Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The VET Student Loans (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2025 addresses a technical but important issue in the administration of our vocational education loan system. It ensures that students, training providers and the government all have the clarity and confidence that they deserve in the operation of the VET Student Loans program. This is a responsible and necessary measure that fixes a problem identified during a review. It provides certainty to the sector, and it strengthens the integrity of a system that supports tens of thousands of Australians to gain new skills and qualifications. Vocational education is a highly valued resource in my community, and much of this important work to upskill workers is happening in north-eastern Melbourne, in my electorate of Jagajaga, thanks to some really important investments from our Labor government.

Income-contingent student loans for vocational education and training students were first introduced under the Rudd Labor government in 2008 under the VET FEE-HELP scheme. That allowed VET providers to handle student tax file numbers, as those identifiers are essential to linking students' loans with their Australian Taxation Office accounts. In 2017, the VET Student Loans program replaced the VET FEE-HELP scheme. It brought in stronger integrity requirements and a new legislative framework: the VET Student Loans Act 2016. However, the new legislation did not explicitly provide a role for VSL providers to handle tax file numbers, even though the IT systems that supported the program continued to operate as they had under the previous framework.

During a review of the program, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations identified this misalignment between the legislation and the technology platforms that manage loan applications and data. This bill ensures that the law will now match what has occurred in practice. It retrospectively authorises the handling of students' tax file numbers by approved VSL providers for the purpose of administering student loans. This retrospective authorisation will apply from 1 January 2017, when the program commenced, until 30 September 2025, when final system updates fully removed the need for providers to handle tax file numbers. Put simply, this bill provides legal certainty that past actions that were taken in good faith to administer student loans were lawful.

While this bill deals with the past, it also ensures confidence for the future. Throughout 2025, the department has implemented system updates to mask tax file numbers from providers and automate their secure transfer between the student interface and government systems. This means that from 1 October 2025, providers will no longer handle tax file numbers at all. These are important reforms that strengthen privacy and reduce the administrative burden for training providers while maintaining integrity and accuracy in the loan system. I also want to assure members and students in my community that no students have been adversely affected by the past handling of tax file numbers and that the department has received no complaints relating to this issue since the program began in 2017.

This bill is all about certainty and integrity, but I also think it's about something broader. It's about the value that our government places on skills and training, and the work we are trying to do to continue to build a robust TAFE and training system that is giving Australians the best possible future and the best possible chance at a good future with the job and the skills they need. We know, on this side, that free TAFE is delivering real opportunity right around the country. It's helping hundreds of thousands of Australians to gain the skills they need while also strengthening our workforce in key industries. That's why I continue to be surprised that those opposite have free TAFE on the chopping block.

Despite having recently gone to an election where it was wholeheartedly endorsed by my electorate and others, despite the results we see through our TAFE and training sector—where people are getting the skills they need to get good jobs, where we are filling workforce shortages right around our country in key industries—the Leader of the Opposition and her colleagues continue to come into this place, and go out to the community, and oppose Australians getting the skills they want for the jobs we need. I was here in the last parliament when the Leader of the Opposition said: 'It's a key principle and tenet of the Liberal Party: if you don't pay for something, you don't value it.'

I want to be very clear. Our government does not see it that way. We believe in opportunity. We believe that every Australian, no matter their background or their postcode, deserves the chance to learn, to upskill, to work and to build a better life for themselves and their families. We believe that education should open doors, not close them—that skills and knowledge are the great equalisers of our society. The truth is, as the Prime Minister has said, that, no matter how far TAFE helps you climb or what opportunities it opens for you and your family, the Liberals and Nationals will always look down on the very education that gave you that lift. We do not see it in this way. That is the difference. This opportunity to help people to get these skills, to get the future that they deserve, is what drives and defines our government: helping Australians now while also building for the future.

I'm really pleased to see how this is playing out in my electorate in north-eastern Melbourne. We have a number of excellent TAFEs and vocational institutions locally that have for many years been playing a vital role in creating opportunity and that I know are feeling reinvigorated by this government's focus on skills and training and by the investments we are making in this.

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