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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-21 Daily Xml
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TAFE SA

Mrs PEARCE (King) (11:58): I move:

That this house—

(a) recognises the importance of TAFE SA in transforming lives and building a stronger, more inclusive South Australian economy;

(b) acknowledges that TAFE SA should always be at the centre of the VET system; and

(c) recognises the importance of TAFE SA delivering a wide range of in-demand courses to give South Australians the skills they need for rewarding careers, including in early childhood education, health and social care, defence, building and construction, primary industries, information technology and community services.

As many of us would know, TAFE SA is the largest provider of vocational education and training in our state and it is a public provider. Training is delivered from more than 30 training locations, importantly, the majority of which are found in regional and remote South Australia. That includes the Pirie campus in my hometown of Port Pirie. My mum worked there for a number of years and often I would spend time after school around the campus in awe of those who were learning to get involved in automotive, building and construction trades, and aged and disability services.

More importantly, it showed me firsthand how a local educator can work in collaboration with industry to ensure the training and educational needs of a local community are met, how it feeds local communities with the skilled workforce to help it to thrive, and how in turn that creates economic benefits to those communities and the state as a whole.

In fact, I was just discussing this very matter a couple of weekends ago when I visited home for an engagement party. One of the guests is a lecturer at TAFE and he was promoting how valuable welding is, how there is a growing demand in and around the area for this skill, and how the local TAFE is doing all it can to assist upskilling in this space. It was great to see this guest's passion for the trade, passion for the system, and passion for supporting job pathways in the local community.

For many locations, TAFE SA is the only provider of essential courses for that local community, including remote areas such as the APY Lands. It targets its services to help increase participation and training and ultimately employment for our state's most disadvantaged, so it is no surprise that TAFE SA trains a greater proportion of the state's disadvantaged and priority cohorts compared with the broader skills sector.

This includes students from regional and remote areas, Aboriginal students, students aged 17 to 24 years, and students who are not in the labour force. It is important that we recognise and acknowledge this because it is vital in helping to ensure that as many people as possible are provided with opportunities and support to be able to thrive in life, to feel fulfilled, and to be equipped with the skills they need to secure pathways.

TAFE SA is also South Australia's largest provider of courses for new migrants and the largest provider of foundation skills to domestic students. These program areas expand the talent pools from which South Australia can draw our future workforce. They develop social cohesion and belonging and directly contribute to the economic prosperity of the state. In total, more than 70 per cent of TAFE SA students come from a priority and disadvantaged cohort based on the commonwealth definition. TAFE SA plays an essential role in transforming the lives of these people, and in recognition of the complex needs of these student cohorts, TAFE SA often provides comprehensive learning and support services to ensure that completion and success rates do not result in further disadvantage.

These include disability support services, wellbeing support and counselling services, financial hardship, creche and early years education facilities, special support and physical spaces for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and student representative and advocacy structures. They understand the barriers that many people face and they implement what they can to help bring those barriers down.

Outside of the formal teaching and learning times, TAFE SA also provides students with access to learner support, space and resources irrespective of the university or provider that they enrolled with. This includes laptops on loan, educational learning resources and places to study. As the public provider of VET in South Australia, TAFE SA is also playing an essential role in addressing the state's acute skills and labour shortages.

By aligning TAFE SA's course delivery to the state's future and strategic economic priorities, TAFE SA can be a critical lever in responding to the state's emerging strategic workforce needs like defence, hydrogen and early childhood education and care.

In terms of graduate outcomes, recent national data shows that TAFE SA graduate employment rates are higher than all other training providers in South Australia combined, with 79.3 per cent of TAFE SA graduates achieving employment after training compared with 78 per cent across the broader SA skills sector.

The Malinauskas Labor government understands that TAFE SA must play a central role in delivering essential training and equipping South Australians with the skills that they need for well-paid, secure work. It is why we have firmly placed TAFE SA at the heart of the skills system, and we are investing to strengthen and rebuild TAFE SA now for well into the future.

