Ann Sudmalis (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australia's work and training relationship needs quite a shake-up. There was a time where our gender determined the stream of training subjects that we were directed towards. This week we celebrate International Women's Day, and it is significant that we as women are no longer directed towards secretarial studies or home-maker courses; in fact, girls these days, thankfully, can pretty much take on any career choice they want. Our youth can choose from a huge career range.

Whilst many of us have successfully aimed for and achieved a degree or other qualification at university, young men and women, also people choosing to change careers, can attend a different, often more practical, application of education learning. We call this, in general terms, vocational education and training. Our Australian scheme is envied in many places around the world as a quality alternative educational pathway. In recent years, we have finally begun to re-realise that our vocational education is not only desirable but absolutely essential. Following this recognition, as we developed several areas of skills shortage past governments scurried to shore up the gaping holes in our skilled labour force. Rather than the slow, steady, methodical approach that was needed, there was a frantic process of registration of a number of organisations that supposedly offered training, education and qualifications. While this superficially looked to be the solution pathway, many of these training organisations did not train and many students could barely grapple with the English language, so education was 'off the whiteboard' and, as for qualifications, they were not worth the certificates printed. Businesses were crying out for tradespeople, students really did want a recognised and full qualification and the government wanted a return on its investment dollar.

Over recent years, various attempts have been made to remedy the situation, without a lot of success, hence the need to introduce the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment Bill 2015. This bill will improve the quality of the VET system and help the Australian government to create new quality standards in order to quickly address problems with VET providers or VET courses, and require anyone marketing a VET course, including brokers and other third parties, to clearly identify which registered training organisation is providing the qualification. It will also extend the registration period for RTOs from five to seven years, which will help the national training regulator, the Australian Skills Quality Authority, to focus its attention on investigating and acting upon high risk and poor quality providers. At first I was a little unsure of this extension but on talking to some of my fair dinkum RTOs it makes perfect sense—more time for them to just concentrate on getting great results for their students, rather than fussing around with paperwork, which in turn means more time for ASQA to check out the other RTOs.

In 2012, the original standards for ASQA were put in place. The standards are the instrument ASQA uses to ensure nationally consistent, high quality training and assessment across Australia's VET system. Compliance with the standards is a requirement for all ASQA-registered training organisations, but these standards have not always been met. The standards describe the requirements that an organisation must meet in order to be an accredited training provider in Australia. Training must be delivered by a training provider meeting industry requirements, as set out in the training package or accredited course, and it must have integrity for employment and further study. Also, training providers have to operate ethically and consider the needs of both their students and industry. However, there have been some pretty significant problems, so some major reforms had to be put in place: new standards for new RTOs from 1 January this year and for existing RTOs from 1 April. The standards strengthen the requirements for RTOs and third parties acting on their behalf, including the requirement to advise prospective and current students of any debts and government subsidies before they actually sign up to a course.

Often, for a government to create new standards, negotiations must take place with all the states and territories and approval must be secured from the ministerial council. But this can take around 12 months—way too long for the current problems, with unethical RTOs giving great RTOs a bad name. As a consequence, a quality standard has been devised and is introduced with this bill. Essentially, this will give the Commonwealth the equivalent of emergency powers to address known and emerging quality issues that compromise student and, eventually, industry interests and the quality of outcomes. It will also give industry and individual states or territories a direct avenue to the Commonwealth for action to urgently address issues of concern. In addition, these stakeholders will be part of the development of the quality standards. The Australian government will consult with employers, training providers and the state and territory governments to deliver the new quality standard within weeks.

The quality standard will be a condition of registration for RTOs. This also provides government and registered training organisations with the ability to respond far more rapidly to emerging issues than the current structures allow, sending a clear signal that, when required, the government can take action against those who are undermining the quality of the training sector.

These new standards also apply to the type of training in the information that must be provided to prospective students, including VET FEE-HELP loans, state entitlements and subsidy arrangements they sign up to. It must be absolutely clear to all students what they are signing up for, every single time their debt level is about to increase. The standards also make it clear that registered training providers are ultimately responsible for services delivered on their behalf by brokers, including that these third parties have to have a written agreement.

This measure of third-party notification has come about in direct response to the negative impact of marketing by such parties in the training sector and, in particular, the VET FEE-HELP market. There are a number of young students who are terribly confused about what their load currently is. A potential vocational student should be able to clearly identify the registered training organisation responsible for the qualification they expect to get. Under the proposed amendment, ASQA will be able to pursue anyone, not just training providers, who does not make it clear who is actually responsible. In line with this amendment, the bill will also clarify the coverage of 'person' to include organisations that are constitutional corporations, for coverage of civil penalty and offence provisions in part 6 of the act, so ASQA can take action.

To improve the effectiveness of ASQA in dealing with unscrupulous practices, this bill makes a suite of administrative amendments. Currently, the act only allows the regulator to request information from a regulated registered training organisation, which kind of defeats the purpose. ASQA cannot request information from a person or an organisation that is pretending to be an RTO. Another improvement is gained by amending the definitions of vocational education and training information so ASQA can share that information wherever necessary. Some changes are as simple as terminology changes, like from the Australian Quality Framework, a very current Public Service term, to the more user-friendly VET Quality Framework.

