Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to put remarks on the record regarding the VET sector and these important pieces of legislation that go some way to cleaning up the mess that is currently the state of the nation with regard to vocational education and training.

In principle Labor supports these bills as being necessary but long overdue. It has taken the government far too long to get to this point, and still the legislation continues to raise questions and ignore issues. We understand the urgency, but had they been doing their job the government would not find themselves in this position today. Had this government got its act together sooner and listened to what Labor has been saying for some time now, the public purse would be hundreds of millions of dollars better off. Instead, that money has been wasted and has found its way into the pockets of some unprincipled, ruthless and deceitful private providers—or perhaps profiteers might be a better way to describe them and their practices.

I do not wish to extend the debate unnecessarily, and I know that many have put on the record the scale of the problem. But what I cannot for the life of me understand is why this government has consistently adopted a careless, cavalier and incompetent approach to the vocational education and training sector, given that it is absolutely vital to our economic success and the prosperity of the nation. Under this government, VET policy development has lacked continuity. There have been multiple changes in ministerial responsibility. There has been no sense of direction or anything that would remotely suggest that somewhere somebody in the government was engaged in some strategic thinking around this vital and essential part of how we are going to continually transform our capacity as a nation, economically and in terms of our work participation capacity.

Instead of turning around to dodgy private providers and saying 'Wait a minute: what about student outcomes? What about ensuring high-quality teaching and learning experiences? What about completion rates? What about linking courses to the needs of local and regional economies? What about accountability and transparency? What about value for the taxpayers' dollars?' this government did nothing; they just let it continue. The media has been full of stories about rip-offs, wasted money, poorly thought through courses, a lack of transparency and accountability, and we have seen a very flat-footed government in response.

The scale and the depth of the problem is also well documented in the CEDA report—the recent report by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia—titled VET: securing skills for growth 2016. It claimed that while the VET system in Australia is a fundamental part of our economy it is under very significant threat. That is the context in which this legislation is arriving and why Labor does not seek to delay any further. This is a small change amongst a raft of changes that need to occur to genuinely maximise the value of our investment in the vocational education and training sector. The CEDA report catalogues a VET system that is blighted by drastic reductions in enrolment. It identifies a system in which accountability, transparency and regulation are weak. There is within the system a deep anxiety among providers as to the future of VET funding. They argue that the entire vocational education and training sector system has been so undermined that it is in an extremely parlous state. The CEDA report recommends a comprehensive national review of the sector with discussions within COAG designed to help reach national partnership agreements. It adds even more weight to the reports that have been prepared by the education and employment committee here in the Senate as well as interest that has come from the House.

Sadly, though, we are in a position where there remains a major gap in the bill, and there is no redress for the many students who have been the innocent victims of dodgy VET providers and who now find themselves thousands of dollars in debt, having signed up for third-rate, badly constructed and poorly delivered courses that did absolutely nothing to help them get into employment. That is an area that certainly needs some further attention.

As a senator for New South Wales I also want to put on the record how valuable TAFE is and what a critical part it needs to have in the conversation going forward. To take the example of one small section of New South Wales as a test case—TAFE New South Wales in the Hunter—in the last period the state government has seen a real decline in funding of TAFE. The outcome there has been the loss of 120 permanent and support staff, with of course a massive economic on-flow, and enrolments are down by approximately 60 per cent. There has been a reduction in the variety of courses offered, significant fee increases and threats to the viability of TAFE centres in places such as Belmont, Glendale, Newcastle, Hamilton and Cessnock. And on the central coast there has been investment over many years of forward-looking governments, particularly state Labor, investing in Wyong TAFE, putting in wonderful facilities for hospitality, only to have the course capacity completely removed. So, these resources are going to waste while young people are desperate to get the training they need to get into a profession that is actually growing on the coast—this complete mismatch.

This is the scale of the problem. When we talk about it here as a bill, it is an abstract concept, but in reality it is people's lives that are being put on hold or delayed indefinitely because of a failure to have proper planning and proper leadership from this government. The Liberal Party talks about managing money. Well, they have clearly showed by the way they have managed this that they have not done that. The other thing is that they are advocates of a market based economy. Now, a market based system is not going to work in rural and regional New South Wales or in any rural or regional area. It cannot have the same dynamic or scale that it does in metropolitan and urban centres. Rural and regional centres are bound to have small student enrolments. We need to make sure that providers understand that this is part of dealing equitably with this, of giving Australians an opportunity, close to where they live, to get a future. Market forces are determining what courses are offered based far too much on delivery costs. The inevitable outcome is that attaching a financial cost to offering a particular course means that in rural areas, where there are small numbers of students, those students will never ever get the training and the access that they need. That problem is being exacerbated by the failure of this government to provide ubiquitous access to the technology of the 21st century—the NBN—to all people across this country. It would have been delivered pretty much across Australia by now had Labor continued with the rollout. So, we are seeing the exacerbation of a lack of access to education for people in regional areas and across this nation.

In closing, can I say that the Prime Minister cannot continue to tour, and to undertake appearances at media studios, sloganeering about an innovative Australia while his government's policy in the VET area has determined that it should shrink—that it should shut down. How is it possible to retain any credibility whatsoever by simply sitting back and trotting out platitudes, while all around him the system that educates the nation is plunging into crisis more deeply every day? The task is clear: we must restore the integrity of a system that has been plagued by scandal. We must invest in the education and training that our economy and our nation need as we work towards a progressive, dynamic and innovative 21st-century Australia. Can I suggest that, instead of providing $50 billion to provide tax cuts to multinational businesses, this government consider re-investing in our nation's future by committing themselves unequivocally to supporting education and training. If the government is interested in going down that path, Labor stands ready to listen.