE as having a very important and specific role as a publicly funded entity. That role extends into areas that may not be profitable, from just a pure economics point of view, and therefore not picked up by other private RTOs and private providers.

TAFE has a wider importance to the fabric of a community and, in particular for me, regional communities. I guess I have been blessed in a way to have an educational background. I have seen TAFE certainly operate far more effectively than it currently operates, and that was operated under a campus board. In fact, one of the main chairs of that board was David Mezinec, who now runs Tenison Woods College, our Catholic secondary school in Mount Gambier.

At that time, the campus was certainly proactive and responsive to our community needs, but it also had a social element to it. It ran courses and looked after some of the most disadvantaged people in our community. Those courses would not have been viable, just from a pure economics point of view, and therefore would not have been picked up by private providers. Once you understand this space, you can see that private providers play a very important role. The compliance requirements they have to go through from the Australian Quality Training Framework are very onerous.

That is where I see a central role for TAFE, the compliance aspects of it, in making sure that the courses that are run are fully compliant, that the paperwork and checking and the administration of it is done at a central location. But what we are seeing with TAFE is quite honestly the complete destruction of the current publicly funded vocational offerings, in particular in regional areas.

I will go back to 2016 when I presented to this committee and I quoted from AEU Journal SA's edition of 25 May 2016. This is what I said at that time, directly from this:

We've seen it all before. How do you close down a service you no longer want, even when it ticks all the boxes? You change the conditions of delivery so that it can no longer meet expectations, you starve it of support and funding, you add a layer of management and bureaucracy and then you make it personal. You isolate the staff providing the service, caution them about speaking up or garnering external support. You pit worker against worker to compete for jobs. You talk it up publicly and suggest other options that are supposedly cheaper but you know will fail to deliver. The service loses its connection to business and the community and the knowledge, expertise and skills of professional practitioners. It becomes so ineffective that no one really notices it when the doors are closed.

If I look back to 2016 to what has happened here with my local TAFE, that is exactly what has happened at a local level. I have plenty of examples of it. Obviously, I cannot read the people's names because they are TAFE employees, but very clearly in any correspondence that I have had with TAFE staff, it has 'Please note', under this person's contract, they are not allowed to talk to anybody, in particular the local MP, about issues relating to TAFE.

This person's specific email wanted to make sure that I was aware—and this was from the end of last year—that there are massive cuts that are being made to Mount Gambier courses. Half of the courses at Mount Gambier are now gone. There are changes to the courses where there is meant to be consultation and none of this has occurred. They are increasingly moving to an online delivery platform which lecturer after lecturer tells me will not fit the expectations of business nor will it provide the quality outcomes for the participants at TAFE.

Then we go to the employers who are contacting me, saying that the offerings at TAFE are not fitting their needs. Their apprentices are online or now needing to travel to Adelaide to complete courses that were being offered in Mount Gambier. Again, there are a number of employers who are giving me this message loud and clear. If we go back to my comments just a couple of minutes ago, it is exactly what we have been talking about if you want to starve an organisation and perhaps have an ulterior motive of where you would like to see that go.

I touched on the point of courses that may not be economically viable but are intrinsically valuable to a community and the fabric of a community. That is where I see the importance of regional TAFE with a regional board which I would like to see incorporate the private providers because, quite frankly, we are not big enough to have duplication of services. So where there is opportunity to leverage off of private providers, we should be doing it. But TAFE needs to provide, I believe, that cornerstone of vocational education.

What I do not understand is that I saw the same characteristics in regional health over many years. The Liberal Party came to the last election with a plan for regional health boards. I would have to say from my own experience (and others may have quite different experiences) that my regional health board is a very high-functioning board, attuned to our community. It has brought the health advisory council on board and engagement with community is strong, and I firmly believe that it is the right decision to make from a regional health perspective.

I cannot understand why we would not be looking at a regional vocational board that would try to achieve the same outcomes and productivity for a community because, quite frankly, we are seeing a denigration of the quality of service and the people from my electorate having to travel further. The reason they are having to travel is that over the past 10 years 13 TAFE campuses have been closed.

These include Millicent, Naracoorte, Gawler, Bordertown, Tea Tree Gully, Morphettville, Roseworthy, Cleve, Waikerie, Renmark, Panorama, Marleston, Port Adelaide and Parafield. On top of that, there are efficiency targets of $11.5 million, efficiency targets being another word for budget cuts, which are seeing the vocational sector being starved of funds.

Unless you have local management that can engage with your business community, engage with the participants of your community and hold accountability for that campus and delivery, I think the current model is fraught with danger, and its path, unfortunately, is laid out for us all to see. We have to acknowledge that TAFE have some encumbrances that private providers do not have. Down in Mount Gambier, the TAFE building is a massive building, yet TAFE only use probably a third to half of that building. It would have to pay the rates on the entire premises, so there has to be some recognition of the disadvantage TAFE has.

Going beyond that, the thing that concerns me in not having a local board is the missed opportunities. I look at forestry as a key opportunity for vocational education: 30 per cent of our employment workforce is tied to the forest industry, yet the training is scattered all across this state and half of Victoria because nobody is coordinating the forest industry and the various players within it to centralise that training at Mount Gambier.

We are talking not just of what you would think of forest training but of diesel mechanics and safety courses—a whole range of vocational training that should be delivered in our local area, but there is no local board and no local connection pulling all those threads together to have the forest industry invest in vocational education in our region, which would benefit our entire community. That leads to more and more young people travelling, putting their safety at risk.