ASQA has advised the government that renewal, or re-registration, audits are the least effective method of identifying poor-performing providers, leading to less sanction activity than other types of audits. Extending the registration period will enable ASQA to redirect its resources from re-registration audits to more-targeted and random investigations and audits which will actually find the providers who are doing the wrong thing.

In doing so, the bill brings registration for RTOs into line with current registration under the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, TEQSA. With a number of providers offering both higher education and vocational education and training, this will mean that the process is duplicated across them rather than having two separate processes. Finally, a system where the standards make training providers responsible for their services delivered by brokers is a much better checking system.

The government is so serious about making sure this works that there is an allocation of an additional $68 million over four years to allow ASQA to really enforce these standards. This is a complete change, managing risk to our students and their education, as opposed to the policies of those on the other side that caused ASQA to spend time and resources on cost recovery rather than checking up on dodgy RTOs.

As part of this suite of changes, there is also a new National Training Complaints Hotline. On 19 January 2015, we launched this National Training Complaints Hotline—and it has actually been a 'hot line'. It is a joint initiative with the states and territories to provide a single point of contact to make it easier for complaints to be heard and actioned. Gilmore residents can call 133873, email skilling@education.gov.au or visit the training complaints website.

The government is looking at further action to crack down on inducements such as 'free' iPads or cash rebates, and increase the duty-of-care provisions for training providers to keep when they sign up a student, make sure that the student loan is actually spelt out and address single-unit qualifications where the full loan amount is levied up-front. That is totally inadequate, and we must address this.

The rapid expansion of VET FEE-HELP in the last few years and its misuse by providers is a direct result of Labor's failure to properly administer and implement the program, failure to establish a strong compliance regime and failure to protect these vulnerable students and taxpayers from unscrupulous training providers.

You might wonder, Deputy Speaker Broadbent, what else this government is doing to support vocational education and training. We are going to provide almost $6 billion this year in support of vocational education and training through direct funding for programs, support to the states and territories, and student loans. We have introduced the new trade support loans, which is up to $8,000 in the critical first year, up to $20,000 over four years, with almost 16,000 of these already taken up in the first six months of offer.

There is a new Australian Apprenticeship Support Network, to start 1 July this year, to cut red tape and improve apprentice commencement and completion. This will offer tailored support to Australian apprentices and their employers from pre-commencement to completion, entry-level screening and testing to ensure assisted apprentices find the right training pathway and are well matched to their employer. How many times do we hear about a young person going into the wrong career and being stuck there? This individual case management and mentoring will be available to those at risk of noncompletion. The $476m industry skills fund will be a key component of the government's Industry Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda. It is absolutely critical. Most importantly, as part of this entire initiative the government is conducting a full review of training products in the VET system.

There will of course be more reforms, following periods of consultation that occurred in the first part of 2015. One initiative as a result is the introduction of the vocational education in schools framework, preparing our secondary students for work. A second series of national VET reform consultations hosted by the VET Advisory Board was held throughout January and February, and the results will be taking into consideration by the government when rolling out reforms. As part of the broader reform of training packages, the government is moving to a more contestable model for training package development and maintenance from 1 July 2015.

The coalition worked with all stakeholders to review and revive the vocational education in schools framework, to help our students get the right training for the right place, the right job and the right employer. Updated for the first time in more than a decade, the framework marks the start of an exciting phase for students who choose to pursue a vocational pathway to their preferred career and for those who develop and implement VET programs in our secondary schools. Elevating the status and quality of the vocational pathway is critical for the skills audit that we need in our nation. Throughout 2015 we will be working with the schools involved and other stakeholders to establish the curriculum, recruit year 9 students who will join the recently announced P-TECH for year 10 in 2016 and engage industry partners. These concerns emphasise the study of science, technology, engineering and maths, all extremely important and absolutely dear to my heart. Over the next four years we have also budgeted $1.9 billion in loans to apprentices under our Trade Support Loans, $1.79 billion in apprenticeship incentives, $1 billion for adult migrant English and so on. We are actually getting on with the job of investing in our students.

As part of the inquiry into TAFE education we saw examples where dodgy RTOs have been allowed to flourish at the expense of well-known and well-respected TAFEs. The Labor Party say they are the friends of TAFE—really? When you allow unchecked, unaudited, non-compliant organisations to expand exponentially while TAFEs and very effective private RTOs are struggling to survive, I have to question the value of Labor's friendship. In fact it is more a case of: with friends like that, you don't need enemies.

To conclude, Labor failed to support training, but I would like to congratulate the member for Cunningham for the introduction of this amendment. It is really just a shame that it did not come about in the last government, as so many students now have difficulties that they will have to deal with in the future. I congratulate the member for Cunningham for bringing this forward, because it addresses the issues that developed, and they needed to be addressed. Now we have a bipartisan approach to look out for the betterment of our students, our industry and their training.

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