Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak on this very important bill, which I think goes to one of the critical parts of what a government can do in terms of trying to up-skill the community by providing the necessary educational facilities and support for people trying to get the sorts of skills and education levels they need to have fulfilling careers and to help not only themselves but the economy as well. So it is very pleasing to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (VET FEE-HELP and Providers) Bill 2009.

I also want to make mention of the Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion, who has a very large portfolio looking at workplace relations, training and other areas. It is a very important role—as well as being the Deputy Prime Minister, of course—and no less important in that it is the issue of education which is front and centre in my local community in terms of all the things we are trying to achieve as a community and certainly of which I am very supportive. I do everything I can as the local representative for that community. I have got a number of stories about what is happening in the electorate of Oxley which I will recount to the parliament in my contribution.

This bill provides a number of technical amendments for the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to ensure that a student’s access to assistance under the VET FEE-HELP Assistance Scheme is limited to those VET units of study that are essential to the completion of the relevant vocational education training course of study. This makes complete sense and is where it ought to be. It also ensures consistency between the VET FEE-HELP assistance schemes, and the bill applies previous amendments made to HESA in relation to the revocation of a higher education provider’s approval to the VET FEE-HELP Assistance Scheme and provisions of HESA, and also allows a higher education or VET provider notice of approval to take effect on the day immediately following the day that it is registered under the federal register.

The VET FEE-HELP Assistance Scheme provides loans to eligible fee-paying students and it does that for certain VET courses of study. It helps pay for all or part of the tuition fees for students. Students can then access training and defer the fees until they are able to pay, which is a completely reasonable and appropriate manner to deal with getting students through these schemes. You will hear debates in this place from time to time, or perhaps in the community, about whether that ought to be the way for deferral of fees, how those fees should be paid and how much they should be; whether they are for a VET course, a training course, a higher education course, a university degree or others. I think those debates will continue for a long time into the future. But I think it is important that we all recognise here that any assistance that can be granted through government schemes that helps particular students to further educate themselves to gain particular skills and to improve themselves gives them a better chance of fulfilling careers, contributing to the economy and playing a larger part and a bigger role in their own community. This is one of the very important driving factors for this government, to ensure that we do our bit to assist students in their ability to pay fees on specific courses.

The VET FEE-HELP Assistance Scheme is targeted to certain higher level skills as access to assistance under the scheme is limited to VET courses of study leading to the award of a vocational education training diploma or advanced diploma or a graduate diploma or certificate. This is for a good reason: where there is assistance provided, and where that study leads to a particular type of award, that is where the assistance should go. It should not just be right across the board on any course or on every bit of training. Where there are limited amounts of funding, and where governments are limited in what they can do with the amount of resources they have available, it should be specifically targeted and directed at those who not only need the most assistance but also to those skill level areas the government wants to promote and where the economy needs to be stimulated. That is exactly what this does.

For local communities, there is a focus you can make when defining your area. In the past decade, and certainly in the last five years, there has been a real focus in the western corridor of Brisbane and Ipswich from a whole range of areas—local government authorities, the state government and the federal government—on skilling people up, providing better educational opportunities and providing better training opportunities. That has come not only from those three levels of government but also from private providers, the community itself and—some might find it surprising—even from developers. I make specific mention of that because I want to put it on the record that Springfield Land Corporation in my electorate has for many years driven not only the development of a very large estate—a satellite city called Greater Springfield—but has had education as a central focus of what that community is about, right at the core of it. For a lot of years I suppose people just looked at it as perhaps any other development and did not really consider just how serious they were, or the sort of impact it would have on the local community: to build a new community for people to live in on the principle that education gives you great opportunities.

We are many years down the track now, and probably close to 20 per cent of the development has been completed. The Bremer TAFE has been involved. It is a fantastic TAFE organisation in my electorate and wider—it runs into the electorate of Blair, and I note that the member for Blair is here and will also speak on this very important bill. We have not only organisations such as TAFE but schools getting more involved at a community level and at a government level outside the normal charter that we would expect from schools, and certainly outside the normal charter that we would expect from developers of a particular estate. That achievement means that the University of Southern Queensland has set up in my electorate. It is a great regional university that is branching out and providing the sorts of opportunities to people that otherwise would never have had those opportunities. A lot of young people growing up in the western corridor have traditionally not had a lot of places to turn to. I say that would be the same regardless of which state we were talking about. You traditionally have not had a lot of opportunities directly around you. You certainly cannot look directly at a university in your own backyard, or some professional skill providers or other educational institutions that have the capacity to deliver the sort of up-skilling, training and educational opportunities in a community that we now find we do have in the western corridor.

I am particularly pleased and I am thankful about this. I would also like to acknowledge all of the hard work that has gone into delivering those sorts of opportunities. Right across the board there has been this wonderful partnership in the electorate between community, government, private enterprise, businesses small and large and employers. It is a story that continues to develop and grow.

I would particularly like to make reference to a group of schools in my electorate in that part of the western corridor, which, through our schools trades training investment, decided there was a real opportunity for them to collaborate and pool their funds to build one big trades training centre that could be utilised by all four schools. It was quite a simple proposition and one that I know is being dealt with through the department, and it is one that I expect will be successful. The simple proposition is one of four schools getting together. Not only do they have more resources but they can build a higher quality, better resourced facility for their students. What was really nice and really different about this one is that it involved government and non-government schools collaborating together. I am not sure how many other electorates may have this happening, but I hope it is happening elsewhere. I know that what is happening in my electorate is a really great example of schools in a particular community seeing the advantages of skills and education and what they can deliver for their students.

