Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Vocational Education, Training and Apprenticeships) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill and move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Today I introduce the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment Bill 2019. The Australian vocational education and training, or VET, sector delivers outstanding education and training for a variety of institutions through public and private registered training organisations within universities and schools. It is a dynamic and responsive sector that supports millions of students to obtain the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in an ever-changing economy. It provides flexible opportunities to engage in education and training as a starting point to a career pathway or as a solution to upskill or reskill.

That is why last year this government committed $18.1 million to support reform of the national VET regulator, the Australian Skills Quality Authority, or ASQA, to improve its engagement with the sector and increase its focus on training excellence over a minimum standards compliance regulatory approach.

This bill is the first tranche of changes to ASQA as we move the agency towards a more transparent and balanced regulator that builds quality and capacity in the VET sector. ASQA has a wide range of legislative responsibilities important to the success of the Australian VET sector, including registering and monitoring some 4,000 RTOs, accrediting courses, undertaking compliance audits, collecting and distributing information about VET, and taking appropriate re-entry actions. It is important that we have a trusted, respected and independent regulator that takes action to protect students and ensure confidence in the quality of training.

This bill responds to recommendations from both the 2018 Braithwaite review into ASQA's primary legislation and the 2019 Joyce review into vocational education and training, to ensure the legislation is fit-for-purpose and supports ASQA and the sector in delivering quality VET services. To this end, the bill strengthens registration requirements for RTOs, to ensure only those RTOs genuinely committed and adequately resourced are able to operate in the sector. As such, organisations applying to ASQA to become registered will be aware of the high expectations placed on them and the need to show they are prepared and committed to providing high quality training from the first day their doors open and throughout their registration.

Further, the bill introduces a new requirement on RTOs to notify ASQA when significant changes to their businesses are likely to occur. This will ensure ASQA has better and more timely information about an RTO's operations and assist ASQA to mitigate risks to students and to VET quality.

Where ASQA must cancel an RTO's registration for noncompliance with the VET Quality Framework, the amendments provide ASQA with flexibility and discretion in determining when cancellation or refusal of registration takes effect, so as to minimise the impact on students. In practice, the amendments will allow providers in some circumstances to continue operating for a period while students complete their training or arrange to transfer to another provider.

It is critical for ASQA to follow standard regulatory procedures so RTOs are afforded the principles of natural justice and that decisions are supported by sound evidence. There are existing natural justice requirements in the NVETR Act that ensure providers are notified of ASQA's intention to cancel and provide time for RTOs to respond to the notice. These remain unchanged by these amendments, and RTOs will continue to have access to appeals processes.

Improving the transparency of ASQA's regulatory actions will ensure the sector has confidence in the ability of the regulator to make appropriate, consistent and proportionate regulatory decisions. To achieve this, the bill provides for publication of audit reports, expands information entered on the publicly available national register, as well as enabling ASQA to share information electronically with others responsible for administering laws relating to VET.

ASQA will also be able to authorise a National Centre for Vocational Education Research, NCVER, to disclose information that would reasonably inform a person's choice to enrol in VET and that would encourage compliance or improvement in training quality.

In addition, the secretary of the department responsible for VET will be able to release information on students' and employers' experiences of training provided by RTOs. This information will assist students in making informed enrolment decisions and provide employers with better information about training quality.

Combined, these measures will ensure students are informed and protected through the availability of consistent and transparent information about RTO services and ASQA's regulatory assessments of training organisations.

To improve the efficiency and effectiveness of ASQA's operations, the bill makes amendments to enable ASQA to request documents in electronic form and expands its powers to use enforceable undertakings to take action against an RTO where it deems an undertaking is more effective, aligning it with similar powers of other regulatory regimes. In addition, ASQA will have powers to stay regulatory decisions if an RTO seeks internal review by ASQA, providing flexibility to support training delivery so students' studies are not interrupted during a review process.

To ensure the minister responsible for VET is able to respond effectively to sector issues, the bill clarifies the nature of directions the minister may issue to ASQA to improve its regulatory processes. This will assist the minister to support and direct ASQA, without impinging on the statutory independence of the regulator. Improvements to the efficiency of the NVETR Act will enable a simpler and faster acting appointment process for ASQA commissioners.

