Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Skills and Training) | Hansard source

I want to thank all members who have contributed to the debate on this important bill, the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment (Strengthening Quality and Integrity in Vocational Education and Training No. 1) Bill 2024, particularly the members for Farrer, Werriwa, Nicholls, Corangamite, Fowler, Holt, Macquarie and Swan. I'd also like to thank stakeholders and states and territories for their invaluable feedback and insights into how this bill can best protect the reputation and integrity of our vocational education and training sector.

The Albanese government understands that a trustworthy and high-performing VET sector is essential not only to create meaningful and secure career opportunities but to deliver the skills our economy needs. The amendments in the bill will provide the regulator, the Australian Skills Quality Authority, better tools to protect students and tackle the minority of providers that engage in unscrupulous conduct and fail to demonstrate a genuine commitment to education and training delivery. These providers tarnish the reputation of the sector, and the bill reinforces that there is no place for them in the VET sector.

The bill builds on the government's track record in strengthening the integrity and the quality in VET. This includes negotiating a landmark $30 billion five-year national skills agreement, the first of its kind in a decade, investing $37.8 million to increase ASQA's capacity to detect and address unacceptable behaviour by registered training organisations and strengthening the 'fit and proper persons' requirements to apply increased scrutiny on those in management positions within RTOs. The government's track record includes turning around apprenticeships, and the member for Farrer particularly referred to apprentice commencements in her remarks. I remind her that the commencements steadily declined under the coalition, from 220,000 in 2014 to fewer than 135,000 in 2019, a drop of nearly 40 per cent. We're obviously at odds when it comes to the history of this area.

It took a global pandemic and the emergency injection of wage subsidies, costing $7.7 billion, to arrest this decline. Perhaps apprentices expected some sort of direct support from this huge spend, but they should have known better. Those opposite saw fit to funnel every cent of the $7.7 billion directly into employers' pockets. Not one cent went directly to an apprentice or trainee. The coalition knew that the spending was unsustainable, and their last budget, handed down by Josh Frydenberg, the then Treasurer, shows they planned to drop apprenticeship support to below pre-COVID levels. To paraphrase the member for Farrer in her second reading speech on the bill: you can defend this wage subsidy or defund it; you cannot do both.

The biggest users of the coalition wage subsidy were businesses like fast-food giants, retail stores and call centres. The design of the scheme allowed businesses to funnel employees into traineeships in name only to access wage subsidies and pay workers below the standard award wage. I can exemplify that by referring to the Fair Work Ombudsman investigation into the conduct of a fast-food employer, Grill'd, that employed 2,800 employees and placed them on so-called traineeships under this agreement. I have to say, there were was, in many instances, very little training indeed, but it did allow the company to pay these workers below the minimum standards that would be provided to an employee. In some cases, some of these so-called trainees were providing evidence to the Fair Work Ombudsman that they received no more than eight hours of training in 18 months of employment.

We don't really believe that the Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements program was really an apprenticeship scheme. That's not to say we didn't support wage subsidies; obviously, we supported JobKeeper. We proposed it. It was originally rejected by the member for Cook, the then Prime Minister, but the previous government did finally accept it as a good approach, of course, and Labor supported that. And we do support wage subsidies, particularly at a time of a pandemic, but we do not accept that the Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements program was an apprenticeship scheme in the way in which traditional apprenticeship schemes are operated. For that reason we disagree with the contentions by the member for Farrer in relation to those issues in her contribution on this bill, but we do appreciate her support overall for the bill as introduced by the government.

To illustrate my point, in media reporting one of the trainees involved in this program was quoted as saying, 'Originally I was told there would be no more than six months to a year, and then, about 18 months into my employment, I finally got off my traineeship, having had two training sessions totalling eight hours'—as I said earlier. We would say we are very different from that approach. The Albanese government is targeting investment to apprentices and employers in areas of the economy where skills are needed the most, and I think it's fair to say it's working. You need only to look at the architecture of the New Energy Apprenticeships scheme to see the difference. It is not front-end loaded. There's payment to employers and apprentices throughout the entire life of the scheme to ensure we increase the likelihood of apprentices completing their apprenticeships, because we need those skills for many sectors of the economy. That's what we will continue to do.

