Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, rise today to speak about the Higher Education Support Amendment (VET FEE-HELP Reform) Bill 2015. Today, we are here trying to reform a piece of legislation, but the amending legislation that has been put forward by the government does not do enough. It does not go far enough to address the issues with VET FEE-HELP. The amending legislation that is being put forward is in response to what has become 18 months of major national scandal. It is not just the loans aspect but the training industry itself. I am checking my watch to see what the year and the month are. It is November 2015. For 18 months we have had headlines that have let everyone in this country know what is going on in this industry. We have waited 18 months for this government to bring some amending legislation forward that will change things on the ground for young people and change things on the ground to stop the rorting of the system that is going on. We have waited 18 months. In what is becoming very indicative of the Turnbull government, this, just like the NBN, does not go far enough and it has not got here fast enough.

Labor come today to the chamber with some further amendments that we think will sharpen this piece of legislation and make it much more practical and much more useful on the ground.

When we talk about the scandal and the disgrace that have been occurring in this space of training organisations across an 18-month period, we do not have to go back far to find the headlines that are most disturbing. I am looking at an article here and the headline says: 'Childcare centres blacklist accredited training organisations providing poor graduates'. It dates back to September 2014. Our media outlets were alerting this country to the fact that the quality of some of the training that was occurring in this country, supported by government loans, was not what it needed to be—for 18 months. Today we are in the chamber with a piece of legislation in front of us with amendments that do not go far enough, let alone have come in fast enough.

In October 2015, in this last month, we have had headlines about private training colleges luring students with false promises of free iPads, the ACCC alleges. This is very late because I have heard several times in this chamber and in the Federation Chamber members of the House of Representatives bringing to the notice of the House occurrences like this happening in their electorates. Yet, we have been hearing those stories for 18 months and we are here today with amendments that do not go far enough. We have also heard media reports about the unscrupulous actions of some RTOs preying on vulnerable people, gaming a system to ensure their profits are skyrocketing while young people's training is diminishing and the quality of that training is being called into question.

While we look at this 18-month time line, I could put that into a Victorian perspective with the work that has happened in Victoria with Minister Steve Herbert and the things he has put on the ground in a very short space of time to tidy up this sector, to find those organisations which are operating in unethical ways and to straighten out the system, and in the process to put value back into the TAFE sector. Let us face it, we are having a conversation here about a sector which, through private operators, diminished our state-government-backed TAFEs across this country, TAFEs people could rely on to deliver a quality product, TAFEs which, over years, had delivered quality products and had been perceived to deliver reliable product to young people.

Over the 18 months, we have had three different ministers—Minister Macfarlane, Minister Birmingham, Minister Hartsuyker—but very little has been done while this debt and the loans have skyrocketed from $699 million 2013 to $1.7 billion in 2014. It is alarming that it has taken this long for action to occur. It is even more alarming that we are here today to see that action and it still does not go far enough. The government has known that this has been an issue for a considerable period of time and has done nothing. Strong regulation of this sector is essential to ensure young people receive quality training and are not signing away for a life of debt. Vulnerable students are still, as we stand here today, being ripped off by shonks and sharks and this needs to stop.

We have some amendments which Labor would put forward to build on the work done by the government to date, which we would strongly recommend go into the mix going forward. We want to see the government appoint an industry funded national VET Ombudsman. We want that person may. We want there to be a reliable complaints process of the highest quality, so that the space is marked clearly: if you are an unethical provider operating in this space, if you are gaming the system, we have put someone there who will track you, who will look into those complaints and who will hold you accountable. And we want the Auditor-General to conduct an audit on the use of VET FEE-HELP. We believe students require direct access to a complaints resolution process and we believe it because in our electorates, as in the electorates of those opposite, we are hearing stories every day of young people signing up for loans and for courses they are not accessing and sometimes are being blocked from accessing. We need to get this right and we need to get this right now.

