2 million self-employed
Their interests are our interest
It's your contract: Take control of it!
We say you should control your contract. Here's how. Check for clauses that are:
Red for Stop
Amber for Caution
Green for Go
You can also make use of our Contract Template to design your contract.

Matrixes and template are available here (ICA members only). Not a member? Join here for as little as $55.
You and Your Contract
Charter of Contractual Fairness.

Debate: Suck it up?

Contract problems?
Fixing business disputes
There's lots happening for new dispute resolution services for small business people. The Small Business Commissioner (SBC) model is being rolled out across Australia. Explanation of developments.
Watching: The new world of work
We track and discuss what's happening with work.
The new Cuban revolution.
Watching: The coordinated attack against self-employed in Australia
Do unions hate the self-employed?
Federal tax attack
Sham contracting small problem
Watching: New Technology
Opportunities and new threats for self-employed people
Left versus right: the great debate
Ken Phillips (ICA) and Peter Strong (COSBOA) debate "The Future (or Death) of Employment". Vids are here.
Our Campaigning
We need unfair contract protections
Defend contractor tax laws
Watching: Your Super
We're monitoring superannuation
Watching: Work Safety Laws
Harmonised laws have big problems.
Watching: Government Contracts
Military Aircraft (JSF)

National Broadband Network
Watching: Fair Work Act
We're watching

What the AIG wants
Handy ATO Links
Filing your tax return:
A member's problem
ATO advice

Handy ATO tax links:
ATO debt collection: overview
ATO debt collection: 'Products'
Guide to managing your debt
Not-for-profit tax guide
Lodge your BAS online
PAYG withholding tax tables
New tax form: Taxpayer Statement of Account
New tax form: Notice of Assessment
Mortgage scams
Small business support
Payment arrangement calculator
Want an ATO visit?
ATO Help for small business
ABN eligibility rules
Self managing your tax debt

Handy Super links:
ATO SMSF compliance
ATO free seminars.
SMSF Admin advice
New Super clearing house
Tax on SMSF loans
Watching Global Economies
Watching Global Economies
Watching the USA
Watching China
Central Banks on Debt
Watching Housing Bubbles
Ken Phillips on the debt equation

Is our national training system going to the dogs?

2 June 2011

 We hear a lot that Australia has a skills shortage. This particularly affects the practical areas in trades and so on. What's not widely recognised is that much of the practical training is delivered directly to businesses and their workers by other (mostly small) business trainers. There's a large and well-developed network of these private trainers. They tailor training to the specific needs of individual business clients.

At the moment there's a major government review of training occurring. We've received feedback from the small private trainers that they are being dealt out of the review process. This is consistent with what we're seeing on a wider scale. Big government likes to talk with big unions and big business. They make big decisions and expect the 'little people' to just fall in line. The small trainers say the prospective outcomes are not looking good. More red tape and lower quality training! Here's what some private trainers have said to us.

A view of the skills training market

1. The flawed review process
The Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA), which is to become the new national regulator for the Vocational Education and Training industry on 1 July, 2011 has made quite a splash amongst small registered training organisations (RTOs) even before its official birth. Despite not yet existing, ASQA put up on its new website a request for submissions addressing its new schedule of fees and charges. Unfortunately, ASQA is so new no one actually works there. This left a number of bewildered RTOs to use the email message box provided.

The sense that something was not right grew as these unfortunates realised that the end date for submissions was the 6 May 2011. As the date on the discussion documents was 18 April 2011 and given that Easter and Anzac day fell into this period, those wishing to make submissions via the email text box had 12 working days to do so. No contact names and 12 days to provide a submission to a non-functioning government QUANGO? Little wonder many smaller RTOs concluded they were being deliberately shut out.

As an exercise in consultation this could have been much better---much, much better. However, it is understood the big end of town got its chance with AIG, ACCI and ACPET all being directly consulted. Wonder what they said? It is a fair bet they were not promoting the interests of small RTOs but, just in case, keep an eye on their submissions pages here, here as well as here.

Let's see if they stand up for their smaller brethren.

