2017-10-17
Ms PENNICUIK (Southern Metropolitan) (16:43:08) — We have another motion brought by Mrs Peulich with regard to the training system, and it is a bit of a Groundhog Day experience here talking about how the training system has fared in this state over the last nine or 10 years, certainly since 2008. I listened to the contribution of Mrs Peulich and the contribution of Mr Gepp with regard to not necessarily the substance of the motion but the failings of the vocational education and training (VET) system over that time. I noted Mr Gepp suggesting that it was all the fault of the previous Napthine-Baillieu governments, and certainly they are very culpable in that they did little, if not nothing, to fix the decline of the VET system and in fact exacerbated the very big trouble that the public TAFE system and the VET system were in as a result of the introduction of full market contestability by the Brumby government in 2008.
I can just repeat some of the things I said only recently, in June this year, in response to another of Mrs Peulich's motions:
… many people —
including me —
who worked in the TAFE sector warned the Brumby government, and particularly the minister at the time, that full market contestability and deregulation of the market would be a disaster and would lead to what it did lead to: massive rorting of the system —
of public funding of the VET system —
and overnight mushrooming growth of so-called registered training organisations …
We always had registered training organisations (RTOs). They were always part of the system, but a minority part of the system. They became the majority part of the system, and a large number of them were very dodgy. They did not deliver quality training to students. They basically fleeced the system, and that was just allowed to continue. Nothing was done to actually rein them in for years. In fact in June I quoted Michael Callahan of the Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE, who said back in 2011, when really this disaster was in full flight, that:
Millions, absolutely, millions and millions of dollars will have been wasted on no training effectively. A lot of people just fleecing the system.
…
The problem is that it's a free-for-all. Anybody can open up a private RTO. The government is not adjudicating appropriately over the system, and the auditing system is simply a paper trail, and it's really easy to fabricate a paper trail.
There were many examples put forward by the investigation that was done by the 7.30 Report, as it was at the time, of this type of tick-and-flick training, where students were enrolled in overnight registered training organisations that were — and we can now get to the subject of the motion — ostensibly, allegedly, training apprentices but were not delivering the type of training that apprentices really do need. They were just running them through virtual training or paper training over a small number of hours or half a day for particular modules that would normally take a week or longer to do. They were just ticked and flicked off, and this was happening under the watch of the Brumby government. It is not correct for members of this government to come in here and say that they are not complicit and they are not culpable in the demise of the system. At the time, our public TAFE system delivered 70 per cent of VET training in this state, and by 2014 it was down to less than 30 per cent.
Of course when the Baillieu-Napthine governments came in I can remember very well the Minister for Higher Education and Skills of the time, Mr Hall, coming in here. Mr Hall is a man I have great respect for, but we disagreed a lot on what was going on in the VET system and particularly what was happening to TAFE. He and other ministers and the Premier at the time said, 'Well, there's been a blowout in the training budget'. There had been a massive blowout in the training budget, but it all went to dodgy registered training organisations that did not exist in the years before. Their response to that and their solution to that was to cut hundreds of millions of dollars out of the TAFE system. There was not a blowout of expenditure in the TAFE system; it was in private VET providers.
I could spend all day here running through the number of dodgy, dodgy registered training organisations that grew up under this completely unregulated system. It was an absolute scandal. I quoted Mr Callahan saying it was millions of dollars, but it is billions of dollars of taxpayers money that has been wasted and no quality training has been delivered. Thousands of TAFE teachers were sacked. Thousands of courses were lost. Thousands of students were not trained or lost their training guarantee or had trouble finding another place. And this is happening just this year.
I have raised it with the Minister for Training and Skills with regard to the Sage Institute and another institute that failed just recently, leaving thousands more students in the lurch. I do have to come in here and correct the record every time because there is a lot of myth making going on, but we had deregulation of the training system under the Brumby government that led to the troubles that we are still trying to mop up today.
I give this current government some credit for bringing in the TAFE Rescue Fund.
Mr Gepp interjected.
Ms PENNICUIK — It needed to be rescued because it was just about to fall off a cliff, Mr Gepp. It was just about to fall off a cliff as a result of full market contestability. That is what it was a result of — Labor Party action. That is what happened, so they brought in the TAFE Rescue Fund, and it is helping. Some TAFEs are getting back on their feet.
In 2014 the Auditor-General found that 21 per cent of TAFEs were at medium risk of failing and a whopping 58 per cent were considered at high risk of failing. That is nearly 80 per cent of TAFEs that were in deep trouble at the end of 2014, and of course the troubles that the TAFE system were experiencing were exacerbated by the policies of the Napthine and Baillieu governments, which ripped money out of TAFE.
Mrs Peulich — No, we didn't.
Ms PENNICUIK — Mrs Peulich, you might want to rewrite history.
Mrs Peulich — The total pool of money was greater.
Ms PENNICUIK — I was there through it all, and I studied it in great detail.
Mrs Peulich — We funded where the students went.
