Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Data Streamlining) Amendment Bill 2023. It gives me great pleasure to speak in support of this legislation. In Australia the vocational education and training, or VET, sector delivers outstanding education and training through a variety of institutions, through both public TAFE and private registered training organisations, or RTOs. This service is delivered within universities and also through schools.

In my first speech in this place I mentioned how important education is to me personally, and I quoted those immortal words of Nelson Mandela—that education is the most powerful weapon we have to change the world. At that time I said that we need a national curriculum that is relevant, is empowering and builds in our children a lifetime love of learning and that we need a TAFE and university system that is first-class, leads the world and provides students with job-readiness skills. That is why I'm always happy to support reform and improvement to our VET sector. The VET sector is a dynamic and responsive sector. It supports millions of students each year to obtain the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in an ever-changing economy. It provides flexible opportunities for individuals to engage in education and training as a starting point to a career pathway or as a solution to upskill or reskill.

In my electorate of Hughes we have an excellent public TAFE, located at Loftus, where courses on offer include remedial massage and massage therapy, commercial cookery, hospitality, English language, retail services, fitness, sport coaching, accounts administration and, very importantly, early childhood education and care. I also make mention of Gymea TAFE, which is in the electorate adjoining mine, but many students from my electorate attend Gymea TAFE.

As background to this legislation: these reforms commenced under the previous coalition government in order to better facilitate the ability of government to collect and report data extracted from the vocational education and training system. So, it's about how we collect that data. The reforms were an aspect of the heads of agreement for skills reform that was agreed to in July 2020 between the Commonwealth and the various state and territory governments. The bill's stated purpose is to improve data collection as part of the VET data streamlining reforms by imposing an obligation on RTOs to report data under that act. And it does seek to implement some of the recommendations outlined in what we call the Braithwaite review, which was a review of the national VET system. Commissioned by the previous coalition government, the review responded by supporting, in principle, recommendations that are relevant to this legislation. I'll just mention four of them here.

The first one, recommendation 11, is that the Australian government prioritise the improvement of policies and systems that allow for transfer of real-time data for timely use by other agencies with regulatory responsibilities for identifying and responding to emerging sectoral and provider based issues. That recommendation has made its way into this legislation. The next recommendation, which is known as recommendation 13, is that the legislative framework be amended to enable the National Centre for Vocational Education Research to make the RTO level data it holds publicly available and identifiable. Thirdly, it was recommended that changes be made to support the way VET activity data is collected and submitted by the various RTOs. Fourthly, to modernise the way that VET activity data can be accessed and used by authorised users. To that end, I note there are currently data lags of up to 20 months in national VET activity data collection which is published annually. Therefore, the current data lags make it difficult for government to respond effectively to emerging skills shortages or other policy and funding issues as they occur.

In terms of this legislation, it's anticipated that VET data streamlining will introduce more modern technology; an updated VET information standard; and updated regulatory, legislative and government settings that will support the stated objective of better data, faster. In all of these circumstances, I believe that these VET data reforms are important and they will, if enacted, enhance the transparency of changes and developments in the VET market; make VET student activity data reporting simpler; reduce reporting pathways for training providers; and reduce the time delay between the collection, availability and reporting of VET activity data.

To conclude, for all of these reasons I support the proposed legislation that is currently in this place. It was commenced under the former coalition government and has come about as a result of the Braithwaite review. It is uncontroversial, but it is a key step in modernising the collection and use of VET activity data. As I said in opening, I will always support any reforms that will help to improve our education system overall, whether it's VET, university, primary or preschool education. So for all of these reasons, I commend this bill to the House.

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