Canning Labor candidate Mellisa Teede sees Mandurah CBD as future educational hub

That’s where Canning Labor candidate Mellisa Teede sees it heading. 

The Federal candidate has said she would like to see a tertiary education hub in the heart of Mandurah so study can be integrated into other parts of the community. 

“I would like to see that site out at the Mandurah campus maybe become part of the high school, and we bring our universities and parts of our TAFE – not the heavy industrial side of TAFE but certainly the health and community services part of TAFE – to start to bring it into the CBD,” Ms Teede said.

“Not only will it benefit the CBD economically in the small business sense, but students want to go to cafes hang out around the city.”

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Ms Teede – who has spent time working in education and TAFE – said it was important the region doesn’t get caught short without any forward planning into education and training. 

“What we don't want to see – and I've seen it throughout my career – is that we get caught short,” she said. 

“Suddenly we have a turnaround in the economic cycle and the resources sector starts to pick up again and we get caught short because we haven't invested in the pipeline of skills in our community so inevitably we start to bring in overseas workers to take up those very lucrative jobs.” 

Bill Shorten and Federal Labor have promised to put $470 million back into TAFE colleges if they win the yet-to-be announced election. 

It’s funding which Ms Teede says Canning needs. 

“We don't have enough tertiary education presence here,” she said. 

“In fact, it seems Canning misses out when it comes to any rationalisation of resources.

“You can see the Mandurah TAFE College is good but we need much more of presence across the whole of the region.

“I feel like the big gap is still in our trades area. 

“People are having to go to Rockingham or in many cases Thornlie to go and get a trade and I know through workforce planning, with industry, we've done some economic planning over many years and under all scenarios this state will always need trades workers.

“If our people are highly skilled... then that itself creates jobs.

“Build that capability and we'll attract other industries to this region and that was always the plan under the movement.”

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