I remember being a little bit younger than I am now and what a week away training at the age of 18 or 19 would involve—in some cases, late nights and some frivolity perhaps. That training should and could easily be offered in a district as large as Mount Gambier for others to access. It is vitally important that we seriously look at this and establish regional TAFE boards or regional vocational education boards not only to deal with the current training but to project forward into our future needs the greater connection between our secondary schools, which are the feeder opportunities for vocational education. These were done. It is not rocket science.

All I am saying is that we go back to a model that actually worked, a model that was responsive to a community and a model that met the needs of vocational training in our electorate. I think probably one of the greatest mistakes was the Skills for All initiative. It totally distorted training and, in my opinion, watered it down to a point which has been hard to recover from. We need this cornerstone of vocational education. TAFE is that cornerstone and for regional areas it is the bedrock for other vocational training to leverage off.

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (11:45): I fully support the motion. I think it is an excellent motion and, in some ways, it is back to the future. We did have regional boards in the past; in fact, there have been a number of different variations over the years when it comes to TAFE. One of the issues with TAFE—and this is potentially another restructure—is that when we were in government we were not blameless.

I think there were things that we did to TAFE that I did not find acceptable as a person that lives in the regions. I do not think the record of the current government is good because, clearly, TAFE is being hollowed out in regional areas. It is being degraded. Courses are being cut and courses are being diminished. You get the feeling that this is a deliberate strategy on the part of TAFE management operating within the constraints they have in Adelaide.

I mentioned yesterday the cutback to Certificate III in Hairdressing in Whyalla and the consequences of that. Apprentices are now expected to go to Adelaide for two-week training blocks. Some of those people are school-based apprentices as young as 16. Are they going to go to Adelaide for two weeks? Who is going to accompany them? Who is going to pick up the costs associated with going to Adelaide? I have had mature-age apprentices approach me to say that the cutback to certificate III in Whyalla means that they will have to pull out because they have kids. They cannot afford to go to Adelaide and do those two-week blocks. This has been a very successful course over many years.

I quoted yesterday some of the people who have commented on my Facebook page. There are hundreds of comments about what a backward step this is when it comes to certificate III, but people then started to talk about the other courses that have also been lost over time. If you go to the TAFE building now, like the one at Mount Gambier, it is a big facility and parts of it are empty.

When I was first advocating for the new high school in Whyalla, to close the current high schools and get rid of that poor model we had with the transition to a senior high school, the $100 million commitment that Labor made to a new school was in my view part of a greater educational precinct, given that you had a new high school that was going to be next to the university and next to a TAFE.

Yet we see at TAFE the degradation that is going on, a degradation that is to the disadvantage of people from the regions. For instance, with the hairdressing course, people would come down from Port Augusta, and it would also service the smaller communities on Eyre Peninsula. That is all going to be lost now. Also, as an indication of what is going on with TAFE in Whyalla—and this is very similar to what the member for Mount Gambier was saying—our major employer that took on 21 apprentices this year is no longer using TAFE. TAFE used to be the provider of choice, but because of the degradation at TAFE that is 21 apprentices lost in the metal trades and the electrical trades.

They are probably fortunate in that they work for a big employer, so when they do go to Adelaide this year for their block training they will not be out of pocket; that big employer will pick that up. However, when you look at the smaller contractors that are also dependent upon apprentices going to TAFE to do metal trades courses or electrical courses, they are not going to be in the same position. They are not going to be able to shoulder the burden.

When I went around and spoke to nearly all the hairdressing salons in Whyalla, a number of them indicated that in future it is going to be very difficult to have an apprentice because the local training is no longer there. I could go on at length about specific courses that have been degraded or lost in Whyalla and elsewhere in the region, but I think there is an overarching problem.

I was critical of the government I was part of because some of our people, back then, had also drunk the contestability Kool-Aid. When you drink the contestability Kool-Aid, out the window goes—or at least is diminished—that sense of social obligation that is incredibly important in regional communities, because we do have thin markets.

That is not to say that a properly funded, robust and responsive vocational education sector is not important in the city as well, but it is incredibly important in the regions—and there are additional costs there. As the member for Mount Gambier said, there are a whole range of fixed costs with the facilities that have been run over the years when it comes to regional communities.

You get people coming up to you and talking about how TAFE used to be incredibly vibrant once upon a time. It used to have lots of students there. In some respects, online learning has been used to diminish what happens in regional communities. One person who is doing child care in Whyalla sent me a message, a person called Donna Hosking. This is what she had to say:

I signed up to do diploma in early childhood education at [the] Whyalla TAFE because I wanted class learning and an educator on site. Within days told no lecturer only someone [to] come to Whyalla to assess. All classes online. Adelaide got class teaching one and a half days a week. We got two hours a week by Skype, so no time for [any] questions.

This is how it has been degraded.

Once upon a time you did have lecturers there. We are going to see the loss of the lecturer when it comes to hairdressing as well; a 0.5 lecturer and she is going to be lost, someone who is highly respected in Whyalla for the work she did at TAFE. That position is going to be lost, and they are saying, 'Oh well, we'll bring someone up from Adelaide.' They have not decided yet whether that person is going to fly up or drive up.

You get this all the time, this chip, chip, chipping away. My view is that the ultimate agenda is to benefit elements of the private sector. We need an incredibly strong TAFE, especially for regional communities. It has to be well funded and it has to be responsive.

That is one of the important things about devolving responsibility down to the regional level, because then people will be more responsive to the companies, the students and the apprentices who live in that region. The fact that a big company like GFG, a major employer, no longer uses TAFE is deeply concerning. It sends an incredibly poor message.

We do have to reinvigorate that sense of social obligation when it comes to country communities. We do have to realise that is going to cost more if we are serious—and I am always serious about the sense of having that access, that equity. As someone with an incredibly strong egalitarian ethos, to see the way country apprentices and country students are being increasingly treated is not a good thing.

