Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to speak on the Student Identifiers Bill 2014 and to indicate that the Labor opposition will be supporting the bill. Indeed, it is almost identical to the bill that we introduced into the parliament in March 2013 so it is probably no surprise to the House. That bill lapsed with the dissolution of the parliament. There are some slight changes in this bill, which I will address, but it is our intention support the bill.

The bill did stand as part of a significant body of policy and programs that had been put in place by the previous Labor government in the VET sector. I just want to set it within the context of what was going on when the proposal in the Student Identifiers Bill was developed. Labor had made a record investment in skills and jobs because it was a critical area of priority for us. On coming to government there had been numerous reports by various agencies and peak bodies about two areas where bottlenecks were developing in the economy. One was the rollout of infrastructure and the other was the development of skills. These were two specific priorities for Labor in government. In total we invested over $19 billion in skills funding between 2008 and 2013, which was a 77 per cent increase on what was invested by the Howard government. Sadly, we have seen that the Abbott government revert to under-resourcing the skills sector. It is clearly not a priority for the current government.

I have mentioned in this place before the interesting conversations I had after the election with a number of organisations and individuals with an interest in vocational education and training. They were asking, 'So who is the minister for skills?' because they could not quite work it out. It does not sit obviously with the Minister for Education, who has all the other variations of education. It has been left in the industry portfolio and it is not included in the minister's title so it creates quite some confusion. Indeed, in an earlier matter of public importance debate on vocational education and training and youth unemployment I challenged about 20 members of the coalition government who were sitting opposite to name the minister for skills and there was a deafening silence. I suspect it has been well hidden, and that is probably a reflection of why it has not got the priority it should have and why it has suffered significantly in the budget.

There are $2 billion of broken promises in the skills sector in the most recent budget. In this bill we are talking about providing the opportunity to record and track the participation of the Australian population in vocational education and training. I want to identify the significant cuts that have occurred to that very sector and the programs that have been abolished that provide opportunities for people to participate. The most recent budget has slashed the National Workforce Development Fund, a very well-regarded co-investment fund which organisations like the Australian Industry Group before the budget were calling for the government not to cut, and the Workplace English Language and Literacy Program, which again is a very important program that often worked in conjunction with the National Workforce Development Fund to upskill existing workers.

I had the opportunity in the previous parliament to visit a number of these programs in the manufacturing sector and in the aged-care sector. Companies were using these programs to bring together upskilling opportunities for their staff. A lot of the staff I met had done no training since they left school and most of them left school early and had not gone through to our equivalent of year 12 today. They had been very intimidated and frightened by the prospect of having to undergo training again and were absolutely thrilled to participate and graduate with certificates from these programs. But these are cut in the current budget.

In the apprenticeship sector there is the Australian Apprenticeships Access Program, a program that targets the most disadvantaged young people to get them prepared to be able to access an apprenticeship, and the Australian Apprenticeships Mentoring Program, the very program that works with young apprentices to provide them, and indeed their workplace as well, with support. Their employer is often a good person to work between the two to make sure they are able to complete their apprenticeships. Then there is the Accelerated Australian Apprenticeships program, which is a targeted program to look at ways and means of which we can accelerate people through the apprenticeship program. They were all cut in the current budget.

The national partnership agreement on training places for single parents has been cut. Then there is the alternative pathways program. The Apprentice to Business Owner Program is a very important initiative. As many in this House would understand, when apprentices complete their apprenticeship a lot of them are not kept on by the company they did their apprenticeship with. They use the opportunity to train up a new apprentice and give them an opportunity. Many set up their own small business. The Apprentice to Business Owner Program is specifically designed to give them the skills and knowledge they need to do that. That has been cut in the budget.

The Productive Ageing through Community Education and the Step into Skills program are very critical and important programs. When Labor were in government they recognised that not only do we need to invest in the training opportunities to get into jobs but we also need to work with workplaces and employers to train and upskill existing workers and to provide opportunities for those who are most disadvantaged to get into training. So this is, I would argue, a very short-sighted decision in the budget. It is great to have the bill before us but, sadly, I think as a result of the budget there will be less work for this bill to do as fewer people will have opportunities to gain qualifications.

The bill, as I have generally indicated, will establish a unique student identifier for VET students and will make rules about obtaining access to the individual's authenticated VET transcript. When in government I often used to refer to this as the shoebox solution. Many members would be familiar with this experience. If you have any children who have completed school, you would have experienced the multitude of statements of attainment, certificates and qualifications that they get. When they go to apply for a job or want to get some recognition of prior learning for a further course, it is a matter of finding out the exact name of the course and finding the certificate to see whether it has a list of the modules and subjects that they did. In my house we kept all of those in a box so we could easily find them. I think many households would be the same. As the workplace has got more complex, people have many more of these documents. Given that a lot of training occurs through private RTOs or work based training, often they do not know who it was that provided the training, so if they do not have the records or the information it will be very hard for them to track it down. This bill will mean that there will be a single reference point for all of that registered training where they can get transcripts of what they have done. I think this is a great initiative that is well needed.

The reason that I would suggest it is particularly important in the VET sector goes to exactly those issues—the size, the scope and the complexity of the VET sector and the increasingly common participation by Australians in training and skill development. This will continue into the future. Lifelong learning, which we talked about when I first went into training, is in fact now a reality and it is something that is valued and important. But you do not want to lose the story of what your qualifications and skills are. So it is important to have an initiative like this in order to enable us to achieve that.

The main difference between this bill and the previous bill, which I actually introduced into the House in March 2013, is that the current government has decided to not proceed with the establishment of a stand-alone agency for the unique student identifier but is instead creating a registrar, with staff for that registrar to be provided by the department.

A government member: Hear, hear!

That seems to have stimulated some excitement over there. But I would say that it is important that the task is done and that it is done efficiently, and that is where the priority should be.

I want to put on the record a bit of a story. If I have any frustration with the national discussion about vocational education and training it is that I think too often in commentary at a public level—particularly in the media—and in some of the debates that happen in the community, people do not quite understand the size and scope of the sector. It is very important to understand what exactly it is that we are talking about when we talk about the vocational education and training sector. It is interesting that very often when you talk to people they simply perceive it as young people who have left school and are going to TAFE; yet it is so much broader than that.

If people are interested in having a look at the current state of the modern vocational education and training sector in Australia I would refer them to the report of the Productivity Commission entitled Report on government services 2014, which was released on 28 January 2014. Chapter 5 covers vocational education and training. It makes the point that VET programs can be a single module or unit of competency, which might be a very short course—and there are many of those—of around 10 contact hours in general. People would know those programs. People might do training in a particular workplace occupational health and safety issue, for example, or they might do a very short course on using a particular type of ICT application in the workforce. If those are recognised and registered, they can be fairly short courses with very narrow purpose. Of course, the programs range all the way up to associate degrees, and many of our public TAFEs now run associate degrees. The variation in course offerings is huge in this sector.

All of this training needs to be assessed, because, on many occasions, the students will complete modules or units of competency without intending to complete a course or qualification. So it needs to be consistently assessed along the way. The types of training delivery are diverse. It can be a formal classroom learning experience or a completely workplace-based learning experience. It could include flexible, self-paced learning and, increasingly, it could include online training. Often it is a combination of all of those. It includes apprenticeships and traineeships and it includes a significant amount of formalised and on-the-job as well as off-the-job training.

