States wrong about skills funds: Evans

THE minister says they are not taking account of $1.8bn in extra funds.

Chris Evans

FEDERAL Tertiary Education Minister Chris Evans has rejected claims states will lose money in the next skills funding agreement, saying they'll benefit directly from almost $2 billion in extra funding.

Western Australia and Victoria say they'll lose more than $250 million between them over the next three years because the $1.75bn of incentive funding offered by the federal government won't make up for the dismantling of the $2.1bn productivity places program.

But Senator Evans said the states weren't taking account of $1.8bn in extra funds allocated separately from the commonwealth-state skills funding agreement. This included $630m in a new industry-driven fund, $320m for foundation programs, $200m for apprenticeships and $660m in capital works.

"Claims about reduction of funding are just not right," Senator Evans told HES.

"We've invested hugely in the vocational training sector in addition to the straight partnerships with the states, and the states have had the benefit of that."

Senator Evans said the federal government had increased its skills investment by 35 per cent. Funding from the states had grown just 5 per cent over the same period.

He defended the government's recycling of "old news" in its skills statement. "We have been trying to run some of these agendas for some time, because they're good policy."

Senator Evans confirmed that while the government supported competition in the "training space", it wouldn't compel states to open their training funds to private competition.

But he said the new training entitlement would make a difference, regardless of whether private providers were part of the system.

"It's like saying you have a right to an educational level to Certificate III level, in addition to your right to publicly funded school," he said.

He flagged measures to ensure entitlement training met industry needs. "We don't want to be training thousands of cake decorators if we have shortages of plumbers," he said.

And while there have been waiting lists for plumbing courses in Victoria's open training market, Senator Evans said that wouldn't be acceptable under the proposed entitlement system.

"The entitlement has to be real -- (states will) need to be able to meet the demand," he said. "I'm not saying people have to (be able to) get the course the next day, but there is an expectation that people will be reasonably entitled to attend an appropriate training course if they've got the right prerequisites. That's what the entitlement's about."