It is pleasing to see already—bolstered by initiatives we have introduced, such as fee-free TAFE—that enrolments are continuing to soar, with a rise of 65 per cent compared with two years ago. That means more South Australians are gaining the skills they need for well-paid, secure jobs in in-demand sectors, which is good for our state's prosperity and economy and why I commend this motion to the house.

The Hon. D.G. PISONI (Unley) (12:04): In speaking to this motion, I would like to move an amendment to the motion as follows:

In paragraph (a), amend 'TAFE SA' to 'the training sector, including both TAFE SA and non-government training providers';

In paragraph (b), amend 'should always be at the centre of' to 'must play a central role in' and add 'and therefore the government has a responsibility to ensure that it is always delivering high-quality training in collaboration with business and industry needs';

In paragraph (c), amend 'TAFE SA' to 'the training sector, including both TAFE SA and non-government training providers'.

The motion will then read:

That this house—

(a) recognises the importance of the training sector, including both TAFE SA and non-government training providers, in transforming lives and building a stronger, more inclusive South Australian economy;

(b) acknowledges that TAFE SA must play a central role in the VET system, and therefore the government has a responsibility to ensure that it is always delivering high-quality training in collaboration with business and industry needs; and

(c) recognises the importance of the training sector, including both TAFE SA and non-government training providers, delivering a wide range of in­demand courses to give South Australians the skills they need for rewarding careers, including in early childhood education, health and social care, defence, building and construction, primary industries, information technology and community services.

In doing so, we know that the non-government sector provides about half the off-the-job training required, particularly for apprenticeships and traineeships here in South Australia, but only receive about 20 per cent of the funding in order to do that. In the four years that I was the Minister for Skills, we saw a partnership develop with the non-government sector, not just with the government but also with TAFE SA. That delivered a complete change in access to apprenticeships by both employers and apprentices and trainees themselves.

We were able to stop a decline of 66 per cent of commencements for apprenticeships and traineeships from 2012 to 2018. I think it was in June 2018 when we saw the first increase of commencements in apprenticeships and traineeships in South Australia. I think it was about 114 up from the same time the previous year, and that was the beginning. What was the difference? What did we do differently? The same public servants were running that department but there was a different policy.

The policy was for the government to recognise that there were on-the-job training costs for the employer and also barriers for people who wanted to do apprenticeships and traineeships, whether they needed a driver's licence or needed their car registered, or they did not have tools or they needed some additional support.

About 1,100 employers took on apprentices for the first time because of the extra money that was available to support them to either train their staff or use group training for the first time to provide the support, which is so important for young apprentices in particular, the pastoral care that they provide. The funding of pre-apprenticeship training was conditional on employers lining up to take on those who successfully completed that pre-apprenticeship training in order to become apprentices and trainees. We reintroduced the traineeship system in the public sector. For about a 10-year period under the previous Labor government, there were no trainees in the public sector. We introduced cybersecurity traineeships.

We saw what was happening in the United Kingdom, in particular, and we also learnt what was happening in Germany, which is the home of vocational pathways into professions. There, the apprenticeship pathway and the university pathway have equal status, something that we need to achieve here in South Australia. In order to do that, there needs to be a partnership with the non-government sector, TAFE, government and business. Consequently, what we saw with that partnership being introduced here in South Australia for the first time was a target, which was committed to before the election, to deliver extra apprentices and trainees in South Australia. There is no dispute of that.

We saw basically a doubling of the number of South Australians in training in South Australia. If we look at the NCVER figures, in September 2018, 15,890 people were in training; towards the end of the Marshall government, in the June quarter of 2022, we saw 32,130 South Australians in training—and this was not just in training; this was in paid training, being paid as an apprentice or a trainee. This is a significant difference because when that system finished we saw a dramatic drop in the number of commencements of apprentices and trainees here in South Australia.

There was a 60.4 per cent decline in the June quarter of 2023 compared with the June quarter of 2022—a 60.4 per cent decline. That was 10 per cent higher than the national average. We heard the minister trying to defend that by saying that federal subsidies had stopped. Yes, they did stop, and apprenticeship commencements did fall in all states, but here in South Australia they fell by 10 per cent more than the national average—the highest in the whole nation.

