Mary Bluett from AEU at TAFE4All rally 10 May 2012
Channel: takvera - John Englart
Date: 10/05/2012

Mary Bluett said "there had been a budget blowout in the skills area because of the rorting of the current system by spineless and mean spirited private providers" who do the bare basics in delivering certificates in a minimal time. She told the crowd that last year there was a $40million cut in funding to the four largest metropolitan TAFE institutes to make up for the rorting and bad business practices of private training providers. This resulted in over 300 redundancies, and reduction in courses offered.

This time around it is "$300million to be cut and ripped out of TAFE for the money to go to private providers" she said.

"The social and economic future of this state depends on the quality of education and in terms of jobs, that there is quality TAFE provision in the state of Victoria. We have seen 43,000 jobs lost in this state in the last 12 months. Where do those people go to get retraining and another chance of employment? Our Public TAFEs! Without our public TAFEs those people will have nowhere to go, and in fact many of our own TAFE members both teachers and support staff are going to join the ranks of the unemployed."

"It is a criminal act of economic and social vandalism that this Government is wrecking on the Victorian TAFE system." 

"It has got to stop. And we will be here for our students, the future of TAFE, and we will take this campaign for as long as need be right up to the next state election where we will remind Ted Baillieu: He promised to wind back the Skills reform, He promised to invest in TAFE." concluded Mary Bluett.

http://indymedia.org.au/2012/05/11/baillieu-government-funds-new-prisons-while-slashing-public-tafe-education