Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to compliment the member for Bendigo on a great speech. On the strength of that speech, I look forward to her supporting this legislation when it comes to the vote. I would point out that it is a great pity, in fact, that the member for Bendigo was not here for the last six years while the training system was run into the ground. Her colleagues turned their backs and refused to do anything to fix up the proliferation of dodgy RTOs.

It is interesting to listen to these speeches, as I have done back in my office at various times today. I was listening earlier in the day to the member for Newcastle, Sharon Claydon. You wouldn't know that there is a state election coming up in New South Wales, would you! She managed to line up the New South Wales government on a number of occasions, and gave great weight to that old saying that there are lies, damn lies and statistics.

I thought that I would go and have a little look, after her speech, at some of the rates she talked about for technical training in New South Wales as compared with my state of South Australia. Therein lies the variation. Of course, it is priced differently in the two states. I could only check for TAFE in South Australia. I do not mean, in any way, to cast any aspersions on TAFE; I have just used them as an example. For certificate III in agriculture, in New South Wales, for instance, it is a flat rate. It is an all-inclusive rate of $2,170. In South Australia you can actually build that qualification and leave some modules on the table, or not. It is true that there is a minimum fee of $1,333, but if you want to take all the modules, which is roughly equivalent to New South Wales, it is $4,500. So, it is a little over double the cost, in fact.

With respect to certificate III in civil construction and plant operations, the comparison is that the cost is $2,080 in New South Wales and nearly $4,500 in South Australia. I am sure that, if I went through all the courses, I could find variations that run in the other direction. I take issue with the argument that the member for Newcastle put when she attacked the New South Wales government. I say: we should all look a little deeper and make sure that we understand the issues what we are talking about, and bring wisdom to this place and not just plain partisan bashing because we have a state election coming up.

I turn to the bill itself. In June last year, I ran some forums in my electorate—one in Port Pirie, and one in Whyalla. They were very, very well attended, I must say. I was assisted by Karen Andrews. It was perhaps on the basis of some of the work that she did helping out some of the members that she is now the parliamentary secretary to the minister. She was very helpful and we had a really good roll up—lots of training providers and businesses that use the courses provided by the RTOs.

It was pretty clear that, while there are some good things happening out there, there are also plenty of deficiencies. As the member for Bendigo has just said, there was a high level of concern about the quality of service providers, particularly the fly-in fly-out providers. For instance, we found that aged-care courses that should take months to complete were being completed in a matter of days and that students with minimal hours on a piece of plant were being granted plant operator tickets and a licence to operate. When such a person rolls up looking for a job, the boss says, 'Can you drive a forklift?' and he says, 'Yes, sure I can,' but when the boss pops him on the forklift, he cannot do it. That has to be fixed. We just cannot put up with that in Australia. Not only does that attack the student, in that they have paid for a qualification that is substandard; it actually destroys business confidence in the qualifications system. If, on a regular basis, an employer finds that the person who walks in the door cannot actually do what they are qualified to do—whether, as the member for Bendigo spoke about, it is a hairdresser or whether it is a person working in aged care—in the end they do not trust any of the qualifications and it is back to square one, so we really achieve very little at all.

At the forums there were two types of providers—those doing VET training in schools and those providing post-school training. It is a complicated area, because schools are a state responsibility, whereas adult training is largely the responsibility of the Commonwealth. There were a number of issues raised that intersect between state and federal policies and funding lines. All in all, the training sector generally is not a happy place. There is a lot of frustration and disappointment.

This bill addresses many of those key issues and, in particular, the substandard provision of training from RTOs. This government will not put up with shoddy practices and with course attendees being ripped off. We will not put up with the taxpayer being ripped off and we will not put up with employers being driven to regard many of the qualifications of potential workers with suspicion.

