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

I rise today to speak on behalf of the Australian Greens in support of this piece of this legislation before us. The Education and Other Legislation Amendment Bill (No.1) 2017, creating a Commonwealth ombudsman position which would oversee the VET loan system, is absolutely essential.

I would say from the outset that I think it is important we do not see this as the only way that this ombudsman role could operate. The Greens, along with many stakeholders, believe that this could and should become part of an expanded ombudsman role that would look at and oversee the broader VET sector, but this legislation is an important first step and something that has been called for time and time again. It is as a result of the significant amount of rorting that has happened within the VET sector and, indeed, in relation to the flawed and abysmal VET FEE-HELP system that was established under the previous Labor government and then continued under the Abbott-Turnbull government.

Right from the word go—the moment the Labor Party deregulated this system—there were warning signs and the ringing of warning bells that should have been heard and responded to. But, of course, we saw nothing from the Labor Party at the time, and then it took years for this government to act. The result of that has been a system that has blown out in budgetary terms from something like $329 million, which is what it was originally listed at, to well over $2 billion—in fact, $2.9 billion, just short of $3 billion. That is how much the budget for the VET FEE-HELP system blew out under this government. That is because the moment the system was deregulated and the moment it was seen by dodgy providers as an opportunity to make money rather than to provide an educational experience for students, some providers took that dodgy path and exploited it for everything it was worth. This created a system where for-profit private providers were setting up dodgy courses, some of which did not really even exist, signing up students who did not even know they were being signed into courses and reaping hundreds of thousands, millions and billions of dollars from the Australian taxpayer. It has been an absolute shambles and a disgrace that this system was able to continue the way it was.

Frankly, one of the things that have not been answered through this whole process is: who in the education department here in Canberra knew what was going on? Who in the education department knew that this system was being rorted, that people were making billions and billions of dollars from the Australian taxpayer, and yet no-one said a word and no-one acted until it started to break through into media and public awareness? Someone in the Department of Education and Training is covering somebody else's backside, because I do not see how you can get from having a loan system for courses that is budgeted at $329 million to it then all of a sudden costing the Australian taxpayer almost $3 billion. Are you trying to tell me that no-one in the education department or the various ministers' offices knew this was going on? It is just not believable.

It is good that we have seen the system cleaned up—that there is now action to clean that up and to put in place proper oversight. But, boy oh boy, someone knew this was going on, and they have not been held to account. In years to come, I am sure we will find out just who was scratching whose back in order to cover up such a shambles that was going on for years out of the education department, with these private for-profit providers reaping so much money from the Australian taxpayer coffers to provide them with huge profits under the dodgy auspice of offering VET courses.

Of course, it is the students themselves who have been left high and dry as result of this absolute balls-up of both the previous Labor government and the Turnbull-Abbott government. It is the students themselves who have really copped it as a result of this. The quality of courses has dropped. We know that students have been left with thousands of dollars worth of debt, which some students did not even know they were going to be signed up for.

The role of a Commonwealth ombudsman to oversee this system is absolutely essential because these for-profit dodgy providers have proven themselves to be untrustworthy, and the Commonwealth education department has proved itself to be absolutely incompetent to manage and foresee the dodginess and the rorting that was going on. So it is essential that this ombudsman role is created, but we need to make sure that it acts with teeth and with integrity. To that point, one of the things that I urge the federal Minister for Education and Training, Minister Birmingham, and his department to do is to really look at how we can have proper powers of arbitration included in this role of an ombudsman and also to consider how it can be broadened beyond the loan system, because, if these dodgy providers can get away with it, they will. That is what we have seen. The proof is in the pudding. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been ripped off the Australian taxpayer and ripped out of the pockets of students and have gone straight into the pockets of these dodgy providers as profit, and they need to be held to account.

The creation of a Commonwealth ombudsman to clean up this system and to provide proper independent oversight—because clearly the Commonwealth government and the departments cannot be trusted to be competent enough to do it themselves—was an election promise that the Australian Greens took to the campaign. We are glad to see that now both the Australian Labor Party—despite the fact that they were the government at the time who put in place this dodgy system—and the government of the day, the Abbott-Turnbull government, have seen that a Commonwealth ombudsman is indeed essential and needs to be created. I also give kudos where kudos is due. I believe that the education minister has acted in a fairly timely way following his promise of introducing an ombudsman. It is only a few sitting weeks on that we are now seeing this legislation before us and can have it passed into law today.

I commend the bill to the chamber, but I say: let us not have the finger-pointing across both sides of the chamber here. This system, this dodgy, rorting system, was established by the Labor Party and continued by the Liberal-National coalition. Both sides sat back while the rorting got out of control. They sat back while hundreds of millions of dollars were sucked out of the taxpayer coffers and hundreds of thousands of students were screwed over. Both sides of government in this place sat back and did nothing for far too long. And we know that not one person in the Commonwealth education department has been put up and held responsible for this system getting totally out of hand. It is not something we are going to forget. We are going to continue to prosecute just who knew inside the Commonwealth education department that this was going on and why on earth they stayed so silent for so long.