Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Training and Sport) Share this | Hansard source

The first thing in speaking to the Higher Education Support Amendment (VET FEE-HELP and Providers) Bill 2009 is to reflect that the VET sector is quite different from the higher education sector. The VET sector is made up of a national network of 4,000 public and private providers. There are 1.67 million students in 2008-09 financial year studying in the VET sector. These include, for example, 429,000 Australian apprentices in training—apprentice hairdressers, mechanics, plumbers, chefs and electricians and trainees in building and horticulture.

In the 2007 budget the former Howard government announced that it would extend FEE-HELP to the VET sector. Recognising how different this sector is from higher education, where we have a limited number of universities, it was constrained to a special category of providers. Until the introduction of the 2007 legislation, the VET sector was the only sector offering post-secondary qualifications without an income-contingent loans scheme. The previous government recognised that students seeking an education in the VET sector did not receive the same level of financial support as those seeking an education at university. We believe that students wishing to undertake a VET course should not be deterred from doing so because of the financial pressures associated with upfront fees. Our view was that pursuing a VET qualification was just as important as pursuing a university qualification.

Under the bill we introduced, FEE-HELP was available to those undertaking a TAFE diploma, associate diploma, graduate certificate and graduate diploma where full fees were charged, where arrangements were made for credit transfer to a higher education award and to VET providers that were corporate bodies only. As I said, this was the first introduction of a student loan scheme in the VET sector at the national level.

The former minister for vocational education, the member for Goldstein, said when he introduced that bill that the operation of the scheme would be monitored carefully and that he was of the general view that if this introduction were successful VET FEE-HELP could be extended further in the future. We would like to see VET FEE-HELP more widely available in the future. For that reason we supported the federal government’s decision last year to extend income-contingent loans specifically in the context of the Victorian state government’s reforms of vocational education and training. In August 2008, as part of the Victorian state government’s move to a demand-driven system, the federal government announced the extension of income-contingent loans to the Victorian VET sector. The opposition at that time indicated our support for that extension.

Unfortunately, that legislation to extend income-contingent loans to Victoria was linked with the bill which allows universities to levy all university students with a $250 fee, which the opposition cannot support. That second piece of legislation, by way of guidelines, eases the conditions for providers to be eligible for VET FEE-HELP. As of 20 March 2009 there were 12 approved VET providers and 15 others awaiting the parliamentary disallowance period.

The bill we are considering today is really consequential from those two earlier ones: the original extension of FEE-HELP to the VET sector and then the subsequent legislation which is still being considered in the other place, which did allow the extension of income-contingent loans and did it by way of guidelines which will ease the conditions on providers. It has been explained that this will be done to support the Victorian state government’s move to a demand-driven system and would be available for any other state or territory government that chose to move in that direction. This legislation is a consequence of the easing in an early bill and it provides discretion to the minister to revoke the approval of a provider and allows the registration of a provider to be rescinded if they no longer operate in Australia. As a consequence, this is a simple machinery bill, a result of some earlier pieces of legislation. It will help ensure additional regulation of providers, who will have access to VET FEE-HELP. The opposition will be supporting the bill.

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