The standards for national vocational education are policed by the Australian Skills Quality Authority, ASQA. This bill greatly strengthens their hand. Currently RTOs are registered for five years. ASQA inform us that the regular review of five years is not really a very useful vehicle for keeping an eye on how these RTOs are providing a service to their customers. If you know when the audit or the review is coming, you can tidy things up and make sure that the ASQA inspector sees exactly what you need them to see on that particular day. Acting on that advice, we have decided to extend the registration period to seven years, which will free up some ASQA resources so that they can more actively monitor the quality of RTOs at any time. ASQA will be given an extra $68 million over the forward estimates to police RTOs.

I spoke earlier about the interface and the often tortuous negotiations between the states and the Commonwealth, taking at least 12 months to get modifications to standards in this area. This bill unilaterally introduces a new quality standard, meaning that ASQA can get on with the job. I say: you beauty! When we see malpractice happening in our communities, we want to be able to jump on it straightaway. This will give a great amount of flexibility to ASQA to act. When they see things that are not happening correctly, we can make alterations to the standard and they can then enforce the alteration. As I said, they get an extra $68 million to do that.

We have all become very frustrated—when I say 'all' I mean the Australian public generally—with the delay between the announcements of governments' intentions or policies and their implementation. It can often take many months, sometimes years, to get to that point. In recent times we have been unable to get legislation through a fairly uncooperative Senate, which adds extra time to that lag. People often think that, when a government announces something, the deal is done. That is not the case, and it is not the case with training either. It is very important that ASQA will be freed up to act in this manner.

The bill also addresses the issue of poor information provided to individuals on the courses that they may be undertaking. RTOs will be compelled to inform their customers who owns or operates a training provider. It will force them to make clear to all students what they are committing to every time they embark on a new course or a variation to their course. So they will know their financial commitments and they will know just what kind of qualification they will have at the end of their course. That would seem to be dead simple. It is like buying a car. You would expect people to be well informed about what they are buying. But, unfortunately, it is not the case with all providers. All providers are not created equally. Some of them are doing a very good job. As I found at my forums, it is those people, the good providers, that are crying out for increased scrutiny in this area. They lose business to poor operators, who they are able to undercut on price. Sometimes it is more expensive for those who deliver a quality product than it is for those who fly in and fly out after a few days and give you a shoddy qualification. So they are more keen than anyone to get this fixed up.

This is very important to my electorate, which, as I have said a number of times in this chamber, covers more than 90 per cent of South Australia. Of course, hands-on workers are the predominant species in an electorate like Grey. We have fewer professional services but more people who actually work in the trades and the hands-on professions, if you like. So, getting good qualifications, whether it be in the mining industry, the building industry or the fishing industry, is very important. It is a term of trade. In fact, in 2013 there were 160,000 public VET students in South Australia. We will be providing over $130 million in funding and support for the subsidisation of VET training over the forward estimates. That is a substantial investment in South Australia. It comes at a time, of course, when there will also be around $30 million coming into South Australia to help with the training procedures surrounding the exit of the car industry in our state.

In 2012 there were 44,000 VET qualifications awarded through the public VET system and approximately 28,000 apprentices and trainees in South Australia. That is a lot of people, but, from my point of view, I would like to see more. I think there are many occupations in our workforce where the workforce is ageing and where we need upgrading of qualifications. In fact, with our apprentice training system, it must be said at some stage that a lot of employment providers have been burned in the past by the vagaries of the apprentice system. So we also need to make sure that we help them out and provide the assistance, and credible assistance, where it is needed.

By and large these bills are a great advance. I have been privileged to be able to participate in the forums and then give the feedback from my forums directly to the then minister, Ian McFarlane. Of course, I have been able to pass that on now to Senator Simon Birmingham, a close South Australian colleague of mine. I expect that the VET sector will welcome the changes and that we will be able to get on with the job and make sure that our young people are getting the training they need and, more or equally importantly, that businesses are getting the trainees they need with the right qualifications and suitable skills when they arrive at work.

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