http://www.andrewrobb.com.au RSS feeds for Andrew Robb MP - Federal Member for Goldstein 60 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1440/Speech--Online-Education-in-the-Asian-Century--The-Australian-Opportunity.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=1440 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=1440&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1440/Speech--Online-Education-in-the-Asian-Century--The-Australian-Opportunity.aspx Wednesday, 17 October 2012 Presentation to Online Education Forum Online Education in the Asian Century – The Australian Opportunity   Earlier this year I expressed the view that there was no reason why Australian educators couldn’t be teaching 10 million international students in a decade.   In some quarters from within the education sector itself my remarks were met with scepticism.   How on earth could we go from teaching fewer than 700,000 international students to a mind boggling 10 million in 10 years?   It was clear that some who raised concern had the blinkers on.   Their immediate thought was how could we possibly accommodate all these students in Australia?   They missed the point.   While we should be aiming to increase international enrolments in-country, the real growth opportunities are off-shore.   Australian university and vocational education institutions are so well placed for major ‘bricks and mortar’ involvement within Asia Pacific countries.   The RMIT experience in Ho Chi Minh city, and now Hanoi, is a case in point, as is the recent opening of Monash University’s joint-graduate campus in Suzhou.   As importantly, content will be delivered over different online platforms in a variety of ways, online lectures via sophisticated videoconferencing, vocational training modules delivered over tablets and I-Phones, to increasing aggregation and partnerships of universities and VET institutions across the region.   I was most heartened after a story appeared in The Australian which reported my ’10 million’ comments, to be contacted by several individuals who are extremely active in this space.   Instead of saying: “Andrew, what were you thinking?” the response was: “You are right on the money.”   One of them was Jonathan Marshall who is one of the sponsors of today’s event.   His innovative thinking, his passion and his drive are infectious.   It was at Jonathan’s invitation that I have the privilege to speak to you today.   Education is one of our nation’s top strengths, up there with energy, resources, agriculture and medical research.   It has been tracking as our third largest export behind iron ore and coal, and represents more than 25 per cent of our total services exports.   ABS statistics track the sustained growth in exports of Australian education services. In 1999 total education exports were put at $4 billion and peaked in 2009-10 at an incredible $19 billion.   Australian international student enrolments have grown from just under 300,000 in 2002, to 450,000 in 2007 to 696,000 last year including 139,000 who were studying off-shore.   The training sector has however been hit in the recent dip we have seen in education exports on account of the high dollar and ham fisted changes to student visa requirements.   Analysis by PIMCO, the world’s largest bond trader, suggests that some of the stickiness of the $A at current high levels, despite easing terms of trade, reflects the impact of an unprecedented $256 billion in Commonwealth Government Bonds under issuance – our second biggest export in 2011-12.   But that’s another story and we’ll keep the politics out of this!   DFAT data shows that total education earnings fell by $2.6 billion between 2009 and 2011, with vocational colleges losing some $500 million in fees.   As with any person, or organisation or company, if we are to broaden and deepen our economic base and take advantage of our opportunities we must back our strengths.   Middle Class Growth   And the opportunity to take our strengths to a higher level is emerging on our doorstep, with the massive expansion of the middle class throughout the Asia Pacific over the coming decades.   OECD figures paint an extraordinary picture.   In 2009 the Asia Pacific accounted for 28 per cent of the global middle class or 525 million people.   By 2030, not 2050 or 2100, that figure is expected to be an almost inconceivable 66 per cent or 3.2 billion people. Europe by comparison will be a distant second at 14 per cent.   Over this period middle class spending is expected to surge from $4.9 billion to $32.5 billion.   Well paid employment is what will break billions of people out of poverty, and the lower classes, and into the middle class.   Education at various levels is the crucial ingredient for this to happen.   This extends from basic literacy and numeracy, tailored vocational training through to high level tertiary education.   For Australia there are simply wonderful opportunities in these developing mass markets.   As well, we are in the same geographic region.   The advantage of being in the same time zone is seldom recognised but can’t be emphasised enough.   I have run the Australian arm of a major global company headquartered in the eastern states of the U.S.A. Believe me, you tire very quickly of regular 24 hour each way trips, and of constant conference calls in the middle of the night.   By contrast, I have also run a company focussed on the Asian region. Overnight flights to and fro, and telephone and electronic contact in roughly the same time zone bring enormous efficiencies and advantages, not least of which is quality of life and impact on families.   But these opportunities won’t fall into our laps; the rest of the world has recognised the opportunity. If we don't take it, others will.   And the trend to online learning won't go away; in fact it is accelerating dramatically. In the United States close to 10 per cent of tertiary students in 2003 took at least one online course. That percentage grew to 25 per cent in 2008, nearly 30 per cent in 2009 and is forecast to be 50 per cent by 2014.   In education Australia has strong fundamentals, we have a good reputation; we have the technology and the capacity to innovate.    But there is no time to waste. We need to be flexible and responsive to the various demands of the market.   A Surging India   Let’s for a moment look at India, the world’s largest democracy, current population 1.24 billion.   It is estimated that India’s working age population will grow by 240 million over the next 20 years.   Currently, around 60-70 per cent of the Indian workforce has not completed secondary education.   The need to increase the education and skills base of the population is crucial given India’s annual growth targets of around 8 per cent on average over the next five years.   The magnitude of the challenge was highlighted in a recent significant study by McKinsey Global Institute (MGI).   It found that India will need to retrain at least 285 million working Indians with no secondary education – and 150 million of these have not even completed primary education.   Capacity constraints within the Indian education system present an enormous challenge.   For instance 15 million young Indians enter the labour market each year, yet current VET capacity is estimated at just three million and the standard of training is generally poor.   It is estimated that an additional 50,000 new VET colleges would be required to meet in-country demand and the cost of construction alone is prohibitive.   Demand for Skills   The need for vocationally skilled workers in India spans across most industry verticals including mining, agriculture, retail, automotive, hospitality, aged care, tourism and education itself.   The focus on skills and skill sets is vital. In the developing world the requirement to up-skill the workforce is paramount.   Rigid qualifications are far less important than the skills obtained.   Retail for instance will require an additional five million skilled workers by 2016.   There is a similar story in regard to VET demand across the Asia Pacific in countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand. Then you have Africa.   It is estimated that nearly 60 per cent of a predicted 600 million net additions to the global labour force through to 2030 will occur in India, south Asia and Africa.   According to McKinsey unprecedented action will be required on education and training to address global mismatches in supply of workers with skills needed to drive 21st century economies.   Demand for Higher Education   While practical, vocational training will be critical to supporting growth, higher levels of skills and university qualifications are also in desperate need.   India for example needs four million capable engineering graduates per year, yet is only producing 500,000.   Of these an estimated 97 per cent required extra training in order to be employable, according to The Economist.   The utilisation of technology and the rapidly evolving online environment seems the obvious means of providing new educational firepower throughout the Asia Pacific.   The affordability of wireless mobile devices and the mobility they provide bring almost boundless opportunities for the delivery of online education and training.   They are also empowering millions and millions of people and can provide a virtual classroom almost regardless of where they live.   An estimated 120 million Indians currently have internet access, which includes about 90 million in regional areas.   By 2015 McKinsey estimates that figure will surge to 450 million.   Already the majority of internet access (55 per cent) is by way of mobile device, phones, tablets and notebooks.   McKinsey in fact predicts that India will become the first truly mobile digital society.   India’s online education market will be worth $40 billion by 2017 and that is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the region.    Look at the ECE market in India alone. It is growing by 25 per cent per year. Currently about 120 million children under the age of six receive no formal early childhood education.   More than 90 per cent of the current ECE workforce has no formal training.   By 2020 there is a projected need for an extra two million ECE teachers/educators, yet there is almost no physical training infrastructure in place.   For the masses in India and elsewhere, the online environment would seem the only cost-effective, scalable solution for the timely provision of innovative educational outcomes.   The technology and the platforms are and will be increasingly available but content will be king.   The potential of mobile devices as the enabler of new learning is well understood in India.    The price of Apple products and the like puts them out of reach of the vast majority of Indians, the very people who will help drive growth with training and education.   World’s Cheapest Tablet   Last year what is described as the ‘world’s cheapest tablet’ was launched in India.   The ‘AaKash’ or ‘Sky’ in Hindi, is being sold to students at a subsidised price of just $35, but even at full price it retails for about $65.   While lacking the speed and whiz-bang features of the more sophisticated tablets we are accustomed to, it is light-weight, has a touch-screen and USB ports.   It supports video conferencing and has three hour battery life. It can connect to the Internet via WiFi and through mobile phone networks.   The development of fourth generation (4G) mobile networks will help address capacity constraints.   Infotel Broadband for instance has plans to roll out more than 100,000 towers which will deliver high-speed wireless services.   It is now estimated by Cisco that by 2016 there will be two billion networked devices, up from one billion in 2011.   The government’s aim is to use the ‘Aakash’ to help provide university students access to course materials.   India’s Telecoms and Education Minister Kapil Sibal said: “The rich have access to the digital world, the poor and ordinary have been excluded. ‘Aakash’ will end that digital divide.”   Clearly, with sophisticated content, specifically targeted to demand, the ‘Aakash’ and similar devices present enormous potential for delivering vocational training and base ‘job-readiness’ education.   The same applies in other developing parts of the globe, in major countries in our region such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand, and further afield in Africa and South America.   China’s Evolving Story   China’s demand for international education is also an evolving story.   Again, capacity constraints including fierce student competition for limited domestic places present enormous challenges.   Economic growth and increasing incomes have put overseas study within the reach of many.   There is also a keen appetite for western educational experiences.   Chinese government data shows that as of 2011 there were 339,700 Chinese students studying abroad, an increase of 19 per cent on 2010.   Between 1978 and 2011 a total of 2.2 million Chinese have studied abroad.   China’s embrace of online technology is underlined by projections that 45 per cent of the population will have Internet access by 2015.   This will also bring new demand for content and opportunities to train and educate the workforce required to drive growth in an ageing population.   Given the high regard and the fascination among younger Chinese for western products and experiences, those without the means to physically study or train abroad may increasingly turn to international online offerings, or online combined with shorter, more affordable international experiences.   A Brand to Leverage   Australian Universities and VET colleges in general, and many individually, have a stellar global reputation and they have an exciting opportunity to capitalise on transformative technology to digitise and distribute their content.   For starters there is almost a false dichotomy between the vocational and university sector, yet both have opportunities in both practical and theoretical content.   Much of the content universities sit on could focus more on the practical elements without losing their academic (theoretical) heritage and thus provide a very attractive educational product for the Indian and Asian markets.   They just have to overcome the stigma of the words ‘vocational’, ‘competencies’ and ‘skill sets’ and realise they have a strategic asset they should capitalise on.   For example the University of Queensland, the University of Melbourne, the University of New England and Charles Sturt University all have world class agricultural schools – they sit on content that could be contextualised for regional agricultural industry skills development needs – which also eventually create a pathway to qualification/certification in the future if or when there is sufficient economic validity to going down that path.   Tropical medicine is another example – there are always shortages of sufficiently qualified doctors in most of the region that could benefit from high quality visually based digital instructional content developed by say University of Queensland Health Sciences.   There is not one university in Australia that does not have content that could be contextualised and adapted to the needs of markets in the region and where it makes sense could partner with existing VET operators with shared capabilities in a particular domain.   Even mimicking the lab experience is being tackled in some U.S. universities; the boundaries of simulations are being aggressively pushed using the skills and experience of the online gaming world.   The point being universities and VET colleges have a terrific brand they can leverage and content they can adapt – they just need to view the opportunity through a different lens.   Yet, it is seen as too costly and risky.   Our education sector needs to approach the market opportunity as a business problem requiring a business solution – a solution that is efficient, effective and scalable.   As a country we need to identify and assess this Asian Pacific opportunity to determine the total addressable market for potential educational products and services – start with the big picture and work backwards.   Identify where the largest profit pools exist – Where’s the money? Who will pay?   Once key industry customers are identified – work with them to develop products to ensure these are designed to satisfy their needs and get assurance that they will purchase the product in principle – no ‘build it and they will come’ approaches.   We need to identify low cost scalable distribution channels and potential partners whose products complement ours, while targeting the same customer group.   We need to design core products to be adapted for different markets without significant and costly re-build (similar to standard car platforms).   And we need operational excellence as the key to sustainable success – design a lean business system that can scale efficiently to produce premium products at low cost.   Growth in demand for education both domestically and throughout the region is not going to be driven purely by secondary school leavers. In fact they are really only a small part of the picture I am talking about today.   Demand for skills and qualifications will constantly change as workforces adapt to technological and economic development, and in this context it is demand from the adult population that will really drive growth.   As many adults already work and don’t have the capacity to attend regular bricks and mortar institutions, the advent of online and electronic education is a true enabler.   This evolution will be very difficult for many individual educational institutions, and successful transition may well involve establishing autonomous business units unencumbered by existing processes and priorities. In many cases this will involve partnering with innovators.   Furthermore, enormous online opportunities exist to both enhance the educational experience within Australian universities and VET colleges, as well as using such material to capture international opportunities.   For example, some are streaming lectures, with the lecturer speaking in one window and slides or other teaching aids being clearly presented and in sync in another window.   Others are preparing similar online lectures but using them for what some call ‘hybrid teaching’ – asking students to view the online lecture as homework, and then using the time when they come to class to engage in active dialogue, rather than sit through a traditional lecture and have only a couple of minutes, if that, to answer questions at the end.   Targeting our Online Educational Effort   While this online adaption of traditional teaching methods will have a useful place, capturing the extraordinary educational needs in our region will involve highly sophisticated new age educational products, using enormous creativity and innovation.   It will have to take account of illiteracy and innumeracy, be user friendly, visual and interactive. It will involve role playing scenarios delivered via smart but simple apps.   Fundamentally most people learn by seeing and by doing, not by reading abstract texts and complex theories.   To be effective online content must be relevant and meaningful, it must be immersive, entertaining, stimulating and emotionally engaging.   The smartest and most driven of innovators already know all of this and they are working to make it happen.   They see a market opportunity as a business problem that requires a business solution not an academic solution – a solution that is efficient, effective and scalable.   They are building relationships and partnerships identifying need and developing content.   They are drawing on the talents of film producers, animators, programmers, language specialists and even script writers, actors and voice over specialists. And it isn’t cheap.    For example, developing an effective equivalent Certificate III course in retail, for use on a $35 tablet, could alone cost several million dollars.   They are spending time upfront in the design phase to ensure better end products and effective online content; content which sees students or employees become immersed in a 'story based' curriculum.   They are developing products that are intuitive, with extensive user testing ensuring user interfaces are user friendly.   They are working on designing such core products and platforms that can be readily adapted to different markets without the need for costly re-builds.   They are focusing on operational excellence with market scale providing the scope to deliver premium products at a necessary low cost.   The ultimate return on investment can be spectacular given the numbers of potential customers.     Collaboration and Quality   I understand concerns that the advent of free Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) will impact upon the way academics and universities work and teach.   However, while there isn’t a business model for MOOCs that stacks up, it does underscore that there are very large numbers of people following MOOCs who traditional higher education is not reaching.   MOOCs are also highlighting the power and potential of collaboration by quality professors, teachers and instructors across the education space to improve the skills being taught and the qualifications on offer.   Michael Jones, Google’s Chief Technology Advocate, recently spoke of ‘movie star’ professors and, whilst I am not going to get into that debate, I can envision collaboration by leaders in a field resulting in top-quality branded product for use in teaching, with much of the content involving animatics and simulations.   This collaboration might result in a purely online or electronically delivered course however it could also result in a flagship on-site course, perhaps a residential period as a portion of a full course, one semester in six for example.   The premium product offered through collaboration could well increase overall demand for the course based on the appeal of an in-person component hosted by a world-leading team.   Collaborative teams may even be cross-disciplinary, drawing together relevant aspects from different spheres, indeed that may be one of the best ways to make the most of collaboration.   Capturing the Opportunity   Australian university and vocational education has an enviable brand reputation but that will only take us so far, we need to be among the first movers because others are acting on the opportunity.   German, Singaporean, Malaysian and Israeli VET training entities are rapidly setting up operations in India.   They are developing partnerships like Israel in agriculture and Germany in automotives. They are adopting blended models utilising both technology and ‘training the trainers’.   Several large Indian private education and technology companies are also establishing partnerships with U.S. educational publishers to deliver online skills development content in India.   Elsewhere, global education leader Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) is combining with leading Korean wireless service provider SK Telecom to develop and deliver world-class educational content to mobile devices.   And in Singapore the Ministry of Education will launch a sophisticated online learning portal in 2013.   Complacency and narrow minded thinking will be our greatest enemy.   Simply providing some course material in PDF form, without visual engagement and tactility simply doesn’t cut it.   But I can understand how the need to evolve to meet global demand is a daunting task.   It has resulted in a reluctance among universities, major VET operators, including TAFEs and even private early childhood education (ECE) providers to invest or collaborate in the production of high quality online content.   Yet, education is a key part of the next wave of microeconomic reform that will boost productivity and innovation and ensure Australia’s prosperity in the decades ahead. Online and electronic education have a key role to play in this reform.      The Role of Government   To this end government can play a critical role in fostering a more entrepreneurial, risk-taking, innovative response from our university and vocational education institutions.   Reducing very significantly the strangling red tape is fundamental, as is providing much greater management autonomy, for the TAFE sector in particular, but also our universities, and increasingly the private providers.   Providers of higher education need more freedom and flexibility to leverage the particular strengths of their own institution, and to respond to the dramatically changing circumstances and opportunities they now confront.   The one-size-fits-all approach has held our tertiary education sector back. The emerging online technology and innovation facilitates a progression to policies that focus on competency and mastery, allowing students to accelerate or consolidate, making the most of their time.   To this end, especially in the VET space, we must progress to the recognition, accreditation and training of skill sets as a fundamental component of life-long learning.   The funding approaches to higher education needs to reflect the diverse missions of all our providers, while driving increasing quality, with decreasing cost.   Conclusion   Australia’s educational sector has the potential to lead our engagement with the emerging middle class of the Asia Pacific, and in the process establish literally tens of millions of personal linkages into the region.   Such linkages will contribute hugely to future economic and social engagement, and do more than anything else to foster peace and harmony with our regional neighbours.   For their part, Australia’s governments, both state and federal, need to lead Australia’s advocacy of our educational ambitions and abilities, but not in a predatory way, but rather in a way which treats our Asian Pacific neighbours as potential partners.   This means that Australian governments and Australian society must be ready for deeper relationships with Asia.   The future for Australia's university and vocational education sector is rich with opportunity, if only we have the courage and freedom to grasp it Andrew Robb Wed, 17 Oct 2012 00:07:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:1440 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1142/Auditor-General-Exposes-Labors-Pork-Barrelling.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=1142 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=1142&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1142/Auditor-General-Exposes-Labors-Pork-Barrelling.aspx The Auditor General has revealed the $800 million Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program has been used by Labor as a pork barrelling vehicle to funnel money into its own seats. The Auditor General’s report released today found the approval rate for projects located in Labor held seats was 42.1 per cent. The approval rate for projects located in Coalition held electorates was just 18.4 per cent – less than half the ALP rate (p24). The Rudd – Gillard Government handed out a total of $550 million of the program funding without following its own assessment guidelines. Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction Andrew Robb said the audit is a damning indictment of the Rudd-Gillard Government’s pork barrelling and waste. “The Rudd – Gillard Government broke its own rules, funnelled money to Labor electorates and punished Australian families based on where they live,” Mr Robb said. “The Auditor General’s report makes it clear: this was nothing more than a massive Labor pork barrelling exercise. “Labor has failed to give Australian families a fair go, actively discriminating against people in certain areas. “This was a purely political exercise designed to shore-up support in Labor held seats ahead of the election. The audit found that: Eligibility and compliance checking processes were abandoned, with 71% of projects shortlisted for risk assessment by the department being ineligible, and/or non‐compliant in terms of the published Program Guidelines (p110); “The awarding of funding to projects also disproportionately favoured ALP-held seats when considered in terms of the extent to which the various applications indicated that construction work would be able to be undertaken in the desired economic stimulus timeframe” (p194); The ALP held 55 per cent of electorates, with 57 per cent of funding being awarded to projects located in an ALP held electorate; The Coalition parties held 43 per cent of electorates, with 37 per cent of funding being awarded to projects located in an electorate held by the Coalition (p46); Anthony Albanese removed two projects in the Liberal held seats of Grey (SA) and Curtin (WA) against departmental advice (p183); There was no documented assessment of each application; and The Rudd – Gillard Government didn’t even follow its own guidelines. The findings raise some difficult questions for the Prime Minister: Why were Labor electorates shovelled so much money? Why did the government punish Australians in non-Labor seats? How did it happen that Labor projects were approved at twice the rate as those in Coalition seats? “This is further evidence of Labor spending taxpayer’s money to further its own political needs, instead of meeting the needs of all Australians. “We are offering a clear choice in this election: a Coalition Government that offers real action for Australia, or more of the same – more Labor waste and mismanagement of the type the audit found today and more Labor taxes to pay for it,” Mr Robb said. Further information: Cameron Hill on 0408 239 521 Andrew Robb Tue, 27 Jul 2010 02:49:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:1142 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1136/Interview-with-Fran-Kelly-Radio-National-Breakfast.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=1136 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=1136&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1136/Interview-with-Fran-Kelly-Radio-National-Breakfast.aspx Topics: Coalition’s expansion of the education rebate, Labor’s reckless spending. E&OE FRAN KELLY: Andrew Robb is the Shadow Finance Minister therefore he’s the man in charge of the Coalition’s books. He joins us now from his campaign HQ in his electorate of Goldstein, Andrew, good morning. ANDREW ROBB: Yes, good morning Fran, how are you? FRAN KELLY: I’m very well, thank you. Do you have the numbers wrong? ANDREW ROBB: No we don’t. No we do not at all. Look, this is Hawker Britton 101. Labor’s default position seems to be to question our costings, drop it late in the day to muddy the water, then, you know, sneak away from scrutiny. Simon Crean last night after making a big man of himself in front of the cameras late in the afternoon, he committed to going on radio last night to defend their criticisms but then went into hiding. No one could find him. FRAN KELLY: Well I don’t know about that, that’s certainly been, there’s been a few statements from Labor floating there and about, but I mean to be fair both sides are accusing the other of getting their numbers wrong, the question from Labor is, is your $760 million program, predicated on the same take up rate as the current take up of the school rebate ... ANDREW ROBB: It absolutely is. The Government needs to explain how eight days ago, the Prime Minister Julia Gillard, used 2.7 million students as eligible for the education tax rebate when costing their policy, yet yesterday in trying to discredit our costings they said there were 2.1 million eligible students. Now there’s only 600,000 difference in the space of eight days, we used the Prime Minister’s number which she had also used back in January. FRAN KELLY: 2.7 million? ANDREW ROBB: That’s right 2.7. Now either Mr Swan is incompetent or deceitful or both. FRAN KELLY: What about the argument Andrew Robb that even if you are predicating it on the same numbers as the Government, the likelihood is that given your promise is more extensive for instance school fees can be claimed then more people are going to take up this rebate because that’s a fantastic offer. There are more people going to use it. FRAN KELLY: Very good point, very good point Fran, so as a consequence we increased the percentage of uptake from the Government’s current percentage of 65 per cent to 80 per cent. So we made full allowance, in fact, more than full allowance in my view for that. FRAN KELLY: So 15 per cent more on top of that 2.7million? ANDREW ROBB: In terms of the maximum claim that could be made and we actually increased the number of people that would take up any claim by 15 per cent because our policy is more attractive. And I think… FRAN KELLY: Okay, so that’s the numbers. You’ve added more students, potential student claims to the number, not just 2.7, you’ve increased that? ANDREW ROBB: We’ve added tens of tens of thousands more to it and we’ve increased by 15 per cent the likely claim by any one family for their child. FRAN KELLY: Okay. ANDREW ROBB: So, on both counts we’ve made very very generous assumptions of increases. We’ve used the numbers that were used by the Prime Minister eight days ago to explain hers. They’ve come out without any real justification. They’ve used different numbers that have not been in the public arena. And we see today Tim Colebatch from The Age, who is an expert in this area, has gone into great detail about comparing the two schemes and said the Coalition’s plan is clearly better, clearly better. FRAN KELLY: Alright, well I guess that’s for the voters to judge. But the point is you will submit this policy I presume to the Treasurer for the charter of budget honesty. When will you put those figures in? ANDREW ROBB: We have said this, Fran we have said this endlessly, that we will submit. We will be submitting the first batch later next week, after our own independent accounting firm has considered them and checked them. The first tranche of costings will go in later next week… FRAN KELLY: Including this one? ANDREW ROBB: … And we have, we have said, we have said that we will consistently submit every one of our costings and not like the Labor Party.  The Labor Party are out there trailing their coat on this issue. You must recall that last time they submitted all of their policies for costing at 12.35 on the Friday before the election. Now they’ve got the gall to start to suggest that we’re not going to follow proper procedure. On every count they’ve challenged our numbers. They’re talking about black holes. They’ve got a $40 billion deficit predicted for this year. That’s a black hole, that’s going to cause the Australian population more taxes, more borrowing. FRAN KELLY: Sure, sure, sure, sure, I want to bring you back though, because time is tight. ANDREW ROBB: This is relevant Fran. They’re accusing us of black holes… FRAN KELLY: That’s a black hole caused by the global financial crisis. ANDREW ROBB: No it’s not. It’s caused by the reckless spending of this Labor party, unnecessary and reckless spending and the waste and mismanagement. That’s what it’s caused by. FRAN KELLY: Okay, well talking of black holes, okay there’s been Government attacks too on what you’ve claimed as savings. You say $46 billion in savings is what the Coalition has found. Now there are question marks over some of that because you count in cancelling the broadband network and also the sale of Medibank Private savings. There are questions marks over all of that. But the point is… ANDREW ROBB: Sorry Fran, can I just, on that, it’s a very important point, from day one when we came out with $46 billion worth of savings people were dismissing the $18 billion because it’s a capital saving. Because if we don’t go ahead with a version of the broadband network and borrowing $43 billion or $18 billion in the next three years they’re saying well that’s not a saving. Well I’ll put it to you, if you’ve got a 25 per cent discount on a $40,000 new kitchen, a capital expenditure, you would save $10,000. Now that happens to be real money. FRAN KELLY: Yeah but it’s not an $18 billion saving. Look we must move on. ANDREW ROBB: Sorry Fran, the next three years, the Labor party have committed to borrowing $18 billion to do the first part of their broadband network. If we don’t borrow that $18 billion that is a direct saving to the debt that this country will incur. FRAN KELLY: Alright well, what I’m interested in is the money that you do have at your disposal to spend. There are various estimates of it, around the $6 billion mark, will that money be used, be spent on election promises, how much of it to be used to retire debt? ANDREW ROBB: Well, what we have said is that these savings we will in some cases use the savings, by scrapping certain Government programs, to replace them with better programs. FRAN KELLY: Yes, but will you spend all that money? ANDREW ROBB: No we won’t. No, we’ve said we’ll do both, we’ve said how this Government could and should reduce the debt either with recurrent savings which means you borrow less or with capital savings which means you pay off debt. In both cases, you’re reducing the debt burden that is hanging now around the neck of Australians and is putting enormous pressure on interest rates. Six interest rate rises in a row, much of it due to the reckless spending which is added to the debt at the rate of $700 million a week. That’s a new hospital a week we’re borrowing as a country. This is going to go on for two years, every week for two years, $700 million a week. FRAN KELLY: Andrew Robb, thank you very much for joining us, I’m sure we’ll be talking again about the figures during this campaign. Thank you. ANDREW ROBB: Thanks very much Fran. Further information: Cameron Hill on 0408 239 521 Andrew Robb Fri, 23 Jul 2010 01:35:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:1136 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1076/The-2009-Robb-Report.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=1076 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=1076&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1076/The-2009-Robb-Report.aspx  (3.95MB PDF) Andrew Robb Thu, 06 May 2010 23:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:1076 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1068/Brighton-Secondary-College-Must-Be-Recognised.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=1068 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=1068&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1068/Brighton-Secondary-College-Must-Be-Recognised.aspx Brighton Secondary College has been ignored by the Rudd/Gillard Government and the Brumby/Pike Government, and has failed to receive funding to upgrade their science centre and other facilities, despite actively lobbying for such since the announcement, over a year ago, of the Rudd Government’s school buildings program. “It would appear that Brighton Secondary College has been deliberately discriminated against because of where it is located. “The students and teachers are working at a great disadvantage, having been denied, for many years, any sort of adequate funding compared to other schools,” Andrew Robb, Federal Member for Goldstein, said. The 2010/2011 Federal Budget is due to be brought down on 11 May 2010, and the 2010/2011 State Budget is due to be brought down on 4 May 2010. “Given the lack of funding supplied to Brighton Secondary College in 2009/2010 budgets both the Rudd/Gillard Government and Brumby/Pike Government should think long and hard as they finalise their 2010/2011 budgets. “It is an outstanding school with enormous spirit and strong results. The teachers, parents, numerous other school community members, and students have lobbied for years for adequate funding and their appeals have been disregarded. “I commend the school community and urge them not to give up, to continue to lobbying Education Ministers, Julia Gillard and Bronwyn Pike. “It is time Brighton Secondary College was recognised,” Mr Robb said. Media contact: Skye Buttenshaw, 9557 4644 Andrew Robb Wed, 28 Apr 2010 01:21:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:1068 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1044/Year-12-and-Gap-Year-Students-to-be-Left-in-Limbo.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=1044 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=1044&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1044/Year-12-and-Gap-Year-Students-to-be-Left-in-Limbo.aspx As Bayside and Glen Eira year 12 students celebrate the end of exams, finalise their university applications and plan summer holidays away, many face the prospect of no longer being eligible for Youth Allowance following the Rudd Labor Government’s decision to axe the current criteria. Under the present regulations, students can earn $19,532 within an 18 months period to qualify for independent Youth Allowance. However, changes proposed by the Rudd Labor Government would see this criteria abolished. Instead, a young person would be required to work full time for a minimum of 30 hours a week for at least 18 months in a two year period to be considered financially independent. “The Coalition is committed to supporting all students being able to access university education. The Rudd Labor Government however, is making it increasingly difficult for many, particularly for those who don’t have the option of living at home while pursuing their studies,” Andrew Robb, Federal Member for Goldstein, said. In addition, the proposed changes have a start date of 1 January 2010 therefore students who are already currently taking a gap year are being left in limbo. Having made the decision to delay their university studies and work for financial independence, criteria changes will see their hard work go to waste. “Many students, including the 25,000 students who at the end of 2008 took the advice of Centrelink to delay their studies in order to work, will fall victim to these changes,” Mr Robb said. The Coalition proposed amendments which would allow students currently taking a gap year to remain eligible for Youth Allowance. In mid November, with the support of the Greens, the Senate passed these amendments, but they were then rejected by Labor a few days later in the House of Representatives. “I am extremely disappointed that the Rudd Labor Government has not accepted our amendments and I urge the Government to reconsider their position so that Bayside and Glen Eira students have the chance to fulfil their dreams of going to university and succeeding in their chosen career,” Mr Robb said. The Bill is due back in Parliament next year. The Coalition will again be looking to move these amendments. Media contact: Skye Buttenshaw, 9557 4644 Andrew Robb Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:49:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:1044 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1006/Sandringham-Student-Journeys-to-Japan-for-Science-Showdown.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=1006 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=1006&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1006/Sandringham-Student-Journeys-to-Japan-for-Science-Showdown.aspx Sandringham resident and Brighton Grammar School student, Mel Chen, will journey to Japan in July to go head to head with other students from all over the world at the International Biology Olympiad Competitions as part of the Science Olympics. Mr Chen is one of thirteen who were selected from nearly 40,000 students to represent Australia in the Science Olympics following a gruelling series of special classes, exams, study sessions, and an intensive summer scholar school training programme run at Monash University by Australian Science Innovations (ASI). “I would like to congratulate Mel on this outstanding achievement. Being selected to compete in this university standard competition is a phenomenal feat in itself,” Andrew Robb, Federal Member for Goldstein, said. Mr Chen’s success builds on that of former Kilvington Girls Grammar student Genevieve Martin, who took out the bronze medal at the International Biology Olympiad Competitions in 2007. Mr Robb celebrated Mr Chen’s selection with him recently at a Parliament House presentation and morning tea. Students selected also had to the honour to hear an address by Professor Ian Frazer, 2006 Australian of the Year and cervical cancer vaccine pioneer, who stressed the importance of developing talented young scientists. The Science Olympics is a great experience for students considering careers in the field of science. Mr Chen hopes to pursue a career in biology in the future, but right now he is simply looking forward to the experience of the competition and travelling overseas. “I wish Mel all the best in seizing every opportunity this competition offers,” Mr Robb said. Media contact: Skye Buttenshaw, 9557 4644 Andrew Robb Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:33:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:1006 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/925/Bayside-schools-to-benefit-under-the-National-Secondary-School-Computer-Fund.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=925 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=925&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/925/Bayside-schools-to-benefit-under-the-National-Secondary-School-Computer-Fund.aspx Five local Bayside schools are to benefit from a share in $964,000 under the Australian Governments’ National Secondary School Computer Fund. The successful schools include three Government schools and two Catholic schools located throughout Bayside suburbs. “The high level of funding is testament to the wonderful work and dedication that the many staff, students and parents carry out each and every day within their school community,” Andrew Robb MP, Federal Member for Goldstein said. “Computers play an integral part of our youth’s education, and it is important that our schools remain up to date with new technology. For this reason, I encourage all eligible schools who did not apply in Rounds One and Two to apply under Round 2. “I would like to congratulate all five schools who have received a grant in this funding round, and wish them well in continuing the wonderful work that they do. These grants will have a significant influence in aiding many parents and students through this tough economic time,” Mr Robb said. Local schools to receive the grant include: Our Lady of the Scared Heart College $63,000 Star of the Sea College $151,000 Brighton Secondary College $195,000 McKinnon Secondary College $257,000 Sandringham College – Sandringham $298,000 Further funding under this program is still available. All secondary schools both government and non-government with students in Years 9 to 12 will have the opportunity to apply for up to $1 million from the Fund dependent on enrolment and need, and are able to purchase laptops, desktop computers, and other technologies. All eligible secondary schools that did not apply in Rounds One and Two of the National Secondary School Computer Fund (the Fund) can apply. Schools that did not apply for their full number of computers to reach the target ratio of 1:2 in the first two rounds of the Fund can also apply. The supplementary round closes on 11 February. For further information on the successful applicants for this round of funding under the National Secondary School Computer Fund, or for further information on round 2.1 please contact the office on 9557 4644. Media contact: 9557 4644   Andrew Robb MP Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:925 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/897/COAG-The-more-things-change-the-more-things-stay-the-same.