Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It must be tough for those on the other side to have the VET student loans bills come before the House as pretty much a carbon copy of many of the policies that we have put forward—sadly not all of our policy but a number of things that need to happen—to stop the rorting of the VET FEE-HELP scheme.

Sadly, the fact that the government have had to come to it kicking and screaming means that billions of dollars has been rorted from the system by dodgy private providers. That is billions of dollars that should have been invested in TAFE and apprenticeships—money we just won't see again—and in young people who will have simply missed out on the chance of a good start.

What is it like inside these operations? I have seen inside the operations of some of these big providers. They are big marketing machines, actively and aggressively recruiting potential students. And that is not just the bad ones. The good ones do that too. The difference seems to be the level of student support, the integrity of the course material and whether there is a genuine commitment to just getting bums on seats or to graduating students. I think graduation rates are a key indicator of whether a provider is serious or not. In 2014 the graduation rate for the 10 largest private providers was less than five per cent. That means 95 per cent of students who were signed up for a course did not graduate.

One of the things that concerns me is that the good private providers are now tarnished by the behaviour of those bad private providers. In my own electorate of Macquarie there are very reputable long-term private providers. I have been speaking with one provider for more than two years about her concerns on the way other operators are working. She knew that fly-by-night organisations, new on the scene and with no track record of course delivery, were taking advantage of the government's failure to crack down on the sector by offering high-fee, high-loan courses that gave little or no face-to-face student time and so were operating at a huge profit margin. No doubt the good providers will be very pleased to finally see some action on this. But, at the same time, they themselves will have suffered enormously.

Let's look at the measures in this bill. One is on capping student loans to stop rip-offs. That would be our policy. Not one student should be asked to take out a loan for something they are not receiving. It should be fair value. Official data revealed the average tuition fee for a diploma of information technology from some private education course providers has soared from $2,779 in 2011 to more than $18,000 in 2014. Some private education providers are still charging students an average of $15,500 for a diploma of business management that cost $4623 in 2013. So they have clearly seen an opportunity, and that opportunity remained for so many years that they grabbed it.

Cracking down on brokers is something else in this bill. That would be our policy, too. We all know the stories of brokers who have unscrupulously signed up elderly people, people with disability and people who do not speak English. Those sorts of brokers should have been out of business a long time ago.

Linking publicly funded courses to industry need and skills shortages is contained within this bill. That would be our policy. There is no doubt we should be prioritising public funding to areas where skills are most needed. Business courses, including diplomas in hair salon management and training for 'fitness business professionals', now account for 50 per cent of the $1.7 billion that students borrowed for vocational training courses in 2014. There should have been action sooner.

Requiring providers to reapply under new standards so only high-quality providers can access the loan system is a measure in this bill, and that would also be our policy position. It is important that that is in this bill. Our concern, though, is that there is no information yet about how that accreditation process will work in time for 1 January next year. That goes to the heart of this bill—that it is coming so late and there is so little time to see what the implementation will actually look like. How quickly will departmental staff be expected to develop and implement the new standards? Yet again, more pressure has been placed on hardworking public servants. They are being asked to do something in an unreasonable amount of time.

Linking funding to student progress and completion is something that I think needed to be government policy long before now. The government's failure to act has led to a scheme of charging whatever they can get away with for some dodgy providers. All the dodgy training company has to do is get students to sign up and then keep them hanging around until the first census date and the bulk of money goes straight through to the provider. After that, they do not really care if the students learn anything. We also support a VET loans ombudsman. Again, that was our policy and it is long overdue.

There is one area of concern, though, that I hope will be looked into by the other chamber. Private drama, film and performing arts schools around the country are reeling from what I hope are unintended consequences of this legislation. The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, of which I am a member, says the next wave of Australian acting talent is being put at risk by the government's decision to axe hundreds of courses. Around the country, only 12 courses in the screen, music, media and design areas look like retaining eligibility unless changes are made. These are highly credible courses that provide professional training for stage, television and film performers and makers. Many students depend on access to fee help to ensure that they can get in. That means we have a diverse pool of talent applying for these very elite courses. But they are elite based on talent, not on bank balances. We do not just want to see rich kids from the north shore and eastern suburbs of Sydney filling these courses. Like everyone, the MEAA supports the need for fee-gouging operators and substandard courses to be brought to account. But let's not lose incredibly talented students because they happen not to be wealthy.

The Actors Centre in Leichhardt are one of those who are shocked at the legislation and at the announcement of courses that will not be eligible for fee help. They are concerned that acting courses have been lumped in with dodgy business courses and that this puts at risk the viability of the acting schools. I commend the director of the Actors Centre, Dean Carey, for speaking out on this on behalf of the whole sector. He has said that the whole performing arts centre will potentially be impacted on. With that, of course, go the hopes and dreams and sweat and tears of a whole generation of future performers whose job it will be to keep our Australian cultural independence alive. I note that this legislation allows for exemptions, and I think the performing arts sector's voice needs to be heard. When they are a school with a patron of the calibre of Hugh Jackman, it is great to see they are willing to speak out about this and talk to us. Let's hope that the other side listen. I should also disclose that my own daughter completed the three-year diploma course at the Actors Centre, thanks to VET FEE-HELP.

