Australia's vocational education and training (VET) system has undergone reform over the last ten years. The original goals for training reform were prodigious - a high-skill, high wage economy and a training system accessible to all.

Few if any of the goals have been realised. Apprentice numbers fell 18.9% between 1989 and 1997, and while this fall has been somewhat offset by the growth of traineeships in the service sector, structured training in this part of the economy remains the exception rather than the rule. Official statistics suggest also that while training expenditure increased marginally as a percentage of gross wages and salaries between 1989 and 1996, the average number of training hours available to employees actually fell.

The training which is available is defined sharply by class and gender. In 1996, almost 44 per cent of managers and 51 per cent of professionals received in-house training, compared to 27.6 per cent of sales and service workers, 26.4 per cent of plant and machine operators and 16.9% of labourers. And the average expenditure per employee was more than double in organisations with 75 per cent or more male workers compared with organisations with more than 75 per cent female workers.

Given the efforts of governments, unions and employer associations to modernise industrial awards to encourage training, how could this investment yield such scarce returns?

The available data suggests that it has actually been the deterioration in the public sector's training effort that has resulted in the mediocre results in the seven years leading up to 1996. The public sector has, along with immigration, been a key source of skills in the Australian economy, in both heavy industry (a role played by public railways and electricity commissions) and in the 'white collar' jobs of the public services.

The public sector's role as a skills incubator was reflected in the large numbers of apprentices indentured beyond the needs of public agencies themselves, and in such things as the provision of paid training for administrative workers at both Federal and state levels of government. The corporatisation and privatisation of government business enterprises, and the downsizing of central agencies, have combined to undermine the public sector training effort, with sharp consequences for the country's overall training effort.

Australia's VET system has been defined around the traditional male-dominated apprenticeships. Around these, craft unions built militant labour organisation. Reform of this trade system proceeded, not only in the interests of equity, but because the Australian business community considered the craft identity generated by the apprenticeship and fostered by craft unions was a threat to the new workplace culture of a globalising economy. One consequence of training reform has been to imperil the Australian union movement's stronghold in heavy industry (including the public utilities), with very uncertain gains in the recognition and delivery of training in the service sector, where the majority of women in the paid workforce are employed.