THE Greens have challenged member for Wagga Daryl Maguire to vote for a bill they say will save TAFE and meet a commitment he made to the vocational education and training sector.
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In Wagga as part of a "save TAFE tour" of NSW, Greens MP John Kaye said before the March 2011 election Mr Maguire joined with Nationals leader Andrew Stoner and now education minister Adrian Piccoli in signing a pledge not to outsource TAFE jobs or courses, cut funding or make TAFE unaffordable.
But since then, according to the Greens, the NSW Coalition government has cut TAFE's budget, reduced staff numbers, pushed up fees and slashed courses.
"Since coming to power, the Coalition has broken every one of those commitments," Dr Kaye said.
He said in direct contradiction to Mr Maguire's pledge, the government was about to put more than $630 million of public funding out for competition with private for-profit training corporations in what is being called the "smart and skilled" market.
Mr Maguire will not vote for the Greens bill and said they and Labor continued to live in the past.
"I don't want to sound unsympathetic, change is not easy, but it is necessary because of the mess Labor left us," Mr Maguire said.
"We are delivering a modern TAFE system to meet the needs of business, industry and the state.
"The Greens continue to devise their policies down the bottom of the garden with the pixies without even explaining how on earth they will pay for them."