One of the more interesting developments over recent times—probably as a result of our improving technologies—is the amount of training that is provided through distance education. A lot of correspondence, internet study and interactive teleconferencing based learning occurs in this sector. It tends to be the sector that is at the cutting edge of a lot of innovative teaching and learning. Therefore, obviously, the institutions that are delivering it are just as diverse and significant in numbers.

We have as the backbone of the system—and one would hope it continues to be a strong and effective backbone of our system—our public TAFE institutes across the country. We also have agricultural colleges and private training businesses—people who specialise in things in the music industry or the film industry. There are also adult community education providers. These have been around for a long time. In fact, in my electorate, we have the Workers' Educational Association and just last year I went to their 100th anniversary. So they are in the sector as well. We have schools, colleges and universities crossing over into the sector in what they offer as courses. We have registered training organisations, private-for-profit operators and large employers themselves registered as RTOs delivering training. So it is a huge, diverse and very, very dynamic section of our economy.

For the House's information, the Productivity Commission reported that recurrent expenditure on VET by Australian, state and territory governments—not private expenditure; just government expenditure—in 2012 was $6 billion. That was equal to $397.77 per person aged 15-64 across Australia in that year. In 2012, 32.2 per cent of Australians aged 15-64 held a certificate or diploma as their highest level qualification, and approximately 1.9 million Australians were reported as participating in VET programs at 22,486 locations across Australia. Of that 1.9 million, 1.5 million students—nearly 80 per cent—were government funded.

It is really important to understand the size, complexity and significance of the sector, not only as an industry sector in and of itself and the massive employment opportunity, growth and productivity it provides but also in its significant connection to community. Many of us in this place who work in rural and regional Australia well know the importance of vocational education and training not only to our communities and local economies but also to the whole task of participation and productivity in the nation.

There are so many areas where there is a particular industry or a particular geographic region undergoing transformation into a modern Australian participant in the economy and they will need upskilling of their existing people. This is the sector that does the heavy lifting. Our university sector is fantastic. It is important for many of those tasks. But the driving force for that is a quality, accessible and affordable vocational education and training sector. That is why it is so significant and why in particular in opposition I am really pleased that we have a shadow minister specifically for vocational education and training. It is such an important part of not only participation and equity but also economic growth and productivity. That has been shown time and time again across many, many studies.

In recent times we have seen another report on the importance of meeting the challenge faced by many of our workplaces that English language literacy and numeracy skills are not at a level required for a modern workplace. Some of that is obviously a challenge that we sought to deal with in our schooling system. Our Gonski reforms were significantly targeted at providing opportunities to lift those who were missing out most significantly on foundation skills such as language literacy and numeracy. But we also had a focus on supporting people who had arrived in this country without those skills and people who had been out of the workforce for a long time and were seeking to re-enter it, which is something that I think all governments would encourage, by providing language literacy and numeracy either through what is now known as the SEE program or, if they were already employed, through the WELL program. I think that is a particularly important task for this sector.

I want to finish up by saying that I am pleased that this particular bill has been reintroduced. I commend the government for doing so. As we all take on the challenge of ensuring people are able to gain the skills they need, one of the really interesting things for policy makers—whether those in government departments, those who sit in the parliament or those who operate within the business sectors of our community—will be to have a good idea of what actually happens with people's skills development. The NCVER has done some great work on that, but we have not really had a way to effectively track and analyse the movement of people throughout their post-secondary education and skills experience.

I am sure many of my colleagues here have had similar experiences to me. For example, I recently went to my local TAFE. I visited a class in the engineering section. Probably 20 per cent of the students sitting in that class actually had a university degree and were coming back—by and large sent by their employer but some off their own backs—to get on-the-tools experience at TAFE and to match their university qualifications with some very vocationally based skills. It is hard to quantify and understand what is happening in that space because the systems do not talk to each other. There is no tracking of that sort of data. So what is the size of this sort of activity? How should policy makers respond to that? Some universities and TAFEs are already proactive in the space, joining together and offering qualifications that encompass part training at TAFE and part training at university.

I think for policy makers the other great advantage of this unique student identifier will be its capacity to, within the provisions of protection and privacy in the bill, provide good data and information about the movements of people in their post-secondary education to policy makers so that we can be more effective at the sorts of decisions we make. I commend the bill to the House and I hope that it might be the start of a new focus by the government and a reinvestment in the skills of the nation rather than the cuts that we saw in the most recent budget.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I support the introduction of a unique student identifier. Obviously that is in the context of Australia having debated for decades the merits or otherwise of unique identifiers, right back to the Australia Card of the 1980s and 1990s. The lesson we learned in that debate is that there has to be significant net benefit to citizens if we are going to contemplate the privacy issues around unique identification. But there is pretty much no doubt in this chamber or across the nation that a unique student identifier delivers for us a range of important benefits. Not the least of those is being able to track the up to three million Australians who, together with overseas students, often move in and out of the VET sector, picking up courses, changing courses and even changing providers.

I want to acknowledge that there have been a large number of participants in developing this student identifier. They have done a good job. I might be slightly critical and say that it should not have taken the years that it has. This really was something that should have been achieved five years ago. It should have been in place a long time ago. The fact that it has fallen to us to finally legislate on it indicates that there was a lack of progress under the previous Labor government in this area.

The benefits of a unique identifier are, firstly, for students, secondly, for RTOs doing training, thirdly, for employers and, finally, for government—fourth out of four, and that is appropriate. I want to make the observation that the one significant change made by the coalition government was to say, 'We don't need another agency to do this.' Isn't this a recurring theme that we have heard in the last few weeks? What was it with Labor and their predilection for setting up new agencies and giving each one of them a fancy acronym? What was it about Labor that they fixated on this? The only form of job creation they were truly behind was making government agencies larger and larger. The message is fairly simple: enough of the water bubblers, tea rooms and pot plants. What we need to do is run them as efficiently as possible, and with the registrar supporting the work of a department you will see that the unique student identifier with modern technology can be done without floors and floors of publicly funded office workers in high-rise buildings in major capital cities. Let's release those very good, capable, impassioned and talented people into the private sector where they can drive our economy and build GDP.

The introduction of mandatory collection of this sort of activity data has already started. In January of this year multiple data for the purposes of planning and tracking has already been collected, but with this legislation comes the unique identifier itself. What we now have is, of course, risk framework; and that simply means that instead of a carte blanche surveillance by which government can monitor, profile and target their audits the more high-risk providers of education or reduce oversight of those who are lower-risk providers. That will support more efficient allocation of training subsidies, because we do not want to be crowding out private subsidy where there is willingness to pay for degrees and where people are keen to acquire that qualification or know there is significant private benefit in gaining it. Then, of course, the need for public subsidy reduces.

That responsive deregulation is clearly a coalition vision that was never going to be adopted by Labor. I note that the Greens have released a website with details of what students will be paying for each of their degrees. That is very impressive, given our inability to predict the weather or even the fuel price next week. The Greens' website also says, 'If this makes you mad and we're mad too, why don't we recruit you to our party?' It is a cheap trick and it is a stunt and most students will see it for what it is.

