Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (No.1) Bill 2011. It gives me enormous pleasure to again be speaking on a higher education matter in this place. The Gillard government has certainly been a reformist government when it comes to education, increasing the opportunities for students to access the higher education system. This bill will provide opportunities for greater efficiency and effectiveness in the government's VET system. This bill will also better position implementation of the government's 2010 budget measure, Skills for Sustainable Growth. That is certainly something that I welcome and I know all members from the Labor side welcome this quality provision. The Australian government recognise that for some people the payment of up-front tuition fees for higher education and for VET courses is a barrier to study. I know the member for Deakin has raised this matter often. He is a qualified electrician and has a real passion for, and has taken an interest in, making sure that young people have the opportunity to take up a trade and receive a TAFE education as part of that. I certainly welcome his contribution.

In keeping with the tradition that Labor governments want to improve the access of people to higher education, VET training and the like, we want to lift barriers to participation. These are important provisions to enable that. They build on the FEE-HELP and the VET FEE-HELP that have been put in place to enable people to access TAFE courses and the like. I think these amendments are proper and will enable people to access the very important reform areas that we have put in place.

Requirements will be developed for inclusion in legislative instruments under the act, where possible, for streamlining and for the use of existing Commonwealth regulatory frameworks to apply. The amendments will allow the minister to put in place the necessary approvals for higher education and for VET providers. The minister will be able to vary or remove conditions which have been imposed in the past. I think placing conditions on approval and continued approval is very important.

I take this opportunity to put on record my continued support for the Gordon, the Geelong TAFE training facility that has, in one way or another, been around since 1887. It has played a very important role in providing training opportunities for young people across Geelong and the western districts. By the nature of my seat, two-thirds of young people that access TAFE training would access that institution with the remainder of people, from the northern part, taking the opportunity to go to the School of Mines in Ballarat, another very old institution. Its roots go back to the gold rush. It has had a very long and proud history of training young people for a very significant period of time in the northern part of my electorate. In the western part, we have the South West Institute of TAFE which was established in the late seventies. It has been providing training opportunities for young people. Whilst it is based in Warrnambool, one of its sites, the Glenormiston College, is only just to the west of my electorate and has been providing educational opportunities, particularly in agriculture, for a very long time. It is something I am very proud of. I know many people in the western district have access to training opportunities in the west.

As I said a little earlier, this Labor government has a very proud record of building opportunities for young people to access TAFE and university education. We continue to put in place the necessary reforms to increase participation to enable universities and TAFE colleges to grow in a sustainable way to provide quality educational outcomes for those students. Course costs have been a barrier for access, and Labor has a very proud record, going back a long time, of putting in place opportunities for young people to be able to go to universities or TAFE and have those costs deferred to a later time when they can afford it. We are about removing barriers and we will continue to work hard to reform our education system to ensure that barriers are removed wherever possible, providing people with an opportunity. As a consequence of that, I commend to this place these bills. As I said earlier, I would like to thank the opposition for their cooperation.

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