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Mrs PEULICH (South Eastern Metropolitan) -- I would like to make a few remarks in support of Mr Hall's motion, which is intended to probe the intention of the government in relation to its recent announcements on skills reform. Mind you, they come nine years after winning government and after a very -- dare I say it -- damning track record when it comes to technical and further education on the Labor side of politics.

Before I briefly remind members of the dreadful track record in relation to technical education on the Labor side of politics, let me first commend Ms Pulford on a reasonable presentation of a thoroughly prepared departmental speech -- rather than on her really coming to grips with this. It was interesting that the speech generated more questions than it answered. It certainly confirmed in my mind my suspicions about the motives I have attributed to Labor for initiating and bringing forward these reforms and structuring them in the way it has. Before doing so I again commend Mr Hall. He gave a very clear presentation with some simple questions, and I understand very few of those questions have been answered by Ms Pulford -- the most notable being that they are putting in some new money rather than just re-channelling or diverting old money.

She castigated Mr Hall for not putting in a submission to a Labor Party review.

I want to correct all those who get up there on the Labor side of politics and parrot these lines. Debate in this chamber is the most public submission of the views we have been elected to represent. We have formed these views through consultation with the stakeholders in whatever portfolios or electorates we work in. Ms Pulford should not come out with that ridiculous tripe about how we should be putting pen to paper and making written submissions to provide the government with the answers that it clearly has not got and has not had for many years in the area of technical education.

First and foremost the government ought to hang its head in shame for what it did to technical schools under former Premier Joan Kirner. The reason there is a skills shortage in Victoria comes back to roost for the Labor Party -- because it destroyed technical education in Victoria and denied a generation of young men a livelihood and a purposeful role in life. It ought to hang its head in shame. It is a party that is supposed to represent the underprivileged and the disadvantaged and believe in access to education, social justice and representing the worker. That in my view is probably the greatest travesty -- it goes against the ideology and philosophy it claims to uphold and represent.

Since then we had Joan Kirner attempting to respond to the need for some form of technical education by creating group 1 and group 2 year 12 subjects. Some of those were delivered in secondary schools as well as in TAFEs. Notwithstanding the best endeavours to ruin the education system, some of our educators came forward and put together some very good group 2 subjects, and I remember teaching some of them.

Kids who were never going to go on to year 12 could finish a business course at year 12 and go and get a pretty good job and earn pretty good money while still having the option of pursuing further studies -- but Labor killed that off too. Because Labor wanted a parity of esteem and it wanted a one-size-fits-all education system, irrespective of what kids were interested in and what their needs were.

Of course it failed. It failed because the best system is one that delivers a mixed economy of service provision -- a mixed economy, not a jigsaw puzzle as the government is now coming up with. It is a jigsaw puzzle that will be very difficult to audit for quality. It will be even more difficult to centralise in terms of data and to be kept aboveboard and incorruptible. I think that will be a big challenge. Ms Pulford answered the question of why this has been introduced.

These reforms are intended to siphon money out of the TAFE system, out of the bricks and mortar of those wonderful institutions that serve a very important purpose in our community, to the union movement and the businesses that Labor has intimidated to form alliances with it in these training organisations.

All you have to do is get onto the web pages of the major unions and have a look at the courses they are offering. What they want is government funding for them. The hand is out and it is going to take a whole lot of money out of our TAFE system to fund various union-inspired -- obviously RTOs (registered training organisations) -- alliances that are designed to meet the needs of those in the workplace. Labor has traded off the school leavers who will be less likely to take up tertiary and further education, TAFE, courses because of the increased fees.

It is an absolutely brainless idea to argue that somehow by increasing the fees and putting in place a higher education contribution scheme-type system that is going to burden people with somehow you will increase the number of people taking advantage of the system. That is ridiculous, and members opposite know it. What it might do is inject some funds into workplace courses delivered by unions and those businesses which know how business operates under Labor. They know it is 'You play my ball or we are going to break you'. We saw it in New South Wales where the Labor Party broke the back of the state government. That is how you do it. You are a vindictive bunch and unless people play your game it is no game.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Mr Pakula) -- Order! Through the Chair, Mrs Peulich.

Mrs PEULICH -- What Labor is trading off is the right of school leavers, particularly those Ms Pulford claims to represent in regional Victoria and many in Labor's marginal seats, to have an accessible education. The government is going to trade these people off and have a proliferation of courses in the workplace -- which are needed. As I said, we do need a mixed economy. But many of the people doing those courses will already be earning enough money to trigger off the repayments. They will not be carrying the debt; they will be assisting the government's cash flow. The school leavers will have to defer that debt to a future point and the government will not have that money to fund the courses. In addition to the first-time school leavers, women seeking to re-enter the workforce will be denied the opportunity to take up government-funded courses if they are retraining. If, as Mr Hall mentioned, they hold a diploma in a particular course but wish to pursue another, say in hospitality or retail, to gain a second diploma, they will not be entitled to a government-funded place.

How does this sit together? In the 1980s we had Labor destroying the technical school system and the attempt to provide for the same cohort by imposing a one-year-12-certificate-fits-all approach. We now have a VET (vocational education and training) system and the need for every school to have a VET wing rather than having a concentration of technical expertise and resources in reasonably accessible -- maybe regional or subregional -- facilities. We know how difficult it is to staff these facilities, to pay for the equipment that is required and to establish the business and industry links required to make them work for young people. At a federal level Labor has destroyed former Prime Minister John Howard's attempts to set up technical colleges. It has heavy-armed the Geelong proposal, because its entire concept of technical education is so ideologically driven that it cannot see the wood for the trees. That is Labor's problem.