Deregulation allows the market to meet the demand in a way that high-quality universities have never been quite able to do. I went through a sandstone university medical degree. Medical degrees were pretty much MacDonaldised right around the country—they were very similar—but, despite the passion, the qualification and the high esteem I held for my lecturers, there was very little movement or intellectual exchange between our campuses. The notion of bringing someone from overseas as a high-impact professor to alter the program in Australian medical courses simply was not contemplated in the 1980s and 1990s. I see a day when the greatest lecturers and professors in the world come to Australia, because they are attracted to be here by a deregulated system that rewards them for their ability and rewards them for what they can do for a course. But that can never happen if we are simply doling out fixed, rationed arrangements to every university, because, naturally, they will play the game of delivering services as efficiently and as leanly as possible, but they will never contemplate the idea of investing more in quality until fees are deregulated.

Let's be honest: in a few years from now when courses are deregulated, high-merit students will be offered multiple places at multiple universities for varying prices. They will make an assessment of whether that price is appropriate for the degree. Students are perfectly capable of doing that—of comparing courses, comparing campuses and deciding what to pay for and what not to pay for. As long as we simply have the same size, the same shape and the same flavoured degree in every location, we will be left behind by international providers who are taking their degrees to new levels, as reflected in university rankings.

Let me pull back to a little history of how we came to the identifiers. In April 2012 the Council of Australian Governments came together to realise the benefit in having some form of student identification, which obviously provides students with the ability to have a complete vocational educational report of everything they have done. It enables them to provide it to future training providers where necessary and they can give permission to those training providers online to access their academic records. This is far simpler than the old days of having to certify academic transcripts. That initiative was developed jointly by all state and territory governments, and so it is a further nationalisation and harmonisation of what was a very fractured and state based vocational education sector. It all comes together with advances in ICT.

Subject to what we are passing today, the identifier will be implemented and it then becomes a building block for a whole lot of other vocational education reforms, which I will just touch on briefly. The ability to follow students who often move between publicly funded and private providers is just one example. If the government is going to be funding education, we need to know absolutely that the dollar goes to where it is delivered and to where it most makes a difference and to where it has most impact. There is no point crowding out private investment and there is no point government trying to pick winners on where money should go or how many people are taken into courses—all of that can be done by the sector itself. Universities know that well; they understand their market; and decisions should be left to them to make. As part of the broader VET reform agenda we are seeing for the first time people who are contemplating study do not face significant upfront costs. Almost buried in the hysteria around the budget is the fact that millions of young Australians, who will not necessarily go to university to obtain those highly-sought-after and restricted degrees, will not face upfront costs when they pursue vocational and other forms of TAFE based education.

Many of those students will be in and out of educational training. That is the reality. They are not all going to go into three-year degrees in three years. Many of them will have children; many will come from very complex backgrounds; many will be barely literate or numerate because they have failed the school system—or the school system has failed them. For Australia to increase its proportion of its population with some form of tertiary qualification ,we realise that we are moving to those who are not the orthodox university attenders of a generation ago. We are behind in those proportions; other nations are well ahead. We know that keeping people in formal education for a year longer has direct GDP benefits.

We know that, by increasing the number within our population who have a tertiary qualification, that has a direct GDP outcome. We are a low-population, leading economy. We are short on labour. We cannot afford those people to be unqualified lacking in confidence or self-esteem. We need those people engaged, training, gaining capability because only with capability can you have opportunity. The two are integrally linked, and capability is the antecedent.

Training providers will have a few extra obligations. It will be a requirement under this legislation we are debating and the conditions of registration that providers have a valid USI for student before they can graduate the student, provide them with a qualification or a statement of attainment. That will apply to new students, pre-enrolled students and those who are continuing. The process for all students to obtain that USI will be pretty much the same but, importantly, thanks to ICT, it will be closely interwoven with training provider access to that information.

Once USIs are available, nationally, courses will only be able to be entered if you have a USI and you will not be able to receive your qualification without it. Training providers will not necessarily be required to apply for a USI, but in many cases that might be the most convenient way of doing it with the student support. That can all be accessed through a website or through a web server interface.

The training providers have, as I said, requirements. They need to verify a USI, if it is provided by a student, and they need to collect one from the student directly if that is not the case. They need to ensure a student has a valid USI before completing a program and they have got to ensure the security of a USI. All of that related documentation should be destroyed along with any personal information once it has been collected solely for the purposes of generating the USI.

Accessing transcripts, I have pointed out, becomes far simpler and that is thanks to, currently, the very good work that is being done at the NCVER. I think it is important also to mention very briefly the range of authorities and participating groups that are on the reference group—that is, TAFE Directors Australia; ACPET; the Enterprise Registered Training Organisation Association; the Industry Skills Council Collective; Adult Learning Australia; ASQA; and a number of other state based bodies.

The USI important advance should have occurred years ago. It allows training to follow the student. It is further evidence that benefits well outweigh any inconvenience or risk, and that having a unique identifier is increasingly being adopted as a comfortable thing for the Australian. There is an important lesson for us in health care where we are moving towards similar efforts with the personally controlled electronic health record—memo for health planners: make sure that the benefits for the patient increasingly together with the provider outweigh any concerns or detriments. Unlike Labor, who again came up with this fabulous idea of yet another agency and even more bureaucracy, it is a coalition government that is delivering this reform without needing to place an unnecessary burden on the taxpayer.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Members will be aware of my passion for education. In my first speech in parliament I spoke about how I was living proof of the transformative powers of education, and this is a sentiment I have repeated again and again. Through education my sisters and I escaped the cycle of disadvantage, and there are thousands more like me.

And it is not just school or university education that has this transformative ability; vocational education also has this great ability. Vocational education, training in job related and technical skills enables students to gain qualifications for all types of employment and specific skills to help them in the workplace. Vocational students are provided with real-life work skills, and they graduate not just work-ready but experienced so that they can begin contributing to our economy by participating in our workforce, straightaway.

Labor is committed to vocational education, skills and training. While in government, we worked with the states and territories to implement the national training reform agreement to improve our vocational education sector. These reforms were designed to ensure that Australia has the right skills to meet the demands of our economy, which is an economy undergoing significant and rapid change.

As a graduate and former union president of the great RMIT, the oldest working persons college in the world, I am also a strong advocate of vocational education skills and training. The skills I gained while I was there set me up for work immediately and underscored and provided me with the great platform to set up my own business. Again, I am a bit biased about vocational education being a graduate of RMIT and also having been union president of that wonderful institution.

The skills in demand by Australian industries are changing and increasingly need qualifications. Our training system needs to keep pace with the changes occurring in the economy. This was a priority of Labor while we were in government.

Labor wants to ensure all Australians have access to high-quality training systems that are flexible and responsive to industry needs. Some of Labor's reforms included the establishment of the MySkills website to connect individuals or employers looking to undertake training with training organisations that best suit their needs. MySkills is an easy way of navigating training possibilities within a system with around 4,800 providers and over 3,000 courses on offer.

We also established the national entitlement for all working aged Australians to a government subsidised training place to at least a certificate III qualification. We expanded access to student loans to reduce upfront financial barriers for those people studying for a diploma or advanced diploma through an extension of VET FEE-HELP. We made a record investment in skills and training for smarter jobs and a stronger nation. We delivered record investment and created a dynamic environment that positions Australia so we can compete in the Asian Century.

