Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today as Deputy Chair of the Education and Employment References Committee to speak on its report Getting our money's worth: the operation, regulation and funding of private vocational education and training (VET) providers in Australia. If only the students of Australia could get their money's worth. This report draws on work the committee has done previously in this area. I would like to underpin coalition senators' absolute support for a vocational education and training system that delivers for our industries, that delivers a workforce that is capable, primed and ready to do the work that needs to be done locally and that delivers for students so that those students who choose to seek a vocational pathway can be guaranteed a high-quality education that is available at a place that they need to go and that is affordable for them.

If we have a student focus when we are talking about vocational education and training, we can clearly see that there are a range of providers in this space. Obviously, the state-run TAFEs are some of those providers and, indeed, RTOs out in the community are also providers of high quality. We heard evidence about the many providers of high-quality vocational education and training who are private providers and who industry say give them the skills in the workforce and the people—predominantly young people—who are ready to work and ready to get ahead in the industries that we need going forward in the 21st century.

It is so important to get this right. As Senator Carr said, it is not only important for our domestic students; it is also important because the vocational education and training system is going to be one of our key export areas. Prime Minister Modi in India made it very clear he wants half a million Indians educated in vocational education in the next three or four years. We have a fantastic system and some wonderful providers who can take advantage of that opportunity and then reinvest in their businesses, whether they are public or private, Senator Rhiannon, and actually employ more Australians as a result.

Coalition senators and, indeed, ministers have been very clear that we want an accessible system that works for industry and in which industry and students can have confidence. Coalition senators were appalled by some of the stories we heard about providers ripping off the most vulnerable in our community. No senator in this place should be backing those providers. Absolutely not. I think we need to actually get real about the issue we are dealing with and not play politics, and I look forward to the Labor Party supporting the bill that has just been put through the lower house and is on its way through to us, which actually addresses some of these issues.

I look forward to Labor and Green senators getting behind Senator Birmingham's very swift and effective action in this space because the coalition has been active in the last two years in actually dealing with this issue. Absolutely. We should not choose to make political points out of the most vulnerable. I cannot get those people from the Redfern housing district out of my head. That evidence we heard, Senator Carr—I think it was in Sydney—was actually chilling. The most vulnerable people in our society are being landed with tens of thousands of dollars of debt because they have been 'sold a pup'.

But this government has been very quick to deal with the issue. The government has acted to improve the quality of training by introducing tough new standards for all RTOs from April 2015. We have committed a further $68 million to the national regulator, ASQA, to maintain our strong reputation, both at home and overseas, for delivering high-quality training. We have introduced the National Training Complaints Hotline, and I will get to complaints later, because the complaints did not just start rolling in when we came into government. This a system and there has been a systemic failure. We have heard from both Senator Rhiannon and Senator Carr about issues with the system. It was a system that was set up by the previous Labor government. As Senator Carr has said in public commentary, that system was set up with the best intentions. But, as with so many of the former Labor government's best intentions, the tough policy thinking, the tough work, behind those press releases that used to come out quite regularly from the then Prime Minister's office and various ministers' offices was not done. They did not do the thinking behind it, they did not do the stakeholder engagement and they did not get the policy setting right. Given the unintended consequences of the Labor Party policy, which we are dealing with, we look forward to the Labor Party supporting our efforts so that all of us can have confidence in a system that is delivering not only for students and for industry but, indeed, for the nation.

One example of swift action that our government has introduced is that we have banned inducements to students. We heard stories during this inquiry about iPad inducements and students being told their degree or qualification was free, which was not true.