We have to have a really hard look at what has gone on. I believe that our party needs to have a cold hard look at what we did when we were in power and we need to hold the current government to account for what they are currently doing. We need to get back to a strong commitment to a well-funded public education provider, not just for the city but especially for regional areas.

Mr BOYER (Wright) (11:55): I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise to support the motion from the member for Mount Gambier. As per the comments of the member for Giles, it is timely that this motion comes before us now, given some of the issues that we are grappling with in regional areas around training and skills.

I have a little bit of background in the issues that the member for Mount Gambier spoke about specifically in his contribution because earlier this year I went to Mount Gambier at the invitation of the member to discuss with local training providers the issues they are facing. I know that the issues they are facing are similar to issues experienced by training providers in regional and rural areas of South Australia and Australia more generally all around the country. It is something that the member for Giles touched upon in his contribution as well.

I was very thankful that the member for Mount Gambier organised that round table and especially thankful, as someone who is relatively new to these portfolios and, certainly when I ventured down to Mount Gambier for the round table, very new to the portfolios, for the very frank and honest way the attendees spoke about, first of all, how they thought the previous Labor government performed in these areas and how they think the current government is performing and the challenges they face and what we can do to address those.

As someone who has worked in ministerial staff land for some time, I know that we try to kid ourselves sometimes that we can do the kind of research and consultation that is required to make good decisions for the whole of the state through sitting in our offices in Adelaide, but nothing beats face-to-face consultation, particularly when it comes to consulting with regional areas, and talking on a one-on-one basis, as I had the opportunity to do in Mount Gambier recently with the people who face those issues on a daily basis.

As the member for Mount Gambier mentioned in his comments, TAFE is the major vocational training provider in regional areas. That is not always because there is less overall demand in those areas and that there is not demand to necessarily support private providers. Sometimes it is because it is just not economically viable for those private providers to set up in some of those smaller communities.

I believe TAFE will always have an important role to play in our state as the public provider of vocational education and training, and the member for Giles and I, and I am sure other people in this chamber, fundamentally and unashamedly believe that all South Australians have the right to public education at all stages of their lives. Public education at its core is about access. It is about making sure that doors are open to people who would ordinarily not have those opportunities, and that should be at preschool, primary, secondary and tertiary levels.

We know that we have an economy in South Australia, and indeed a global economy, that is very different from what it used to be, and we have certainly seen that in our state with the decline of traditional manufacturing. The need to be nimble on our feet, in terms of the skills and training we are providing to the community, is more important than ever, particularly in the case of the decline of that traditional manufacturing base, which has meant making sure that the vocational education and training sector is also open and accessible to older South Australians who may have been in long-term jobs in industries such as automotive and with employers like Holden's who need to retrain to find work in new and emerging areas.

I believe that TAFE plays a very important role in that by being a strong public training provider. It also potentially gives the government of the day a bit more leverage and a bit more flexibility in being responsive to those changing training needs.

Certainly, when we talk about its offerings in regional communities like Mount Gambier and elsewhere, TAFE is at its best when the voices of the local community are really embedded in the decision-making. Whether that be through local engagement with the employers that will be ideally taking on the staff who are trained and offering them employment opportunities or hearing about the emerging needs of communities, or what the students and staff themselves need, it is critical that those local communities are heard. That was overwhelmingly the feedback that I had at the round table that was convened by the member for Mount Gambier.

I would like to quickly touch on how TAFE boards are working just across the border from Mount Gambier in south-west Victoria, which is where I grew up, and I spent a lot of time in the Mount Gambier area as a young person as well. There are TAFE boards in that area that I think for some time now have been making decisions in the interests of their local communities, and the South West Institute of TAFE is a very good example.

The decision-making structure they have adopted means that the priorities of the regional centres that use that TAFE—and in that case it is areas like Warrnambool, Portland and Hamilton, which would be areas that would face a lot of the same kinds of challenges and skills needs (certainly in the case of Portland) faced in the Mount Gambier area—are really factored into the decisions.

Ultimately, it means that the course offerings are a better fit, and I think it acts also as a check and balance to make sure that, in an ideal world, the kinds of decisions the member for Giles just spoke about that have occurred in Whyalla, with hairdressing no longer being offered by TAFE there, do not happen.

I think its value is really twofold: it is to make sure that the course offering is accurate and that there is a bit of a check and balance against any aberrations in terms of what is being offered. I believe that South West Institute of TAFE has won the Australian Training Award for large training provider for the last five years, so there is obviously some kind of merit and value that is being recognised nationally.

I accept that the concept of regional boards might seem like a fairly simple one, and there is probably no need to over-egg the pudding. I take on face value the representations made to me by the member Mount Gambier and the regional training providers that I have heard from about how they think this can add value. I do not think anyone has spoken more passionately than the member for Giles about the need for making sure that local communities are listened to in decision-making.

I have certainly hopped onto his Facebook page and had a look at the incredible number of comments and feedback from the local community of Whyalla about those decisions. If you are in any doubt about how people feel, I suggest that anyone who might be so inclined should hop on there too and have a little look for themselves.

I would like to thank the member Mount Gambier for moving the motion, and I thank him again for being proactive and inviting me down to his area and convening that round table. It is certainly something I would like to do again and I am very pleased to offer the opposition's support for the motion.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (12:02): I move to amend the motion as follows:

In paragraph (b), replace 'moves to establish' with 'consider establishing'; and in paragraph (c), replace 'these boards' with 'regional campuses'.

