Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As previous speakers on this side of the House have highlighted, it is great that the government have finally caught up and are actually putting forward these VET student loans bills that seek to address the exploitation, the gouging and what is going on in the VET student loan area, VET FEE-HELP. In the last term Labor put together some comprehensive reforms and on several occasions raised this very issue—and it was not just Labor but people within the sector, students, media and concerned people in the community. Alongside the exploitation of temporary workers this is the other issue that got a lot of coverage in the last three years. Labor is asking the government to support our amendment to see an ombudsman introduced in this space. Whilst these reforms will clean up some of the mess, we still have a lot of work to do to make sure it is cleaned up properly, and an ombudsman would assist with that.

In highlighting how bad it has got I can go no further than what happened in my own electorate. I wish to share with the House the story of the Karen refugees who have made Bendigo their home. We are very proud to have a large Karen population in Bendigo. They are working hard. They do the jobs that other Australians would not do. They take on cleaning jobs and food-processing jobs. If they arrive in this country at a younger age they do very well at school and are engaged in education. They are volunteers in our CFA and are involved in soccer. They are contributing to our community.

We were quite shocked to learn that they had been manipulated and tricked by one of these dodgy colleges into signing up for childcare and disability courses. It was not until they were halfway through the course that they found out via a text message that they would incur a debt of $17,000 for the course that they had been told would be free. It was not until they received this text message that they started to talk to me and to their Neighbourhood House about it. We worked closely with the community and with the department to see these debts waived. They are a group of new Australians—all of them have since become Australians—who were taken advantage of by a college provider and were not aware of the nature of the system. And it was not just one or two people; 52 Karen Australians were tricked into signing up for a course they thought was for free. It was a lot of work to get the debt waived, but we worked hard to make that happen—which is, I guess, another reason why we need to ensure that we have an ombudsman overseeing the reform in this area.

The sad thing is that those Karen refugees are not alone. There have been incidents such as this experienced by people with a disability who were signed up to courses that they in no way had the capability to complete. People were signed up on a 'Get a free iPad and get yourself into debt' basis. It is a demonstration of how, because it did not have the proper safeguards in place, a system became rorted at the expense of vulnerable Australians, who quite often ended up with a debt. We also know now that a number of those people will never pay back the debt. It is bad debt that this government and every government will inherit. It reminds me of the HECS debates that we have about how some women will never pay back their HECS debts because they simply will not earn enough. This is even worse. We are talking about people who are on fixed incomes and will, literally, never pay back the debt that they have incurred through this system. So we need to continue to look at reform in this space. That is why Labor has been speaking about this for quite some time. We know, through talking to people in our communities, what has happened in many states of Australia, including my state. Because state Liberal governments have gutted TAFE, we have seen dodgy providers marching in to try to fill the gap.

There are a couple of things that I want to highlight in this contribution. I am disappointed that the money the government will save—and they are big on saving money—is not being reinvested into TAFE. Labor has made a TAFE guarantee. I am concerned that, if that money does not get invested in TAFE and the government does not partner with the states to help rebuild our TAFE system, we are going to leave areas of regional Australia without skilled education providers. To highlight that, another example from my electorate is the Bendigo TAFE. The former Liberal government gutted the Bendigo TAFE. They laid off hundreds of educators and teachers. Lots of courses were closed, including basic, common trade courses like construction. You cannot learn carpentry through a TAFE placement in Bendigo; you have to travel to Shep or Ballarat, and some are travelling as far as Geelong. We lost a number of courses. One young apprentice told me that, because of the cuts in staffing and delivery at the local Bendigo TAFE, they said, 'Look, try to do your welding on the screen. Just touch the screen and that will help you understand welding.' You cannot learn how to weld on a touchscreen computer—that is just madness—but this was the state of TAFE in Victoria. We almost lost our Bendigo TAFE and would have if not for the election of the Labor government, which put some money forward for a rescue package to try and save the TAFE so that they could start rebuilding.

