Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the coalition, I am pleased to note that the government, despite all the rigmarole in this chamber when we were debating the coalition’s amendments on enshrining risk management into the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Re-registration of Providers and Other Measures) Bill 2009, has seen fit to support what is a very sensible amendment and, of course, an amendment which will further strengthen this legislation. We agree with the minister that this is an important piece of legislation, and it is a piece of legislation that should have been dealt with some time ago. We are pleased to see that the government is now moving swiftly to get this legislation through the parliament.

In relation to the amendment which was supported by the Senate after it had been moved by Senators Xenophon and Hanson-Young, we take the view that the government is making alarmist and unsubstantiated claims about the potential harm of those amendments. We do not think that what the government is saying is accurate. We think the government is yet again jumping up and down without having the facts substantiate their statements. However, whilst we do not agree with these claims, it is important, as the minister has said, that this legislation gets passed. We on this side do want to see the re-registration process proceed as swiftly as possible.

Mr Baird, who is chairing a review of the Education Services for Overseas Students Act on behalf of the government, contacted me, at the request of the government, last week or the week before. He assured me, and assured the opposition through me, that his review has seriously considered the issue that is canvassed by the amendment that was put forward by Senators Xenophon and Hanson-Young and that, in his review and in the recommendations he will make, those issues will be addressed. We will look with interest at how the government responds to the review, when it is finally tabled.

In relation to the ESOS Assurance Fund, the minister has finally provided us with the current financial position of the ESOS fund and has finally provided some of the detail that has been asked for for some time. Clearly, the minister got some advice from Deputy Prime Minister Gillard as to how he ought to address this. I have to commend the Deputy Prime Minister on the way in which she handled this legislation when it went back to the House of Representatives, and on the way she has clearly given instructions to Minister Carr as to how he should approach things in the chamber today—because, quite frankly, the way this legislation was dealt with when we last discussed it in this chamber was quite disgraceful.

But the way the questions around the ESOS Assurance Fund were dealt with during estimates was even more disgraceful. The minister has now brought up the issue of the ESOS Assurance Fund. We asked a very simple question during Senate estimates: how much money is left in the ESOS Assurance Fund? Given the imposition on that fund as a result of successive closures of private training colleges, we thought it was a reasonable question. Given that the most recent publicly available information went to 31 December 2008, during which year the fund lost about $1.3 million, we thought it was a reasonable question. Furthermore, the officer who was responsible for the ESOS Assurance Fund, from the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, started off by saying, ‘We can answer that,’ before saying a few things to put that answer into context. But what happened? Minister Carr, consistent with the attitude he had taken during the debate in the Senate chamber on this legislation, jumped out of his chair and ran around the other side of the table to prevent the officer at the table from answering the question. That was completely bizarre. The officer did not refer the question to a superior officer. The officer was clearly not concerned about providing that information. But, for some reason, Senator Carr was desperate to keep that information secret. I am pleased to see that, again, he has been overruled by the Deputy Prime Minister, who is taking a much more conciliatory and constructive approach to these matters.

With those few comments, and having noted our great pleasure and satisfaction that the government has accepted our amendment, and having put into context the reasons why we will support the proposition that the chamber should not insist on the other two amendments, I call on the government to take very swift action to go through the re-registration process, based on a proper risk management approach, and to start addressing some of the other, more fundamental issues in a more strategic way.