Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment (Strengthening Quality and Integrity in Vocational Education and Training No. 1) Bill 2024. This bill amends the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Act 2011 with the aim of improving the quality of vocational education and training. The Greens support the bill. The Greens are proudly the party of fully funded public education where students have fee-free access to the best learning conditions and where staff enjoy secure, well-paid jobs and feel valued and respected for the incredible work that they do. The Greens will always support TAFEs and public universities as the primary provider of education and training and the first priority for government funding.

Education is a fundamental public good. It should never be privatised and it should never be for profit, yet, tragically, for years and years, we have seen our excellent TAFE system ripped apart by successive governments through regulatory neglect, significant underfunding and the destructive privatisation of the sector. TAFEs do excellent work despite these circumstances, but the government's market model has been putting the sector under huge pressure, with job insecurity, poor working conditions and private providers getting away with the neglect and exploitation of students.

We know that, for years, dodgy private providers have been at the centre of exposes and inquiries that have revealed widespread practices of neglecting students for the sake of profits. A 2015 Senate inquiry revealed a litany of exploitative practices by private VET providers, including the misleading of students on the likely debt to be incurred, false promises about equipment and facilities and deceptive about employment and qualification opportunities. In the 2018 Braithwaite review, the Consumer Action Law Centre described examples of providers misleading students on course costs, immigration outcomes and likely salaries following qualifications. They call for ASQA to prioritise the scrutiny and investigation of misleading and deceptive conduct by private VET providers. Meanwhile, the Australian Dental Association said it has particularly been RTOs operating on a for-profit model which have deliberately targeted disadvantaged people, luring their participation in courses by offering free tablets or laptops without providing the quality teaching that students expect in return.

Over the years, review after review has uncovered and confirmed extensive practices of private vocational providers neglecting and deceiving students—especially international students—all for the sake of making a buck and a profit. After years of failing regulation, it is welcome to see this bill take steps to prevent and deter the unethical behaviour of dodgy RTOs, including strengthening penalty frameworks for misleading and deceptive conduct and by more closely regulating RTOs at the point of and shortly after registration, which recent reviews have recommended are critical times for intervention.

While these are important steps to stop the unethical conduct of dodgy RTOs, there is really nothing in this bill or in the government's reform agenda to properly address some of the fundamental problems with the vocational training sector. Commercial interests have for so long trumped quality in education and training, and the competitive market model really has utterly failed. We need big and bold changes to bring vocational education and training back into public hands, and we need to supercharge our TAFEs with significant increases in funding, and ensure that staff are properly resourced and supported. Funding cuts by state and federal governments and Labor's contestable funding model have privatised and decimated our public TAFE system. The coalition cut over $3 billion from TAFE funding from 2013 to 2021, forcing many TAFEs to close or significantly downsize. In New South Wales alone, a whopping 12 entire TAFE campuses have been closed and sold off by the government since 2012, while many others have been massively hollowed out.

In a 2020 Australian Education Union survey of TAFE staff, 81 per cent of the respondents said the team budget had decreased over the previous three years, and 68 per cent of respondents said the institution had stopped providing courses over the three years prior, with the most common reason being lack of funding. The decline of TAFEs has continued in years since, and the Labor government must act urgently to reverse these trends and undo that damage that has been caused over so many years. A publicly owned and fully funded TAFE system is the only appropriate model to ensure an accessible and high-quality education system. Government funding should not be going to private providers, where again and again we've seen the quality of education fall by the wayside at the expense of making profit. TAFEs should be the provider of choice and the priority for government funding.

We must also shift away from the competitive and contestable funding models, which has seen worse outcomes for students and staff and has been a distraction for providers from the key task of providing high-quality education and training. The government should be guaranteeing significant long-term funding for TAFEs, allowing them to attract and retain staff and to provide students with the best learning environment. Everyone deserves access to high-quality education, no matter their bank balance or their background, and, while some recent Labor government announcements of more fee-free TAFE places are very welcome, what is needed is to make TAFE and uni free for all. Free higher education has the potential to transform our society, giving all people the opportunity for world-class education and training and ensuring that no-one is saddled with a death sentence in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis—or ever, in fact.

The government needs to get their priorities right. Instead of spending half a trillion dollars on stage 3 tax cuts, which finally has produced a bit, and building dirty war machines, it could make TAFE and uni free many times over and fund so many other essential services at a fraction of the cost. Making TAFE free would open up education opportunities for many who are currently locked out. The recent Universities Accord report found that students from low SES backgrounds and First Nations students are more likely than those from high SES backgrounds to enter university after first undertaking vocational education and training. If Labor is really serious about increasing participation in higher education, then it should remove all financial barriers to study and training entirely and make TAFE and uni free for all.

Improving working conditions in the vocational education and training sector must also be a priority. It is unacceptable that so many TAFE staff are in precarious and insecure work and their wages are not at all keeping up with the cost of living. An Australian Education Union survey of TAFE staff found that around 90 per cent of respondents did not have adequate technology, equipment and resources to even deliver the training. Less than a third of the respondents expected to spend their career working in TAFE, and more than three quarters said they had considered leaving the sector in the last three years, with high workload, excessive hours and a lack of support for staff amongst the most common reasons for wanting to leave. Increasing funding to TAFE goes hand in hand with attracting and retaining staff, of course, and ensuring that staff are properly resourced and have fair pay and working conditions. The government should also set clear and measurable targets for higher rates of secure work across the higher education and training sector and work with the staff and unions to link Commonwealth funding to reductions in the rate of insecure and precarious work. TAFE staff work incredibly hard and do an excellent job under very challenging conditions. They are the beating heart of our TAFE system, and the government must do more to ensure they are valued and respected for the incredible work that they do.

I just want to say a few things about international students. As we have seen in review after review, international students suffer the worst of exploitation by dodgy RTOs. It is welcome that this bill will help improve this, but there is so much more the government should be doing to support international students and trainees in Australia. International students make incredible contributions to our society yet are the last to be provided with government support and access to essential services, and the first to be scapegoated and blamed for the government's failures, from housing to unemployment. Not only do many international students struggle to afford the basics amidst this cost-of-living and housing crisis, but they experience significant racism and marginalisation across society. We owe so much more to international students, whose perspectives enrich our cultures and make our streets vibrant and diverse and whose skills and ingenuity help to solve the country's most pressing challenges. We must do better to embrace their contributions and properly support them, and this starts by providing them with the best learning conditions but extends to improving access to essential services, from housing and transport to health and income. And we must work to ensure that our institutions and policies are actively antiracist.

The Greens support this bill as a step to improve integrity and quality in vocational education and training, but it really does nothing to reverse the years of damage inflicted by underfunding and privatisation of our public TAFEs. TAFEs should be the first priority—and I cannot say this often enough—for all federal funding for vocational education and training, and I remain staunch on the view that TAFEs should be the vocational education provider of choice. That means fixing the whole system by moving away from the market model governments have made it, reversing privatisation and contestability and investing in public provision. The Greens will continue to push for these changes that are needed to restore public funding to TAFEs as the provider of choice, ensuring access to high-quality training and education for all students and an excellent working environment for all staff.