Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Labor supports this bill. We recognise there is a genuine risk, which has been thoroughly tested, that our higher education system could be targeted by unscrupulous providers. Labor believes in vocational training and education and in the people who rely on it to contribute to society. We have always stood up for TAFE and the vocational educational system because we know how life-changing these courses can be. As a proud TAFE graduate, I can attest to this. Unlike those opposite, we are in the business of improving the standard of living for ordinary Australians, not taking every single opportunity to reduce it. We are about ensuring that Australia's world-class higher education system, and our students, are properly protected. That is absolutely critical to its ongoing success.

The reforms that are proposed in this bill rightly acknowledge that there has been a surge in applications from vocational education providers to become higher education providers. We are seeing this surge because people want choices to skill themselves, choices other than just universities. Not everybody wants to go to university and not everybody needs to go to university to be successful. Sadly, the Turnbull government does not believe in vocational training. The runs are on the board for the conservatives: TAFE has been gutted, there are plummeting enrolments and 5,700 world-class TAFE teachers and support staff have been sacked since 2012—and I reiterate the support staff.

The government and New South Wales state Liberals have made an art form of killing the TAFE system, and the result has been an increase in private operators, resulting in shonky providers who think they can game the system. As I previously mentioned in this House, under the Liberals we have seen the sector ripped off and defrauded. Students have been signed up to fake courses; vulnerable people have been enrolled in completely inappropriate courses; and young people have been tricked into taking on significant debt with no personal gain or return, nor any ability to repay. People have been bribed with iPads. These are vulnerable people—young people, sometimes people with a disability—and they are made to sign up to courses that they have no intention of participating in or completing, nor do they have the ability to complete the courses. We know of vulnerable people tricked into enrolling in classes where the completion rate was less than five per cent. We know of employers who refuse to employ people who have certifications from certain institutions.

Without a strong and effective VET sector, many people in my electorate will not be able to reach their full potential and, therefore, will not be able to contribute to society as much as they otherwise would. That means we all lose. Businesses will have fewer skilled workers to employ and we will have more people relying on social benefits rather than participating in the workforce—two things those opposite continually bang on about in this place.

Good private providers are all well and good, but we know that the bottom line for some of them is profit, not good educational outcomes. The government needs to understand that education is an investment, not a burden. TAFE course fees are rapidly rising, and hundreds of thousands of people are being locked out of courses that could change their lives. Millions of dollars of taxpayer funds have been spent on courses where the qualification was not worth the piece of paper it was written on. I am pleased then to see that this bill will go some way towards making the safeguards and protections necessary for students, but I remain concerned about the impact on students already affected. You cannot have jobs and growth without investment in education; businesses know this and employers know this. Those of us who have been educated know this. But the government is silent on this. The Liberals are saddling our youth with debt and making them put their hand in their pocket even before they start earning more than the minimum wage. If it isn't TAFEs, then it's universities and public schools where the government also wants to hurt students.

The government will have your hand in your pocket earlier by charging higher fees and cutting university funding at the same time, not to mention stopping K-12 classrooms from reaching their full Gonski funding allocation and ensuring that every classroom, no matter the postcode, has the resourcing standards it needs. The Prime Minister and the government are only interested in increasing disadvantage. We saw that today through the MPI. We need opportunities for our young people. This can only be achieved with a strong VET system. We welcome the greater scrutiny but would like to see a restored TAFE sector, where everyone gets the opportunity to participate in our society.

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