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=897 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=897&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/897/COAG-The-more-things-change-the-more-things-stay-the-same.aspx   Despite years of promises by Mr Rudd to “re-engineer federalism”, to create a new era in housing, education, infrastructure, health, business regulation and much more, today’s COAG was very much “business - as – usual”. Yesterday’s COAG confirms the growing impression of this Rudd Government, as a government of all talk and little or no action. The expectations created around COAG are a triumph of spin over substance. The five year health funding agreement, welcome as it is, has all the hallmarks of a host of such agreements, across many policy areas, over the last decade. Furthermore, despite a GST windfall of $3.2 billion to the states and territories in the last year alone, the various state hospital systems have gone backwards, none more so than in NSW. After twelve months, the only innovation in Mr Rudd’s “co-operative federalism” appears to be the introduction of an impenetrable COAG mechanism, with layers of new bureaucracy, far removed from the usual checks and balances, and consultative imperatives, behind which the nine heads of government can hide. A bureaucratic structure is in the making which removes governments from individual accountability in a political sense. It smacks of Mr Rudd’s reported dream in July 2005 of turning COAG into “the senior bureaucratic clearing house for the nation”. It smacks of a lack of leadership, a lack of robust ideas, a lack of any articulated critical path, a lack of accountability. Mr Rudd’s reform program, including COAG, is being exposed for what it is - just a spending program. Now that the inherited surpluses have been spent, Mr Rudd’s reform cupboard is looking decidedly bare. Media Contact: Stuart Eaton, 0433 298 620 Andrew Robb MP Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:897 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/885/Schools-Bill-an-attack-on-choice-in-education.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=885 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=885&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/885/Schools-Bill-an-attack-on-choice-in-education.aspx Non-government schools in Bayside, which enrol over 10,000 students, face an uncertain future under changes the Rudd Labor Government is proposing to introduce into Parliament. “The Labor Party has a long record of attacking funding for non-government schools and this is yet another example of this,” Andrew Robb MP, Federal Member for Goldstein said. “The Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard however needs to appreciate that private schools are not typically wealthy schools. Hundreds of Catholic and other small independent schools are vital in offering hard working parents choice and alternative education streams so their children can get the education that is right for them. “Under the Rudd Government’s proposed legislation, Julia Gillard will have the power to withhold or stop funding to these schools almost at a whim. “Schools that offer different or alternative education streams such as Montessori, International Baccalaureate, special needs schools and Jewish schools such as Mount Scopus Memorial College will be in danger of losing their funding unless they amend their programs to fit into the national curriculum – a curriculum that hasn’t even been written yet. “This Bill has the potential to severely compromise the ability of independent schools to specifically tailor their curriculum to suit the needs of both the parents and the students. This can only adversely affect the teaching quality. It also could result in lower government funding which would lead to higher fees,” Mr Robb said. St. Leonard’s College in Brighton which offers an excellent International Baccalaureate programme would fall under this category. If this legislation passes without amendment, it is possible St. Leonard’s College’s funding could be withheld if it doesn’t conform to a rigid national curriculum. “Additionally for the first time non-government schools will be forced to make available for publication all of their sources of funding, whether it be the takings from the school fete or even a chocolate raffle. This information is entirely superfluous to the non-government schools Federal funding, which is calculated based on the wealth of the parents of students. “Why does the Federal Government need funding information that isn’t used to calculate how much money schools will get? “Julia Gillard is already planning a review of how non-government schools are funded in 2010. Armed with all this information she wants to take non-government schools back to the days of Mark Latham and Labor’s Private Schools Hit List. “The Federal Opposition will be seeking to amend several aspects of this Bill to protect Australian students, schools and parents, protecting their right to choice in education,” Mr Robb said. Media contact: (03) 9557 4644   Andrew Robb MP Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:885 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/829/Goldstein-schools-miss-out-on-their-own-trades-training-centre.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=829 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=829&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/829/Goldstein-schools-miss-out-on-their-own-trades-training-centre.aspx In a blow to every student in Goldstein, Kevin Rudd has broken his promise to put a trades training centre in every Australian secondary school. To add insult to injury not a single trades training centre has been announced in the first round of funding within reach of Goldstein students. Federal Member for Goldstein, Andrew Robb MP, also said because the funding offered to each school was so limited, schools were having to cluster together to build anything that resembled a trades training ‘centre’. “This means at best, there will never be a trades training centre in every school in Goldstein as Kevin Rudd explicitly promised last year,” Mr Robb said. “Kevin Rudd promised a trades training centre in all of Australia’s 2650 secondary level schools and yet yesterday, after eight months, the Rudd Government announced funding for centres is just 34 schools or 1.3 per cent of total schools.” “The funding is so paltry for schools it will barely update a woodwork room at best - not create anything that resembles a specialised ‘centre’.” Mr Robb said the former Coalition Government spent on average $24 million on each Australian Technical College while the Rudd Government was offering each school on average just $900,000 over 10 years to build a ‘centre’. “This policy is a cruel hoax that won’t do anything to encourage more apprentices or address the skills crisis,” said Mr Robb. “The Rudd Government’s idea of creating a trades training centre is to turn up at each school with a new sign to rename the metalwork room the metalwork ‘centre’.” “To provide proper trades training, students need dedicated, properly funded Australian Technical Colleges which have scale, local industry input and expert trades teachers.” Mr Robb said Kevin Rudd had failed to deliver on giving every upper secondary school student their own computer and now he’s failed to deliver on giving every school its own trades training centre. “So much for an education revolution and solutions to the skills crisis,” Mr Robb said.   Andrew Robb MP Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:829 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/822/Kevin-Rudd-leaves-Goldstein-families-to-pay-for-broken-computer-promise.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=822 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=822&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/822/Kevin-Rudd-leaves-Goldstein-families-to-pay-for-broken-computer-promise.aspx The families of Goldstein students who receive their promised computer from Kevin Rudd will be out of pocket given the Labor Government’s miscalculated and under funded policy. Federal Member for Goldstein, Andrew Robb MP, said the Rudd Labor Government has yet to work out who will pay for all the extra costs such as re-wiring, power, software, security, installation and teacher training on the reduced number of computers actually delivered. “I am increasingly concerned that is going to be left to individual schools in Goldstein to pay these costs which will eventually be passed on to families through higher school fees,” Mr Robb said. “Kevin Rudd no doubt will be happy to turn up to schools, deliver the computers in boxes, smile for yet another photo opportunity and then leave the school and families to pick up all the extra costs.” Andrew Robb said that the WA Premier, Alan Carpenter had estimated that for every $1 the Federal Government spends on computers, an extra $3 will be needed for the extra costs. “Kevin Rudd’s figures do not compute. This is highlighted by his proposed secret payment to the New South Wales Government to buy their silence on the extra costs families and schools face,” said Mr Robb. The Rudd Labor Government has also declared that, at best, the neediest of schools will only be allocated a ratio of one computer for every two students. “Kevin Rudd promised every Goldstein student in Years 9 to 12 would receive their very own, free computer before last year’s election. Now he has admitted he will not live up to his word,” Mr Robb said. “Out of the 116,820 computers available in the first round of funding only 183 will find there way into Goldstein students hands. That is just 0.15 of 1% of the total computers going out to Australian schools.” “Kevin Rudd and Labor have deceived parents and students who believed they would be receiving their very own computer.” “Kevin Rudd has shown he cannot deliver on his promise to bring petrol prices or grocery prices down and now he cannot deliver on his promise to give every Year 9 to 12 student a free computer.” Media contact: Andrew Hudgson (03) 9557 4644 or 0404 020 896   Andrew Robb MP Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:822 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/784/Victorian-Training-Awards--Bayside-applications-invited.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=784 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=784&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/784/Victorian-Training-Awards--Bayside-applications-invited.aspx Federal Member for Goldstein, Andrew Robb MP, has announced that nominations for the 2008 Victorian Training Awards are now being invited. “Skills training is vitally important for the future of our nation.” “As a Minister in the previous government I was proud to implement programs which improved the way skills training is delivered, in particular, the development of state-of-the-art Australian Technical Colleges” Mr Robb said. “These awards provide the community with a great opportunity to recognise and celebrate the achievements of Bayside students, trainees, apprentices and the teachers and employers that are readying the next generation of Australia’s workforce” Nominations are being called for in the following categories; • School-based New Apprentice of the Year • Koorie Student of the Year • Trainee of the Year • Vocational Student of the Year • Teacher/Trainer of the Year • VET Client Service/Support Excellence Award • Large Training Provider of the Year • Small Training Provider of the Year • Training Initiative of the Year • VET in Schools Excellence of the Year • Employer of the Year • Small Business of the Year Award Winners of the 2008 Victorian Training Awards will be eligible for $10,000 study or professional development fellowships. Award winners will then go on to represent Victoria at the 2008 Australian Training Awards. Nominations for the 2008 Victorian Training Awards close on Monday 12 May 2008. For more information on the awards or how to nominate contact Andrew Robb’s office on 9557 4644 or contact Andrew through his website www.andrewrobb.com.au   Andrew Robb MP Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:784 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/738/More-support-for-apprentices-in-Bayside.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=738 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=738&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/738/More-support-for-apprentices-in-Bayside.aspx Australian Apprentices and their employers in the electorate of Goldstein will be able to access additional assistance worth thousands of dollars under an extension of the Commonwealth Trade Learning Scholarship, and opening up of the Employer Incentives Programme and Living Away from Home Allowance. “Local businesses in the Bayside area will greatly benefit from these changes. Businesses play a vital role in training Australian Apprentices and these changes will enable more employers to access the range of financial assistance provided by the Australian Government,” Andrew Robb, Federal Member for Goldstein and Minister for Vocational and Further Education said. Australian Apprentices will also benefit, with more apprentices able to get the $1,000 tax-free Commonwealth Trade Learning Scholarship and Living Away From Home Allowance. “These changes support young people to stay in our community and contribute to Bayside’s future growth and prosperity through completing an apprenticeship; they will help to further drive the unemployment rate in Goldstein below the current level of 2.9%. “There are now over 3,600 apprentices in Goldstein which represents a 254% increase since 1996. With these changes, we will see more apprentices and employers supported to start and complete an apprenticeship,” Andrew Robb added. The additional assistance includes: - Ensuring access to the $1,000 tax-free Commonwealth Trade Learning Scholarship to apprentices who complete their apprenticeship before the end of their first or second year; - Opening up the Incentives Programme to employers of apprentices with prior qualifications who are training in an area of skills shortage, including incentives of up to $4,000 in commencement and completion payments; - Introducing six new intermediate building and construction qualifications that will attract incentives for employers under the Incentives Programme; and - Extending Living Away From Home Allowance to Australian School-based Apprentices. “The Howard Government’s record on training Australia’s workforce speaks for itself. In 1996, when Labor last held government, only 30,920 people completed an apprenticeship. This compares with a massive 544,000 completions over the past four years. “This year alone we have committed a record $2.9 billion to skilling Australia. Labor has no effective plan - all Labor has to offer is a lathe or a microwave at the back of a classroom,” Robb said. The new measures will commence on 1 January 2008.   Andrew Robb MP Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:738 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/736/360000-to-help-Bayside-students.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=736 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=736&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/736/360000-to-help-Bayside-students.aspx Six bayside schools will each receive $60,000 each to hire school chaplains to provide greater pastoral care, support and advice for the wellbeing of their students. The successful schools were announced recently under Round Two of the Federal Government’s School Chaplaincy Programme which provides funding to schools to engage or expand the services of a chaplain. The denomination of the chaplain and their role within the school is determined entirely by the school and parent community. The successful local schools are; • Berendale School, Hampton East • Brighton Grammar School, Brighton • Brighton Secondary College, Brighton East • Firbank Grammar School, Brighton • Larmenier Special School, Hampton East; and • Star of the Sea College, Gardenvale “School chaplains are already making valuable contributions to many schools in the local area. They provide a wonderful support to students who may be going through a difficult time either at school or home and simply need some advice or even just a sympathetic ear,” Andrew Robb, Federal Member for Goldstein said. “The merits of school chaplains have been recognised by the thousands of schools around Australia who have applied for funding. Over Round One and Round Two, eight local schools have shared in $480,000 to provide these valuable services. “I congratulate the local schools who have applied. This is a wonderful programme and I am certain it will provide support to our local students,” Andrew Robb said. Further information on the National School Chaplaincy programme, and details of all the successful Round Two schools is at: www.dest.gov.au/schools/chaplains Media contact: Megan Cox 0414 492 674 (m) or 9557 4644 (w)   Andrew Robb MP Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:736 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/732/Questions-Without-Notice-Australian-Technical-Colleges.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=732 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=732&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/732/Questions-Without-Notice-Australian-Technical-Colleges.aspx Mr RICHARDSON (3.10 p.m.)—My question is addressed to the Minister for Vocational and Further Education. Would the minister outline to the House the progress of the government’s Australian technical colleges? Are there any alternative plans and what is the government’s response? Answer Mr ROBB—I thank the member for Kingston for his question. He has been a powerhouse in making the technical college in his area a great success. In raising the status of the trades and technical training, the Australian technical colleges are already an unqualified success. When you go and meet the young people at these colleges, time and again they tell you that for the first time in their lives they feel motivated, they feel understood and they feel valued. We are restoring with these Australian technical colleges a great sense of pride and confidence in these young people. And it is resonating in local communities. Over the last few weeks hundreds of parents and prospective students have attended information nights at individual colleges around the country. Even parents of primary age students are approaching colleges around the country seeking to book their kids into years 11 and 12 at technical colleges some six or eight years hence. Yet the members opposite continue to denigrate these colleges for their own selfish political purposes. To make matters worse, the opposition is promoting a totally inadequate alternative. Labor promised between $500,000 and $1.5 million to all of the 2,650 academic secondary schools around Australia to set up so-called trade centres in all of these Australian secondary colleges. This is a policy that is being ridiculed in education circles—and for good reasons. About four weeks ago I reopened a renovated toilet block in a local primary school in my electorate. It is a small primary school and the renovation of this small toilet block— Opposition members interjecting— Continue Mr ROBB—You might laugh—they were worried about the health of their kids. This was not funded by the Labor Party; this was funded by the Australian government and the parents because the Labor government did not do anything about the health of these young kids. This renovation for a very small primary school cost $200,000. My point is that it highlights the total inadequacy of $500,000—or, for that matter, $1.5 million—to create a trade centre in every secondary school in the country. That sort of money will not touch the sides—it is a total con. It will see no more than an oven or a lathe in a classroom down the back end of every secondary school. More disturbingly, it will serve only to further perpetuate in every secondary college the second-class view of a trade career. Can’t you see it now—every Wednesday afternoon the kids who are not up with it academically will go down the back and do some cooking. That is all you will achieve with this. You will perpetuate what you have been doing for 20 years—talking down the trades. It will do nothing to raise the status of the trades. The Leader of the Opposition, your leader, knows this and he is becoming increasingly embarrassed by it—so much so that he is starting to fudge this policy. Just last week the Leader of the Opposition said to a gathering at Geelong: Here in Corangamite— an electorate very well served by the local member, I might add— there are some 13 secondary schools … That means 13 times $1.5 million to come to this community to make sure that we’ve got these trades training centres. He went on: Corio next door, some 20 secondary schools … That, he said, is 20 times $1.5 million. What the Leader of the Opposition is now saying is that every school across the country will get $1.5 million. But that is not Labor’s policy. Under Labor’s policy, only one-third of all the schools get $1.5 million, one-third get $1 million and one-third get $500,000. So we saw emerge last week just a little matter of a $1.5 billion gap in Labor’s costings. I know that maths is not Labor’s strong point, but this was not a simple mathematical oversight. The Leader of the Opposition has been selling this policy all over the country since the budget. In fact, apart from IR, which has been an absolute debacle for them, this has been the only policy where they have released any detail. And he has been selling it for months. If he does not know the detail, I’ll go he. He knew what he was doing when he misrepresented his own embarrassing policy. He did not want to be ridiculed, so he told his audience what he thought they would prefer to hear. This was deception plain and simple. Mark my words: under pressure, the Leader of the Opposition reverts to type.   Andrew Robb MP Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:732 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/728/Better-facilities-for-Bayside-students.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=728 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=728&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/728/Better-facilities-for-Bayside-students.aspx Three bayside schools will receive a share of $191,209 to install new equipment and improve existing facilities for their students. Beaumaris North Primary School, Berendale School and Black Rock Primary School have all received grants from the fourth round of the Federal Government’s Investing In Our Schools programme of grants. “This money will help these three schools to upgrade their current facilities. Both Black Rock and Beaumaris North Primary School will install new ICT and computer equipment whilst Berendale will upgrade their canteen,” Andrew Robb, Federal Member for Goldstein said. “We are lucky to have such excellent schools in our local community. However, due to an increased number of students being enrolled at these schools and the Victorian State Government ignoring the needs of our students, a number of schools have simply outgrown their facilities, “Investing In Our Schools has been a welcome programme in the area with local schools receiving more than $4.2 million in grants for infrastructure and equipment,” Andrew Robb said. Following the overwhelming response to the Howard Government’s $1.2 billion Investing in Our Schools Programme (IOSP), the Minister for Education, Science and Training the Hon Julie Bishop MP has announced that the programme will be extended. “The extension of the Investing In Our Schools programme will provide bayside schools with further opportunities to receive grants to upgrade their facilities. I look forward to working with principals, teachers and parents to secure more funds for our local schools in the future,” Andrew Robb said. The grants received by each school are as follows: • Beaumaris North Primary School - $74,281 • Berendale School - $99,990 • Black Rock Primary School - $16,938 For more information on Investing In Our Schools, visit www.dest.gov.au. Media contact: Megan Cox 9557 4644 / 0414 492 674   Andrew Robb MP Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:728 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/725/Bayside-students-eligible-for-Australian-Defence-Force-Gap-Year.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=725 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=725&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/725/Bayside-students-eligible-for-Australian-Defence-Force-Gap-Year.aspx Bayside School Leavers will benefit from a new initiative, the Australian Defence Force Gap Year program, which will provide young people with the option to join the Australian Defence Force for a year after they complete Year 12. While many Year 12 school leavers go straight into tertiary education and training, about 34,000 of them each year take a break in their first year out of school to broaden their life experiences, gain skills or travel. “The Australian Defence Force Gap Year offers a unique opportunity to undertake training, acquire transferable skills, gain independence, maturity and become self-reliant, all while being paid,” Andrew Robb, Federal Member for Goldstein said. “Importantly, the Australian Defence Force Gap Year offers a ‘try before you buy’ taste of the ADF, without any obligation to serve beyond the 12 month program. In this way, young Australians are given an excellent introduction to service life without having to commit for four or more years.” Each of the Services has tailored their Gap Year programs to give participants a wide range of choice. A basic military training element is common to all, but Navy participants can expect to experience life onboard a ship as a sailor, while Army is offering a range of employment streams as a soldier; from rifleman and gunner to clerical and logistics trades. Air Force participants will be exposed to a range of officer and airman employment categories. While not all Gap Year participants will want to continue serving in the Australian Defence Force, those that do may transfer to full-time military careers and training or return to the ADF later and receive a financial bonus, having completed their tertiary or vocational training. Some may also pursue part-time paid service in the Reserves. “I encourage all local Year 12 school leavers to seriously consider the Australian Defence Force Gap Year option. The skills they will gain in terms of teamwork, self-discipline, communication and access to emerging technologies will assist them in their future studies and will be valued highly by prospective employers. All this while earning between $30,000 and $46,000 over the year.” Andrew Robb said. Defence Force Recruiting is accepting Australian Defence Force Gap Year applications now, for entry later this year or early in 2008. More information is available at www.defencejobs.gov.au or by texting Gap to 13 19 01. Media contact: Megan Cox 9557 4644 / 0414 492 674   Andrew Robb MP Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:725 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/714/Australian-Technical-Colleges-Flexibility-in-Achieving-Australias-Skills-Needs-Amendment-Bill.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=714 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=714&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/714/Australian-Technical-Colleges-Flexibility-in-Achieving-Australias-Skills-Needs-Amendment-Bill.aspx Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2007 Speech 15 August 2007 Mr ROBB (Goldstein—Minister for Vocational and Further Education) (5.51 pm)—I take this opportunity to acknowledge the parliamentary career of the member for Port Adelaide. I rise today to speak on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2007. It is a very important bill and I acknowledge the contribution of various members on both sides to this debate. The additional funding provided under this bill will ensure that a further three Australian technical colleges can be established in the regions of greater Penrith, north-eastern Perth and southern Brisbane, adding to the existing 25 colleges that have already been announced by the government. The benefit of these colleges to the regions in which they will be established cannot be overstated. They are all areas of skills need, with high youth populations and a strong industry presence. Once fully operational, up to 350 students will graduate from each college every year, and by 2009 we will see some 8,000 to 10,000 students in residence. These young people will not only achieve their year 12 certificate but they will also be up to one-third of their way through an apprenticeship in a trade that is vital for the future of their part of Australia. They will be highly trained, having had the exposure to the latest machinery and equipment—the same state-of-the-art equipment used by industry. They will be highly motivated, having had a high level of tailored support and mentoring that would not be available to them at other schools with a strong academic focus. They will be work-ready, having worked in an industry area for up to two years and having received a specialised education that incorporates enterprise education, small business skills and employability skills. The member for Prospect in this House last week called these colleges a national disgrace. This simply continued Labor’s 20 years practice of talking down the trades—of denigrating those who wish to pursue a technical career. The campaign being waged by the Labor Party, both state and federal, is the national disgrace. They are simply playing politics with the lives of young Australians. The Labor Party knows that we have struck a chord with the community. We have identified a burning need—something that parents all over this country see an urgent need to address. Labor will do anything, say anything, to denigrate this initiative. In the process they are denigrating and putting down the young people and their parents who strive to see those wonderful technical talents developed at a secondary level through these colleges. We also had a disingenuous contribution from the member for Perth, the shadow spokesman for education. Among many other things, the member for Perth claimed that there had been cutbacks to the TAFE sector since 1997. The Howard government has provided record funding of well over $12 billion to the states and territories for TAFE and vocational education since 1996—$12 billion. Mr Stephen Smith—How many graduates are you going to have? The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. BK Bishop)—The member for Perth! Mr Stephen Smith—How many graduates are you going to have? The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. BK Bishop)—The member for Perth will desist! Mr ROBB—In 1995-96 our Labor predecessors allocated $770 million to TAFE. A continuation of that level of funding would have meant an allocation of some $8 billion over the last 11 years, yet the Australian government has contributed over $12 billion to the funding of TAFE. The member for Perth claimed that only two colleges had met their enrolment target. Mr Stephen Smith—How many? The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. BK Bishop)—The member for Perth will listen! Mr Stephen Smith—How many graduates? Mr ROBB—Of course, this is not true. In fact, two of the colleges had to increase their intake to meet the local demand. A further two had more enrolments than originally projected and there are many others that have a difference of five or less between their enrolment and their target. The fact is that, as at 31 March, the timing of the numbers that are being quoted by the member for Perth and others, a mere five weeks after these colleges had opened—a revolution in secondary education brought about in record time; a mere five weeks—we had over 90 per cent of our target for the full year in those colleges. We did not take into account— Mr Stephen Smith—How many graduates? Mr ROBB—I will get to your point in a minute. Be patient. The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. BK Bishop)—The member for Perth will desist! Mr ROBB—The member for Perth did not take into account midyear enrolments or the opening of the Pilbara college, which took place in July. The member for Greenway today recounted how, on a daily basis, there are 10 new inquiries for the technical college in Western Sydney. Despite having started in the face of abuse and demonisation by those opposite, they are getting 10 inquiries a day for next year about enrolments in this college. Parents of primary school students are approaching Australian technical colleges around the country seeking to enrol their primary age students in year 11 and 12. And they sit there and say that there is no demand for these colleges! Students are travelling three and four hours. We had one student from Launceston who went to Perth South in the city of the member for Perth to attend this Australian technical college. We are seeing this level of demand around the country. Those opposite are playing at semantics and creating a totally false impression for crass political purposes. We are very much on track with the creation of these colleges. The member for Perth claimed that only 21 of the colleges are open. Again, disingenuous—seeking to create a false impression, a false implication. The Howard government is proud of the fact that we have met our policy promise to open 24 colleges between 2006 and 2008. Twenty-one are already operating and at this stage a further four will be opened next year, making a total of 25. The Audit Office noted that it usually took three or four years for new schools to be established by state governments, yet 20 of the new colleges were open for business within six to 18 months. I congratulate the local communities and my department for the inspired and extraordinary work and effort that has gone into the creation of these colleges. The member for Perth then went on to claim that there has not been one graduate. He is parroting on about it again in the House here this evening—parroting on that this is a shallow, superficial, misleading proposition. Mr Stephen Smith—How many graduates? Mr ROBB—He knows only too well that these colleges have only been open for six months and that they have been created in record time. What a stupid statement to make that there has been no graduates when they have only been open for six months. They are there for years 11 and 12. Mr Stephen Smith—How many graduates The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. BK Bishop)—The member for Perth has had a good go. He will desist! Mr ROBB—You have had your turn. You have made all your disingenuous statements. Listen to some answers for a change. Mr Stephen Smith—Tell us how many you have? The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. BK Bishop)—If the member for Perth does not desist, he might find himself out of the chamber! Mr ROBB - The member for Perth also claimed that there is an average cost per student of $175,000. That is a nonsense and a total misrepresentation of the facts. When it comes to costs per student, Labor’s inability to understand money and the economy are on full display for all to see. Your naiveté is breathtaking on this count. Costs per student cannot be worked out by dividing all costs over the forward estimates, including the capital cost, into the number of students for one solitary year. Capital, as most people know, is allocated over many years and also subject to depreciation. The capital that the Howard government has invested in will be used for many decades to come, and the money that has been set aside for operating costs is in many cases for three calendar years. The capital cost for these colleges is at or below that of comparably sized schools being built by state governments, at around $10 million on average. When it comes to recurrent costs, I have been advised by the colleges that annual recurrent costs will be in the order of $12,000 to $13,000, consistent with the declared costs by the states for other secondary schools in this country. The member for Perth claimed that this is the only initiative of the government to address the skills shortage. Again, that is patently absurd—and, again, he knows it. The Howard government has provided record funding of well over $12 billion to the states and territories for TAFE and vocational education. In addition to that $12 billion, we have provided a further $12 billion on other initiatives to employers and to young people to undertake vocational and technical training—a total of over $24 billion. The year that we took office, the government, our predecessor, spent around $1 billion. In the subsequent 10 years, we have spent $24 billion, a massive increase—a 99 per cent increase in real terms—on spending in vocational and technical education. As a consequence we have seen, over the last four years, 544,000 people having completed apprenticeships. This compares with 30,900 in 1996—30,900 to 544,000. There is much happening, much being achieved, and the technical colleges are on top of this. They are designed not only to invest in the future and encourage further young people to develop their technical and creative talents at an early age, as well as getting their literacy and numeracy skills developed, but also to raise the status of the trades, something that has been in great peril since the Labor Party embarked on this crusade to elevate academic education by denigrating those young people with wonderful technical and creative talents. The member for Perth is also confused when he says that the colleges are duplicative. He also criticises them for working with TAFEs. The fact is that from the outset the model has been one of local consortia. It is the great strength of the model. No two technical colleges around the country are the same. Back in November 2004, we issued the expression of interest document. The expression of interest document provided to the public said: Each Australian technical college will be based on regional industry needs, local infrastructure and current and future economic circumstances. Tenders will be sought from consortia of existing educational institutions, including schools, TAFEs and universities, together with local and national industry. Colleges may be based on new or shared campuses of existing organisations or totally new institutions. Organisations can be expected to include local businesses; industry representatives; schools, government or non-government; TAFEs and other registered training organisations; and universities. The organisation of these consortia will largely be the responsibility of interested individuals and organisations with a commitment to addressing regional skills shortages and local knowledge and links to achieve this in the most effective possible way. As I have said from the outset, the model was intended to include TAFEs, state and non-government schools, and local organisations to give the most effective outcome, yet we have been criticised for including TAFEs. We have been accused of duplicating when in fact we have gone out of our way to ensure that the resources and infrastructure that exist locally are used to maximum effect for these colleges. Let me say again, for the member for Perth, that these colleges are not a duplicate of TAFE. TAFE is for postsecondary students. These colleges are akin to the dedicated technical schools that were closed all around this country 20 or 30 years ago. They allow students to complete year 12, which is not a feature of TAFE; to start an apprenticeship, sometimes with the involvement—encouraged by the federal government—of TAFE; and to gain some real-world experience. The member for Perth also said that the technical colleges have no relationship with state and territory based secondary school systems. What a nonsense—again, a disingenuous statement. Each and every one of these schools is registered by the state and territory, just like the 900 other independent secondary schools in Australia—another example of deliberate misrepresentation. The member for Perth also wants to criticise the government for TAFE— The DEPUTY SPEAKER—I call the member for Perth, on a point of order. Mr Stephen Smith—He can rant on about misleading all he likes. He can’t say— The DEPUTY SPEAKER—You are addressing a standing order? Mr Stephen Smith—On the point of order: he cannot say ‘deliberate’ misleading of the House. I ask that he withdraw that. He used the word ‘deliberate’. The DEPUTY SPEAKER—If the member did make an allegation of deliberately misleading the House then I would ask him to withdraw that. Mr ROBB—I withdraw the word ‘deliberate’, Madam Deputy Speaker. The DEPUTY SPEAKER—Thank you. Mr ROBB—The member for Perth also wants to criticise the Howard government for TAFE infrastructure. Primary responsibility for TAFE, of course, lies with the states and territories, yet, even taking that into account, the Howard government has invested over $4 billion into VET infrastructure, compared to the $2.5 billion from the states, since 1996. Then the member for Perth talked about Labor’s plans for technical training in Australia, to create so-called trade-training centres in every secondary school across Australia. He talked about the $2.5 billion to be spent in lots of $500,000, $1 million or $1.5 million in every one of Australia’s 2,650 high schools. Five hundred thousand dollars per school will barely touch the sides. I opened the renovation of a toilet block at a local primary school two weeks ago which cost over $200,000. How can Labor suggest that $500,000 spent at a secondary school is going to, in some way, create a trade centre when the cost of a lathe or an oven is around $500,000? How will the purchase of a lathe or an oven stuck in a classroom down the back of a secondary school lead to a resolution of the skills shortage? We have heard nothing of that. We have just heard this tricky politics designed to give the impression of something significant—trade centres in every school around the country—when it will barely touch the sides. Mr Stephen Smith interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER—The member for Perth will desist interjecting. Mr ROBB—What we have not heard is the detail. Which schools are going to get the $500,000, $1 million or $1.5 million? Which schools will have to wait until 2018 for their piece of the pie? Who decides which schools get what? What is the criteria? Are we going to see Latham’s hit list again by stealth? Will schools miss out because they are private schools or because they raise money through fundraising? Where will all the trained teachers go for these schools? On average it would be about 70 teachers per school. Surely seven or eight teachers would be required for a trade centre of any consequence. That is about 20,000 new teachers with technical and university teaching qualifications. Where are the 20,000 teachers going to come from? Where is the detail? What school funding will cover more than one trade? Are the schools going to cover different trades so that students have to pick and choose? None of this has been thought through. What we have is typical Labor: they tell us what they are going to do but not how they are going to do it. This has not been thought through. This is policy on the run. This is tricky policy designed to give the impression of doing something significant. It allows them to run around the country and make little announcements implying that they are going to create a trade centre in each school for $500000. What a total joke that is. These colleges are going gang busters. They are something we are very proud of. We have nearly 2,000 students enrolled around the country in the first six months of the operation of these colleges. We have enormous demand—for example, in Bendigo we cannot keep up with the demand from local businesses. In the last few weeks hundreds of parents and prospective students have turned up to information nights at colleges all around the country. These are a wonderful investment in the future. This is a visionary initiative of the Howard government. We must reach a situation where a high-quality technical education is as valued as a university degree. One of the biggest mistakes we made as a community 20 to 30 years ago was to close the dedicated technical schools around Australia. The states have failed to meet this critical need because the Australian Education Union will not allow it. They are philosophically and fundamentally opposed to specialisation in schools, and they are tweaking your tail. The unions are spending $30 million on trying to get you back into office and you are doing their bidding. You are stopping any specialisation that might take place in schools—in this instance in regard to technical education. In the meantime tens of thousands of young people born with strong technical and creative talents are condemned to be treated as second-class students in largely academic schools. You know it, and you are doing nothing other than talking down this great initiative. We need an environment which celebrates what these young people are good at a secondary school level. We need to build self-esteem, self-belief and motivation. They need to feel good about themselves. At year 11 and 12 level we need not only the literacy and numeracy skills but also for these young people to feel the self-esteem and the self-belief that comes from these technical colleges. These three additional technical colleges in greater Penrith, north-eastern Perth and southern Brisbane will make an important contribution to the lives of young Australians and to our ongoing skills needs. Hopefully the state governments will follow suit, and hopefully in time those opposite will see the benefit and the great value of providing specialised technical training at a secondary school level. I suspect that the politics behind this initiative will disappear after the next election. I commend the bill to the House. The DEPUTY SPEAKER—The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Perth has moved as an amendment that all words after ‘that’ be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.   