TAFE SA
Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (17:45): Like my colleagues, I rise to speak in support of this bill, and the shadow education minister, the member for Unley, has gone into many aspects of this bill in great detail, as he usually does, and very well. I would like to touch on a few regional aspects. TAFE in regional South Australia is incredibly important, as educational opportunities are everywhere. The ability for our people in regional South Australia to get to go to small schools often—sometimes big schools in regional centres—but the importance of small primary schools, potentially with only 20 kids in them, and for them to flow through high school and be able to undertake tertiary education in regional areas, is vitally important.
In the region that I live in and represent, the Upper Spencer Gulf, there are four key TAFE campuses—not all of them in the electorate of Stuart—but Port Pirie, Port Augusta, Whyalla and Roxby Downs are vital institutions, and it is important to say that there are TAFE campuses all over regional South Australia.
They are particularly important because they provide a wide variety of educational opportunities, which I think country kids probably need access to perhaps even more than city kids do. We have just as many smart kids who would like to be doctors or lawyers, or pursue more academic paths. We have just as many of them proportionally in regional South Australia, but we probably have more young people—whether they be young or middle-aged adults who would like to pursue more hands-on educational opportunities that take them towards trades, and with our impending mining growth coming in South Australia, and we all know that both sides of this house are extremely supportive of what we hope will be a mining boom in the future for South Australia, this is going to be even more important.
I would also like to say that with TAFE and educational opportunities in general—but certainly TAFE—I think the value of these institutions in addition to their primary purpose of educating people is often undervalued. The value that a TAFE campus provides by being located in a regional town or a regional city is extremely important.
Of course, the primary purpose always has to be there—they must be good education facilities—but there is the additional value that they offer these communities with regard to employment opportunities, with regard to retention of young people, with regard to attraction of young people from outside the region, and with regard to the ability for older people to stay and grow and learn and be productively involved, for whom it may not openly lead towards an income earning opportunity but may well lead to a greater quality of life and a greater ability for them to contribute as volunteers to the community. All of those values are often overlooked. Now, never once would I say that the primary purpose of course is not the most important, but in regional areas those extra opportunities are very important.
So I hope that this TAFE SA Bill 2012 will allow those opportunities to grow and not diminish them. There is, of course, the fear by some people that the marketisation of TAFEs, while offering great competition and potentially creating the opportunity for some courses to be cheaper and some courses to be more swiftly tailored to the market, might also take away that public component, and that public conscience that TAFEs have had under governments of both persuasions for decades now. If it becomes a market rules situation, we might find that we have cheaper courses tailored to the demand that is there on the spot for graduates but there may not be the same sort of foresight and opportunities, if those institutions—whether they be TAFE or other registered training organisations—do not have more of a community mandate.
The broader values of TAFEs that I just discussed may be diminished somewhat and also I fear that the opportunity for timing the delivery of TAFE courses in line with future demand may not be done quite as well as it could if the trainer, the training organisation—whether it be TAFE or another one—is essentially there trying to make money. I am not suggesting that TAFE's only desire will be to make money but if it is in a competitive market it will be forced to compete and it will be forced to justify itself in that way.
The example which I used and which I have seen in Port Augusta in two cycles now was that, when there is a downturn in the economy, when there are fewer jobs, when there are fewer opportunities for people, often fewer training opportunities are provided as well. I think that is a great mistake because at a time when there are fewer employment opportunities for people that potentially is the time to create more training opportunities for people. Whether it is a six-month course or a three-year course, the reality is that it is going to take a certain amount of time to get through your training and if there is an assumption that when demand for job placements returns we will just ramp up the delivery of training so that people can get those jobs, things are out of whack because you have lost the opportunity to train people before the job opportunities are there.
That is a concern I have with this marketisation. As I said, I have seen that happen for two cycles now in the northern part of the state. I am also particularly concerned because I saw the demise of the Australian Technical College (ATC) which, to my mind, was an absolutely outstanding institution. It was set up across three Upper Spencer Gulf campuses, plus Roxby Downs, and it gave young people particularly the opportunity to complete their high school diploma at ATC, or to complete a trade (an apprenticeship essentially) at ATC, or to do both at ATC. That was a fantastic model but it was disbanded. There are people in the area that I represent who are still dreadfully disappointed about that. I hope that the outcome of this bill which, as I have said, I do support overall (as do all of my opposition colleagues) does not lead to that sort of short-sighted decision, because unrealistic commercial expectations are put on TAFE when it is put into a more competitive market.
Like my colleagues, I support competitive markets. We believe that those sort of commercial realities lead to good outcomes. However, there are some things that governments are obliged to do on behalf of people and one of the greatest reasons we have governments is to provide services and to provide opportunities that the markets on their own would not provide. We can debate in this house about how far that should go but we all believe that at some level that is what government does, and I know that is currently what TAFE does. That must be kept front of mind as the government progresses after, presumably, this bill passes successfully.
Another example of a concern here is the astounding revelation that we had in question time today (which was very swiftly picked up by the shadow treasurer, the member for Davenport) that the Labor government is now considering using the construction industry training levy to meet budget savings targets. I hope it does not but if somehow this marketisation of TAFE leads to those sorts of decisions then, of course, we will all be very sad about that outcome.
I have spoken about the value of TAFE, the flexibility and the wide range of courses (and the member for Chaffey touched on that as well) that TAFE offers a wide range of people. Let's not beat around the bush here: the sort of people who can attend TAFE may be rich, may be poor, may be men, may be women and also come from a very wide range of intellectual horsepower—and that is fantastic. To provide opportunities to improve their lives, to get access to the workforce and to contribute to their communities is vitally important to a very wide range of people, and I think vitally important in regional areas where we fight so hard to retain our communities and where we fight incredibly hard to even try to attract people to grow our communities as well.
I have another issue which I will touch on now but it is probably more for the minister in the committee stage of the bill. It is the issue that has been floating around Port Augusta of the lease of the cinema at Port Augusta to the people who currently lease it and have felt incredibly under threat. They operate the cinema in a TAFE facility and I have always said both publicly and in private discussions that if TAFE has a need for that facility for an educational TAFE purpose that is where it should go and unfortunately the cinema would have to miss out.
If that is not the case—and the minister has assured us that it is not the case, TAFE does not need that cinema—then the current operators, Roger and Michelle Cole, should be able to continue to use it. The minister has been true to his word. Things have dragged on a bit and time has taken a lot longer than everybody wanted but I give the minister credit. He has said that he will lease the cinema on a long-term basis to the Coles. They will be obliged to meet the necessary maintenance costs to the structure of the building associated with that lease but they will get a long-term lease to operate that business.
I say this now so the minister can think about it and I am happy to address it again in committee. I would like to be sure that this bill, with regard to the arm's length relationships that it establishes, will not in any way interfere with the commitment that the minister has given to Roger and Michelle Cole. I do not suggest for a minute that the minister would do that deliberately but sometimes unexpected things come up and I would like to be absolutely sure that that will not happen through this bill. Those people have a commitment from the minister and from TAFE as it currently stands that they can lease that facility so I will allow the minister to come back to me when he is ready on that issue, but without that I cannot support this bill.
I am happy to leave it at that. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to speak on this bill and, as my colleagues have said, to support the bill.
Comment