Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Vocational Education and Skills) Share this | Hansard source

There have been a number of questions that have been put this afternoon in relation to skills, and it is my intention to deal with as many of those questions in the next five minutes as I am able to do. I acknowledge the contribution of all members to the debate in relation to skills. I particularly note the contributions by the member for Boothby and the member for Berowra. I understand that, if time had permitted, the member for Gilmore was keen to speak in this afternoon's debate.

I would like to start by talking about the existing national partnership agreement, which continues until 30 June this year. It was a five-year agreement that was negotiated back in 2012, and I can say that I am so pleased that I was not the person who negotiated that agreement. That agreement provided for $1.75 billion over a five-year period. Of that $1.75 billion, $1.15 billion was for structural reforms. It was for things such as harmonisation between the states. The remaining $600 million was for training outcomes. The agreement is being replaced by the Skilling Australians Fund, which was announced in the budget, which is a $1.5 billion fund over the next four years. However, it is structured so that it will be a continuing fund into the future. That $1.5 billion will go towards training outcomes. If you want to compare the dollars under the current national partnership agreement specifically for training outcomes and the dollars in the new Skilling Australians Fund for training outcomes, you are comparing $600 million over a five-year period to $1.5 billion over four years. The Turnbull government is certainly increasing, significantly, the amount of funding that is available, particularly for direct training outcomes.

I note the contributions from one of the members opposite in particular who I note is no longer in this chamber. I think that the important thing to note out of that contribution is that there is clearly an absolute lack of understanding about the funding arrangements for vocational education and skills. There are two parts—at least to the funding arrangements that have been in place. These are arrangements that have been in place since the start of the existing national partnership agreement. One is a $1.5 billion special purpose payment that is made to the states. Within that is a range of funding options that the states can use to disperse funding to their needs within the state. The national partnership agreement sits on top of that. Of the national partnership agreement money, not one cent under the existing national partnership agreement was dedicated to an outcome for TAFE. So there was no specific funding that was allocated to TAFE under the national partnership agreement that was negotiated by Labor back in 2012.

The national partnership agreement that is in place had a number of things that are important to the situation that TAFE currently finds itself in. That agreement introduced contestability into the market. As a result of that, TAFE's share of vocational education students has eroded, falling from 60 per cent pre the national partnership agreement to 49 per cent now. In fact, if you want to look at the time period during which TAFE was negatively impacted, it was actually during the national partnership agreement that Labor negotiated. So the opposition had negotiated it. It had a devastating impact on TAFE.

I also notice that, in the proposals that the opposition had in the lead-up to the last election, if you look at the table that shows the number of dollars that the opposition was dedicating to TAFE over what would have been the forward estimates, it actually has zero in each of the four years. So under their proposal that they took to the election, they were providing absolutely not one single cent.

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