We have the notion of free TAFE and the minister boasting about increases in TAFE enrolments, but free TAFE does not deliver more apprenticeships and traineeships. In most awards, the employer is obligated to pay the RTO fees. In many businesses where that is not the case, the market means that the employer will pay the RTO fees, so there is no benefit to an apprentice or a trainee in free TAFE in South Australia. What was working in South Australia was acknowledging the fact that there is a cost to on-the-job training and that people need to have the skills and confidence to have an apprentice or a trainee working by their side. We need to acknowledge that businesses may very well need extra resources in order to do that.

That is what the previous government did. We took the training system in South Australia from the worst performing in the nation to the best performing in the nation in just three years. What we have seen with this government's shift in policy, a dramatic shift in policy, focusing almost entirely on TAFE and on government funded training without a hook-up to paid training—they are even taking kids out of four-day-a-week school-based apprenticeships to put them into technical colleges where they are not paid to learn.

I can tell you now that one of the biggest complaints that employers had to me was about finding apprentices. People were not prepared to work for apprentice salaries. Employers would pay more and the federal money that came in in response to COVID actually helped to pay apprentices higher wages and higher salaries to get them started in that industry.

Group training has worked extremely well. We see very high rates of completions in group training. As a matter of fact, the efforts that we put into having more commencements in South Australia actually delivered a 17.9 per cent increase in completions for June 2023. More South Australians were not only starting apprenticeships and traineeships in getting skills, they were completing them also.

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (12:15): I rise to support the motion by the member for King and wholeheartedly agree that TAFE plays a critical role in building a stronger and more inclusive South Australian economy. This is particularly evident in our regions. As a cornerstone of vocational education and training, TAFE institutions offer a wide range of courses and qualifications tailored to meet the needs of diverse learners and industries.

In preparing for today, I reflected back on the many speeches I have given in relation to regional TAFE and our TAFE in Mount Gambier and there is a recurring theme: we must get the administration structure and the responsibility to the community right.

I have spent nearly all my working career in education around vocational education. I have seen our local TAFE go from a very responsive and innovative part of the Mount Gambier community—headed by a local board, which again was responsive to the industry and student needs, and more importantly, I think, accountability for high outcomes, for staff rocking up on time and actually delivering what they were meant to deliver—to now a shell of its former self.

At the moment, if you walk through the Mount Gambier TAFE site it is almost 'spot the student'. It has very good facilities, but the reputation of TAFE and its ability to deliver into our community is nowhere near what it used to be when we had local management, and there is a perverse incentive that some lecturers undertake. Instead of having 15 students in their class, the ability to make it difficult and reduce that number down to five or six certainly lowers the workload of that lecturer. I know of lecturers who have not seen their line manager for well over 18 months.

We have to have a serious conversation about TAFE, particularly in regional areas, because I am actually very passionate about seeing it re-achieve its very important place in our community and the state. To give a local example, every year we have a trainee come into our office. I specifically target gap-year students who are going to do 12 months and then come to Adelaide or go over to Victoria to complete their university or tertiary education.

We have very high achieving trainees. Some of our trainees have achieved 99-plus ATARs. During the theoretical component of their traineeship—and again, I am trying to support our local TAFE—I had my trainees coming to me saying, 'This is embarrassing. This is a joke in terms of the level of interaction and how the course is being delivered,' so we made the decision to go with another provider two years ago and the contrast could not be more stark. We have a provider who comes into our electorate office, works with our trainee and pitches the course at a level that is commensurate with very high-achieving young people. That is because they have a standard, and they project the course at that standard.

I am sure I am not alone in talking about our industries in Mount Gambier that actively now send their apprentices to Adelaide. We have big industries down there, like the forest industry, that bypass TAFE. That is because they are not getting what they need as an industry from the state government's training provider.

It is quite interesting that one of TAFE's commitments by 2033, as outlined in their 2023-33 strategic plan, is to:

Ensure the voices and needs of regional businesses are reflected in the delivery of TAFE SA's courses and services. TAFE SA will engage local industry, community, staff and student representatives to inform TAFE SA's training profile and service delivery within the regions they represent.

