Page 2812 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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We are taking out teaching staff. We are driving up the cost of fees. There are some provisions whereby first year apprentices in some trades will be exempt from the fees but, generally speaking, there will be fees that will go up. People in the non-apprenticeship lines of training will be facing, by the time they get to 2008, a 30 per cent increase in their fees. My daughter, who is in her first year at the CIT, will not be particularly affected. Her fees will go up 10 per cent next year. But for the people who come after her, the following year, their fees will be 20 per cent higher than they are this year. By the time they have finished their two-year course the fees will be 30 per cent higher than they are this year. That is going to be replicated across the range of courses, which means that fewer and fewer people will be going down the path of training at the CIT. The people who will be marginalised will be the people who can least afford it.
The government beats its breast about being progressive and looking after the poorest of the poor. I do not know where these people are that it thinks it is looking after. What is actually happening is that the government is limiting the educational opportunities for the people that it claims to represent. There is a real problem with this line. It is a real problem of lack of thought and lack of consideration of the real implications for the needs for high-quality training in the ACT. Instead of finding ways to encourage more and more people into training, we are finding ways to discourage them.
There are still people within the population of the ACT who are not finding work. There is a view that if you cannot find a job in the current climate you do not want one, but there are still people out there, there are people still in jobs for which they are not appropriately trained or not trained to an optimum level and there are still people who would like the opportunity to train up so that they can get a better job than the one that they currently have.
At a time nationally recognised of skill shortages, this government is creating barriers to prevent people obtaining the skills that we need for our economy. Economically rational Mr Andrew Barr is scrimping and saving a few measly dollars at the CIT and the long-term pain will be much greater than the $3 million-odd he proposes to save over the life of this budget and in the outyears. Again, it is false economy. He is saving a little bit here in flouting his economic rationalist credentials, but he does not seem to realise that in the long run it will cost the community more.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (3.56 am): The CIT finds itself, once again, faced with shrinking resources and greater expectations. There is also talk of a merger with the University of Canberra to make, I suppose, a kind of university of technology. There could be advantages in that in terms of academic achievement as well as, presumably, cost efficiencies. One suspicion, of course, is that the idea is driven by the revenue that would come from selling off the Reid campus. That must not be allowed to happen. Even if that is not the subtext, the notion of a merger does, however, raise profound questions about the kind of education we offer and whom it will suit.
One of the areas of the education debate in which I agree with the education minister is on the need to improve the options for young people who do not plan to attend university. I am not comfortable with the university of technology of Canberra idea at this stage because it opens the door to higher fees and HECS debts. TAFE education is
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