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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Thursday, 1 April 2004) . . Page.. 1534 ..

properly directed vocational education and training. Earlier, when Mrs Burke was contributing to debate on this motion, she said that this government was doing nothing in the area of career education and that it was doing nothing for careers advisers. If Mrs Burke had a close look at the budget she would see that this government committed $2 million for the provision of careers advice at both government and non-government schools.

I find curious the statement by Mrs Burke that this government is doing nothing in that area. I thank Ms Dundas for bringing to our attention this matter of public importance. Skills shortages are faced not only by the ACT; they are faced by every other state and territory. We must examine these issues in more detail. On Tuesday evening I attended a forum at which we discussed TAFE providers and the issue of skills shortages. We must ensure sure that workers have appropriate skills in the future. I thank Ms Dundas for brining this matter to the attention of the Assembly.

MR PRATT (4.31): I rise today to agree with Ms Dundas’s MPI and join her and my colleague Mrs Burke to encourage the government to support ACT business to take on trainees and apprentices. The government has moved ahead on this issue and a lot has been done in the last couple of years, thankfully, but I would like to make some observations. To begin with I will run through the current information for both business and potential trainees/apprentices that is available on the Department of Education, Youth and Family Services website.

As of this morning there was information about becoming an apprentice or trainee; information on programs such as adult and community education, the student to industry program, the school-based new apprenticeship program, career pathways and VET. That is not too bad. However, there is no information to inform business how to become involved in these programs. If there is such information I would be happy to hear about it and, for the record, change my perspective—perhaps.

The information is not cross-referenced with the Business ACT website. The Business ACT website is quite well resourced with information for business—when you finally find it. It is not clear and it does not clearly assist businesses looking for a trainee or apprentice. Perhaps there is room for improvement there. We are talking about fine-tuning, not driving a bulldozer through existing programs. While the ACT government has programs in place to assist both business and trainees/apprentices, they are not clearly set out for businesses; the information is not readily available. It seems they rely more on business organisations or the general business community to educate business and organise traineeships and apprenticeships, rather than taking the lead and doing it themselves. I want to speak about that in more detail later—I have an example of that.

Business can work with government to help the community by employing people under traineeships or apprenticeships. However, working together does not just mean dumping in the laps of businesses; it means supporting and encouraging business through training, information provision and professional industry support to ensure that there is a successful relationship between the trainee/apprentice and the business. Once the linkage is made there needs to be ongoing support to encourage businesses to carry what they might see in the first instance as a bit of a burden. We need to tell businesses that they have a responsibility to carry this burden as well. That liaison must be maintained.

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