It’s Time To Save Our TAFEs

February 15, 2015

by Dafyd Martindale

Over the past few years the South Burnett’s TAFE system has been quietly gutted – and we suspect, it’s occurred throughout the rest of Queensland, too.

Under new arrangements – which many at the time saw as an interim step to the TAFEs being privatised – the former State Government amalgamated many TAFEs and closed some down.

The Kingaroy and Nurunderi campuses, which were formerly part of the Southern Queensland Institute of TAFE, became part of TAFE South West following “rationalisation” recommendations found in a review by the Queensland Skills and Training Taskforce in 2012.

And the maintenance of all TAFE buildings was handed over to another statutory body, the Queensland Training Assets Management Authority, which was established under its own Act and made ripe for sale.

At the same time, private training providers were actively encouraged by Federal and State government initiatives.

TAFE’s teaching arm was expected to run in direct competition with these private education providers.

Why? Because the State Government believed this arrangement would deliver better training for students.

But the early indications we’ve seen (and the evidence of similar reforms in Victoria and NSW) are that this new system is going to prove an expensive disaster.

The ultimate losers in all of this – in our region, anyway – will be the South Burnett’s youngsters, followed closely by every resident who needs to hire tradespeople in the future.

southburnett.com.au has reported the changes that have been happening at the local TAFE colleges – the amalgamation, the closure of the library and the canteen.

However, other issues we could not report because the TAFE staff involved would not “go on the record”.

This is understandable. These are all good people with families to support and mortgages to pay who’ve suddenly found themselves caught up in an avalanche of sweeping changes not of their own making.

Some of the issues have only been brought to our attention in the past few days.

The reform of the TAFE system in Victoria, NSW and now in Queensland – all undertaken by Liberal or LNP governments – seems to be driven more by a mindless adherence to ideology than level headed pragmatism.

A central tenet of conservative ideology is that the market is always right and that competition will always deliver the best outcomes for consumers.

This sounds attractive and there are plenty of economic models that appear to support this argument.

But is this really true on all occasions, and in all things?

No, we don’t think so.

This sort of thinking has given us a banking oligopoly that delivers bumper profits to four big banks alongside consumers who are almost universally fed up with the way our banking system exploits us.

This sort of thinking has also given us a State dairying industry that’s been decimated in the last few years by a system which has allowed two major supermarket players to accumulate so much market power they can now dictate terms to every supplier in the food chain.

And God help us if we ever allow “competition” to creep into our public health system and wind up going down the American path of privatised health care, where consumers who can’t afford health insurance can wind up having almost no access to health services at all.

No – the sad truth about capitalist competition is that while it does deliver better services at lower costs where there is widespread competition in a market, markets where power is widely dispersed will inevitably become smaller markets where a few very big players will use their market power grind customers into the dust.

Fortunately Australia recognised this flaw in unregulated capitalism very early on.

The result is that we’ve always had a “moderated” competitive system in this country where the government sector plays a much bigger role in the economy than it does in a country like the United States, particularly in fundamental areas such as health and education.

The downside of this arrangement is that, yes, we do put up with some inefficiencies in our markets and yes, we do pay higher taxes.

But in exchange we have universal free health care, a world-class education system, and we don’t wait weeks for help when a natural disaster like Cyclone Katrina devastates a major city like New Orleans.

We think the reform of TAFE (ie vocational education) is muddle-headed because it is attempting to privatise a public system originally set up to ensure our future tradespeople are given uniform, high-quality education to undertake the fundamental and vitally important roles they play in everyday life.

Right now we all trust that our sparkies, our plumbers, our caterers, our builders and other tradespeople will – almost universally – adhere to good, safe work practices and deliver us reliable, high-quality workmanship.

Why do we think this? Because we know they’ve all received the same high quality instruction during their training. Profit and cutting corners were not part of the system.

But can we have the same faith when an electrician tells us they’ve received their training from some private provider we’ve never heard of?

A trainer who (for all we know) was just some fast-buck shonk who pumped a few hundred graduates through a third-rate training course before they were exposed as frauds, folded their $2 company, and then started up again under a different name to repeat the cycle?

No, we’re not being alarmist and no, this isn’t a far-fetched or improbable scenario.

Any internet search about Australian training providers or vocational training will quickly reveal a raft of horror stories about corrupt and/or incompetent private sector trainers who’ve enriched themselves at the expense of both students and consumers by delivering training that ranges from inadequate to farcical.

Victoria and NSW have both already been down the privatisation road and both governments are now pumping big dollars back into their TAFE systems after similar experiments there failed badly.

In Queensland, the ALP pledged during the election that if it took government, it would “rescue” the TAFE system and seek to reverse many of the LNP’s reforms before any further damage is done.

So now that they have been confirmed as our new State Government, we hope they keep their promise.

The old TAFE system may not have been the most efficient in the market and yes, it probably cost some taxpayer money to prop up.

But it wasn’t an extraordinary amount of money.

And in exchange it delivered us tradies we could trust. And qualifications we could rely on.

If you don’t believe us, just speak to any former or current TAFE teacher … “off the record”.

Footnote: We have been told from more than one source that the Kingaroy TAFE had been marked for closure under the LNP reforms and it was only strong lobbying from our local member Deb Frecklington that saved it. If this is true, we thank her but even her influence with the LNP government could not stop the TAFE cuts.

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