Andrew Robb MP Tue, 14 Aug 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:714 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/715/Questions-Without-Notice-Skills-Shortages.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=715 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=715&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/715/Questions-Without-Notice-Skills-Shortages.aspx Mr BARTLETT (3.11 p.m.)—My question is addressed to the Minister for Vocational and Further Education: what progress is the government making in dealing with labour and skills shortages, and are there any major impediments to further progress? Answer Mr ROBB—I thank the member for Macquarie for his question. Over recent months, in the absence of any worthwhile policy ideas on the other side of the House, they have resorted to asserting that the government has done nothing on skills—and the Leader of the Opposition was at it again this morning. This is just not true; it is a political lie, and the Leader of the Opposition knows it. He knows that apprentices in training in the electorate of Griffith have more than doubled since 1996. In 1996, there were 1,350 young people doing apprenticeships in the seat of Griffith; today there are 2,890 doing apprenticeships. Recent research, released today, also puts a lie to the assertion. It shows a massive increase in the number of trade apprentices since 1995-96—for example, there has been an increase of 67 per cent in the number of apprentices doing construction apprenticeships; there has been a 63 per cent increase in the number of young people doing electrical and electronic apprenticeships. It is the result of the $22 billion worth of initiatives that the Prime Minister detailed earlier. It is why over the last four years in Australia 544,000 young people have completed apprenticeships, compared to 30,000—a lonely 30,000—in 1996 when we took office. This has not happened by accident. It is a response of 10 years of hard work by the Howard government, yet what do we hear from those opposite? On the eve of an election and after eight months as Leader of the Opposition, the member for Griffith has provided no plan whatsoever to address the labour and skills shortages. There has not been one question in this House to me or anybody else about skills shortages from those opposite in eight months, yet we hear them assert again and again that this is a priority for the country; not one question. And why? It is because they are devoid of suggestions and ideas. The only response to date that Labor have announced is a program all the way through to 2018, an 11-year program of spending, to tack on a technical classroom to every secondary school across Australia. Putting an oven or a lathe in a classroom down the back end of every secondary school is not a solution to the skills challenge and will only continue to reinforce the view that a technical education is a second-class career. In every one of those secondary schools, the academic stream will continue to dominate. This response would only serve to reinforce the view that a technical career is a second-class career. Recent research from Monash University shows that the one-size-fits-all approach is counterproductive. Labor made ‘apprenticeships’ and ‘trade training’ dirty words. If they win office, they will do it again.   Andrew Robb MP Tue, 07 Aug 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:715 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/713/Upgrade-for-Gardenvale-Primary-School.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=713 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=713&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/713/Upgrade-for-Gardenvale-Primary-School.aspx Students at Gardenvale Primary School will benefit from an amenities upgrade funded under the innovative Investing in Our Schools Programme. The Federal Member for Goldstein, Andrew Robb today officially opened the $182,000 project, which has been a high priority for the school for many years. “The 590 students at Gardenvale Primary will now have access to a modern, hygienic and safe toilet facility. This upgrade will help improve the well-being of students,” Andrew Robb said. “The Australian Government invested $150,000 towards the project and I would also like to congratulate the Parent Association for their significant contribution to this key project, “Raising money is not easy and for the parent community to raise $32,000 for this project is outstanding,” Andrew Robb said. “I visited Gardenvale Primary School in 2005 to discuss this project with the principal, Mr Peter Boyes, “I was impressed with the school but could see how urgently they required this $150,000 grant to make their facilities safer for their students,” Andrew Robb said. “It was wonderful to visit Gardenvale Primary School today and see the upgrades. It is a great school and a credit to the staff, parents and students who have all worked hard to create a friendly learning environment,” Andrew Robb said. This grant is part of more than $3.4 million dollars received by bayside schools under the Investing In Our Schools programme of grants since 2005. Media contact: Megan Cox 9557 4644 / 0414 492 674   Andrew Robb MP Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:713 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/722/Science-speech.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=722 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=722&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/722/Science-speech.aspx SCIENCE SPEECH BY THE HON ANDREW ROBB, AO MP 29 JUNE 2007 Thanks very much, John, and good morning ladies and gentlemen. I do appreciate this opportunity this morning. I was interested when I got the invitation. I've had a long standing interest, to be honest, in science and engineering and maths. Before I did economics part time I did a Diploma of Agricultural Science at Dookie Agricultural College, and as part of my economics degree, actually, I did two years of maths stats at the maths school at La Trobe University. I was a board member with Sinclair Knight Mertz for several years in between politics when I was in business. I really sought that out, because of my interest in engineering and the sciences, I wanted to build a network as my objective had been, as John said, why is another story, to try and find an opportunity in politics. I sought out Sinclair Knight Mertz to get some network and exposure to what's happening. Of course, they've got 3000 consulting engineers across just about every discipline, and it's a fascinating organisation doing wonderful work. The focus of this symposium, to me, it is a critical one. It's an issue that is facing so many professions, but my assessment of your disciplines is that there's perhaps even a sharper edge to the problem facing so many others. When I look at the trends in vocational and secondary education in science, engineering and technology, the proportion of students completing those areas has declined from 29 per cent in 1996 to 22 per cent in 2004. There's a fairly dramatic decline on what was already a declining trend in any event, I think. Oddly, 38 occupations that are currently deemed to be in serious skills shortage out of literally hundreds of occupations, every one of the 38, on my reckoning, requires at least a good working knowledge of maths, and over half of them require science, engineering or technology skills. So, it's really important, this gathering here today, I think, and yesterday, to workshop the problem, because it is not going to automatically self correct, in my view. You do need to be on the front foot and be taking action, as you are as I see and I'm aware of since I've taken over these responsibilities four or five months ago. There are quite a range of projects and studies being undertaken to see what can be done to track young people into these disciplines and to hold them and to upskill them, in fact, through the line. A lot of that I can see in your program as being reported on, and many people in this room are far more qualified to report on that than me. I'm not going to bore you with listing all of those sorts of projects, many of which governments, state and federal, are, in part, involved with. What I thought I would do is to give you perhaps some context, because my particular responsibilities are in the vocational technical area, Julie Bishop has schools and universities, my comments will be particularly focussed today on the VET area, but it has got wider implications. I do think the shift to sort of multiskilling that has taken place for individuals that have skill sets that sometimes cross the traditional boundaries between trades, the para-professions and the professions. I think it does blur to some extent the distinctions between the three levels, and that's increasingly happening not just in these disciplines but in so many disciplines. You see it, in particular, in electronics and specialised areas of manufacturing, but it's true across so many areas. I recall even my first occupation, too long ago to remember, but I was a stock inspector for three years while I did economics in Victoria. I was doing post mortems on cattle in paddocks and all sorts of things, working with just about every type of livestock disease issues, often trying to identify why things had died. Sometimes there was compensation and all the rest, but having done three years of a Diploma of Agricultural Science and having acquired a certain level of skills and knowledge and then working as a practitioner in the field, every time something significant would come along, such as a major disease scare, the veterinarians would move in and we would become the sort of drivers. I remember it was immensely frustrating to me I hadn't been trained as a veterinarian, but I had a lot of the skill sets and more practical knowledge that I was acquiring, and in many ways it drove me to finish my economics degree and move to other things because I found I hit the ceiling there all the time. Now I'm seeing, I think, there's an important and good development. There is this blurring starting to take place. There is more of a continuum that is now being developed, so I think all of you need to be aware of and take advantage of that, because it gets back to what John was saying in the previous address. He talked about TAFE and universities and the pathway between the two. I agree with John, you know, not a lot has happened in that area. But I think it is more for institutional structural reasons than for the good sense of it happening. I do think, given that the nature of the workforce and all the issues that we're confronting and what a modern economy dictates about current economy, I do think we have to foster this sort of continuum rather than have boxes for trades, paraprofessionals and professionals. You know, I might have still been in science if I hadn't witnessed in a very early stage of my career what I saw as to be a very fixed ceiling on me doing things that extended me and interested me and enabled me to fully utilise what I thought was the skill set I had. I thought I would particularly focus my comments and contribution on the context of federal government policy at least towards skills shortages so that you who are involved in so many wonderful institutions around the country can just see at least the framework that we are trying to work to create. I think that is the role of government, to create a framework. I think individuals and organisations are far better placed to find, often, the solutions, so long as we can clearly create an appropriate framework. Fundamentally, we have got a labour shortage. Ever since I got into these responsibilities in February, I keep hearing about a skills crisis. Well, there is a real skills problem, but it is driven, not wholly, but largely, by a labour shortage. There is a wider dimension to the skills issue, but we have first and foremost got a labour shortage problem. I'll give you a sense of that. I was just looking at the numbers the other day for May, the workplace figures. We've created in this country 66,000 new jobs in May, over 2000 jobs a day on average, both new jobs and in addition to what was already out there. 94 per cent of them were full time. Again, I looked at what's happening in the availability of people in the workplace. In the month of May, on average, every day, 530 more people came into the 15 to 64 year old bracket than left it. So we had an increase every day of 530 people. That's about 16,000. That's 66,000 new jobs, 16,000 new people to do that work. And not all of those 16,000 who came in would be in the workforce. Now, every other month is not quite the same, but there was a prime example of the problem that we've got. You know, if we think it's difficult now, if you look at Peter Costello's intergenerational report, the second one just recently released, it assumes 530 people at the moment coming in, that includes migration, skilled migration, and all the rest, more coming in than leaving, retiring, whatever, 530 on average a day now, 160 in eight years time. Now that is dramatic. That's with high levels of immigration we've got now. Bear in mind, 10 years ago we had 75,000 people coming in and a family skill mix. Now we've got, last year 100,000 came in as permanent skilled migrants, with families, another 35,000 families associated with those 100,000. Then we had 40,000 temporary skilled migrants coming in for four year terms, many of whom will stay on to become permanent residents. And we had 30,000 refugees. So we've gone from 75,000 migrants to last year close to 200,000, and we'll do 200,000 again this year, because temporary skilled migrants are doing 20,000, 40,000 and probably closer to 80,000 this year. So we are dramatically ramping it up, and yet we still have 530 a day compared with 66,000 new jobs. That still assumes that sort of pattern of migration off into the future, and we'll get 160 a day in eight years time. So, what you're planning and considering and all the rest of it, you know, it's going to become a bit large in the years ahead. It is an OECD phenomena. It's not just restricted to our country. It is certainly restricted to the developed world, but not just to our country. The significance of that is that often when we drew lots of skilled migrants in the past from a lot of cultures not that dissimilar to ours, a lot of European cultures. They might have had different languages, but culturally, they were not that far apart. There's a new dimension to that. A lot of the people we're bringing in now are great people but they come from cultures far wider and far further apart. It brings a whole set of other issues into this whole equation. But, you know, it just means a whole new dimension, again, which I think many of you need to accommodate because many of the skilled workers that are coming in gravitate and are well placed to be part of the teaching force out there and to also be part of the professions that we're talking about here today. I think the three things that are really driving this labour shortage and, in turn, contributing to the skills shortage, is now over 14 years of uninterrupted economic growth, which is a phenomena not true to Europe, but it is true to here. It is not even true to the US. They were in recession in 2000. That is a major factor which is putting a lot of pressure on the ageing population, which we were now was coming, but it only really started to manifest itself this century as the bubble of the baby boomers worked its way through and has now emerged. I think also the profound and unexpected emergence of China and India. Put those three things together, it has created a skills demand but also a competitive demand in our economy which we have to be mindful of both those factors as we move forward. The China and India thing can't be underestimated in terms of its impact especially on a lot of the engineering demands and the rest. I did a lot of work in 2000 and 2001 with a lot of big mining companies, North West Shelf project, a lot of gas projects in particular with other things in Thailand and elsewhere with BHP, Rio, Chevron and Shell, different projects with these different companies, and I was doing strategic work with them. And I had access to often buildings full of boffins with Shell and Chevron, and I visited these, and they had literally floors of people whose job it was to estimate what was the demand and likely supply of energy, total energy in the next two years, five years, 10 years, 50 years. Very sophisticated work with companies that are in every part of the world. I can tell you, in 2000 2001, there was no sense within all of that work with all of those people of what we have subsequently seen with China and India, the profound emergence. There was no sense of that. The oil companies and the resource companies had no sense of it, you know, we shouldn't all be lipping ourselves too much. We've got a problem, we've got to deal with it, we've got to be aware of it, but it has emerged, and if there's any comfort, there are a lot of people confronting the same sort of issues that you're confronting, not just in Australia but elsewhere. We have got a new set of problems, so the more aggressive you are in trying to deal with it, the chances are you'll get an edge on how to deal with it. Often if you're realistic about the problem, you're halfway to solving it and not just doing some incremental and marginal sort of responses. To me, and the government, for that matter, there is no real silver bullet. Often we will look for a silver bullet when you have a problem, and invariably, whether it is business, politics or family, for that matter, usually there's a whole lot of issues that have to be done when you've got an issue to solve. It is the government's conclusion that dealing with the labour shortage and internal skills shortage requires action on a whole bunch of policy fronts across a lot of different portfolios. I think, you know, particularly since Peter Costello's intergenerational report about five years ago, a lot of what we've done in a policy sense since then, actually most of the big initiatives have really been directed at getting this labour shortage issue and the competitive issue thrown up by India and China. There are great opportunities in India and China, but there are enormous threats also. I was in Shanghai 18 months ago and went out to see a car plant they had just finished building just on the edge of Shanghai. It was a car plant that could turn out a million cars a year. I'm talking to the people who manage the show and said, "What's your next big challenge now you've done this magnificent thing and all the rest?", and they said, "Well, this has gone so well and we've still got everybody here and put it together, we thought we might go to 2 million cars a year while we're at it". I got back to the hotel that night and thought there's probably three or four other car companies, Chinese car companies in China at that time deciding whether they go from 1 million a year to 2 million cars a year. You know, the potential to swamp us and I had a bit to do with the Mitsubishi expansion over many years. It took about eight years to go for an extra 220,000 cars a year in South Australia. All of a sudden, the potential to swamp us is enormous. I got back to my patch in Victoria and I'm looking at the export statistics out of Victoria, the second biggest manufacture of car components, so the potential to swamp us with finished products is there, but huge opportunities. So, what I'm saying is, you know, we've got a whole new environment. It's not just cheap labour up there. It's very sophisticated stuff happening, as you know probably much better than I do, many of you. So it's got this environment, not just the labour shortage but also what skill sets we've got and how to respond and be very quick on our feet and fast on our feet. I think a lot of what you do in terms of encouraging these disciplines, it's also how you encourage them and what skill sets and how they can be responsive and how there can be a little operation in Victoria, a little manufacturing plant that has previously sent plastic moulding for cars for a finished product which is now getting that done in China but adding value back here and sending the product back again. How do we keep ramping up that skill set to deal with the technology needs of this new modern 21st century environment? The sort of work we've done, the welfare to work legislation, this is highly critical. I'll come back to it in a second. The tax changes over the years, the superannuation changes, the interaction between tax and welfare payments. The workforce reform, the independent contractor legislation, the skilled migration program and a raft of initiatives, particularly in education and training. All these things intercept. I'm finding often the workplace relations reforms are as central to delivering new training opportunities and all the rest as some of the more specific, you know, dollars on training. They all intercept in this new environment. I think you've got to look more broadly, because, again, the point the John raised about, you know, TAFEs and universities, there's plenty of will and there's plenty of people who see the commonsense of it, but there are really structural issues stopping progress, and I'll come back to that again. To meet these labour and skills shortages, the government has been working really on three broad fronts, and I'll talk about it as it relates to more my area, but we really have been working on three broad fronts to deal with the labour shortage and skills shortage. The first one is we're seeking to get anyone who can work into work or to stay in work. It sounds like a pretty simple proposition, but it is a pretty important objective. To get anyone who can work into work or to stay in work. The fact of the matter is we have got 700,000 people on disability pensions. Many of those can't work, but hundreds of thousand, I put to you, could work, would love to work, can't do full days, have got a capacity, there own self esteem, everything else, would be enormously advantaged by them getting into the workforce, but they don't work at the moment 700,000. We've got 750,000 on parenting payments, many of them want to work, could work, many can't, they've got little kids. Many have got kids up to 16, can't get back into the workforce because they can't work full time, and there aren't opportunities, and there's a cultural sort of block, in many cases. A lot of these things are cultural more than anything else. We've got 490,000 people still on unemployment benefits, despite having, you know, very low levels of unemployment. This just proves to me again the interaction of policy across all sorts of areas. In the last 12 months, 22 per cent of long term unemployed have found jobs. Now that has usually been a very sticky sort of number. Very hard to get people into jobs. A lot of them have been trained and trained and trained in order to keep getting the goal, they're trained and trained, but they still can't get jobs. The last figure saw a 22 per cent reduction in the long term unemployed. My observation is, and I've had a lot to do with small business, the unfair dismissal laws going for people under 100 has now made it worthwhile for companies to take the risk of employing somebody who they think would be all right but because they've never had a job, they're 28 and have never worked, they're not prepared previously to take the risk of $30,000 go away money, that is not attractive it, they can't afford it. But now they can take the risk, if it doesn't work out, they can move them on, so overwhelmingly, it's working out, as you'd expect. We've got 3 million people between the ages of 55 and 70. Again, John talked about this. In your area, how you keep them on in different capacities as coaches and mentors and in other capacities. We've got a growing indigenous population in a lot of mining areas and other areas. Its capacity is young and growing very significantly. It is the only area that is really growing significantly. There are real opportunities. We've got all these significant pockets of untapped resources , huge, hundreds of thousand. If you add them all up, the ones who probably are available across all those numbers I've talked about, there's probably, you know, well in excess of a million people who are and could be gainfully employed in some way or other but it requires often just a cultural change to tap into those and to provide an opportunity for them to come and do the work. The second broad front that we have sought to deal with is to encourage those entering the workforce to value technical and vocational and creative training, to see it as important, to see it as fulfilling. Now, I think we made a huge mistake 20 to 30 years ago when we started to talk down the trades. We suggested that unless you went to universities, you somehow or other were a second class citizen. We have got to the point now where a lot of parents out there still feel they're failures if their kids don't go to university. And yet, the fact is, that we're all born with some level of academic skills, but most of us are born with stronger technical, vocational or creative skills an academic skills. That's a fact of life. In the workforce, the current modern workforce, it is estimated that we need 20 per cent of the workforce with university qualifications going forward to deal with the sort of climate we've got and the opportunities and threats. We'll need about 60 per cent with a good quality technical or vocational qualification. Currently we have got about 20 per cent for university, that is roughly in balance, the university qualifications, but we've got 30 per cent of the workforce with a good quality technical qualification, not 60 per cent. There's a huge gap there. My assessment is a lot of it is driven by this sort of cultural attitude, again, towards technical and vocational occupations. It is changing, but it is really quite critical, I think, that we turn this around so that people do enthusiastically and positively embrace opportunities. Many schools I go to, the teachers tell me if the young people haven't sort of shown some interest in the trades in particular I think the same thing is now applying to things like maths and sciences if they don't show an interest by year 10, you've lost them. You know, years 11 and 12, it's too late. They've already got most of them, the teachers are telling me, they've already been conditioned to a certain set of opportunities out there. So, you know, I don't know what you've been talking about, no doubt, this is coming up, but I think a lot of this has to do with parents and parents experiences. If they haven't had any experience with the trades, as many haven't, if they haven't had any experience with science and maths, and it's been talked down for 20 to 30 years and some of that is true of science as well. You know, it's lost its lustre. All of you in the room are leaders. A lot of this, to me, is actually what we say. We get out there and proudly and positively and constructively say these are really important things. “These are talents had you've been born with, for God's sake don't waste them. You've got to make the most of them. You'll be happiest if you exploit what you've been given, what God's given you has talents, whether it's creative, it's technical, vocational or academic, you've got a responsibility to make the most of those talents, and you, as parents don't steer your kids into things they're not good at, because they should do what they do best”. That's the sort of message that often people like myself in government or yourselves as leaders in institutions around the country don't underestimate the power of a message. You give people the right message, they are very well equipped to deal with it and exploit it and assess it and analyse it and act on it. You don't have to force the action. We have to, I think, create the right framework and mindset. One of the reasons we've set up technical high schools around the country, which is something you'd be well aware of, not to take over technical education at secondary level, but we have now created and have in place 20 Australian technical colleges, years 11 and 12. They get the year 12 certificate, a third of a way through an apprenticeship, two years in the workforce, and an environment, most importantly, in their years 11 and 12 years, which is focussed very deliberately on developing the technical and vocational skills those young people have been born with rather than being a tack on to an academic education, rather than being almost an elective. Now, there's nothing wrong with a lot of very good vocational courses that are introducing people to technical areas in a lot of schools, but, clearly, some kids from a very early age have outstanding technical skills and they should be developed and promoted. That's why we think closing the high schools, technical high schools, you know, they were everywhere when I was a kid, has been a very big mistake. We are trying to get back to a point where people in the community see that a high quality technical education is as valued as a university education. If that's what you're good at, go for it, you'll make a huge contribution to the community and to yourself, and it should be and is as valued as a university qualification. Now, finally, the third area that we are focusing on as a government. I think this is a really critical one, given the nature of the competitive environment we face and a lot of the Generation Y issues that are coming through and all the rest. We need to build a culture conducive to training and retraining for topping up of skills of existing members of the workforce. Again, it's a cultural issue. Almost the whole three of these areas I'm talking about, when I look at it, more and more, what's holding things back and what's locking it in to this disadvantaged situation, is a cultural mindset, a mindset that, maybe for good reasons originally, has developed. In this area, you know as well as I do, that many people feel that you do your training at the end of secondary school and that's it. The rest of anything you pick up is experience in the workplace. This mindset, especially in small and medium business managers and owners out there, they feel they've failed if they have to have their workforce trained or they have to be trained. They think they've done something wrong because, you know, they haven't been able to shape their workplace to accommodate the skills the person they employed has. We've got to turn it around so that people see, "I've failed as a manager if I'm not constantly looking to upskill my workforce and myself for that matter". So, again, I think it's a really cultural thing. We've got 3.4 million of the workforce who haven't finished school or have no technical training of any consequence. That's over a third of the workforce. They have really no formal training. I think this is a really significant thing, because so much of the response to the labour shortage, as there has been for 150 years, it's not a new phenomenon, it has just really accelerated in the last few years for various reasons so much of the response will be industry substituting technology for workforce, but as we do that, the existing workforce has to be able to cope with that technology and deal with that technology and use that technology. I was out at a really it really came as an enormous enlightenment, I suppose, three or four weeks ago, I was with my wife in the Northern Territory. I used to be on the Cattle Council of Australia, it's a lobby group for cattlemen. I've got a lot of friends on big cattle stations. I went out to see one fellow and his wife. My wife and I, we went out for a drink, and the place is a 20 minute off the road to get to the homestead. That's just the horse paddock, it's about 10,000 acres. He's got about 8000 head of cattle. We drove in on Saturday afternoon, and I didn't see any horses. I said to him, "I didn't see any horses. Where are all the horses? Have you shifted them?". He said, "No, there's not a horse on the cattle station. Not one horse. We used to have about 150, 200 horses for mustering". And then we had a drink and were looking around and he said, "I've got to take you down to the yards, I've got this wonderful cattle crush". We go down to the yards and here’s this $400,000 cattle crush, all singing, all dancing. He started it up, the technology is unbelievable. There's a key pad that drives the whole thing. The cattle crush, you've got hundreds of head of cattle each day going through the yards, you're doing all sorts of things to them. The cattle crush, you lead them through all sorts of races, lots of things happen, gates open and shut, until you get individual cattle into a metal crush with bars across their neck to hold them in place while you do all sorts of sometimes unfortunate things to the animals, ear tag them, whatever. It's quite a dangerous business, labour intensive over the years. He has one person on a key pad, and dogs and another person working all the cattle in the yards. His son is 40, and he and his son run the place. He's up the front doing the mouthing and all the rest. Everything is driven from this key pad. There's no horses. All the mustering is by helicopter and by aircraft. I said to him, "Where are all the people? Where's the stockmen? I haven't seen any stockmen or ringers", as they're called out there. He said, "I don't have any ringers any more. My whole workforce are backpackers, German and Swiss". Here we are, out in the middle of the Northern Territory. I said, "Where's the romance? It's gone out of the cattle industry". It was unbelievable. That's where it's moved. If that's where things have moved on a cattle station in Central Australia, two hours north of Alice Springs, what's happening in every little place around the country, every manufacturing operation, et cetera, et cetera? He's there enthusiastically talking about using the backpacker market. He knew the market back to front. He had contacts overseas, he had it all beaten, and he was very happy with it and was able to introduce them to little training exercises when they first arrived. They got three months or six months out of them and ran a cattle station with 8000 head of cattle. Very profitable. So it just shows you what's happening out there, and you know, his training operation is fundamentally different. The skill sets he needs to maintain his $400,000 cattle crush and to maintain his helicopters and his light aircraft, the skill sets needed in Alice Springs and Katherine are quite different from the skill sets that were needed even 15 years ago in Central Australia. This is happening all around. There is a revolution going on, and it's always been the case, but it has been accelerated by that conjunction of things I mentioned at the start. I think we have to have that overlay, this urgency. We can't just sort of limp along and say, "How are going to respond to some of this?" If you do understand and can convey that urgency and that bigger picture, I think it's remarkable how the people that, you know, you're working with and are working to you and all the rest will respond. They'll work it out, what to do, they just have to understand that there's a time frame and urgency and all the rest. I'll just finish off with a couple of comments really relating to that third, critical area, this training of people in the existing workforce. A lot is happening at the lower levels with those coming into the workforce, and it always can be improved. But there's a lot of focus there, and a lot of really good and innovative things happening. But it is in this existing workforce, you know, I don't know if you go to Bunnings these days. But, I used to hate going to the hardware store when I had to renovate houses when you didn't have enough money. I never knew what I was doing, I didn't know quantities, quality, anything. You go to Bunnings nowadays, it's full of former tradesmen. They've got an explicit policy of finding people with 30 years experience who's bodies no longer allow them to crawl around a roof and do plumbing and all the other things they used to do. They give them four weeks training in retail, new skills attached to there old skills, and here you've got a whole lot of people who were going to retire at 50 or 55, they're still there for another 10 or 15 years, loyal, effective, motivated, and all the rest of it. But, mostly, they know what they're talking about, and it's a wonderful experience when you go there and they've got the flexibility. If one fellow says, "Well, I really was going to take two months holiday in the caravan with my wife and do the usual thing at this stage of life", sure, go and do it. Come back after two months, "I want to do two days a week on the golf course", no problem, three days a week for you. That is the whole mindset. They've got a deliberate strategy to tap into a very experienced older workforce. Now, that sort of thing, again, is, to me, a prime example, and it is adding skill sets. There's no attitude you've got to have a course and you've got to do it early on and it's three or four years and it's a double degree. You know, what is happening around the country is that managers and companies, they want their existing workforce, they might have 34 people, they want them to cope with a new set of technology to have another skill. A year later perhaps another skill, but they don't want a 12 month course. They want someone to come in, often into their workplace, and deliver a particular skill set, to upgrade whatever the people have got in their operation. We saw this week in the census, can you believe it, the number of people involved in TAFE education declined in the last five years at a time when we've got the problems we've got. And yet, what it didn't pick up in the census is the explosion that has taken place amongst private training organisations and in house training organisations who are delivering these skill sets. The big challenge is to make sure if everyone acquires these different little blocks of skills that they are accredited and they can build, so people do develop a qualification over time. We've got this flexibility, horses for courses. I think it is a big challenge for us, at every level of education to get to this building blocks approach, far more flexible, it meets the immediate needs of particular workplaces, it is demand driven, not supply driven. Not, "Here we are, you take it or leave it". What do you want? Where do you want it? How do you want it? Now we've got the technology so much can be done online, so much can be done in the workplace. The mining industry said two weeks ago in the Financial Review overwhelmingly they have moved away from TAFE. We’ve got this wonderful investment in TAFE around the country. A super investment, great people in these TAFEs, they are all handcuffed, because of mountains of regulation. I talked to the TAFEs. The only state that has it Victoria in the 1990s freed up TAFEs and gave them autonomy, not dissimilar to universities. Those TAFEs are just jumping out of their skin. They went from the back of the pack to the front in terms of TAFE education. 60 per cent of all international students in TAFE in Victoria. A lot of the invasion and the demand driven stuff is coming out of that because the people who are running those organisations are given the freedom to manage their business and not be hide bound by bureaucratic, centralised structure dictating everything. In New South Wales, if the head of the TAFE wants to go to Malaysia to go to a conference to try and talk about a deal, he has to get ministerial approval for the air flight. Now, this is the sort of nonsense that, you know, in a modern economy, if you want to be able to link TAFEs with universities with a dual campus operation, which I think is critical, we've got to allow them to run their businesses. We've got to allow them to appoint their own staff, to enter partnerships, to retain revenue, to purchase capital items, to run tailored training programs in the workplace and to negotiate flexible workplaces. All these things, the continuum of normal business responsibilities. I do think the biggest factor on reform we've got in the whole education sector is to provide much greater autonomy to this great TAFE resource. We've got for it to breathe life back into our TAFE sector so we can take advantage of a great resource of so many people. This is constraining a lot of the opportunities again, it's very important to look at the topic you've got here today. How do you get people to acquire and have an interest and engage in the disciplines you're talking about if you haven't got one big part of that resource that can stimulate and cultivate and provide that training? It's hands are tied, so that they are not able to respond to industry demands or demands of individuals. I think I'll just leave you with that thought. This is the area, to me, that requires the greatest attention in terms of structural and other change. There are lots of things to be done. Could I just conclude. There are sort of four things I really tried to get across. First, I think we need to foster a cultural change which restores the standing of the technical and vocational training. Secondly, I think we need to foster a cultural change to see training and education as part of a complete working life. Thirdly, I think we need to foster a cultural change to see the possibilities for a continued contribution well into later life. Finally, to deliver all this, I think we've got to move away, not just in terms of TAFE, it's true in many sectors, but from the four walls classroom approach to education, away from the supply driven, historical model, to very much a responsive and flexible demand driven approach, which sees every education experience as a building block approach to acquiring training and qualifications. Thanks very much. QUESTIONS MALE SPEAKER: I think TAFE has taken on some of the challenges you talked about. I've got teachers in the water industry all over New South Wales, …(inaudible)... We've got teachers in Newcastle training people, that's kind of happening. But one of the things I think is missing is that we talk about the trades, we talk about higher education, we talk about schools supplying higher education and the trades, but a lot of people who need science and engineering skills are operators in the industry, they are …(inaudible)… cement works, a lot of the processes in manufacturing areas. One of the areas I look after, I look after …(inaudible)… industries for New South Wales. That's where we need a lot of training. We need more educators and people in the higher education sector to get involved with that in developing training packages. I've got a book here on the …(inaudible)… the explosion at the Esso plant in 1998. Victoria was without gas for two weeks. The royal commission found that it was a basic lack of training, in particular, in understanding physics and chemistry of the plant at the operator level. A couple of years later, the National Centre for Vocational Education and Research published a report on new skills, what are we going to need for people in the future who work in paint factories cement works or whatever. What was indicated was basic physics and chemistry. So there's a need to find not just putting funding and knowledge into vocational training, but a broader knowledge, to make people more transportable across the sectors. So I think that's a challenge to this group, bringing it back to science, there's a definite need for the operators who are considered trades and many of them still don't have qualifications. There are many people who have been in the workforce for 20 years and all they've got is a certificate, but …(inaudible)... They're the people that we need to get to, and we need not just the HR people to get involved with training package development, but we need the universities and the professionals within the industry to take a real interest in developing training packages and vocational workforce training. ANDREW ROBB: Yes, look, I need to respond to a couple of points. I accept that things are happening in TAFEs around the country, but it is snail's pace. I'm telling you, there is an urgency about this. I'm talking now of people individually running TAFEs all over. There is a deep, deep frustration. National industries want national responses, national solutions. They come to a TAFE, they're very happy with what a TAFE might provide them locally, TNT, or one of these organisations, they say, "Right, we want to do this around the country". TAFEs then look, from Victoria, for instance, to go and replicate that joint partnerships, provide a seamless and identical service to the companies that they're providing for. That's impossible. The bureaucratic hurdles to jump just make it totally an impossibility to consider that. So what happens? You get the mining industry, who used to be, you know, great users of TAFE, and still respect what's there. They say, "We've got a revolution happening on our doorstep. China and India have emerged in a way that no one ever thought of, even ourselves, who are out there, the resource companies. We want somebody who can drive a shovel". Shovel operators in the mines are very important. It's like a quarterback. They really dictate the whole activity of the mine. "We want a shovel operator.", "Yes, we can do it, but they've got to do a four year course. Come down to Perth and we'll sort it out". No. What do they do? They go to a private provider or they build in house capacity, it's the same thing, go and poach the lecturers from TAFE and other places and they teach these people as a highly technical shovel operator. A year later they might do another skill, and another skill and another skill, and, ultimately, if you add these up, as I was saying, they've got the broader qualification and are running a mine in 20 years time. But, until we get that mindset, we are under-utilising and devaluing. We're building an alternate sort of structure out there, albeit under the radar, when we've got this huge investment and expertise and resource that we should be using. That's my frustration, I've got to say. I do think the point about the training packages, there's a lot of really good work that has gone on, cooperative work between the feds and the states and industry with all of the skills councils and the training. We're the envy of the world in terms of our national training. Again, there's more to be done, but, again, if you give this really flexible delivery of training, the companies and others will be dictating in a very aggressive way, "This is what we want, these are the skill sets". Rio last year, 20,000 people apply for 1000 jobs. The capacity for Rio to say, "We want people who've got science, maths, whatever, depending on what the sort of areas we want them", there's great capacity for industry to dictate both what they need and to line up training and the training packages and all the rest. CONVENOR: Thanks very much.   