Mr BAYLEY – In light of the rising skills shortages, how does the government intend to boost funding for TasTAFE to meet future workplace demands and ensure that students across the state in all regional areas have access to quality future‑ready vocational training?
Mr ELLIS – This is where we’re looking to invest. We need to make sure that we have a strong pipeline of workers coming through. Tasmania has been successful in terms of growing our skills base in recent years, but we know that there’s more investment that needs to happen. It’s working with TAFE, obviously, but it’s also working with industry bodies and our RTOs who provide one in two of the courses that happen in Tasmania.
Our High Vis Army project is a great example whereby we’re working in an area of some of the most acute skill shortages that we have in Tasmania and around the country so that we can unlock the experience that those different industry bodies and their RTOs and GTOs have on delivering great outcomes for the community. This is something that we talk about at national skills ministers meetings quite a bit – no one part of the economy can do all the heavy lifting. It can’t just be individual businesses, it can’t just be government and it can’t just be industries as a whole. We’ve all got to work together so that we can deliver those outcomes to address the skill shortage.
We are having good success and expanding our Hi Vis Army program, for example, into taking into account the Electrical and Communications Association and the Master Plumbers is an important part of that. We need to continue to invest. That’s why we need to have that real posture of backing in these industries, backing in TAFE with investments in new facilities and new teachers, and continuing to grow that training capability.
Mr BAYLEY – Can you commit? It’s a competitive space, obviously, with the private RTOs, and we really need TAFE to remain a cornerstone of education in the state. Can you commit to increasing funding over time to make sure that it holds its place as the cornerstone of VET in Tasmania?
Mr ELLIS – In our world, the learner is at the centre, so the learner is the focus. Ensuring that we’re investing in TAFE so that they can meet the needs of learners and they’re an attractive place for learners to go and get those qualifications is critical. Whatever the choices that learners are making around the pathways that they want to go down, for example, if you want a career in seafood or maritime training, then most of that is provided outside of TAFE. That’s where the opportunities are. Similarly with transport and logistics. Whatever the choices those learners are making, we want to be backing them with funding that follows them and the choices that they make.
That being said, TAFE is a real cornerstone when it comes to delivering the training that we need. Say, for example, trades. I mean, I’m a plumber and Grant’s a chef. There are a whole bunch of those vocational trades for which TAFE is perfect, because it’s capital intensive and it also takes a long while to get people through a four-year apprenticeship. Continuing to invest in those key areas is important, but we also need to be really targeted. We need to be investing in areas that are going to help address those skill shortages and that are going to give learners the best opportunity to grow and thrive. We don’t want to be providing courses that are dead ends. We want to be providing courses that are in areas of need and areas of growth. Getting that balance right is important. We mentioned the Cyber Security Training Centre – it might be a good opportunity, Grant, to talk about that as an area of growing need where we need to continue to invest in TAFE.
Mr DREHER – Thank you, minister. We need to look at cyber and technology, I think, on a vertical and a horizontal axis, and certainly our Cyber Security Centre will have a little bit of a vertical axis. More importantly, we’ll be looking at how we role and skill Tasmania’s workforce in this really important space. It hasn’t been done until we started doing it last year at a Certificate IV level.
We’re also delivering the Essential Eight programs and looking at what it is as far as how you use technology – whether that’s AI, whether that’s other types of ChatGPT – across your industry to do better than what you’re doing. In reference to what the minister has said, that again is quite an expensive place to work in, but it’s a great space for TAFE to be. We’ve opened that centre here in Hobart, and we’re looking at how we roll those programs out across the state now.