We certainly know that Skills Australia is happy to publicly recommend students should only buy their training from RTOs, which are, according to Skills Australia 'TAFE Institutes or Colleges'. Pity the small commercial operators without the word 'college' in their name. See the transcript here. There seems to be widespread ignorance that there is a vibrant and innovative RTO sector out there operated by small business.

2. Some quality issues
The real issue is that the federal organisations consistently impose regulatory and other regimes with NO REGULATORY IMPACT STATEMENTS. This is again the situation in relation to the schedule of fees recommended by ASQA (Australian Skills Quality Authority). Indeed, the last effort has added approximately $25,000 in costs as RTOs (Registered Training Organisations) are forced to buy compliant software systems from a restricted pool of suppliers and employ staff to input data that no government agency reads or uses.

The approach being suggested by ASQA will severely affect 'specialist' RTOs, particularly those working directly to employers as clients and not to students. However, there is no recognition that the sector of the VET (Vocational Education and Training) market which sees RTO selling directly to employers for training of employees is growing and is a substantial outsourcing opportunity across industry. The imposition of unnecessarily complicated data collection has seen many specialist RTOs recommending to their clients (employers) that they abandon the VET system and move towards 'company' or 'industry' qualifications whilst avoiding all nationally recognised qualifications. In our own case, we have already achieved this outcome with two industry groups.

The recommendation to increase Accredited Course Fees will be met by howls of outrage. These courses are often developed and implemented to meet urgent and real needs within industries which are importing new technology and techniques. Trying to alter a Training Package is unworkable! The process is bureaucratic, controlled by educationalists employed by governments, unions and employer representatives and is far too unresponsive to the changing face of work in Australian workplaces today.

In short, the problems are:
  1. Second-rate administrative oversight by educationalists representing industry groups, unions and governments. There is a consistent failure to produce regulatory impact statements and there is what appears to be a deliberate effort to exclude the mass of the industry from the consultation processes.
  2. The current system of Training Packages has been captured by the educationalists and is now slow, full of unnecessary rubbish and consequently becoming irrelevant within workplaces.
  3. Increasing anger and frustration at the whole system and those involved, including failing to talk to the people working on the ground directly providing the training.

Send us a Comment

To send us a comment on this story, click here.

Submitted Comments

On 5 June, Mick said:

I agree that the training schemes do not work---you send a staff member to a course---which is only suitable for 20% of your business. It is far better to do in-house training (which cost us about $200,000 a year) but we get no help with this. It would be better if there were grants to have small businesses train an in-house person to train your staff in the skills that you require to suit the business. In other words, a flow-on succession plan of how your business does things---so it can survive for 200 years---we will!!!! But at a cost.


And John commented from the skills migration perspective:

I'm a migration agent, we tend to look at training at the end of the process, when a graduate of a training programme seeks to progress their training into migration, either permanent or temporary.

Your correspondent's "Is our national training system going to the dogs?" seem to be pretty close to the money.

When seeking a working visa, the applicant must have his or her skills assessed. That makes good sense and I support the idea.

For applicants with trade skills, the assessor is the TRA (Trades Recognition Australia). I sometimes must communicate with TRA which is buried within the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. They are incredibly difficult to work with. Their website is impenetrably dense and frequently seems circular, by that I mean that a couple of "clicks" leads one back to where one started without finding any new information.

The TRA assessment system is incredibly bureaucratic and the department seems to be staffed by persons who know nothing about training, trades or the requirements of industry.

Of course I've complained through the official channels. Guess what response? "    " Yep, that's it, between the quotation marks.

Compare the unfathomable TRA system with efficiency, courtesy and promptness of private assessors such as the CPA who assess accountants, or Engineers Australia who assess engineers, or the Australian Computer Society who assess skills of IT workers; all in a professional and responsive manner; the government department is none of those.

Migration agents are not dopes, but we cannot figure out how the TRA wants us to work.

One cynic states that the only logic that can be attributed to the system is that it is designed to not work.

Take a moment; look at the union antipathy to any form of migration. Look at the overt control the unions have over the Labor Government. Look at the requirement that a visa applicant gets a skills assessment but finds that to be incredibly difficult when using a government department. Put on our small businessman's paranoia cap and one can easily start to subscribe to that theory.