Chris Crewther (Dunkley, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the VET Student Loans Bill 2016 and the two supporting bills in the package—the VET Student Loans (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2016 and the VET Student Loans (Charges) Bill 2016. Along with many Australians, I understand the importance of vocational education and training and the role that education providers play in ensuring that Australia has the skilled workforce it needs to drive innovation and economic growth. As policy makers of this country we need to be ensuring that there is a better and brighter future for all Australians.

Good quality education is a strong part of ensuring our future prosperity. This is particularly important for my electorate of Dunkley, in which around 10 per cent of the population of Frankston city and slightly higher, at around 12 per cent, of the Mornington Peninsula Shire council area have bachelor degrees or qualifications above that—and I hope to grow this further, particularly through local universities and TAFE providers like Monash University Peninsula campus and Chisholm Institute.

Several wonderful staff members in my electorate office each undertook courses through higher education providers prior to becoming a part of the office. I am pleased to have a team which has been educated through various means, making up a diverse team that is able to assist me in serving the constituents of Dunkley.

Just like my own team, many businesses rely on the skills developed through training and education which are offered through vocational education and training. Last year, around 4.5 million people participated in the Australian vocational education and training system, including around 24,800 people in my own electorate who participated in training and education at great education providers such as the Chisholm Institute of TAFE, which I mentioned before. Fifteen thousand students participate in training at that institution across a number of campuses, including a very substantial campus in Frankston.

Pragmatic Training, Nepean Industry Edge Industry Training and SAI Home and Community Care, which have recently moved into a wonderful new building in Frankston, are all doing great work to prepare many in my electorate for their futures and for their participation in the workforce—and there are many others in my electorate and beyond that do a similarly great job.

Participants in my electorate undertook training in courses such as management and commerce; engineering and related technologies; architecture and building; society, culture and health—just to mention the top five fields of study. In fact, VET delivers training to more than 24,800 students, as I mentioned before, with 1,000 trade Australian apprenticeships and 494 non-trade Australian apprenticeships in train within Dunkley.

The future of our economic prosperity relies upon the quality of our graduates, the outcomes of the training they receive—and by ensuring they are skilled in the way employers need them to be skilled. That is why supporting high-quality vocational education and training is central to the Turnbull government's economic growth and jobs plan. Vocational education and training is key to Australia's economic growth and competitiveness and is central to ensuring innovation and productivity.

The role of the VET system in Australia is to provide individuals with the skills and qualifications needed to participate effectively in the labour market and contribute to Australia's economic future. It provides training to cover entry-level jobs through to highly technical occupations. The VET Student Loans Bill 2016 aims to achieve better outcomes for higher education for people studying under vocational education and training providers.

Over the past two years, the government has implemented or commenced a number of key reforms designed to strengthen the quality of the system, build connections between VET and industry, streamline governance and regulations and improve the status of the VET system. In Dunkley we have a growing industry sector, with a number of job opportunities, and it is important to link what our education providers are doing with the industries and jobs available in Dunkley and beyond.

In early 2014 the government announced the first in a series of reforms to protect students, taxpayers and the reputation of the VET system as a whole. These included: tightening marketing and recruitment practices, including banning inducements for students to enrol in the scheme and constricting what is communicated about the scheme to prospective students; improving the understanding of how VET FEE-HELP operates and students' rights and obligations; prohibiting the charging of withdrawal fees—and many other changes.

In December 2015, in the face of continuing growth in enrolments and quality concerns, the government made further changes, including: strengthening the debt remission process for students under the VET FEE-HELP program; ensuring student debt is incurred in line with course delivery; establishing minimum prerequisite and prior education qualifications; introducing new entry requirements for training providers wishing to offer VET FEE-HELP loans; supporting altered payment arrangements in arrears of census dates for certain providers; and freezing the total loan limit for existing providers at 2015 levels.

The VET Student Loans Bill 2016, along with the two supporting bills in the package before us today, will ensure the Australian government can hit the reset button on Labor's flawed VET FEE-HELP scheme, so that Australians can start to rebuild their trust in vocational education and so that taxpayers can ensure their money is not rorted. This is a win-win for students and taxpayers that will restore integrity to Australia's vocational education and training sector by placing an emphasis on quality and by holding providers to account.

The majority of training providers do the right thing already, but this new program will protect prospective students by banning brokers from acting on behalf of providers or directly soliciting them. Subcontracting training will also be limited. We will end the free-for-all subsidies Labor started that has seen providers burden students with tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt for courses that offer poor employment prospects.

