Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

We were contemplating education and its significance in the closing the gap speeches today. One of the most telling statistics that we drew from that report, amidst many disappointing ones, was that the employment gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians does not exist—in fact, employment percentages are the same—where Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians have a tertiary education. So it is a great reminder that education is transformative. We know that a quality education provides a lifetime of opportunity. We are investing more money in school education than any government in the history of the Commonwealth. We are getting on and fixing another one of Labor's extraordinary messes in the field of education.

Under their failed VET FEE-HELP scheme, thousands of vulnerable students, including many Indigenous students, were ripped off by dodgy providers and that led to a blowout from costing $325 million in 2012 to $1.8 billion in 2014 and $3 billion in 2015. This was a Labor Party scheme they set up and it resulted in the taxpayer funding courses like diplomas of energy healing—and this was not applicable to South Australia; this was not an engineering degree—flower essence therapy and Chinese medicine treatments for dogs and cats. That was what the Labor Party did with taxpayers' dollars on education.

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