Labor is also calling on the government to support what we had in place for over six months, to have the Australian National Audit Office look closely at the operation of this system. We also think some of the suggestions from those opposite, what appears to be, at first impressions, a two-day cooling off period, might sound fine but we are talking about an industry which has already gamed the system. We are talking about an industry which has already used incentives like iPad, which have already gone to the most vulnerable young people in our communities, and had them signed up for loans and for courses, without due diligence, without advice. We are talking about an industry that is advertising in our national papers, who are advertising online. We are talking about young people who think they are applying for a job to find that they are not applying for a job, who are called in for what they think is an interview, to find themselves with a course adviser who is suggesting they do these courses and who wants them to sign up then and there. With a two-day cooling off period, what would change? These people have already gamed this system: two pieces of paper, two different dates, the same vulnerable young person, they will sign it both times. It is not enough protection.

I am also alarmed today to read in our papers that the department has asked providers to provide them with the details of the young people who have loans. There seems to be a mismatch here. It seems crazy to me that the government and the department do not already know who has these loans. What Labor is suggesting today is that that is the step that needs to be put in place, so that a young person, a person wanting to retrain, a person wanting to access more training later in life, when they go to sign up for one of these courses and to sign up for a VET FEE-HELP loan, there is another step and that step is that the course provider provides that information to the department and the department contacts that person to have their interest in the loan verified. This is just another step, but is one that takes the provider out of the picture. Miraculously, the department would then have the contact details for everybody that has a VET FEE loan.

The two-day cooling off period for me is at the core of this something that appears to be not even a bandaid. It is too easily gamed. It is lacking in thought. It is lacking in real policy work around how we can stop these RTOs behaving in this way. How do we stop young people being saddled with guilt that they do not even realise they have taken on? How do we ensure that these costs do not continue to blow out—even if they were delivering a quality product to the person who signed up to do them, even if they were providing a quality product, and even if the organisations delivering that product had processes in place to satisfy what could only be called reasonable completion rates in these circumstances.

We have seen reports of a 24 per cent completion rate by some of these organisations. I do not know how the business model could possibly survive with a 24 per cent completion rate. There needs to be more done in this space, and the amendments in this piece of legislation and what Labor is putting forward would tighten this up very quickly. It would ensure that people who are signing up for the course and for the loan have been through a process where there is an extra layer of checking going on.

We need this because we have heard the stories. We need this because our papers have exposed some of the behaviours that are going on. It is belated. It is 18 months that we have been in this space, and the amendments do not go far enough. I urge those opposite to think carefully about the amendment that would include the ombudsman and about a contact specifically between the department and the person signing up for the course and signing up for the loan, because I believe that these two measures in themselves may go a long way to ensuring that people are aware of what they are signing up for.

As to the quality of the training the ombudsman could be a great resource on the ground, where people know they have a complaints process and they know that it is going to be seen by somebody independent. We would have somebody there tracking and monitoring, and not relying on our newspapers to cover it and not relying on constant calls for another Senate inquiry to see if these amendments have been further gamed by this sector.

You do not have to look far to see where actions have been taken quickly. You only have to look at some state governments. I suggest the government look closely at what is happening in Victoria, where this sector has had a microscope put over it, where courses have been very carefully scrutinised to ensure that people are getting quality.

Ultimately we are talking about a system where a potentially vulnerable person is going to put themselves into debt to access training in the belief that it will lead to secure employment. The history of this space is extraordinary. I have a story from my own electorate of a young man who applied for a position—or what he thought was a position—on Seek, and found himself on this rollercoaster of 'sign up for this course'. But the whole course did not get delivered, and the young person had to chase the trainer for months to get what was promised and what the federal government had paid for.

I think the harshest story I heard was the story of a choir and a young job seeker from Warrnambool, Ben Mutch that was reported by Henrietta Cook and Michael Bachelard. This young person was pursued, contacted like a door-to-door salesman. He thought he had been somehow talent identified to take on a loan to do a course that did not lead to an outcome of a job. We are in a space where there are some piranhas operating, and we need to be vigilant. I ask those opposite to support the amendments that Labor puts forward, to look through the eyes of our young people and the industry that needs them trained in specific areas. I ask them to look at our amendments.

See this speech in context