Tuesday, 22 March 2022

Vocational education and training

Mr McGUIRE (Broadmeadows) (19:19): (6283) My request is to the Minister for Education. The action I seek is to accelerate the promotion of practical skills that deliver pathways to Victoria’s most in-demand jobs. This is critical to make the transition from deindustrialisation into the new jobs of the future, particularly in Broadmeadows, where I am delighted that I have been able to leverage an off-the-leash dog park and a bike track delivering no jobs to get private sector investment of a billion dollars that is predicted to create 5000 jobs at no cost to taxpayers. This is centred on the old derelict Ford site. We know it devastated Broadmeadows when that was closed, and that marked the demise of Australia’s once-proud automotive industry. We are bringing Broadmeadows back. We are delivering the new industries and the new jobs and of course we are making the vaccines. It is the highest level of manufacturing that defines the sophistication of what is needed to fight the pandemics of our time and to look after these catastrophes, and we are soon to have another revolution with a $1.8 billion deal for new vaccines against influenza nearby.

Now, to bring it down to its practical situation here, we want to look at the senior secondary pathways reforms. I describe this as being for students who think better with their hands. We need these students and we need to make this connection. The Victorian government has reforms planned to integrate the Victorian certificate of applied learning, VCAL, into the Victorian certificate of education. This is a really important evolution in what we are doing to give Victorian students high-quality practical skills to make these pathways to Victoria’s most in-demand jobs. This fits within the bigger picture structure that is being delivered.

In May I was delighted to be with the Minister for Training and Skills in the other place, Gayle Tierney, and we both signed off as witnesses to the memorandum of understanding at Kangan Institute’s Broadmeadows campus. This agreement delivers a new, much-needed collaboration between Kangan Institute and Northern Health, leveraging the capabilities of both facilities to support future training and the health sector vital for Melbourne’s north, and there could be no better time than in a time of pandemic. The Andrews government has also delivered $60 million for the new Broadmeadows Health and Community Centre of Excellence. This means that we can provide the pathways for blue-collar jobs. We have got plumbing in there as well. We can connect the disconnected to opportunity. We have brought in the billion-dollar investment, and now is the time just to add this other critical pathway at secondary school as well.