A swallow doesn’t make a summer – comment by CEO Craig Robertson

The impact of the Joyce Review on the Australian VET system is open for debate, apart from three clear achievements – the National Skills Commission, the National Careers Institute and Skills Organisations (SOs).

The extent of Joyce’s vision of SOs leading to new forms of industry guidance to the VET sector is up for review because Australian governments through its skills reform consultation[1] are asking more fundamental questions about the role of industry. It is also asking key questions about qualifications, quality and professional development.

From how I read his report and from conversations with him, I take it the Joyce organising theory is all about aligning incentives. I can imagine him saying, “if industry is dissatisfied with the relevance and quality of training, as I heard, then put them in charge, and they will have no one else to blame if things do not go the way they expect.”

We have seen three SOs so far – each representing a slice of the economy. But a swallow doesn’t make a summer. It is one thing to trial but it’s a different matter if the rest of the economy needs to be catered for – thus the consultation.

There is a rich history we need to take into account when we consider industry arrangements for VET. Most of today’s design can be sheeted home to the Hawke-Keating era. Triggered by Australia Reconstructed (a report from an ACTU visit to Western Europe in 1986), it concluded Australia needed to open itself to global trade and some of Australia’s protected industries would wither, along with jobs.

Award Restructuring, which resulted, sought to bring together education planning and training along with enterprise restructuring in order to make learning relevant to the restructuring of the Australian economy. The competency movement was born and training focused on the necessary knowledge and skills required for the job to smooth the disruption in jobs. ‘Through the accumulation of these ‘vocational competencies’ the worker will become more capable, flexible, adaptable and useful’.

This last sentence was written in June 1993[2] at the tail end of the 1990s recession, remembered for its record youth unemployment. In this emergency and the Award Restructuring backdrop the Australian National Training Authority was established. Many in VET would say it was the zenith of industry engagement as the governing board consisted of captains of industry and they engaged directly with governments and ministers on skills formation priorities.

Come forward to today and there seems little appetite for structural reform of this ilk. The Productivity Commission in its report doesn’t venture down the path of industry engagement as a key consideration, apart from highlighting the role of the NSC.

Returning to Joyce. Aligning incentives is a good thing but achieving fair economic outcomes is another. The swallow is offering strange glimpses of a reshaped VET system. The Digital DSO has gone straight outside of the formal training system and enlisted non-accredited training and non‑registered providers for its first foray of reform. Mining has taken a measured and methodical approach seeking to evolve the VET system (as the sector which probably drives most innovation in Australia, it had every right to step outside of it but chose not to). It is too early to say about the health services SO, but with the aged care sector crisis induced by cash-strapped operators it will be interesting how it can reconcile the sector’s sustainability with the demand from the Aged-Care Royal Commission for higher order skills, and higher wages as a result.  Wallah! Here’s where the rubber hits the road.

ANTA and competency were born of the era of conciliation and arbitration between workers and employers – a balanced deal for both and for the good of the economy. The organising logic of VET is now 30 years old and the economy and the way it is organised has moved on. (If it were current then we would have seen skills feature in the dialogue between the industrial parties for IR reform).

We now have the National Skills Commission, but that is technocratic, and the National Careers Institute, but that is retail. No one can blame the current Industry Reference Committees holding on like grim death as the last vestiges of Industry in the system.

The nature of industry engagement is not a minor thing as the significance of award restructuring in smoothing the structural adjustment in the economy attests.

It’s hard not to see similar scale restructuring heading our way. Maybe it would be a good thing, IR aside, to bring the traditional industry players together to chart a new course for a new age.