Skills training work in progress

Skills and Training Minister Andrew Giles pitches the government’s fee-free TAFE policy as an “accessible pathway to secure work and cost-of-living relief”. It’s a message that gives the government something to sell in the imminent election but it is more an untargeted welfare program than a means to meet the nation’s critical skill needs and create opportunities for disadvantaged young people. While the program promises to prioritise target groups, including Indigenous Australians and women in “non-traditional fields”, another target is everyone aged 17 to 24.

The Business Council of Australia is right to oppose cementing fee-free TAFE in legislation that would guarantee 100,000 places a year from 2027, pointing out that after two years it is too soon to judge its effectiveness. The test of that should be whether the program’s projected $1.5bn cost across 2023-26 will train people for work that builds the economy and give workers career-creating skills for in-demand work.

The signs so far are that it may not. According to the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, the program has funded 508,000 places – but enrolments are not completions and vocational education in general has high attrition rates. According to the National Centre for Vocational Education Research, after four years of starting a course across the whole training sector, just 54 per cent of students had completed.

And fee-free TAFE students are not all enrolling in the courses the nation needs most. National planning agency Jobs and Skills Australia identifies shortages of care economy workers and there are 160,000 fee-free TAFE students studying for the sector.

But it is no disrespect to people studying for careers in childcare and the NDIS to note the Housing Industry Association reports we are 830,000 building workers short to meet government home construction targets. That would take a “significant boost” in apprentice chippies, sparkies, plumbers, brickies and concreters, HIA warns, yet there are only 30,000 students learning building skills in the program.

Skill shortages are a way bigger problem than fee-free TAFE can fix but the money it costs could be better spent on funding for trades training that will build homes. But Mr Giles says “under the Albanese government, free TAFE is here to stay”. It is a slogan, not a policy.