Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Higher Education Support Amendment (No.1) Bill 2011, which is designed to streamline measures within the Higher Education Support Act 2003 both to improve the efficiency and effectiveness and to ensure the ongoing integrity of the income contingent loan program for the higher education and vocational education and training sectors.

Members will be aware of my continued advocacy for this vital sector of the Australian education market. As a tutor at the Queensland University of Technology prior to entering the House I know how important and fundamental education is. I want to place on the record that I commend the outstanding work that is being done at the Queensland University of Technology Gardens Point campus and the Creative Industries faculty at Kelvin Grove. They are to be commended for the excellent work that they do. I have enjoyed working particularly with the QUT alumni at Gardens Point campus in recently honouring a former lecturer in the marketing department, Su Mon Wong, and establishing the Su Mon Wong Memorial Scholarship for Excellence in Marketing in the School of Business.

Appropriate education pathways are essential building blocks and opportunities for all Australians, both young and old. I am determined that this sector be supported and given all of the assistance that it possibly can be given. Quality education and research are crucial to our nation and our people's success in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world. All Australians should be encouraged to pursue higher education and be supported in their endeavour to do so. That is why I support this legislation and will ensure that quality providers apply for and are able to offer those very important income contingent loans in the form of VET FEE-HELP. By simplifying administrative arrangements and improving risk management processes, the potential increased access to VET FEE-HELP is worthy of support.

The Australian vocational education and training system is extremely distinct in every regard—in its curriculum, provider, student fees and charges. The vocational education and training system provides students with the practical skills and knowledge that they need to go into the labour force initially and re-enter the labour force, either by retraining for a new job or upgrading their skills for an existing job. Since the 1990s, government policies have supported the development of a very competitive market in VET provision and today VET is provided through a national framework of many thousands of public and private registered training providers. I want to acknowledge the work that the VET providers do for state and territory governments. They run institutes of technical and further education and other government providers—for example, in the university VET campuses, agricultural colleges, community based providers, private providers, enterprises and also in the great work that some secondary schools do in this area.

While TAFE is now just another provider in the market, it is still the single largest provider, delivering exemplary services over the years. There are approximately 72 TAFE colleges operating out of a large number of campuses, and I want to pay tribute to the remarkable work that they do in my own electorate and I want to place particularly on the record the fantastic work that is being done at the Ithaca TAFE college in Red Hill and also the Gateway TAFE college.

The Australian Council of Private Education and Training, ACPET, is the main body responsible for all of the private providers and it represents more than 1,000 private organisations delivering a full range of higher education, vocational education, training and English language courses. Their leadership has always been valued by me, and I want to place also on the record the wonderful leadership of the national chair of ACPET, Kay Ganley—her business Charlton Brown is also based in the electorate of Brisbane—and the terrific work she has done, particularly in her advocacy work. I also want to place on the record the wonderful work that Michael Hall, the Queensland representative of ACPET, does in encouraging choice, innovation and diversity in Australian education and training for individuals and working proactively and cooperatively with government education training providers, industry and community groups.

I know that both Kay and Michael want to ensure that vocational, higher education and training services provide that choice, provide that diversity, that they are well targeted and widely accessible and that these courses are of very high quality. We need to make sure that all of our independent providers of post-compulsory education and training are supported, and I thank them both for the incredible leadership that they provide in this particular area.

On another indulgence, I want to mention briefly the leadership that ACPET showed recently, including with their National Disaster Scholarship Scheme that provided training assistance to individuals affected by major natural disasters that occurred recently, particularly in my electorate of Brisbane. The course scholarships were made available through the generosity of ACPET, the member colleges and the institutions and they have been made available since 2009 in response to the Victorian Black Saturday bushfires.

The scholarships provided tuition support for the completion of an Australian based vocational education qualification at both certificate and diploma level and they cover a whole range of study areas and occupations. Scholarships were awarded on demonstrated financial need, technical ability and interest in the nominated course of study. Those interested, particularly if they are wanting to take advantage of these scholarships, should also contact my Brisbane office. I want to pay tribute to the sector for bringing up those scholarships at a time of great need.

Returning to the bill, it has been reported that, because of these thousands of diverse providers entering the market, combined with the growth of the sector generally, there is an increased risk of unethical providers operating in this space. Because of these risks, we need to be satisfied that our safeguards and mechanisms for provider approval are robust, and to my mind the bill the government has presented achieves this though the fit and proper persons test.