The motion will now read:

That this house—

(a) recognises the importance of TAFE as a major education provider in regional South Australia;

(b) consider establishing regional TAFE boards, similar to the model used for regional health boards, with financial and course autonomy; and

(c) ensures that regional campuses be accountable and responsive to their communities.

I thank the member for Mount Gambier for bringing this motion to the parliament and for the constructive way the debate has been held. In his comments, I think that he had a lot of significant merit in the way he brought this to the debate. I also acknowledge the member for Giles and the member for Wright. While I do not necessarily agree with everything they said, I also identify that there are some specific things they said that speak to a truth of the challenges confronting the TAFE and the training sector in South Australia that have been confronting us for some time. I think some of the insight that both of them brought to their comments have some merit; I disagree with some aspects.

In moving this amendment, I am seeking to ensure that this house can stand united in reflecting the core desire of the member for Mount Gambier in bringing the motion in a way that is not overly prescriptive on either the government or the TAFE organisation itself or that would potentially lead to unintended consequences.

One of the comments made by the member for Wright in his contribution was to talk about the regional TAFE authority that I think operates in the south-west of Victoria. Indeed, he identified that the Victorian structure for TAFE is significantly different from our South Australian structure on a number of levels. There are actually a number of TAFE SA equivalents operating separately in Victoria because there is a scale that allows that to be the case.

One of the things that I am keen that such a reform of TAFE as is proposed by the member for Mount Gambier not lead to is a further release of silos in operation. The scale of TAFE SA as a statewide organisation can lend to flexibilities and the opportunities for courses to be offered that would not necessarily be able to be offered if a local TAFE authority was completely responsible for their own funding, autonomy of courses and so forth. In Victoria, there is certainly a scale. There is a scale to regional communities. There is a scale to training providers that is enabling them in what is, I believe, a more contestable market than we have or are proposing to have in South Australia to operate in that way.

The second part of the proposition where I think there is some difference—and it is a difference the member for Mount Gambier, I would submit, has with the opposition, and the government would side with the member for Mount Gambier—is indeed the value of those regional TAFE campuses and those city TAFE campuses being able to have some shared use with the non-government training providers.

At its core, what we are seeking to deliver in our training system here in South Australia is a system that will see every student, every young person or an older worker seeking re-skilling or upskilling, to be able to further their career, to be given the opportunity to have quality training that will enhance their job prospects going forward, giving them a new career or indeed the ability to tap into advanced career pathways.

The second group of people I think we are all seeking to support are those businesses and industries, whether new or established, that are looking for a skilled workforce. One of the key challenges here—and the member for Mount Gambier touched on this in raising his concerns about Skills for All—is that the purpose of training is more than a holistic educational exercise to improve the mental and intellectual capacity of an individual, like primary or tertiary education might potentially be in some ways, but it is to help people find a job. We are seeking to enhance people's capacity to get a job. That means there must either be jobs for them or a very high likelihood that there will be jobs for them.

For example, TAFE is helping to support South Australia's future industry needs by radically enhancing the offering we have in areas like cybersecurity, where we have developed a new traineeship pathway, as an example in IT, or in areas like shipbuilding, where we have developed new pathways into shipbuilding in conjunction with the Naval Shipbuilding College. These are areas where there will be jobs, and we are getting ready in advance. TAFE SA, as our public training provider, has a wonderful opportunity to enhance that or, indeed, work with the industry skills councils, as we do now, to identify the job vacancies and the job opportunities that are there now and make sure we are providing for those opportunities going forward, meeting the needs of students first and meeting the needs of business and industry second.

The member for Wright characterised one of the philosophical differences between the government and the opposition when he said that at every stage in people's lives there should be a public education offering for them. Instinctively, I am okay with the broad concept but, frankly, when it comes to training, sometimes a publicly subsidised training outcome can be as useful as a public training outcome.

There are group training organisations and registered training organisations in this state delivering high-quality training that is meeting the needs of business and industry and students, and I am equally satisfied with one of those outcomes as I am with a government training outcome. The member for Wright himself said that he met with broad training providers when he went to Mount Gambier, and indeed there are opportunities where a non-government training provider might well potentially find the solution for a student's needs or for a workforce need that TAFE SA is not equipped to do.

We see examples of these, particularly in the industry-led non-government organisations. Whether it is PIA, the Housing Industry Association or the MTA, a range of these organisations are delivering courses in exactly the way in which employers want, because the employers are funding them to do so. I would not want at any point to cut out those organisations from having the opportunity to deliver for students and businesses.

When we are talking about the country, the third particular area that we need to think about is the needs of that broader local country community because the educational offerings, the training offerings and the needs of those businesses are much more than just the individual outcomes for a student or for a business; they are symptomatic of the success of that country town. That is why having a look at how we deal with country training has value. Indeed, it is something that the TAFE SA organisation is looking at the moment. I am happy to further enhance that investigation by giving consideration to this motion, and so I encourage people to support the amendment to give consideration to that motion.

One example of the way that the amendment would enhance what this motion offers is that it would give us the capacity to have a look at the way in which TAFE SA and non-government training providers integrate in country regions. If TAFE SA were to have these regional boards in and of themselves, as in Victoria for example, you are looking at having a whole wealth of smaller, less nimble individual training providers in effect that are then in a much more contestable space than we have at the moment where we are supporting TAFE SA to deliver in a way that the state needs, that the government needs to on behalf of the state. Then, when there are non-government providers able to support or offer something differentiated, that can be part of it too.

