Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I and the government have, essentially, taken a belt-and-braces approach to the way we have structured the new VET Student Loans program because of the enormous wastage, rorting and failure of the old VET FEE-HELP scheme. It would be my hope that, over time, the successful administration of this new program might enable some of those elements, in a belt-and-braces approach, to be relaxed in recognition of the fact that we have the fundamentals more accurately put in place than was the case under the previous program. I do not want to say that means we would be unwinding in the foreseeable future, but what we are committing to do is to review, starting in February next year, the methodology behind the list of eligible courses and the methodology underpinning the loan caps that have been established for those eligible courses. Those reviews may recommend a more relaxed approach to how an eligible course is determined or a more relaxed approach in some way to how it is a that a fee cap is determined, but we certainly intend to maintain very high standards in terms of who is eligible to offer these loans on behalf of the government.