Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I'm just wanting to raise a matter with Senator D Pocock. I'm still considering our position in relation to this amendment, because we haven't had a division in relation to the amendments brought forward by the opposition, so it's quite tricky to work out whether our provision in relation to refunds for student debt will be supported. We need to keep our options open, at this point in time, because divisions will be held tomorrow.

Senator D Pocock, in relation to provision (2), what I'm wanting to propose is that the word 'may' be deleted and replaced with the word 'must' in both the first line and in the fourth line. So it would read:

The STARTUP-HELP Guidelines—

must—

… require higher education providers that provide accelerator program courses to conduct internal audits, or to arrange for audits, of compliance with the STARTUP-HELP Guidelines with respect to the courses.

The guidelines must:

… prescribe any or all of the following.

I'm proposing that this amendment be further amended by amending those two words, deleting 'may' and replacing those words with 'must'. Could I ask you to respond to that, Senator D Pocock.