Media Statement - 4th November 2007
The Prime Minister is again using the same old tired excuses that he used in the last election campaign to mask more than 11 years of complacency and neglect in skills and training.
According to Mr Howard, apprenticeships and trade skills were undoubtedly the ‘cut-through’ issue of the 2004 campaign.
The problem, however, is that the Howard Government only responds to Australia’s skills crisis during election campaigns.
The Prime Minister today said that:
“…we’ve made the 100 Australian Technical Colleges a centrepiece of this election campaign…”
In the 2004 election campaign, without any consultation with the States or Territories, John Howard announced 24 Australian Technical Colleges which would supposedly have 7,200 students, or 300 students per College.
Three years later, and despite having created a further four Australian Technical Colleges, there are only 1,800 students enrolled in ATCs across the nation.
Despite the fact that after expenditure of more than half a billion dollars ATCs remain under-enrolled, are still yet to produce one graduate, and outsource the bulk of their training, the Howard Government is just offering more of the same.
The truth of the matter is that of the so-called 100 Australian Technical Colleges announced last week, only 30 of these will be new Colleges, with just 19 due for establishment over the next three years.
The Minister for Education deceptively claims that the Howard Government’s ATCs would provide 300,000 trades training graduates each year when fully operational.
The truth is that even with a total of up to 50 ATCs up and running over the next three years, the Government’s ATCs will produce only about 15,000 to 20,000 graduates.
This stands in the face of projected shortage, on the Government’s own figures, of 240,000 skilled workers by 2016.
The Prime Minister also said today that:
“Well certainly he have a lot more apprentices now than when we had when we came into power…”
The Howard Government trumpets the fact that as at March 2007 there were 414,000 apprentices in training. What it fails to disclose is that of these 414,000 so-called ‘apprentices’, only about 40 per cent, or 170,000, were actually in traditional trade apprenticeship areas.
Similarly, of the 142,000 apprentice completions last year, only about a quarter, or just 35,000 were traditional trade apprenticeships. That is, in the areas where Australia faces particularly acute skills shortages.
In 1997 on Mr Howard’s watch, the number of traditional trade apprentices fell to 102,200, its lowest point in 30 years. Between 1997 and 2001, the number of trade apprentices was at record lows –
lower than at any time since 1971.
In addition, apprentice and trainee completion rates for all occupations are currently less than 50 per cent. That is, less than half those that commence an apprenticeship or traineeship actually go on to complete it
These years of neglect by the Howard Government have sewn the seeds of today’s skills crisis.
In contrast, Federal Labor has a $2.5 billion plan to build, upgrade or enhance trades training facilities in Australia's 2,650 secondary schools targeted at the 1 million students from Years 9 to 12.
Only Labor has a long term, broadly based plan to comprehensively address Australia's skills shortages into the future.