Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment Bill 2019. Labor will not oppose this amendment bill. The bill seeks to reform the operation of the Australian Skills Quality Authority, ASQA, the national VET regulator, to strengthen its powers, enhance protections for students and improve transparency to assist RTO compliance. The proposed reforms largely implement recommendations of independent reviews that have been supported by the sector.

The key amendments will impose a new condition of registration that requires RTOs to demonstrate a commitment and a capability to deliver quality VET, and to strengthen and clarify existing ASQA powers with stronger civilian penalties and powers to make directions. It will require the production of audit reports and enable public sharing of information on RTO performance to improve transparency; it will expand ASQA's scope to adopt a more educative approach to lifting quality in VET; and, finally, it will shift ASQA to a full cost-recovery model.

Stakeholders in the sector support the intention of the bill but have noted their frustrations with the lack of consultation about the legislation. There remains some uncertainty as to how many of the changes will actually work in practice. Of particular concern to Labor is ASQA moving to a minister-directed full cost-recovery model. It may mean that some providers pass the cost of ASQA services onto students. The change contradicts the recommendations of the Joyce review, which stated:

It is important that ASQA be adequately resourced to perform the guidance and educative role and to perform its role more generally. In many jurisdictions there is an understood difference between parts of the regulator’s activity that should be directly funded by the regulated through cost recovery arrangements versus what are broader activities for the 'public good', and should therefore be government funded.

The Joyce review specifically noted that ASQA should be resourced to provide broad education and guidance to the VET sector. We will monitor the ongoing adequacy of the funding of ASQA to ensure that it can perform regulatory and educative tasks. Labor has always backed, and will continue to back, a strong and comprehensive regulatory compliance and education framework for ASQA. Following the widescale rorting of the VET FEE-HELP program, ASQA's work is crucial in attempting to rid the sector of low-quality and unscrupulous providers. Labor supports a fair and considered approach to ASQA reforms. We will support changes that improve ASQA's capacity to ensure responsiveness to students, communities and employers but will reject changes that attempt to weaken ASQA's regulatory framework.

More broadly, this is just another tweak from a third-term government who simply refuse to deliver a genuine reform package that overhauls the vocational training sector. The Liberals have in fact slashed funding to TAFE and training, let apprentice numbers fall and preside over a national shortage of tradies, apprentices and trainees. More than seven years of Liberal government has left Australia facing a crisis in skills and vocational training. If the Liberals don't do something serious to fix the skills crisis that they have created, we could be looking at the extinction of Australian tradies. Under the Liberals, there are 150,000 fewer apprentices and trainees and a shortage of workers in critical services, including plumbing, carpentry, hairdressing and motor mechanics. The Liberals have cut TAFE and training by over $3 billion. The number of Australians doing an apprenticeship or traineeship is lower today than it was a decade ago. There are more people dropping out of apprenticeships and traineeships than finishing them. There has been a nearly 10 per cent increase in the number of occupations facing skills shortages. I can see you're very concerned about that, Madam Acting Deputy President Askew, and so you should be.

While the Australian Industry Group says 75 per cent of businesses surveyed are struggling to find the qualified workers they need, there are about 1.9 million Australians who are either unemployed or underemployed. We are simultaneously experiencing a crisis of youth unemployment and a crisis of skills shortages. One of these crises is bad enough, but to be faced with both at the same time is hard to imagine. But here we are confronted with both. While businesses are struggling to fill the skilled positions they have on offer, we have young people desperate for work who cannot fill those positions because they haven't been given the chance to gain the skills that the roles require. Why isn't Scott Morrison training these people for jobs in industries where there is a shortage of workers? The answer is: because the Liberals have cut funding to TAFE training. Even though this is the case, and it's plainly obvious that it is, the government refuse to properly fund the sector. They refuse to give the proper reform that is so desperately needed.

Young people have been clear about what they need. They need a skills training sector that is properly funded, properly resourced and has educators who are properly trained and able to skill them up with the pathway to meaningful employment. The government hasn't delivered on a single element of those requests. The Liberal government doesn't care enough or doesn't have the capacity to do the hard work that needs to be done to build a better post-school system. Fiddling at the edges of the current system will not address the profound problems that undermine vocational education and training and, consequently, the productive performance and international competitiveness of our economy.

Unlike Labor, the government does not understand the critical role of TAFE as the public provider, the value in skills and apprenticeships, or the value of hardworking and passionate public TAFE teachers. If we continue down this path we will severely jeopardise our future economic growth, undermine the opportunity of individual Australians to meet their full potential and—very importantly—compromise our ability as a nation to compete with the rest of the world using the skills, knowledge, discovery and invention of our people.

We know that nine out of 10 jobs created in the future will need a post-secondary school education, either TAFE or university, so we need to increase participation in both universities and our vocational education sector to make sure that our young people are prepared for the world of work, which is changing so very quickly. We need to value the role of an appropriately funded VET sector for the training, skills and apprenticeships it provides to so many Australians and its vital role in driving the economy and enhancing industry.

This third-term government simply refuses to deliver a genuine reform package that overhauls the higher education sector and that properly funds both vocational training providers and universities to deliver the services that students need. So, while Labor will not oppose the bill, we remain deeply concerned for the management of skills and vocational education under this third-term Liberal government.

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

I rise to speak on the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment Bill 2019. This bill implements recommendations of the Braithwaite and Joyce reviews of vocational education and training and makes additional amendments to the act. The Greens will not be opposing this legislation. We note, however, that this bill does nothing at all to reverse the government's malicious underfunding and undermining of public vocational education and training through our public TAFE system. It's a good measure of how slow this inept government is in conducting its business that its response to the Braithwaite review has been public for 18 months yet we're just now seeing legislation to enact it.

We need a strong, independent regulator in ASQA to hold dodgy private providers to account and prevent them from ripping off students and defrauding the government of public funds. Many of the changes in this bill are welcome, including a stronger threshold for provider registration and options for increasing transparency. This will help students navigate the world of competition-driven, privatised vocational training that the Liberals and Labor have built and watched fall to ruins.

ASQA's ability to operate effectively relies on it having the resources it needs and strong independence. I am concerned that this bill's expansion of the scope of directions that the minister can give ASQA opens the door to ministerial interference akin to Minister Birmingham's meddling in the Australian Research Council's recommendations or to recently departed Minister McKenzie's rorting of sports grants. It leaves the door open to the misuse of powers by ministers. Time and again we've seen that those opposite are willing to compromise the independence of public services and regulators to their own political ends. You can be sure that I will be watching closely to ensure that the government's mates in the for-profit education sector don't get a free regulatory ride.

What is wholly missing from this legislation, however, and indeed from any vocational education and training legislation the government has on its agenda, is any sign that it intends to cease its slow put purposeful destruction of our public TAFEs. As Anna Hush, a PhD student from UNSW, writes:

TAFE trains over half a million people each year to do some of the most socially important work, like nursing, plumbing, construction, childcare and community work. However, the TAFE system in Australia is woefully underfunded, the federal Coalition government having cut $3 billion from the sector since 2013.

Skills and training are incredibly important for the future, a future where we set ourselves up to be a renewables powerhouse, with a just transition from polluting fossil fuels to long-term-sustainable and life-making work. Skills and training will also be vital for the resurgence and recovery of Australian manufacturing, which is fundamental to this new future, as it becomes part of addressing the twin challenges of growing inequality and climate degradation.

Just and sustainable manufacturing with decent jobs that value workers, where participation and inclusion are fundamental—

Wendy Askew (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Faruqi, it is 12.45 and we will proceed to senators' statements.