Let’s learn from Hawke – comment by CEO Craig Robertson

Reflecting on the death of Bob Hawke, the 23rd prime minister of Australia, on the eve of the federal election and contemplating a Morrison government, causes me to think that we’ve lost sight of the heavy lifting VET can do for the economy.

Hawke’s reforms are legendary. They were designed to open Australia to compete on the world stage – reducing trade barriers, floating the dollar, setting wage accords between industry and unions, decentralising wage fixing and restructuring awards.

His reforms also reached into the heart of vocational education and training, courtesy of the union movement.

Australia of the early 1980s was facing under-developed value-add to products and high prices of goods coming from protected Australian industries – jeopardising jobs and wages. At the instigation of the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union and its leading official, Laurie Carmichael, the federal department of Trade supported an ACTU mission to Sweden and other Northern European countries. Carmichael had observed first-hand Sweden’s approach to transforming its industrial base while protecting the rights of workers.

The ACTU’s report on the mission – Australia Reconstructed – released in 1987, recognised there needed to be a closer working relationship with industry to grow the industrial base for the benefit of businesses as well as workers. Narrow job roles, rigid job demarcation and poor levels of skills in workers were a drag on efficiency.

Speaking in December 1988, Carmichael laid out the challenge:

Award restructuring embodied a strategy to address the issues and the Metals Award was the instrument. Developed in conjunction with the Metal Trades Industry Association (the predecessor of the Australian Industry Group) the award encouraged multi-skilling and established skill-related career paths accessible by additional training embedded in VET competency-based qualifications. It established fixed minimum rates of pay and relativities between different categories of workers.

The National Training Board, established in 1988 by John Dawkins as Hawke’s education and training minister, was charged with deploying this model across a large sweep of industries and occupations served by the TAFE sector. Competency based training, linked to occupations and tied to the Industrial edifice, was born. Little has changed since – the Carmichael vision still underpins our approach to qualification content and qualification hierarchies within training packages.

Regardless of views on the success of the Carmichael model or its relevance for today, the broader point is that VET was used as a driving force for change across the economy. It is worth keeping in mind that VET reaches about 70 per cent of occupations in Australia and over 5.3 million Australians hold VET qualifications.

Come forward and many commentators lament that the training package model is not fit for purpose. The enquiry into TAFE SA concluded:

The development and use of Training Packages in their current form, particularly when combined with the way they are used in regulation, don’t support the innovation required to meet the emerging skill needs of at least some occupations and industries. Nor do they provide a framework for the lifelong learning workers need to adapt to economic change.
Today we face different industry structures, work organisation practices and industrial arrangements in a services-dominated economy.

Just as Hawke knew he could not hold onto old approaches in the vain hope that the economy would correct itself, I trust that Morrison is similarly brave when it comes to VET.

A footnote: At the same time of these VET reforms, Dawkins expanded higher education by converting Colleges of Advanced Education into universities. It is worth contemplating the autonomy afforded by Dawkins to the expanded university sector compared to the tri-partite mechanisms (complete with wage fixing and work demarcation) he imposed on VET, and which produces the better outcomes and is suited for the times.