Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to add my comments to the Higher Education Support Amendment (VET FEE-HELP Reform) Bill 2015. We had a Senate inquiry which was really concerning in terms of the sorts of scams and shonks, and the horrific stories of students being left without an adequate qualification. The problem is that, whilst Labor is not suggesting that this is a huge problem in the sector—it is in terms of money—it is not the majority of providers. We have seen very good providers in the VET system, both public and private, but, of course, what gets into the media are the shocking rip-offs of students that we have seen from a number of private colleges, which have gone on completely unchecked by the Turnbull government.

It is time that the government really got tough on those that are seeking to flaunt the system. It is as bees to a honey pot. The VET FEE-HELP system has attracted its fair share of shonks and sharks, and those are the people that Labor wants to see dealt with in a very robust way. Once again, like the bill we had in here yesterday, this bill falls short. It misses an opportunity. It is the government, again, applying a light touch. They will tell us that it is robust but it is not robust enough. We have these sharks in the system preying on vulnerable students, students with disability, students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, who are very pleased to be given an opportunity yet are left high and dry from a system, which the government is administering, which clearly needs substantial reform and robust regulation.

The aim of the bill before us today is to do that kind of regulation. But Labor says: this is a bill which is playing catch-up. It is playing catch-up to put in place regulations to the operation of the VET FEE-HELP system. It is playing catch-up to try to retrospectively put in place regulations for the victims of the shonks and the shysters, who have been perpetrating a scam on students, on Australian voters and on Australian taxpayers.

Again, we have before us today another inadequate bill. It continues this government's practise of addressing the symptoms but not fixing the underlying problems. These problems plague the VET FEE-HELP system and vocational education across the country. This bill forms part of the government's hopelessly inadequate and flawed deregulation agenda and it makes the whole of the vocational education system look bad, when, in fact, it is not. There are significant amounts of money involved, but it is a few small operators that need to be taken out of the VET system. This bill, just like the bill yesterday on regulation and international students, is yet another missed opportunity.

The government has failed to take the opportunity to give the Commonwealth and the national regulator sufficient powers to act. This is what we want—sufficient powers for them to act decisively against providers who are suspected of misusing the VET FEE-HELP scheme and exploiting Australians. That is what is happening here: young Australians, in particular—but mature age students as well—are being manipulated and exploited. They leave school with the best of intentions to take up a vocational education course. Many of these shonksters and sharks, if you do a Google search, come right to the top, and you think that they are decent operators, and yet they are not. Clearly what we saw in Victoria last week with Phoenix is an example of where students are absolutely preyed on. They are absolutely run down by these shonky operators. And what for? For the millions of dollars of taxpayers' money. They are not interested in providing quality education.

As I said at the start of my response today, they make all colleges, whether they are public or private, get tarnished with the same brush. That is what Labor wants to see completely stamped out, for the benefit of young and older Australians—because we know that VET is particularly important for second and third careers, after a business has closed or people require retraining. Vocational education, including through TAFE, is the great provider of that. We want a system that is free of corruption, because students and potential students are the victims of these providers and the broker-led feeding frenzy that is going on.

We know that the government—and they did it in their majority report—like to blame Labor for this. But the reality is that, when Labor introduced the VET reforms, the government—the opposition as they were then—supported those reforms. So they cannot sheet home the blame of their failures to Labor. In his second reading speech, the government minister sought to play partisan politics with this bill, pinning the blame for this scheme on the former Labor government. Well, it is just not on, and it is not true.

Unfortunately for the government, the facts do not bear out what it says in its divisive policies and politics. In 2012—the last year of published figures before the current government was elected—there were just over 55,000 VET FEE-HELP assisted students. VET FEE-HELP loans totalled $235 million in that year, and the average loan was just under $6,000. In 2014 there were almost 203,000 students, a whopping increase of, wait for it, 367 per cent. VET FEE-HELP loans totalled almost $1.8 billion. And we know fees have shot up. As senators in this place, all of us, no matter which side of the political divide we are on, get those complaints from students about the great hikes in fees that have occurred. Fees have shot up to almost $9,000. Under Labor they were about $5,800. They are almost now at $10,000, a whopping increase of 147 per cent. None of that can be attributed to Labor. It is all because this government has got a runaway scheme that it tries to regulate all the time after the event.

Under this government we have had three ministers to date. Ministers Macfarlane and Birmingham both talked tough, but on the demonstrated outcomes they have failed. Even Senator Birmingham's cherished initiative of a transfer of VET powers from states and territories to the Commonwealth appears to have failed, largely because the territory and state ministers, quite rightly, doubt the capacity of the Commonwealth Department of Education and Training to manage a national VET system, given its incompetent administration to date of the VET FEE-HELP scheme.

Let us not forget that VET is vocational education. That is what it is: vocational education, ensuring that our young people about to start their careers can develop new skills to equip them to enter a modern workplace, that they can bring those new skills to the job. But all of that has been lost with the crisis and scandal that is going on across the VET scheme right now. Unfortunately, what it looks like now, looking from the outside in, is that the VET FEE-HELP system has become a business opportunity for shonks and shysters to rip off young people—particularly those who are vulnerable—to rip off Australian taxpayers, to rip off Australian voters. That is what the VET system is currently looking like.

Just last week it was reported that the Phoenix Institute of Australia took more than $100 million in government funding. As a former union official, I would be very proud; in fact, I would be amazed—they signed up 9,000 students in 10 months.