When this new facility is built and starts to provide the training, the skills and the resources it has been chartered to do, we will see something that we have not seen for a long time: government and non-government schools working together and sharing facilities with students being able to interact directly with students from other schools in an educational and trades training environment. That interaction will, I think, have a huge impact in the local community by the fact that it will give an understanding of how other schools work, how other students deal with their issues and how you can provide better opportunities in the local community.

So it is all very good news and all very important. It is all part of a genuine focus by a whole range of people to do something just a little bit different that will leave a legacy behind. But all this would not have happened if it were not for a couple of factors. Not only do you need essential goodwill—the goodwill of communities prepared to work together across all of those areas I have already described—but also investment, and very importantly that investment should be an investment such as the one contained in this bill. Being able to provide assistance schemes, funding for schools, supporting TAFE colleges and the work that they do, supporting universities in their expansion and their provision of courses for students: without all of that and without government assistance and without proper programs in place you do not get all those great ideas becoming a reality.

I have had the good fortune of having a number of ministerial visits to my electorate. I have shown them what is happening and I have taken them to the local schools and the university to shown them the growth that is occurring in the western corridor so that they can see that the money being invested, the programs that this government has put in place, the investment in schools, the vocational education training programs and the support we give to students and to families is having a very positive impact—that it is having the desired outcomes that we all seek. In the end, any government wanting to invest will want to see a great outcome from that investment, and that is certainly the case in terms of the electorate of Oxley and the wider western corridor.

I tend to refer to my electorate these days as being not just strict boundaries based on an arbitrary line that is given to us by the Australian Electoral Commission but as being more about the western corridor. It is a growing and developing community and it sometimes transcends those artificial boundaries that are given to us by the Australian Electoral Commission, which are necessary obviously for elections and for representation purposes.

Under the current arrangements, there are no provisions that would expressly limit a student’s access to assistance under the scheme to the vocational education training units of study which are essential and directly relevant to the completion of the student’s VET course of study. As such, it is possible that a student may be entitled to VET FEE-HELP assistance for a unit of study, even where that unit of study was additional to or not directly required for the completion of that course. We acknowledge that and we understand how those arrangements work. These amendments, therefore, do ensure that access to VET FEE-HELP assistance is appropriately targeted and that we are getting bang for our buck in terms of delivering essential funding into what I think is a key area in terms of driving the economy and in terms of keeping Australia moving and ensuring that young people and people who are doing re-training get the essential assistance they need.

This amendment is also particularly important in light of the Australian government’s decision to support the Victorian government’s VET reform agenda by allowing for the extension of the VET FEE-HELP Assistance Scheme to subsidise diploma and advanced diploma in that state. It is important to acknowledge that part of what we are doing is trying to bring about some consistency across the states and some uniformity to reduce the burden of bureaucracy and red tape and other inefficiencies that are contained in all systems and, also, to try to make it as user friendly as possible.

Further, the bill makes minor technical amendments to provide for appropriate protections of the minister and the Commonwealth in the event that a VET provider no longer offers any eligible VET courses, or is no longer appropriately established under a law of the Commonwealth, a state or a territory or no longer carries on a business or has central management and control in Australia. These amendments mirror those made to the HESA in 2007 in relation to higher education providers. It therefore ensures consistency between the two different programs: the VET FEE-HELP Assistance Scheme and the FEE-HELP scheme. The bill also makes amendments to the provider approval provisions to ensure that a greater number of approved higher education and VET providers can actually operate sooner, giving eligible students faster access to both those schemes.

Under the current HESA arrangements notices of approval are legislative instruments, and such notices of approval to operators of higher ed or VET providers do not actually take effect until the parliamentary disallowance period of 15 joint sitting days has elapsed. This can sometimes take up to two sitting periods. This creates some unacceptable delays and additional costs for higher education institutions and registered training organisations applying for approval and, as a consequence, leaves students without access to either the FEE-HELP or the VET FEE-HELP assistance programs during this time. So the amendments will ensure that higher ed and VET providers can operate on the day immediately following the day on which the notice for approval is registered. The amendment is particularly important, again, in light of our decision to support what the Victorian government has done as to reform in this area.

The key drivers of this amendment and changes are not only part of a wider program of the Rudd government’s move to make education, higher education and vocational training more efficient but part of a general philosophy that we have in terms of creating better efficiencies, creating more consistency across different jurisdictions and ensuring that where the government expends taxpayer dollars you get maximum value for those dollars, they are appropriately targeted at the people they are meant to help, they are targeted at the appropriate schemes or courses and, in the end, it is an investment not only in those people that receive that help but also in jobs and in the upskilling of all Australians. It helps to provide for better infrastructure delivery and, very importantly in all electorates, it helps to provide better schools and better outcomes out of the students that go through the schools. I think, too, it has better linkages between primary and secondary education, on to higher education, regardless of the path that students want to take—whether they want to take a university type path or whether they want to take a trades based path. Both of those have some equal opportunities that students can choose for themselves, and they can do that as early as possible through the education system, be it government or non-government.

I think one of the great successes of this government has been to, over recent years, turn that debate around. I think a lot of the public, certainly in the community, view these constant debates—about government schools and non-government schools, about how money is expended, about what is more valuable and about having a trade or a university degree—as old debates which are hopefully dead and buried. We can all move on to more important issues such as providing people with the necessary skills and investments, providing the right resources and facilities, providing all the right paths, providing the right types of policies and strategies, making sure that there is conformity across states and jurisdictions, and making sure that government is a facilitator and not an inhibitor of people’s educational opportunities and skilling opportunities.

While I commend the minister for her great work in this, I also commend the bill to the House. I know it is not a controversial bill and it is supported by everyone in this House. I commend it to the House.

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