PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Mr BIRRELL (Nicholls) (17:11): I, too, rise to speak on the motion moved by the member for Leichhardt. The motion talks about the strengthening of vocational education training and celebrates enrolments in free TAFE. But I don't accept that free TAFE necessarily equals better TAFE, and the enrolment in courses shouldn't be automatically taken that vocational training is working.

Vocational training works best when the skills being acquired align with the skills required by employees, and it goes to the quality and relevance of the education that is being provided and how fit for purpose the facility is. Some years ago, when I was working at an organisation called the Committee for Greater Shepparton, which you know well, Deputy Speaker Aldred, I was concerned about this issue of us not having the skills we needed in regional Australia, particularly for our food manufacturing businesses.

I sought to study what was being done in other parts of the world, and I was successful in gaining a Churchill Fellowship. I continue to thank the Churchill organisation for the support of me to travel to Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Finland to look at vocational education. Particularly in Germany, I saw a vocational system that looks different to ours and, I would argue, is better.

We can look to other parts of the world to try and improve our vocational education system. For example, at Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart, Germany, typically an apprentice will do a couple of days at the vocational education facility, which is their version of our TAFE, then they'll do another three days at the actual organisation; in this case, it was Mercedes-Benz.

What I saw there was a real alignment between the businesses, the industries and the curriculum at TAFE. In fact, the curriculum at the vocational education facility in Germany is set by the chamber of commerce. The funding arrangements are shared between the chamber of commerce—the businesses—and the government.

The education facilities are state-of-the-art. I saw one in Frankfurt, which was absolutely first class in terms of the quality of equipment, the quality of teaching—in this, case it had to do with mechatronics. I saw highly engaged students who had skin in the game because they had a hard-won a prized apprenticeship at an organisation such as DAB, Fresenius, Mercedes-Benz, BMW.

The other two days were spent working in this really high-quality facility. The connection between the two disciplines—getting the theory in the classroom at the vocational facility, and the actual industry—tended to bring forward a very engaged, high-level, problem-solving graduate. I think we've got a bit of a way to go in Australia.

I don't wish to denigrate any of the people doing a lot of hard work at TAFE, as it does have some good outcomes, but I feel like it's going in a direction of herding people into it through the free system, trying to be able to say 'We got X number of enrolments in TAFE; isn't this great?' and not ensuring that the actual quality, the curriculum and skills that people end up coming out with from TAFE properly align with the skills that industry requires.

We've got a long way to go in this country to be the equal of Germany and Finland. Another thing, before I finish up—and I appreciate the opportunity to talk about what I saw in Europe—is that, in Finland, 40 per cent of school leavers go to university, 40 per cent go into vocational education and 20 per cent go straight into the workforce. That hasn't changed since 2001, and the Finnish department of education told me they're very happy with that because it equates to the workforce.

For a lot of those courses, the vocational education system is best to put young people into industry. That's something we can learn from in Australia, rather than pushing more and more kids to university when it might not be right for them. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Aldred ): The time allotted for this debate has expired.

The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.