Prime Minister Kevin Rudd savaged state governments for destroying vocational training while simultaneously stripping $111 million set aside for TAFE and university campuses.
During his campaign launch speech on Sunday, Mr Rudd vowed to protect the national training system from the likes of Queensland, Western Australia and Victoria, which he said had allowed TAFE to start to “wither on the vine”.
But half of the $200 million in small business tax cuts unveiled in the speech would be paid by deferring payments from the Education Investment Fund, which is used for new buildings and facilities for tertiary colleges.
“[It’s] another broken promise,” said the fund’s independent chairman, Philip Clark. “They’ve [had] to find an offset and thought, aha, we’ll defer these TAFE projects and use that as the offset.”
