Page 1602 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 17 May 1994
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MRS CARNELL (Leader of the Opposition) (9.22): Madam Speaker, before you change any legislation the first thing you decide is why. It seems like a fairly logical first question to ask yourself. In this particular circumstance, why do we need to change the current training levy, and why do we need to increase it at this particular time? Is it because, as Mr Berry said, business will not pay its way? Is it because, as I think the introductory speech suggested, training in this industry is somehow insufficient? It was very interesting to read this statement in the Federal Labor Government's paper entitled "Working Nation":
In the light of the commitment -
I stress "commitment" -
by industry to meet its training obligations over the past few years, the Government has decided to suspend the Training Guarantee for two years from 1 July 1994.
That does not tend to indicate that industry is unwilling to meet its obligations to train. Why do companies train their staff? What has changed? Certainly, the white paper does suggest that training was not all that crash hot back in 1990 when they first introduced the levy. Whether that be true or not, what has changed since 1990?
What has happened is that business has had to become more competitive, and the first and most important thing that any business has to do if it wants to remain competitive is to train its staff. The difference between being profitable and not being profitable in this day and age is your capacity to provide quality service. That is done only by training your staff. That is done in the construction industry, as in any other industry. When you remain profitable, what happens? You employ more staff and you give young people a go. In the construction industry in Canberra in particular we have seen the industry give more young people a go than is the case in any other place in Australia. We are already seeing an industry that is fulfilling its obligations, that is very keen to stay competitive in a jolly tough environment out there and that does want to give young people a go.
The next question I ask is this: Is more money required to achieve this end? No, that is not the case either. It seems that there is $436,000 in reserve already for training under the current training levy in the ACT that has not been used, and the long service leave board fund has another $140,000 which they have not paid over yet because the ITC simply has not produced any proposals to spend that money. The long service leave board fund is really interested in paying over money if the ITC has any training proposals available. The current budget of the ITC is $160,000 a year. That is for a whole year. What would they do with $1.8m when they cannot even spend $500,000? With $500,000 in reserve, they have three years worth of their annual budget at their current level of training, even if they get no new money. If, as Mr Berry said, and the presentation speech said, there is some dramatic problem in the industry with regard to training, surely the money currently there would have been spent. But, no, the money has not been spent.
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