Registered training organisations must meet a number of eligibility requirements to be approved as a VET provider: they need to be a body corporate whose principal purpose is to provide education; they need to be an RTO as listed on the National Training Information Service; they need to be financially viable and to remain financially viable, and they must offer VET accredited diploma and advanced diploma courses with credit transfer arrangements or VET accredited graduate certificate and graduate diploma courses; they must be a member of an approved tuition assurance scheme and hold a guarantee or an exemption from tuition assurance requirements; and they need to have administrative procedures and capacity to meet reporting requirements. These are all very important criteria of approval to ensure that the VET network remains strong, competitive, fair and flexible.

There have been an incredible number of reforms—and previous speakers spoke about those earlier—over the last 15 years and they have created strong foundations for the sector, but according to Skills Australia in their discussion paper Creating a future direction for Australian vocational education and training, aspects of the sector's performance over the last several years have been variable. Enrolment growth has been slightly at less than an average of one per cent a year in the last five years and apprenticeship completion rates are not satisfactory. Public confidence in the quality of provision has been shaken by improper activities in the delivery of programs, particularly to international students. We have some challenges before us and we have areas that need to be corrected and improved upon, but the future does look bright. With better provider approval processes it will certainly increase the number of students accessing fee assistance, and the coalition are very supportive of this measure. At a time when all Australians are facing very tough economic realities, including increases in groceries, utilities, rents and mortgages, any assistance that we can provide to those who really need fee assistance and help in accessing it is very welcome.

Tuition fees for publicly funded courses can vary enormously from course to course, across providers and even across jurisdictions, thus making the case for increased access to income contingent loans to the VET sector very important. It could be argued, as it is with higher education, that there are private rates of return to VET that make student charges justifiable. Consequently, VET students should have access to income contingent loans because upfront fees may be acting as a terrible barrier for them to pursue VET participation.

In 2005 income contingent loans, known as FEE-HELP, were made available to domestic students paying full fees in non-Commonwealth funded courses at universities and eligible private higher education providers. Expectations were that, with the introduction of FEE-HELP, there would be an increase in the uptake of full-fee places. This was introduced by the coalition government, of which I was a part. Under the reforms in 2007 extended student assistance was provided to those studying at diploma, advanced diploma, graduate certificate and graduate diploma levels, just as the requirements are with the Higher Education Contribution Scheme. The requirement was for students to repay the loan once their income exceeded a minimum repayment, currently just under $45,000 per annum. Unfortunately there are far too few Australians who have been able to access VET FEE-HELP to date. Departmental figures show that, in 2009, only 5,262 students received income contingent loans under this scheme. It is understandable, I suppose, as there are only 50 registered training organisations eligible to provide VET FEE-HELP.

Less well stated, but potentially implicit in the reasoning for targeting diploma, advanced diploma, graduate certificate and graduate diploma courses, is that professional and associate professional occupations are expected to be the areas of greatest labour market growth in the future. Predictions are that there will be labour shortfalls in these areas if current levels of supply of qualifications are maintained. Therefore, by providing students with financial support needed to undertake studies at this level, VET FEE-HELP can potentially help finance this demand. That is why I am very happy to support this bill. Every day in my electorate of Brisbane people tell me of the very great difficulty they face in sourcing and retaining appropriately qualified and experienced staff. Indeed, from my own experience as a small business operator I can attest to the trials of negotiating the human resources merry-go-round that exists out there. That is why we need to do so much better in this area. I am committed to ensuring that all Australians have access to quality training to make sure that they have the real world skills needed. This commitment goes hand in glove with the coalition's long-held goal to ensure that all Australians who want a job can get a job.

Over the years we have seen Labor waste the opportunity to provide meaningful skills access to Australians. What is a tragedy, today, is that 40,000 people aged 15 to 17 years of age—that is nearly five per cent—are not in education, training or work. And nearly one quarter of people aged 15 to 19 are currently looking for full-time work. We really need to do much better. It is a function of many variables, notably major demographic changes and the ageing of the population, but it is also partly due to a shrinking pool of skilled-up job seekers available to take up job opportunities and it is certainly a function of the government's failure. The skills shortage is of great concern to me and my coalition colleagues. I recommit myself to ensuring all I can do as the member for Brisbane to help businesses struggling to find staff with the skills that they need. We need workers in Australia to have better skills and to utilise them more effectively in workplaces and businesses. The VET sector provides that certainty and particular support, and we should all work towards that aim. I support this bill and I hope that more students will take advantage of the VET FEE-HELP scheme.

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