This statement underscores a critical point: every region, whether it is Mount Gambier or Whyalla, poses distinct needs and priorities shaped by the industries unique to that area. These needs have not been met over the past decade, which has slowly seen course numbers and students decline from my local TAFE. I strongly believe the answer lies in having a regional board that is responsible to the community and responsive from the community.

We require local management capable of effectively engaging with our business community, interacting with community members and ensuring accountability for the campus and its operations. We are entering a crucial time for vocational education and training in Mount Gambier, with a $55 million investment to create an education and training precinct, including a $5 million injection for the upgrade of facilities and equipment at our TAFE campus.

We must use this opportunity to push for local governance and accountability. We now have the ability to create not just a TAFE board but an education precinct board that can coordinate TAFE, as well as the new technical college, Forestry Centre of Excellence, private providers and UniSA all in one location. A board comprising of local people who possess a deep understanding of the needs and priorities of both students and our community is essential. This structure enables funding to be distributed in accordance with local needs and allows relevant courses that are important to our industries to continue and expand.

This approach also helps prevent unnecessary duplication of courses in regional areas. Regions do not have the population base to have the same or similar courses offered multiple times by different providers, which can lead to relevant courses being discontinued due to insufficient enrolments. Let's use this opportunity to collaborate closely with local businesses, industries, schools and the community to achieve the best outcomes for our students. By doing so, we can ensure the continued success and growth of TAFE in our regions and South Australia.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (12:23): I move to amend the member for Unley's amendment as follows:

Delete all words after 'providers' in paragraph (a), relating to changes in paragraphs (b) and (c).

I am very pleased to have the opportunity today to rise to speak to the member for King's motion, a very important one. I enjoyed greatly the contribution made by the member for Mount Gambier and thank him for the very collaborative way he has worked with me, as the minister for TAFE and training and skills, and the agencies for which I am responsible.

I think the member for Mount Gambier explained well the very big opportunities around the investment that we are making in Mount Gambier's education precinct—which I think we are safe to call it—where we have a fantastic opportunity with the government's commitment to build one of five brand-new technical colleges and also the Forestry Centre of Excellence, a very big and much-needed upgrade to the TAFE campus there. As the member for Mount Gambier correctly pointed out, that opportunity is to give some local control as well to the community in the South-East.

I grew up only an hour across the border, the member for Adelaide grew up nearby as well and the member for King grew up in a regional area, and we all understand very well how important training providers are in regional areas, particularly in those regional areas where you might have to travel quite a distance to access training were it not for the TAFE campus in that area. It does not work the same as it does in metropolitan areas—you often do not have choice in many parts of the state.

The member for King spoke in her opening remarks about TAFE's footprint in the APY lands. I have, indeed, been to the TAFE campus in Pipalyatjara, which is basically in the north-western extremity of our state. It is the most remote TAFE campus in our state and, I think, the most remote TAFE campus in all of Australia. The importance of TAFE was brought into sharp focus for me: the importance of it having a presence and operating in parts of our state where there are what we refer to as 'thin markets' or small population, where the market is not going to incentivise private providers to come in and operate.

I do not say that as a criticism of private providers because you would not expect them to go to places like Pipalyatjara and set up a training operation. The truth of it is that, unless we have a strong public training provider like TAFE that is at the centre of our training system, we have to accept that in a state particularly like ours, where the second-biggest city outside the capital has a population of about 25,000 people, we have to operate in a lot of thin markets.

Having grown up in a small area like the member for King and the member for Adelaide, we all understand that, if those training providers go and local employers cannot get the skilled workforce they need to continue or grow, they close their doors, and the next minute the town starts to shrink and shrink. That is certainly something I saw in my home town of Portland, which has not had the same long-term prosperity, I think you could say, that towns like Mount Gambier in our state or Warrnambool—an hour away in Victoria—have had. We saw the Borthwick abattoir close, and every year there is debate and conjecture about whether or not the smelter will close.

Were it not for having training providers in those areas that can continue to produce a local workforce for those employers, you are basically dooming that town to either shrink considerably or disappear altogether. Therein lies the real importance of TAFE everywhere in Australia, but I think there is a case to be made that it is even more important in our state because we are essentially a state of thin markets. Aside from the challenges that poses, there are things that we love about our state around all the small regional areas: most of them beautiful and are fantastic to visit, with strong and vibrant communities, but they are smaller.