At this point I would say that it is really important that with all the challenges, whether it is in relation to things in Mount Gambier or Whyalla or other aspects of country SA or TAFE SA across the city, you have to take into account the underlying conditions. When people talk about the way in which TAFE operated in 2010 or 2011 when it was not a corporatised organisation, before the Portolesi reforms to TAFE SA, it was a different world. It was a world before that 2011 to 2014 period that saw 500 staff removed from TAFE SA.

An FOI that Minister Pisoni identified when he was in opposition showed that between 1 January 2011 and 30 September 2014 there was a reduction of 545 staff, either TAFE SA employees or DFEEST employees but working in traditional TAFE SA positions. Further budget decisions made between 2015 and 2017 put what the TAFE SA board has argued—and I agree with them—were unrealistic savings measures and fanciful revenue projections imposed on TAFE SA in an ongoing way as a result of those deliberate budget decisions between 2015 and 2017.

Responding to that, over the first three budgets, we put an extra $170 million into TAFE and we are investigating how we can better support TAFE SA going forward. That means for the country as well, particularly for students, for businesses, industries and regional communities. I thank members for their contributions to this debate. I think they are constructive and I urge all members to support the amendments and the amended motion if it is amended.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (12:12): I rise to speak to this motion by the member for Mount Gambier and note the amendment moved by the education minister. I note the original motion:

That this house–

(a) recognises the importance of TAFE as a major education provider in regional South Australia;

(b) moves to establish regional TAFE boards, similar to the model used for regional health boards, with financial and course autonomy; and

(c) ensures that these boards be accountable and responsive to their communities.

I note our amendment:

That this house—

(a) recognises the importance of TAFE as a major education provider in regional South Australia;

(b) considers establishing regional TAFE boards, similar to the model used for regional health boards, with financial and course autonomy; and

(c) ensures that regional campuses be accountable and responsive to their communities.

In supporting the amended motion, I acknowledge that TAFE does make and has made a valuable contribution to regional communities. Over time, though, some of the issues that have arisen when making TAFE the best training provider it could be relate to bureaucracy in the background in different governments over many, many years.

We could all name TAFE facilities that have been under-utilised, for whatever reason. I do not know. I have facilities in Murray Bridge. We have excellent workshop facilities, welding, machine work, mechanic facilities and trade training facilities, and they are extremely under-utilised, yet I have two schools in the region building their own trade training centres. I know in the past I have had discussions with people on my side of government, and with the opposition when they were in government, about making the best of facilities across the board so that general education providers can utilise the facilities.

That said, there has also been some excellent work done through TAFE. I know in Murray Bridge we have courses involving hairdressing. It is pretty simple to cut my hair: clippers and a few snips and an apprentice can do it pretty quickly. Other people demand a bit more attention. Also a valuable training part of the local TAFE in Murray Bridge is the aged-care training. As we all get older, most of us may need it into the future. That training is vital for aged-care providers across the board.

Currently, one of the great outcomes that we have assisted in as a government is the skilling of people in hospitality, working with our TAFE to train them up for the new hotel that is soon to be opened at Murray Bridge, the new six-storey Bridgeport Hotel. We have assisted with the funding of training people there. There are 150 jobs going into this hotel. I know from talking to the general manager, Mary-Lou Corcoran, who would not be unknown in this place, that there are 52 long-term unemployed. She has made sure that she is very inclusive with who she hires. People with all ranges of abilities are getting the training to bring them up to speed to function in that hotel.

One of the things that people are being trained for is the responsible service of alcohol. There are different courses online and we all know that volunteers, including ourselves if we want to work at the footy club bar for instance, have to have a responsible service of alcohol ticket. If you deal with the one where you have to use the videos, you may have different levels of success, but you can get through it.

What is happening with the hotel is everyone, whether they are assigned initially as hospitality staff directly in bar work or whether they are cleaners or room attendants, is getting their responsible service of alcohol as part of that training. Across the board, they are all having that opportunity to get the appropriate hospitality tickets to get through.

It was a pleasure to speak to one of these classes recently. I think they were a bit stunned. I said, 'I haven't got a ticket to do anything, but I have bumbled along and I suppose we are going sort of okay.' I did stress to them that they want to achieve all the levels of training that they can because it will only benefit them in the future.

That is a great thing that is happening as we speak. It is going to be a fast ramp-up. There is going to be some soft entry into the hotel in the next little while. Next week, there is a breakfast there and some of us are staying the night before. They will barely have the doonas out the boxes, let alone on the beds, I think.

In a real coup as part of the soft entry, as I call it, Mary-Lou Corcoran realised that the Australian Institute of Sport had a problem with their waterways in Sydney for rowing training. She made the call and said, 'Come to Murray Bridge and we will host you.' It is going to be pretty raw and the cobwebs will be ironed out really quickly, and then the official opening will happen a few weeks later. That shows what we are doing just in one item of training locally using TAFE facilities.

Another thing TAFE at Murray Bridge are doing really well is opening up the facility as a learning hub for people at all levels of training, right through to tertiary training, with quiet areas where people can go to do their remote study from the Murray Bridge TAFE campus. I have been to multiple openings there of various aspects of the hub, and it is great. If people cannot find quiet time and time to do their university work or training work, they can go there, find a quiet space and get online.

As we have seen with COVID, there has been so much more online work done in university education and other education where it is done remotely. I see it with my eldest lad, Mack, who is doing his third year in mechanical engineering. This year, he is just starting to go back to do a little bit more work at the University of Adelaide, but a lot of the lecture work is done remotely, as it can be.

I also want to pick up on what the minister mentioned before about training across the board in South Australia. Sometimes training does not directly suit different providers, and sometimes that is because of the bureaucratic impediments that are put in place. A classic one TAFE did struggle with was shearing training—I had some direct input from some shearing trainers locally—and that is being picked up by another provider. I just want to acknowledge in the broad training space the training providers right across the board who train our people into the future.

