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I acknowledge the Ngunnawal People on whose land we meet, and pay my respect to their elders past and present. 

Chair of the Mick Young Scholarship Trust, Linda Burney, Parliamentary colleagues, TAFE Directors and staff and members of the Young family.

I’d also like to acknowledge my colleagues, Sharon Bird, the Member for Cunningham and the Chair of the House of Representatives Committee on Education and Training, as well as Andrew Southcott, the Member for Boothby and Shadow Minister for Training.

We’re here tonight to honour a great Australian, Mick Young, and to advance an idea that was one of his strongest passions: giving every Australian the freedom and security than comes from education and training.

Mick Young was born into a working class, Irish Catholic Australian family in Harbord on Sydney’s Northern Beaches in 1936.

One of seven brothers, none of whom had the chance to matriculate and go to university, he left school at 15, started work as a shearer and quickly got involved in the union movement.

By the age of 20 he had become a union representative. And by the age of 32 Federal Secretary of the ALP at one of its most tumultuous but productive historical moments.

He later became an adviser to Gough Whitlam, entered the federal parliament as the Member for Port Adelaide in 1974 and become a Minister in the Hawke Government before leaving parliament in 1988.

Mostly though, Mick Young is remembered for two telling interventions in Australian political history which had a profound impact on the shape of modern Australia and whose significance endures to today.

The first was his amazing partnership with Gough Whitlam to drag the Labor Party out of its historical slump of the 1960s and preside over the winning campaign of 1972.

Mick Young was the great organiser of that victory.

The pivotal moment was the Labor Federal Conference in 1969 when with Young’s help Whitlam united the party around a new platform which rose above the sectarianism that had divided the party for some two decades.

It’s important to recall that the issue that symbolised this break with the ways of the past was the provision of State aid to Catholic schools through the establishment of an Australian Schools Commission – a policy that would that would begin Commonwealth investment in Australia’s schools.

State Aid ended a generation of sectarian bitterness over education. But more than that, it was the starting point for the education revolution that followed.

So it’s important to recall the wording of the resolution that made State Aid part of the Labor Platform. It stated that:

"On the basis of needs and priorities." Our education system has changed in hugely significant ways since those words were written in 1969, but the principles that informed the Whitlam education revolution are the same principles that inform a new education revolution: needs, priorities and innovative Commonwealth intervention.

As the Labor Party’s most famous writer and chronicler Graham Freudenberg summed up the outcome from that Conference:

Labor went on to do just that. And that advance couldn’t have been made without Mick Young.

His other achievement was playing a pivotal role in the forging of closer ties between the Labor Party and later Australian Governments with the People’s Republic of China and with Asia.

It was Mick Young who as Federal Secretary of the ALP in 1971 put the idea to Gough Whitlam that he should cable the Chinese Premier Zhou En Lai proposing an Australian delegation.

Mick had been taken with Chinese culture on a visit there before the Cultural Revolution. He recognised that a visit by Whitlam was a huge but risky political opportunity and a turning point of obvious importance to Australia’s future.

How right he was. And that visit spawned a mandarin-speaking Prime Minister and an Australian foreign policy attuned to Asia and able to benefit from the awakening of the giant economies of our region.

That someone like Mick Young – who had started his working life as a 200-sheep-a-day shearer – could develop a fascination with Chinese culture and end up feeling at home in the company of Zhou En Lai, reminds us of the enormous intellectual and practical capacities that can be found in every Australian.

Unrealised human potential is all around us, held back by social disadvantage and lack of opportunities.

Mick Young knew this.

If he were around today, with all the extra opportunities that are now available to smart working class children like him, there’s little doubt that Mick Young would have gone on to tertiary study at TAFE or university before making his mark on the world.

But Mick knew not everyone would be lucky enough to move in the circles he did.

He knew that unless people like him built a platform for those people to stand on, so they could see the expansive opportunities ahead of them, many would accept the limited horizons they could see from ground level.

So he took responsibility and built that platform with Gough Whitlam through our democratic processes, as well as in a direct and practical way through his own work as a Member of Parliament.

As the Member for Port Adelaide Mick Young created the Port Adelaide ALP Scholarship for people looking for a second chance to get an education or trade.

