The Australian 21 September 2012 The Age 20 September 2012
Teachers and workers at Victorian TAFE institutes and dual sector universities staged an unprotected 24-hour stop-work action on 20 September to protest against $300m in funding cuts. TAFE directors declined to take action to oppose the strike out of sympathy with their staff while skills minister Peter Hall condemned the unprotected strike action as unnecessary and an inconvenience to students and the community.
At a rally of up to 2000 TAFE staff and students, AEU Victorian president Mary Bluett condemned the cuts as “an act of economic and social vandalism.”
Although anger at the rally was overwhelmingly directed at Hall and the Baillieu government, the former Brumby government came in for a bit of stick for having engineered open slather access to public VET funding., a point picked up by Hall:
The market driven training system was engineered by a state Labor government, required by the federal Labor government and now [Labor] are shamelessly seeking to absolve themselves of their own creation.
But state Labor’s skills spokesman Steve Herbert rejected the criticism, saying the Baillieu government was to blame for not earlier cracking down before the blow out in private provision.
The damage that is being done isn’t the result of contestability. It is the result of $300 million in budget cuts. We recognised TAFE had to be funded at a higher rate for their community service obligations and having to operate in thin markets.
