Tom French (Moore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Every now and then a bill comes before this House that doesn't spark headlines or hashtags but quietly makes the system fairer. This is one of those bills. At its core, the VET Student Loans (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2025 is about trust in the law and our institutions and trust for the students and providers who rely on them. It fixes an ambiguity that should never have existed. It confirms that the people administering student loans did so lawfully and in good faith. And it future-proofs privacy protections, so the same uncertainty can never happen again. That's it. There's no spin and no sleight of hand. It's just the kind of measured repair work that good government does quietly and well.

When Australians apply for a VET student loan, they must include their tax file number. That's what ties the loan to their tax record and ensures repayments are made correctly through the Australian Tax Office. It's a safeguard that keeps the whole scheme honest so that the person who borrows the money is the person who pays it back. But here's the issue: the technology that made this possible moved faster than the legislation that governed it. While the law required the tax file number to make the system function, it never clearly authorised providers to handle it. For years, approved training organisations were doing exactly what the system needed them to do, entering data into secure government portals and reconciling loan information. But the authorising words in the statute weren't there. No-one acted improperly. No-one misused data. There were no complaints, no breaches and no scandals—just a gap between what the law said on paper and how the system worked in practice.

This bill closes that gap. It makes clear that everything done in good faith since 1 January 2017 was and always had been lawful, and it confirms that, from 1 October 2025, providers no longer need to handle tax file numbers at all. Earlier this year the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations finished a major technology upgrade. Student tax file numbers are now masked from view in the student loan portal and transferred automatically between government systems. That means the data never passes through the hands of training providers or their staff. It moves seamlessly and securely from the student's application to the ATO and back again. That's modern governance in action—tightening privacy, reducing risk and removing unnecessary human handling altogether. This bill doesn't create new powers or broaden access to personal information; it simply aligns the law with the secure digital systems we already have and ensures that people who are already doing their jobs—providers, Commonwealth officers and departmental staff—are protected from the technical uncertainty created by a missing line of legislative authority.

It sends a clear signal: when Labor finds something that isn't quite right, we don't bury it. We fix it, and we make it stronger for the future. From the day the VET Student Loans program began, privacy has been tightly controlled. Providers have been bound by strict information-handling rules under the VET Student Loans Act. They must meet a 'fit and proper person' test, undergo extensive approval processes and report any breach immediately. They are subject to civil penalties and even criminal offences for misuse of data. Those safeguards remain. What changes under the bill is the certainty that every past action performed in good faith and to get the student loans processed or reconciled sits squarely within the law. For the future, the system will operate with even higher privacy standards. No provider will see, store or transmit a student's tax file number. That's exactly how it should be in the digital age: minimal access, maximum protection. The bill, therefore, strengthens both integrity and confidence in our program, which has helped hundreds of thousands of Australians learn, train and work.

The principles behind the bill are simple and consistent with the values that underpin our democracy. It supports the right to education by ensuring that the VET Student Loans program continues to operate smoothly for those who already rely on it to study and upskill. It supports the right to work, by guaranteeing access to training that leads directly to secure jobs in our economy. And it protects the right to privacy, by tightening the rules so that personal information is handled only when absolutely necessary and always within the bounds of the law. That is how we maintain trust in public administration: through careful, proportionate reform that respects both the individual and the institution.

The bill may look technical, but it sits within a much larger effort of rebuilding Australia's vocational education system after its neglect. The truth is, when Labor returned to government, we inherited a skills system that had already been hollowed out. TAFE campuses were left to crumble, apprentice numbers were in freefall, and billions had been stripped from training budgets. Young Australians were told, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, that choosing a trade or a technical career was second-best. We reject that nonsense. We believe that, whether you are wiring a hospital, caring for the elderly or coding a new piece of software, your contribution matters equally to this country's future, and that's why Labor has put TAFE back at the centre of Australia's training system.