In total, Labor invested over $19 billion in skills funding between 2008-09 and 2012-13, a 77 per cent increase compared to the Howard government's investment. In 2011 alone, a total of $6.5 billion was invested in Australia's national training system, with the Labor government's share being $2.4 billion or 37 per cent. Since 2009, Labor also provided funding of $6.06 billion to support state and territory skills and workforce development under the national agreement. The initiative in this area that I am perhaps most proud of is the Trade Training Centres Program. This was an investment of $2.5 billion over 10 years to provide all secondary schools with new or enhanced trade training facilities.

The bill we are debating today, the Student Identifiers Bill 2014, was first introduced in an almost identical form by Labor last year. This bill was a key element of Labor's skills reform agenda and was agreed to by COAG in April 2012. The introduction of the scheme is part of the current National Partnership Agreement on Skills Reform, to which all jurisdictions are signatories.

The main purpose of this bill provides for the introduction of a student identifier for students undertaking nationally recognised vocational education. Labor's original bill also established a Student Identifiers Agency as a stand-alone, dedicated agency to administer the identifier scheme. The current bill instead proposes the creation of a registrar only, who is appointed under the same provisions as were previously proposed for the chief executive officer of the agency. Staff to support the registrar will be provided by the department.

Perhaps most importantly, the bill also provides for the creation of an authenticated transcript of an individual's record of nationally recognised training. Currently, there is no single repository of records of VET student enrolments and achievements. This means that individuals cannot access a consolidated electronic record of VET attainments over their lifetime and, in turn, registered training organisations may be unable to readily confirm students' prerequisite coursework or properly assess their prior learning. Prior learning is particularly important in VET. This also affects the capacity of state, territory and Commonwealth policymakers to assess how the VET system is performing and to administer government student subsidy programs.

The student identifier scheme is designed to improve the transparency and responsiveness of the VET sector. All jurisdictions have endorsed the introduction of the scheme through COAG and have signed the National Partnership Agreement on Skills Reform that provides for its implementation.

Labor also undertook extensive public consultation leading up to the process of drafting the bill. Both the preparatory and final business cases included stakeholder consultations during 2011, and further stakeholder consultations were undertaken as part of the regulation impact statement process, which ran from December 2011 to January 2012. Consultations with RTOs were undertaken in March and April 2012 and all state and territory jurisdictions provided input into the drafting of the legislation. So that is a lot of consultation.

The draft bill and other elements of the draft legislative package were released for public consultation—again, that is the next step in the process: stakeholder consultation and then public consultation—from 21 January to 15 February 2013. During this period information sessions were held in the capital cities of each of the states and territories. Feedback from these sessions has confirmed support for the student identifiers scheme. Thirty-one written submissions were received during this consultation process.

We know that at the moment it can be difficult for students to keep track of training records, particularly when trying to gather evidence of prior learning when entering a higher level course later on or when trying to compile a comprehensive record of study prior to a job interview. There is always that frantic run-around to try and pull all those pieces of paper together or find out where they are.

The student identifier will help students keep track of their VET training and keep a record of all qualifications and certificates achieved throughout their lives. The scheme will make it easier for students to find and collate their VET achievements into a single, nationally recognised, authenticated transcript that can be provided to employers as proof of qualifications or to a training provider when seeking recognition of study previously undertaken. As I said, in this area the recognition of previous study, but particularly recognition of prior learning, is very important. This will enable providers to assess if course prerequisites have been met, determine credit transfer or grant recognition of prior learning.

The student identifier will also provide governments with access to more accurate data on the pathways that students take through the VET system and a greater understanding of the progress of disadvantaged students. This will enable governments to better develop evidence based programs that effectively target skill shortages and the skill needs of industry and better support the management of government funded subsidy programs.

The bill safeguards the privacy of individuals, which is particularly important. It provides that identifiers cannot be collected, used or disclosed without the individual's authorisation unless provided for in legislation. The Australian Information Commissioner will be the key regulator of the privacy and confidentiality aspects of the bill and will have the capacity to conduct audits, undertake investigations and impose a range of sanctions.

Labor is proud of the student identifiers initiative and we are pleased that the Abbott government is continuing with this important reform. This legislation will enhance the responsiveness and transparency of the VET sector by providing a clear picture of Australia's skill base. It will make students' lives easier and it will enable future training to be better targeted to meet the needs of industry and the economy, strengthening the potential for productivity growth in the future.

However, when it comes to ensuring Australia has the right skills to meet the needs of future industry and the economy, it would seem that supporting student identifiers is the only sensible decision the Abbott government has taken. Earlier I mentioned the trade training centres. The Trade Training Centres in Schools Program was an important element of Labor's reforms to ensure Australia has a skilled and qualified workforce to meet the needs of our future. The trade training centres program was to provide $2.5 billion over 10 years to provide all secondary schools with the opportunity to access funding to build new or enhance existing training facilities.

Just two weeks ago, I attended the opening of the Tuggeranong Sustainable Living Trade Training Centre in my electorate of Canberra. Labor announced $8.1 million in funding to establish this centre in 2011. One of the most innovative elements of the trade training centres program is that they are not just built on a school-by-school basis but instead bring together a number of schools in a region to ensure within a particular region the necessary training facilities for numerous trades are available. The Tuggeranong trade training centre will benefit a number of schools in my electorate, including Erindale College, Calwell High School, Caroline Chisholm School, Lake Tuggeranong College, Lanyon High School and the Wanniassa School Senior Campus.

This trade training centre includes the refurbishment of seven existing facilities including construction workshops, automotive workshops, commercial kitchens and horticulture workshops across seven sites within this school cluster. The centre will deliver certificate I and II qualifications and units of competency at certificate III in automotive, construction, horticulture and hospitality to address skills shortages in horticulture and the trades of carpenters and joiners, cooks, landscape gardeners and motor mechanics.

It was with mixed emotions that I attended the opening of this trade training centre. On the one hand I was thrilled that the young Canberrans of the valley would benefit from this exceptional facility. I was also acutely aware that this may be the last trade training centre opening in my electorate, because the Abbott government has scrapped this program and cancelled all future centres. The Abbott government does know that we need to improve the low participation rate in vocational education in schools. The responsible minister said in a speech to TAFE Directors Australia earlier this year:

Schools must provide a high quality vocational pathway that engages students and prepares them to take on the high-skill and high earning roles our economy demands.

At the opening of the Tuggeranong Sustainable Living Trade Training Centre, the Liberal senator for the ACT, Senator Seselja, had the nerve to say that trades training in schools is a 'critical part of Australia's future'. However, this can be nothing more than hollow lip service on the importance of trade training, because the Abbott government is insisting on nonsensically scrapping the Trades Training Centre in Schools program, which enables students to participate in vocational education in schools.

I have visited the trade training centres in my electorate and I know they work. I have spoken to students who have said that without the trade training centre, they probably would have left school at year 10 and gone straight into an apprenticeship. But, because of the centre, these students were able to complete their year 12—continuing to study the other subject they enjoy like languages, science, maths and English—and begin their trade qualification at the same time. In the long term, having not left school but instead completed year 12 will provide the students with more options and better opportunities.

The Abbott government says that they are cutting trade training centres because they were an unfunded election commitment of Labor's. But this statement is completely wrong. Trade Training Centres in Schools was not an election commitment; it was a long-held policy and program of Labor's and was fully budgeted until 2019.

Trade training centres keep kids in schools and provide them with the skills training they need to ensure they are job ready. The Abbott government's decision to scrap this excellent program is a mistake and it is a mistake that will cost the young people of Australia dearly.

