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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 2711 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

We have a fairly vibrant private training sector. I have been delighted to see over recently times a huge jump in year 11 and 12 students doing VET courses. The number has gone up from about 700 students in both the government and non-government sectors in the mid-1990s to at least half of all of our students now doing at least one VET course in year 11 and 12 in both systems. I think that that is something that needs to continue.

I was interested in Mr Corbell's remarks about the Queensland minister thanking the university system for training up people for VET, because the big trend now with university graduates who want to get a job in an area in which they want to work is for them to go and do a 12-month diploma or a certificate course to bone up on their practical skills. I am delighted to see the interplay now between the universities and the VET sector in terms of tertiary education.

Our own CIT has a number of course for which you can get a certificate and then a diploma and an advanced diploma and then go to the University of Canberra for a year and end up with a degree. I am thinking of some of the design courses there. The ever-expanding cooperation between the university sector and the VET sector is terribly important. But not everyone wants to go to university. Everyone has their unique skills and the expansion of the types of traineeships and apprenticeships people can do now is terribly important. It needs to be encouraged and it needs to continue to be fully supported because it is crucially important to the development, not only of the ACT, but of our country. Some of the employment growth that we have seen in recent times in the territory has been assisted greatly by our strong, vibrant and growing VET sector.

I extend my congratulations to whoever is going to win tonight's awards. I have had the pleasure of handing out a number of awards since 1995. I think that this will be the first time for Mr Corbell. It will be an excellent night. There will be some truly wonderful young and no so young people there. I can recall going to Sydney for the national awards in my first year as minister for education and training. The winners of each of the categories go on to the national awards and in that year we were lucky to have the Australian trainee of the year, who was a charming and very talented young lady. We won another award for a student who had been, I think, a postman and had gone back to train up in the VET sector and he won a national award at the age of 59. We have always been well represented by our students who have won these awards and gone on to the national awards.

I went to school with one bloke who won an award in about 1971 for apprentice of the year. Another bloke I played football with picked one up in 1984. I know that he was a hell of a lot happier about picking up that award than the award he got at Royals for being the prettiest back. The list of people is very impressive list and I am just delighted with the diverse ages. There are some awards now for the best indigenous students. The evening is excellent. Some wonderful people are nominated for these awards. It is interesting to see what the people who do win have actually achieved.

My congratulations go to them all and I thank Ms MacDonald for bringing on the debate. I am delighted, as a former education minister, with the support in this chamber across all of the groups represented for this absolutely essential vibrant sector.

MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time for this discussion has concluded.

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