Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Lindsay for her remarks in respect of the Education and Other Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2017. As other speakers have made clear, this bill has two schedules: the first is in relation to the establishment of the VET Student Loans Ombudsman under the Ombudsman Act 1976, and the second is in relation to making annual appropriations to the Australian Research Council.

I am going to focus my remarks on the VET Student Loans Ombudsman. This is an appointment which has become necessary because of the Turnbull government's incompetence and woeful administration of the VET student loans scheme. It was not the scheme that was the problem; it was the Turnbull government's oversight of it. As the figures show, between 2013 and 2015 VET FEE-HELP loans blew out from $700 million in 2013 to $1.8 billion in 2014 and then to $2.9 billion in 2015—that is, in the space of just two years, VET FEE-HELP loans blew out by over $2 billion.

It is beyond comprehension how a government could oversee that kind of increase. Surely there would have been figures coming into the government on a month-by-month basis as to what was happening, and surely those figures should have raised alarm bells for the government. Indeed, I ask myself: just what advice was being provided by the department to the minister of the day, and what did the minister do with that advice? Why did it take so long for the government to act?

In fact, the government only acted after this became a public issue, with lots of media stories and examples of the rorting that was taking place being brought into this House. Indeed, I do not recall having seen a similar level of incompetence by a government as what I have seen with respect to the Turnbull government's mismanagement of the issues relating to VET FEE-HELP loans. Not only should the cost blow-out have raised concerns; the stories that had been continually and openly talked about out there in the community, and which surfaced months and months before the government acted, had become too commonplace.

The sad reality is that, at the end of this scandal, it was not just the government and, through the government, the taxpayers of Australia that lost tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars; it was also the students who were left with thousands of dollars of debts, with worthless certificates that would never ever get them a job anywhere, because no-one gave those certificates any credit, and with courses that, in many cases, were left incomplete because the dodgy providers were unable to fulfil their obligation to provide the full courses that had been promised in the first place— indeed, providers closed down before they were able to deliver the full courses.

Many of the young people who were caught up in these scams where young people who were desperate to find work and who were, in turn, left further out-of-pocket because they spent some of their own money chasing courses with dodgy providers that resulted in a worthless certificate. When they realised that they had been duped and enticed into expensive courses with little prospect of employment at the end of them, who did they have to turn to? They had no-one to turn to because, when they turned to the government, nothing was done about it. Indeed, I can recall taking up some matters on behalf of constituents in my electorate, and, regrettably, the outcome was not very good at all at the end of it.

So Labor promised that an ombudsman would be created if we were elected to office, and the government finally agreed to do that. At least an ombudsman provided an office where some of these people could turn to when they found themselves in the situations that they did. Regrettably, under this legislation, while an ombudsman is being created, my concern—a concern that is shared by other speakers on this side of the parliament and by other external bodies who have an interest in this matter—is that the ombudsman's powers are limited.

The ombudsman has no ability to make binding decisions and, indeed, will be dependent on the department taking action. In fact, reading the explanatory memorandum, the department does not, in any event, even have to accept or take any notice of the ombudsman's advice or report when they receive it. So you might as well put your complaint, if that is what it is, directly to the department, because ultimately it is the department that is going to make a decision as to whether anything is going to be done about it or not.

This was an opportunity for the government to do more than that. It was an opportunity for the government to establish an office that had some real teeth and was able to resolve problems if and when they arose, either with respect to the student or the training organisation. Like other speakers on this side of the House, I welcome the position being established, and we will wait with interest to see just how well the position does deliver.

I also want to talk about apprenticeship numbers more broadly. A report last week suggested that between June 2012 and June 2016 there had been a 45 per cent reduction in the numbers of apprenticeships across Australia. The figures were: in June 2012, 515,000 apprentices in this country; in June 2016 the number had fallen to 282,900. That is nearly half. One has to ask the question: why is that? Why are we losing apprentices in those sorts of numbers, and why are there no places for apprentices in this country? It seems to me that it predominantly is because of many of the decisions of this government.