Andrew Robb MP Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:722 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/707/Additional-support-for-students.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=707 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=707&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/707/Additional-support-for-students.aspx Kilvington Girls Grammar in Ormond and Our Lady of Sacred Heart College in Bentleigh will receive $60,000 each to fund chaplaincy services to assist their students. The funding, which has been awarded under the first round of the National Schools Chaplaincy Program, aims to support school communities that wish to access the services of a school chaplain. Chaplains will be expected to provide general religious and personal advice, comfort and support to all students and staff, regardless of their religious denomination, irrespective of their religious beliefs. The choice of chaplaincy services, including the religious affiliation, is a decision for the local school community, following broad consultation. The program is voluntary and students are not obliged to participate. Parents and students will be informed about the availability and non-compulsory nature of the chaplaincy services. “School chaplains are already making valuable contributions to the personal, spiritual and emotional wellbeing of many school communities nationally. The Chaplaincy program, announced by the Prime Minister last October, will help many schools access these services for the first time, as well as enabling the expansion of many existing chaplaincy services,” Andrew Robb said. “Chaplains will be able to provide moral and spiritual support to students in times of difficulty, such as family breakdown or crisis. “I congratulate the Kilvington and Our Lady of Sacred Heart school communities on their successful applications for this funding. I have visited both schools and have been impressed with the dedication of the staff to the well-being of their students,” “This funding will help staff provide further assistance to the students and families within their school communities,” Andrew Robb said. Round Two will commence in early July. For more information on the National Schools Chaplaincy Program, please visit www.dest.gov.au/schools/chaplains Media contact: Megan Cox 9557 4644 / 0414 492 674   Andrew Robb MP Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:707 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/723/Speech-to-the-Committee-for-Economic-Development-of-Australia.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=723 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=723&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/723/Speech-to-the-Committee-for-Economic-Development-of-Australia.aspx Thank you very much, David, and it's nice to be here. Nice to see you in this job. I've had the pleasure of working with David on some projects when I was in business, and it's really good to see him in this capacity, he's doing a great job. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very conscious of the fact that I'm standing between you and a drink after all the proceedings of the day, but the topic I have got is a very important one, I think, and many of you would be very familiar with the dynamics of what is called the skills crisis. We hear a lot about it, but really in essence, it starts with a labour shortage. And that is driving, in turn, the skills crisis, or the skills shortage that we've got. And to me, it is this sort of a combination of nearly 14 years of uninterrupted economic growth, an ageing population and, in many ways, and the profound emergence of China and India. There are other factors, but, to me, those three things, in combination, have brought about what is, in many respects, a 21st century phenomena. It is now becoming conventional wisdom and we could all see this coming, and all the rest of it. I did a lot of work with the mining companies at the turn of the century, and I did have access to strategic work for some of those big companies. And I had access to a lot of their serious forecasting work that they do. Some of them have whole buildings full of people doing that sort of thing. I saw in 2000 and 2001 no suggestion amongst any of those companies of what has ultimately happened in China and India. Many of you would be very conscious of that. So, my sense is that if the big resource companies, the big energy companies who are in every market in the world, exploring, understanding the politics, all the rest of it, if they had no sense of what's coming down the line at us, and all I'm saying is it's there, we've got to deal with it. It's profound, it's got lots of opportunities, lots of threats, but, you know, it's important to recognise that it is a new phenomena. The whole ageing issue, we did know that was coming, but, again, I think many parts of the community have not focussed. Even today, VECCI, the Victorian chamber, did a survey recently, and it blew me away. Some 64 per cent of the businesses surveyed thought that there was no issue with an ageing population for their businesses, and yet the majority of those businesses had a majority of their staff over 50. The majority of the 64 per cent had a majority of their staff over 50, and they saw no issue coming down the line. I mean, it is something that we need to be realistic about with regard to what's out there. The fact that last year every day on average 530 more people entered the working age group, not the workforce, necessarily, but the working age group. Every day averaged an extra 530 more entered it than left it, and we've got the problem we've got now with 530 a day net increase. It is anticipated, if you look at Peter Costello's work that in eight years time that even with the current high levels of migration, we will have 160 people net increase in the working age group each day. So that's 530 back to 160 in the space of the next eight years. So you put all these things together and, you know, we've got an issue now to deal with. But a lot of what we do now has got to position us to deal with an even more difficult situation in terms of available labour and the consequent impact it has on skills. So, you know, it is a phenomena across the OECD, which also brings other dimensions to this thing. Last year, as David said, I had responsibility for multicultural affairs and related matters. What struck me was the fact that a lot of the migration we've had for 50 years of great success in the country with migration into Australia, but a lot of that migration has come about because a lot of people came from cultures not that far removed from ours. They mightn't have spoken English, but there was a lot of European immigration and all the rest. Now, a lot of the immigration, both into our country, but also into other OECD countries, to fill and to cope with a lot of the labour shortages, are coming from cultures that are far removed from ours. China, for instance, 10 years ago didn't even rate its own line, it was in the "Other" category. It's now about our third biggest source of migrants and skilled migrants. There are 200,000 from the Middle East and Africa in the last few years. Now, we will deal with this, but again, for business and the community, there are all these related issues associated with the ageing population and the impact of China, India and uninterrupted economic growth on our business, on our communities and all the rest of it. Now, I thought I'd give you a sort of overview, if I could, of where, as a government, we're trying to influence it. Because, of course, business has taken a lot of its own initiatives, and the community has taken a lot of its own initiatives. But, as a government, how are we seeking to deal with and facilitate the response towards this. The fact is that, like in business, there's no silver bullet. If you have a problem, usually you've got many parts to the solution and from my observation, the solution to dealing with coping with this labour and skills shortage covers many policy fronts, welfare to work, workplace reform, taxation, superannuation, independent contractor legislation, skilled migrants, temporary skilled migrants, and a range of other portfolio initiatives. And if you look back over the last three years in particular, that has dominated our policy agenda. All of those issues. Most of the key policy issues, the skills shortage and the emerging problems has been front and square hitting in the motivation and the need for lower mass. There are really three broad fronts that we are working on. The first is that we are trying to get anyone who can work into work or to stay in work. That seems a fairly basic proposition, but that is a really critical one trying to get anyone who can work into work or to stay in work. It's driven by the observation that there are large pockets of untapped labour resources in Australia at the present time. We've got 700,000 people on disability pensions, we've got 750,000 people on parenting payments, we've got 490,000 people still on unemployment benefits. We've got 3 million Australians between the ages of 55 and 70, and we've got a quickly growing young indigenous population. Again, for certain sectors, mining and agriculture, particularly, that is a really important future source of labour in certain areas of the country. Now, the sort of policy responses that are seeking to unlock, untap, some of that untapped labour, is what we're following up. The WorkChoices, the workplace reform, unfair dismissal, for instance, in my view has driven without qualification the 22 per cent reduction in the long term unemployed. That has been the figure that is a really significant figure. You think back over 15 years, it's been very hard to move the long term unemployed back into work. In the last year, 22 per cent reduction in long term unemployment because businesses, and, in the main, a lot of small businesses, are able to say, "I can take the risks with somebody who looks good but hasn't had a job for eight years. He's 27, never had a job, but looks okay, looks motivated. I can take the risk because if it doesn't work out, I can move him on". As a consequence, we've seen across the economy a lot of people, a lot of women on parenting payments who want to work, need to work, their own self esteem to stay in the workforce, maintain skills, but they have been denied opportunities, again, for the same reasons. Ken Henry said in response to the tax changes and the welfare changes made in the most recent budget that it will lead to an extra 90,000 people in the workforce in the next year because of the interaction between welfare payments and tax. It is a requirement to tackle this on a whole lot of fronts. We are seeking to do that. The second thing we're trying to do is to encourage those entering the workforce but also those in the workforce to value technical and vocational and creative training in a way that academic training is valued. We made a big mistake as a community in the last 20 to 30 years when we talked down the trades. It has got to a point where technical and vocational training in the minds of many people is seen as a second class career. We've got a situation, I think, where many parents feel they've failed if their children don't go off to university. That's a fact. That is what is in the minds of many people in the country. It's a cultural development over the last 20 to 30 years, which, I think, is really now starting to impact on our ability to deal with this skills issue. The fact of the matter is that with the current economy and the level of technology and the need to respond to the opportunities and the threats that are there, it is anticipated that we'll need about 20 per cent of the workforce with a university education. Currently we've got about 20 per cent of the workforce with a university education. That's in balance. It is anticipated we'll need about 60 per cent with a high quality technical vocation education. Currently we've got 30 per cent of the workforce. There's a huge gap in that area. One of the things is a cultural issue. Unless we value technical and vocational education you go to Germany, and a master trades person has got the status of a judge or a professor. You know the answer here. They're making a lot of money, but, you know, it has been seen as a second class career. I do think there's a lot we can do. Everyone in this room, and we've got leaders in this room and a lot of it is what we say, it's what people like myself and people like yourselves and other leaders of industry, it's what we say, other leaders in the community, about the importance of valuing a high quality technical education as much as university education. We're all born with different skills and talents. If you've got strong academic skills, develop those, make the most of them. But most of us are actually born with better or stronger technical and vocational and creative talents than academic talents, and yet we closed every technical high school in the country in the last 20 years. As a consequence, one of the things we're doing as a government, at the last election we promised to open because they weren't opening and technical education is still a state responsibility 25 Australian technical colleges. They're old style technical skills. They are years 11 to 12. They've got industry boards, they give the young people certificates, but they're one third of the way through an apprenticeship when they finish that year 12. They have two years in the workforce. They earned while they've learned, but, most importantly, they've been in an environment, that technical school environment, where their talents and the focus of the course and all the rest of it is celebrated and focussed on. You go to some of these schools in Townsville and Port Macquarie, we've got 20 open now in the 18 months since the legislation passed, and you can see these young people bursting with pride. They've got their uniform on, Australian Technical College, the parents are full of pride, the grandparents, because they are giving effect to the talents they've been born with and they do feel valued. It's very important that we feel good about what we're doing. I can't overstate this enough. I think it's so critical that we do as a community start to reposition the goal posts in terms of how we view these technical and vocational areas. It's why we're doing a lot to keep young people in apprenticeships. I won't go through all the initiatives and things we're doing, but we've got subsidies we're now paying to apprenticeships and apprentices in the first two years, because, in a four year apprenticeship, we're currently losing about 42 per cent of all those who start, 42 per cent. But 38 per cent of that 42 leave in their first two years, because, you know what it's like, the young generation. Another $5000 from the warehouse down the road, an unskilled job, they're off, because they haven't got as much money as their mates. They're not looking forward. We've got to say to them, "What you've got to do is valued, and what it's good for you, but it's also good for the community and it makes the most of what you're good at". So we've got getting people into work and staying in work, the 55 to 70 year olds, and, finally, and critically, we've got the need to train and retrain those who are already in the workplace. We've got 3.4 million of the 10 million in the workforce who have not finished school or have no technical training of any consequence 3.4 million. We've got one third of the workforce really with no training of any consequence. We've got mature age workers who we want to encourage to stay in the workforce. You go to Bunnings now, and to me it's the greatest experience. I can remember when I was younger and had to do the house renovations and all the rest. It was such an excruciating experience to go on Saturday morning and you had no idea of quantities and quality and all the rest of it. You'd waste hours. You go there now, Bunnings is full of former tradesman and women, people who can no longer physically crawl around the roof and do the plumbing or whatever they did, but at 50, they get a four week training course. Bunnings put them through a retail course, and in there they've got the expertise, they've got the motivation and flexibility in the work. If they want to get in the caravan and go away for six weeks, it's accommodated. They've got a mindset of taking that expertise, retraining it, leveraging what they have with it, giving them another skill set and putting them in the situation where they feel immensely good about what they're doing. And you can tell. They're telling you things you don't know. They're helping you enormously. It's a great experience, and you can get a cup of coffee with it! So what I'm saying to you is that they're the three major areas. But, critically, this last one, I want to talk a little bit more about how do we train people and retrain people throughout the workforce. It's a critical issue if we are to overcome that skill gap. Young people are still going to be coming in in big numbers for the next few years, and forever. But, if we don't train and retrain, we've got a real problem, because a lot of the response to a skills shortage and a labour shortage relies on technology. But the existing workforce has to be able to manage and cope with that technology. Again, we've got a cultural problem. There's such a mindset in our community that you do your training at the end of school, and that's it. Now we have to turn it around. I know from the survey work and other work done, there's a lot of this for people running businesses who feel they've failed if they have to have their people or themselves trained. In fact, the mindset should be, "I'm failing if I'm not constantly looking at training opportunities". Again, that's what we mean by training. People don't understand that it doesn't mean a three year diploma or apprenticeship. It may do, if you want to, but it doesn't have to. A lot of it is just a building blocks approach to adding to people's skills, going back, doing a four week course, bringing you into the workplace. It was brought home to me in a most profound way recently, the reliance on technology. Years ago, 20 years ago, I was Executive Director of the Cattle Council of Australia. I have some good friends all over the north on cattle stations. My wife and I went to see one of them one Saturday night to have a drink. We got to his property off the main road up in the territory and a couple of hours from Alice, and his home was about 20 minutes off the road. It used to be full of horses, that was the horse track. And we got in there and I said, "We didn't see any horses, where are the horses?". There was no horse on the place. Like 8000 head of cattle, that was the average property there, and no horses. He said it's all helicopters to do all the mustering. A couple of motorbikes, not many of those since the unions had moved into safety and health and all the rest of it and the insurance costs were through the roof. But, here is, with helicopters and all that. We've had a drink. He said, "I want to take you down to the yards". Huge set of yards, 8000 head of cattle. And he's got to show me the new cattle crush, you know, "We contain the cattle and do the marking or whatever else you want to do to them", and I look down to a $400,000 cattle crush. And key pads, you can just imagine the piece of equipment. All the gates open, all these things, and I said, "Where are all the cattlemen, you know, riggers?", as they're called. And he said, "I haven't got any riggers on the place. I've got 8000 head of cattle". His son is 40, and there's himself. He said, "With this sort of equipment, this technology, I use backers, German and Swiss backpackers". A whole cattle station run with backpackers and technology and pilots. He's a pilot and his son's a pilot. I said, "Where's the romance? No horses, no cattlemen, what's going on here?" "We've got all these backpackers". It just shows you. That's happened in the middle of the Northern Territory. What's going on across our industry everywhere else? It's just unbelievable what's happening. It just brought home to me the technology and the response to that. My sense and I've had 14 weeks in this job, and my keen sense of where the big hits are in the months and years ahead, is to change a culture in a fundamental way. Not only the culture, the way that we view people in training per se, but also when we get trained and how we get trained. That comes to all the training providers as well. Changing their mindset is probably one of the most important things, about what's made available. But much of that training to accommodate the technology will be skill sets. So people who come in for a three week course, the Bunnings people, four week retail course. Someone will come in to learn the technology. For a lot of the people, those pockets of untapped people, a lot of them haven't got the confidence to actually even go and do a course. They can go and do short courses, fill a skill set, go and get a job and do that, get some confidence then they go and do something else. But the training has got to be available in these sort of different modules that can be accessed and take account of the fact that these people have got little kids and a sole parent or they're in the workplace and can't head off to a four wall classroom an hour and a half or 20 minutes away and sit up there all day Thursday and do the training. You might think that's silly. It's not. All over the country this is what we're confronting. We've got a multibillion dollar resource in TAFE. It's 75 per cent of our infrastructure, and it sits there all choked up with regulation and red tape. It is something of great consequence, and I'll come back to it in a second. But, I think the need to build this building blocks approach, so if someone does a four week or six week or six month course and they come back two years later, it is important that that piece of work is recognised, and the experience they've had in between is recognised. So it's the ability to recognise competence and experience. And if you put these building blocks in, they've got something. One of the interesting things is developing an education passport, so you can tick off different skill sets, and you can go to an employer and they can say, "Yes, I'm a mining operator, you've got ability to drive a shovel. Nothing else, but that's what you can do. That's a critical job. You do that for 12 months and if you want to do something else, I'll help you train and do something else". But it is this mindset, the building blocks. And I think we've got to you've got to demand it, as industry and business. And people like me have got to talk about it and do what we can with initiatives to encourage it. One of the initiatives we're doing, last year in October we launched a package Skills for the Future, designed for the existing workforce. We had a voucher, a $3000 voucher which goes to individuals in the workforce who haven't finished school and haven't got any serious technical training. We are now double what we expected at the moment after four months of operation. We're getting close to 20,000 vouchers. People take their $3000 voucher and they go to a training provider, whether it's TAFE or whether it's an individual private provider. They can do all sorts of courses, short courses, long courses, certificate II, they can do that with that amount of money. But, also, they can bundle it up, so if you're an employer in Emerald and you've got 40 staff, you can put it together, 40 staff times 3000, $120,000, you can go down to Brisbane, go to TAFE or a training provider and say, "What can you do? Here's what my needs are, what can you do? When can you do it, how can you do it? By the way, it's out there in Emerald and we've got accommodation". This opens up, in my view, endless possibilities for flexibility and responsiveness in training. You know, I think going forward, for government at least, one of the ways in which we will in all sorts of different guises, I think, put the power of the purchase in the hands of the individual or the companies and give them the capacity to drive the training response for all the training providers. I'll finish on this. In strategic terms, with a business, you're trying to get somewhere. In this area we're trying to solve a skills problem. Where are the big hits? Where can we make serious inroads into it? I just talked about one, getting that flexibility, but how do we do it when 75 per cent of our infrastructure is tied up in the TAFE sector? To me, the biggest micro-economic reform in the education sector by a country mile and probably one of the biggest across the economy is to breathe life into our TAFE sector. We've got 74 institutions across 1300 campuses around the country. It's a wonderful resource, and a lot of good people in it. You only have to look at Victoria. In Victoria, there is a model. In the 1990s, Jeff Kennett came in, economy was a basket case. Jeff said, "I'm going to give autonomy to the TAFEs". The TAFEs in Victoria have now gone from the back of the line to the front of the line and are so far out it doesn't matter. 60 per cent of all of the foreign student money invested is in Victoria. There are other examples of TAFEs, there are things happening. But, overwhelmingly, we've still got a situation in a number of states, most states, where TAFEs are seriously choked with red tape. You've got $100 million plus businesses where, if the person running it, wants to go overseas to set up some business partnership or go to a course or a conference, they have to get the approval of the minister. You're running a $100 million business in New South Wales and you want to get on an airplane and go to Malaysia to attend an international conference on your area of expertise, your business, you have to write in and get approval of the minister to buy that air plane ticket. Now, this is an example, in every area of their business, that's what's happening, these sorts of things. It's nonsensical. To me, you know, we need to give the TAFE sector a level or autonomy, at least equal to that enjoyed by the universities. If we're going to see technical and vocational training on a par with universities, just different, then, they need to operate with the same levels of autonomy and same approaches. It is, as I say, one of the great opportunities for very rapid and very important change. The dead cat on the table in all of that, is the unions. They are instructing the states to maintain that choking control. Jeff Kennett showed it is possible to do it, he did it with the stroke of a pen. And yet in all the other states, some progress is being made, in New South Wales hardly at all, but in others, it's all at different stages. The thing holding them back and I've been meeting with the state ministers and privately they all admit it that it makes sense to give autonomy. By all means, be very transparent, very accountable, but they know it and they can see in Victoria what's happened. The runs are on the board. I think it is why in this election, and I say this not as a passing comment, the fact that the unions will be front and square, it is why the unions will be front and square of this campaign. It is what impact, what control, what measure of influence do they exert over state Labor governments and the federal government. If you get it wall to wall, what are the implications of that? I know in Victoria with all the success in Victorian TAFEs, the Victorian government in the last six months has agreed to implement an enterprise agreement across all TAFEs in Victoria, so even things like dual campuses, Ballarat and all these other, will not be able to approach their staff and all the rest of it with the flexibility they've enjoyed in the last 10 years across dual campuses, university and TAFE. Again, it is a very significant issue, and, you know, with 70 per cent of Labor's front bench in the federal Parliament being former union bosses, the issue of union influence over future policy and direction and all the rest of it will be front and square, and it is a very important issue on the table for you, for us, for the community. It must be, I think, a really critical part of the forthcoming election. To summarise, we're fostering cultural change, which restores the standing of technical and vocational training. There's all sorts of ways we can do that, but a lot is what we say and how we approach it for young people and all those throughout the workforce. Secondly, and most importantly, we are trying to drive responsiveness and flexibility, make it demand driven, not supply driven. That involves a strong economy, in my view, it involves the voucher approach and it involves the building blocks that I talked about. A lot of this is a cultural change, not just for the workforce or for the training providers but for management. It is an important cultural change for all of us, and it's one that's critical. I think if we do these things, I think we'll very able to cope with what's coming down the line. Thank you. QUESTIONS CONVENOR: We have time for some questions. FEMALE SPEAKER: Good day, Andrew, good to see you again. Megan Motto, the Association of Consulting Engineers Australia. You talked about cultural change, and I'd just like to take a step back to where career decisions are made. In tends to be in the middle school, in the middle years of secondary school. We know that the careers advice really doesn't kick in until the later years in schooling. The careers advice is not implemented throughout the whole of the years of school through dedicated careers advisers. But, more so, student choices at that stage are going to be influenced by their everyday classroom teachers, and teachers will teach what they know, and that is the university experience, because they have university training themselves. I'm interested in initiatives that you might have in mind to get a better interface between industry and classroom teachers as opposed to industry and schools with industry and careers advisers. In my opinion, I really think that classroom teachers are going to keep perpetuating what their experience has been, and you'll never really change the cultural beginnings of the ideology that they've picked up. ANDREW ROBB: Good point, very good point. I don't think the careers people are any different to anyone else, you can spend a life time pretty much, certainly the last 30 years of there lives, in a community that is really saying, if you don't go to university you're dumb, basically. That's what they're saying. They've had the same experience. Also, they haven't been in the VET area, they've all been to university. I think one of the best ways of changing their mindset is to try and tackle the community mindset and to showcase the fact that we are now valuing technical skills. That's why these technical schools, which have now become a bit of a political football, but I can tell you, if you go around to the 20 I've seen, they are just breathtaking in terms of building really lovely facilities, a lot of them renovated stuff. It's not wasted money, it's good quality. So they feel they're going somewhere significant. And there's industry on the boards, and the industry is demanding the sort of curricular and the arrangements by which they do their block training and all the rest. They still get their certificate 12, they still do academic program, but the whole program even the maths and things often picks up examples out of the trade that they're doing. The whole focus is on maximising what they are good at while picking up numeracy and literacy and all the rest and getting their year 12. I think a lot of it is what we say and what we do. If we've got these little lighthouses all over the country, we reinvent technical schools. Now we've done 28 we've got 20 open and eight in the pipeline. The states, as a result, have been, in a way, shamed into it. I don't care, it's great. Morris Iemma, he ran the strongest positive ads in the last election, they were basically a rewrite of what we had in 2004. I thought, "How good’s this? He's promising 25 technical schools dedicated to technical skills". So we've now got 40 dedicated technical schools promised by the states. I've got 70 technical schools in the pipeline. By 2009, we will have somewhere close to 30,000 young Australians in technical schools around the country. To me, that starts to say to the community and the careers advisers and all of this, this is now legitimate. We've got to put some money into it and decision making behind it. Just not talk about, we must do it. I think there's other things, but that is a really critical issue. FEMALE SPEAKER: Thanks, Minister. I heard Helen Clark speak this week, and one of the questions that she was asked was what is she most proud of that she has done as Prime Minister of New Zealand. She said that she was passionate about encouraging New Zealand families to be passionate about education. She really went much further back to formative years. I don't know what the percentage is in Australia of three and four year olds at kindergartens, perhaps you can tell us that, but she introduced legislation which may three and four year old kindergartens free. She said that is really encouraging families to put children into kindergarten, which then had an added economic benefit because the mums could go back to work without having to pay for childcare. So I'm just interested in your comment on that. ANDREW ROBB: I've got to admit that the secondary schooling, rather than the VET area is mine, so Julie Bishop is more responsible for this area and has studied this in more detail. I could give you a generic response but not one that is a result of my responsibilities. I do think that, you know, the significance of education, it does start at an early age, but it's got to be appropriate. To me, force-feeding kids at three to four is not the answer. But they have got a capacity at that age, in my opinion, to start learning, stimulation. But how it is done is quite important. And some kids are different to others, so some kids are not ready for it. So, I think, all of that needs to be taken into account. I can't compare Australia with New Zealand, because I just don't think you can. I don't know whether they're more successful than us and her pride is well placed. Certainly, there is a growing opportunity for three and four year olds and parents taking up the issue themselves. There is assistance in a lot of these facilities now, and there is major consciousness that in the sort of workforce that we now have, the workplace we now have, that providing opportunities for those, particularly women, who've got childcare responsibilities to continue to participate in the way they wish to and can is important. The whole ability to provide childcare or learning opportunities or a combination of those is a critical part of going forward. I think both sides of politics agree with that. How we go about it might be different, but the need for it is, I think, recognised by all major parties. But I still think there is a reasonable view across the community of the importance of education. As a country we can always improve on things, but that is not something where we're trailing in any sense. But I do think there's been a very unhealthy bias towards academic education. Even at three or four, there would be kids there who have clearly got talents that relate to creative or technical skills, good with their hands and not showing much interest in other things. We've just to get to a point where whatever talents you've been born with, we celebrate them and value them and allow those to be made the most of. Do what you do best, and know that what you do is valued. If you do what you do best, the individual is better off and the community is better off. So I think we've got a serious problem at that level. MALE SPEAKER: …(inaudible)… young people to speak out. Is that something that the government is looking at addressing? Employers say they can't pay more. …(inaudible)… ANDREW ROBB: Actually, that is one of the things that was exercising me mind, and in the recent budget we introduced provision for first and second year apprentices to receive $1000 a year tax free as a wage top up. It's not going to solve all the problems, but someone at that stage getting $1000 a year in their pocket, untaxed, that is not just there to keep the wage up to comparable levels but also to say that what they're doing is important. A four year apprenticeship in the main, 42 per cent are leaving before they finish it, 38 of the 42 in the first two years. So it is, in my opinion, part of it is the money. We've also introduced in the budget a $500 voucher to go towards TAFE fees or private providers. So $3000 over the first two years, an $800 tool kit, so that's $3,800. So that's half a billion dollars worth of stuff. It's as much about saying to them that what you do is important, the government values it, the community values it. Part of that, there are a lot of employers, because they have to, some say they can't, and I'm sure they can't, but they are topping up significantly. …(inaudible)… It's a first and second year problem, and we have sought to do something about it, starting with a top up. It's part of the mix. Now we've got to try and free up the type of training that's available. Because in a lot of areas, like agriculture, for instance, and a lot of other areas, they want their skills. The mining industry wants their skills. The mining industry has got all this pool of labour, but they haven't got three years or four years to do the training. They want them to do certain tasks, and they want them trained well. …(inaudible)… do the training, get them skilled up, and away they go. These people have a career in mind and can do lots of other training and get skills. CONVENOR: I have to say, after 14 weeks in your portfolio, you're already showing deep feeling and enthusiasm for the subject. Thank you very much, again, for being so generous.   Andrew Robb MP Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:723 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/716/Questions-Without-Notice-Vocational-Education-Training.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=716 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=716&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/716/Questions-Without-Notice-Vocational-Education-Training.aspx Mr McARTHUR (3.15 p.m.)—My question is addressed to the Minister for Vocational and Further Education. Would the minister inform the House what the coalition government is doing to encourage young people to undertake a trade and technical career? Answer Mr ROBB—I thank the member for Corangamite not only for his question but for his wonderful leadership in the development of the Australian Technical College, Geelong. This college is built on the grounds of the Gordon Institute of TAFE and is being run in partnership between the Gordon TAFE and local industry. It was a wonderful experience, at the recent formal opening of this Geelong college, to see the great pride, self-belief and enthusiasm of the students, parents and grandparents—great pride, self-belief and enthusiasm which has gone missing over the last 20 to 30 years as we have closed old-style technical schools and replaced them with one-size-fits-all secondary schools with a bias towards and emphasis on getting kids ready for university. Might I note the member for Corio also understands this. It would be remiss of me not to thank the member for Corio for his significant help in the creation of the Geelong technical college. While I am at it, I should also thank the member for Oxley. This does not happen too often on this side of the House, but could I also thank the member for Oxley for his strong support for an Australian technical college in the south of Brisbane. I appreciated the letter and I must say that in the recent budget the government acted on his plea. Clearly, both members opposite do not share the ‘university or bust’ mindset of their parliamentary leader. With the introduction of Australian technical colleges, once again young people born with strong technical, vocational or creative skills can access specialised training in year 11 and year 12. Those going to the technical schools, which we have created, end school with a year 12 certificate, one-third of the way through an apprenticeship, two years experience in the workplace and two years of their schooling in a school environment which places a high value on the technical and vocational skills they were born with. Not only that, but in the short 30 months it has taken us to build 20 colleges—there are eight others in the pipeline—we have seen state Labor governments, in most states, follow our lead. This was our intention all along—to show leadership in technical education. We now have several state governments mimicking our initiatives with a commitment to a further 25 old-style technical schools. In fact, the only positive ad that Morris Iemma had in his last election campaign was a rebranded version of our 2004 campaign ads committing to many technical schools. This means that within the next two years we will have more than 50 new Australian technical colleges, state and federal, on over 70 campuses across the country. We will be providing technical and vocational education to years 11 and 12 for nearly 16,000 to 20,000 young Australians. This is a real technical education revolution. The opposition leader’s proposal to stick an oven or a lathe in a classroom at the back of the secondary school is no revolution. Interjection Mr Howard—Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.   Andrew Robb MP Tue, 29 May 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:716 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/703/Government-policy-pespectives-on-Vocational-Training-Education.