Keeping up with the population pressure – comment by CEO Craig Robertson

On Tuesday last week the resident population of Australia ticked over 25 million.

The ABS population clock shows the ins and outs of our growth, so to speak. Someone is born every 1 minute 42 seconds and someone dies every 3 minutes 16 seconds. A new resident arrives from overseas every 61 seconds and an Australian resident leaves to live overseas every 1 minute 51 seconds. Our growth is based on 1.9 births per death and 1.8 new arrivals over each departure.

The impact is in Sydney and Melbourne. You only need to visit their CBDs to see the huge infrastructure projects states have underway to ease congestion and house their citizens.

On Thursday last week the NCVER released the latest figures on funded enrolments in vocational education and training for the first quarter of 2018, reporting a decline of 3.7% compared with the same period in 2017. While there is caution from NCVER about data integrity, the message is still one of continuing decline in training.

How do we reconcile these trends? We can’t. Most iterations of VET funding policy in the past have recognised the failure of capital markets (banks will not – and should not – lend for education or training because of the fragile nature of the returns), so we can’t blame the banks. We all look to governments to create conditions conducive to economic growth, which includes training skilled workers to support economic outputs and improve our effectiveness.

Since Earl Page advocated for federal funds for roads in the bush, Menzies funded school science laboratories in part responding to the strike of Catholic schools in Goulburn in 1962, and Whitlam transformed the education landscape, the Commonwealth has made specific purpose payments to states and territories to show citizens it also cares for these issues.

For VET that’s the National Agreement on Skills and Workforce Development. First struck in its current form in 2012-13 it distributed $1.389bn to states and territories and grew to $1.495bn over the next five years to 2017-18, thanks to indexation. Over that period, however, the working age population grew by six percent. In effect, the effectiveness of the federal Government’s contribution to VET reduced by six per cent.

The Commonwealth makes other financial contributions, which I’ll talk about in future newsletters, but the funding theme is consistent – decline.

With well over half the projected new jobs in Australia needing VET qualified workers, the time for response is urgent.

In the meantime, TAFEs are getting on with the job, against the odds.

Many are training the skilled workers needed for Australia’s infrastructure response. Holmesglen Institute is training workers for the Melbourne Metro Tunnel Project and TAFE NSW has been the key training partner for Barangaroo on the Sydney foreshore.

Peter Costello famously implored us to have the third child as one for the country. Those children are now starting high school and in five years’ time will make decisions about post-school options.  The Commonwealth’s interest would have dropped a further six per cent by that time.