PRIME MINISTER
ADDRESS BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P. J. KEATING MP
TO THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL TRAINING AUTHORITY CONFERENCE,
BRISBANE, FRIDAY 10 FEBRUARY 1995
I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak to you,
at this first Australian National Training Authority
conference. The National Training Authority has a special
significance for me: I might say a special place in my
heart and in my mind.
Vocational training is like that warm hearts and cool
heads are what we need.
And I don't think I have to tell you I'm a TAFE person.
I was an early leaver a normal leaver in those days
and I picked up a formal qualification at Belmore
Technical College.
ANTA was one of the first major creations of the Keating
Government: prefigured in One Nation of which
vocational education and training initiatives were a $ 720
million centrepiece and announced at a Youth Summit
later in 1992.
It seems an eternity ago three Budgets, a major
economic statement, the White paper on Employment, the
statement on the arts and the new media, an election,
three Opposition leaders and much else.
Even in those three years there have been quite
remarkable changes in the lives of our people, in our
national life: changes both in our economy and society,
and in our understanding of ourselves and the world
around us.
Unemployment is at last falling, employment growing more
strongly than ever before in our history, we have the
fastest growing economy in the OECD, investment is
booming. Our perspectives and expectations have changed. our role
in the region has materially altered and appreciation of
it is deeper and more sophisticated.
The information highway is upon us. Much more than we
did three years ago, we talk about information
technology, information highways, new media, Internet.
Because it is happening before our eyes, we are more
aware that our children will learn things we never knew,
by means we never had and I fear we will never really
understand. The same goes for work: the revolution in work we are
living through, particularly the rise of knowledge-based
industries, is changing much more than our working lives
it is changing the structure of our society.
And if we do not address and facilitate these changes, we
will disastrously fail the generations of the next
century. That is why ANTA is so important it was created to
address and facilitate the changes. Its success is
crucial to our future.
That is why I said ANTA has a special significance for me
and for the Government: because there is nothing more
gratifying in a political life than to have created
something for the times ahead.
Governments do not always discern the currents of change.
This time I know we have.
When we do these things there is a buzz of approval and
enlightened interest and it lasts about 10 minutes and
fades.
But the reality doesn't fade with it, and nor do the
challenges which face us.
And now, three years later, we have in ANTA a body to
meet and confront them.
I think of AI4TA as a bridge by which Australians can get
from the old to the new into the realm of new
opportunities, into the new jobs, into the new
technology. From fading industries to the industries of the future.
It is a bridge, but not an unchangeable, inflexible one,
I hope not an impregnable bureaucratic edifice.
It needs to reflect the change it is dealing with. That
means it must be adaptable, flexible, portable,
approachable. It has to get women across, working mothers, new
migrants, poor Australians and their children, Aboriginal
Australians.
It has to be a bridge f or people in the growing number of
industries where retraining of various kinds is necessary
as often as every two years.
It is not the only bridge we have, but it is an essential
one. It provides the framework for the journey.
As our economy and society changes it has to give
Australians the training they will need to keep up, to
make the transition from unskilled to skilled, from
manufacturing industries to knowledge-based industries,
from school to work, from unemployment to employment.
In the last Atlantic Monthly, Peter Drucker declared that
in future there would be " no poor countries. Only
ignorant countries.",
Australia simply cannot afford to be an " ignorant
country". Nor can we afford to stand still. We can't afford to let
old ways of thinking govern our response to present
needs, or let old institutions administer to the future.
Remarkably enough there are still influential people in
Australia who tell us that the 1950s was a period we
might usefully try to imitate. There were so many jobs
in the fifties, after all.
For once a bureaucratic answer is the right one. " Not
applicable".
Certainly there were jobs in the fifties.
I can personally vouch for it I left school to take
one. But, I hardly need to tell this audience that my job and
most of the others of that era have gone gone as
emphatically forever as those in farming, which a century
ago were still the most numerous of all.
I may not need to tell this audience but it is very
important that all Australians know the way the wind is
blowing. It is likely that by early in the new century a third or
more of jobs in Australia will be in the so-called
knowledge-based industries.
That does not mean our manufacturing industry will shrink
quite the opposite.
