Zaneta Mascarenhas (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The thing that I'd also point out is that the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Data Streamlining) Amendment Bill 2023 has bipartisan support, which is wonderful. I love it when the parliament can work hand in hand, improving our nation together. It's a shame that we can't talk about all the positive things that we're doing together and we had a bit of sledging just then.

I will say that I am proud and will take this opportunity to highlight the Albanese Labor government's strong track record in the vocational education sector. We are a party that recognises the importance of tradespeople—I note the use of the word 'tradesmen' in the previous speech, but I will say 'tradespeople', because there are lots of trades that people do where you could be any gender really. Some of the highlights include broadening our commitment to TAFE by introducing 480,000 fee-free TAFE places. For 2023, we introduced 180,000 fee-free TAFE places, including 18,800 fee-free TAFE places and VET places offered in my home state of Western Australia. These extra training places have been intentionally selected to be delivered in critical skill shortage areas. These include aged care, early childhood education, health care, disability care, technology and increasing digital skills, hospitality and tourism, and construction and agriculture, while also increasing our sovereign capability in areas like manufacturing and defence. We've also committed $2 million to a new commercial kitchen at South Metro TAFE in my home electorate o Swan. We've also committed $95.6 million over nine years to support 10,000 new energy apprentices. The program will see eligible apprentices receive up to $10,000 over the course of their apprenticeship to assist with the cost of living.

I want to see the vocational sector grow from strength to strength, and a part of this is around good data processes. Twenty-five years old sounds quite young for maybe a man or a woman, but for a data system it's very old. In fact, I would call it geriatric. Currently, the existing geriatric 25-year-old data system, which is associated with the VET sector, can take up to 20 months to upload the data before students, governments and regulators can actually get this information. It's archaic; it's clunky; the system is not fit for purpose for the year 2023. Good organisations have good data management systems. You know the old adage: if you're not measuring it, you can't manage it. So this is a part of improving the processes. This is the first step in broadening the VET data streamlining program, which is designed to speed up and modernise the collection and use of VET data. The truth is that we're looking at data in ways that we haven't in the past. We need to have good systems in place so we can start to have a look at the trends and see what's happening.

Under the existing data standard, which was developed 25 years ago, data on VET students and training activity took 20 months to update before it was available to students, governments and regulators. This data is crucial for program administration. It supports providers to deliver high-quality training and is key to implementing policy priorities effectively. That activity data is currently collected under the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Data Provision Requirements) Instrument 2020. Currently, the act requires that any changes to the data provision requirements be agreed to by the ministerial council, which includes all the Commonwealth, state and territory skills ministers. This creates unnecessary administrative burden for skills ministers and makes the data standard less responsive than it should be.

This bill contains four important elements. It allows the ministerial council to agree to appoint another person—for example, a senior bureaucrat—from each jurisdiction. They can then agree to specific changes of the data provision requirements. Once these are passed, the ministerial council could make an agreement which includes stating the circumstances or procedures by which a specific person or body can agree to changes to the data provision requirements. This will allow changes to the data provision requirements to be made more rapidly and flexibly and will allow VET data streamlining to be implemented responsively. A reflective and responsive VET sector that can be efficient is one that will better meet the needs of Australian students in the long term. I will use COVID as an example. Organisations needed to be flexible and pivot, and this is something that we can't do with the current system.

It will allow the national VET sector regulator, ASQA, to make administrative decisions, primarily in relation to granting exemptions from certain data for registered training organisations. Currently, under separate policy, ASQA grants exceptions to RTOs from reporting data in specific circumstances—for example, when training relates to national security or where reporting related data would jeopardise security. This change will allow exemptions to be granted under the act rather than under a separate policy. In our changing strategic environment we will require decisions to be made quickly, and these changes acknowledge that.

It also allows the secretary of the Commonwealth department with responsibility for skills and training to release the data under the data collection provisions to the public when agreed to by the ministerial council. This removes an existing ambiguity in the act which treats the release of data provision requirements data differently to other data. It also permits the secretary to authorise ICT operators, by legislative instrument, to access and use VET data while contracted to build a new VET data system. In my previous role, I sat on the board of the South Metropolitan TAFE governing council, and data management and data governance were really important. This will be an important step to improving that. This will ensure that those involved in handling information collected under the data provision requirements are authorised to do so.

To ease the burden of the new requirements, the bill will insert a new schedule into the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Transitional Provisions) Act 2011 to support registered training organisations to transition across to new reporting arrangements over two years. It's important that we're also giving our registered training organisations time to adjust to the new regulatory system.

Our world is dramatically changing and the role of digital data systems in all that we do has grown drastically in the last three decades. CSIRO's Our future world megatrends report notes:

The rapid adoption of digital and data technologies in recent times has meant that many sectors and organisations have experienced years' worth of digital transformation in the space of months. … While this progress has been significant, experts predict that this is just the tip of the iceberg, with the vast majority of digitisation yet to occur.

This bill updates our data management processes in the VET sector to meet the changing ways in which society is using data for community benefit. When I worked at Energetics, big datasets and collection mechanisms were essential for carbon accounting, and we were doing this because we were responding to global market conditions which required decisions to be made quickly and accurately. This legislation is effectively about updating our 25-year-old data system processes. This will enable better decision-making and ensure a high-quality VET sector student experience. I welcome the support of the crossbench and the opposition in passing this legislation and I hope to see positive impacts of the change under this legislation soon.

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