The first was abolishing the $6,000 Tools for Your Trade program, which I believe was working very well and which offered apprentices $6,000 in real money in their pocket to assist them with their training. It was not a loan that they had to pay back; it was $6,000 of assistance. Secondly, we have seen TAFE being undermined by this government, and, in turn, when it is undermined, it is not able to perhaps perform to the extent that it would otherwise have done. TAFE had been a reputable training organisation for decades—and still is—and it should have been an organisation that this government put its full support behind. But it did not; it actually wanted to see its demise.

Then we saw this government also oversee the demise of the automotive industry in this country. The automotive industry was one of the industries that provided opportunities for young apprentices in a whole range of different vocations. Again, with the loss of the automotive industry comes the loss of apprentices that would have otherwise been employed.

Lastly, the fall in the number of apprentices is due to the obsession of conservative governments over recent decades with privatisation. The reality is that it was always governments—government departments and government utilities like the water, power, transport and construction arms of governments—that provided opportunities for most of the apprentices in this country. As those different entities have been privatised, their new owners do not commit to taking on apprentices in the same way that the government departments did. The truth of the matter is that, as we sell off more and more of those government entities, there will be even fewer opportunities for young people to take up apprenticeships. As the Business Council of Australia Chief Executive, Jennifer Westacott, said only recently, as reported in one of the newspapers, we need to change the stigma surrounding TAFE being a poorer cousin to our universities. The reality is that not every young person either wants or is suited to university education. I will talk in just a moment of an example of a person who is doing exceptionally well right now but at the time was not suitable, for a range of reasons, in terms of seeing university as a career path for him. For decades, as I said earlier, vocational education has been part and parcel of the core function of TAFEs around the country and, hopefully, it is going to continue to do that if it gets the support of this government. We should not consider vocational education training and TAFEs as the poorer cousins to universities.

I said I would talk about a specific case example in just a moment and I am going to get to by talking about St Patrick's Technical College in the electorate of Wakefield. The college services the northern region of Adelaide, much of which I represent. Last week I attended the college as it celebrated its 10th anniversary under the leadership of the principal, Rob Thomas. St Patrick's Technical College also comes under the umbrella of Catholic Education South Australia. For the last 10 years or so it has been providing a range of apprenticeships and trade and vocational training courses to young people in the region. Indeed, my understanding is that some 800 apprenticeships have come out of St Patrick's Technical College. The areas that it focuses on are building and construction, community services, hospitality and lifestyle, and engineering and transport. And then it links with local businesses to try and provide career paths for the youngsters who go through the college. The youngsters are generally here year 11 or year 12 students from one of the surrounding high schools who, for whatever reason, do not think their future lies in university education.

One of those young people, who I met last Friday, is young Jack Donaldson, who did a certificate III in engineering and fabrication at St Patrick's college. Jack was transferred from his local high school to St Patrick's because his teachers and his school considered that, at the time, he was not going to be someone who had a future beyond going to high school, and so they recommended that he go to St Patrick's. Young Jack did that, and he became the young apprentice of the year in South Australia after having completed a certificate III in engineering and fabrication. Having done that, built his confidence, and stabilised his lifestyle, he then decided he would pursue a university degree and he is now doing a diploma in leadership and management. This is a good example of having an alternative opportunity at a time when it suited him best in order to keep them focused on his future. And he did it very well. He addressed the gathering last week at the college, and I have to say that he shows an incredible amount of ability and confidence in what he is doing.

It is important that we maintain a strong VET system in this country—a system that gives confidence to young people, industry and the broader community. The VET student loans ombudsman office is a step in the right direction—we acknowledge that. Hopefully, it will not be a tokenistic initiative to appease the sector but a an appointment that will make a real difference to VET in Australia because right now that is what is needed. With unemployment at nearly 6 per cent and youth unemployment more than double that and in some places triple that, Australia should not be filling the skills shortfalls that we have through immigration programs but instead by making the most of providing skills training to young people in this country, who I am sure would love to be given the opportunity to do that.

With those comments, can I say again that we will support the legislation but I wait with interest to see how well it works.

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