Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

Really. The member for Petrie reminds me of when I was with him only last week. There are people who say that TAFE courses are being put on, but no students are turning up. This is because it's a fee-free product and somebody has decided that it's good to offer it in that particular TAFE at that particular time, but nobody actually asked students whether they wanted to study there. Or you've got hardworking people at Workforce Australia who know that they've got to get long-term unemployed people into work, so they allocate them to a TAFE class, thinking that that's the answer. But maybe it's not the answer, because it might not be the course that that person wants to study.

And remember this, and it's a key principle and tenet of the Liberal Party: if you don't pay for something, you don't value it. So, if you're told that your TAFE is free and all you have to do is turn up—you actually have to do some work, and then you have to get a qualification at the end—and if that's all that it is but you haven't paid for it, you don't see it as something that makes a difference to you in your life; you don't see it as something valuable. Your idea of your pathway into a job might be completely different from this one that's been articulated for you by fee-free TAFE.

We value the role that industry led training plays in this country, and I've made it clear in my remarks that, having studied at TAFE, I'm not anti TAFE, but we value the fact that we've got private providers who do an incredible job and who have much higher pass rates than the ones that we've been able to find from the government. Their pass rates, their failure rates and their dropout rates under fee-free TAFE, to the extent that they've informed us of those, have been extraordinarily low. It was the minister's own question time briefing that demonstrated that the dropout rate of only 13 per cent is extraordinary.

I was quite horrified to hear that, and I then thought that if there's going to be a new policy that comes from this then it needs to have proper evaluation and it needs to have proper consideration. It's not good enough to invest this much taxpayers' money into something that isn't developing the skills and training pathway for the youth of today, because young people of today and those who undertake skills and training are worth much more than this. They're worth a government that understands what they need, what they deserve and how to best equip them for a future in the workforce.

Debate adjourned.

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