The focus will instead be on courses that have a high national priority, align with industry needs, contribute to addressing skills shortages and, importantly, lead to employment outcomes. Courses like, for example, the Diploma of Fashion Styling, Diploma of Veterinary Chinese Herbal Medicine, Advanced Diploma of Therapeutic Arts in Counselling and Diploma of Energy Healing will receive limited attention under this program.

VET student loans will protect students and taxpayers and restore integrity to the vocational education sector through tougher barriers to entry for providers, properly considered loan caps on courses, stronger course eligibility criteria aligned to industry needs, mandatory student engagement measures, and a stronger focus on students successfully completing courses. There will be 347 courses receiving funding support and 478 knocked off the list. Those knocked off the list will have the opportunity to be reconsidered if strong employment outcomes can be demonstrated. This is a good thing because it is a clear statement that we will have no place for those who think they can offer courses, particularly to overseas students, under the guise of educational opportunities that will lead to careers. However, many overseas students in particular have wasted their time and investment, and they are now unlikely to have employment opportunities arise from these courses.

These courses can diminish the quality of education in Australia, and, as we are aware, education is a very key export for our nation. Of importance to me in my electorate of Dunkley is ensuring that every individual who is undertaking a course, believing that they will be able to improve their own future and employment prospects, will indeed be able to do exactly that. We have seen some impressive economic growth in my electorate. According to a recent report by SGS Economics & Planning, Dunkley topped the state with economic growth of 3.6 per cent—the fastest growing economy of any Victorian federal electorate in the 2014-15 financial year. We have experienced a rapid improvement in unemployment figures, which have recently gone down from 8.3 per cent to around 6.1 per cent. The improvement in local economic growth and better employment figures is what I am looking to support and what I believe these bills will help achieve.

Measures that mean providers will need to meet tougher entry criteria to become, and to remain, an approved course provider are obviously encouraged. They include being a 'fit and proper person' to enrol and having to satisfy provider suitability requirements around stronger governance, industry engagement and quality training; these will be specified in the rules. Again, it is over to the 'responsible government', the coalition government led by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to make the decisions and changes which will ensure that instances such as those that have occurred with providers like Phoenix Institute will not be common practice in the future. On 3 March 2016, the department revoked the VET FEE-HELP approval of Phoenix Institute on the basis of use of prohibited inducements, ASQA's finding that Phoenix failed to demonstrate compliance with the standards for registered training organisations and the VET quality framework, as well as non-compliance with the tuition assurance requirements. My understanding is that the graduation rate for Phoenix was around four per cent, which is a terrible outcome and what we do not want to see. Some of the inducements offered were things like laptops, vouchers, cash or similar things. The government rightly banned this organisation from 1 April last year.

It is important to make these changes to support local organisations in Dunkley such as Pragmatic Training and the many other local training providers who are trying to do the right thing. Organisations like Phoenix and others who are not doing the right thing make it harder for those who are doing the right thing to operate and get through the processes set out by ASQA—in particular, there are the delays caused by the regulatory requirements needed to be gone through for organisations to be approved and to remain approved because of shoddy operators. As we know with any regulatory changes, when people are doing the wrong thing it can make it harder for people who are doing the right thing. So it is very important for me and for Dunkley that we make these important changes.

Some other notes I would like to add are that inducements like laptops, vouchers, cash or similar things offered by Phoenix led to terrible outcomes, particularly for those overseas students who were trying to do the right thing and who were putting significant time and effort into these courses. I do not want to see this occur again, particularly when we are trying to encourage overseas students to come to places like Dunkley. Last week, I met with Pragmatic Training, who are currently in Dunkley looking to attract overseas students to the area. Pragmatic Training have offices not only in Frankston, which is where their head office is, but in the centre of Melbourne, Brisbane and elsewhere. They have gone through a long process with ASQA to get approval for overseas students. Much of this is related to the difficulties which we have experienced with organisations such as Phoenix, who have made it much more difficult for organisations like Pragmatic Training to operate.

In Dunkley, as I have noted throughout my campaign, I am a strong supporter of local education providers such as Chisholm Institute and the Monash University Peninsula campus. I announced some funding recently to expand enrolment in the Monash University Peninsula campus, by extending the Metro Rail services down to Leawarra station. I think this will have a positive outcome for the university, and the university have indicated to me it will result in more than a 20 per cent increase in enrolment. So I do support these bills today. I am proud to talk about these bills, and I acknowledge the government's work in this regard.

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