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=703 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=703&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/703/Government-policy-pespectives-on-Vocational-Training-Education.aspx Minerals Council of Australia Minerals Week Seminar ‘Positioning Australia in a Supercycle of Change’ Keynote Address “GOVERNMENT POLICY PERSPECTIVES ON VOCATIONAL TRAINING AND EDUCATION” Wednesday 30 May 2007 Hyatt Hotel, Canberra CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY E&OE… A successful company does two things; it pays a healthy dividend to its shareholders, and it takes from the profits and invests in the future. An unsuccessful business pays little or no dividends because they don’t have the profits to distribute and they borrow to keep the company afloat. In 1996 the Howard Government took over an unsuccessful business with little or no dividends being paid, and a $96 billion government debt requiring yearly interest payments of $8.5 billion. Yet, today we are paying Australians healthy dividends and investing heavily in the future. Just as the creation of a highly successful mining company doesn’t come easily, so too the key measures that have enabled the economy to be in such strong shape – the tough fiscal measures to pay off that $96 billion debt, the budget reforms, the waterfront reforms, the tax reform, the workplace relations reforms, the superannuation reforms, the Future Fund, independent contractor legislation, the temporary skilled migrant program, the sale of Telstra, Welfare-to-Work programs – all of these reforms have been very hard fought. As with a business, the economy doesn’t run on autopilot. It takes hard work, vision and persistence. This may sound like quite a political beginning to my comments today. It is, because it’s an election year and the stakes are very high for Australia. Informed decisions need to be made. For our political opponents to pretend that we are as one on economic matters is a hoax after they have spent the last 11 years opposing, root and branch, every single one of those reforms I have just mentioned, reforms which have helped shape the great resilience of our economy. Reforms which have enabled the Howard Government to increase annual spending on vocational and further education by 99% in real terms over the last 11 years; an ability to invest in the future. Yet, the case for ongoing reform is as strong as ever because of the 21st Century phenomena of a rapidly ageing population, the huge challenges posed by the unexpectedly profound emergence of China and India, the threat of global terrorism and the major issue of climate change. When combined with over a decade of uninterrupted economic growth, severe labour and skills shortages are one consequence of this changing world. There is no silver bullet. The response requires action on many policy fronts. It requires hard work and vision, and a far more flexible approach to work and to further education. To meet these labour and skill challenges, the Government has been working on four broad fronts: • first, we need to get anyone who can work into work, and encourage those who are in the workforce to stay in work; • second, we need to re-open the ‘old-style’, dedicated technical schools, to provide choice, specialisation and self esteem to those born with strong technical, vocational or creative skills; • third, we need to ensure that those who start an apprenticeship stay the distance and don’t drop out, and • finally, and critically, with existing members of the workforce we need to build a culture that encourages training, re-training or topping up of skills. This must also include many of the 3.4 million in our workforce who didn’t finish school and have no technical or vocational training, and the grey market. I know that you share my view of this need for a comprehensive approach. I’m familiar with the work you commissioned, with the WA Chamber of Minerals and Energy, to address barriers to the employment and training of traditional trade apprentices in the mining industry. Your work on increasing the skills of your existing workers, topping up the wages of apprentices and trainees and fast-tracking apprenticeships provides a great model for other industries. I would like to explore a number of ways that I think we could work more closely together to address these needs. The first response to the labour shortage that I outlined previously was to get everyone who can work into work. On Monday I launched a report on “Indigenous Employment in the Australian Minerals Industry”. It was funded by Rio Tinto and had the involvement of several other major mining companies. The report contained many examples of companies successes, particularly over the last decade, in employing members of the indigenous community. This is an important contribution to addressing your labour shortages, and it also provides many indigenous people with a critical career start in the mining industry. Across our economy we have many significant pockets of underutilised labour which must be tapped. The second response was the need to build, or re-open, centrally located technical schools in our cities and regions; technical schools which offer a comprehensive and specialised range of trade and vocational courses at Year 11 and 12 levels. These colleges are in response to the greatest mistake we’ve made in education in Australia over the last 20 to 30 years – that was to close dedicated technical schools, and replace them with one-size-fits-all secondary colleges. These old style, dedicated technical schools are designed to properly prepare young people who are suited to a career in the trades or vocational areas. When students in these technical schools finish Year 12 they will be one-third of the way through an apprenticeship, they will have their Year 12 certificate, they will have worked on state-of-the-art equipment and had two years of real experience in the workplace, while earning as they learn. Very importantly, these Australian Technical Colleges have restored the links with industry in the direction of technical education in secondary schooling, and restored pride and prestige to technical training. I am very appreciative of the support from the mining industry for our Australian Technical Colleges proposals and in particular the efforts of many of the major mining companies in managing the Pilbara Technical College and supporting the colleges in North Queensland, Gladstone, the Hunter, the Illawarra and Spencer Gulf. The third measure is one that the mining industry is well aware of and that is the importance of ensuring that young people who start an apprenticeship “stay the distance”. We now have 404,000 apprentices in training compared with 154,000 when the Coalition took office. But, on average, 42 per cent of those who start apprenticeships drop out, and 38 per cent of that 42 per cent drop out in the first two years. The first and second year of apprenticeships can be particularly difficult. It was for this reason that in the 2007/08 Budget we introduced the “Wage Top” measure for apprentices in skills shortage areas - a $1,000 untaxed wage top-up in each of their first two years for those under 30, with a $500 fee voucher each year. That is a total of $3,000 to encourage many of these young apprentices stay the distance and fulfil their talents. On top of that we provide a $4,000 employer incentive, a $13,000 wage subsidy for mature age apprentices, a $1,000 trade scholarship, an $800 tool kit and a $1,000 regional incentive. This is a very significant program aimed at encouraging apprentices to see their training through. The fourth front in the Federal Government’s efforts to address the labour and skills shortage is to train and re-train those who are already in the workforce. Too many adults don’t have the school qualifications or the skills training for effective participation in the modern workplace. And we have millions of other workers who are trained, but from time to time must now seek further training to stay ahead of the technology demands of today’s workplace. It is why the Australian Government last year committed $837 million to boosting skills and qualification levels among both older Australians and those in mid-career with a package that included Work Skills Vouchers which allow an individual to access up to $3,000 worth of training. Such has been the popularity and success of this scheme that in less than five months we have issued over 14,000 vouchers, with 640 training providers providing 6,200 courses, including distance learning. Yesterday, the Prime Minister announced that the number of vouchers would be uncapped for the rest of this financial year – and I encourage you to promote this program to your staff. As the Howard Government is serious about training for every stage at every age, we know we must also be serious about how we deliver this training. I know that the report prepared for the Minerals Industry National Skills Shortage Strategy include recommendations to explore strategies for more flexible training delivery. I share this concern; as do many others. To meet the needs of the workforce and industry of tomorrow, training must be available in the workplace, in the home, on-line, at night, tailored to the specific needs of a large or small business, and constitute a ‘building blocks’ approach to recognised training. It is why there is a growing focus on the ageing infrastructure, “four walls” mindset and hand-cuffed governance of many TAFEs around Australia. The TAFE sector represents one of the greatest opportunities for microeconomic reform in Australia. The nation’s 74 TAFE colleges, across 1,386 locations, teach more than three quarters of all vocational and technical students. The leading TAFEs are typically $100 million businesses, with a client base totalling more than 1.4 million individuals, and industry sectors relying critically on their performance. We need to breathe life into the TAFE system. They need to be given the opportunity to be fully responsive to the users of the system – employers and students alike. To achieve this, TAFE colleges need a measure of autonomy at least equal to that which universities enjoy. Yet many are still subjected to constraints which are from another time. States could deliver this reform tomorrow – with the stroke of the pen if they were so minded. Under the 4 year compact agreed with the Australian Government in 2005 (Skilling Australia's Workforce Agreement the States and Territories), the States agreed to pursue greater flexibility for TAFE institutions and a capacity to respond to local industry and community needs; more flexible employment arrangements; stronger leadership and autonomy for TAFE directors; fair and transparent performance management schemes; the ability to generate and retain revenue; the capacity to develop entrepreneurial and commercially orientated business plans; and third party access to TAFE infrastructure, in short the autonomy of TAFEs by the end of this Agreement in 2008. Although much has been done there is still much that is outstanding and I believe progress in some important respects has been too slow and indeed in some cases the reform process has stalled altogether. At the three quarter mark of our Agreement it is timely to assess this progress bearing in mind various independent reports. By way of illustration: The Victorian TAFE structure is the most devolved of the State Systems with major autonomy granted by the Kennett Government in the 90s. In turn, the Victorian TAFE sector has outperformed those in other States. Employer satisfaction with Victorian apprentices and training delivery exceeds the national average, with 84% of employers satisfied with their apprentices and 86% satisfied with the quality of training provided by Victorian providers. Last year, Victorian TAFEs generated nearly half (47.2%) of the total national income from onshore VET course delivery to international students. Victorian providers generated $193 million in 2006, which is more than double the amount generated by the next highest earner, New South Wales. Consistent with this devolution, TAFE Boards were given broad powers including in relation to the setting of employment conditions. Yet now the Victorian Government wants to turn back the clock and reduce the autonomy of TAFE Boards to set employment conditions of staff and increase the centralisation of power. The Victorian Government has imposed a Multi-Enterprise Certified Agreement on all State owned VET institutions, including dual sector Victorian Universities and all Victorian TAFE colleges. Consider the case of the four dual sector institutions. Rather than being able to exercise institution based employment agreements for all their staff, they are forced to maintain a differentiation between their TAFE staff and University staff, with TAFE staff fettered by the AEU controlled Certified Agreement. This seriously undermines the Victorian Government claims to operate a devolved system. Last year in New South Wales the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) report to the NSW Government supported VET as a key element in a whole of government strategy designed to increase the supply of skilled labour, improve labour market outcomes, and, ultimately, raise economic growth. The report recommended developing a system-wide culture characterised by entrepreneurship and innovation. In particular, it recommended: • Removing the constraints on commercial revenue retention. • Negotiating future industrial agreements so that any change in pay and conditions is linked to productivity agreements and provide institute directors with greater flexibility to attract and retain key staff. • Allowing a more commercially focussed and accountable business framework for TAFEs in NSW. • Sub-leasing real estate and any equipment to third parties and retaining the proceeds at the institute level. I applaud these recommendations. The New South Wales Government has not responded to the recommendations nor provided any suggestion in their VET Plan update for 2007 that changes are proposed to enhance the authority and autonomy of TAFE Directors. While Queensland has made significant progress, the Queensland Government still vests authority for TAFEs with the Chief Executive Officer of the Queensland education Department. TAFE Councils are relegated to the status of Advisory Committees and their Directors are accountable to remote bureaucratic authority in Brisbane rather than to the Council. Queensland needs to improve their efficiency and direct more funds to training delivery and less to administration. Queensland TAFEs should also be allowed to access more funds from industry by delivering responsive training. In recent years TAFE in South Australia has undergone substantial reform with a reduction in the number of TAFE institutes to three: Adelaide North, Adelaide South, and country. The efficiencies created through this rationalisation have, however, been at the expense of training delivery with no commensurate reductions in administration costs of their bureaucracy or Institutes. In addition, the South Australian Legislation places all authority in the hands of the Minister and his Departmental Secretary, rather than with TAFE Councils, in terms of how TAFE Assets are utilised, or staff are employed or deployed. The Tasmanian system remains largely under centralised control. TAFE Tasmania is required to seek the approval of the relevant Minister to enter into joint ventures, partnerships or any other arrangements. Forming or participating in a Company or Trust arrangements requires the approval of both the relevant Minister and the Treasurer. And now I turn to Western Australia. As this group would well know, Western Australia continues to enjoy the immense wealth arising from the mining boom. But it has failed to invest much of this wealth in building and enhancing its infrastructure and its capability for skills development. The Australian Government has invested more funding for capital infrastructure including for TAFE and the three Australian Technical Colleges. The Western Australian Legislation currently requires the approval of the responsible Minister to participate in business arrangements relating to the provision of education and training for certain purposes. During 2006, the Western Australian Department of Education initiated proposals to change “TAFEWA” employment arrangements to strengthen the accountability of TAFEWA managing directors and staff to the Director General of the Department of Education and Training. While I understand these plans have been shelved for TAFE Directors it is still being proposed that the responsibility for selecting and managing TAFE staff would be removed from the TAFEs and given to the Director General of Education. Such moves would clearly undermine the autonomy of TAFE Directors and are a serious concern to the Australian Government and question the WA Government’s implementation of their agreement with the Australian Government. Through our annual $1.2 billion VET funding agreement with the States, the Australian Government is endeavouring to drive change towards a more responsive and flexible system with increased competition, more performance-based employment contracts and far greater responsiveness to industry. For our part in the 2007/08 Budget we have announced important reforms to FEE-HELP to assist students who are pursuing a VET diploma or advanced diploma in a registered training organisation such as a TAFE. FEE-HELP will be extended to full-fee-paying students in Diploma and Advanced Diploma courses that are accredited as VET qualifications, where agreed credit for a university degree is available to the student. This will ensure it’s easy for VET students to apply their skills in studies at university and get credit for what they’ve already done. It will also encourage those already with trade qualifications to build on them. But there is more that can be done. Our TAFEs should at least be granted the autonomy enjoyed by our universities. So with that in mind, I am announcing today that during the upcoming negotiations for the next four year funding agreement between the States and the Commonwealth, I will put on the table a proposal to align our funding model in VET with the one we use for universities – that is negotiating with the States in relation to the provision of student places as opposed to teaching hours. In this way individual TAFEs would be free to decide what courses, the number of places in each course and the method of delivery – in the workplace, at home, on-line or at the TAFE. I know that the mining industry has had some important positive experiences with TAFE and flexible training. My point is this – that sort of flexible training should be the norm and not an exception. The TAFEs are a wonderful national asset with thousands of talented and dedicated staff. They should be given the opportunity to take true responsibility for their business, free to respond to industry and students demands. The iron glove of the unions must be removed. In any changes we must preserve some of the real strengths of the VET sector – many developed through State and Federal cooperation over the last decade. In the VET sector we see strong industry engagement at the national level. We have given Australian business a stronger voice in national planning and priority setting through the National Quality Council. The Industry Skills Councils are also tasked with developing the competencies and training packages which ensure that training programmes deliver the skilled workers required for Australia’s industry and enterprises, and are consistent and recognised across Australia. Another key feature of our system is the well developed quality assurance arrangements which allow industry, employers and students to have confidence in the qualifications delivered. The Australian Quality Training Framework provides the basis for Australia’s nationally consistent, high quality vocational education and training system. The standards for registered training organisations and state and territory registering/course accrediting bodies provide the common foundation for ensuring the quality and integrity of training and assessment services of registered training organisations. The national recognition of training qualifications means that students trained in one state or territory can have their qualifications recognised in any other state or territory across Australia. I look forward to discussing a number of these matters with my state counterparts at the upcoming meeting of the Vocational Education Ministers in June. Opposition Policy As you can see, the Government has a comprehensive plan to address the skills and labour shortage but, as I said at the start of my speech the mining industry, like every other Australian, will have to make a choice at the next election. I have outlined the Government’s commitments and now I would like to move to the proposals put forward by the Opposition. Labor’s policy is one dimensional. Any commitment of funds to technical education must be acknowledged, but the direction of Mr Rudd’s recent proposal would be a huge “wasted opportunity”. If Labor wins the next Federal election, the push to reintroduce a large number of dedicated technical schools will be lost; it will be actively and ideologically opposed by Labor. Mr Rudd’s proposal to assist with a modest up-grading of existing technical facilities and equipment in all of Australia’s 2,650 secondary schools will provide some assistance to the thousands of secondary schools that already provide a reasonable “introduction” to some technical areas of study, but it will perpetuate the one-size-fits-all approach to secondary education. And, the misplaced orientation towards university would continue. While any introduction to vocational studies is obviously worthwhile, it does not seriously prepare those students with strong technical and vocational talents for a career in the trades. Mr Rudd’s $2.5 billion sounds like a lot of money. But spread over 10 years, and across thousands of schools which have principally an academic focus, in practice it will barely touch the sides in raising the status and focus on specialised technical studies. There is more to technical training than putting an oven or lathe into a classroom. As the Dusseldorp Skills Forum has observed, “…if it (Mr Rudd’s proposal) just adds another workshop at the end of the school yard…. then it is a wasted opportunity”. As well, it ignores the question of where will the thousands of technically skilled staff be sourced who have industry-standard skills and knowledge, and a graduate qualification in teaching. Unfortunately, on these matters, Mr Rudd has been unduly influenced and constrained by the Australian Education Union. The Education Union is implacably opposed to the Howard Government’s new technical schools because they don’t control them. The new technical schools are governed and led by local industry and local educators – a far cry from the stranglehold exercised by the Education Union over public secondary education in Australia. As well, the Union sees an education system which promotes specialisation, quality which can be measured and reported, diversity and competition as elitist and abhorrent; to be opposed at all costs. Education Union ideology drove the closure of specialised technical schools over the last 20 to 30 years, to be replaced by one-size-fits-all secondary schools. Australia is now paying a heavy price. For these reasons Labor’s policy approach is to try to patch up a 20th Century mistake in technical education, rather than strike out and help to create a 21st Century solution. If Mr Rudd had followed the lead of the Howard Government, rather than the dictates of the Education Union, and had promised this money for dedicated technical schools, it would provide specialised technical training at Year 11 & 12 levels to 100,000 students, as opposed to further help in introducing vocational subjects to students across all secondary schools. Conclusion In the coming decades, Australians with trade and technical skills will be in demand. It is predicted that over 60 percent of jobs will require high quality technical or vocational qualifications yet currently only 30 percent of the population have these skills. It is vital that we continue to make the necessary reforms. It means thinking outside the four walls in which we have imagined vocational education and training. It means giving trades the status they deserve, and giving TAFE and other and other institutions the flexibility they need to provide for the needs of the community and industry. Thank you.   Andrew Robb MP Tue, 29 May 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:703 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/700/Bayside-to-benefit-from-new-skill-centre.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=700 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=700&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/700/Bayside-to-benefit-from-new-skill-centre.aspx Andrew Robb, Federal Member for Goldstein and Minister for Vocational and Further Education, officially opened the Arts and Entertainment Skill Centre at Sandringham College VCE campus on Friday 18th May 2007. Andrew Robb said the Skill Centre will ensure that local students receive industry-standard experience with access to three digital recording studios, a control room, studio, cinema, video tuition space, digital video workshop, and music room. Equipment, including computer hardware and software, theatre lighting, recording platform and compressors, graphic equalisers, FX racks, external pre-amps and speaker simulators, was also purchased as part of the project. “The Australian Government has recognised there will be particular skills shortages within the technical roles in theatre, film, television and radio sectors in the next five years, “This Skill Centre will be the catalyst for individuals to pursue meaningful and rewarding long-term careers in the arts and entertainment industry.” Andrew Robb said. Funding of $130,000 for this project was provided by the Australian Government through the Commonwealth-State Agreement for Skilling Australia’s Workforce. The infrastructure funding is provided to establish and develop training facilities. The establishment of the Skill Centre will provide nationally recognised training in VCE drama, theatre studies, music, studio arts, and Certificate II and III in Music and Screen to around 500 senior secondary students in the bayside area, as well as the South Eastern suburbs of Melbourne. “This type of industry-relevant, hands on training is a passport to future employment opportunities across Australia and even the world, “The Skill Centre will provide further opportunities for bayside students to turn their interests and talents into their careers” Andrew Robb said. “I would also like to congratulate Sandringham College on their ongoing successes in the area of vocational training. They do an outstanding job in providing varied and unique courses which offer their students flexibility to pursue their own individual skills and talents,” Andrew Robb said. Media contact: Megan Cox 9557 4644 / 0414 492 674   Andrew Robb MP Mon, 21 May 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:700 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/698/Cheltenham-Primary-Schools-plan-to-save-water.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=698 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=698&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/698/Cheltenham-Primary-Schools-plan-to-save-water.aspx Andrew Robb, Federal Member for Goldstein, today congratulated Cheltenham Primary School on receiving over $40,000 worth of funding under the second round Community Water Grants Programme. Cheltenham Primary School’s project will be funded under the $200 million Community Water Grants programme, which is part of the $2 billion Australian Government Water Fund. Funded projects promote wise water use and increase community awareness about water efficiency and conservation, water recycling and water health. “Cheltenham Primary School submitted an excellent proposal which once implemented will save 513,400 litres of water per year, “I commend the Cheltenham Primary School community for their ongoing initiatives in water saving and conservation,” “The staff, students and parents at Cheltenham Primary School have demonstrated an ongoing commitment to the protection of our local environment and I am pleased that this grant will be able to continue their wonderful work” Andrew Robb said. The third round of Community Water Grants are now open. For more information visit www.communitywatergrants.gov.au Media contact: Megan Cox 9557 4644 or 0414 492 674   Andrew Robb MP Tue, 15 May 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:698 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/717/Questions-Without-Notice-Vocational-and-Further-Education.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=717 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=717&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/717/Questions-Without-Notice-Vocational-and-Further-Education.aspx LAMING (3.00 p.m.)—My question is to the Minister for Vocational and Further Education. Would the minister inform the House how the government has continued to invest substantially in vocational and further education? Minister, are there any alternative policies and what is the government’s response? Mr ROBB—I thank the member for Bowman for his question and for his very genuine interest in this area. I might begin with the alternative policies, because there I can be brief. In Labor’s much touted Education Revolution document, on skills needs, the so-called skills crisis, and vocational and technical education the sum total of discussion was four lonely paragraphs—and not one idea amongst them. Yet the member for Lilley last night was out asserting that Labor had set the agenda on vocational and technical education. Fortunately, we have not waited for Labor to tell us what to do, and I can report for the benefit of the member for Lilley that in 1996 there were 1,500 people doing apprenticeships in his electorate. He can now go back and report to his electorate that today there are 4,280 people doing apprenticeships—nearly a threefold increase in the last 11 years. So we have done a lot. We have now spent around $3 billion a year compared with $1 billion 10 years ago when we took over office. That is a 99 per cent real increase in spending on vocational and technical education in the last 11 years. Yet we have a rapidly ageing population and the experience of well over a decade of uninterrupted economic growth. This means that we have further challenges. That is why last night we made a further substantial investment of $668 million in vocational and further education. That adds to the $837 million that we announced last November, just six months ago, for the Skills for the Future package. So, in total, in the last six months the government has announced $1.5 billion for technical and further education. Last night’s announced initiatives were aimed at three things: improving the status, improving the opportunity, and raising the level of vocational and technical education across our workforce. Specifically the measures included, in the trades areas facing a skills shortage, a tax-free $1,000 wage top-up to every first- and second-year apprentice under 30 years of age. On top of that, every first- and second-year apprentice, without age restriction, will get a fee voucher worth up to $500 a go towards their TAFE or other training fees. When you put that together with a trade scholarship, each first- and second-year apprentice across the country in areas of trade skill shortage will get a total of $1,500 a year as a tax-free top-up for their wages and a $500 contribution towards their TAFE fees—nearly $2,000, or up to $2,000, for every first- and second-year apprentice. The government also announced the establishment of three more Australian technical colleges, one in southern Brisbane, one in Western Sydney and one in northern Perth. This means that in the five largest cities we will have two technical colleges across the country to combine with the other 18 technical colleges in regional and other cities in Australia. Furthermore, we announced nearly $60 million to develop fast track apprenticeships. We have extended fee help to full fee paying students pursuing diploma and advanced diploma courses through the VET system and we have provided further assistance for our Indigenous community and for people with disabilities to enter the workforce. So, along with the tax cuts and the childcare and the superannuation initiatives last night, these new measures will further expand our productive capacity at a time when the economy is at full stretch.   Andrew Robb MP Tue, 08 May 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:717 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/692/Prizes-up-for-grabs-for-Bayside-students-in-Captain-Cook-Essay-Competition.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=692 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=692&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/692/Prizes-up-for-grabs-for-Bayside-students-in-Captain-Cook-Essay-Competition.aspx Bayside school children can win the trip of a lifetime to Captain Cook’s birthplace in England by taking part in the Australian Government Captain Cook Essay Competition, which opened today, said Andrew Robb, Federal Member for Goldstein. The national competition encourages children to learn about the birth of modern Australia, when the then Lieutenant James Cook sailed into Botany Bay in 1770 and first set foot on Australian soil. “This educational competition is an initiative to encourage primary and secondary school students to learn more about Australian history,” Andrew Robb said. “Looking to the future requires solid knowledge of and appreciation for history, which is why it is imperative that our children and future leaders understand about Australia’s past. “There are wonderful prizes for the winners, including a trip to England, Captain Cook’s birthplace, and educational vouchers of up to $1500 for school libraries. I strongly encourage schools in the Bayside area to take part in the competition and help keep our history alive.” The competition closes on Friday 22 June 2007. It is open to children enrolled in Australian schools from Years 4 to 12. There are three divisions, divided by age-group with different entry requirements for each division. Free Teachers’ Resource Kits, including lesson plans, curriculum links and competition posters can be ordered from the Australian Heritage website at www.heritage.gov.au or by emailing ciu@environment.gov.au. Further information is available at www.heritage.gov.au. Media contact: Megan Cox 9557 4644 / 0414 492 674   Andrew Robb MP Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:692 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/718/Questions-Without-Notice-Trades-Qualifications.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=718 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=718&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/718/Questions-Without-Notice-Trades-Qualifications.aspx Mr CAMERON THOMPSON (3.07 p.m.)—My question is to the Minister for Vocational and Further Education. Would the minister outline to the House what the government is doing to alert young people to the value of trades qualifications? Is the honourable member aware of any alternative policies? Mr ROBB—I would like to thank the member for Blair and note that since 1996 in his electorate the number of apprentices has gone from 710 to 2,190. That is an increase of more than 200 per cent in the number of apprentices in his electorate. The member for Blair has worked very hard with the six Australian apprenticeship centres in his electorate, along with all the other initiatives the Howard government plan to increase the participation in his electorate in technical and vocational education. It is all part of the Howard government plan to tackle labour and skills shortages in this country, and it is a plan that is working. Today, 72 per cent more apprentice carpenters exist than did in 1996. Today, four times as many bricklayers started apprenticeships this year than in 1996. What is the plan of those opposite? We are now one-third of the way through this year, on the way to a very important election, with an issue of fundamental importance to the future of the country, and all we have heard from those opposite so far is one lonely policy—that is, to hand the 25 Australian technical colleges over to the states and the unions. Mr Speaker, you know what will happen if the unions get a hold of these colleges. We all know what will happen. The links with industry, which are so important to these colleges, will be severed. They will choke off all the traditional trades, as they have done in the past. We will see a return to the lost generation of Australian trades men and women and a further betrayal of future generations.   Andrew Robb MP Sun, 25 Mar 2007 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:718 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/680/Training-our-workforce-for-tomorrow--Address-to-the-National-Press-Club.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=680 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=680&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/680/Training-our-workforce-for-tomorrow--Address-to-the-National-Press-Club.aspx TRAINING OUR WORKFORCE FOR TOMORROW Address to the National Press Club Canberra, 14 March 2007 CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY E&OE… Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you very much for the invitation today. Before I start, I would like to acknowledge two past Press Club attendees who can’t be here today – Morgan Mellish and Cynthia Banham. I am sure that I speak for all of us when I say our thoughts and prayers are with both of their families and loved ones. In the words of Thomas Edison: “Opportunity is missed in most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work ”. Yet, in the world of tomorrow, these trades people and the training they receive will be centre stage. In the years ahead, the demand for university level qualifications is expected to be just over 20 percent of the workforce, which is roughly what it is already. However, in the future over 60 percent of jobs will require technical or vocational qualifications, yet only 30 percent of the population have these qualifications. If this is to be corrected we must start by restoring the status of technical and vocational training. The relentless talking down of technical education through the 80s and 90s has fostered a generation of parents who feel that they have failed if their children do not pursue a university education, regardless of the particular technical, creative or other vocational talents of their children. This attitude has effectively denied many of the recent generations of young Australians the fulfilment and happiness that comes from doing what you do best, and to the best of your ability. This attitude continues to deny our country the special talents of so many of our fellow Australians who entered the workforce over the last quarter of a century. This attitude is changing, and must change. And the Government is driving it. We need a nation that once again values a high quality technical education as much as a university degree. I recently had the pleasure of attending the opening by the Prime Minister of one of the Australian Government’s 25 Australian Technical Colleges at Port Macquarie in NSW. I listened to Father Donnelly, a towering man in more ways than one, a man in his seventies whose career is far from over, a pioneer in reinstating the trades as a career of great value and merit. Father Donnelly said at the opening, and I quote, “We first experimented with the concept of a senior secondary vocational school some 30 odd years ago here in Port Macquarie. At the time the concept was treated with something approaching contempt in educational circles……… Prime Minister, when you first proposed the concept of the Australian Technical Colleges and saw to their implementation, I think you might have written larger than you thought. Although the emphasis was on the need for skills, there will be 25 of what could be called lighthouses in education, spread through the land, which challenge the way in which we deliver education in high schools……… This Port Macquarie Technical College, and the 24 others like it, give students a genuine career path in industry (as well as a HSC) and opens the way for the expression of their many and varied talents.” Father Donnelly was right. These 25 Australian Technical Colleges are lighthouses. They are beacons of excellence. They have an unparalleled and irrevocable link to local industry. They train on state-of-the-art equipment. They will set the standard for technical and vocational teaching, and will lead the way in restoring a technical career as a career path the equal of any. Already several state governments have announced their intention to follow suit, and to open new secondary technical colleges. This is a great thing if they meet the standard being set by the Australian Technical Colleges.But technical and vocational education must go beyond young people entering the workforce. To set Australia up for tomorrow vocational and technical training must be relevant to every age group capable of work. It is about apprenticeships for tomorrow. And, it is also about people in mid-career getting ready for the rest of their career. It is about older workers positioning themselves for a longer stint in the workforce and ultimately a healthier and wealthier retirement. It is about skilling those without a job to take their place in Australia’s future – including the over 50s, many with disabilities, parents not in the workforce, other jobless and many looking for part-time work. We need to accept that it is never too late to be trained or re-trained; in fact, it is essential to be trained and re-trained. We need to reverse the attitude of many employers that the need to train themselves or their staff amounts to failure; these employers have failed if training is not part of their business. Workplace Environment There is an urgency about changing attitudes toward training across every age group because this new century is already witness to some major developments which are reshaping the world. The extraordinary and sudden emergence of China and India has combined with a rapidly ageing population to create labour and skills shortages across all the OECD countries, and will increasingly do so to a remarkable degree. Within five years it has been estimated that Australia will have 200,000 more jobs than people to fill them. At the same time as our population is rapidly aging, the nature of our economy continues to shift. In the 50’s and 60’s migrants walked off the ships at Melbourne or Newcastle or other ports, and typically within days could be working in jobs on assembly lines at the Ford factory, or at the BHP steelworks in Newcastle. Visit the Ford factory of today, as I have done recently, and you still see assembly lines, and you still see migrants alongside other Australians, but the sophistication of the manufacturing process is breathtaking, the skill levels of the workers remarkable, the training programmes challenging and continuous. Rapid technological advances are transforming the world of work. The Solution To keep Australia strong and prosperous there is no alternative but to tap further sources of labour within our community – older workers, many with disabilities, parents and the unskilled - and to increase productivity in the face of the huge competition coming at us. We need to tap the talent and the potential in every home, in every working age group and in every neighbourhood. We need to tap every place of learning and every workplace. On the productivity front we will all need to be fast on our feet, accept change as a normal part of life, be flexible and constantly reviewing what we do, how we do it, what product we produce or service we provide. This is the Australia of tomorrow. Responsiveness and flexibility must be the touchstone. It runs against our instinct for the status quo. It means that the sense of discovery that marks our youth will be a constant throughout our lives. Of course, fostering this flexible attitude and tapping new labour resources requires action on many, many fronts. There is no silver bullet. It is why in recent years the Howard Government introduced the WorkChoices legislation, the welfare-to-work legislation, tax changes for seniors, successive rounds of tax cuts, generational reforms to superannuation, legislation to free up independent contractors, more permanent and temporary skilled migrants, industry restructuring such as the Telstra sale and changes to media laws, and a 42 percent real increase in Australian Government spending on all education and training over the last decade. It is why the Howard Government has dramatically reshaped the incentives and choices within technical training, and increased spending in real terms in vocational and further education by over 90 percent since 1996. It is why the Australian Government has built 20 technical colleges, with five more in the pipeline to open by next year, across 42 campuses. It is why we have influenced the training of apprenticeships such that 404,000 people are currently enrolled in apprenticeships, compared with the Hawke/Keating record in 1996 of just 155,000. It is why we have invested $837 million in wage subsidies for mid-career apprentices, and in providing more than 130,000 training vouchers, valued at up to $3,000 each, and in other initiatives to assist people in mid-career with training, re-training or advanced training opportunities. It is why more than 40,000 young apprentices have received an $800 tool kit. It is why the Australian Government established the Institute for Trade Skills Excellence which will, this year, introduce an industry driven star-rating system for institutions providing technical training. Parents and the students themselves want to know the calibre of the institution they plan to attend. Drivers of Training Reform A responsive and flexible culture in the workplace is based on choice, access and industry involvement. This has been the guiding philosophy of the Australian Government for the last 10 years. Choices in training drive innovation and quality, fill training gaps as training organisations compete to meet industry needs, and provides individuals with control over where they get their training, how they get their training and at what level. It is why I am very supportive of the role of private training organisations and community training organisations. But choice can be illusory if it is not matched with access. Access should be tailored to individual circumstances, whether on-line to regional centres, on-the-job in small businesses or manufacturing plants, after hours, at home or within the more traditional training environment. True choice also requires industry involvement in the training agenda to ensure that it is relevant and effective, that it meets not just the demands of today but tomorrow. It is a touch point which underpins the Technical Colleges and the Industry Skills Councils. The characteristics of choice, access and industry involvement, along with self esteem, incentives and portability will drive our training programs to be responsive and relevant. These characteristics make up the template against which new and existing policies will be judged. These are the characteristics which has enabled us to significantly rebuild and strengthen the apprenticeship system over the last decade with pre-vocational education in schools, the introduction of school based apprenticeships, the Australian Technical Colleges, technical scholarships, tool kits and vouchers for business training of apprentices, together with measures to make apprenticeships more flexible and competency rather than time based, including recognition of prior experience. The Next Stage While a strong and important focus will continue on those entering the workforce, an increasing spotlight is being shone on those already in the workforce. The fact is that we are now seeing about 140,000 Australians each year complete apprenticeships. This compares with an average of 30,000 completions a year throughout the 13 years of the last Labor Government. The Labor Party keeps saying that was a long time ago so why bother about it. Well, as a Government we have to bother about it because the fact that for well over a decade the Hawke/Keating Governments trained 100,000 less apprentices each year than are being trained today means that there are now more than a million Australians who should