Of course, as we all know, the Abbott government's budget of broken promises also cut support to skills and vocational education. My colleague the member for Cunningham has outlined these cuts in detail, but I just want to mention one: the axing of the Tools for Your Trade allowance. This is a much-needed allowance that allows apprentices, who will all know are paid only a small amount, to buy the tools they need to complete their training. I have had a lot of mail on this from my constituents. The government has scrapped this allowance and instead replaced it with a loan of up to $20,000. This is a terrible policy that will deter young people from entering or completing their apprenticeship. Completing an apprenticeship can be financially challenging, and the removal of the tools allowance and introduction of a loans scheme will only make matters worse.

In closing, I commend the Student Identifiers Bill, but I call on the Abbott government to genuinely commit to ensuring this country has the skills we need for our future by continuing with trades training centres and supporting our apprentices with the Tools for Your Trade allowance.

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to this important bill that will finally enable students within the vocational education and training sector to have an easily deniable student number. The Student Identifiers Bill 2014 the will benefit those students commencing nationally recognised training from 1 January 2015. It will enable the establishment of a much more coherent and streamlined system of information from the currently inaccurate and fragmented one that leads to waste and confusing duplication of student identities and records. The coalition took a commitment to the election that we would provide more assistance to those in the vocational sector, and I am proud to be here today to talk about these important changes.

This is a very technical bill and I will go through it in specific detail to demonstrate how this bill will be of enormous benefit to all those involved in the vocational education and training centres and the impact it will have on those in my electorate of Brisbane and throughout Australia. The bill will establish a national life-long unique student identifier—USI—for students in the vocational education and training, VET, sector who undertake nationally recognised training from 1 January 2015.

Currently, information about vocational education enrolments, participation and completions is fragmented, incomplete and inaccurate. There is waste and confusing duplication in the creation of student identifiers and records, and unnecessary cost to training providers because often the same information is collected many times over and over again. Pathways and patterns of enrolment and completion are often difficult to understand. It is currently difficult to develop evidence-based and cost-efficient programs that effectively target skill shortages and the skills that industry needs. The USI is an integral part of the government's strategy to address these many problems.

An immediate benefit will be to lessen the burden on training providers, and this will be done by collecting that important art just once and it can be used many times. It will operate in conjunction with the Total VET Activity program. The USI will enable a much more rationalised way to collect data. It will empower students to access further training and to promote their skills in the labour market, because records of their learning outcomes will be so much easier to access.

An exciting component of this bill is the way in which students will be able to access their records online. They will be able to access their national training records online anytime, anywhere. They will be able to give access to their training provider, which will simplify enrolment processes, and send a transcript to prospective employers.

A person does not have to wait. You can create your USI online faster than you can complete and be issued a white card online, and often using the same ID. An online white card training provider can also create a USI for the student using the same enrolment information and ID—for example, a driver's licence—that they use to issue a white card. Providers must have a USI to issue a certificate of attainment. The white card effectively includes a certificate of attainment. With the USI, governments will be able to better assure the integrity of training activity and investments by enabling accountability for public funds and the delivery of certified training. Comprehensive and relevant labour market and training data will also very much help the engagement with training for students and businesses.

This legislation is very similar to a bill that was introduced by the previous government and lapsed in the last parliament. The major change, which is a key amendment, is to adopt a more streamlined and less costly governance arrangement for the administration of the USI scheme. Instead of having a separate statutory agency, which would have increased red tape and imposed more burden, the scheme will be administered within the Department of Industry under guidance of a statutory office holder. This will be much more efficient and simpler. Subject to passage of the legislation, the scheme is set to formally commence on 1 January 2015. Although initial implementation of the USI will be in the VET sector only, there will be capability in the future for the USI to be introduced into other sectors over time.

This bill will enable training providers in the Brisbane electorate to provide much better service to their students. I want to highlight some of those very excellent providers and the incredible work they do to assist in training our students. Charlton Brown, founded in 1985 and located in Fortitude Valley, places graduates in local, national and international employment. Their training includes a range of community services, including early childhood education and care, aged care, home and community care, disability care, outside school hours care and community services work. It is also a national and international employment and nanny placement agency, which is where it had its humble beginnings. I want to commend the principal and CEO, Kay Ganley, and her wonderful team for the nationally and internationally acclaimed work that they do.

Another education provider is the Carrick Institute of Education, also in the Valley. It was founded in 1987 by Catherine Carrick as a small tourism and hospitality training centre with a focus on personalised education. Its courses range across business, marketing, management, accounting, hospitality, tourism, events, community services and children's services and it is also recognised internationally.

Sarina Russo, based in Brisbane's CBD, is part of the Sarina Russo Group. The group was established in 1979 and is an industry leader in education, training, recruitment and job creation. They boast a domestic and an international training cohort of over 10,000 students. I would like to congratulate Sarino Russo on her work in the higher education area as well, particularly her collaboration with James Cook University.

These excellent vocational education and training providers are just three of Australia's many providers who will benefit and who, in turn, will provide benefit to their students, families and the wider community from the unique and innovative changes that form part of this Student Identifiers Bill. The bill will also build on the Abbott government's commitment to provide more financial assistance to apprentices through the Trade Support Loans program. This was a commitment we took to the last election and one that I was very proud to see implemented for those in my electorate of Brisbane who choose to build richer lives for themselves and their families through taking on an apprenticeship.

Apprentices in the Brisbane electorate will have access to $20,000 over the entire period of their training. Importantly, more support will be provided during the initial years when it is needed the most. The $20,000 is repayable once apprentices are earning a substantial income, of around $50,000. Apprentices will receive a 20 per cent reduction in the amount of the loan once they complete their training. The trade support loans will provide support of up to $8,000 in the first year of the apprenticeship, $6,000 in the second, $4,000 in the third and $2,000 in the fourth.

The USI is an initiative of the Council of Australian Governments, COAG. As such, the development of the bill, underlying policy and operational arrangements has been undertaken in very close consultation with state and territory jurisdictions and agreed by all training ministers. Extensive consultations were undertaken with the sector in the development of the bill. This included a consultation regulation impact statement process, two rounds of national consultations and a round of national workshops and webinars. In addition, an external reference group was established to bring together Commonwealth, state and territory governments and VET peak industry bodies to collaborate on the USI initiative. In addition, national workshops with around 650 training providers were undertaken in 2013 to ascertain the level of training provider 'readiness' to implement the scheme. The workshops found a high level of engagement and acceptance of the scheme amongst the many training providers who participated.

This Student Identifiers Bill is unique and will provide life-long affiliation between students and learning providers. I am proud to be able to represent the Brisbane electorate in this important shift to enable our vocational education and training providers to have the opportunity to greatly streamline their operations and to enable increased efficiency and greater ease for students to access their learning data. I commend the bill to the House.

Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Student Identifiers Bill 2014, which, as the previous member has said, was based very much on a piece of legislation introduced under Labor. Both sides sensibly agree that it is a good thing to provide a unique identifier number for students in the education sector. It will help students over time to keep track of their record and have ready access to their training history, making it much easier when applying for jobs and seeking further qualifications by having a comprehensive and verifiable record of their past endeavours and achievement. Likewise and very importantly, it will add to our research endeavour to get a profile of people's lives—when they are embarking on a particularly course, the success of those courses, the sequences of the courses they do—and to make some inferences about the success of the training. This is an area where we are going to have to focus much more intensely on just how well our vocational education sector is delivering for the people who are looking to it to provide them with an opportunity to gain skills that will enable them to obtain meaningful, enjoyable and productive employment. There is a good deal of concern out there that perhaps we are not going in a very good direction. There is some suggestion that, rather than embracing the extent of this problem and taking steps to deal with the quality issues, we might in the name of deregulation and cutting red tape be taking vocational education backwards.

