Ms BADGER question to MINISTER FOR SKILLS AND JOBS, Mr ELLIS
[10.53 a.m.]
Last year you wouldn’t tell us which TAFE campuses are on your chopping block. Instead, you said the focus was investing in facilities and only divesting from those that don’t have a core teaching purpose. Now, the prospect of campus sell offs is looming large, after the TasTAFE CEO emailed employees saying we cannot be everything to everyone or operate everywhere.
An RTI by the Greens lists campus locations and associated divestment opportunities including divestment from a chunk of Campbell Street and selling off the Devonport campus. Devonport has nursing facilities, business and creative arts, metal and motor body workshops and much more. Are you still intending to sell this campus? What other campus sell offs are on the cards, and which campuses or part of are you intending to lease out?
ANSWER
Honourable Speaker, I thank the honourable member for her interest. As I stated last year: there are a range of different assets that TasTAFE owns that are not delivering teaching outcomes. There are childcare centres where we don’t actually have TasTAFE teachers or students in them, and those childcare centres actually want to be able to own them so that they can have greater certainty for their operations and they can invest in the facilities.
There’s a range of different land located near our TasTAFE campuses that are perfect, for example, for things like housing. They’re well located. They’re next to education facilities, obviously: in the case of Devonport, next to a childcare facility which we’re looking to divest, and we’ve had really good conversations with people there. We want to be making sure that our assets are fit for purpose, and TasTAFE doesn’t have an interest in owning large swathes of land in these locations. We have an interest in teaching students. Our focus is about making sure that our asset base is fit for purpose.
As we continue to invest in the student management system and digital infrastructure, certainly we’re seeing great opportunities for us to invest in those new parts of the campus that will help connect people even better with learners. We’re already seeing, at our Alanvale Health Hub, that people are able to contact in through to the health hub teachers from campuses right around our state, building a stronger, more joined up system. So from our perspective, when it comes to the asset base that TasTAFE has, we want to ensure that it is delivering teaching outcomes, not land banking, effectively, in the middle of some of our towns like Devonport and Burnie.
Ms BADGER – Honourable Speaker, 45, relevance. I’m just going to go to the question, which did include the aspect of those that have core teaching purposes, such as Devonport and Campbell Street campuses. What other campuses are intended for sell off, or which will be leased out?
The SPEAKER – I draw the minister back to the question.
Mr ELLIS – We continue to work with a range of different people. As I mentioned before: the Devonport campus, the opportunities there are to sell vacant land; the opportunities there are to divest of the childcare centre, which we don’t have teachers or students in. We will continue to work through that. There are opportunities to lease floors on the Campbell St campus. There are opportunities to work even more closely with industry so that we’re leasing out parts of our campuses to industry so that industry can do training in them.
That’s exactly the model that we are going to have at the north west clean energy centre of excellence, where Mr Albanese was yesterday, because we hear from NECO, the sparkies association, that they want to be able to come into campus and be able to train their learners with their teachers in a way that suits industry best, and we should open our doors to those people. Industry are a key driver of training in this state and we should welcome the opportunity to lease parts of our facilities to people who want to do more training on site. I don’t know why the Greens have a problem with that. That should be the kind of thing that we welcome in this state.
The SPEAKER – The minister’s time has expired.
Supplementary Question
Ms BADGER – Based on the minister’s answer, is he prepared to rule out to the House any sale or divestment of the Devonport campus itself, understanding the minister has identified land around it, and what other campuses was also part of the question, not just Devonport and Campbell St. I call on the minister to address these in the supplementary.
Mr ELLIS – As I mentioned before, we are continuing to look at all of our assets to make sure that they are fit for purpose and delivering for learners. We do not rule out, at all, the opportunity to lease parts of our campuses to other people who want to do training, particularly if it is industry led training. We should be very open to that. The Devonport campus, for example, is a very large footprint for the learners that we have there, and there are people who want to come into campus and teach learners. Some of them might even be former Labor politicians. It’s encouraging, I think, that the asset base that we have at TasTAFE gives us the opportunity to open our doors to people who want to teach learners, and do it to best industry standard, so they can be part of developing training and workforce development for their staff for the future.
That’s exactly the kind of opportunity we should welcome in the new reality that comes with more flexible learning, that comes with greater access to resources and know how and knowledge from right around the country and right around the world. I don’t know why the Greens want to close that door when it should be open.
The SPEAKER – The honourable minister’s time has expired.