We are not set up like Victoria, which has a much smaller geographical area with very large regional hubs like Ballarat, Bendigo or even Warrnambool that can offer training to people from smaller regional towns scattered around that area who can easily travel there to get their training. That is not the case here. In many cases, and Mount Gambier is a good one, if you have to travel to Adelaide to get the training that you cannot get in Mount Gambier you are talking about a six-hour drive—a drive I have done many times, plus the hour on the end to get across to where I grew up. It is a long way. You cannot expect people to do it, particularly older people and younger people who might just have their licence.

So when we say that TAFE needs to be at the centre of our training system, that is what we mean. There is extra responsibility on top of the public training provider for our state that we would not expect of other training providers, whether they are private or whether they are not for profit. That is about leading the way in terms of course development, which we want TAFE to be doing. They should be set up and funded to be able to do that—that is very important—and also be out there operating in the thin markets and the regional areas, where we would not expect for-profit or not-for-profit providers to operate. There is a role for TAFE to do that, and it has to be funded accordingly.

I will perhaps just also touch on some of the other things that we have been doing in terms of rebuilding TAFE across what is almost now the first two years of this government. In the very first press conference or announcement that I was fortunate enough to make as the minister responsible for TAFE, I was joined by the Premier at the CBD TAFE campus in the member for Adelaide's electorate, where we announced that we were delivering on the election commitment we had made to reintroduce courses for early childhood education and care, individual support (ageing) and individual support (disability) to metropolitan TAFE campuses.

The former government had cut those courses. They were three of the most popular courses that TAFE had, and I would put to this place that they were also some of the areas where TAFE had the strongest reputation. We heard consistently from employers, whether it was long day-care centres, nursing homes, retirement villages or disability care providers, that they wanted to have TAFE producing those graduates because they had historically always sought their employees from TAFE because they found them to be of a very high quality. So, that was the first thing we did, bringing those courses back.

I can tell you that the response has been really impressive in terms of those course numbers being very strong but also in terms of the support we have had from some of those employers who called for the reinstatement of those courses, who have then partnered with us at the technical college at Findon and will partner with us at other places, too. I mentioned Helping Hand being one of the employers that was outspoken about having those individual support (ageing) courses back at metropolitan campuses. They have now partnered with us at Findon Technical College where they are guaranteeing employment for graduates, which I think is a very novel and unique model.

The member for Unley, of course, does not agree with me, and has used his contribution today to speak out not only about fee-free TAFE but also about technical colleges. I have to be honest, nothing pleases me more than to hear the member for Unley put on Hansard and on the official record that those opposite do not support fee-free TAFE and do not support the technical colleges.

I can absolutely live with that on a day when we had the Deputy Prime Minister at Findon Technical College this morning, with the Premier, the Deputy Premier, myself and the local member, the member for Cheltenham, highlighting not only what we have done at Findon but the role that it will play in producing the defence workforce we need now that we have certainty about the frigate. When the former Minister for Skills in this state gets up and says that we do not need either of them and that they are a waste of money, that is okay—it will not age well, but we will hang onto those comments.

I am happy, as I indicated in my opening remarks, to accept the member for Unley's amendment to the first paragraph to include all training providers: profit, not-for-profit and TAFE. Although this was designed to be a motion moved by the member for King today which was about TAFE, I am happy to include that because, as I said from the first day in this job, unless we have all parts of the training sector pulling together—the public training provider, for-profit training providers and not-for-profit training providers—then we have no hope of meeting the workforce challenges that are ahead of us.

I want to support all those sectors as they are all important, but today was an opportunity to talk about the importance of our public training provider and the work this government has been doing to put them back at the centre of the system and to rebuild them after what had happened to them over the past four years.

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (12:33): I, too, rise in support of the motion of the member for King. The TAFE education system is something that I am incredibly passionate about. Being a former education journalist, one of the absolute privileges of the role was getting to actually visit TAFEs, talk to TAFE students and cover the stories that mattered in the TAFE sector, particularly towards the end and start of the year, when I was able to talk to TAFE students who were receiving offers to go to TAFE, and just how incredibly important that was.