Trade commencements were up almost 20 per cent in Labor's first year of government compared with June 2019, pre COVID and pre emergency stimulus spending. We agree with the coalition that we cannot continue to fund an unsustainable emergency $3.8 billion COVID wage subsidy. The member for Farrer also referred to the VET FEE-HELP program in her remarks. From 2009 to leaving government in 2013, the previous Labor government provided VET FEE-HELP scheme loans of a total of $1.39 billion. Over the next three years to 2016, the coalition allowed VET FEE-HELP loans to skyrocket to over $9 billion total—a more than sixfold increase—overwhelmingly to for-profit providers. Despite being urged to rein the loans in, the coalition sat on their hands for years, taking too long to act. The non-genuine and unscrupulous providers we saw exploit the VET FEE-HELP program are the kind of providers the Albanese government is cracking down on in this bill. This minority of providers continue to tarnish the sector and undermine the majority of genuine providers doing the right thing, whether they are public providers, industry providers or providers for profit who deliver excellent training and education in many respects.

The bill also responds to issues highlighted in reviews related to the VET sector and the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Act 2011. These include the 2018 review, with its report entitled All eyes on quality: review of the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Act 2011 report, conducted by Professor Valerie Braithwaite; the 2023 rapid review into the exploitation of Australia's visa system, conducted by the former chief commissioner of Victoria Police, Christine Nixon; and the inquiry by the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, with its report entitled 'Quality and integrity - the quest for sustainable growth': interim report into international education.

The measures in this bill increase ASQA's powers to take decisive action against non-genuine and unscrupulous training providers. The bill enables the automatic lapse of the RTO registration where it has not delivered training and/or assessment for 12 consecutive months, as recommended by the Braithwaite review that was commissioned by the previous government. This targets integrity risks posed by dormant RTOs that are not demonstrating a genuine commitment to training delivery. Students will be better protected by measures requiring new RTOs to demonstrate their ability to deliver quality training before being allowed to expand their course offerings. Providing ASQA with greater discretion to prioritise, consider and decide applications for initial registration means that ASQA can better address risks as well as skill shortages and community need.

The bill supports the integrity, health and quality of the VET sector by empowering the minister responsible for VET to determine specific periods where ASQA is not required to accept or must not process initial applications for RTO registration. This will better enable ASQA to address trends in applications by non-genuine providers or manage unsustainable influxes into the VET sector. This ensures risks can be appropriately managed before providers enter the sector, for the benefit of students and the sector as a whole. To maintain appropriate checks and balances, the use of this ministerial power will be time limited and require the minister to consult with ASQA and seek the agreement of state and territory skills ministers prior to the determination being made.

Expanding and increasing offence and civil penalties fivefold will make it clear to RTOs that ASQA is armed to impose tough punishment where RTOs seek to exploit vulnerable students through false and misleading representations or otherwise engage in egregious conduct. Providing ASQA with increased flexibility to expand the period within which it can conduct an internal review of decisions, combined with technical and administrative amendments in the bill, will support ASQA to be a more efficient regulator and make its processes more proportionate, effective and fair.

The bill provides ASQA powers to respond effectively to integrity threats and safeguard the quality and reputation of the Australian VET sector, as well as support the vast majority of genuine registered training organisations. This bill is the next step in this government's plan to ensure the sector has the capacity to deliver quality training outcomes and meet Australia's skills and training workforce needs into the future.

I welcome the opposition's public statements of support for the bill, and I look forward to working constructively with them and crossbench members to facilitate swift passage of the bill. This will allow students, industry and the whole Australian community to benefit from the removal of non-genuine and unscrupulous providers who undermine integrity and trust in vocational education and training. A strong VET sector is vital for a strong economy. Once again, I thank members for their engagement on this bill.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.

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