Page 3757 - Week 12 - Thursday, 25 November 2021
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Let me begin with the closure of the CIT Woden campus, first discussed in 2015, with courses gradually withdrawn from the campus until its forced closure in mid-2018. Woden CIT has had a presence in Woden for over 30 years, and to see its closure was disheartening for many.
The rebuild of Woden CIT was finally promised in 2019 after considerable public pressure from staff, students, the general public and the Woden Valley Community Council. But it will be quite some time before it returns to operation. The extension is a feature of this government’s inability to complete projects on time and on budget. This year’s budget and forward estimates see an extra $40 million added, plus another year until completion. This year’s forward estimates mean that students will not be able to attend the Woden campus until 2026, eight years after the last students were able to study in Woden. This has been a significant disruption for students, and for businesses in the Woden area, who are experiencing some economic challenges because of the lack of students passing through.
It would be great for both the community and the students if the government could provide a completion date and stick to it. It would also be good if the government could stick to the budget and not have to continually appropriate further funding because of its inability to deliver.
There is also a lack of ability to deliver additional new employment places even through the federal government’s JobTrainer initiative, which provides funding on a fifty-fifty basis for additional enrolments. It is difficult to determine where these places have gone, other than the initial 500 allocated. Just 20 per cent of those were allocated to independent RTOs.
The lack of transparency in the budget makes it also difficult to determine if additional places were created, and if the money was allocated to CIT to fund places in existing courses. There are no outcome measures that can ensure that the money provided to CIT was for additional places above the existing. The CIT operation and cashflow statements appear to indicate that, though the money was received, there were no additional enrolments noted.
The intention of this funding from the federal government was the creation of additional enrolments across the vocational training and skills sector as part of its economic response to COVID-19. It would be good if this Labor-Greens government could provide certainty to the people of Canberra that this money went to those additional places. It would also be good for round 2 of this money to have a broader application, with more courses and open applications across all the training providers in the ACT. It should not be predominantly limited to CIT.
Finally, we come to the matter of apprenticeships. This Labor-Greens government recently signed an agreement with the commonwealth to recognise that Australia’s vocational education and training system, the VET system, will play a critical role in supporting Australia’s future growth and prosperity. This includes the economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. It is disappointing to not see this commitment reflected in the budget, with a minimal investment in apprenticeships across the board.
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