In the past ten years our manufacturing output has
increased by over thirty per cent, but the number of
people directly employed in manufacturing is actually
less than it was a decade ago.
In manufacturing, we produce more vastly more but
with fewer people.
Increasingly those people need skills and training. And,
of course, so do the people in the industries where the
new jobs are the service industries, the
knowledge based industries.
The unmistakeable fact is that, if we are to serve this
and future generations, we need ANTA; we need the
initiatives in Working Nation; we need NETTFORCE; we
need a vocational education and training system as good
as any in the world.
We need more of these things to be a competitive and
efficient country, a country in the front rank of nations
and a fair and equitable social democracy.
ANTA is more than a bridge between old industries and new
ones, old lives and new ones it is a bridge between the
past Australia and the future. It will be an essential
underpinning of our success as a nation in the 21st
century. I said before that there had been dramatic changes even
in the three short years since ANTA was first proposed.
One of those changes has been in education and training
itself.
We pledged those $ 720 million dollars in One Nation
because we had reached an impasse: schools and
universities had grown rapidly, but TAFE was actually
declining. And budgetary problems left the States unable to expand
the system.
The changes have been remarkable. We all might take a
little uncomplacent pride in them, and even allow
ourselves to think that, if we can do these national
things in vocational education, we can do them in other
spheres of great national importance.
In short, we now have national strategic planning of
vocational education and training; cohesion and
cooperation in place of the dislocation and
inefficiencies of the past.
We have certainty of funding for the States triennial
funding and through-growth funding.
We have two spheres of government working through a
ministerial council; employers and unions working
together on an industry-controlled board.
And, in what may one day be seen as a landmark in our
national development, we have ANTA established in
Brisbane, one of the dynamic regions of Australia: one
of the regions of the future, with many of the industries
of the future.
Over the period 1993-97 the Commonwealth will have
contributed $ 1.5 billion to vocational education and
training.
We have more than doubled our expenditure since 1989.
Most importantly of all, by the end of this year we will
be able to say that in the last four years the number of
people enrolled in TAFE has grown by 25 per cent that
more than a quarter of a million Australians have entered
the system.
This expansion of training will soon be transforming the
Australian workforce.
To illustrate this: in 1986, 45 per cent of Australian
workers held post-school qualifications. In 1995 we are
on track to a figure of 65 per cent by 2001.
In other words, from a country where a significant
majority of workers held no post-school qualifications to
one where two-thirds do.
In addition, ANTA is now spearheading the implementation
of Australia's new entry-level training system the
Australian Vocational Training System which will
combine education and training with experience in
workplaces. This will mean a more integrated framework for existing
training pathways, such as apprenticeships and
traineeships; and it will enable young people to combine
more traditional academic school subjects with vocational
education. I think we can say now that we are well on the way to
making a reality the concept of an employment, education
and training entitlement for young people leaving school.
And I might say in passing, that while Governments bear
the ultimate responsibility for achieving that objective,
we should set ourselves the complementary goal of seeing
it become a community value one held by parents,
schools, employers and, of course, young people
themselves. Nor should we forget that in the modern economy the need
for retraining among older workers and older unemployed
people can be as profound as that of our young people.
The process of workplace reform and enterprisebargaining,
and the drive to high quality and best
practice, is generating demand among companies demands
and opportunities f or people in occupations regarded in
the past as semi-skilled or unskilled.
You have clients who have had no formal education and
training for perhaps fifteen or twenty years.
Many will have had no education or training in this
country. There can scarcely be a greater responsibility than the
one which is placed on those who provide it and I
suspect that, whatever short term frustrations you may
encounter, in the long run fulfilling that responsibility
will be a uniquely rewarding experience.
You are involved in a quiet revolution, one which is
recognised and admired abroad; and, more importantly,
one which will significantly shape the Australian economy
and society in the next century.
Now I could spend the remainder of this speech listing
further achievements like the fact that today almost
the same number of young people are studying at TAPE the
year after leaving school as are going to university.
Or I could instance some of the many benefits of growth
in the training sector.
The kinds of benefits which flow from the Vehicle
Industry Certificate which has been developed at Ford.
Or the on-site training which is providing skills
and learning opportunities to workers in food processing
companies in the Murray Goulburn area.