I want to acknowledge the great suggestion made by the member for Cunningham to the Standing Committee on Education and Employment as part of our inquiry into the TAFE and vocational education sector that we engage in a survey. We have had very substantial responses on the website, but it is alarming how many people have talked rather despairingly about their experience in vocational education. Some of the responses were:

I am still seeking employment and my three certificates from TAFE haven't helped.

Another:

A lack of resources including teacher availability has severely impacted on my learning experience.

Another:

The trainers were a little out of touch.

Another:

... unfortunately, the course I had done stood for very little.

Another said the course had:

… no benefit; it has created more stress. TAFE added no value. The teachers were hopeless.

Another:

I found the quality of the education poor, I received no learning materials and had difficulties with it.

It was a waste of time!

It did not improve my employment prospects in the field that I studied which was disappointing.

I know that much good work is being done in the vocational education sector, but I do not think we can turn a blind eye to the fact that there are a lot of questions as to whether or not courses being offered in the public sector or in the private sector are fit for purpose.

I am sure many people will recall what happened in 2009 when Labor had to change some of the international study programs that were luring overseas students who were coming here and finding that the programs being delivered simply did not provide the training promised. People were being lured here on the pretext that, if they completed these courses, they could apply for permanent residency and in that process there was a great deal of sham training. This is not just confined to overseas students. There certainly is the potential for and there is evidence that there are private providers who are not scrupulous, who just want to move people through. We find people ending up with qualifications, which have been paid for, which really add nothing and provide very little increment to the skill level of the participant and certainly nothing to their ability to get further job training.

I make it very clear that I recognise the problems are not just confined to private providers, although we find more often that they have the profit motive of churning people through. There have been various serious questions about the quality and the variability of programs available through public sector vocational education providers and we need to be as vigilant about that as we are about the private providers. That is why the Australian Skills

Quality Authority is such an important entity. We are very concerned by the review that is going on, particularly as the minister has said, 'We're looking at a more streamlined approach with a self-regulation perspective. There s far too much regulation in the system.' I doubt that there is too much regulation in the system. I would agree that perhaps some of the regulation is targeted at the wrong place in the training cycle, that far too much of it is focussed on the process levels. So you have the development of a bureaucracy within training organisations that is very much focussed on having a chain of paper and not enough focus on assessment of the skills at the end of the training. So if I think that there is a problem, it is with the over-focusing on the inputs and under-focusing on the outputs of the training. But there is absolutely no doubt that we need to be very, very rigorous about the training standards and about the accreditation of these training programs particularly as we are now moving into this brave new age where people engaging in vocational education are going to have to be seeking loans—loans that are steadily increasing—and where state governments have relentlessly increased fees in many states.

Certainly in Western Australia we have seen very extensive increases in the cost of TAFE. In August 2013, for example, the Western Australian government announced that the cap on TAFE fees would be scrapped at the start of this year and we saw tuition fees, for instance, for an 18-month nursing diploma, go from $2,000 to $8,000. In that process we have seen that the number of people in Western Australia engaging in training and apprenticeships has dropped by 1,700, the biggest fall that we have seen since the GFC. This is in a state where we have youth unemployment, nevertheless, we have had a very, very significant drop in the number of people entering training. Overall, we have seen a four per cent drop in the number of people training in WA. There were 41,000 people in training in December last year, a drop of four per cent on the numbers the year before, and the total number of people starting a new course or apprenticeship was down 12.7 per cent in the same period.

We now know that the economic burden that is now part of undergoing vocational training is having a downward effect on people in training. We know from the reports that we are getting from our constituency that the cutting of a number of schemes is having an adverse effect. This is particularly the case for the Tools for Trade scheme, which was a great financial incentive for many young people to go into trade training and which to some extent offset the very negative impact of these increased fees incurred at a state government level. That scheme has now gone and I think that we could anticipate a further decline in vocational training.

But even for those people that do decide they want to stick with it, they are going now to have to borrow very considerable sums of money to ensure that they complete their training. So I think that we have double the obligation, both a moral and economic obligation, to make sure that the training they undertake, that we underwrite in a quality sense, is worth taking. This is so important for so many people's lives, and to retain confidence and belief in the system it is going to be critically important for us to ensure that what is on offer both in the private and the public sectors offers quality skills that are really going to enhance people's opportunities to gain a job and have a place in the sun.

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this Student Identifiers Bill 2014, noting that it is part of the coalition government's wider agenda to invest in the skilled workers of the future. For too long higher education support has focused on universities and neglected trades and apprenticeships. While this bill is quite technical and uncontroversial, it is an important step in the right direction to ensure that young people starting trades and apprenticeships are not left behind and are given as much support as possible to start study and complete their course. This bill establishes a national lifelong unique student identifier, USI, for students in the vocational education training, VET, sector who undertake nationally recognised training from 1 January 2015. The current situation is that information about vocational education enrolments, participation and completions of courses is disorganised, incomplete and inaccurate. The measures outlined in this bill will fix this issue.

Information is usually collected many times at considerable and unnecessary cost to training providers. This is obviously a waste of time and resources that could be better spent on training the apprentices. The USI is an integral part of the government's strategy to address these problems and improve efficiency. An immediate benefit will be that the USI will operate in conjunction with the Total VET Activity program to help rationalise the way VET data is collected and used—to collect data once and use many times—lessening the burden on training providers. This bill will allow students to more easily explore and access further training as well as making it easier to promote their skills in the labour market. Students and apprentices will be able access their national training records online anytime and almost anywhere. They will also be able to share their data with prospective employers. The USI will allow governments to better assure the integrity of training programs and investments by facilitating accountability for public funds and the delivery of certified training.

As I highlighted earlier, this bill is just part of the coalition's agenda for investing in the skilled workers of the future and broadening the focus of education assistance, not just on universities but to the VET sector as well. The coalition government is investing in national productivity gains and the skilled workers of the future, delivering on our commitment for the $1.9 billion Trade Support Loans to equip young apprentices with the skills for real world jobs.

As part of the coalition government's comprehensive plan to create a more responsible skills and training system that cuts red tape and trains apprentices who are job ready, trade support loans are to start from 1 July 2014. Australia's productivity and competitiveness depend on a highly trained workforce. Trade support loans will help more apprentices complete their training and get the skills they need to fill the jobs that businesses actually want. Many young apprentices do it tough in the early years, and the government's proposed loans, paid monthly, will ease the financial burden and help increase training completion rates. Trade support loans are interest free. They are indexed annually with CPI but are not subject to a commercial rate of interest, as a bank loan would be. This is a policy that the coalition took to the election, and it is a policy that we are now implementing in government. The coalition's trade support loans are a responsible investment in the nation's future tradespeople.

The Australian government has an Economic Action Strategy that will build a stronger economy, create new jobs and bring Labor's debt and deficit disaster under control. The Trade Support Loans program offers loans of up to $20,000 which are repayable once apprentices are earning a sustainable income of more than $50,000. Apprentices will receive a 20 per cent reduction in the amount of the loan once they complete their training. The program targets occupations on the National Skills Needs List such as plumbers, diesel mechanics, electricians and fitters, as well as priority areas in horticulture and agriculture, with more than 1,000 qualifications eligible.

