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

This bill empowers the minister to determine by legislative instrument that the regulator, ASQA, need not, or must not, accept or process initial applications for RTO registration, and this amendment clarifies by an order in legislation that, if a minister exercises this power to suspend RTO applications, they must table a legislative instrument along with an explanatory statement in each house of the parliament. This is due to the operations of sections 38 and 39 of the Legislation Act 2003.

Additionally, this amendment requires the national VET regulator to publish on their website a notice describing the determination and a copy of the explanatory statement of determination to suspend the processing of applications for an RTO. For these reasons, these amendments do increase clarity on how the legislation works and they do increase accessibility of information about the minister's suspension of the processing of RTO applications, so the Greens support these amendments.