I could itemise the progress and talk at length about
some of the more remarkable achievements of recent times.
I could, for instance, talk about the initiatives in
Working Nation the most comprehensive response to the
aftermath of the international recession of any country
in the world.
But it is mandatory on occasions such as this to point
out that there is still a great deal to be done and many
obstacles to overcome along the way.
Mandatory and necessary.
We have made tremendous progress, but not yet as much as
we made in expanding secondary and higher education in
the 1980s.
We transformed the university sector from an elite to a
mass education system, and we doubled retention rates in
secondary schools.
We need a revolution of at least the same proportions in
vocational education.
If it is true that, as Peter Drucker says, " knowledge is
the only meaningful resource today", we have to deliver
knowledge to the workforce as a whole.
The imperatives of economic success demand it. The equal
imperatives of social equity and cohesion demand it.
To provide it, we will need to dissolve the boundaries
between schools and training, and between training
institutions and industry.
We are competing with countries like Germany, Sweden and
France, which have well developed links between employer
associations, training institutions and schools.
Asian economies like Taiwan and Korea are rapidly moving
in the same direction. We must move just as quickly.
If we want a high wage/ high skills economy with high
levels of employment, a world class training system is
absolutely essential.
Let me, then, briefly address three areas which it seems
to me, we will need to tackle if we are to develop and
maintain such a world class system.
First, we will need to improve the quality and
responsiveness of the system.
Second, we will need to expand it expand it to the
point where vocational education and training is the
norm, not the exception.
And third, we will need to get the balance right the
balance between different types of education and
training.
Quality, understandably enough, is often measured by the
standard of buildings and the qualifications of staff.
Given the standards of a few years ago compared with the
world class facilities and teachers we now have, we could
be forgiven for thinking that we are rapidly approaching
our quality goals.
Ultimately, however, the quality of our training system
has to be measured by its responsiveness to clients its
responsiveness to industry and students alike.
I am well aware that over the last few years industry has
sometimes complained that the training reform agenda is
hard to comprehend, and that the system assumed a
knowledge of industry's requirements instead of taking
steps to actually find out what they are.
The skill needs of industry and individuals are changing
so rapidly there must be mechanisms to ensure that
training and industry are moving hand in hand.
Consider for a moment just two statistics: in the German
metals engineering industry knowledge turns over every
five years, and in the German information technology
industry it turns over every two years.
We need to ensure that training reform keeps up with the
astonishing rate of industrial change. We therefore need
to ensure that training reform is industry driven.
Working Nation set us on that course and since then ANTA
has undertaken its own review of the reform agenda.
I am pleased to say a number of key reforms are in train.
For instance, an Enterprise Stream has been developed to
cater for the special training requirements of larger
enterprises. And ANTA will be undertaking a series of pilots of
userAchoice which will allow firms to choose the provider
for off-the-job training.
The second great challenge is to expand the coverage.
By 2001, 95 per cent of 19 year olds will have completed
Year 12 or an initial post-school qualification, or be
participating in formally recognised education and
training. That is the goal agreed to by all Australian governments.
In Working Nation we announced a series of measures to
extend the coverage:
The Youth Training Initiative, to enable fifteen to
seventeen year olds to get into education, training or
work through individual case management;
The Australian Student Traineeship Foundation to
enable Year 11 and 12 students to receive vocational
training and work experience; and
The National Employment and Training Taskforce
NETTFORCE which, under the leadership of Bill Kelty and
Lindsay Fox, has already approved the establishment of 21
industry training companies and consulted with State
training authorities to streamline their accreditation
arrangements. These reforms will make a difference, but they need the
support of other players.
Employers will have to take on more trainees, and State
school systems will have to become flexible enough for
students to combine vocational training with academic
study. It seems to me we should consider moving towards a
European model where employer associations take a key
responsibility for training.
It may be possible to encourage larger employers to pool
their incentive payments with an employer association, so
that projects can be undertaken to improve training
within an industry.
When we speak of coverage, we also need to recognise that
the current system is not doing enough for women.
Women are woefully under-represented in trade training.
And only half as many women as men receive financial or
other support from their employer when they undertake
education. No doubt there are complex reasons for this imbalance.
