Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to put on the record the Greens' support for the opposition's requests for amendments here. These are amendments that reflect the recommendations that the Greens made as part of the Senate inquiry into this bill. I think it is absolutely reasonable to allow TAFE providers to have that extra amount of time to ensure that students do not fall through the cracks during this transition period. In fact, it is essential, because otherwise some students are going to be hit with a double whammy—being thrown out of some courses and left without the ability to finish and, indeed, being then left with years and years of debt, the extent of which some of them would perhaps not even have been aware of.

Senator Cameron is absolutely correct: TAFE are not the enemies or the providers who have messed this system up. This has actually been the doing of bad government policy from the beginning—and then we had bad people, people who wanted to rort the system and take advantage of it. It was not the TAFE providers and it was not the students; it was the government thinking, in the space of education, 'She'll be right; let the market rip and everything will work out A-OK.' Well, it has not. It has been found to be an absolute fiasco. It is the biggest cock-up in education this government, parliament and country have seen for a long time and, in order to clean it up, we need to make sure that there is a proper transition period that helps students be able to graduate from their courses.

The CHAIR: The question is that amendments (1) to (4) on 7962 be agreed to.