Labor pledges to build $5m Tafe expansion with 'green' focus

The promise to construct a new Building Innovation and Design Centre at its Sherwood Park campus will include a large multi-disciplinary trades workshop area equipped with specialist equipment.

As well as the workshop space, the project would include new classroom learning spaces, a student lounge, student welfare office, staff rooms and toilets.

The funding jobs would include "green" plumbing, solar and battery electrical systems, sustainable integrated building designs, and new construction technologies.

South West Coast Labor candidate Kylie Gaston said the $5 million would give the Sherwood Park site an "extra push" and real boost.

"There's no point announcing we are going to go to a renewable society without having the skills to back it up," she said.

"For this generation now at TAFE, it's a fantastic opportunity to learn this new cutting-edge technology as they set up their future, and future businesses.

"They're going to have an opportunity that others haven't had."

The expansion pledge was part of a larger announcement from the Labor Party as part of its plan to end reliance on coal and revive the SEC.

Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Action Lily D'Ambrosio said a re-elected Labor government would create 59,000 jobs in clean energy.

"We will make sure at least 6000 of those jobs are apprentices and trainees - so we're getting our TAFEs ready to train them," she said.

The Warrnambool project would be part of a re-elected Labor government's first investment from the Clean Energy TAFE Fund.

There are also plans to introduce legislation into Parliament that guarantees 70 per cent of Vocational Education and Training funding to TAFE each year.

The proposed building project comes as the Labor Party also promises to make free TAFE available to every Victorian who wants to get the skills they need for the job they want.

It plans to remove the previous eligibility criteria, making free TAFE courses available to people with higher-level qualifications who want to return to study and change the once-in-a-lifetime limit on enrolling in a free TAFE course - when they are continuing a select training pathway.

It means a graduate with an Arts degree would be able to re-train to become one of the thousands of new early childhood educators Victoria will need in the future.

Or someone who has completed one free TAFE course - getting a qualification in an important area like disability care - would be able to go back to TAFE and upskill to a higher-level disability qualification for free.

Ms Gaston said TAFE was getting stronger and stronger as a training base for the jobs that were needed.

"This is allowing people who have a degree already not to be knocked out from doing a free course," she said.

"It's an opportunity to upskill for free."

She said Tafe was not only being rebuilt by the Labor Party, it was being fortified. "It's visionary. It's setting us up for the future," she said.

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