Another school that has been in contact with me is the Sydney Film School. Similar concerns exist for them. They have been operating for more than a decade. This film school will have its fees capped. I know a lot of people make movies on their iPhones, but in fact learning to be a filmmaker and how to work in the professional environment of international film and television involves using expensive equipment and a lot of hands-on work. It is not a cheap course to run. These are professional courses run by professional people, with industry standards taught by industry professionals. So capping fees at $10,000 per year, much like with pilots, will make it a prohibitively expensive course for the average budding filmmaker. But let us remember that these are not just your average filmmaker; these are hotly contested courses—you do not just apply and get accepted. They certainly do not offer you a free iPad to sign up. These courses turn people away because the standards have to be high. The Director of Education of the Sydney Film School, Kathryn Milliss, is an award-winning filmmaker, and she tells me that the most impacted students will be Indigenous students and low socioeconomic students. The Blue Mountains Aboriginal film festival was held for the first time this year, and in fact it featured a film by one of the new graduates of the Sydney Film School. These are young people exploring a medium to express not just their culture but who we are as Australians. They deserve a chance, and we as a nation deserve to have this sort of work being done.

Let us be clear about the economic benefits of this sector. This is an industry that generates jobs and revenue. The Victorian government has found that creative industries in that state make up eight per cent of the economy, contributing almost $23 billion and 220,000 jobs. And the industry in New South Wales is bigger—some estimates have it at almost twice the size. We know that nearly five per cent of the population works in creative industries. In my electorate, the Blue Mountains Economic Enterprise group has found that 7.6 per cent of the total population is employed in the creative industries. Blue Mountains Economic Enterprise also estimates that they are the third-largest contributor to the Blue Mountains gross regional product. The total output of Blue Mountains creative industries is estimated to be $592 million. And that is just half my electorate. I am sure we would see equal data coming from the other half of my electorate, the Hawkesbury side. So future workers in this industry, the creatives who move the industry and influence our culture, need to be nurtured just like any other profession.

All this is fixable. It is not too late. It is not completely locked in by this legislation, but we need the Senate to inquire to make sure there is consultation. The minister can amend the course list so creative industries are not crushed alongside dodgy courses by dodgy providers. The minister can negotiate a national partnership that ensures adequate funding for the creative arts. The big problem with this legislation, and in fact with this government, is procrastination. It is all happening late, at the eleventh hour, after much delay. Right now, kids who are thinking seriously about what they will do next year, who are sitting the HSC and making decisions, are being left in limbo. The government seems determined to undermine the confidence right now of an entire sector. It reminds me of the eleventh-hour decisions that impacted so heavily on the community sector on a Christmas Eve not so long ago—another example of the government failing to talk to people before making announcements.

I urge the arts training industries to raise their concerns directly with the minister, but, more importantly, I urge the minister to really listen and make sure the creative future of Australia does not disappear. What consultation has taken place with the arts industry? None that we can ascertain. Does the government understand the need to evaluate the fees that a course charges in relation to the people it employs to deliver those courses? If it did talk to the performing arts sector, it would realise these courses account for a tiny proportion of the spend on training. They are usually courses that might have 300 people audition, with maybe two dozen accepted annually. They go through intense face-to-face training—you cannot learn these things online—and most of the people running these schools are doing it for the love of the industry and for the love of nurturing the next generation, running at a very low profit margin.

My concern is that, without consultation, we will be in trouble. The government have redefined the meaning of the word 'consultation'. For them, it means, 'Let's make a decision finally, eventually, and then let's tell people about it.' That is what they think consultation is. All the arts sector is asking for is to have a conversation. We need to make sure that, in our bid to stop the rorting of the private fees and vocational education and training, we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. My concern is that, without decent consultation, the government will oversee a new dynamic, where we do not produce the best actors and performers from a cross-section of our society but we produce the best actors and performers from wealthy families—only those who can afford to pay.

Having had the privilege of watching a diverse group of first-year students evolve into an equally diverse and impressive group of final-year graduates, I can only implore the government to consult with this sector. And let us keep in mind that, sure, not all these students will end up as the next Cate Blanchett, but the vast majority of the particular cohort that I have had the privilege to see are working in the industry, or in closely related industries where their skills have been transferable, and they are contributing economically to this society. That is to all our benefit. Let us hope that this legislation stops people from being signed up for courses that they should never be signed up for, that they will never complete, that they are only being signed up for so that someone makes money off them. Let us make sure that we do not lose the essence of what VET student loans are about, and that is helping people access the education they need to make Australia a better place.

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