Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Nicholls is right. It's called evaluation. It's also called—for a minister—taking responsibility for the use of taxpayers' money and ensuring that you achieve the best possible outcome for the hardworking Australians who have contributed tax in the first place and expect you to work just as hard to ensure you achieve value for money with the dollars they contribute to the overall revenue of the Commonwealth.

There have been 508,000 fee-free enrolments during the time of government, but no data has been provided to members on this side of the House in relation to the completion rates. This is a bit mischievous, at best, by the government, because we heard in Senate estimates that that data has been made available. While the minister comes in here and claims it takes four years to get usable data, it was actually confirmed in Senate estimates that he regularly receives a report on fee-free TAFE numbers, with the latest current data provided on 30 June 2024.

Data is provided to the minister's office every three months. So why is he coming in here and saying it takes four years to get usable data? Why is he saying that? Has he misspoken? I hope he hasn't misled the House; that would be an appalling state of affairs. If there are 508,000 people who have had the advantage of fee-free TAFE, surely the Australian taxpayers have every right to know how many of those students have completed their course, are still making progress on their course or have dropped out. If I was a minister and making commitments with hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money, I'd want to know: 'Has it worked? Has this been a good program?' Surely you'd be calling in the secretary of the department and bureaucrats, and saying: 'Hey, team, 508,000 people have enrolled. Fee-free enrolments seems to be a very successful program. A lot of people have turned up. But how many of them have actually completed their course?' This is the critical aspect of it.

There is no transparency in the debate. This is all about trying to buy the votes of young people and then masquerading in here that there's some sort of fault line with those on that side caring much more about education than those on this side, who apparently don't care. That's just not the truth. These are reasonable questions for the minister to answer: Why won't he give us the data on completion rates? Why isn't fee-free TAFE specifically targeted at the most vulnerable, disadvantaged Australians? And why isn't there at least some consideration on an individual's capacity to pay? If you can afford to contribute to your own education in some shape or form, then, surely, you should, because that gives the government more money to help more vulnerable people in the first place.

Right throughout their presentations today, those opposite have belled the cat. They've come out and told us that if you do a TAFE or university course you'll earn more money across your life. If you're going to benefit financially so significantly, why should the taxes of the cleaner I talked about earlier—on $58,000 a year, with no access to further training or earning extra income—go to making education free for someone who's going to earn probably twice as much in their career? It fails the test of fairness, fails the test of transparency and fails the test of value for money for Australian taxpayers.

I urge the minister: instead of trying to create false fault lines around education, come in here and tell the truth. What has been the completion rate of the 508,000 fee-free TAFE enrolments in this term of government? How many people have completed their courses? How many are progressing successfully through their courses, and how many have dropped out? We will then be in a better position, on both sides of the House, to evaluate the proposal put before us. But there is no way those of us on this side of the House are going to give this government a blank cheque to go out and try and cynically buy more votes of young Australians and show no respect to the Australian taxpayers who work damn hard for their money and expect ministers to work just as hard.

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