And after he died at a tragically young age his colleagues decided that the most fitting tribute would be to make it a nationwide effort.

After some years the Mick Young Scholarship Trust found its niche – in an area where scholarships hadn’t traditionally been made available, TAFE.

Importantly, all scholarships awarded by the Trust are made available on the basis of the same priority Mick put at the heart of Commonwealth Government policy almost four decades ago – "need".

Today the Trust is helping people like Jim, a father of two young boys who worked two jobs whilst also attending Mount Druitt TAFE, to build a better life for himself and his sons. A scholarship from the Trust enabled him to give up his evening job packing supermarket shelves. Now, as he says: "My sons get their dad back."

And it’s helping people like Oscar Habonimana, a 39-year-old father of four who used to run a school for 400 children in East Africa before being forced to spend nine years in a refugee camp. He’s now continuing to help others as a counsellor thanks to a scholarship from the Trust that allowed him to complete a diploma in Community Services Work.

I can’t resist one further example. Joshua Smith, who is a young Indigenous Australian from Kempsey, who helped gain a law degree with the help of the Trust said this:

Thanks to the Mick Young Scholarship Trust, help is out there.

All up the Trust has supported some 1800 students and this year hopes to disperse some $230,000 to help more of them.

The proceeds of tonight’s dinner will extend that great work by sending two scholarship holders to continue their technical instruction overseas so they can bring back more knowledge and new perspectives to help others.

This is the first time the Trust has provided help of this type and a sign that it has become a major source of educational assistance in Australia.

The onus on all of us here tonight is to continue the educational advances and principles that Gough Whitlam established with the help of Mick Young

The Government has committed to this goal through our plan to create an Education Revolution.

It’s driven by need and priorities.

And it’s informed by new understandings about the way children learn.

To bring that revolution about we’re making large scale investments in early childhood education, schools and universities.

Our plans to invest in early childhood education, with emphasis on disadvantaged communities is well known.

And recently the Prime Minister announced a new direction for schools that targets new Commonwealth funds to helping the most disadvantaged students by raising the standard and status of teaching. This is a huge opportunity for all Australian schools and a new future for the teaching profession. I’m convinced that once the full possibilities that plan represents are recognised that all Australian educators with join with parents to support it.

But the revolution won’t succeed unless we make a corresponding effort in vocational education and training.

We have to increase VET completions and modernise and improve the quality of the courses we offer if we are to give our people the depth and breadth of skills they need for a 21st century economy.

More than 7 million Australians aged 15 to 64 now hold no post-school qualification.

On current projections Australia will be short of around 240,000 employees with VET qualifications in 2016. We will need to quadruple the number of advanced diplomas and double the number of diplomas just to meet projected demands.

We also have to overcome the shortages for skilled employees that now exist in areas like ICT, tourism, leisure, building and construction, the metal trades and engineering.

And we have to re-tool and train our own VET workforce to build capacity in emerging skill areas. Just like school and university education before them, VET is being transformed by the continuing evolution of a knowledge-based economy. Modernisation is needed.

And the stakes are high.

They’re high for individuals because these days to get a good job and avoid unemployment young people increasingly need a post-school qualification at Certificate III or above. We know for instance, that having post-school VET qualifications reduces a young person’s likelihood of being unemployed by an average of 40 percent.

And they’re high for our economy because without a highly skilled workforce Australia will lose part of its competitive advantage in attracting new investment and growth.

The Government has responded to this situation by making the future of the vocational education and training system a central element of the national reform agenda of the Council of Australian Governments.

To guide us, COAG has set exacting targets. By 2020 we aim to:

halve the proportion of 20-to-64 years olds without Certificate III or higher qualifications; and

double the number of diploma and advanced diploma completions.

Our starting point must be to come to grips with the patterns of change in the economy so we can pinpoint where the new jobs are emerging.

To guide us through this we’ve established a new body, Skills Australia and reinvigorated existing Industry Skills Councils.

To help us meet the demand identified through this process, we’re significantly increasing the nation’s trade training effort.

We’ve set aside $2.5 billion to establish Trade Training Centres in our secondary schools, with facilities that meet industry standards in both traditional and emerging industries. In the last two months alone we have approved more than $90 million for new Trade Training Centres that will benefit almost 100 schools nationwide.