The chief commissioner is ASQA's chief executive officer, so there is a high risk of complications if unexpected circumstances mean that there is a vacancy in that office. The bill will enable the minister to appoint a commissioner to act as deputy chief commissioner during a vacancy in the office or whilst the deputy chief commissioner is absent from duty. As a result, the deputy or acting deputy chief commissioner will automatically act as the chief commissioner where there is a vacancy in the office of the chief commissioner. Further, the minister may also appoint an acting commissioner. These changes will improve appointment time frames to ensure ASQA can continue to operate effectively and with a quorum.

The bill also aligns ASQA reporting requirements with broader Commonwealth requirements. Currently information required in the annual operational plan is also required in the corporate plan, pursuant to the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013. The bill will remove the duplication, allow the corporate plan to reflect the most current information and allow for the plan to take effect from 1 July annually. The bill also makes minor administrative changes to update definitions and streamline the operation of the act.

The quality vocational education and training sector protects students. It is responsive to industry, has a strong and balanced regulator and supports students to obtain the skills they need to succeed in a modern economy. This bill is a critical element in the government's reform to ASQA's regulatory approach and will improve confidence in the regulation of training across the sector. It will ensure ASQA has legislative support to continue to be an effective and responsive regulator. Streamlining processes, increasing scrutiny of new entrants to the market and ensuring ongoing capacity to deliver quality training will benefit Australia's VET sector. Improvements to transparency of information and access will assist VET students to make informed decisions about their future and will provide better oversight for ASQA to monitor RTO activities. This bill supports the continuous commitment of this government to improve the regulation and quality of the VET sector.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Of course, Labor won't be opposing this bill, because we've always supported a strong, transparent and properly resourced regulatory framework for ASQA. This bill largely implements recommendations from the independent Joyce and Braithwaite reviews into Australia's vocational education and training sector. It addresses some of the frustrations that have been expressed by registered training organisations within the existing system, particularly in terms of transparency in ASQA's audit process and the move towards to a more informative and educative approach to compliance.

These are broadly sensible changes, and we'll support them, just as we support any changes that make the system more responsive to students, to employers and to industry. But we do have a few concerns with the way the legislation is drafted. Firstly, the move to a full cost recovery model for auditing actually contradicts what the Joyce review suggested. The Joyce review suggested:

… there is an understood difference between parts of the regulator’s activity that should be directly funded by the regulated through cost recovery arrangements versus what are broader activities for the 'public good', and should therefore be government funded.

I am a little bit concerned about how broadly this move to full cost recovery might affect some of the other compliance arrangements that ASQA has. We're very concerned that the funding arrangements might push some providers to put additional costs onto students, and anything that increases the price of training is something that we wouldn't want to see.

The government needs to actively monitor the situation to make sure that this isn't a result of this legislation, to make sure that these changes don't impact on student costs and to make sure that ASQA is adequately funded to meet its public good obligations. We also need to make sure that reforms to ASQA, to the audit process, don't allow any drop in quality. We accept that there's room for some changes here, but what we don't want to see is a rush to the bottom on quality. We want to make sure that our training system continues to deliver high-quality training to students, benefitting employers.

In the past, we've seen the government very slow to act on quality issues as concerns have emerged with the industry. That has done very significant harm: significant harm to the students, if they get a substandard education; significant harm to employers that can't rely on the quality of the training given to their employees or prospective employees; and, of course, very significant harm to the good players in the system, the people who are doing the right thing, the organisations who are delivering high quality, as the reputation of the whole system has suffered.

So we won't oppose measures that enhance student protections or address provider concerns. But this bill, in many senses, is working at the edges of the real dysfunction in many parts of the vocational education and training system. The TAFE and training system has been undermined by the repeated cuts this government has made and by a lack of attention over many years. These changes don't come close to addressing the skills crisis that the government has created and has so far failed to address.

Our country sits on the doorstep of a region going through one of history's greatest economic transformations. Australia is absolutely perfectly positioned to benefit from this extraordinary growth, but to take full advantage of our situation we need to be smart and proactive. We need to train Australians in the skills and qualifications that are required to meet these amazing opportunities. Unfortunately we've got a government that has spent the last seven years doing exactly the opposite of that. We have a government that has spent seven years neglecting our TAFE and training system. We have a government that has spent the last seven years cutting funding to TAFE and training—not just cutting funding, but also even underspending the funding that they have left. We have seen seven years of a government ignoring the vital role that TAFE plays in the growth of our young people, in our workers who are retraining as their industries change, and the vital role that TAFE and training play in our economy.