My own bit of training with TAFE many years ago in the early eighties (I think it was 1980 or 1982, so I am starting to show my age) was on-farm training. I think it was the second course in the state. As I said—I have already let it out that I do not have a ticket—I did not quite complete the course because I went away at the time to work at the gas fields in the Cooper Basin, but that was no fault of TAFE as the training provider.

I certainly support the amended motion and I support TAFE. May they go on to educate people well into the future and support training across the board, and may we always get fantastic outcomes for all those people who go along and seek better skills, as our trainees do through our electorate offices, to get their Certificate III in Business. I support the amended motion.

The Hon. G.G. BROCK (Frome) (12:23): Today, I would also like to talk to the member for Mount Gambier's motion regarding regional TAFE. For far too long, governments of both persuasions have fully understood the great importance of regional TAFE locations and facilities. Our regional people always seem to fit in with the metropolitan advisers' recommendations, and I mean this with great sincerity.

For our regional people, for many years it appears to have been the notion that these facilities have to break even, and on many occasions they have to produce a profit, which then goes back into general revenue. We all must remember that regional people do not have the great luxury of public transport going past their homes, nor do regional people have the luxury of the same opportunity as metropolitan people who have to secure the relevant certificates in the various categories employers require for positions that are advertised.

I have heard it all before: let's make training the best we can by providing the best facilities, the best equipment and the best tutors. To do this, we have to have mass enrolments, which makes the expenditure of funds for these facilities meet the financial requirements. We must remember where all royalties come from to this government, to any government—where most of our food is produced and where all the requirements come from for the manufacture of many of our staple diets, including bread and meat and other commodities. They all come from the regions, but successive governments have centralised the best teaching facilities—all in Adelaide—and expect people who need to get the required certificates to come to Adelaide. What for? To satisfy the decision to centralise the teaching facilities.

Not everyone can afford to pay for accommodation during their training period. Not everyone can afford the extra food away from their homes. Not everyone, particularly those who may be looking to get extra training to get a better paying job, can afford to pay the above costs and also the cost of wear and tear on their vehicles and the cost of fuel, which I might add is more stable in regional areas and more volatile in the city.

I have also heard of various courses not progressing, as the required number of students is not met, which, according to the financial people, needs to be met to meet the costs involved with that training. I have mentioned to many people across the regions and at TAFE, 'If you don't have the required numbers at your particular location, why don't you look at other sites that may also not have the required numbers to provide that course and between the two or three different sites use the technology that we have today—for example, Skype or Zoom?'

However, there are many courses where students may need to have hands on. The member for Mount Gambier and others have mentioned the issue that certain trades have to have their hands on and cannot do it via Zoom. If that is the case, and it is the training that businesses are looking for, then the government of the day needs to provide these people with suitable training for those industries and not have the person away for two or three weeks at extra cost, not to mention the emotional impact on their families.

I ask: do we charge primary school children to be educated? Do we charge secondary students to achieve their SACE? The answers are, no, we do not. Do we say to the smaller schools across our regions that if they do not have the sufficient number of students in a particular year of education that we will not teach that particular year in that school? Again, the answer is no. I ask the question to those involved: why do we do this to the people in our regional locations when they may not have the numbers to make it sustainable?

We all know we need to have the qualifications to achieve the requirements of the ever-changing world we are in at the moment. If we do not allow our regional people to get those requirements, then these regional people will not be able to better themselves, nor will they be able to contribute to the future direction of our state and country.

There are many regional people who may be in an occupation with a lower skill and who want to improve their opportunities. It is absolutely critical for productivity and future employment for young regional people to acquire workforce skills that employers want. There are many regional people who may also have had their previous employment impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic; some of these jobs may not come back and people may need retraining to get further employment.

As mentioned by the member for Mount Gambier, are we supplying training for those jobs that are emerging in various locations? The issue is we have to bring it back to the regional locations. The regional boards and the regional facilities know exactly what is happening in the regions and they can be advised by the people in the regions who actually need it. I know there are certain jobs where the training may have to come to Adelaide, but there are a lot of jobs where the training can be done in the regions. In my particular area, we have lots of jobs in the social justice area, aged care, the NDIS and so on. The member for Whyalla indicated hairdressing. We have that opportunity in Port Pirie and I do not want to lose that either.

It has been stated to me over many years that country children do not have the ability to achieve the same as metropolitan children. I question this and say to students whenever I am visiting the various schools across my electorate, 'If you want to do something and you are passionate about it, have a shot at it. If the door opens, put your foot in it and see where it leads you. If you want to do something, don't let anybody tell you that you cannot do it. Believe in yourself and ask many questions.' If someone asked me, 'What if I don't succeed in that particular decision?', my answer to that would be, 'Get up and walk again.'

In closing, I think it is critical that governments look at their role in supporting people who may be at the bottom of the queue and who potentially suffer inequity to get improvement in their lives. Regional people are very hardworking and very passionate about what they have out there, but what they do not want to do is to have to come down to the city. Our employers need those people to be trained on the job, not away in the city.

We have locations out there, but there is no public transport, so the issue is: how do those people get to their regional locations? That is the other issue we have: there is no public transport coming into those locations. They have to do that training and get their certificate III, II, IV, or whatever it may be, to keep their job and to keep their Centrelink going.

We have to really start looking at the whole operation of education and further training across all regional South Australia. Years ago, Port Pirie had a massive facility, a big campus, but over the years it has deteriorated, and I blame both sides. There have been fewer and fewer courses coming into the facility. Just recently, in the last 12 months, some of TAFE's operations were relocated to one side of the building. My information is that it was to save rental or payment to DPTI that was managing it. This is some time ago.

