SA VET training hits rock bottom

The new subsidy list offers almost unlimited subsidies to those wanting to study in the automotive and construction industries - which are crashing – while killing funding to the creative arts, writing and multimedia, which are monetizing.

The real prize for dodging and weaving goes to the SA Minister for Higher Education and Employment, Gail Gago. She told the media, "It was industry itself that determined what courses were redundant and obsolete and which courses were really priority areas," she said. "They told us they wanted the training list streamlined so that those courses that were no longer being used, or had a low public value, were removed."

Gago has washed her hands of TAFE SA claiming that it is run by an independent authority, yet much of this disgrace lies at her feet. The SA government provides the funding and therefore is instrumental in how TAFE SA is run. Some course fees have risen almost 500 percent in the last year.

We heard from Gago last year when a leaked parliamentary briefing note prepared for her showed that SA TAFE plans to slash 814 jobs by 2017-18 as part of a cost-cutting drive. At the time, Gago was unable to provide details on the full four-year impact of the state government's savings drive when questioned in Budget Estimates.

It appears that Minister Gago is not responsible for anything. Combine this with the fact that none of the nine TAFE SA board members have any VET teaching or leadership experience and you have a recipe for disaster. If you were flying, you'd want a qualified pilot in the cockpit. Not in South Australia.

The SA government's Skills for All fiasco has slashed 200 courses, killed off the private providers and provided the raison d'etre for sacking one third of the TAFE SA workforce. A good days work for this hopeless government, surpassed only by a totally inept and invisible opposition.

The chickens have come home to roost in SA. For the last 30 years, the best and brightest prospects in political leadership have left the state, leaving only the dregs. Time after time, 'leaders' with third class minds have floated to the top where they consistently demonstrate incompetence and failure.

It's only a matter of time before the Commonwealth Government intervenes as the state is sinking in to chaos.