Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Training and Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a straightforward bill, theHigher Education Support Amendment (VET FEE-HELP and Tertiary Admission Centres) Bill 2009, which the opposition will be supporting. In fact we have spoken to this bill earlier when it was part of a bill to reintroduce compulsory student unionism and at that time I did indicate that we supported those sections of the bill which related to the broadening of the definition of students who would be able to receive VET-FEE HELP.

VET-FEE HELP was introduced by the former coalition government in 2007 and it was in 2007 that VET-FEE HELP was extended for the first time to the VET sector. It was principally for students undertaking full-fee courses in diploma, advanced diploma, graduate diploma and graduate certificates. It was at bodies which were corporate bodies and which had in place credit transfer arrangements for higher education. Prior to this the VET sector was the only sector offering post-secondary qualifications without fee help. The coalition recognised that students seeking an education in VET did not receive the same level of financial support as those seeking an education at university.

In August 2008, as part of the Victorian state government’s move to a demand-driven skills and training system, the federal government announced the extension of income-contingent loans to the Victorian VET sector and at that time the opposition, both myself and the shadow minister for education, at that time the member for Casey, indicated our support for that extension of income-contingent loans. So the opposition position has been laid out there from August last year.

The TAFE future survey in 2006 indicated that fees present a major deterrent particularly for those living in areas with a high dependence on social security and in low-paid jobs. VET-FEE HELP increased the accessibility to vocational education and training for people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who otherwise may not have been able to afford to undertake these studies.

This legislation allows for a broadening of the students who will be able to receive VET-FEE HELP. For the first time it will be extended to government subsidised students who are studying for a diploma or advanced diploma. At this stage it applies specifically only to VET reform states or territories, and at present there is only one, and that is Victoria. There is provision there for other states, should they go down the same pathway that Victoria has gone down in the vocational education and training sector, to gain access to this, but at the moment the costings are there for $5 million over the next two years and then there is a return after that. The opposition recognises the importance of VET qualifications and believes that these qualifications deserve the same status as a university degree.

In the budget reply speech this year the Leader of the Opposition outlined our proposal to bring forward the incentives for apprentices in the area of traditional trades. By bringing forward the incentives to a time when apprentices are generally less productive, it gives a clear financial incentive for businesses and helps them retain staff when finances are tight. That is why, when the government recently announced its proposals for KickStart apprentices, again focused on trade apprentices and also on bringing forward the incentives to commencement, the opposition supported it. We thought that was very similar to the idea that we proposed in the budget in May.

We need as a country a multifaceted approach to boost enrolments in traditional trades and areas of skill shortage, especially as the Australian economy enters recovery. That is why the previous government established the Australian Technical Colleges. The idea was to have centres for excellence for VET in schools. It combined a pathway to complete year 12 certificate III, a school based apprenticeship, and a very big employer-industry input into the direction of the school. We thought that was very much the direction to go to concentrate the effort. VET training is very expensive and it made very good sense to concentrate that effort. So the Australian Technical Colleges were set up with industry, ensuring that the needs of employers were taken into account in the development of curriculum and training of the future workforce.

Unfortunately, the government did not share our vision. They have ceased funding the Australian Technical Colleges as of the end of this year, throwing the education of many students into turmoil. For example, there is the Australian Technical College in Northern Tasmania and the Australian Technical College in Spencer Gulf. Both have no certainties about their future, both are looking at closing at the end of the year, and both have seen a very significant number of school based apprentices on those campuses.

It is absolutely critical as the economy recovers that we do see strong enrolments in VET courses and in apprenticeships as well. That is why we proposed in the budget bringing forward the incentives for apprentices in traditional trades. As the economy recovers it is likely that we will see skill shortages in a whole range of areas—in electrical, in automotive, carpentry and mining—and it is absolutely critical that we encourage participation in these areas of skill shortages now.

The second part of the legislation has some amendments which deal with tertiary admission centres and will see tertiary admission centres to have the same status and duty of care as officers of a higher education provider and a VET provider in relation to the processing of students’ personal information. Tertiary admission centres allow for the streamlining of applications by potential students to higher education institutions and it is vital that they adhere to stringent guidelines in the processing and handling of personal information.

That is the opposition’s point of view. This is a straightforward piece of legislation. We do support the extension of income-contingent loans, in this case to Victoria, and any other states or territories that go down that track. We would be very interested in watching the progress of the reforms in Victoria as well. The amendments which relate to the tertiary admission centres are ones which we think are necessary.

Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I certainly acknowledge the contribution of the member for Boothby and the bipartisan approach to this particular piece of legislation with all these amendments. I rise to speak in support of the Higher Education Support Amendment (VET FEE-HELP and Tertiary Admission Centres) Bill 2009. The bill before us today seeks amendments in two areas of the Higher Education Support Act 2003. The two amendments seek to expand the VET FEE-HELP Assistance Scheme and amend the functions of tertiary admission centres. As the member for Boothby well explained, the changes—and the continuation of a number of parts of the framework—are to what we understand very well as the vocational education and training system, and they put in context the better known and historical aspects of the TAFE system of technical and further education. Labor governments for many generations, certainly from the Whitlam years, always looked at vocational education and training and the better ways of enhancing that approach.

VET FEE-HELP is a loan scheme to assist vocational education and training students with their tuition fee expenses. VET FEE-HELP allows students to defer their fee expenses until they are earning a reasonable income of at least $43,150 for the financial year 2009-10. Schedule I of the bill broadens VET FEE-HELP eligibility by allowing lower debt amounts to apply to classes of students and to allow VET credit transfer requirement matters to be dealt with within the guidelines. These changes will allow VET FEE-HELP to be made available to more training organisations and state government subsidised students. As the member for Boothby mentioned, this is about VET reform states—states which take the commitment. At the moment Victoria is progressing that way but certainly the framework is there for other states to come on board. Schedule II of the bill makes technical amendments to allow a better flow of personal information between tertiary admission centres and other educational entities. This is to be achieved by amending the act to give tertiary admission centres the same status and duty of care in dealing with personal information as officers of a higher education provider and VET provider. These changes are to ensure that education authorities can share relevant information. The privacy and rights of students remain protected by the privacy requirements and provisions of the act.

What is significant about this bill and the continuation of the framework is that it gives increased recognition, certainly for the vocational education and training sector. As I said before, it enhances the technical and further education system and many of the TAFE colleges. This harks back, of course, to the same sort of ideology that Labor governments have had for many years, in fact since the Whitlam government. I have mentioned before in this House the considerable changes that a former Whitlam education minister, Kim Beazley senior, whom we know very well, brought to skills training and to vocational education and training. A senior public servant at that time, Myer Kangan, set out to produce a report that would look at the delivery of technical skills through different agencies. It was clear in the very beginning that coordination—the very things that we talk about today—brings in a system. At that time the system was called ‘technical and further education’—the system we know today as TAFE.

That has been further enhanced with our understanding of the vocational education and training system, or the VET system. Over the last two decades there has been a move towards other private providers and registered training organisations which can actually work in that space of technical and further education. It is of personal interest to me, of course, because for 10 years of my working life I was a TAFE teacher, lecturer and TAFE college director. I had a lot to do with a lot of the changes and enhancements to our training system and coordinating a national training approach to skills and the way we credential skills. Not so many years ago an electrician who gained training in Queensland might not have been able to operate in Victoria or Western Australia because of the differences of not only the training regime but also the certification that went with that. Those times are long past. The establishment of the Australian National Training Authority in the Keating years was very much about setting that framework in place. As the member for Boothby well recognised, during their time in government they recognised that TAFE and the VET system were important frameworks in establishing and maintaining our skills training base.

Bipartisan support exists in this area, and it is critical that it exists because over 30-odd years from the time that the Kangan report was tabled and the TAFE system was born we still today need to continue to work together. The nationalisation of most of our training systems—but particularly the TAFE system, which, as the member for Boothby pointed out, is so important—means that we have a strong skills base and that people have the opportunity to gain not only higher educational qualifications through university but certainly the vocational skills that quite often enhance the training that they already have. In fact, only today in a related area of education I spoke about this very thing—that not so many years ago a person could engage in a course of academic study and not necessarily gain the empirical skills that someone might need to provide a certain activity on the ground.

I had a strong involvement in helping to understand that reverse articulation. Most organisations now accept articulation, certification and the recognition of skills across not only different state jurisdictions but different educational institutions. This very bill does talk about the need for a number of requirements—certainly articulation and reverse articulation—in those programs. The fact is that not so many years ago a certificate course in Queensland, whether or not it was seen as what we understand now as a cert I to a cert IV, might have been completely different from the sort of training that you might see in another state.

That national framework was very important; the processes of ANTA were very important. But one problem, one difficulty that existed was that the funding for students in the VET sector did not match those opportunities that had been established in the university sector. So the Whitlam era brought in access to a university education, the development of the TAFE system. At a later time, the introduction of a HECS fee system allowed students to access educational opportunities and take a loan and pay those fees at a later date when they were earning certain levels of income. That was all very important, but the VET system is still very important in continuing to enhance the TAFE system.

