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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Thursday, 1 April 2004) . . Page.. 1530 ..

done that. She has been to university, she is doing some work experience in my office and she is now back in the TAFE system.

Perhaps most importantly all three peak industry groups highlight strongly that skills shortages are currently perceived by industry as the most serious constraint on investment. The question that has to be asked is: What is the ACT government doing about these concerns? I heard the minister refer earlier to figures relating to investment in VET and so forth. However, in the bigger picture, when addressing the problem of skills shortages, industry has still not come up with a concrete solution to this problem.

This Australia-wide problem will not be addressed by having money thrown at it. All that will do is make things difficult for industry. The things that this current government is doing could be contributing to those blockages. What are the front-end policy concerns that contribute to this problem? As early as this week I was lobbied by the Australian Education Union, which highlighted unease in the government’s true commitment to and action when addressing vocational education and training problems in the ACT. It was an excellent meeting. I got a lot out of it and I hope to be meeting with those people again.

Vocational education and training in the ACT suffers from a significant lack of true commitment by this government. As a result, students are not being adequately channelled into careers where there are skills shortages. TAFE, for example, which was once a jewel within the education system, suffers from an identity crisis. Ms MacDonald, who attended the meeting to which I referred earlier, would be aware that these issues have been referred to and debated in this chamber. I appreciate and accept that a former Liberal government cut the funding for these programs, which I do not necessarily think is acceptable.

We now have to look very differently at how we train and up-skill people. Trainees and apprenticeships are the way to go. That flexible scheme will give students portability of skills that they can transfer right across Australia. As the minister said earlier, some of the good systems that were developed through the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, the Australian National Training Authority and so forth, will open the doors and this will become a really good system. Dr Brendan Nelson at the federal level is trying hard to focus on some of these vocational education and training systems.

Just as concerning is the fact that students in the ACT are not enrolling in traditional VET courses simply because the costs for each of them are becoming increasingly prohibitive. We—and I am sure the government—have been looking into this issue of costs. As a result, students are entering into courses in which they really do not want to participate purely on the ground of costs, which is of grave concern. That concern was voiced strongly by members of the Australian Education Union when I met with them this week. We must value vocational education and training in the ACT if we are to address serious skills shortages in a number of areas.

Funding must be better directed to outcomes and quality and it must not be based purely on efficiency criteria, which was the case in the past. I am sure that all members would agree on that issue. What does research tell us about skills shortages in the ACT? The skills vacancy index is the principal indicator in determining skills shortages. In

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