We now have non-government facilities—education and other office staff—going into a training facility. I think that gives the opportunity for any government to then say, 'We can't do any more courses here because we don't have any more room.' We need to use these facilities out there.

The member for Mount Gambier has indicated that he has a great facility down there that is not fully utilised. We have a great facility at Port Pirie. The Port Pirie campus is one of the biggest in South Australia but it is not fully utilised. We are now using some of that facility for non-government agencies. What is happening is that they are coming away from commercial rentals in the city itself and into government facilities, which is therefore impacting not only on the opportunities for training facilities there but also there is a financial loss for the commercial facilities out in the community. Certainly, I wholeheartedly agree with the member for Mount Gambier's notice of motion and give it 100 per cent support.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (12:31): I would like to make just a brief contribution to this debate, particularly in the context of paragraph (a) of the motion, which recognises the importance of TAFE as a major education and skills provider not only in regional South Australia but also right across South Australia, and particularly in my electorate.

From where I stand, and certainly from the feedback I am getting from people in my electorate, people do question this government's commitment to the TAFE sector. Certainly the view that has been put to me is that what people can see from this government's ongoing funding cuts to the TAFE sector is a dismantling and a deskilling of the TAFE sector.

I will provide some examples of how it impacts on my electorate of Light and more broadly on the people in the northern suburbs, because there have been a number of cuts to programs in this area that have, as the member for Frome has just mentioned, imposed additional costs on people who enter the TAFE system, and that is certainly true for people in my electorate.

There are some courses in the building trades that have been shifted from Elizabeth TAFE, which services both the northern suburbs and Gawler as well as some of the Barossa areas. Some of these courses have been moved down to the other end of the town, the other end of the city, on the premise that it is actually better for students to have these programs miles away from their homes, which incurs additional costs for them.

One of the courses, I understand, is now being provided online through an interstate company. As some speakers have already mentioned, often a lot of trades require hands-on teaching. It is very important for these people to actually gain hands-on teaching. Again, it has been done more cheaply through a company in Victoria, and therefore the students and our young people are the greatest losers as a result of cuts to the TAFE sector.

That was particularly true and made very obvious to my community last year when TAFE, like many organisations, had to close its doors for a while. They did their best to try to transfer some of the teaching to online teaching, and I acknowledge that the TAFE administration did do that and that the teachers were keen to do that.

The biggest lot of feedback I got from students who do a trades type of training was that a lot of the training did not lend itself to online learning. A lot of the people who do trades studies do them because they like that face-to-face contact, they like that hands-on training, and that is how they learn: they learn through doing. They learn in the classroom, they learn on the job, they learn from actually doing things, and it is very hard to learn that sort of stuff online. I understand why TAFE is moving more things to online. They are trying to reduce budgets and maintain their programs and support for students and young people in our communities. It is actually making it harder for our young people to learn.

We are often told, and I have been to a number of places where we are often told that this government has decided to make TAFE more competitive, that TAFE now operates a much more competitive VET sector. We are often given figures of how much cheaper the private sector can do it compared with TAFE. It is interesting. These figures are, in my view, quite deceptive. It is like comparing a medical course with a legal studies course, saying that the law faculty can deliver many more graduates than the medical faculty can in costs. They are two different things.

When you compare the costs of running TAFE—and this is the more important point to make—when the government guts TAFE and all the high-demand, low-cost programs are given to the private sector, of course you are going to shift all the revenue to the private sector and keep the costs in the public sector. I will give you an example. Business studies programs are no longer available to students in metropolitan Adelaide through TAFE. For those who have trainees, previously they would send the trainee to do their business studies through TAFE. That is no longer the case. They now have to send them to a private provider.

What this government has done is use some false justification. It is not creating competition; it is actually reducing competition in the marketplace by taking TAFE out of the sector for training courses in some really key areas, and business studies is one. There are a whole range of other programs where TAFE can no longer compete on the open market for students. This whole story about trying to create a more competitive sector is just nonsense.

This government is not committed to the TAFE sector. It is keen to dismantle the TAFE sector. It is deskilling the TAFE sector, and our communities are the poorer for it. Not only are metropolitan communities poorer but regional communities would also be poorer for this. TAFE, as the member for Hammond said, has been the bulwark of education and skills training in regional areas, and quite rightly so.

I think it is very important to remember that, in a lot of areas, were it not for the TAFE system people just would not access post-secondary education. TAFE, as the motion says, is very important to our sector. I do not believe this government is committed to the TAFE sector. What I have seen from my own area is that they have done nothing but try to dismantle it, undermine it and deskill it.

Also interesting, from a political point of view, is the undermining of the current CEO of TAFE. That is very interesting. Why all of a sudden would the government be party to undermining its own CEO? I assume he is probably saying that some of this stuff is actually hurting our students. He is probably telling the government the truth. This government does not like the truth—we know that. It gets rid of people who tell it the truth.

This undermining of the CEO is just part of the dismantling of our TAFE sector in this state, when we should be building it up to make sure that we have the skills and abilities in our community for our young people and other people who want to retrain. There are a whole range of sectors that require additional people. We should be building and supporting the TAFE sector right across the state and particularly in our regional areas. With those comments, I certainly support those parts of the motion that indicate and recognise that TAFE is very important to the state.

The Hon. D.G. PISONI (Unley—Minister for Innovation and Skills) (12:39): Firstly, may I congratulate the member for Mount Gambier on bringing this motion to the house. I congratulate the Minister for Education, who is the minister responsible for running TAFE or certainly the minister that TAFE is responsible to. I support the amendments brought forward by the Minister for Education to this place.