The numbers involved truly are shocking. We learned last year, from the federal education department's own data, that the Liberal government has failed to spend $919 million of the money that they set aside in the TAFE and training budget over the last five years. In the 2018-19 financial year there was a $214 million underspend. In the 2017-18 financial year there was a $202 million underspend. The year before that it was a $118 million underspend. The year before that it was a $247 million underspend, and in 2014-15 it was a $138 million underspend. That money, which could have been doing such good in our neglected TAFE and training system, is instead sitting in a bank account somewhere. It should have been supporting students to get a great education. It should have been supporting employers to get the trained staff they need. Instead, it is sitting there unspent.

That comes on top of the more than $3 billion that's been deliberately cut in successive budgets by this government. We have TAFE campuses falling apart across the country. We've got state governments closing campuses and ending courses. I have seen some magnificent TAFE facilities in some states and I've seen some pretty bedraggled ones too. We have $919 million sitting, begging to be spent on upgrading these facilities. It has not been done.

When we ask why this money wasn't spent, the response really tells its own story. The government says that there was less demand than forecast, apparently, every year since the Liberals and Nationals came to office. Actually, this is what neglect looks like. It's not just decaying campuses and shrinking course options; it's a loss of faith in the system.

The Prime Minister is pretending that there are a whole lot of young people and their parents out there turning their noses up at vocational education. That is so not true. I cannot tell you how many young people I speak to who say they would love an apprenticeship, they would love to do an apprenticeship, and they would love to study at their local TAFE college, if it offered a course that could help them get a job in the industries that are relevant in their local community. This is not about a lack of interest, a lack of demand or a lack of enthusiasm for vocational education and the great jobs that it can lead to; this is about government neglect and the misdesign and maladministration of programs, making them so unappealing that students don't want to do them and employers don't want to use them. It's a loss of faith in the system because of years of abandonment by this government.

Too many Australians have been locked out of TAFE or they've lost faith in the basic promise of a vocational education. The consequences of this are being felt throughout our nation and they're being felt most profoundly in the decline in apprentice and trainee numbers. Stunningly, we now have fewer apprentices and trainees than when Tony Abbott—the former member for Warringah—first became Prime Minister. It doesn't happen by accident. That billion dollar underspend included program areas which provide incentives for businesses to take on apprentices, support to help people finish their apprenticeships and a fund designed to train Australians in areas of need. This money had a clear purpose. It is obviously much needed in the system and yet you've got programs so poorly designed and a lack of faith in the system because of the $3 billion cut by this government. We see that money not helping in the way that it could have and should have.

The National Centre for Vocational Education Research recently found that, over the past year, 20 per cent fewer people were signing up to a trade apprenticeship or traineeship and it's even more extreme in a number of essential trades. Australians are starting an apprenticeship or a traineeship in construction, including carpentry, bricklaying or plumbing. The number or the proportion starting an apprenticeship in key trades like this dropped an alarming 40 per cent. I don't know if many of you have tried to get a plumber, a carpenter or a bricklayer recently. I can tell you it's not easy. And, depending on where in Australia you live, it can be very difficult indeed. That will get more difficult when we enter the huge reconstruction phase after these terrible bushfires and terrible floods. We're going to need these tradespeople more than ever. They're good jobs. But, instead of seeing the number of people signing up for these good jobs rise, we're seeing it plummet.

These programs are absolutely vital for young Australians looking for their first job, looking for a career that can help them support a family and buy a home. But they're also critical for mature Australians who are looking to retrain, upskill or learn something new. We've seen massive economic changes in our nation in recent years. These massive changes that have led to very widespread dislocation in some communities in some types of work. These people should have the opportunity to retrain as well.

Of course, if you talk to businesses, you will find that so many different types of businesses in so many parts of Australia simply can't find the skilled staff they need. They are crying out for skilled staff, for qualified workers, to do the work they need done to expand their businesses. In September last year, an Australian Industry Group survey found that 75 per cent of businesses surveyed were struggling to find the qualified workers they needed. That is three-quarters of Australian businesses say that they can't find the trained Australians they need with the relevant skills.

Debate interrupted.