have technical training, and don’t. This is the Labor Party’s lost generation of tradesmen and women. These one million Australians are today either in their late 20s, 30s or into their 40s, should be at the peak of their productive lives with 10 to 20 years experience, and could now be in big demand if they had had high quality technical training. The irony is that the Labor Party, the self professed party of the worker, obsessed about university education during their years in government, while failing to provide more than one million Australians with vocational and technical training. And it continues today. In Kevin Rudd’s 27 page so-called Education Revolution manifesto, a lonely four paragraphs were devoted to vocational and technical education. This Labor legacy of one million untrained Australians are part of the 3.4 million adults in the workforce who have either not completed a full secondary education or have no significant skills training. Too many adults don’t have the school qualifications or the skills training for effective participation in the modern workplace. It is why the Australian Government last year committed $837 million to boosting skills and qualification levels among both older Australians and those in mid-career. It is why today there are 160,000 mature age people undertaking apprenticeships, 6,000 more than the total number of people, of all age groups, undertaking apprenticeships in 1996. Skills at Every Level We must also find ways to stimulate interest in training amongst people who have missed out on training opportunities. In this regard, recognition of prior experience is also essential. The training system needs to give credit for experience on the job as an incentive to study, and to shorten completion times and the costs involved. Small and medium sized businesses will require particular assistance and support because they often face considerable difficulty in restructuring work arrangements to allow their employees to train. Training in the workplace and on-line are critical future options. Community organisations providing education services will also play an increasingly strong role, especially with adults not in the workforce who can’t access work based training, and for those who may not be comfortable in more formal educational institutions. Community organisations currently deliver around 15 percent of all formal vocational and technical training, have the highest client satisfaction rates of all training organisations and are twice as likely to have delivered in rural or remote locations. This demand for more flexible work and training arrangements is coming from employers and employee alike. They want training tailored to meet a wide range of needs – whether it be a four week skills course or an Advanced Diploma. Workers want portable skills and flexible sets of skills that can be built upon over time. Workers want to be able to respond to change – both in the workplace and in their own circumstances and stage of life. For example, many older tradespeople who struggle physically to do what they have done for 30 years, have found new careers as educators, technical advisers or in skilled retail jobs, such as in major hardware stores. The greater involvement of mothers in the workforce means that more workers have substantial responsibilities outside work. Delayed child bearing and increased life expectancy also results in workers increasingly finding themselves with demands from both children and needy parents – the ‘sandwich’ generation. All of this underscores the need for choices. Industry Involvement in Training Increasingly, a world leading feature of Australia’s training sector is the growing influence of industry in shaping the content of vocational and technical training. This has reached a high point with the recent opening of 20 of the 25 Australian Technical colleges where the Board of Management of each College includes local industry leaders and experienced educators. They oversee the curriculum, the acquisition of state-of-the-art equipment and foster close industry contact with the students and teaching staff. This principle must be extended across all training organisations in Australia. While I have only been in this job a couple of months, it’s clear to me that Australia’s TAFE sector would benefit from greater microeconomic reform. The nation’s 74 TAFE colleges, across 1,386 locations, teach more than three quarters of all vocational and technical students. The leading TAFEs are typically $100 million businesses, with a client base totalling more than 1.4 million individuals, and industry sectors relying critically on their performance. They need to be responsive to the users of the system – employers and students alike. That in the end is what microeconomic reform is all about. Through our annual $1.2 billion VET funding agreement with the States, the Australian Government is endeavouring to drive change towards a more responsive and flexible system with increased competition, more performance-based employment contracts and far greater responsiveness to industry. To achieve this, TAFE colleges need a measure of autonomy at least equal to that which universities enjoy. Yet, many State governments still exercise choking centralised control which precludes effective industry involvement, and leads to little meaningful connection with the workplace during training and little experience and training on current technology. Victoria runs by far the most decentralised model, where TAFEs are able to operate on a commercial basis, independent of centralised control. Queensland is starting to head in that direction. Is it any wonder why Victorian TAFEs can be more flexible in delivering courses and training; why Victorian TAFEs can adjust to new course demands faster; why Victorian TAFEs are able to develop customised curriculum to suit individual and employer requirements; why Victorian TAFEs raise the largest amount of revenue, or why Victorian TAFEs have more overseas campuses than any other State and have more students studying for a Diploma, or higher, than in any other State. The irony is, the reforms that make the Victorian TAFE system the outstanding performer in Australia started in the mid 90s because the State had to become competitive again, after the basket case that was Victoria in the late 80s and early 90s. Increasing the autonomy of TAFEs like they have done in Victoria would breathe new life into a massive training infrastructure, and is essential if vocational and technical training is to have the responsiveness and flexibility needed for the Australia of tomorrow. This is a matter I intend to take up with my State Ministerial counterparts at our mid-year meeting. Higher Level Training Tradespeople deserve the special support and the status which are available to university graduates. The Australian Technical Colleges are a critical first step. In this regard, access to higher level technical qualifications can allow apprentices to keep several options open. It can lead to much greater specialisation in their trade, eventually reaching a status of Master Artisan. It can lead to further training and careers ‘beyond-the-tools’, in technical areas and business. And, for some it can allow a seamless move to other studies at a university or a technical institute. These options do require the development of a ‘Master Artisan’ stream of experience and study to retain and recognise highly specialised and advanced trade skills. In Europe there has been a strong tradition of honouring Master Artisans, and passing the skills of artisans down from one generation to the next. I intend to strongly encourage such recognition, qualifications and training. In getting many apprentices on the road to higher level technical qualifications we need an approach that also accelerates trade training and gives quicker learning apprentices access to higher level training. One first step I would like to explore is the introduction of a Trade Diploma as a complement to an apprenticeship. Conceptually it would be like undertaking an Honours stream within a degree course. Certificate III would remain the base level requirement to gain an apprenticeship, together with the requisite on-the-job training. Those invited to undertake a Trade Diploma (just as someone is invited to do an Honours year within a degree course) would reach a Level 5 qualification and still be required to do the requisite on-the-job training in order to complete the apprenticeship and the qualification, and be eligible to register as a qualified tradesman or woman. Those with a Trade Diploma would then be eligible at any future point in time to undertake a Level 6 Advanced Diploma, and/or receive credits towards some other advanced qualification at a university or Institute of Technology or move to a Master Artisan career progression. Recognition of prior experience for mid-career apprentices undertaking a Trade Diploma would be a part of the competency based assessment in completing such an apprenticeship. Such a training option extends existing Australian Apprenticeship arrangements and increases the opportunities for higher level trade careers. Such a qualification would need to be driven by industry and developed within the national training framework. Low Level Skills Training Apart from promoting higher level qualifications we must not lose sight of the importance of basic skills - specific sets of skills to enable people to successfully perform in jobs which don’t require long formal training programs. In this regard the life skills and previous experience of the ‘grey’ market is not properly valued. Nor are those with no formal training who could perform very effectively with two to four week courses which give them skills necessary for certain jobs in hospitality, retail or other sectors. As an example, the Statement of Attainment available in Victoria, requires 18 days of off-the-job training to enable people to become a short-order breakfast chef or room service chef. Many of the students who complete this course find work in cafes, restaurants and function centres. Further down the track they can use this short training course, combined with their working experience, as a building block towards a trade qualification as a cook, a chef, or a baker. To make the most of existing skills in the workforce, we need to ensure that people are given credit for the work they have done towards a qualification or other forms of recognised short course training. All training and experience should be viewed as building blocks. On-line Training Platform In the near future elements of such short course training, along with components of more formal technical training courses, will be available electronically. All vocational and technical training organisations, could be connected to a dedicated high bandwidth network to enable them to deliver leading edge on-line teaching products. People would be able to undertake training any time, any place. This would further open the door to high quality training for people in rural, regional and remote areas, and in metropolitan homes and workplaces. The Australian and State Government’s have together spent $105 million over recent years to prepare for the new era of on-line learning. I am now assessing the role that the Australian Government could and should play in a move to a national on-line learning platform which would deliver accredited training on-line in the workplace, in the school or training organisation, or in the home. We have the opportunity to develop an Australian solution for Australian circumstances, to meet our unique geographical and education challenges. Conclusion I began this speech by talking about the world of tomorrow – about present action and plans to set us up for the future. A plan for our young people, for those mid-career and those in the later years of their working life. A plan to restore the true value of technical and vocational training, where a trade or technical qualification is as prized as a university degree. A plan for training to be responsive and flexible, to provide choice. We must continue the rapid reform of the training system and tackle the remaining sacred cows standing in the way of all Australian workers reaching their full potential. END Media contact: Andrew Coombe 0438 777 145   Andrew Robb MP Tue, 13 Mar 2007 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:680 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/677/1-million-investment-in-Bayside-schools.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=677 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=677&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/677/1-million-investment-in-Bayside-schools.aspx Andrew Robb, the Federal Member for Goldstein, is pleased to congratulate 13 bayside schools who will share in $1,011,046 of funding under the Federal Government’s Investing In Our Schools programme of grants. “This funding will provide 13 local schools with the opportunity to buy much needed equipment such as computers, classroom furniture and musical instruments or undertake construction of essential infrastructure such as building a new library or installing shade structures” said Andrew Robb. “Such projects, many desperately needed by schools, never seem to make it on to the Victorian Government’s priority list. Often school communities are left to face the long and arduous task of raising the necessary funding themselves. This funding will allow students to experience the benefits of new equipment and upgraded facilities sooner” “I congratulate the staff and school communities of the successful schools for making applications for this funding. It is a competitive process and the local success is a tribute to the initiative and hard work undertaken by schools in the bayside area” The bayside schools received as follows: • Beaumaris North Primary School $25,315 • Beaumaris Primary School $70,000 • Bentleigh West Primary School $105,440 • Black Rock Primary School $31,256 • Brighton Beach Primary School $57,738 • Carnegie Primary School $13,636 • Caulfield South Primary School $150,000 • Elsternwick Primary School $149,971 • Katandra School $32,594 • McKinnon Primary School $98,189 • McKinnon Secondary College $100,753 • Sandringham College (Sandringham Campus) $31,190 • Sandringham Primary School $144,964 Since 2005, schools within the electorate of Goldstein have shared in more than $3.6 million worth of funding under the Investing In Our Schools programme. Contact: Megan Cox 9557 4644/0414 492 674   Andrew Robb MP Tue, 27 Feb 2007 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:677 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/719/Questions-Without-Notice-Older-workers.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=719 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=719&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/719/Questions-Without-Notice-Older-workers.aspx Mr LAMING (3.05 p.m.)—My question is to the Minister for Vocational and Further Education. Would the minister inform the House how the government is helping older workers to gain work skills? How many workers have potentially benefited so far, Minister? Answer Mr ROBB—I would like to thank the member for Bowman and acknowledge a longstanding interest in education and training. In today’s world, people need access to training and education throughout their life—training, retraining and reskilling. In this respect, it is anticipated that in the future the demand for university qualifications will be roughly in balance with the current supply of university education—that is, around 20 per cent of the workforce. By contrast, in the future, it is anticipated that over 60 per cent of jobs will require vocational and technical education, vocational and technical qualifications, yet only 30 per cent of the working population have those qualifications. This is why as a government we have increased real spending in vocation and technical education by over 88 per cent since we took office. It is not the virtually flat funding so disingenuously claimed by the Leader of the Opposition in this place two weeks ago. There has been a more than 88 per cent real increase in spending in the last 11 years. That is why we also announced, late last year, a package of measures worth over $840 million to train people in mid-career. Among the measures are 30,000 training vouchers a year with a value of up to $3,000. So far, since this program started on 1 January this year, with some 530 registered training authorities contracted to provide over 4,400 different courses, we have had over 3,000 vouchers issued in the last six weeks. That is a very high demand and a very important initiative. It is also why in this package we have decided to provide up to $13,000 in wage subsidies for those taking mid-career apprenticeships. We are also providing incentives for higher technical skills and much more. But why are we in this position, where we are now providing billions of dollars to train people in mid-career? Why are we providing support and encouragement to people who are in their late 20s, throughout their 30s and in their early 40s—people who should be at the peak of their productive capacity? Why are we training people in this age group? It is because these people are the people who finished their early education throughout the eighties and much of the nineties. If each year through the eighties and early nineties the number of people who finished an apprenticeship was equal to the number who finished apprenticeships last year—142,000 young Australians—we would have in Australia now over one million more trained people in technical and vocational education. We would have over one million more people able to deal with the skills challenge that this country faces. This is Labor’s lost generation of tradesmen and tradeswomen—people in their late 20s, their 30s and their early 40s, who never got the opportunity to get a technical and trade education. This is Labor’s legacy of 13 years of neglect and denigration of the trades. These are the people—a whole generation of parents and their children—who were made to feel that a trade qualification is somehow second-class, because of Labor’s rhetoric through all those years. Labor are still in denial. In the education revolution document put out by the Leader of the Opposition—it is 27 pages—how much do you think there is on technical education? There are four paragraphs out of 27 pages. They are still in denial. Just last month the member for Rankin, the shadow minister—listen to it—for service economy, small business and independent contractors said, of all things, ‘I think we can very easily overstate the importance of trades.’ Labor are still in denial. This government and the country must place a priority on training Labor’s lost generation of tradesmen and tradeswomen.   Andrew Robb MP Sun, 25 Feb 2007 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:719 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/720/Questions-Without-Notice-Australian-Technical-Colleges.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=720 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=720&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/720/Questions-Without-Notice-Australian-Technical-Colleges.aspx Mr NEVILLE (3.09 p.m.)—My question is addressed to the Minister for Vocational and Further Education. Would the minister inform the House how new Australian technical colleges in cities like Gladstone and Townsville will boost skills and employment in regional Queensland. Mr ROBB—I would like to thank the member for Hinkler for his question and at the same time warmly congratulate the community and the industry in his part of the world, in Northern Queensland, for the way they have so enthusiastically embraced the technical colleges in Gladstone and Townsville. The people in Northern Queensland have really got behind this initiative, because they understand very clearly the importance of these colleges to maintain the very high growth and the jobs that are so much a part of that region. Already this week we have seen some hundreds of students start at those two colleges, taking up building and construction, electrotechnology, commercial cooking, automotive metals and engineering. The reaction in Northern Queensland is mirrored across Australia. Interjection Mr Brendan O’Connor interjecting— Interjection The SPEAKER—Order! I call the member for Gorton to order. Continue Mr ROBB—I would like to give a couple of impressions from students who began this week in colleges in different parts of Australia. Louise Brown, who started this week at the Illawarra technical college, said in the Illawarra Mercury this week: ‘I think it’s a great opportunity for education and also a trade in electrical. I’ll have an advantage with the HSC and a trade. It will be difficult, but I’ll really try to do well and strive for high achievements.’ Aspiring electrician Nick Habibeh, who is attending the Western Sydney technical college, said this week in the Blacktown City Sun, ‘The college will give me more opportunities and will also shorten my apprenticeship.’ Cherie Martin, whose son Ryan is attending the northern Adelaide technical college—he hopes to become a sparky like his dad by studying electrotechnology—said this week in the Adelaide Advertiser, ‘It’s absolutely brilliant because all the subjects are relevant to the workplace.’ Interjection Mr Adams interjecting— Interjection The SPEAKER—Order! The member for Lyons is called to order. Continue Mr ROBB—These 20 colleges—which have gone from an idea to reality in just under 15 months, a remarkable achievement—have struck a chord across Australia amongst the community, industry and students. Interjection Mr Byrne interjecting— Interjection The SPEAKER—Order! The member for Holt is warned. Continue Mr ROBB—They will deliver many thousands of highly qualified tradesmen and tradeswomen in the years ahead. Just as importantly, they will build on the hopes and self-esteem of many thousands of young Australians. Interjection Mr Howard—Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.   Andrew Robb MP Wed, 07 Feb 2007 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:720 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/721/Questions-Without-Notice-Vocational-and-Further-Education.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=721 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=721&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/721/Questions-Without-Notice-Vocational-and-Further-Education.aspx Mr MICHAEL FERGUSON (3.02 p.m.)—My question is addressed to the Minister for Vocational and Further Education. Interjection Mr Snowdon interjecting— Interjection The SPEAKER—The member for Lingiari is warned! Continue Mr MICHAEL FERGUSON—Would the minister inform the House how the Howard government is helping young Australians to reach their full potential through Australian technical colleges? Also, how will this provide a highly skilled workforce for Australia’s future? Answer Mr ROBB—I thank the member for Bass for his question and acknowledge the wonderful work he has done to help get the Australian Technical College, Northern Tasmania off the ground. This government has been working to a multibillion dollar plan to tackle labour and skills shortages. It is a plan that has already made a major contribution. It is an important part of the continuing success of our economy, and it is a success already. I will give you some examples. In 2006, four times as many young people started a bricklayers apprenticeship than in 1996. In 2006, nearly four times as many young people started a plasterer’s apprenticeship than in 1996. The list goes on and on through dozens of trades. In fact, last year, in 2006, 142,000 people completed apprenticeships compared with a paltry 32,000 in 1996. Importantly, the government’s plan, which has delivered so much already, is also a plan for the future because demand for skills will continue. It will continue because of the strength of the economy, amongst other issues—the year-on-year uninterrupted growth that we have had. The 30-year low in unemployment will continue to put significant demands on skills. So this plan for the future not only includes a raft of initiatives to give us the capacity to train more people but also, very importantly, is about elevating the status of technical training so that people can be justly proud to pursue a career in a trade. Elevating the status of technical training is necessary because Labor—those opposite—have spent more than 20 years telling parents that unless their children go onto a university education they have failed them. Interjection Mr Adams interjecting— Interjection The SPEAKER—The member for Lyons is warned! Continue Mr ROBB—Young people must be encouraged to follow their strengths. We want a nation where a good technical qualification is as prized as a university degree. The 25 technical colleges are an important initiative in, among other things, restoring the status of technical training in Australia. Not only will 2,000 young people this year directly benefit, and 7,500 by 2009, but these Australian technical colleges will stand as a wonderful symbol in local communities of the importance of a technical career. The government has a plan to address skills shortages and keep the economy strong. Labor’s plan is to hand the technical colleges back to the unions. Interjection Mr Howard—Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.   Andrew Robb MP Tue, 06 Feb 2007 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:721 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/676/Questions-without-Notice--Australian-Technical-Colleges.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=676 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=676&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/676/Questions-without-Notice--Australian-Technical-Colleges.aspx Mr RICHARDSON (3.32 pm)—My question is addressed to the Minister for Vocational and Further Education. Would the minister inform the House on the progress of Australian technical colleges and how students are benefiting from this initiative, particularly when I lobbied hard for my electorate in the southern suburbs of Adelaide and secured one for the 112 students who will start next Monday? Mr ROBB—I thank the member for Kingston for my first question. I also acknowledge his very strong interest in the successful establishment of the Adelaide South Technical College. The investment by the Howard government in the 25 technical colleges is an emphatic statement that the days when a trade or vocational qualification was deemed second-class are over. We want a nation where a high-quality technical qualification is as prized as a university degree. Our country made a big mistake 20 and 30 years ago when it turned its back on the old system of developing technical skills within technical colleges. On behalf of the government I am proud to report that, in respect of technical colleges, we have gone from an idea to reality in a very short space of time. It shows that if you get the community and industry behind such an initiative you can move mountains. In that regard, I would like to acknowledge the very significant work of my predecessor, the member for Moreton. I can report that by Monday of next week 20 of the proposed 25 colleges will have commenced, with another technical college opening in the Pilbara midyear and the remaining four on schedule to open in the early part of next year. The program is well ahead of schedule. It means that, in 2007, some 2,000 students across Australia will attend these technical colleges. We are seeing very high-calibre students attracted to the colleges. It means we are on track not only for 2,000 students this year but for 7½ thousand students in 2009. Through this initiative, the government is supporting the dreams and aspirations of thousands of young Australians and their parents. We are getting on with doing what needs to be done. Yet what did we hear last weekend from those opposite? The member for Perth announced over the weekend that a Labor government would hand the Australian technical colleges back to the state Labor governments. Handing the colleges back to the states is code for handing them back to the unions. The unions are pulling the strings on this matter. The unions will insist that the employers involved be shown the door. As a consequence, the unique and innovative role of training students with skills that are highly tailored to the needs of local employers will collapse. The colleges will disappear if they are handed back to the states. If Labor were to hand back these colleges to the states, history would repeat itself and the status of technical training would be reduced once again to that of a second-class career. The Australian technical colleges are a major step in elevating the importance of and the interest in technical careers. They are a reality. They have a big role to play, and I urge the Labor Party to show some spine: stand up to the unions and support the dreams and aspirations of thousands of young Australians. [ENDS]   Andrew Robb MP Mon, 05 Feb 2007 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:676 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/675/Bayside-schools-receive-infrastructure-grants.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=675 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=675&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/675/Bayside-schools-receive-infrastructure-grants.aspx Ten local Catholic schools have received Federal Government funding boosts to carry out important infrastructure and capital works to their schools. “The ten local schools have received $75,000 each from the Federal Government to undertake works such as refurbishment of learning areas, construction of shade sails, upgrading of play facilities and general maintenance works on the school buildings,” said Andrew Robb, the Federal Member for Goldstein. The ten schools are: • St Joan of Arc School, Brighton • St Joseph’s School, Black Rock • St Kevin’s Parish School, Ormond • St Mary’s Primary School, Hampton • St Paul’s Primary School, Bentleigh • Star of the Sea College, Gardenvale • Stella Maris Primary School, Beaumaris • Sacred Heart School, Sandringham • St Finbar’s School, Brighton East • Our Lady of the Sacred Heart College, Bentleigh “Students learn better in high quality facilities, and this money will help to make important upgrades to school buildings to create better learning environments for Bayside students.” “Sacred Heart in Sandringham will use the funding to upgrade their play areas, including the installation of shade structures which will enable the students to enjoy their play times outside whilst remaining safe from the sun.” “And Star of the Sea College in Gardenvale will use the money to refurbish the visual arts room for their students.” “These might sound like small projects, but they make a really big difference to the students and the school communities.” “I congratulate the schools for receiving their funding, and look forward to seeing their works in action.” This funding is part of the Federal Government’s Investing in Our Schools programme, which provides vital capital funding to local schools, to ensure they can continue to upgrade their facilities. Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 132 567   Andrew Robb MP Thu, 21 Dec 2006 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:675 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/664/Skills-for-the-future--Today.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=664 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=664&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/664/Skills-for-the-future--Today.aspx The Prime Minister recently announced a major package of skills initiatives worth $837 million over five years which includes work skills vouchers, support for mid career apprentices, business skills vouchers for apprentices, more engineering places at universities and incentives for higher technical skills. “Skills for the Future will deliver more opportunities for Bayside residents to gain new skills, and help to develop a more entrepreneurial workforce” said Andrew Robb, the Federal Member for Goldstein. “For Australia to compete in a globalised, rapidly changing market place we must build highly skilled, flexible and responsive workforces.” “This skills packages will encourage Bayside residents to keep upgrading their skills so that they can respond to the changes in the technology and other needs of modern businesses.” This packaged includes five key programs: • Work Skills Vouchers – $408m to support adults who want to further their education. People aged 25 years and over who do not have Year 12 or equivalent qualifications will be eligible for vouchers up to $3000 to assist them with the costs of studying Year 12 or vocational and technical education courses at Certificate II level. • Support for Mid-Career Apprentices: $307m to support mid-career workers aged 30 years and over to upgrade their skills through an apprenticeship in a trade occupation which is in high demand through a wage subsidy of $150 per week in the first year of the apprenticeship, and $100 in the second year. • Business Skills Vouchers for Apprentices - $12m for vouchers of $500 to apprentices to contribute towards the cost of gaining accredited business skills training. As more apprentices are moving on to become self-employed, small business operators or independent contractors when they finish their apprenticeships it is important that they have the skills to operate their own business. • More Engineering Places at University - $56m to address a shortfall in engineering skills in Australia which was highlighted in the Audit of Science, Engineering and Technology Skills. From January 2008 the Government will provide more than 500 Commonwealth supported engineering places at university, with universities able to utilise the places in areas of engineering where there is most demand. • Incentives for Higher Technical Skills - $54m to support Australians in the workplace upgrade their qualifications. The existing Australian Apprenticeships Incentives Programme will be expanded to encourage growth in Diploma and Advanced Diploma qualifications, particularly in engineering. For the first time this programme will be open to an employer’s existing workforce and to workers with prior qualifications. These new arrangements will help 24,800 workers over five years attain a Diploma or Advanced Diploma. “Australia’s future prosperity depends on building a highly skilled, flexible and responsive workforce. These initiatives will represent a major investment to help achieve those goals.” For more information on these initiatives please visit www.pm.gov.au Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 132 567   Andrew Robb MP Mon, 16 Oct 2006 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:664 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/662/Opening-Address-to-the-Adult-Migrant-English-Program-National-Conference.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=662 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=662&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/662/Opening-Address-to-the-Adult-Migrant-English-Program-National-Conference.aspx “Cultures of Learning” Perth 5 October 2006 CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY Acknowledgments Peter Nelson Of the Noongar tribe Professor Denise Murray Executive Director, AMEP Research Centre Neil Fernandes Managing Director, Central TAFE Khin Myint Singer Other distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Opening remarks It’s a pleasure to open this 'Cultures of Learning' conference on behalf of the Adult Migrant English Program Research Centre. I see teaching as a job that brings with it big responsibilities, often major stress levels, yet real satisfaction as you change lives. Someone who understands this extremely well is Professor Denise Murray. Professor Murray had a distinguished academic career in the US in the field of teaching English as a second language. In 2006, Denise was awarded the James E. Alatis Award in recognition of outstanding and extended service to this field. She has made a substantial contribution as head of the Adult Migrant English Program Research Centre and the National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research since 2000. In recognition of Denise’s outstanding service to Macquarie University, she was awarded the title of Emeritus Professor in August 2006. Professor Denise Murray, on behalf of the Australian Government I would like to record my appreciation for your contribution in this field over many years, and wish you a well-earned retirement. Reflections Today I would like to reflect briefly on the great contribution of migrant English programmes over many decades, as well as discuss some of the immediate challenges. In the 60 years since the Second World War, Australia has run a hugely successful migration programme. As a nation, we have been very good at integrating people from over 200 countries around the globe. From my assessment, we owe that success to three factors. The first is the clearly regulated immigration programme that we have had for 60 years – in contrast to our European counterparts, we have made decisions about who comes to Australia, when they come, how they come and what skills they bring. The second important factor is our effective border control. Broad community support for a strong immigration programme depends critically on being able to control our borders. And the third, and some would argue the most important contributor to successful integration, has been our longstanding tax-payer funded settlement programmes. As a result, now more than 8.5 million first or second generation migrants are an integral part of our Australian family. This number, of course, includes one of the three largest refugee resettlement programmes in the world, as part of an uninterrupted refugee intake since World War II. A record we can all take pride in. In fact, on a per capita basis, Australia settles more off-shore refugees than any other country, including the US and Canada. We also spend more on the settlement needs of each new migrant than either of those two countries. In the mix of these settlement programmes, the longest running and most important programmes have been those involving the teaching of English to migrants. The Adult Migrant English Program has a long and proud history commencing in the late 1940s with classes held on ships bringing migrants to Australia, as well as in the migrant hostels where many spent their initial weeks and months after arrival. Over the decades since, programmes for the instruction of English have been revised, modified and added to, to reflect changing needs. For example, Adult Migrant English Program funding increased from $2 million in 1970/71 to $18 million in 1978/79. Full-time courses, industry courses, the home tutor scheme, the training of teachers and the development of materials were all expanded. In 1993 fees were introduced for business and skilled migrants and an “entitlement” to 510 hours of English tuition was legislated. 510 hours was determined, on professional advice, to be the average time taken for a non-English speaker to reach a ‘functional’ level of English. In 1997, an additional 100 hours for refugee and humanitarian entrants was provided to mitigate pre-migration experiences of torture and trauma. Similarly, in 2004, the special needs of refugee youth with low levels of literacy and education were recognised, with these young people getting up to 400 hours in the special preparatory programme, before commencing their 510 hours instruction. As a result, this year the Government has made a provision of $153.7 million to meet the expected demand for the Adult Migrant English Program. Refugee and humanitarian entrants will be able to get up to 910 hours of free tuition and migrants up to 510 hours of tuition. And despite what has been disingenuously asserted by my political opponents, the Government, since taking office in 1996, has ensured that no eligible migrant has been denied access to their English tuition entitlement. Not one cent has been cut from the programme. In fact, funding of the Adult Migrant English Program is now at levels more than double annual funding levels that prevailed throughout the 90s. Of course, the Adult Migrant English Program is nowhere near the whole story. From this first programme, others have also grown. For example, the English as a Second Language – New Arrivals programme was established in 1982 to assist with English language tuition for newly-arrived students in Australian schools. Under this programme in the 2005 calendar year, $61.5 million was provided to State and Territory government and non-government education authorities to help provide intensive English language tuition under this programme. Funding is on per capita basis so figures for the current year are not yet available. Add to this the Language Literacy and Numeracy Programme, which has operated in its current form since January 2002 when the former Literacy and Numeracy Training Programme and the Advanced English for Migrants Programme amongst others amalgamated. This programme helps people improve their chances of getting and keeping a job, as well as making their everyday lives easier. Training is available to eligible people between 15 and 64 years who would like to improve their language literacy and numeracy skills. Migrants are the significant beneficiaries of this programme. This year $56 million will be spent on the Language, Literacy and Numeracy Programme. Finally, the Workplace English Language and Literacy Programme originated in 1991 from the Australian Language and Literacy Policy. This programme funds employers to assist with training which is essential for their workforce, and incorporates English language, literacy and numeracy. This year over $14 million will be spent on this programme. So, English language training for migrants, which had its humble beginnings in the hulls of ships in the 1940s, now involves a range of programmes– at school, in training and in the workplace - at a total cost this year of about $285 million. The Challenges As you can see, the history of English language training for migrants has been one of ever increasing flexibility to respond to the great diversity of need. And while diversity is something you are used to, an even more diverse population is likely in the future. The significant challenges faced by the rich countries of the world because of the rapid ageing of our populations, and the added pressure in Australia on skills shortages stemming from more than a decade of strong economic growth, will mean even more people migrating from non-traditional source countries. In the current global environment, it’s not so much a matter of whether migration will occur – it will. Or whether it’s beneficial – it is. It becomes a question of how we best manage and support the significantly changing patterns of migration. How do we keep improving our ability to integrate people quickly and effectively? The shifting nature of world trouble spots also means that people will be coming from places that have not been traditional humanitarian regions for Australia. World events have a huge impact on our refugee programme. For example, the percentage of people resettled from Africa has risen from 31% of the total offshore programme in 2001-02, to around 70% in 2004-05, and it was 55% in 2005/06. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that refugees arriving from Africa generally have greater settlement needs than many people who have previously arrived from other regions, reflecting the Africans’ very different pre-migration experiences and circumstances. Some of the challenges they face in settling in Australia include lower levels of literacy and numeracy, unfamiliar health issues, longer periods spent in refugee camps, little experience of urban environments, higher rates of torture and trauma, higher levels of poverty and larger families. And added to that, many of them are separated from their families. The settlement task has become fast changing, increasingly challenging. You, and those before you, have been very successful at helping millions of new Australians acquire English language skills. You have done a wonderful job and I thank you. But this will be a continuing challenge. Given the nature of our humanitartian programme, and the dynamic and emerging changes in migration patterns, the flexibility of our programmes in responding to the needs of different groups of migrants is critical. The Response The introduction of this wide range of English training programmes, and for that matter, the extensive range of other settlement services, has greatly assisted the need for flexibility. It has introduced more and more services, it has introduced more and more professional advice. But, some in the sector are also telling me that it has encouraged the promotion of settlement programmes that are in many respects value free; programmes that are neutral in terms of what the community expects of new Australians. If, in the end, many of these settlement programmes were to simply give people information about services and entitlements, without a framework of what the community expects of them, then we run the risk of fostering a mentality which works against these new arrivals, and does not support them in having a successful life in Australia. We must seek to avoid at all costs giving these new Australians messages that they are disadvantaged, that they are part of the welfare class, not part of the employee or employer class. Such messages only foster a destructive victim mentality. It should be about building an expectation, from the outset – even before people board the aircraft to Australia – that they are expected to quickly join the workforce, not rely on the welfare system. The communication and implementation of all programmes, including English tuition, should persistently spell out the key milestones to having a successful life in Australia – a job, a workable level of English language skills, high retention rates in school, quick and regular interaction with other groups in the community through activities such as sport. Such an approach engenders a sense of mutual obligation, it provides clear direction and helps establish positive priorities from the outset. Without question, many new arrivals have suffered enormous difficulties, but I’ve observed in most of them very special qualities which are a direct result of their experiences – qualities which make them very marketable in the workplace soon after their arrival. Qualities such as extraordinary resilience and motivation, enthusiasm and passion, a willingness to do jobs many Australian’s reject, and a keenness to learn. From my discussions around the country, I have been attracted to ideas that settlement programmes, including English education, should be driven by, and tailored to, employer needs, with a strongly articulated motive of getting new arrivals quickly into a job. The alternative is to see this motivation, enthusiasm and keenness to learn progressively, replaced by declining self esteem and a mentality increasingly focussed on holding on to benefits, rather than reaching out for the opportunities offered in Australia. In this vein, some express concern to me that there is a growing sense of “take your time, take your time”. Sort out your problems before looking for a job. Also a sense that getting a job or going to English classes are mutually exclusive. If this is so, then in many cases, I believe this to be poor advice. Getting a job quickly may at first be very confronting, but we all know from our life experience that getting on with life heals wounds, builds confidence and initiative, and in this case a job can be a great aid to mastering the English language. These are real and important issues being raised with me, and they warrant debate and resolution. Future Directions In April this year, a committee of Australian Government agency heads began meeting to discuss ways to deal with the new challenges presented by those coming to Australia under the humanitarian programme. The committee focused on broad areas of concern, particularly employment, education and health. A number of important options are being considered to ensure the most effective delivery of settlement services across all levels of government. Some of the matters I would like to highlight in a general sense, include a new education programme for 15 – 24 year olds, programmes for school-age refugees, recognising schools as a central point for new migrants, and helping people to get ready for work sooner through new language training options and support for employers. New initiatives – 15 – 24 year olds With regard to 15 to 24 year olds the Government is considering a new English language and orientation programme. In 2005-06 a total of 14,144 visas were granted under Australia’s refugee and humanitarian programme. In the same period 41 per cent of people who settled in Australia under the program were aged 14 years or under, and a further 24 per cent were aged 15 to 24 years. Under current arrangements, the younger members of this age group are eligible for the English as a Second Language New Arrivals programme – provided they attend school – while others can participate in the Adult Migrant English Program, and subsequently the Language Literacy and Numeracy Programme. But this group really need something designed with them in mind. They have particular needs, because of their age, their transition to adulthood, their level of literacy and English language skills and their turbulent life experience to date. Either because of age or pre-migration experiences, it is not at all effective to place a 16 year old refugee in a very low level class at school, which might reflect his or her educational level. Equally, it is not effective to require a 21 year old refugee to share an Adult Migrant English Program class with the over 60s, with whom he or she has nothing in common. What is needed for this group is basic literacy and numeracy delivered at a greater level of intensity than that suitable to older adult learners; a course designed for young people about to start work, or in work. English as a Second Language for New Arrivals We are also investigating the need for increased investment in programmes for school-age refugees. These kids often arrive in Australia with virtually no formal schooling and low literacy in their own language, having lived in a refugee camp for most of their lives. It's critical that we find new ways to ensure that they get the best educational support they can. Schools as Hubs As part of this support, the Government recognises that schools are often focal points that could be used to link the delivery of services to migrants and their families – hub schools if you will. Schools are often a point of first contact for young refugees and their families upon arrival. We need to take services, like youth counselling, life education, family support, job pathways and so on, to schools with high refugee enrolments. It's not so much creating something new here - several of these schools already exist. It's about all levels of government adequately supporting these schools. There is more we can do in co-operation with the states to support the great work some of these schools are doing. Job readiness With the Minister for Workforce Participation, Sharman Stone, I am also looking at the role the Adult Migrant English Program plays in preparing family stream and humanitarian migrants for work. In the existing programme, there are modules which are focussed on employment, but we are looking to see if there are other ways that the programmes can help people start work earlier. Currently, people studying under the Adult Migrant English Program are eligible for a 13 week exemption from requirements under Job Network which requires them to be actively seeking work. About 80 per cent of people seek an extension of this period by a further 13 weeks. In some cases, three or four extensions are requested. In such cases, a year or more can go by and then the wrong priorities may have taken hold, with unemployment and a welfare mentality often becoming entrenched. With the tender next year, I intend to look if there are ways in which early entry into the workforce becomes a priority. No doubt it will involve incentives to build strong links between the Adult Migrant English Program providers, migrant resource centres and employers. I am attracted to some appropriate version of the highly successful outcomes based funding model under Job Network. Support for Employers We also want to examine whether employers can be better supported to enable English language training to continue if they offer jobs to recent migrants. Options such as traineeships would have the advantage of allowing people to work, but still have dedicated periods of time set aside for them to learn English. Employers would pay only for the hours spent on the job and there would be a real incentive for employees to complete language training to secure a permanent position. The support of State and Territory Governments is vital and I look forward to working with my colleagues as we go forward. Skilled humanitarian and family entrants Of course, English is not the only barrier to early participation in work. Some of our humanitarian and family stream migrants are in fact highly skilled, but they lack networks in Australia to open doors into jobs in their areas of expertise. As one young African said to me recently, “we have no ancestors here”. At a recent meeting, I was impressed with a pilot programme in Ontario, Canada, called Bridge to Work which aims to assist qualified migrants obtain work earlier in their field of expertise. Since it began in 2003, the programme has helped over 6,000 skilled people to find work. At a cost of approximately $10,000 per person, the programme links qualified skilled individuals with work level language programmes and opportunities to demonstrate their skills in a workplace setting. The programme provides information and support on professional accreditation and licensing for entry into specific professions. It offers work placements to learn about industry standards, terminology, regulations and by-laws and allows employers to benefit from the global experience that these skilled newcomers have to offer. The Ontario Government provide loans of up to $5,000 to assist clients to cover the costs of training, assessment and exams and most of the bridging programmes are for people who want to re-certify in a specific regulated occupation. This is something that is worth a closer look in the Australian context. Conclusion In conclusion, on behalf of the Government, and the broader community, I again thank you for the outstanding commitment and contribution you are making to the lives of so many new arrivals to Australia. You can be justly proud of your efforts. On that note, I am pleased to declare the Conference open, and I wish you a productive and challenging few days. END   Andrew Robb MP Wed, 04 Oct 2006 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:662 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/650/Bayside-schools-receive-100000-funding-boost.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=650 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=650&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/650/Bayside-schools-receive-100000-funding-boost.aspx Two Bayside schools have shared in a $100,000 funding boost under the Australian Government Investing in Our Schools Programme, announced Andrew Robb, the Federal Member for Goldstein. “I am very pleased to congratulate St Agnes Primary School in Hampton and Larmenier Special School in Hampton East on receiving this funding boost,” said Andrew Robb. “St Agnes Primary School will receive $75,000 to upgrade the school entry area, storage facilities and furniture and equipment, and Larmenier Special School will use the funding to upgrade external areas including the installation of shade structures, seating, paving and landscaping.” “The Investing in our Schools Programme is a really valuable program which has seen Bayside schools benefit from more than $1.5 million worth of funding since 2004 to improve facilities for our school students, both primary and secondary.” “Our students deserve the best facilities that money can buy, and the Investing in our Schools Programme builds on the $1.5 billion already allocated by the Australian Government for capital works on schools over the next four years.” Investing in our Schools provides Government, Catholic and independent schools with funding to undertake one off projects to improve the schools facilities. This has included for bayside schools funding to improve playgrounds at local primary schools, including the installation of shade sails, upgrading of arts and crafts facilities, upgrading bathrooms and change room facilities and improved heating and cooling facilities. For further information on the Investing in our Schools Programme or other Federal Government education initiatives please visit www.dest.gov.au or contact the office on 9557 4644. Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 132 567 12/06EO Andrew Robb MP Thu, 10 Aug 2006 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:650 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/647/Brighton-Beach-Primary-kids-are-active-after-school.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=647 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=647&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/647/Brighton-Beach-Primary-kids-are-active-after-school.aspx Students at Brighton Beach Primary School in Brighton are having fun and keeping fit taking part in the Australian Governments Active After School Communities program, said Andrew Robb the Federal Member for Goldstein. Active After School Communities is a program aimed at improving the health and well being of Australian primary school children by involving kids in regular, organised physical activity. “Childhood obesity, and its related problems such as juvenile diabetes and asthma, are very important issues that all parents must address,” said Andrew Robb. “This program, which encourages kids to be active, and shows them how much fun being active can be, will have long term benefits for the health and wellbeing of tomorrow’s adults. “Getting kids excited about exercise, helping them to improve their co-ordination and introducing them to different sports will help put in place the building blocks to ensure that they go on to become active teenagers and healthy adults. Mr Robb today visited Brighton Beach Primary School, and tried his hand at a game of softball with the students. “I am really proud of the staff and students at Brighton Beach Primary School not only for taking part in this great program, but for the spirit and enthusiasm they all show in carrying it out. “Also, I would like to show my great appreciation for the many local sporting clubs, organisations and community groups who have helped Brighton Beach Primary establish an interesting and challenging program.” Brighton Beach Primary is one of 1400 schools currently participating in the Active After School Communities program, this number will increase to 3250 schools in 2007. Participating schools receive funding to cover the cost of teachers staying behind to participate, transport re-arrangement costs, program delivery and equipment. For further information on the Active After School Communities please visit www.healthyactive.gov.au Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 132 567 1106EO   Andrew Robb MP Mon, 24 Jul 2006 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:647 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/646/Bayside-students-benefit-from-healthy-school-communities.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=646 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=646&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/646/Bayside-students-benefit-from-healthy-school-communities.aspx 10/06EO Eight bayside schools are helping to spread the healthy eating message to their students through the Healthy School Communities Program, Andrew Robb, the Federal Member for Goldstein said today. “The Healthy School Communities Program provides $1500 grants to schools, and school organisations such as parent and friends organisations, to establish programs and projects which help encourage their students to develop healthy eating habits,” said Andrew Robb. “Hundreds of bayside students have benefited from this program with 8 local schools receiving funding since 2005.” The local schools participating are: • Beaumaris Primary School which has set up a program to increase awareness of its students about the benefits of healthy eating and increased physical activity • Brighton Primary School which has engaged dieticians as guest speakers to discuss healthy eating with students, parents and teachers • Cheltenham Primary School which has implemented a health school canteen policy • Gardenvale Primary School which has, in partnership with a local organisation, implemented programs to increase awareness of the importance of a balanced diet and exercise • Katandra School in Ormond which is involving its students in the development and maintenance of a vegetable garden to reinforce the healthy eating messages • Ormond Primary School which has engaged guest speakers to reinforce healthy eating messages with parents, teachers and students, host a ‘health lunch’ to demonstrate healthy eating and will also get students to develop and maintain a vegetable garden • Sandringham East Primary School which has established a vegetable garden to reinforce healthy eating messages • Sandringham Primary School has developed a ‘no dig’ garden and will use the produce in healthy foods available from the school canteen. “Childhood obesity, and the long term health issues that it creates, are big issues facing Australian parents and students today. Increased levels of obesity, asthma and other illnesses mean that we need to act now to ensure that our children now and understand the principles of a balanced diet and exercise to stay healthy. “The Healthy School Communities program is vital to ensuring that our young people get these messages and is one part of a broader Australian Government program to address these issues. “I congratulate the eight local schools, and schools organisations, who have gotten involved in this important program.” The Healthy School Communities grant offer has been extended and schools are encourage to apply for funds while they are still available. Grant applications and information are available from www.healthyactive.gov.au or by contacting the Office of Andrew Robb on 9557 4644. Media enquiries: Kathryn Hodges 0409 132 567   Andrew Robb MP Sun, 16 Jul 2006 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:646 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/645/Kilvington-Girls-Grammar-wins-55000-funding-boost.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=645 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=645&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/645/Kilvington-Girls-Grammar-wins-55000-funding-boost.aspx Kilvington Girls Grammar has today received a funding boost of $55,000 through the Federal Governments Investing in Our Schools programme announced Andrew Robb, the Federal Member for Goldstein. “Kilvington Girls Grammar is a wonderful school, and each time I have visited the grounds or met with the students I have been thoroughly impressed. So I am thrilled that Kilvington has received this funding to make their school even better” said Andrew Robb. “The $55,000 will go towards the refurbishment of the science laboratories to help ensure that the girls at Kilvington have first class facilities in which to undertake their science classes which will hopefully help encourage a new generation of scientists.” “The Investing in our Schools Programme is a really valuable program which has seen Bayside schools benefit from more than $1.5 million worth of funding since 2004 to improve facilities for our school students, both primary and secondary.” “Our students deserve the best facilities that money can buy, and the Investing in our Schools Programme builds on the $1.5 billion already allocated by the Australian Government for capital works on schools over the next four years.” Investing in our Schools provides Government, Catholic and independent schools with funding to undertake one off projects to improve the schools facilities. This has included for bayside schools funding to improve playgrounds at local primary schools, including the installation of shade sails, upgrading of arts and crafts facilities, upgrading bathrooms and change room facilities and improved heating and cooling facilities. For further information on the Investing in our Schools Programme or other Federal Government education initiatives please visit www.dest.gov.au or contact the office on 9557 4644. Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 132 567   Andrew Robb MP Wed, 12 Jul 2006 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:645 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/636/Bayside-schools-receive-14-million-funding-boost.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=636 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=636&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/636/Bayside-schools-receive-14-million-funding-boost.aspx Bayside schools have received a $1.4 million funding boost through the Howard Government’s Investing in Our Schools program the Federal Member for Goldstein, Andrew Robb announced today. “10 local schools will share in the $1.4 million, which will help provide important funding for the schools to improve their facilities and infrastructure” said Andrew Robb. “I congratulate Brighton Primary School, Brighton Secondary College, Carnegie Primary School, Cheltenham Primary School, Gardenvale Primary School, Glen Huntly Primary School, Hampton Primary School, Ormond Primary School, Sandringham College and Sandringham East Primary School on receiving these grants.” “In particular I would like to congratulate the principals, teachers and communities of these schools who have all worked together to put in applications for these grants, and who give so much time and effort towards ensuring that their schools are high quality learning environments for their students.” Investing in Our Schools is an important Howard Government program, which provides one off grants to public schools to improve infrastructure and facilities. This program will provide an additional $700 million in funding to Australian schools over four years. “These grants will make an important difference to these schools, and contribute to the learning environment of all students.” “The Investing in Our Schools funding round for 2006 is currently open, and I encourage local schools to put in their applications.” For further information about the Investing in Our Schools program, please visit www.dest.gov.au or contact the office on 9557 4644. 05/06 Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 132 567 Andrew Robb MP Sat, 27 May 2006 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:636 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/639/Matter-of-Public-Importance--Trade-Skills-Training-Visa.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=639 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=639&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/639/Matter-of-Public-Importance--Trade-Skills-Training-Visa.aspx Mr ROBB (Goldstein—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs) (3.42 p.m.)—The bottom line in all this, despite all the huff and puff we have heard on the other side—for the third time, I might add—is that the introduction of the trade skills training visa is demonstrably good for young Australians. Opposition members interjecting— Mr ROBB—If you had listened the last two or three times we had this discussion, you might have some sense of it. The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. IR Causley)—Order! The parliamentary secretary will address the chair. Mr ROBB—It is not a matter of neglect, as has been brazenly asserted by opponents who would rather play politics than do the hard yards on policy. We are still not seeing policy from the opposition. This is just politics, plain and simple. And it is very base politics. Xenophobia is being used as a crass attempt to appeal to a base that they betrayed long ago. Australia does face a skills challenge. It is estimated that within five years there will be 200,000 more jobs than people to fill them. That is with our current very high levels of skilled immigration. Have we heard any recognition of this on the other side in any of the policy pronouncements—not just in the area of immigration but in so many other areas of policy? Not one word. They are just playing politics. They are not addressing the challenges that face this country. That is what we are charged on this side of the House to do, and that is what we are seeking to do. There are two causes for this skills challenge. One has been the prolonged period of strong economic growth, which has reduced unemployment to 30-year lows. Youth unemployment has dropped by nearly 40 per cent over the last 10 years. Prolonged economic growth has put pressure on the availability of skilled workers. We plead guilty to the problem of long-term, high economic growth, which has led to pressure on the availability of skilled workers. The second contributing factor to a skills shortage is the ageing of the population. Of all of the challenges that this country faces, the biggest challenge by a country mile is the issue of an ageing population. In fact, the OECD has estimated that by 2025 there will be some 70 million people going into the retirement age cohort across the whole of the OECD. In the same period, in the next 19 years, there will be a net increase of five million people across the whole of the OECD going into the working age cohort. It is a very serious imbalance, which is already starting to impinge but is going to keep going and going because of the reality of that baby boomer group moving through our population. This is a really serious challenge. Again, it is an issue we have not heard addressed in any way on the other side of the House. It requires a multifaceted approach. We have not heard this issue addressed. It is a very serious issue and it invites a wide-ranging response. There is no silver bullet. This is the third time we have had this debate, but there has been no new information—not one word of new information—from those opposite. They are just playing politics with this. There is no silver bullet. We have got the shadow Treasurer here. Have we heard his policies to address this problem? Not a word. The training visa is a further important initiative as part of a wide-ranging response to this emerging skills shortage. It represents action on multiple fronts. That is what this government is all about. In trying to deal with this ageing population issue, we are working on multiple fronts: workplace relations reform, which is a very critical part of that, introducing some flexibility into our workforce and getting a culture of flexibility across this nation to deal with globalisation and the ageing population problems; welfare to work reforms to try to encourage people who can work part time back into the workforce; the independent contractor legislation to try to assist older Australians to come back into the workforce in an easy way; superannuation reforms to encourage older Australians to stay longer in the workforce; tax reforms to encourage older Australians to stay longer in the workforce; a huge investment in skills training and new apprenticeships; and, of course, the immigration program, which is playing an important part. The regional apprenticeship training visa is all about this. It is part of a much wider government policy program across many portfolios to address Australia’s skills shortage. The training visa is but one part, but it is an important part. It is one of many policy responses. The training visa contributes importantly to young Australians in a number of ways. It enables regional Australia to share in the economic growth enjoyed by city based Australians. Filling skills shortages in regional areas— Mrs Irwin interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER—The member for Fowler! Mrs Irwin interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER—The member for Fowler is warned! Mr ROBB—maintains industry and business activity in regional Australia. In turn, this protects and further builds new opportunities for young Australians, as well as enhancing the quality of life of all in regional Australia. There is no more pressing issue I hear as I move around the country than employers in regional areas saying to me, ‘We need to make sure that we have the skill base in regional Australia— Mrs Irwin interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER—The member for Fowler will remove herself from the chamber under standing order 94(a). Mr ROBB—to maintain performance in regional Australia, maintain job growth in regional Australia and to build prosperity in regional Australia.’ Mrs Irwin interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER—The member for Fowler will be named in a minute if she is not careful! The member for Fowler then left the chamber. Mr ROBB—If they only listened instead of yelling at people they might learn something. The second reason this training visa contributes importantly to young Australians is that it protects training opportunities for young Australians in regional Australia. Ms George—That is rubbish! Mr ROBB—‘Rubbish’ you might say, but just think about it for a minute instead of putting your union cap on and just knee-jerking. The DEPUTY SPEAKER—The member for Throsby will have some time to speak in a minute. If she is not careful, she will not get that opportunity. Mr ROBB—At the moment many apprenticeship courses are under threat in regional Australia because of a lack of critical mass. Ms George interjecting— Mr ROBB—Perhaps you might go out and have a talk to some of these authorities out there. The involvement of full-fee-paying apprentices from overseas will help maintain numbers in apprenticeship courses and will help maintain a critical mass. Full-fee-paying students will provide an important source of funding and boost the viability of courses. This helps young Australians. It keeps training opportunities open and available in their region. Labor has no feel for or empathy with regional Australia. It is coming through again and again. The third and important reason why this training visa contributes to young Australians is that none of this is at the expense of local students getting their opportunities. The training visa will only be available where businesses have not been able to attract Australians to apprenticeship positions. This is strictly controlled, as the opposition have been advised on many occasions, by regional certification bodies. These regional certification bodies have to be nominated and endorsed by the state and territory Labor governments. Every one of them has to nominate and endorse these certifying bodies. These agencies are required and are very well placed to judge that no Australian apprentice can be found to fill the vacancy before allowing entry of any overseas apprentice. The overriding criterion is that they have to be satisfied that the apprenticeship cannot be filled locally. They are well placed to use all sorts of techniques to do this, including, if they choose, to confer with local unions if required. Bear in mind that these are all authorities approved by Labor governments. Mr Burke interjecting— Mr ROBB—You may well laugh, but your colleagues in state Labor governments approve and endorse these authorities. Many of these authorities are in fact direct agencies of these state Labor governments. Their requirement is that they must be satisfied that the apprenticeship cannot be filled locally. If they chose to do so—as I would expect that they would if they are appointed by state Labor governments—they can confer with local unions if they feel they need to satisfy themselves about the vacancy that exists. The shadow minister knows full well that this is the case. There is very strong protection. The training visa builds on 10 years of initiatives which have seen a 146 per cent increase in new apprenticeships since 1996, from 130,000 to 390,000. You on the other side should be deeply embarrassed by that. New apprenticeships have gone from 130,000 to 390,000 and you have the gall to stand here and pretend that you have something innovative. The DEPUTY SPEAKER—The member for Goldstein will refrain from using the word ‘you’. Mr ROBB—My apologies, Mr Deputy Speaker. This government has not let down young Australians. On the contrary, the Howard government’s performance has restored a sense of hope and opportunity to the young people of Australia, as witnessed at the ballot box at the last election. There was a strong move by young Australians to vote for the Howard government. Why? Because we have restored a sense of hope. Youth unemployment has dropped by nearly 40 per cent, from 15.1 per cent to 10.9 per cent, at a time when real wages have gone up by nearly 17 per cent. That is performance over a protracted period of time. There has been a 122 per cent increase in the number of young people under 19 commencing new apprenticeships since 1996, and they now account for 41 per cent of all apprenticeship starts. This government has not let down young Australians. On the contrary, we have restored a sense of hope and opportunity. The number of school students getting a head start in the VET program has increased by 253 per cent since 1996, so approximately half of all senior secondary school students are now getting a head start in life. The government is providing funds to the states and territories to support an additional 167,000 vocational education and training places by 2008. We have 24 technical colleges in the pipeline. These are all substantive initiatives. This is a record we can be proud of, and it is one that we have to build on. This government has not let down young Australians. In the recent budget we added to all this an additional $106 million over four years for new apprenticeship centres, $10 million for the Australian Lifesaver Training Academy to provide high-quality training and education programs, and a raft of other measures. We are not going to rest on our laurels when it comes to ensuring that there are skilled job opportunities for young Australians. We must confront the challenge I mentioned earlier of an ageing population, a challenge which dictates that we must do all that is possible on a whole range of fronts. So why are Labor banging on about this? What is their motive? Against all that background—against that urgent need—even when these apprenticeship visas reach full penetration, in terms of young people coming from overseas to be trained, we are looking at an estimated 3½ thousand visa holders in any one year. There are 390,000 apprentices now, with many more opportunities being created, and we are talking about 3½ thousand coming in. Doesn’t it makes you wonder about the context in which these arguments are being put? This is just a grubby attempt to lie and scaremonger— The DEPUTY SPEAKER—The member for Goldstein will withdraw the word ‘lie’. Mr ROBB—I withdraw the word ‘lie’. It is a grubby attempt to scare people in the electorate in a desperate attempt to restore some voting strength to their original base—a base they betrayed many years ago. What we are seeing is a stunt, plain and simple—an exercise in promoting xenophobia. We are seeing an explicit strategy by the Labor Party to promote xenophobia—to create misplaced fear and misinformation—as a means of appealing to a voter base they betrayed long ago. We know that is the case; we are hearing it out of the ACTU. We will see this all the way through to the election. Mr Burke—We’ll guarantee that. Mr ROBB—‘We’ll guarantee that’—some xenophobia from the other side of the House. I will make some predictions myself. (Time expired)   Andrew Robb MP Mon, 22 May 2006 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:639 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/620/Speech--Matter-of-Public-Importance--Training-Skills-Visa.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=620 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=620&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/620/Speech--Matter-of-Public-Importance--Training-Skills-Visa.aspx Mr ROBB (Goldstein—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs) (4.16 p.m.)—We have just heard another burst of bluster and scaremongering, and nonsense in many respects, in this matter of public importance. The bottom line is that the introduction of a trade skills training visa is demonstrably good for young Australians. It is not a matter of neglect, as is brazenly asserted by opponents who would much rather play politics in this chamber than do the hard yards on new policy work. Mr Burke—We have. Mr ROBB—What new policy? What have we heard today or any other day from this shadow minister for immigration? Absolutely nothing. Let me read a quote from the Australian of 15 April last year: [I] do not oppose fee-paying overseas students taking up apprenticeships in regional Australia as long as it is not at the expense of local students getting their opportunities. We absolutely agree with that statement, and the training visa gives effect to it. That statement could have been made by the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations or the Minister for Vocational and Technical Education. All three agree, as all on this side agree, 100 per cent with that proposition. But it was not made by them; it was made by the President of the ACTU, the leader of the union movement, Sharan Burrow. In other words, the unions agree with the government on the proposal of this visa. So why did we have the charade we witnessed here today? It was a charade we witnessed on Monday evening when this matter was debated then. Why do we have all the feigned anger of the shadow minister, the puffed up indignation, the litany of lies and falsehoods and the predictions of doom and gloom? Does that remind you of something, Mr Deputy Speaker? It is so over the top, so manufactured and so false. I am certain that what we are witnessing from those opposite is a purely political exercise. It is plainly an extension of the campaign of lies and scaremongering we witnessed during the workplace relations debate—month after month of lies and scaremongering. For what reason? I will tell you what the reason is. After a fourth election loss and the leadership meltdown that was Mark Latham, Labor are desperately trying to galvanise their base. If I were them, I would also be doing what I could to breathe some sense of purpose back into a disillusioned base. I understand their motive. I would be looking to do what I could to unite base support around a cause. That is what they have been seeking to do for the last few months—unite their base around a cause to try to give them some heart—but they should be trying to do it around a good and worthwhile cause, not a cause based on lies and scaremongering, not cheap petty politics. I would not base it on lies and scaremongering because, ultimately, it comes back to bite you. All this stuff they have gone on with in the House today, and have done for six months on these issues, when the prophecies prove wrong it will come back to bite them. And proved wrong they will be. If Labor were smart, they would seek to galvanise their base around policies they thought would make Australia a better place. But it is not happening. It is even starting to worry their own side. We heard the member for Batman belling the cat this morning when he said in the Australian newspaper: On my own side of the chamber, policy innovation that inspires the people, that puts pressure on the government to perform, and that demonstrates Labor’s capacity to lead the nation in government has also been too rare ... after a decade in opposition, we have plenty of storytellers but not much of a story to tell. Only 19 Labor members elected in 1996 remain in parliament today and they, together with their more recently elected caucus colleagues, according to the member for Batman, ‘are too focused—by necessity—on internal party dynamics that have a lot to do with factional dominance and little to do with a Labor view of how to make Australia a better place’. Try and spend some time galvanising your base around policies that will make Australia a better place and I think you will start to see a lot more success politically and in every other sense. All we hear in this debate is a series of falsehoods and misrepresentations. We have heard it again today from the shadow minister. The member for Watson, Mr Burke, has claimed in this place: I do not think it is any accident that this visa was introduced at the same time that those industrial relations laws came in. Again, you are trying to link it to industrial relations; trying to link it to a cause around which you have peddled lies and misrepresentations from the outset. This is false and can be shown to be demonstrably false. Mr Burke—Was it an accident? Mr ROBB—You said it is no accident— The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Barresi)—Order! I remind the member to direct his comments through the chair and to ignore the interjections from the member for Watson. Mr ROBB—The intention to have such a visa was first announced in April 2005. The workplace relations legislation had not passed the Senate and did not have any prospect of doing so at that time. Consultations on implementation were held with state and territory authorities throughout 2005. State and territory authorities had to be consulted because they are a vital part of the process. This is ignored again and again in everything the member for Watson has to say. The fact is that the visa has its origins in representations that were made by Golden West group training, and I am proud to acknowledge their involvement. They are a big employer of Australian apprentices and that has to be recognised. At a meeting in Senator Vanstone’s office in December 2003, and in annual consultations with stakeholders conducted by Minister Vanstone since then, many employers mentioned the difficulty of finding apprentices as a major constraint on their businesses. Discussions with stakeholders on the possibility of something like this training visa, including the TAFE and training sector, were held in 2004. This has a long history and it gives the lie to your suggestion that we are playing politics. We are playing policy. We are trying to do something about the future of Australians, not play politics. Mr Burke has his facts wrong and, in my view, should apologise in the House this week. The government has implemented this visa after long consultations with many stakeholders, including employers and state governments. Labor always forget that you cannot have jobs without employers—I understand that; I have seen it for years—but it surprises me that they do not seem to have been in touch with state and territory governments, all of which are Labor at the moment. If they had had those discussions rather than coming in here playing politics, they would have properly understood the very hard protections in place for young Australians in this visa. The visas are administrated by state governments—people of the same political party as you, who are willing and able to discuss the arrangements in place—and they would have confirmed with you that protections are in place— The DEPUTY SPEAKER—Order! I remind the parliamentary secretary to address his remarks through the chair. Mr ROBB—My apologies, Mr Deputy Speaker. The state governments would have confirmed to the shadow minister again and again that there are protections in regard to wages, just as we have seen with skilled workers coming in under the migration scheme—which ministers in Labor governments have been defending all around this country against the false assertions of some of your union bosses. If you had bothered to take the time to speak to your state colleagues, we would not be having this debate and you would not have moved to disallow this regulation. This government has not let down young Australians. On the contrary, the performance of the Howard government has restored a sense of hope and opportunity to the young people of Australia. Whether young Australians choose to work, study or undertake vocational training, the government has provided demonstrably good outcomes for all of them. Youth unemployment, since we came to office, has dropped nearly 40 per cent at a time when real wages have increased by 15.6 per cent—and the young have shared in that as well. By comparison, the Labor Party record pales into insignificance. In fact, the Labor Party record is embarrassing in comparison to what has happened over the last 10 years for the young people of Australia. There has been a 122 per cent increase in the number of youth under 19 commencing new apprenticeships since 1996 and they now account for 41 per cent of all apprenticeship starts. The number of school students getting a head start in VET programs has increased by 253 per cent. The government is providing funds to the states and territories to support an initial 167,000 vocational education training places by 2008, including the establishment of 25 Australian technical colleges. The Work for the Dole program has given young people skills. The Backing Australia’s Future program will provide an additional 39,000 university places. I could go on and on. It is clear that this government has not let down young Australians. This government has given great hope and great opportunity to the young people of Australia. On skills, we do have a challenge. It is estimated that in five years time we will have 200,000 more jobs than we have people to fill them. That is what you should think about. And why is this? There are two main reasons. One reason is that the economy has been going gangbusters for 10 years. We have unemployment at 30-year lows and we have youth unemployment dropping by 40 per cent. That is one of the main reasons we have a skills shortage. We plead guilty to doing that. We plead guilty to prolonged economic growth. But it has put pressure on the availability of skilled workers. When you have close to full employment, that is what happens. It is not something Labor would identify with. You have had no experience with that situation. You do not understand it. You ought to get out there and get a feel for it. This is what happens with economic growth. You get skills shortages when you have near full employment. The second contributing factor to the skills shortage is the ageing of the population. Its impact is hugely significant and it is pressing. This was acknowledged by the Leader of the Opposition on 3 October last year when he said we are now experiencing massive skills shortages. It is true. We have had a strong economy and we have an ageing population which is coming in on us. Sadly, that is all the Leader of the Opposition has said about it. He offers no solutions. His shadow minister in the House offers no solutions. None of them offers any solutions. All we hear is carping, scaremongering, misrepresentations and lies about our policies in order to galvanise your base, which is disillusioned and which has lost heart. The member for Batman had it right. He knows what will give your members heart. What will give your members heart is good policy—something that will turn around the skills shortage. And it is not in one area. It requires a multipolicy approach. All of your shadow ministers should be up at this table giving us policies that will address the skills shortage. That is what we are on about. We have introduced reforms on workplace relations, Welfare to Work, superannuation reforms to encourage older Australians back into the workplace, taxation reforms to encourage older Australians to stay longer in the workplace and huge investment in skills training, which I have just been through. Ms Owens interjecting— Mr ROBB—You might laugh. You think there is one little silver bullet. Get out there and get an understanding of the regional apprenticeship visa scheme and immigration. It is a multipolicy approach to solve the challenges that we have in front of us as a country. It is not an exercise in cheap politics, so stop these lies and scaremongering. This training visa contributes importantly to young Australians in many ways. Keeping economic growth in the regions going helps them share in the economic growth that the rest of Australia enjoys. That is a really important contribution. Furthermore, bringing in overseas students to take up apprenticeships will give a critical mass to courses in regional TAFE areas for apprenticeships, which will keep courses going so that young Australians can have access. Mr Burke interjecting— Mr ROBB—You do not understand what it is like to come from regional areas. The shadow minister does not understand what it takes for kids to come down to the city. We want to keep TAFE courses in regional areas. By bringing in students to keep a critical mass, we will protect those courses and we will provide opportunities for young Australians. (Time expired) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Barresi)—Order! Before I call the member for Adelaide, I remind the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and all other speakers who have been taking part in this debate to address their remarks through the chair and to refer to members by their correct title or by their seats.   