Ms PENNICUIK — Mrs Peulich, you will have your chance to wrap up later. If I could get to the substance of Mrs Peulich's motion, it starts out by noting a comment made by the Minister for Training and Skills that 'Apprentices are the backbone of our training system and the future of our workforce'. I agree with that, and it is in fact true — the minister did say that.
Of course apprenticeships and the problem with placing apprentices, placing them in training and placing them in workplaces in particular for them to be able to fulfil the part of their training that is on the job has been a problem over more than the time period I have talked about and goes back dare I say to the times where our public institutions were privatised. They were organisations like the State Electricity Commission, like Telstra and like others that used to have a lot of apprentices working for them. So it has been difficult and it has been a longstanding problem.
But going back to the report that Mrs Peulich draws our attention to in her motion, the recent Victorian Training Market Report, I looked for her figure of a 19.2 per cent decrease in Victorian apprenticeships and traineeships. I just cannot find that figure anywhere, and I have gone over it with a fine-tooth comb, Mrs Peulich. But in reading the executive summary — before we get to the tables that actually have the figures in them — I was very pleased to read in the key findings section that:
Delivery by private training providers declined by almost one-third (30.3 per cent) between 2016 and 2015, accounting for most of the decline in delivery that occurred in Victoria.
I think that is just code for the fact that a lot of dodgy registered training organisations (RTOs) were taken out of the system. That is basically what that says. The report goes on:
This has led to the market share of enrolments in Victoria held by TAFEs and universities increasing to 43.6 per cent in 2016.
That is great news — up from around 30 per cent to almost 50 per cent, so another 20 per cent to go and they will be back to the 70 per cent where they used to be. That is what you need. If you want to have a good vocational education and training system in any jurisdiction, you need most of it to be provided by the public system. It needs to be provided by the public TAFE system. You cannot rely on registered training organisations — that have just ballooned and are in it for the money and no other reason — to provide quality training. So that is good news.
Also in the key findings it says that traineeships have continued to decline, but not by 19.29 per cent. In the key findings it states:
Overall apprenticeship and traineeship enrolments declined by 6.2 per cent in 2016 compared to 2015.
The bulk of the decline in Victoria came from a decline in traineeship enrolments, which declined by 12.7 per cent between 2016 and 2015. In contrast, apprenticeship enrolments declined by only 2.4 per cent over the same period.
If you look at table 37, that is what it says — a 2.4 per cent decline in apprenticeships — so I am not sure where this 19 per cent is coming from. Apprenticeships related to construction trades increased by 3.2 per cent in 2016 compared to 2015.
Mrs Peulich — It is 19.29 per cent from 2014 to 2016.
Ms PENNICUIK — No, I cannot see that in the figures. I cannot see that in the figures, Mrs Peulich. I think you need to get your calculator out. As I said, they are the key findings. If you look at Mrs Peulich's other point, it says:
(3) that apprenticeships and traineeships in Victoria are at seven-year lows.
I really cannot find any evidence for that either. If you go to table 41, 'Number of apprentice program enrolments by whether new commencement or continuing, Victoria, 2010 to 2016', they seem to have increased by 9 per cent — that is, a 9 per cent increase in commencing courses from 2010 to 2016. 'Not a commencing course' has increased by a lot more than 9 per cent, though I have not actually done the calculation. So I am really scratching my head as to where Mrs Peulich is getting these figures from.
If we look at table 39, it shows 'Number of apprentice program enrolments by provider type, Victoria, 2010 to 2016'. In TAFE, for example, from 2010 to 2016, even though there has been a slight decrease in the last year, over that seven years where Mrs Peulich is saying there is a seven-year low there has been an increase of 7 per cent from 21 600 to 30 900.
I cannot reconcile the figures in Mrs Peulich's motion with the figures in the Victorian Training Market Report, and here I am with it in front of me, and the figures are there going back to 2010 for all of these indicators.
Mrs Peulich interjected.
Ms PENNICUIK — Thank you, Mrs Peulich. I doubt if you are going to have time to explain. I fail to see the point of this motion. It shows in the figures that in fact apprenticeship enrolments have increased over seven years. They may have decreased slightly in the last year, but not by the amount that the member has pointed to but by the amount that is pointed out in the key findings of the report that Mrs Peulich has invited us all to study.
I fully support the idea that the issue of apprentices is an important issue. We need apprentices, we need people training as apprentices in the trades, definitely, and they need to be supported.
Mr Gepp was able to advocate for the government as to the programs they have put in place and amounts of dollars, support staff in TAFEs et cetera, so I do not need to go over that. It is an important issue. I think more needs to be done. We certainly do not want to see any more falls in the numbers of apprenticeships. When I say I do not see the point of the motion, I do not see the level of catastrophe that Mrs Peulich appears to be pointing to. It looks as if over seven years there have been more people enrolled in apprenticeships, according to the report.
Business interrupted pursuant to order of Council.