I come from South Australia and one of the major problems that rural industries have in South Australia--and I suspect it is the same in New South Wales--is that the mining industry has enormous capacity to take people at wage levels that rural industries could only dream about. That impacts on our numbers, particularly people who have demonstrated real ability and flexibility and the capacity to work.

They are quickly picked up at totally different wage rates from the level that rural industries have the capacity to pay. That is unfortunate and I am not sure how we address that.

Those who seek a long-term career in rural enterprises, regardless of what they are, are there for more than simply money; they are there because they enjoy the lifestyle, the work and the opportunities.

There are quite a number of commodity areas in agriculture where, even though some of Australian agriculture is in a reasonably parlous state, really good jobs and career opportunities remain. It is not an industry that does not create for itself real opportunities if people wish to put skills into their backgrounds.

If they wish to learn and ramp up their education activities there are quite reasonable career paths. In fact, if you look at some of the more boutique ends of the market there are really strong career opportunities

The first thing that is a requirement for young people entering the rural lifestyle is that they want that lifestyle above all else. If they do not have that there is little else that will have the capacity to work. So they need that.

They need information on how to join people together if it is not just local people being employed by local employers. If you wish to draw people in from outside communities they must have the capacity to understand where the potential employer or employee is.

They must be able to access relevant learning institutions and arrangements. That is the really important issue if people are being encouraged to follow the apprenticeship or traineeship line.

It is about linking like people and organisations and their capacity together.

My observation with TAFE is that the delivery across the State is patchy in the extreme. It depends almost entirely on the personality involved with the delivery.

At North Wagga I am proud to say at the moment that the head teacher, in particular, is very high calibre and he is getting a lot of backing out of his system to do quite a good job. But if you look in other areas, because they are public servants sometimes the application is a little less than ideal, so almost nothing happens.

It is a problem in agriculture that we forever have to attract people to education. If you want to be a butcher there is a trade standard or if you want to be a mechanic there is a trade standard that you have to meet. But there is no such thing in agriculture and it makes it very much harder to entice people into education.

That is where TAFE could do a lot more.

Mr SHINNICK: And the reason we do this is because certainly if you want to become an electrician, you basically have to be university qualified and that has been borne out by the results of the Capstone test, which is the qualification you now have to complete to get your electrical trade certificate.

Last year I believe the failure rate in New South Wales was something like 75 per cent in that test. A lot of those apprentices have come in previous years where the selection process was not as rigorous as to who they put into an electrical apprenticeship but now it is only the very top students who we put in to become electricians and who could quite easily do an electrical engineering degree.

CHAIR: Is that mainly because of safety reasons?

Mr SHINNICK: It is difficult to say. I would have to talk to our trainers but certainly for all the regulatory reasons. You have to have a very high level of understanding, but that test at the end of it basically tests the apprentice's knowledge of what he has gained over the previous four years--it is called the Capstone test--and it is certainly proving to be very difficult for apprentices to get through.