Andrew Robb MP Tue, 28 Feb 2006 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:620 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/621/Speech--Migration-Amendment-Regulations.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=621 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=621&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/621/Speech--Migration-Amendment-Regulations.aspx Mr ROBB (Goldstein—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs) (7.21 p.m.)—I rise to speak against this disallowance motion, and in doing so I cannot help but wonder why you would want to oppose this training visa. I have looked at this from every angle. I have listened to the specious arguments of the opposition, I have read the transcript from the other house and, for the life of me, I cannot find one sound reason for the opposition to seek to disallow this regional apprenticeship visa—not one sound reason. It is as though Labor has no sense of what has been going on in the last five to 10 years in the labour market and certainly no sense of what is in the interests of regional Australia. That is no surprise. There can be only one reason, and we have seen it all through the workplace relations debate. It is all to do with the relationship between the ALP and the three most vociferous unions on this matter. I refer to the metal workers, the AMWU; the meat workers, the AMIEU; and the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union, the LHMU. Let us look at their campaign contributions to the ALP since 1995-96—the last 10 years. Ms Macklin—Is this relevant? Mr ROBB—This is very relevant. This goes to motive. Opposition members interjecting— Mr ROBB—You are playing grubby politics at the expense of regional Australia. That is what you are on about. Mr Beazley interjecting— Mr ROBB—Yes, you want to shut them up because they are losing it. The AMWU has given $5.2 million to the Labor Party; the AMIEU, $634,000; and the LHMU, $5.9 million. In the last 10 years, $12 million—nearly one quarter of all union contributions—has been given to the Labor Party. So, surprise, surprise that we see the opposition going into bat with implausible, baseless arguments, even resorting to xenophobia, to support their case. The grubby reason for opposition members doing the bidding of their union masters is the unions’ quest to regain some relevance and to increase their membership. That has been the pattern of activity since May or April last year, when the workplace relations bills were introduced. It is politics plain and simple. The Labor members know they have no case, but they persist because their union masters have demanded it. Let us look at why the regional apprenticeship visa was introduced and at the important role it can play. This is lost on the opposition. We have a strong economy. We have had one now for a long time. The government takes full blame for having a strong economy. One of the consequences of high, continuing economic growth is very low unemployment. With unemployment at 30-year lows, you find skills shortages. Ms Macklin interjecting— Mr ROBB—Unlike what we saw in your era, we find skills shortages. This has been compounded by a rapidly ageing population. A study last December estimated that, in five years time, there will be 200,000 more jobs in Australia than we have people to fill them. What are you doing in considering that? Nothing! This is a dilemma, a challenge for Australia, borne out of strong economic growth and an ageing population. We need plans to deal with this. When you put these two things together, you get pressure on skills. There is no silver bullet to address the skills shortage. It requires a coordinated and wide-ranging program of policies. Mr Burke—Why don’t you have one? Mr ROBB—We have got one, thanks. Come right in, spinner! What have you got? You have not got a spent cartridge to deal with this problem, much less a silver bullet. The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Quick)—I remind the parliamentary secretary to address his remarks through the chair. Mr ROBB—Yes, Mr Deputy Speaker. This emerging skills challenge requires action on multiple fronts, and that is what it is getting. Workplace relations— Ms Macklin interjecting— Mr ROBB—Yes, absolutely—Welfare to Work, independent contractor legislation, superannuation and taxation reforms. Ms Macklin interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER—The member for Jagajaga will have her opportunity to speak. Mr ROBB—You have not thought of those things. Superannuation and taxation reform will enable older Australians to work longer. There is a huge investment in skills training. The government has increased funding for vocational education and training by 88 per cent in real terms since 1996—the member for Jagajaga can shake her head but that is a fact—to a record $2.5 billion this financial year. The member opposite is embarrassed, but these are the facts. The number of new apprentices in training has increased by 172 per cent, from 143,700 when Labor had control to 391,000 now. The number of students enrolled in vocational education and training has increased by 26 per cent, from 1.268 million to nearly 1.6 million. Not only that, but we will have 24 new technical colleges around Australia in the next four years. We are providing an additional 20,000 places in the next four years in the New Apprenticeships Access Program, specifically targeting industries and regions experiencing skills shortages and supplying tool kits to the value of $800 to around 34,000 new apprentices each year who are entering a skills shortage task. Of course, immigration can and will play a big part in a range of programs across many portfolios. The regional apprenticeship training visa is all about this. It is adding one other plank to dealing with this skills shortage, this skills challenge, driven by a strong economy and an ageing population. It is part of a wider government policy program across many portfolios. Claims that the new apprenticeship visa ignores a pool of young people in the cities who Labor claims would readily take up an apprenticeship are totally misleading and mischievous. This is a two-stage process ensuring that this does not occur. Firstly, an apprenticeship vacancy which an employer seeks to fill using a trade skills training visa recipient must be placed on the Australian Jobsearch database. Secondly, and much more importantly, the new visa requires certification from regional certification bodies that no Australian apprentices can be found to fill the vacancies. Mr Burke interjecting— Mr ROBB—We can say this again and again, but you will not accept that regional certification bodies, state, territory or local government agencies, local development boards and local chambers of commerce are exceptionally well placed to judge whether an apprenticeship can or cannot be filled by an Australian citizen. If they need to advertise to satisfy themselves no Australian is available, they will. They are competent to do this. They are competent to know what measures they need to take to satisfy themselves. Mr Burke interjecting— Mr ROBB—Who are you to judge whether they are competent? This is typical Labor wanting to dictate to local authorities how they will do their task. Moreover, this government offers a great deal of assistance to young Australians under the New Apprenticeships scheme, particularly in the form of a living away from home allowance which encourages people to move to where apprenticeships are available. We have developed this visa very carefully, ensuring that overseas apprentices will not be exploited. Within three months of arrival, the overseas apprentice must sign a training contract under the Australian government’s New Apprenticeships scheme, which is then registered with the relevant state or territory government authority. As a result, overseas apprentices will have the same core protections as local apprentices and will work under relevant awards and conditions in accordance with the Australian government’s New Apprenticeships scheme. This is the opposite of the scaremongering and nonsense that we have heard from the other side of the House. As with other temporary employment visas, monitoring activities will be undertaken in cooperation with the relevant state and territory government authorities responsible for apprenticeship training. This is a tried and true scheme. This is an arrangement that we have confidence in. This is an arrangement where, if those opposite were in power, they would have confidence in the Labor governments in the states conducting this program. This will ensure employers and sponsors are abiding by their obligations, including Australian awards and conditions. To suggest that apprentices from overseas will be exploited is a nonsense, and Labor knows it. Ms Macklin interjecting— Mr ROBB—You know it. I am also surprised at the rather odd assertion that the introduction of the trade skills training visa will take skills away from regional Australia in the longer term. To ensure regional employers and their communities continue to benefit from the investment in the training of overseas apprentices, the government has ensured that there is a range of visa options for the apprentice to settle in regional areas. Once an overseas apprentice has successfully completed their apprenticeship, they will be able to apply for one of the existing regional migration visas without having to go offshore—for example, the skilled independent regional visa or the temporary business long stay visa. These measures ensure that these skills remain in the areas where they are most needed. If we are to sustain regional Australia and if we are to sustain apprenticeship programs in regional Australia, we need to fill the gaps. Where there are gaps we need to fill them. If there are people from overseas eager to fill those gaps, we should invite them in the same way that we invite university students to come and be trained at their expense. The trade skills training visa was developed in response to representations from regional industry which is unable to fill apprenticeship vacancies. Mr Burke—How many companies asked for it? Mr ROBB—In response to requests from regional industries. I want to acknowledge the initiative of Golden West Employment Solutions— Ms Macklin—We have heard of them. Who else? Mr ROBB—There is a whole swag of applications for apprenticeships coming in. You can see the list, go and look for yourself. This is going to be a very popular scheme. Ms Macklin—You do not know, in other words. Mr ROBB—I do not have off the top of my head the names of the 15 or 20 companies—no, I am sorry—but those opposite can have access to the list. I want to acknowledge the initiative of Golden West Employment Solutions, a group training organisation from western Queensland, in highlighting the issues. Golden West has advised the government that it currently employs over 400 local trade apprentices and that it has around 188 apprenticeship vacancies waiting to be filled. They know their business. They are employing 400 local trade apprentices and they need another 188 to sustain apprenticeship programs in regional areas. The formula, the approach and the opposition by the opposition to this visa will close down apprenticeship schemes in rural areas. It will deny young Australians in rural areas the opportunity to obtain an apprenticeship at a local TAFE because there will not be the numbers. That is what is happening. This is head in the sand stuff by the opposition. The big problem out in regional Australia is that there are not enough students in courses. With this visa we have a great opportunity to ensure they can undertake apprenticeships in regional Australia. It will be good for young Australians who live in regional areas. We believe very strongly that these regional certifying bodies will ensure that we can certify that an Australian was not available to take up that position. It will be a full fee paying arrangement. It is just grubby politics that we have seen from the other side. The opposition is prepared to put at risk— Ms Macklin interjecting— Mr ROBB—You can laugh—you are prepared to put at risk the opportunity for regional Australia to share in the growth and prosperity of the rest of the country. The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. AM Somlyay)—Order! The member for Jagajaga will cease interjecting. Mr ROBB—Regional Australians deserve to share in the growth and prosperity of the rest of this country. Those opposite are seeking to deny that. They are prepared to put at risk apprenticeship courses for young Australians in regional areas because there will not be enough people taking up apprenticeships if Labor succeeds in blocking this visas. It is pathetic; it is union grovelling—that is what it is in response to. We expect better from the opposition, and I urge that this disallowance motion be defeated.   Andrew Robb MP Sun, 26 Feb 2006 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:621 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/606/McKinnon-Secondary-College-receives-650000-grant.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=606 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=606&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/606/McKinnon-Secondary-College-receives-650000-grant.aspx Andrew Robb, the Federal Member for Goldstein, today congratulates McKinnon Secondary College for receiving a $650,000 grant from the Federal Government under the Capital Grants Programme. Staff and students at McKinnon Secondary College will benefit from a new seminar room, canteen facilities and student amenities, as well as the upgrade of general purpose classrooms, the arts and personal development facilities and staff work spaces. “These new and upgraded facilities will help provide the best possible learning environment for the students at McKinnon Secondary College” said Andrew Robb. “This project involves a significant amount of funding for McKinnon Secondary College, which should be a good boost to the schools facilities. “In 2005, $249 million will be allocated to capital projects in state schools, with over $59 million being allocated to Victorian schools. “McKinnon Secondary College already has an excellent reputation as a quality educational institution; this upgrade of facilities should help the teachers to continue to provide first class educational opportunities to their students.” For further information about grants available to schools, please contact the Office of Andrew Robb on 9557 4644. Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 316 620 Andrew Robb MP Mon, 05 Dec 2005 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:606 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/599/2004-Australian-Students-Prize.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=599 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=599&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/599/2004-Australian-Students-Prize.aspx On Friday November 4th, Andrew Robb, the Federal Member for Goldstein, had the opportunity of personally congratulating three Bayside recipients of the 2004 Australian Students Prize. The Australian Students Prize is an Australian Government initiative designed to give national recognition to academic excellence and achievement in secondary education. Victorian students received 125 awards, with five of those being to Bayside students. Each of those students received a certificate and a $2,000 cheque to reward them for their hard-work. Andrew Robb had the opportunity to meet three of the local recipients Andrew Jewell, Eleanor Khor and Daniel Kinsey at a morning tea held to congratulate the students and present them with their prize. “I congratulate these five Bayside students on receiving a 2004 Australian Students Prize” said Andrew Robb. “This prize recognises the hard-work and dedication you displayed towards your studies, and congratulates you on achieving such excellent results. “I believe that all students have individual strengths, be it in English, maths, science, physical education or maybe cooking, woodwork or electronics, and that each student should be encouraged to excel in the area in which they find their strength and interest. “I congratulate these students, and wish them well in their future endeavours.” Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 316 620 Andrew Robb MP Mon, 07 Nov 2005 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:599 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/597/Kilvingon-receives-education-infrastructure-boost.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=597 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=597&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/597/Kilvingon-receives-education-infrastructure-boost.aspx Andrew Robb, the Federal Member for Goldstein is today please to announce that Kilvington Baptist Girls’ Grammar in Ormond has received a grant of $40,000 from the Federal Government. Kilvington has received the grant as part of the Investing in our Schools Programme which is a $1billion Federal Government initiative to provide additional funds for infrastructure projects in Australian schools. The staff and students at Kilvington will receive $40,000 towards the project to install interactive whiteboards in the school learning areas. “I am very pleased that Kilvington will receive this grant to upgrade some of their existing infrastructure” said Andrew Robb MP. “Education is the building block for future success of our young Australians, and good infrastructure is one of the foundations of that success.” “The Government will provide an estimated $736million in capital funding to Catholic and Independent schools over the next four years. This represents a 97% increase over the previous four year funding period.” For further information on the Investing in our Schools programme, or other Federal Government education initiatives, please contact the office of Andrew Robb on 9557 4644. Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 316 620 Andrew Robb MP Mon, 31 Oct 2005 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:597 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/586/Bayside-schools-win-300000-funding-boost.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=586 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=586&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/586/Bayside-schools-win-300000-funding-boost.aspx Andrew Robb, the Federal Member for Goldstein, is pleased to congratulate the 5 bayside schools who have received a total of $307,000 in funding through the Investing in Our Schools Programme. “I am very pleased to congratulate the staff and students of Bentleigh West Primary School, Black Rock Primary School, Brighton Beach Primary School, Katandra School and McKinnon Primary School on their success in obtaining a grant under the Investing in Our Schools Programme” said Andrew Robb. “The Investing in Our Schools Programme is an initiative which delivers funding to schools for much needed projects. For example the funding received by the Brighton Beach Primary school will go towards the heating and cooling of school facilities, shade sails for the playground and a pottery kiln for the visual arts centre. “The Australian Government recognises the importance of providing schools with facilities that will enhance the education and wellbeing of the students. These 5 schools will now receive a vital boost which will enable them to upgrade their existing facilities. “I congratulate the staff and school communities for making the application for this funding, and using their initiative to improve the facilities of their school for their students.” The bayside schools received as follows: Bentleigh West Primary School $47,348 Black Rock Primary School $50,000 Brighton Beach Primary School $90,715 Katandra School $69,213 McKinnon Primary School $50,000 The Investing in Our Schools Programme is a Federal Government initiative which will provide over $700 million over the next three years to fund state school capital projects. This commitment is in addition to the $1.5 billion the Australian Government has already allocated for school capital works in that period. Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 316 620 Andrew Robb MP Tue, 04 Oct 2005 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:586 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/590/Building-healthy-and-active-school-communities-in-Bayside.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=590 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=590&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/590/Building-healthy-and-active-school-communities-in-Bayside.aspx “Hundreds of bayside children are benefiting from healthy eating initiatives funded under the Australian Government’s Health School Communities Program” said Andrew Robb, the Federal Member for Goldstein. Schools, and organisations linked to schools such as parents and friends associations, are able to apply for grants of up to $1500 to promote health eating amongst school aged children and their families. “I congratulate the bayside schools who have already applied to participate in this initiative, and encourage more to take up this opportunity.” Bayside schools who have received grants are: Beaumaris North Primary School Bentleigh West Primary School Black Rock Primary School Carnegie Primary School Caulfield South Primary School Elsternwick Primary School Glen Huntly Primary School Sandringham College Our Lady of the Sacred Heart College Each of these schools has received $1500 to undertake programs which encourage healthy eating. Some of the initiatives include a healthy eating expo, review of canteen services and food and breakfast programs. Australia wide, more than 2,500 organisations and schools have applied for these grants. The Healthy School Communities grant offer is available until 1 December 2005. Grant applications and further information is available from www.healthyactive.gov.au . Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 316 620 Andrew Robb MP Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:590 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/550/Indigenous-Education-Targeted-Assistance-Amendment-Bill-2005.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=550 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=550&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/550/Indigenous-Education-Targeted-Assistance-Amendment-Bill-2005.aspx Mr ROBB (Goldstein) (6.57 p.m.)—In her speech on the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2005 the member for Jagajaga made another contribution of the kind which we have come to expect from her, one of endless rhetoric and abuse. She has given us a 30-minute recital of statistics, cliches and shallow assessments but no solutions, other than throwing money at endless programs. That is the only thing that the Labor Party have on their plate. It is the only answer they have. It is a further example of the policy laziness of the opposition. The Labor Party have a policy vacuum in this area and in many other areas. They have made no attempt, in this very critical area of our community, to ascertain why the Indigenous community is bedevilled with chronic societal problems which mitigate against successful education outcomes. We need to get beyond just throwing money at the problem. The Labor Party had 13 years of trying to find solutions, which involved throwing money at the problem. But that approach failed. This government is seeking to take a much wider view of the problems bedevilling Indigenous communities to see if we can come up with durable and effective solutions. Education is the foundation of freedom and personal development for Indigenous Australians, as it is for the broader Australian community. Without education the options open to people throughout life are invariably narrow and very limited. Without education, ignorance and lack of opportunity predominates. The lack of education becomes a breeding ground for low self-esteem and low self-discipline, prejudice, self-justification, antisocial behaviour, the growth of a victim mentality and the non-realisation of the potential that exists within each and every one of us. For this reason, quality primary and secondary education is fundamental to tackling the chronic disadvantage and aimless circumstance confronting so many in our Indigenous communities. To begin with, the simple discipline of attending school five days a week for six to seven hours a day, taking some lunch, doing some homework, participating constructively in the classroom, playing some sport and participating in other non-academic activities for 10 to 12 years, slowly but surely instils in individuals the life skills, routines, self-confidence and reading and writing skills to go on to further study, or to take on a trade or generally enter the work force. Sadly, many in our Indigenous communities have for a long time been denied the chance to develop these necessary life skills. While adequate resources are a necessary and very important part of dealing with this—and the coalition government over 9½ years has massively increased the money going to our Aboriginal communities—in many instances, other factors are operating to prevent young Aboriginal people from getting a strong educational grounding and experience. Serious disruption in the home and community, substance and physical abuse, a mendicant welfare mentality which fosters an environment where self-responsibility and self-discipline is leached out of a community, very few good role models and many bad ones, and a corresponding disregard for one another are not uncommon. This environment makes it extremely tough for Aboriginal students not only to persist in education but also to reach a standard at primary school that gives them a chance to fit in and keep up at secondary school. The seeds of failure are sown early in the lives of so many young Aboriginal people, long before they have any real say in it. There are no easy answers. One initiative worth watching is a trial project at the Coen State School in the middle of Cape York. The Computer Culture trial is being run by an Indigenous organisation, Noel Pearson’s Cape York Partnerships, with the support of a range of government and commercial interests, including very strong support from Westpac. This program is directed at primary-age school children using multimedia digital technology to capture stories and traditional cultures and is a core component of the curriculum. This approach has resulted in the active and regular involvement of parents and grandparents in the classroom and has prompted excitement and engagement, which is extremely powerful and constructive. In the process of capturing the rich inheritance of Aboriginal history and culture in a very interactive, creative and repeatable way this program is giving primary school students at Coen a strong sense of history and identity while educating them in literacy, numeracy and technical skills; engaging and educating their extended families; encouraging them to complete major projects and homework; and exposing them and their families to the joys and very personal achievements of learning. This can set kids up to achieve their full potential and it enables them to have a good knowledge of the history, customs and languages of their own community, while giving them the educational basis and life skills to cope within the broader Australian community and, in doing so, have the best of both worlds. Programs such as these are powerful and hold great potential, but they are not enough. Money alone is not the answer. In many cases, we are throwing good money after bad, because the causes of the social and cultural disintegration of many remote Indigenous communities are not being addressed and have failed to be addressed over decades. Restoring self-esteem and personal responsibility is the key. Participation in primary education is one of the basic means of building life skills and restoring a sense of personal responsibility and obligation. For starters, regular attendance at school is a must. Parents must take responsibility for ensuring the regular participation of their children at school. Many do not, because long-term welfare dependency has fostered a state of mind which is an anathema to personal responsibility and obligation. If they do not shoulder these fundamental parental responsibilities there need to be consequences through either denial of or restrictions on financial or other entitlements. The incentives must change if these parents are to shoulder these critical obligations to their children. These are the sorts of deep societal problems that have driven the focus of this government’s approach to Aboriginal affairs. The problems are much too broad just to throw money at them. We have to engage with the Aboriginal community and try to deal with these underlying problems, the passive dependency that has grown out of many decades of welfare without obligation. The coalition government has embarked on a wide range of reforms, including the shared responsibility agreements, in close operation with the Aboriginal community to seek to deal with the chronic attitudinal problems induced by passive welfare over three decades. The bill before the House is focused on the Indigenous children from remote communities who have had parental support and the opportunity to get through primary school and have reached a standard where they can hope to fit in at year 8 in a secondary boarding school. There are many primary kids who are still struggling to reach that standard. This bill is focused on those who have had the support and opportunity to get through primary school to reach a year 8 standard and who are well equipped to go on to secondary boarding school. At the moment, only 38 per cent of Indigenous students who commence secondary school continue to year 12, compared to 76 per cent of non-Indigenous students. That percentage could be expected to be much lower for Indigenous students from remote communities. In the past, boarding schools have played a prominent role in the successful secondary education of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students from remote areas of Australia. This has been the case because the financial and practical reality is that quality secondary education is extremely difficult in nearly all cases, if not possible, in remote communities. As the primary school issue is progressively addressed by both state and Commonwealth governments with the communities themselves and the leadership of the Aboriginal community—who are very clearly coming to understand the importance of addressing the passive welfare problem, the gross dependence and the impact that this has on the lives, attitudes, motivations, self-confidence and self-esteem of individuals within these communities—policy will focus more and more on providing scholarships for Indigenous students from remote areas to attend quality secondary schooling in non-remote areas. In this way, students will have the teachers, the facilities and the exposure to the broader Australian community which will give them the chance to meet their full potential and to make the most of their lives by equipping them with the skills and education to move more freely and comfortably between their own communities and the broader Australian community and contribute effectively to both. This bill seeks to assist this policy direction by funding tutorial support for an estimated 2,400 Indigenous students in their first year of boarding school. The aim is to help these students cope with their studies and ensure they reach a standard where they can fit in comfortably with others in the class who may have had a better basis of education in their primary school years. It is an important piece of legislation to complement the raft of other initiatives that this government is taking and the efforts that are being made in close cooperation with the Aboriginal community. We are not just throwing money at problems. This has been the narrow focus and the way in which governments in the past have sought to shift responsibility back to others, to unload responsibility and not take responsibility for solving these problems. There are no easy answers in this area. This government has sought to do the hard things and work with the community to find the fundamental problems and causes of the real difficulties we have with ensuring our Aboriginal children have the same educational opportunities and make the most of education in the same way as the rest of the community. I commend the bill to the house.   Andrew Robb MP Tue, 31 May 2005 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:550 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/560/Win-for-Bayside-schools-with-funding-for-values-education.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=560 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=560&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/560/Win-for-Bayside-schools-with-funding-for-values-education.aspx Several bayside schools have received a funding boost from the Federal Government as party of the Values Education Initiative. In the 2004 - 2005 Budget funding of $29.7 million was allocated over four years to help make values a core part of school through the Values Education Program. All States and Territories have endorsed the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools. Stage 1 of this Program was to identify, fund and support 25 clusters of schools across Australian to conduct projects in 2005 - 2006 that develop, facilitate and implement good practice in values education. Brighton Secondary College will lead the way in values education through the Brighton Environment Action Community Helpers Values Education program. The schools involved will be Brighton Primary School, Gardenvale Primary School, Brighton Beach Primary School, Elsternwick Primary School, Bentleigh West Primary School and Berendale School. “Being selected to participate in this project is a considerable achievement. Over 142 clusters of schools submitted applications with only 25 being selected to participate. I congratulate Brighton Secondary College for their willingness to take on this significant leadership role in the local community,” said Andrew Robb, the Federal Member for Goldstein. “The Australian Government is committed to making values education a core part of Australian schooling and recognises that education is as much about building character as it is about acquiring skills, knowledge and a thirst for learning.” “I look forward to seeing the positive results from the bayside schools participating in Stage 1 of the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project.” Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 132 567 Andrew Robb MP Tue, 03 May 2005 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:560 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/536/St-Marys-Primary-Hampton--Winner-for-2004-National-Awards-for-quality-schooling.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=536 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=536&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/536/St-Marys-Primary-Hampton--Winner-for-2004-National-Awards-for-quality-schooling.aspx St Mary’s Primary School in Hampton is the winner of a 2004 National Award for Quality, has collected $10,000 in prize money for their achievements. The National Awards for Quality Schooling were established in 2003 to encourage and award improvement in student learning outcomes. The NAQ’s recognise schools, teachers, teams of teachers and principals based on evidence that school improvement strategies have improved student performance. A total of 51 schools, 6 principals and 16 teachers were awarded prizes in many different areas. These include support for disabled students, student welfare and retention, community partnerships, support for indigenous students, vocational education and curriculum. St Mary’s received their award for its achievement in Whole School Literacy Improvements. Through the leadership and vision of Ms Margaret Doolan, Principal of St Mary’s, the academic performance, reputation and enrolments have improved. Ms Doolan’s implementation of the Victorian Catholics Education Office’s Literacy Success Strategy (CLaSS) has increased standards of literacy at St Mary’s and professional development has also contributed to a cultural change amongst teachers and the school community. “I am very pleased to congratulate St Mary’s Primary, and their Principal Margaret Doolan, for their excellent achievement in winning this award for improvement in literacy” the Federal Member for Goldstein, Andrew Robb, said. “It is so important to recognise the important work of our educators and to encourage them and the wider community to take pride in their achievements.” The Howard Government has committed $1 million in 2005 for the National Awards for Quality Schooling. Further information on these awards can be found at www.niqtsl.edu.au “I look forward to congratulating many more bayside schools receiving awards such as this.” Andrew Robb will be attending a general assembly at St Mary’s Primary School and presenting their Principal, Margaret Doolan, with the award and prize money on Monday March 21st. Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 132 567 Andrew Robb MP Sun, 20 Mar 2005 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:536 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/538/Healthy-and-active-school-communities.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=538 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=538&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/538/Healthy-and-active-school-communities.aspx The Commonwealth Government will send two resource kits to every school to assist them in encouraging students to eat well and be physically active. The resource kits, one containing Australia’s Physical Activity Recommendations for Children and Young People and the other with best practice examples of school-based physical activity and healthy eating programs, will be received by the principals of primary and secondary schools from next week. Almost one in five children in Australia is now overweight or obese. This is an increasing threat to our nation’s health. Schools can assist young people to develop healthy and active life skills. The Commonwealth and state and territory governments have been working together on initiatives to combat obesity. There is now national legislation to ensure that all schools include at least two hours of physical activity each week for primary and junior secondary students. “It is vital that all Australians take an active role in ensuring that our children remain healthy and active” Andrew Robb AO MP said “These kits are designed to help schools with ideas to help implement the Governments policy to keep our kids fit and healthy.” Schools will also receive a reminder about grants of $1500, which are available until 1 December 2005 for activities that encourage healthy eating. A grant kit was sent to all schools in 2004, under the Healthy School Communities program, as part of the Prime Minister’s $116 million initiative to address overweight and obesity. So far, over 500 grants totalling more than $760,000 have been made for projects including breakfast programs, creating vegetable gardens, healthy cooking classes and health food expos. The grant application form is also available from www.healthyactive.gov.au Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 132 567 Andrew Robb MP Sun, 20 Mar 2005 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:538 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/517/Kilvington-Baptist-Girls-Grammer-receive-55000-grant.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=517 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=517&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/517/Kilvington-Baptist-Girls-Grammer-receive-55000-grant.aspx Kilvington Baptist Girls’ Grammar School in Ormond has been awarded $55,000 from the Federal Government as part of the Australian Government Capital Grants Programme. These funds will be used to upgrade facilities at the school including bathroom facilities, change rooms, furniture and equipment. The Australian Government Capital Grants Programme provides capital grants to non-government schools. Schools apply to the Block Grant Authorities in their respective states, these applications are then judged by a certain criteria with recommendations made to the Federal Government. In 2005 a total of $97.9 million will be provided nationally as part of this program. $25.9 million has been allocated to Victoria. “These Grants involve a significant amount of funding directly to schools to ensure that all students have the opportunity to maximise their potential” Andrew Robb said. Andrew Robb said “These grants demonstrate the Howard Government’s commitment to excellent education outcomes for all Australian children.” “I congratulate Kilvington on gaining this grant, and look forward to congratulating many more Bayside schools.” Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 132 567 Andrew Robb MP Wed, 16 Feb 2005 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:517 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/514/Investing-in-our-schools-A-billion-dollar-investment-in-our-school-infrastructure.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=514 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=514&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/514/Investing-in-our-schools-A-billion-dollar-investment-in-our-school-infrastructure.aspx Investing in Our Schools During the 2004 election campaign the Prime Minister announced a commitment to the Australian Government’s Capital Infrastructure Programme ‘Investing in Our Schools: A billion dollar Investment in our School Infrastructure’. The legislation for this program was approved in the December sitting of Parliament and after consultation with parents groups and principal organisations the Government has established guidelines and procedures for the implementation of this initiative. Applications for these programs will be opening towards the end of February. A website www.dest.gov.au/schools/investinginschools and a hotline 1300 363 079 has been set up to provide further information for this initiative. Andrew Robb said that “This shows the Governments strong commitment to helping promote excellence in education.” Andrew Robb has written to all local schools informing them of this initiative and will keep them up to date on the application process. “I hope that the schools in the Bayside area are able to secure grants from this program, I encourage you all to apply” said Andrew Robb. Up to date information on the program can be found on Andrew Robb’s website www.andrewrobb.com.au Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 132 567 Andrew Robb MP Tue, 15 Feb 2005 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:514 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/506/Brighton-Primary-School-approved-for-700000-catpital-grants-funding.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=74&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=506 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=506&PortalID=0&TabID=74 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/ArticlesofInterest/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/506/Brighton-Primary-School-approved-for-700000-catpital-grants-funding.aspx Brighton Primary School (Cnr of Wilson Street and Male Street, Brighton) has been approved for a funding grant of $700,000 under the Capital Grants Funding programme from the Australian Government. The main responsibility for schools is vested in the State and Territory governments. This funding is supplementary funding supplied by the Australian Government to improve education outcomes and to address national priorities. Brighton Primary School is intending to use the funds to upgrade their general purpose classroom, music facility, library, staff/administration, sick bay and amenities. The Australian Government will be providing an additional $700million in capital funding for government schools over the next fours years. Further applications will be for funding grants in early 2005. Please see www.dest.gov.au for further information. Statements from Andrew Robb: “I am delighted that this grants programme will enable Brighton Primary School to continue its record of excellence in children’s education.” “This project involves a significant amount of funding from the Australian Government which indicates the importance the Government places on developing and maintaining school infrastructure.”“This demonstrates the Government’s continued commitment to a strong and effective school system that maximises opportunities for all young Australians.” See www.dest.gov.au for further information Media Contact: Kathryn Hodges 03 9557 4644 / 0409 132 567 Andrew Robb MP Mon, 12 Jan 2004 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:506