I want to use this opportunity to perform a bit of a reality check, particularly for the member for Light and the member for Wright, about the history of TAFE. If you recall, Mr Speaker, and you will see it on my LinkedIn CV, I was a student of TAFE. I did a wood machining apprenticeship, starting back in 1980. It was an apprenticeship of about eight weeks a year for the first two years and four weeks in the third year.

Of course, the bulk of any apprenticeship is the on-the-job training, which is very important for the vocational education system. That is why this government has been delivering more on-the-job training opportunities through our Skilling South Australia program. We have recognised that there is a cost to on-the-job training for employers, and we have gone into partnership with those employers to remove barriers for them to participate in the process and to bring in enablers with some additional funding.

For many decades, debate about funding for vocational education has been about the classroom component and the out-of-job component. We are the first government that has recognised that there is more than just the cost of the classroom component of apprenticeships, traineeships and vocational education, and we have supported employers in that process. In doing so, we have turned the training system around here in South Australia.

When we came to office, we were in the sixth year of tumbling commencement rates for apprenticeships and traineeships in South Australia. In the period from 2012 to 2018, we saw on average a 19 per cent reduction in the number of apprenticeship and traineeship commencements in South Australia. We signed a deal with the federal government for our Skilling South Australia program, which was $100 million of state money and $100 million of federal money, in the first week of September 2018.

From that period, we began supporting employers. In the meantime, we had already started re-establishing industry skills councils in South Australia so that we had the intelligence straight from the factory floor about where those skills were needed, what skills were needed and what barriers there were for employers. But we did not just then design a single one-size-fits-all model, which is the model of vocational education that was handed from the previous government year after year—one size fits all, change your business to suit the qualifications you need or the rules to access this particular program. What we have done is actually bespoke designed programs for individual industries and even for individual businesses if they require them.

Consequently, within the first full quarter of implementing the Skilling South Australia program, we were able to arrest the decline of commencements in South Australia. In the March quarter of 2019, we actually saw growth in commencements of apprenticeships and traineeships in South Australia for the first time since 2012, and we have been growing ever since in that place. We have done that because we have started the process of repairing TAFE.

You will recall that, in the lead-up to the 2018 election, TAFE was in the middle of a crisis. It had failed 16 random audits from ASQA. In other words, ASQA had, at random, chosen 16 courses that TAFE was delivering, audited those courses and they all failed. There were two ongoing investigations into TAFE. The chair of TAFE, Peter Vaughan, was sacked. Robin Murt disappeared and was nowhere to be seen.

This was the legacy of the previous Labor government for TAFE. This is on top of TAFE, under the orders of the previous government—despite the fact that in 2012 they took a bill to this place that gave TAFE autonomy and made it a statutory body—closing 14 TAFE campuses in regional South Australia and around the suburbs, and giving around 550 TAFE staff their marching orders with redundancy packages.

Overnight and without warning in March 2015, we also saw non-government providers that had access to the Subsidised Training List told that they would no longer have access to that list, and that money was redirected to support TAFE. The justification by the previous government at the time for doing that was because they were going to make TAFE competitive by 2018-19. That was their promise to the people of South Australia when they made that dramatic change in 2015 to remove many of those non-government providers.

Those providers had had access to the Subsidised Training List and had been servicing apprentices, trainees and others who were doing vocational education in South Australia for many, many years. People lost their businesses and people lost their homes. I understand there were even people who took their own life because of the effect of that government decision by the previous government.

That set the scene as to what we inherited when we came to office in 2018. Since that time, the Minister for Education has worked diligently to rebuild the TAFE network. Not only have we seen the re-establishment of ASQA accreditation to TAFE, which we have seen granted for a seven-year period, but we have also now seen TAFE in partnership with the Naval Group and other defence industries, doing things that TAFE was not even doing several years ago in the training sector. It is evolving. We are working with TAFE to fix the lack of training opportunities in South Australia.

When we came to office there were about 350 courses available on the subsidised training list, and that was a cost-cutting exercise by the previous government. We have now expanded that to over 800 courses. We do not decide through a committee that sits in some dark corner somewhere as to how many courses we decide we fund and what industries we support.

The trigger for releasing that funding to subsidised training is somebody being offered a paid traineeship or apprenticeship. That is the market indicator. The boss is putting their hand in their pocket and paying a salary—there is your demand for that skill—and that automatically releases the subsidised training for that employer, with whatever RTO they choose. There is no funding that is reserved for any particular RTO. All RTOs that are registered can access the Subsidised Training List.

A lot has happened since we inherited the basket case that was left to the South Australian people by the previous government, not just the basket case of TAFE but the basket case of the entire vocational education system in South Australia. It is important that we recognise the sentiment of the member for Mount Gambier and the amendment to the motion by the Minister for Education. We are getting on with the job. We are working with regional South Australia to ensure that there are many more training opportunities in South Australia than we inherited from the previous government.

The SPEAKER: Before I call the member for Mount Gambier, I indicate that the amendment that has been moved by the Minister for Education is in order, pursuant to standing order 161, and is in the appropriate form and moved and seconded in accordance with standing order 162, so the amendment is before the house appropriately.

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (12:49): I would like to thank the members for Giles, Wright, Morialta, Hammond, Frome, Light and Unley for their contributions today on this very important topic. It is pleasing to see some agreement on moving forward, and that is the intent of this motion: to try to help pave a way forward that will improve TAFE but, more broadly, will improve vocational education, in particular for regional areas. With that, I have had negotiations with the minister involved and will be supporting the amended motion.

Amendment carried; motion as amended carried.

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