How is all this going to pan out? My concern is for this very important sector. Some of the comments made by Ms Pulford were accurate -- it is a very important sector. Our earnings from education exports are significant. We have a skills shortage, not the least reason for which are Labor Party policies over a number of years. Members should remember that since the 1980s Labor has formed government in the state of Victoria for many more years than those on this side have -- 21 years for the Labor side and 7 years for our side -- so the system has been under Labor's stewardship for much of that time.

As I said before, TAFE has been a terribly underfunded system. Ms Pulford provided the answer to Mr Hall's question about where we will find the 900 TAFE teachers we are currently short. The answer is to look at some of the union and RTO web pages.

The idea is that somehow through contestability the government is being respectful of market forces when really it is just a mechanism, just a ruse, just a Trojan Horse for getting the money out of the TAFEs and moving it into unions or union-business-type alliances.

The Assembly electorate of Mount Waverley is serviced by the Wantirna campus of the Swinburne University of Technology and the Glen Waverley and Chadstone campuses of Holmesglen Institute. Holmesglen in particular is very capitalised. If it loses money because of these courses it now has to contest for and it cannot properly plan for, I imagine that over time it will end up with a lot more space than it requires. The electorate of Gembrook is serviced by the Warragul campus of the Central Gippsland Institute of TAFE and the Berwick campus of the Chisholm Institute of TAFE. It has also invested significant funds in capital works, especially at the Berwick campus. I think recently a further addition to the campus was opened.

My suspicion is that its funding future will look bleaker.

The lower house electorates of Forest Hill and Mitcham are serviced by the Croydon, Wantirna and Lilydale campuses of Swinburne. The electorate of South Barwon is serviced by the Gordon Institute of TAFE at Geelong, Victoria University at Werribee and RMIT at Point Cook. The Frankston and Mordialloc electorates are serviced by Chisholm at Frankston, Holmesglen at Moorabbin and Chisholm at Cranbourne. The electorate of Ripon is serviced by the Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE and Ballarat University at Ararat. The seat of Bendigo East is serviced by the Bendigo regional campus. The seats of Ballarat East and Ballarat West have the Ballarat campus of Ballarat University. The electorate of Seymour has the Seymour campus of the Goulburn Ovens Institute of TAFE.

Each of those TAFEs and communities will be disadvantaged because we know full well that economic barriers are the most significant in the decision whether to pursue further education. The reality is that if the price of a course is increased from $800 to $2500, notwithstanding the fact that it is only approximately 20 per cent of the cost of an entire course, people will be less likely to take up those courses. I acknowledge that the scale of price increase varies depending on the level. The greatest impost is being borne by those enrolling in diploma and advanced diploma courses. It is a little less for certificates III and IV, and the new foundation education courses will incur the lowest increase in cost. Nonetheless it makes no sense whatsoever to argue that by increasing the cost access will be increased. For a particular demographic that will not be the case. These are the very people Labor has betrayed over 20 years of education policy.

Let us be quite clear about this.

There is a proliferation and burgeoning of union training activities in partnership with various training organisations. Ms Pulford is pulling faces but I visited a number of websites to check this out. I was absolutely astonished by the amount of training that is being provided by the union movement -- let me say much of it self-serving and I imagine much of it funded out of the government's pockets. I visited the website of the Electrical Trades Union of Australia. It has a quite significant number of courses.

It is a very extensive 2008 training calendar. I invite members to have a look.

Ms Pulford -- Its affections for the Labor government are well known.

Mrs PEULICH -- At the end of the day Ms Pulford makes a valid point. It is likely that the Electrical Trades Union of Australia will get less funding than the preferred unions.

The difficulty with this scheme -- this fragmentation, this jigsaw puzzle -- is that it is more susceptible to that sort of dealing. I do not trust the government in this sort of a system, because we know that the Labor Party operates on favours. We have seen how it operates. It is the servant of unions rather than the servant of good policy and the servant of those communities that have elected it to be represented by its members.

There will be a really big need to audit the quality of those programs, to centralise the data, to make sure that there is not open to corruption and misuse of that sort of funding. There will be a need to have some regular auditing of how these reforms are implemented. I am going to forecast that in 10 years time I suspect our TAFE system will be in a far worse state than it currently is. I think already we are paying a very heavy price after 20 years of misguided reforms, most of them stemming from the Labor side of politics.

With those few words, I would like to commend Mr Hall for trying to bring some transparency and trying to get us some answers to what these reforms are about. I do not think his request for information has been fully satisfied. I suspect that we are going to hear more about this over time, but most importantly we are going to have to keep a very close eye on these TAFEs that over time have invested a lot of money on developing the programs and courses and a lot of money on developing their teaching personnel, notwithstanding the fact that many of them are on short contracts, because I think the effect will be dramatic. I think it is instructive that Ms Pulford did not refer to the concerns raised by the Australian Education Union. It speaks volumes.

I thank Mr Hall for moving this motion. As a former educator I am very concerned that the fate of our school leavers who are not going to university will be less adequately served and fulfilled under these reforms than has previously been the case.

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