Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this matter of public importance. At the outset I remind members opposite that it was the Labor Party that put in place a policy without the necessary safeguards to protect taxpayers and students.

I will give them a little bit of a history lesson. In 2009 Labor introduced the VET FEE-HELP program so that students undertaking a diploma or an advanced diploma could access a loan to help with their course fees. On the surface, that seems to be a reasonable proposition. But, unfortunately, when they did that Labor failed to put in place sufficient controls and safeguards to protect students and to protect taxpayers. In typical Labor fashion, when they set up the scheme they did not have an eye to the implementation risks, which is a very important fact.

In 2012 they again failed to think about the risks when they expanded access to the VET FEE-HELP program by removing the credit transfer arrangements between VET providers, and VET providers and universities. Unfortunately, the changes introduced by the former Labor government have undermined confidence in VET and created a situation whereby unscrupulous VET FEE-HELP providers have flourished at the expense of students and taxpayers. As a result of Labor's failure to think ahead, there was a huge surge in enrolments arranged by unscrupulous VET FEE-HELP providers, from 2012 onwards. They preyed on vulnerable people, putting them into courses of dubious quality that they had little prospect of completing. They lured people into courses with offers of laptops, cash payments and shopping vouchers, and tried to claim that the courses were free, or government funded, when we all know that they are not. Labor had the opportunity to fix this mess when complaints started coming into the Australian Skills Quality Authority, but they failed to do so.

Labor have acknowledged it was their failure. Let me remind the House of the mea culpa statement by the shadow minister for higher education, research, innovation and industry from September last year. Senator Carr is quoted in The Age of 18 September. The article states:

Labor Senator Kim Carr said Labor introduced VET FEE-HELP with good intentions but the scheme contains 'fundamental weaknesses' that need to be fixed.

He went on to say that the regulators 'were not given enough power to crack down on rogue operators'—well, that was right. The article continued:

Senator Carr said the Gillard government's removal of a requirement for providers to have credit transfer arrangements in place with higher education providers was a mistake.

In typical Labor fashion, Senator Carr then washed his hands of the problem and is reported as saying:

Although Labor introduced VET FEE-HELP, it is the government's responsibility to restore confidence in the scheme.

We are all too used to cleaning up Labor's mess, and we are doing it.

For the education of those members opposite, I want to run through some of the 23 measures the coalition has put in place to clean up Labor's failures from 2012. Firstly, we acted to enhance consumer protections to lift the standard of behaviour of providers by banning inducements. No longer can providers or their agents offer laptops, gift vouchers, phones and other sweeteners to sign students up to loans. We acted to tighten up the rules around marketing so that students could not be told that the courses they were signing up for were free or government funded. We strengthened the rules around enrolment so that providers have to give students accurate information about the course and their rights and obligations. We banned withdrawal fees so that students could withdraw from a course without being compelled to continue a course of poor quality and without being charged a fee. We introduced tougher rules around the use of agents and brokers so that training providers are accountable for the actions of their agents. Providers must have a written agreement with any agent they use to market VET courses where VET FEE-HELP is available. We banned providers from being able to use VET FEE-HELP as a hook to get people's attention when cold-calling. Providers must require their agents to identify the VET FEE-HELP provider that a prospective student will be referred to, and the name of the course, and disclose that the agent will receive a commission if the person enrols in the course.

The government acted swiftly to stamp out the behaviours that flourished because of Labor's failure in 2012. Unlike Labor, we do not want people being hassled in shopping centres, outside Centrelink or in the privacy of their homes by unscrupulous providers and their agents. We made providers more accountable for ensuring that students have the capacity to undertake a particular course. We do not want to see people signed up for courses that they have no capacity to complete and then be left with a massive debt. We changed the rules around invoicing so that providers must issue a student with a VET FEE-HELP invoice notice at least 14 days before each census date for a unit of VET study. The census date is the date upon which their debt becomes payable .We put rules in place to ensure students cannot be hit with the entire cost of a course up-front. A provider must determine at least three fee periods for charging purposes for each course to ensure that the student's debt is incurred as they progress through the course. We have included strengthened protections for young people so that a person under the age of 18 must have the documentation signed by a parent or guardian. For all students, we have put in place rules so that a provider must not accept a request for a VET FEE-HELP loan from a student until two days has elapsed since their enrolment. Should a provider not abide by these rules, then a person may apply to the department for the remission of their VET FEE-HELP debt, and, from 1 January 2016, any person who was subject to unacceptable behaviour by a provider will be able to have their loan cancelled. We have sought to address the unsustainable growth in the scheme that was the result of aggressive strategies that were put in place, particularly by agents but by unscrupulous providers in general. Senator Carr himself has acknowledged the rapid growth in the scheme. In addition to these reforms, we have frozen the scheme at 2015 levels, awaiting a fundamental redesign of VET FEE-HELP, and we will put in place a new system in 2017.

And there is more, I say to the member for Cunningham. We have put in place changes to the legislation to allow payment in arrears on a quarterly basis for certain providers instead of payment in advance. Where there are concerns about the performance of certain providers, payments may be paused for new enrolments. We have also introduced infringement notices and civil penalties for provider breaches of certain requirements. We have introduced new financial and trading history requirements so that only established providers with a genuine track record can enter the scheme.

These are huge changes that we have put in place to address the failures of Labor. They were the ones who failed to put in place the safeguards, but we are fixing this. The coalition is committed to a strong VET sector and to deliver quality training for Australian students that meets the needs of employers. We are investing $6 billion a year—including $1.8 billion through payments to the states and $1.4 billion for our own direct programs—to assist with vocational training. The Commonwealth is investing $831 million to support apprentices though the Australian Apprenticeship Support Network. We are providing incentives to assist people to get into apprenticeships.

We are about supporting the VET sector. We understand the importance of having a high-quality VET sector that meets the needs of students and prepares those students not only for the jobs of today but also for the jobs of tomorrow—a system that can meet the needs of older workers who are seeking to transition from one career into another or perhaps to update their skills so that they can stay in the workforce for longer.

Labor have no funded plans for VET. We heard their excuse for a policy on education this week. It is nothing more than a $37 billion unfunded thought bubble which was put in place to protect the Leader of the Opposition's hide. We are about supporting VET. We are about cleaning up Labor's mess. It is a shame Labor took so long to realise that their own policies were a total failure.

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