Since Labor came to office, free TAFE has delivered more than 685,000 enrolments across the nation, in early childhood education, disability care, construction and in digital technology. That's 685,000 Australians who are getting a real qualification for a real job, without the financial barrier that once kept them out. When the opposition leader was shadow minister for skills, she said, 'If you don't pay for something, you don't value it.' Well, Australians are proving her wrong every single day. They value free TAFE, because it changes lives—theirs and their family's.

In my own electorate of Moore, I've seen that transformation up close at the North Metropolitan TAFE. Under the leadership of Michelle Hoad, it's dedicated staff are training the electricians, engineers and technicians who keep Western Australia running. These people are juggling work, study and families. They're showing the same grit and determination that built this country. They deserve a government that has their back, and that's exactly what this bill represents: a government that's making sure the system that supports them is watertight and fair. When those students apply for a VET loan, they deserve to know that their personal information is safe, that their the debt is correctly recorded and that the government has done its homework.

Labor's skills agenda goes further. We're backing apprentices in every corner of the country, because they are the ones who are building the homes, the infrastructure and the clean energy projects of the future. From July 2025, the Key Apprenticeship Program was expanded to include a dedicated housing construction stream, offering up to $10,000 in incentives for new apprentices. We extended the training support payment and priority hiring incentive through to the end of 2025, providing up to $5,000 for apprentices and employers in priority occupations. We increased the living-away-from-home allowance to help young people relocate for work, and we boosted support for apprentices with disabilities by removing unnecessary red tape. Each of these measures helps someone start and finish their trade, and each of them builds a stronger, more skilled workforce for our nation.

We also understand that students and apprentices are under real cost-of-living pressures. That's why this government took decisive action to cut student debt by 20 per cent and lift the repayment threshold so that graduates begin repaying only when they can actually afford to. More than 280,000 VET and apprenticeship loan accounts will benefit from that change, representing over $500 million in debt relief. That's money that will stay in people's pockets. It's money that will help them pay rent, buy tools or simply breathe a little easier when they build their future. It's another example of a government that understands what fairness looks like in practice.

This bill also reinforces something deeper—confidence in the government itself. That's because, when citizens see their government fixing problems quietly and properly rather than ignoring them or playing politics with them, it strengthens faith in every other reform we deliver. This is responsible lawmaking—no fanfare and no finger-pointing, just solid, careful work that keeps our systems strong.

Those opposites might prefer a headline; we prefer results. They might treat governance as theatre; we treat it as service. Service means doing the unglamorous work of tightening a definition, updating a system or closing a legal loophole so that the whole machine runs as it should. That's what this bill does. It ensures that every form lodged, every record kept and every repayment made under the VET Student Loans program sits securely on the right side of the law. It's easy sometimes to think of legislation like this is as dry or technical. but behind every data point and clause is a person—a mature-age student retraining after a redundancy, an apprentice starting their first job in the trades or a single parent studying nursing to re-enter the workforce. They are the reason this program exists. They are the reason we make sure every part of it, from the online form to the privacy settings, works flawlessly. When we get these details right, we're not just fixing a database; we are reaffirming the social contract that government will look after people who put in the effort to better themselves. That's something Labor will always stand for.

I often think that good government is a bit like good wiring. You don't notice it when it's done well; it just works. This bill is the wiring behind a much larger system. It's the quiet work that keeps the lights on, literally and figuratively, for the thousands of students who rely on VET loans every year. It shows that we take responsibility seriously. When we find a problem, we own it, we fix it and we make sure that it never happens again. That's what separates governing from posturing.

So, yes, this bill is small. It won't make the evening news. But its impact will last. It strengthens privacy, validates the good-faith actions of people who did their job, modernises the administration of student loans and reinforces the integrity of one of the most important programs in our education system. It gives students confidence that their personal information is safe, it gives providers certainty that they are operating within the law and it gives the Australian people proof that their government is paying attention to even to the fine print.

The VET sector is one of the great engines of national opportunity. It changes lives, opens doors and drives innovation. By maintaining integrity and trust in the systems that support it, this bill will help ensure that opportunity endures. It may be modest, but it's meaningful. It is, in every sense, what good government looks like—practical, careful and built to last. I commend the bill to the House.

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