Red Rag

David Broadbent paints a picture of harmony between John Howard and Dean Mighell:

What, apart from a love of rugby league, do Prime Minister John Howard and Victoria’s radical Electrical Trades Union boss Dean Mighell have in common?

Not much, one imagines, except for their strongly shared belief that we are facing a critical shortage of apprentices and that our education systems … have for too long overlooked the needs of skilled trades.

The ETU has been campaigning hard on the issue for a couple of years, warning of a looming crisis of skill shortages.

It’s a view Howard has also held for some time and one he expressed in his main election speech when he promised a boost for technical education, and more assistance for apprentices.

Opponents, and some pundits, lampooned the idea that handing new apprentices a nice box of tools amounted to substantial structural reform.

From this, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Dean Mighell and the ETU endorsed Howard’s toolbox plan. The headline even suggested they had formed an “unholy union over skills”.

But here’s what the union actually said about the Coalition’s skills policies:

The government’s tears about the lack of skilled workers are a smoke screen for an attack on our trade. Fancy offering young people a tool box to encourage them to take up a trade! They already get an allowance for a tool box.

This isn’t the way to address the exodus — 134,900 apprentices between 2000 and 2003 — from apprenticeship courses. The real solution lies in treating apprentices as the highly skilled tradespeople they will become, and paying them accordingly. Instead of doing that, John Howard wants to throw money at private training colleges offering two year courses which will be used to smash our national training standards and offer competition from semi skilled casual workers. Did you notice that in his national party launch John Howard didn’t once mention electricians or plumbers? That’s why we and the plumbers have placed a joint an advertisement in Wednesday’s Herald Sun.

You know what they say about statistics? Try this. Less than a third of the 400,000 apprenticeships the Howard Government claims it is currently supporting are actual trade apprenticeships. Official Government data shows there are only 133,376 traditional apprentices in training. The Liberal Party is dishonestly inflating its figures by including short-term trainees such as kitchen-hands in fast food outlets in apprentice numbers.

If John Howard’s claims about his love of Australia were fair dinkum he’d be telling the foreign owned power companies to follow the ETU’s lead and embrace the employment of apprentices. The ETU’s campaign for apprentices will go on. Hopefully Howard won’t be in the Lodge to see it.

Wow, what a ringing endorsement.

Update: Those crazy ETU officials just can’t stop endorsing John Howard:

The Howard Government has cut funding to 11 utilities and electro-technology trades courses in NSW, denying employers incentives to train young Australians.

[…]

ETU state secretary Bernie Riordan said the cuts show that the Howard Government is not serious about increasing the number of apprentices.

“We have a government that is actively undermining the trades by removing funding from trades courses.

“These cuts represent the stripping $1200 per apprentice paid to employers who are prepared to undertake the task of training our future skilled trades.

“A free tool box might deliver a headline, but the real news is what this government is doing to the national apprentice system.”