I also announced last week an additional $45 million for the Productivity Places Program, taking the Government’s commitment to 645,000 new training places over five years. This includes 85,000 new apprenticeships, with the majority of qualifications at the crucial Certificate III and higher levels. The first 44,000 places allocated in 2008 have been fully subscribed and more than 6000 people have already completed training.

But as well as providing new places in VET, we have to take our vocational training sector in new directions.

COAG is pursuing reforms to place students and industry at the centre of the training system, promoting competition, transparency and quality.

We need to establish a properly designed market that will allocate resources in the most intelligent way but without ignoring important quality and equity issues.

Thanks to the existence of a large pool of high quality providers Australia already has a market for vocational training provision.

The point is to make it work at an optimal level by combining a strong institutional framework with fully empowered and informed consumers and measures to prevent the disadvantaged from being excluded.

COAG’s reform approach will do this.

The whole community stands to gain from such improvements, especially students, because increased provision of higher level qualifications will mean more secure jobs and higher future wages.

The Commonwealth will ensure that in those States like Victoria that are implementing ambitious market reform no eligible student is denied a post-compulsory diploma or advanced diploma VET place because they don’t have the ability to pay up-front fees. This will be done through the provision of an Income Contingent Loan scheme for diploma and advanced diploma students, with all administrative costs met by the Commonwealth.

I particularly want to welcome the support of TAFE Directors Australia in this regard who have established Tuition Assurance Schemes to support both the Higher Education and VET Income Contingent Loan arrangements. Just this morning the Minister for Employment Participation, Brendan O’Connor announced the approval of two Tuition Assurance Schemes to be managed by TDA.

I know there are those in the sector who oppose some of these changes. But these changes will create a far stronger system that will reward quality service providers, benefit students and enable the VET system to better reward talented teaching and training staff.

Nobody, whether they are public or private training providers, administrators, staff or students has anything to fear.

In fact, there is much to gain. These reforms to VET are merely the start of the Rudd Government’s plans to expand and improve VET in Australia.

We know that after a decade of underinvestment in TAFE by the previous Government that these changes will mean TAFE and other training providers will need to expand and modernise.

Our reform agenda will be complemented by increased investment in innovation and infrastructure through the new $11 billion Education Investment Fund.

The first round of funding from the EIF was announced in July. This round is targeted at Universities as part of the transition from the Higher Education Endowment Fund to the EIF.

In the next round of funding, eligibility will be expanded and we expect it to help transform the VET sector and increase its capacity to meet the skill needs of Australians into the next decade.

Both public and private providers across the training and higher education sectors will be eligible to apply for funding and unlike the HEEF, which allowed only for the interest earned to be spent, there will be no cap on yearly allocations from the EIF.

This means that substantial investment can be made in our educational institutions in the coming years, transforming the capacity of these sectors to educate and train Australians.

The Government is in the process of finalising arrangements for future rounds, and guidelines for institutions will be available in the coming months.

In his address tomorrow morning, the EIF Chair, Phil Clark, will further outline how the fund can help TAFE to grow into the future.

This is an important time for Australia’s TAFE system.

A time of expansion and modernisation.

We won’t succeed without a couple of important things.

The first is a willingness to embrace change in a positive frame of mind, with an eye to the potential benefits it brings.

And the second is to ensure that change promotes equity and doesn’t put any new barriers in place.

These were the things that motivated Mick Young when he helped Gough Whitlam establish his education revolution and when he set up his own scholarships that have given us the Mick Young Scholarship Trust.

I’m glad to know that those attitudes are endorsed by TAFE Directors Australia, which has been advocating on behalf of TAFE and its users for a decade now.

TDA is supporting new investment in TAFE, forging stronger links with industry and making TAFE a force in international education.

I want to salute its founders – people like Peter Veenker, Bruce Mackenzie and Barry Peddle – and its current CEO, Martin Riordan for the great work they’ve done and will continue to do. And now it’s my great pleasure to propose a toast to the organisation and say I look forward to working with it to give Australia one of the best vocational education and training systems in the world.

Thank you.