I will give you an example of how important it has been to the development of new industries in this country. I reflect on my involvement in the media and the new media industries, which we all understand today as being multimedia. Back in the early nineties most of the skills training did not exist in this country. We had the opportunity to enter that new world of the internet and multimedia, which we understand as being everyday today—accessing computing systems and using browsers and using different software to access different programs and opportunities—but the reality is that in this country back then we had very limited knowledge or ability of how we would create the content. I reflect on a story. When Keating announced the Creative Nation strategy, that was very much built on a visit by Bill Gates to this country when we were boasting of opportunities that we were putting in place with the development of Optus and the laying of fibre-optic cable. That is a very relevant discussion these days but this is back in the early nineties, when this infrastructure was being built. Bill Gates, who was observing this, said: ‘This is very good, but what are you going to put down those lines? What are you going to run along those data lines?’ Of course it was clear that content was something we did not have or did not have the ability of in this country.

The point I am making here is that the development of new industries and the opportunities that exist through training and the new media—what we call now the multimedia industry—were born at that time simply because there was a desire and a need and an opportunity to build a new industry, but through training. That was also enhanced by the understanding that if we were going to have a national approach to multimedia, or new media at the time, then we had to have qualifications that reflected the same things. I remember well that the then Premier of Victoria, Jeff Kennett, suggested that Victoria would be the multimedia capital of Australia. It was great in a statement, but dare I say, being a parochial Queenslander, we did it first. The very first educational programs in multimedia, the first higher post-secondary qualifications in vocational ed and the certificates and advanced certificates and diplomas were developed in Queensland, and then the articulation to those university programs.

The point I am making is that these all go together, these parts all come together to enhance our vocational education and training system. The reality is that we must continue to work towards giving opportunities to students to access this type of training. The choice that many students make is certainly an academic path, but, as we know, during the period leading up to the financial issues we have had a huge skills deficit. In fact, we currently have a skills deficit in this country, and so the vocational education and training system is the place and is the means by which we can finally provide well-trained graduates who then can go out and build our infrastructure in the way that the community demands.

As I said, wonderful opportunities have been advanced by technology, but also by our ability as a country to see an opportunity, and through the TAFE system. Through this bill, which enhances the opportunity and access for students, they can take loans and have an opportunity to study and take that career path which may end up ultimately a combination of vocational skills and also academic skills.

This has also had a lot to do with the very current debate around international students and the international programs that we run. Students who come to this country are studying not only in the university sector but right throughout our vocational education and training system. We talk often in this House about the issues and some of the problems that exist in maintaining a quality system for international students. The reality is that it is a $15 billion industry that is built on the back of our ability to develop a credential system. It is all about having developed a credential system that would give students who accessed education in Australia a qualification that was matched against a quality framework. This is something that does not exist in many other countries in the world. The approach that was taken during the Whitlam years, the development of a vocational education system, TAFE as we know it and the continuation to have easy articulation into university programs is all very much about that program of training and support.

In conclusion, the federal government is supporting students seeking vocational education and training. The VET options provide students with important career progression pathways, as I have explained, and the VET FEE-HELP is expanded to additional training organisations and state government subsidised students. This bill allows the better flow of student information between education authorities within strict privacy guidelines, and of course further opens up the training market to both government and private sector training organisations in the pursuit of quality outcomes for not only our students in this country but also those international students who pay high fees to come and gain a qualification from this country. For those reasons, I commend the bill to the House.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Water Resources and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to support the Higher Education Support Amendment (VET FEE-HELP and Tertiary Admission Centres) Bill 2009. In a previous occupation before I came here I was heavily involved in vocational education and training, and I understand the importance of that, particularly in rural electorates such as mine. In speaking on this bill tonight I would like to highlight some of the flaws that exist in the application of the bill in the hope that by putting this on record the department and the minister may be able to iron out some of the problems that are affecting one training organisation in my electorate.

Since opening its doors in Dubbo in 2006, the Advanced Massage College of Australia has provided a variety of professional courses in the field of massage therapy. The college, and the courses it provided, are somewhat unique to western New South Wales and as such the college has consistently attracted a large number of applicants. In fact, in only a few short years the college’s reputation has grown to the point where a number of its students have relocated to Dubbo from throughout New South Wales to study there.

The owner-director of the Advanced Massage College of Australia, Mr Claude Phillips, has had significant difficulties in accessing the VET-FEE HELP and obtaining a credit transfer agreement for a diploma course at the college. Mr Phillips applied for VET funding on 13 May 2009 but, despite repeated representations to the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister Gillard, Mr Phillips is still unclear as to why these difficulties have arisen.