The coalition government is building a diverse, five-pillar economy that focuses on our strengths in manufacturing and innovation, agricultural exports, advanced services, world-class education and research, and mining. The government will continue to work with industry to ensure that the skills and training sector is responsive to its needs and is an effective catalyst for the industries and jobs of the future. I am proud to stand on this side of the House today discussing just one of the many measures that the coalition government is taking to invest in the skilled workers of the future.

Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the Student Identifiers Bill 2014, as the bill highlights the growing importance of vocational education and training to Australians. Today more Australians than ever before are going to university, getting a skill or undertaking vocational education and training. The reality of the modern education and employment market is that, today, these Australians are undertaking this study and training across multiple disciplines, across multiple institutions and often over extended periods of time. The days of a job for life, of a lifetime career, are well and truly gone. We live in a world where people will have multiple careers throughout their lives and as a result will need to update their skills and undertake formal retraining at a number of stages in their lives.

In this context, it can be difficult for students to keep track of their training records and educational attainment. This is a particularly significant issue when students are seeking to enter a higher level educational course, perhaps years after completing an initial course of study. Obtaining admission to these higher level educational courses generally requires the production of formal evidence of prior learning. Similarly, when students are looking to start work or to change their job and start a new career, evidence of a comprehensive record of prior study is important to give people the best possible chance to secure employment.

This bill provides for the creation of a unique student identifier for vocational education and training students. The purpose of a unique student identifier of this kind is to enable students who undertake vocational education and training through an Australian registered training organisation to see the totality of their VET enrolment and achievement in a single transcript record. It puts an end to the need for a shoebox full of educational transcripts and qualifications stored in the top shelf of the bedroom closet.

Not only will this be an advantage to VET students in planning their studies and using their VET achievement to secure employment but it will also allow for data to be collected on the way that students participate in the VET system—where they study, how they perform and the pathways that students take through the system. This information will inform research into the sector, enabling administrators and policymakers to adapt the system to maximise student outcomes. This would also enable evidence to be gathered to develop programs that more effectively target skills shortages and the skills needs of industry and employers more closely.

The bill before the House shows a striking resemblance to the Student Identifiers Bill 2013, introduced by the previous Labor government. It is unsurprising that the coalition would seek to mimic aspects of the previous Labor government's VET policy because the record of the previous Labor government on vocational education and training was excellent. In government, Labor made a record investment in skills and training, making the investments necessary so that Australians could benefit from smarter jobs and a stronger economy. We coupled this record investment with a dynamic VET environment that gave Australians the platform they needed to develop the skills necessary to compete in the Asian century.

The previous Labor government expanded access to student loans to reduce up-front financial barriers for those wanting to study a diploma or advanced diploma. Between 2008-09 and 2012-13, the previous Labor government invested over $19 billion in skills funding, a 77 per cent increase over the Howard government's investment. After commencing in 2009, the Labor government provided funding of $6.06 billion to support state and territory skills and workforce development under the national agreement. Across the nation in 2011, a total of $6.5 billion was invested in Australia's national training system, with the then federal government's share being $2.4 billion.

Unfortunately, the state Liberal government in Victoria, my home state, has not been doing its share on VET funding. The impact of the state Liberal government's swingeing cuts to TAFE and the VET sector in Melbourne's west have been particularly severe, and my constituents are keenly looking forward to the opportunity to hold the Liberal government to account for these cuts—perhaps sooner than it had anticipated.

In Melbourne's west, less than 50 per cent of the population have completed high school and less than 10 per cent have completed a bachelor degree. We also have a very large migrant and culturally and linguistically diverse community, with over half of the resident population in Melbourne's west speaking a language other than English at home. In this context, TAFEs are particularly important to Melbourne's west as providers of tailored employment training, often addressing skills gaps or deficits in basic education.

The Victorian Liberal government's cut of $170 million in funding allocated to TAFEs to meet their community obligations, promote social inclusion and provide support to students from disadvantaged backgrounds has particularly hurt Melbourne's west. One result of this cut has been the retrenchment of more than 13 full-time youth and education support workers at Victoria University, in my electorate. These student support roles are particularly important for institutions like Victoria University that support large numbers of students who either are the first members of their immediate family to enter the tertiary education sector or come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

It is worth noting for the House that Victoria University has substantially higher numbers of first-generation students than other universities. In fact, over 60 per cent of the students undertaking a bachelor degree at Victoria University do not have parents with a university degree. The technical definition is 'higher education students enrolled at a bachelor or sub-bachelor course level for whom neither parent holds a university-level qualification'. The overall rate for universities across the country is around 30 per cent, so Victoria University has almost twice that level of students who do not have family members with a university degree. These are exactly the kinds of people that our education system should be providing opportunities for.

These students often require a little more holistic support early on in their studies to ensure that they are able to make the challenging transition to tertiary study. These students often do not have the experienced support networks enjoyed by more privileged students and, as such, they are at risk of dropping out of tertiary education early in their degrees.

More broadly, Victoria University, the primary provider of higher education in Melbourne's west, has been substantially impacted by the cuts in VET program subsidies by the Victorian Liberal government. Cuts to VU's program subsidy funding constitute over 25 per cent of the total revenue of VU's TAFE. As a result, VU has been forced to undertake major retrenchments of its TAFE teachers and support staff. As VU is a major employer in Melbourne's west, this has also had obvious flow-on effects for the broader economy of the region. Cuts in VET funding in Melbourne's west have also had an impact on the fees faced by prospective students. When coupled with the Liberal government's decision to remove caps on VET students' fees, the cuts in VET funding have had the inevitable consequence of pushing student fees higher. TAFE providers are forced to increase fees to compensate for lost government funding in order to remain viable—with consequences for the accessibility of education for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

A further consequence of the Victorian Liberal government's cuts to VET funding is the knock-on effect that these cuts have on the accessibility of university study in Melbourne's west. As students from Melbourne's west are statistically more likely to come from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds, they rely heavily on alternative pathways to university study, including VET programs at Victoria University. Of particular concern in this respect is the state Liberal government's decision to dramatically reduce funding for VET certificate I and II courses. These courses are generally not vocational in nature but instead are used by disadvantaged students as bridging courses to further study. Limiting access to VET programs in Melbourne's west therefore has a pipeline effect of limiting access to university study for students in the region. The cumulative effect of these changes is to further entrench educational disadvantage in Melbourne's west.

Vocational education and training is essential for our nation's future. It is a fundamental driver of our nation's productivity. It is an important tool in fighting inequality and giving people from disadvantaged backgrounds a chance to climb the skills ladder to higher paying and higher quality jobs. Labor fully supports our VET sector. We did so in government and we continue to do so from opposition. This is a reasonable bill that will help Australians get the most out of their VET studies, and Labor supports its passage in the House.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In summing up for the Minister for Industry on the Student Identifiers Bill 2014, I would like to thank all members for their contributions to the debate. The bill provides for the introduction of the student identifier scheme. I want to address, to begin with, some of the misinformation in the statements that were made by the member for Cunningham in her speech in the second reading debate. I emphasise that the one thing the sector has broadly and unanimously appreciated since we came into government is that the training and skills portfolio be linked to industry, that it be linked to jobs and that it matter to employers what happens in the training and skills space. Perhaps the member for Cunningham's narrow view of vocational education and training—that it is only about education—is the reason why, for six years under the former government, it was allowed to run off the rails so badly and become so confusing. This government has set the skills portfolio on a far more efficient and streamlined path, by putting industry and employers back in the driving seat. It is typical that the Labor Party sees only the process and not the outcome. For the Labor Party, the process is about the training activity. Important though that is, the training activity is not what matters. What always matters is the job, and that is the focus that the coalition in government now has in this very important area of policy.

