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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-08 Daily Xml
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Question Time

Skills Training

Ms HUTCHESSON (Waite) (14:13): My question is to the Premier. How is the Malinauskas government developing skills training for South Australians?

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:13): I do want to thank the member for Waite for her question. I know that skills and skills policy is something she genuinely cares about. Her young lad, Finn, of course is a recent recipient of services from TAFE, a chippie, working very hard, no doubt, in the ever growing housing and construction sector in South Australia. He is in housing, I understand, more than civil work and thoroughly enjoying it. The member for Waite herself, if my memory serves me correctly, has also been a beneficiary of the extraordinary work that TAFE undertakes.

We are at full employment in South Australia, largely. It's a magnificent position to be in. It represents the fact that young South Australians, when they complete their schooling, will have the opportunity to be able to get a job in a more easy way than pretty much at any other time in living memory. But that doesn't diminish the challenge before government to make sure that we see people's standard of living improving, not just by having a job but by making sure that they've got a high-quality job that is secure and is able to enjoy growing wages. That can't just be at the expense of businesses themselves; it has to be on the back of growing productivity.

The way we grow our nation's productivity, the way we ensure that South Australia's standard of living improves into the future, is to invest in our most precious resource of them all, and that is our people, particularly our young people. That is the sustainable way to grow our economy. This is why we, as a government, have been so determined to not just invest but also innovate when it comes to skills policy in this state.

We start, of course, with TAFE. We know that TAFE has been underdone in South Australia for too long, which is why, under the member for Wright, the Minister for Education, we have seen a revitalisation of TAFE, a reinvestment in TAFE and an appreciation that TAFE matters as a public sector education provider and has its own role to play that can work in concert with the private sector but is nonetheless essentially public.

Simultaneously, we have also wanted to innovate in our schools. We have a massive challenge on our hands. We know that the pipeline of demand for skilled labour in South Australia is only going to escalate across the course of this decade; it is not going away. Whether it be in the naval shipbuilding program, whether it be in the opportunities around renewables and the decarbonisation of industry more broadly, we need more young people doing STEM and also acquiring the skills that are required tomorrow.

This is why, as a state government, we have chosen to invest in building brand-new technical colleges here in South Australia. That doesn't just represent an innovation in South Australia but in many ways represents an innovation nationally. Last week, as I referred to yesterday, we opened the first of those five technical colleges—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: —the first of five technical colleges in South Australia, down at Findon. The first of five, built on time, on budget—and it's full. Students who are studying at Findon Technical College today, enrolled in year 10, are going to walk out of high school in three years' time knowing they have their SACE certificate in one pocket and a trade certificate in another, and walk straight into a job at a company like BAE Systems, or an education service provider in childhood preschool, or in helping in aged care—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: —straight out of school, with a qualification and a SACE certificate, into a secure long-term job of the future, aiding the development of our economy. We are investing in skills and we are investing in education because that is the way you grow people's standard of living and grow the productivity of our economy.

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