Mr Phillips’s confusion about his situation increased when it was brought to his attention that a very similar organisation in Western Australia, offering a very similar course, was granted VET-FEE HELP funding based on exactly the same criteria as presented by the Advanced Massage College of Australia. There seems to be widespread confusion among many such organisations, particularly in regard to the VET credit transfer arrangement, because VET-FEE HELP has been granted to a number of colleges based on the guidelines laid out in the Australian Qualifications Training Framework Health Training Package, but not to others who are in a very similar situation.

During Senate estimates, a manager from the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations clarified the situation somewhat and said the Perth college has a valid credit transfer agreement endorsed by a higher education provider that has been assessed by the department to be compliant with the requirements of the act and the credit transfer part of their application was approved on that basis. The manager explained that the Dubbo college has sought to get that same agreement from Charles Sturt University, which has a campus in Dubbo, as well as several other higher education providers, but has been unable to have a higher education provider endorse that same level of credit transfer for the course he is delivering.

The department was able to do little more than recommend other local higher education providers to try and arrange a credit transfer with them. In regional New South Wales this is very difficult for a variety of reasons, but mainly because there are far fewer options for providers like Mr Phillips. Another reason he has been unsuccessful is because higher education providers such as Charles Sturt University require more credit points, which Mr Phillips believes is a significant flaw in the design of the Australian Qualifications Training Framework Health Training Package, which outlines the benchmark standard for all such colleges to use and follow.

During the course of this funding battle, Mr Phillips has not been able to take on a single student. In 2009, not one student has been or will be accepted to the college, because the students who applied to study remedial massage cannot afford the cost of the course without financial assistance. Over the past four years the college has carried the burden of the financial strain for all students by allowing them to pay what they can. However, the lingering effects of the drought combined with the current economic downturn means that the college is unable to do this any longer. Without VET-FEE HELP the college fears that they will not be able to take in any students in 2010 as well. There are 70 students currently waiting to enrol to study at the Advanced Massage College of Australia and, unless VET-FEE HELP is provided, those 70 students will be turned away.

VET-FEE HELP is an invaluable tool in my electorate in helping address the skills shortages that are increasingly becoming part and parcel of life in regional Australia. However, it is my belief that the processes in which this legislation is applied may need to be altered so that situations such as the one faced by the Advanced Massage College of Australia do not occur in the future.

Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Higher Education Support Amendment (VET FEE-HELP and Tertiary Admission Centres) Bill 2009 before the House today. I will make some comments in a moment which may assist the member for Parkes, so I hope that he takes the time to read them tomorrow. It is frustrating on the one hand that we have so much legislation in this term of our government coming back to us from the Senate and having to be rejigged in the face of opposition from the coalition parties in the Senate. However, on this occasion I am relatively pleased, because it will give me an opportunity to speak on education matters within my electorate, which, because of the number of people who wanted to talk about the bill back in February, I was not able to do. So in that regard I am fairly pleased.

The two things that this legislation does is provide that personnel officers working for the tertiary admissions centres are covered by the same privacy arrangements as all other officers working in the higher education, vocational education and departmental area in relation to the privacy issues, and that information will be able to flow between them easily because of that. It is a super sensible idea. It is hard to understand why it needed to be done at this time. It is something that I cannot imagine has not caused difficulties for a long time, and it was an easy change to make.

The other aspects of this legislation are the changes to the manner in which VET-FEE HELP will operate in what are called reform states or territories. In this instance the only reform state or territory we have is Victoria. Were New South Wales to be granted the status of a reform state or territory, the problems that the member for Parkes has just outlined in relation to the Advanced Massage College of Australia in Dubbo would go away. The answer here is not that we need necessarily to lower the bar in terms of transfer credits—or articulation, as an earlier speaker had called it—but that we need to encourage New South Wales to look at their vocational education and training sector and to make the sorts of moves that have been made in Victoria. Once they have done that, the problems in New South Wales will go away.

I encourage not only New South Wales but my own state of Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, and Tasmania—I encourage them all—to get on board with these new status requirements. I just want to read out what is required. I will not read it out in full but read from what is required to be given the status of a reform state or territory. Basically client choice will determine where government funding goes—the funding follows the client; information and facilitation for individuals and businesses be provided so that they can comprehensively be informed about the training providers that are available; eligible students should receive some state government support; purchasers are not motivated to choose any particular provider but to choose a provider on the basis of quality, price and their individual choice; quality assurance; and all public funds for the delivery of training within the state or territory be open to all registered training organisations with registration within that jurisdiction.

In Victoria what this means is that students studying advanced diploma or diploma level courses that do not have credit transfer systems or articulations are able to get VET-FEE HELP—

Debate interrupted.