Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition supports the Higher Education Support Amendment (VET FEE-HELP and Providers) Bill 2009. The bill is quite uncontroversial, but that belies its significance. Until the Howard government’s 2007 budget, vocational education and training was the only sector offering postsecondary qualifications without an income contingent loan scheme. But the 2007 budget changed all that. Young people enrolled in vocational education and training can now access FEE-HELP, just like their peers do at university.

The policy framework for extending FEE-HELP to vocational education and training students was borne of the Howard government’s conviction that governments in Australia over a long period had paid insufficient attention to the value of vocational education and training. While encouraging and indeed enabling young Australians to embark on further education is vital for our nation’s future, many students, over 1½ million of them, see their talents and their prospects best suited to vocational education and training rather than attending university. It goes without saying that VET is a pathway to great careers. We need plumbers and electricians. We need mechanics and chefs. We need hairdressers and horticulturalists. We need them, but of course often we cannot find them.

The policy of extending FEE-HELP to vocational education reflects a change in culture and a change in attitude. When I was at university, the gulf between university and VET was immense. There were very few so-called pathways, and so-called articulation between VET qualifications and university qualifications in those days was virtually unknown. But, thankfully, this has all changed. We recognise now that the 1½ million students studying in the VET sector are not only important to the economy but essential to community infrastructure, and that of course is a very good thing. This bill builds on that recognition.

Briefly, the bill seeks to achieve just three objectives. Firstly, this bill clarifies that a student cannot access VET FEE-HELP assistance to undertake a unit of study unless that unit of study is essential to the student’s course of study. Secondly, the bill ensures that, if a provider of VET FEE-HELP assistance does not maintain certain standards that are set by the act, it can be required to cease operating as a VET provider. In doing this, the bill ensures consistency between the FEE-HELP and VET FEE-HELP assistance schemes. Thirdly and finally, the bill removes unnecessary delays in the approvals process, ensuring that a greater number of approved higher education and VET providers can operate sooner, providing more timely eligibility to students seeking VET FEE-HELP or FEE-HELP from these providers.

In short, this bill improves protections and access for students and assists the Commonwealth in monitoring the 4,000 public and private providers of vocational education and training in this country. This is good public policy and the opposition supports it.