The member for Cunningham also raised the issue of the National Workforce Development Fund. Let me inform the member that this program was probably the most overly tied up in red tape that I have ever seen. In fact, it was found to have the most onerous reporting in a recent review of vocational education and training reporting. I remember, as the opposition spokesperson in this area, seeing glossy brochure after glossy brochure come out from the then government explaining what this fund had funded, but when you actually did a calculation related to certificate II, for example, in a particular sector, the numbers who had passed that qualification and the dollars that were involved in getting that outcome were phenomenal. It was right over the top. The government now has made a decision to deliver an industry skills fund that delivers a direct line for industry to access some co-investment from government in training.

The member for Cunningham also raised the issue of apprenticeship access being ceased. Let me remind her that a recent review of the program found that, under her watch, this program delivered just 26 per cent job outcomes for participants—hardly the success she would have us believe. We have set about reforming and improving the apprenticeship system. Many of our speakers on this side of the House have talked about our trade support loans and the important role that they will play in delivering completion rates that are a lot better than the current ones. We look forward to the minister making further announcements about that in the future.

The opposition also raised the national partnership on teen parents and the cessation of that program. What we inherited was a program in which those opposite agreed that the only outcome the states would have to comply with in order to get money from the Commonwealth was to sign people up. Easy: sign people up and get the funding. How irresponsible is that? There was no need for evidence of completing training, no link to a job, nothing—yet another clanger in a Labor Party policy that thought the outcome in vocational education was just throwing more money at it.

The member for Canberra made some interesting remarks. She talked about how much money the previous government pumped into skills and came up with a figure of about $19 billion. I must say in response: let's look at the outcomes. We had the failure of the multibillion-dollar Productivity Places Program under review. We had no idea who studied, what they studied or who was delivering the training. Again, it was all about the process: pumping in the people; putting out the glossy brochures; talking up the skills conversation, which is always a good one, always an interesting one and always well supported by those you talk to. But the hard yards were never undertaken.

If this record of spending was so great, why did Labor leave us with a regulator with no budget and, instead, force us into a full cost recovery approach to the regulation of the system, an approach that has not delivered any improvement in the quality of training? In listening to the speakers from Labor on this bill, the word 'quality' did not come up much. It is interesting that it did not, because quality is what you should talk about when you talk about training as being the most important thing after the link with a job.

When I talk to apprentices and they discuss their training experience, yes, the money matters—the job is usually there are on the table if they are already in an apprenticeship—but then it is the quality of the training that matters. Under Labor, there was no money to regulate the system; it was all about the process, the scrutiny of providers, never about the quality.

Let us not forget the trades training debacle. In 2007 Labor committed to $2.5 billion for trades training centres in all of Australia's 2,650 secondary schools. I know the member for Canberra explained how they are now interesting clusters that work really well. The interesting clusters came about because of course the promise could never be delivered. We could never have a trades training centre in every single one of Australia's 2,650 secondary schools. If we did, we would have had even more substandard trades training centres than what we eventually ended up with. I know, from having visited a lot of these centres, that some of them do good work. I do not want to underplay the good work that they do and it is certainly true that for students to have training in areas that lead to a job and apprenticeships, particularly school based apprenticeships, is very important. We know that, but just building the space does not actually make it happen. The actual activity inside that space is what delivers the high- quality training that leads to a job. At that point, the Labor Party walked away. Labor only ever managed to deliver 304 of its promised trades training centres and that is a shameful record.

As we announced, the coalition government will deliver the final round of trades training centres, which will now be known as trades skills centres. They will have a renewed focus on delivering excellent vocational training in secondary schools through stronger partnerships between schools, local businesses and industry. Future funding under the program will then cease. Labor's program would never have achieved the goal to have a trades training centre in every secondary school in Australia and we simply cannot overstate that enough.

Members opposite also raised the issue of the tools for trade allowance. The member for Canberra has not said once how on earth she would fund its reinstatement. We are borrowing $1 billion a month, just to pay Labor's interest bill. And guess what? The tool allowance cost just under $1 billion. So every month of Labor's interest bill could notionally have funded the tool scheme over and over. It would be great to do some of these things. Yes, there were benefits, but Labor created this situation and now we must all deal with the results. We have replaced the Tools for your Trade scheme with something far better: our apprenticeship trade support loans, which give four times as much support as the old scheme. Yes, they do have to be paid back but, importantly, part of the incentive to complete is the 20 per cent discount. It gives apprentices an immediate reduction, of up to $4,000, depending on how much they borrow. It would be $4,000, if they borrow the full amount under the program.

As a country our continued prosperity depends, in large part, on the skills and knowledge of our people. This will be especially the case as we move to reposition Australian industry to take advantage of the many opportunities and the competitive challenges that we all face in the 21st century. Our government is committed to ensuring that the vocational education and training sector is ready to meet the skills and training needs of the nation and it is in this context that the Student Identifiers Bill is being presented to the House.

The bill will establish a national lifelong unique student identifier, USI, for students in the vocational education and training sector—always known as VET—who undertake nationally recognised training from 1 January 2015. The introduction of the scheme is expected to generate time and cost savings for individuals and businesses over time and is intended to support a high-quality contestable and responsive national training market by enabling the streamlining of data collection and other processes in the vocational education and training sector. In particular, the student identifiers scheme will address the wasteful and confusing duplication within the labour market that flows from the fragmented and inaccurate information about vocational education enrolments, participation and completions. It will allow for a greater understanding of education pathways and patterns of enrolment and completion, enabling the development of evidence-based and cost-efficient programs that effectively target skills shortages and skills needs of industry.

The student identifier will also assist industry in making better informed decisions about the skills levels and training needs of their workforces and in gaining a greater understanding of the scope and effectiveness of the training being undertaken within their industry. Moreover, employers will be better placed than ever before to evaluate the training records of job applicants and staff from an authoritative source, streamlining recruitment, staff training and task allocation, and also helping to ensure that training already undertaken is not repeated unnecessarily. In addition, individuals will have easy, reliable, lifelong online access to a record of their training history from a single authoritative source. Individuals will be able to produce comprehensive transcripts or an extract for the purpose of applying for a job when seeking credit transfer or when demonstrating prerequisites when undertaking further training. These advantages are complemented by students being able to give public and private training providers access to an online information source to manage transfers between training providers and their assessment of credit transfer and prerequisites.

As an initiative of the Council of Australian Governments, this bill is the culmination of hard work and close collaboration between the Commonwealth and state and territory governments. I am pleased to say that there is support from all state and territory governments for a USI and I would like to thank them for their significant contribution to the development of this legislation. The bill has undergone an extensive consultation process. I would also like to thank everyone from training providers to state and territory agencies, and privacy commissions, across Australia for their contribution and advice. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation for the bill.