She says the Granville electorate has 8.1 percent of people receiving Jobseeker payments and “yet our vocational training system has been dismantled”.
“Granville TAFE was one the State’s pre-eminent TAFE colleges,” she said.
“It has been training students since 1884 and thousands of Western Sydney people learnt their trades there. Many local people have fond memories of their apprenticeships and traineeships there but the Liberal Government has got rid of two in five staff there in their relentless drive to gut TAFE in NSW.
“Now more than ever we need further training opportunities for our jobseekers and young people, but a decade of damage inflicted by the State Government has reduced their opportunities.”
However, Minister for Skills and Tertiary Education, Geoff Lee, says Ms Finn is totally wrong and it is misleading and deceptive to suggest there has been a reduction in the number of jobs at Granville by 40 per cent over the last few years.
“Labor has already been told the campus level data they are using is not accurate,” he said.
“It is typical of Labor to deceive the community using inaccurate data.
“The data cannot be used to draw these conclusions because many staff work at multiple campuses but are only counted once in data.”
He said the NSW Government had invested more than $1.9 million this year at Granville on classroom technology, improved access for people with a disability, and new teaching equipment for construction trades including plumbing bays.