But one thing is perfectly clear we will not be able to
say that we have reformed training if we have replicated
the inequities of the old system.
It may be that we should give priority to developing new
training arrangements for industries which do not
currently train their employees.
We know that it is in these industries, like community
services, that the largest number of women work women
who have not had access to recognised training.
It may also be possible to encourage the establishment of
group training companies for women only. Such companies
might coordinate the placement of female trainees and
apprentices between small businesses, and give trainees
the support they need to enter training and see it
through.
The third great challenge might be expressed as a
question: have we been expanding universities at the
expense of vocational education and training?
Parenthetically, I might acknowledge that there is an
irony to this in Queensland which has a deficit of higher
education places a deficit, I can assure you, which we
intend to rectify.
Nationally, however, the figures are a cause for some
satisfaction. Commonwealth funding available to higher education has
risen from $ 3 billion in 1983 to $ 4.8 billion in 1995
an increase of more than 60 per cent.
In the same period, student numbers have increased by
more than 70 per cent.
There is no question that over the last two years, across
Australia, it has become much easier to get into a
university. The fact is we need more entrants to the labour force
with trade and vocational qualifications.
In every recovery up to now we have found ourselves
importing trade qualifications and vocational skills.
To reverse that phenomenon we probably need to reverse a
popular attitude: we need to raise the status of
vocational training both in reality and in the minds of
our young people.
For, while some surveys show us that more than half of
Year 12 students aspire to professional status, only 14
per cent of the workforce have professional status.
The point is vocational skills and the teaching of them
should have a comparable status.
There is every reason to believe that the perception and
the reality are both changing.
Unmet demand for TAFE places is now 36 per cent higher
than unmet demand for higher education.
ANOP surveys show that the proportion of students who are
choosing TAFE over university entrance has increased from
to 25 per cent.
There is no question that TAFE is gaining acceptance as
one of the two major pathways in tertiary education.
So, by way of coming to a conclusion: we are doing well,
no one should doubt our resolve or our belief that the
direction we are taking is the right one.
But we are also very conscious of the size and complexity
of the task and the hurdles we have to negotiate.
Of all the points I might stress this morning, I would
choose this one: the issue of vocational education and
training transcends all other loyalties whatever they
might be to States and Territories; regions; social
groups; gender, race or ethnicity; and personal political
affiliations. It is truly a national issue.
It is in the first place, a national issue of equity.
Expanding vocational education to the degree that we are
expanding it, is very likely to assist those among our
young people who are relatively disadvantaged.
And it is certainly the case that once individuals
acquire post-school qualifications, their lifetime
incomes and opportunities are significantly increased.
Without doubt, it will be the best investment they ever
make. In other words, the challenge we have taken on all of
us in this room is probably the single most important
policy initiative we can take to redress lifetime income
inequalities in Australia.
Vocational education and training is, in the second
place, a national issue of efficiency.
There is a parallel here with the Job Compact. The Job
Compact works by assisting the long-term unemployed back
into the mainstream of the workforce, a move which helps
not only some of the most disadvantaged in the community,
but the economy itself to reach its collective full
potential. In the case of vocational education and training, we have
to recognise as a nation that we are not just
increasing the life chances of the disadvantaged, but
guaranteeing our economic competitiveness.
Technological change does not drop from the sky or emerge
from the mind of a particularly brilliant professor of
physics or sociology.
We now know that, in the main, technological change comes
from the adoption of innovation in ways that suit
particular workplace environments.
And there is now considerable evidence that the level of
training of a firm's workforce substantially determines
how efficiently new processes are converted into
productive output.
That is to say, skill formation begets technical change
and we all know that technical change begets
productivity, and productivity begets prosperity and
material well being.
That is what I mean by saying we need warm hearts and
cool heads.
So this is a great enterprise: not so much a
revolutionary one, as one which must keep pace with the
revolution which is already taking place.
I think we all know that there is going to be no end to
the challenge, and that success itself will present new
challenges. We should tell ourselves that this is in the nature of
our era.
The reward will not be a day when we can say the task is
done. Rather, it will be knowing that by our efforts countless
Australians of this and future generations will have
opportunities that would be otherwise denied them.
That they will have crossed the bridge to the 21st
century and Australia will have too.
ENDS