James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the contribution from the member for Bruce. Those are some good things that we should debate and discuss. I particularly like his first point on reform potentially separating assessment from providers. I don't know if I misheard him, but I hope he means that for all providers, not just private providers. I think that assessment absolutely must be for the public system as well.

I'd like to see the union that represents teachers in VET coming out and supporting the public system and the private system having a little bit of independent evaluation. That would be absolutely excellent. It would be dramatic, and there would be significant, significant consequences that the member for Bruce may or may not like to see. But we in the Liberal Party love merit-based assessment, reward for effort and breaking apart the protection racket of poor performance anywhere, particularly when it comes to educating the next generation of our nation. I welcome the suggestion by the member for Bruce, of all people, that some independent merit-based assessment of the entire VET system be put in place. I commit to working with him on that and supporting genuine reform that see the sunlight shine in upon the way in which the entire VET system operates. Certainly in my home state of South Australia it's almost entirely the government's system. But I'm sure they do not fear any form of independent oversight or assessment of the training that they provide or some kinds of published results of the quality of the education and training, as are being put in place. I think that's exciting, I warmly welcome it and I thank the member for Bruce for bringing that to our chamber. I look forward to seeing him get the education minister in the Labor government that he's a part of to bring forward reforms of that nature. I would look forward to speaking up in my party room were there any dissent to the concept of a robust, independent process for assessing the quality of the education that's provided across all registered training organisations in this country. I welcome the opportunity to unexpectedly agree with the member for Bruce on that.

He's talked about some other things. He's obviously very concerned about the amount of migration in this country. He's part of a government that's bringing in 1½ million people through things like, as he's just described, these dodgy renting-worker schemes. He's in the government, so I wish him all strength to his arm in convincing this government that the 1½ million people coming into the country across the forward estimates of the budget—without any planning for the infrastructure and services required to support that spectacular and dramatic increase in our population. I wish him well, within the government he's a member of, in succeeding in the debates, however the Labor Party have these debates, if they have them at all. I wish him well in what he's just expressed to the Federation Chamber in that regard.

Having used most of my time talking about the member for Bruce, I will quickly put on the record in brief what I was going to say in my full five minutes, and that is that we certainly welcome the opportunity in this debate to talk about higher education and its important place within the tertiary system. The member for Bruce has made a good point by introducing VET into this debate, because for too long we've treated higher education as purely being about university-level degree qualifications, and it is wrong to have the sort of elitism in our society where we suggest that the optimal pathway is going to university. Welcome and good luck to all those like myself that go to university, but there are also a number of other very rewarding career pathways that don't require a need to go to university.

This motion talks about government funding to the sector. The most significant thing I'm being contacted about as a local member right now in this sector is the dramatic increase in HECS debts, which of course is occurring because inflation is so high. Of course, when you've got a government running inflation so high, everything that's index linked, including HECS debts, dramatically increases. It is surprising people with HECS debts, because I suppose they never thought that inflation could run this hot, but that's what happens under Labor governments. We're seeing it now, and we've seen it in the past. I merely say to all the students and others in my electorate who contact me that hopefully a change of government will see this high inflation reduced and those debts not increase so dramatically. (Time expired)

See this speech in context