Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Community Safety, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Imagine this. You invest everything to start a vocational education and training business and name it the Australian College of Business and Trade, with a new campus in my electorate of La Trobe. After meeting every regulatory standard, you are approved for 512 students to make the business viable. You sign a four-year lease. You decide to run automotive courses and you rent a mechanical workshop for $6,000 a month. For a cookery course, you rent a commercial kitchen for $8,000 a month. You rent the overall campus for $6,000 a month. That's $20,000 a month, and you also have six staff and all the other overheads. Then, without any warning, last Friday, on 6 September, the Albanese Labor government's Department of Employment and Workplace Relations sent you a letter reducing your capacity. So it was 512 students. It has gone down from 512 students. It hasn't gone down to 400 students or to 300 students; it hasn't even gone down to 10 students. It has gone down to one student next year. So how on earth is anyone going to pay the rent? It's absolutely impossible. So they're going to go into liquidation. It's the same for the other VET providers that I met yesterday, including Franklin International College, the Institute of Management and Trade and Atlantis College. What is happening to that sector is just a complete shemozzle. The Albanese Labor government must be condemned. They must support international students and those providers. There are so many jobs at stake here in Australia.

I also want to bring to the House's attention today the safely engaging with water pilot program arranged by a good friend of mine Harpreet Singh. Water safety is such a huge issue. In my electorate of La Trobe, Harpreet Singh and Officer Gurdwara, in collaboration with Cardinia Life, Aligned Leisure and Life Saving Victoria, have recently launched the safely engaging with water pilot program. Thirty-five people have enrolled in the program and 40 people are on the waiting list. There are men's and women's sessions. I must say that I was very impressed when I went to meet the guys swimming there. I'll make the point that, if you come from a country such as India, you're not born to basically go to school and swim. In Australia, nearly every youngster swims. It's so important that, as adults, we have these programs.

I want to thank Harpreet. I want to thank Paula from Aligned Leisure and Andrew Priestley from Life Saving Victoria. I have worked with Harpreet on so many programs. This is something that I'll call on the state government in Victoria and the federal Labor government to get behind, because, sadly, too many people drown from our multicultural community. Last year, there were 323 drownings in total across Australia. Over the past decade, 133 people from China have drowned; 109 people from the UK have drowned; 55 people from New Zealand have drowned; and 46 people from India have drowned. I know we've had people from Sri Lanka drown. I went to a wake in my electorate, with the family devastated that the father and son had drowned. It's absolutely awful.

When people go to the beach and swim between the flags, it saves lives. It's such a simple thing to do. But, sadly, we still have tragedies. In my electorate, at Officer, a four-year-old boy, Ali Aminzadah, tragically drowned. In April 2023, a father and son from Narre Warren lost their lives attempting to rescue each other. How many times have we heard that happen? And, in January, a Melbourne nurse, two university students and a tourist from India tragically drowned off the coast of Phillip Island. It was the worst drowning tragedy in Victoria for two decades. In April, a father and grandfather, again from my electorate in Clyde North, drowned in the hotel pool on the Gold Coast. It was supposed to be a fantastic occasion, a holiday, and, sadly, they drowned. The message is clear: for adults who can't swim, there's no embarrassment in going to a club and learning how to swim. They need that support. I encourage members of the government to push the Albanese Labor government to fund these programs so that we're not going to more funerals and more wakes.