Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Labor support this legislation, the National Vocation and Education Training Regulator Amendment Bill 2015. We think it is incredibly important that we provide stronger protections for people entering into vocational education and training programs. We are in fact deeply alarmed by what is going on across Australia in this regard.

I start by saying, though, that these are very complex issues, and their relationship with policy decisions can have profound consequences. For example, in Western Australia, since 2013, TAFE fees increased by 515 per cent. That seems extraordinary, but that is the case. We are seeing vocational education and training becoming an incredibly expensive model. What that has done is put TAFE, publicly provided vocational education and training, out of the financial reach of many people, and obviously this has created an environment where people are increasingly looking to private providers for something that is much more financially achievable.

The explosion of concerns about the quality of product coming from private providers must be seen in the context of the massive walking-away by government, by state government, from the responsibility of providing, at a reasonable and affordable cost, access to vocational education and training. Indeed, I note that, in the United States of America now, they are so concerned about the quality and the level of skill formation that state jurisdictions are going in the opposite direction and reducing or even removing altogether fees for vocational education to ensure that they get more people into vocational education and training. So you have to look at the context. These things do not occur in a vacuum. The proliferation of companies that are behaving in a questionably ethical way arises in the context of public sector providers becoming more and more expensive and driving people from that system.

I will talk about a couple of cases. For example, in Western Australia, concerns have been raised about a company called iCollege, which offers a whole raft of programs, including some 26 business courses. The fees range from around $300 to $2,000 per course. Because they provide programs across state borders, unlike others which are offered only in Western Australia, these are subject to ASQA regulation. These programs, which are in most cases not accredited anywhere, are attracting lots of students. Now, there has been an inquiry by ASQA into the courses that are being offered, but ASQA found that they were not in violation of any law. Quite clearly, the reason these investigations emerged is that people were investing in these programs, signing up for up to $2,000 per course, only to find that the qualification they received was not accredited anywhere that was recognised within Australia.

ASQA quite rightly points out that because iCollege is not a registered training organisation it is not in violation and that really this is a case of buyer beware. We think that that is a very irresponsible attitude for government to be taking, hence the amendments that we are moving here. We want it to be recognised that there are issues of consumer protection that need to be taken into account. This is not simply a question of raising the standards for the registered training organisations but of recognising that there are people operating outside the system or even RTOs operating in a way, with their marketing, that is unscrupulous and is leading many vulnerable people into an unacceptable situation where they are paying good money, taking on board what governments of all persuasions are telling them—that they have to get out there; they have to get themselves skilled; they have to get themselves trained—undertaking these programs and then, unfortunately, finding that they are left with a qualification that is worth nothing. For a government to say that it is a case of buyer beware is extremely unfortunate. Many decades ago we recognised that buyer beware was not a fair principle for us to be operating under and we put in place a whole range of consumer protection mechanisms. It seems to me that today, as unemployment is increasing, when the skills gap is increasing and when the cost of government provided vocational education is increasing dramatically, we have an absolute obligation to make sure that these practices are stamped out. That is why we do not believe that this legislation, whilst we do support its general thrust, is going to cover all the bases that need to be covered in providing adequate consumer protection for those people, many of whom are unemployed and desperately seeking to obtain a qualification.

In Western Australia, ASQA covers only international students and RTOs that operate outside as well as inside Western Australia's borders. The rest of the sector is regulated internally by the WA Training Accreditation Council. I am not being critical of the TAC and I perhaps understand why Western Australia decided that it wanted to preserve its own entity, to ensure a proper focus on Western Australia. It is unclear, and I cannot see anything in any of the papers that have been produced that will clarify how this legislation is going to permeate its way into Western Australia, which has not signed up to ASQA. I certainly hope that the minister in the reply is able to provide some clarification. We would be very keen to find out what arrangements, undertakings or negotiations have taken place with Western Australia to ensure that we see these provisions paralleled in the work of the WA Training Accreditation Council. That is an important query that we have. We do not know, because it is not evident from the materials that have been made available, whether or not these protections are going to permeate into Western Australia with its Training Accreditation Council.

I want also to reflect on one of the anomalies that arise out of having two of these entities. I understand that there are resource issues, but we are getting feedback that ASQA is coming over to Western Australia and spending time auditing TAFE courses which have already been audited by the WA Training Accreditation Council. Given that there is so much concern about the operation of RTOs and about people operating in an unethical way, it seems to me that our duplicating auditing processes is quite bizarre. We have a TAC which is able to audit the TAFE institutions. I would have thought that we should be working to establish a greater degree of cooperation so that TAFE staff do not have to go through two sets of accreditation while we clearly have so much unattended business going on. Last night on 7.30, there was another expose—there has been a mounting volume of these—showing a college that has a graduation rate of 10 per cent, despite claiming something like $290 million in government funding by VET FEE-HELP.

So we have two separate problems. We have the problem that those companies operating outside of the system that are not registered RTOs really need to be subjected to some form of scrutiny so that people are not being led down the wrong path; we also have an even higher level of obligation where we have federal and state government or federal government funding going into the proliferation of private RTOs that are reeling people into the VET system and delivering very much substandard training. I think this is where we have to be very, very careful about what we have been doing generally. We see it in the university sector. As Vice-Chancellor Greg Craven said, under the current funding models that we are looking at, we will get Ma and Pa Kettle universities being formed to milk the system. We already see Ma and Pa Kettle RTOs in operation here.

We support the legislation because it gets tougher—it gives us the capacity to take a tougher line—but we do not think that it goes far enough. We think we have to do more to protect both those students who are doing accredited courses and those students who have been seduced into non-accredited courses.

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