House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-10-17 Daily Xml

Contents

National Skills Agreement

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:42): Supplementary, sir: in relation to the 150,000 places the minister described, how many of them are going to be available next year and the year after? Is it 30,000 a year or some other breakup?

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (14:43): We will look at that as part of the Skills Plan. It's 150,000 across the lifetime of the agreement, so the five-year agreement. We will look at what the phasing is of the position of the subsidised spots that are available as part of this agreement. That again is probably something that I will want to sit down with the sector and talk about because it's not just about divvying them up and handing them out. We need to sit down and talk to all those providers—government and not-for-profit and for-profit—who hopefully will be a part of delivering the 150,000 around what their capacity actually is. That's an important question for all training providers including TAFE.

I am sure all training providers out there, whether they are public, private or not-for-profit, are very keen to access some of these, of course, but I need to have reassurance as the minister, as the Premier and Cabinet does, that they are able to actually deliver them within the lifetime of the agreement. That's part of the body of work that we need to do that will make up the Skills Plan in terms of who will access them, how many will be available in each year of the five years of the agreement, and then what the specific qualifications and courses might actually be where we make them available. We know, for instance, we have in my own portfolio areas our commitment for the introduction of preschool for three year olds. Royal commissioner Julia Gillard set out some very precise workforce numbers; we need to meet that.

We have it for AUKUS in terms of the facility that will actually build the subs, and then the workforce we need to build the subs themselves, and then things like hydrogen as well, not to mention existing demand in the construction and building industry. That is a piece of work that we will do over the next few months, and I will be very happy to come back to this place and provide both the member for Morialta and the rest of the members in this place with some more details as we go.