When you compare the pair, it is quite extraordinary what the Minister for Education laid out there, that our former skills minister when he was skills minister actually cut TAFE courses in child care, in ageing and in disability. We all know how critical those sectors are, the skill shortages that we see and how important it is to invest in training to have the workers that we need for those critical sectors.

We saw the former skills minister actually cut TAFE, privatisation by stealth. He tried to gut it on some kind of personal crusade against TAFE, and the minute we got in the very first thing that the Minister for Education did was bring back those courses. We went even a step further. We have actually gone on to provide fee-free TAFE for courses like cert III in early childhood and care and the diploma in nursing.

I want to speak on early childhood, because again this is why elections matter. When we were elected, we undertook a royal commission into early childhood and care, undertaken by the former Prime Minister, the Hon. Julia Gillard. Now we are seeing the investment in the sector, not just through fee-free TAFE to see the workers that we need to be able to deliver the universal rollout of three-year-old preschool, just as an example, but also by putting that extra investment into the sector in the form of scholarships, to invest in childcare workers to move them from workers to educators.

Seeing the comparison between cutting the course under the former Marshall Liberal government and actually bringing it back, bringing back fee-free TAFE and investing in childcare workers, I think the contrast between our two governments could not be more stark. On fee-free TAFE, we have actually seen enrolments in TAFE soar because of this policy initiative. There has been a 65 per cent rise in enrolments compared with two years ago.

I want to speak on where we have seen some of those rises in students in those cohorts, those priority student groups. We have had a 9 per cent increase in students who live with a disability, a 30 per cent increase in women in non-traditional fields, a 5 per cent increase in First Nations students and a 13 per cent increase in veterans, veterans being able to access that fee-free TAFE to then go on to transition into different employment.

On another point, it is not lost on me as a School Card kid, the first of my family to go to uni, that having education that provides that additional support is important. It is a completely new world when you are the first in your family to move away from your country town to access education. Having that support is critical, and that is why having a public provider to provide these courses is so important, because outside of that formal teaching TAFE SA is providing learner support. They provide the spaces to learn and they have laptops that they provide on loan. That is a critical role of a public education provider.

TAFE and VET are playing a huge role in addressing our skill shortages. We have just seen the announcements over the last 24 to 48 hours and we have the defence minister in town touring right now one of our new technical colleges. We are placing investment in TAFE and VET to deliver the skills in those key critical strategic areas for our state, in particular around defence. TAFE is central to that. It is the heartbeat of delivering the skilled workers that we need to move the state forward. Whether it is defence, hydrogen, early childhood education, care—as I said, the aged care and disability care sectors—it is so critical.

I want to thank some constituents of mine who raised their concerns with me over the last few years, when the Marshall Liberal government was completely and utterly gutting TAFE. I thank them for their courage in speaking up and raising their concerns so that we were able to get to work to deliver a policy that was going to restore TAFE, invest in TAFE and bring it back to how critically important it is to our state's future prosperity. With those comments, I commend the member for King's motion.

Mrs PEARCE (King) (12:39): I will not take too much time at all. I just want to thank all the members on this side of the house for their valuable contributions and the member for Mount Gambier as well. I am more than a little disappointed to hear about some of the comments made by the member for Unley, particularly when it comes to fee-free TAFE and our technical colleges.

We are seeing an incredible amount of investment being made into our state, which is going to really develop the skills that we need for a workforce for generations to come. To be able to do that, we need courses like fee-free TAFE to be able to support that. We are already seeing that enrolments have been bolstered by 65 per cent, compared to what we were seeing just two years ago.

The technical colleges have been specifically developed in such a way that students are able to complete their SACE. We know that is important. They are able to acquire a trade, because that is important, and then they are going to be able to get a direct pathway into secure employment, which is absolutely critical in terms of meeting demand but also giving these students the absolute best chance to thrive and live fulfilling lives. With that, I end my remarks.

Amendment to amendment carried; amendment as amended carried; motion as amended carried.

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