In acknowledging that state and federal governments have got the delivery of skills and vocational skills wrong in the past, this is an opportunity for the federal government to reinvest in skills. What we are not seeing from the government is them restoring the $1 billion that they have cut from apprenticeships and TAFE. They are not reinvesting in the apprenticeship scheme. Apprenticeship completion rates at the moment in this country are appalling and there is not enough being done by the government to improve them. We need to start looking at vocational skills and training in a serious way and at how we can rebuild the TAFE sector in this country. I invite and encourage the government, with the money they are saving from these measures, to partner with the states to rebuild our TAFE sector—particularly in the regions. In the regions, you have smaller numbers of students putting their hands up. At Bendigo, even though they had 15 students on the books for a certain course, because they could not get 20 students the course was not going to break even, so they cancelled the course. Those 15 students had no other option but to go to Melbourne. That makes it very hard on young apprentices and trainees, particularly if they do not have their driver's licences or are driving or travelling on public transport. So we need the government to partner with the states and look at how we deliver trades in the regions. If there is not the volume of students that there is in the city, courses just are not being run—and that is happening currently. Instead, we have these dodgy providers trying to trick people and fill the gap. It is good that we are seeing reform on this, but we need to see much more reform and much more investment. It is the reality of the city versus regional situation. We should subsidise regional TAFEs to deliver quality training services. If we want to have people living in the regions and we want a skill base in the regions, what a great legacy it would be for this government to invest in skill based training in the regions.

I am inundated by employers and businesses around the regions who say, 'We just don't have the skills we need.' For example, there is only one provider of pattern making courses left in Victoria, RMIT, but Keech Australia are not looking for pattern makers for dress clothing; they are looking for pattern makers for 3D printing. It is an innovative, exciting business. They are now 3D printing body parts such as hips for surgery and replacement, yet they cannot get people through the trades sector. They are not just looking for engineers; they are looking for people with trade qualifications and are willing to partner with TAFE. Where is the government putting the money on the table to help Keech Australia to do that? The money that we are saving in this area needs to be reinvested in TAFE to help rebuild the TAFE sector.

Australians love TAFE for a very good reason: they know it works. Older people are constantly shocked when you tell them: 'The apprentices that you had available just don't exist today.' Take Bendigo Thales, for example. Where it was owned by the Australian government, it was known as the Ordnance Factory. They had 100 apprentices in a workforce of 1,000. There was a team of them—25 in each cohort each year. Granted the business was much bigger back then, today this company is down to four apprentices. Even with the new Hawkei contract that is coming on—and it is great to get that $1.6 billion investment—it has not brought on any new apprentices with that new work. It is a disappointment to our local young people that they cannot follow the pathway of their fathers or mothers into an apprenticeship. But it is also a reflection of the fact that Thales is not quite sure whether there are enough educators locally to be able to partner with its apprentices.

It is great to see the government catch up to Labor and the community on this and move these reforms on student loans. But it is disappointing that, with all of the time and the delay that they have had in bringing this in, they have still failed to get the consultation right. I have been contacted by people in the arts sector that feel that they have been targeted by this government. There are some courses in creative industries which the government may call niche, but they actually do generate artists and creatives who go on to have professional careers. It is disappointing that the government has not consulted with that sector properly. Yes, there are rogue people. But, rather than going after the rouges, they have gone after everybody.

I want the government to particularly take note of other courses that are delivering higher skills, like for pilots—not just airline pilots but also marine pilots. There are a number of skilled, professional-based training organisations that are currently using this scheme as a way to give opportunity to people within their organisation's businesses and industries to skill up. We do need to make sure that we are consulting with them. It is why I am glad this will be referred to a Senate inquiry—so those industries can say, 'Hey, look, we're legit. We should be quarantined from these reforms.' It is true that a lot are not legit. The Karen example that I had earlier today—of the Karen community from my electorate—is just one of many that I have highlighted. In this space we need to ensure that anybody that is taking out a student loan is getting a great and quality education. We have not seen that so far in the VET sector.

We need to ensure that we are doing more to invest in TAFE. We need to ensure that we are doing more to rebuild public education and TAFE skills. It would be great to see some of the money being saved in this area be invested in our schools, whether it be the Gonski, TAFE or our universities, particularly in the regions. If you do not have a decent public provider that is willing and able, and has the resources to deliver the training that is required, we will be left with skills gaps in the regions worse than what they are now.

Young people in the regions are looking for those opportunities. Youth unemployment figures are out. It is in our regions where we have some real spikes in youth unemployment. If we are genuine about reform and genuine about delivering skills and making sure that people have a good education, we should see rapid investment into public education—particularly our TAFE sector—to give those young people an opportunity to get the skills to get the jobs that we have in our country.

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