Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise tonight to speak on the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment (Annual Registration Charge) Bill 2017 and the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Charges) Amendment (Annual Registration Charge) Bill 2017. I support the bills before the House tonight as I support the TAFE sector and vocational education and training.

These bills ensure that the ASQA, the Australian Skills and Quality Authority, will have certainty. They make changes and amend ASQA's establishing legislation to make it explicit that registration fees are collected under an act dealing with the subject of taxation for the purpose of section 55 of the Constitution. This will ensure the current funding arrangements for ASQA and, further, ensure that ASQA techniques to investigate complaints—techniques like intelligence collection and data analysis, which are effective—are able to be funded into the future. These amendments go to the core of ensuring quality in the VET sector, which is critically important in skills development and employment.

I rise tonight to speak on this bill because I value every opportunity in this place to speak about education—tonight explicitly about vocational education and training, the great history of our TAFE sector and what a wonderful job it has done in service to our nation. ASQA and the sector have suffered enormous reputational damage across the last few years. We have heard stories of student victims: people who have been charged a lot of money and have gone into debt to pursue a certification, only to find that certification ripped away from them because of shonky providers operating in this space. Students have had their certifications cancelled. This bill is part of the first step, I hope, in rescuing that reputation, in retrieving that reputation of our TAFE sector and our vocational education sector. To this end, I also welcome the government's review of ASQA and VET regulation. It is long overdue—four years overdue—but it is welcome. I welcome the appointment of Professor Valerie Braithwaite to head that review.

Let's be very clear: this review needs to result in improvements to restore faith and trust in the sector. Only genuine quality providers should operate in this sector and there are no better providers than our publicly funded TAFEs. This review will hopefully see steps made to put TAFEs back on the map to ensure that they are funded so that we can have a vocational education sector that is about excellence, not just compliance. We have seen where the road of compliance has taken us with some shonky providers in this space. They were all compliant on paper but not compliant when it came to offering excellence in education. The importance of vocational education to our economy cannot be underestimated. It is essential that this system be given its due resourcing and have a quality assurance system put in place. To do that, the government need to leave their ideology behind. They need to join with Labor in committing to a strong public TAFE system as the backbone of our vocational education system.

We heard from speaker after speaker on this side of the House who rushed to put their name on the list to come in here and speak about TAFE and vocational education. We heard about the government's record, a bit of a state of the nation report, if you like, around vocational education and the problems that we have with TAFE. The record of the past four years is not good. We have had $2.8 billion cut from TAFE, skills and apprenticeships across four years. In the most recent budget were further cuts—$637 million across the next four years. We have just heard from the member for Canberra that there are 130,000 fewer apprentices and trainees than when the government was elected in 2013. It is an extraordinary record of neglect. Both TAFE and vocational education funding and the number of students have gone down over the decade, despite population growth and an increase in the number of jobs requiring vocational skills. Between 2013 and 2015, dissatisfaction in regional and rural areas with the availability of vocational education doubled. Investment in TAFE and vocational education through capital expenditure has fallen by 75 per cent and hours delivered have fallen by 25 per cent over the two-year period. The government came in here tonight, late to the party, to make some changes, which we support on this side of the House. They will give us some assurance that ASQA will be able to rebuild its reputation and ensure its funding so that it can continue to look into complaints made by students and members of the public.

A few speakers have spoken tonight about the export opportunities. In my electorate, I have a lot of international students and a lot of them are enrolled in vocational education and TAFE. The reputational damage that has been done to this sector is also damage done to our reputation internationally as providers of international education. It is time for this to stop. I welcome the review and I hope that the review goes far enough to ensure that TAFE is put back as the backbone. It appears to me that the government has very little planned for TAFE or VET. I do not say that on a whim; I say that after being in this chamber for four years and not seeing any action taken to stop the shonky providers from ripping off students and setting up business practices that have damaged the reputation of our nation as an educator.

Labor's policy is clear—we took it to the last election—and it is about investing an additional $637.6 million into TAFE and vocational education, reversing the government's 2017 budget cuts in full. We will guarantee at least two-thirds of public vocational education funding for publicly funded TAFE. We will invest in a new $100 million Building TAFE for the Future Fund to re-establish TAFE facilities in regional communities, meet local industry needs and support teaching for the digital economy—a critical element. We will set a target of one in 10 apprentices on all Commonwealth priority projects and major government business enterprise projects. This is absolutely essential, and I offer it to those across the chamber as a great piece of policy, something that they might look to implement—and, please, as soon as you can. We will invest in pre-apprenticeship programs, preparing up to 10,000 young job seekers to start an apprenticeship to be delivered by TAFE, the traditional place for pre-apprenticeships to be delivered. We will establish an advanced entry adult apprenticeship program to fast track apprenticeships for up to 20,000 people facing redundancy or whose jobs have been lost. That, too, will be delivered by public TAFE.

Building the skills that we need and giving people the capacity to enter the workforce or to change jobs are absolutely critical. Having the ability to train or retrain is a promise that we have given to the Australian people, and we have a long tradition in it. We need to see this government take action to ensure that that tradition continues, that it gets back on track and that we start to undo the reputational damage. TAFE and vocational education are absolutely critical in this country. Generations of Australians have got new and better jobs because they trained at TAFE or did an apprenticeship. In our fast changing world, a modern, adaptable TAFE and vocational education system would not just be a good thing to have, it would be essential. I see the member for Chifley in the chamber and I know his connection to innovation; he knows the importance of having a growing vocational education sector that goes into the digital economy to ensure jobs for the future.

In closing, Labor supports the legislation in front of us tonight; it supports TAFE and it supports the vocational education system. So I commend this legislation to the House and commend the government on calling for the review. I just hope they get on with the job and get on with it quickly before any more damage is done to this sector.

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