Anne Urquhart (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of the VET Student Loans (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2025. This bill is about fixing a problem identified during a review of how VET student loans were administered under the previous government. It is a practical measure that ensures certainty for students, providers and the integrity of the system.

Since the VET Student Loans Act commenced in 2017, VET student loans providers and registered training organisations, including TAFEs and private colleges, have played an important role in administering loan applications. In practice, this involved handling tax file numbers for the purpose of verifying a student's identity and ensuring loan repayment through the tax system. However, during a review of how VET student loans were administered, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations identified that the Vet Student Loans Act 2016 did not explicitly authorise providers to handle TFNs. The program operated as intended, providers acted in good faith and the system functioned to help Australians access training without upfront costs, but the legal footing needed to be clearer. This bill addresses that gap. It clarifies the authority retrospectively so that everyone involved—providers, Commonwealth officers and the department—has certainty that their past handling of TFNs for the administration of loans was lawful.

The bill does three key things. First, it retrospectively authorises the handling of those tax file numbers by VET student loans providers and relevant Commonwealth officers for the purposes of administering VSLs from 1 January 2017 to 30 September 2025. This ensures that the good-faith actions taken to administer the scheme were legally supported. Second, it provides certainty to providers, government officers and students that past practices where tax file numbers were used to correctly link a student's loan account to their Australian Taxation Office record were lawful and appropriate. Third, from 1 October 2025 providers will no longer need to handle tax file numbers at all. Updated IT systems in the department now mask tax file numbers from providers and automate their secure transfer between relevant systems; in other words, the future design eliminates the need for providers to handle tax file numbers while preserving the essential function of the program.

A tax file number is essential for an income contingent loan program like VET student loans because the loan is repaid through the tax system. A tax file number enables accurate tracking of a student's loan. It ensures the correct linkage to their Australian Taxation Office account and supports repayments as the student's income grows. Without a tax file number, the integrity of the program would be compromised. Providers have always been subject to strict integrity safeguards, including compliance with disclosure provisions under the VSL Act, extensive approval processes and mandatory reporting of any data breaches. These protections have applied in the past and will continue to apply, and, with the new IT architecture, we will go further. Tax file numbers will be masked from providers, and the secure handling of sensitive identifiers, which is really important, will occur within government systems designed expressly for that purpose—not for other purposes but expressly for that purpose.

The bill is not just about fixing a technical gap. It is about supporting Australians who rely on VET to build their careers. We know that there are many young and mature students out there who are looking at getting assistance to get through a VET program, and, in my home region of Braddon, the importance of VET cannot be overstated. Across the electorate of Braddon, VET student loans have helped locals train for many jobs like aged-care and disability support. Those sectors are growing rapidly as our population ages, and we want to encourage more people to get into those roles. It's really important. The loans have also backed apprentices and trainees in construction and advanced manufacturing. These are the industries that drive major projects in Tasmania, like the Marinus Link and beyond. Those construction and advanced manufacturing jobs are very, very important for the renewable rollout that we are seeing right across the country but particularly in my region of Braddon, in Tasmania, and we need to back in apprentices and trainees and give them every opportunity to go through the VET system and get trained.

Students at TasTAFE's Burnie and Devonport campuses are completing diplomas in things like agriculture, project management and nursing skills. These are essential for strengthening our hospitals, advancing our renewable energy projects and also supporting our local businesses. Private providers in Braddon play a vital role too. They deliver courses in hospitality, tourism and tour guiding, which create pathways for jobs that showcase our region. We have a fantastic region to showcase and we need really high-skilled people. People can get on board, get skills and training and get involved in those courses to help showcase our region through events like the Wynyard Tulip Festival, which runs every year. It's run by a small committee, but they need lots of volunteers and people with skills. There's also the Unconformity festival, which happens every two years in Queenstown, on the West Coast, and brings in people both from all over Tasmania and from mainland Australia, and there are also international people that visit there. Having really well-trained people with the skills and the opportunities to showcase those regions is vitally important. Without VET student loans, many of these students would face upfront costs they simply could not afford, and we see a lot of students make the decision about whether to actually get involved in a VET course based on whether or not they can afford it.

Free TAFE has been tremendous in supporting many students, both young and mature, in realigning their careers and changing the shape of what they want to do for the rest of their life. That measure has been really helpful. This bill's changes around student loans will make a difference in people's lives. The bill ensures that the system underpinning those opportunities is sound, secure and futureproof. We want more aged-care workers. We want more electricians for renewable energy projects, and we need more chefs in a local cafes and restaurants. These are the sorts of opportunities that students get when they go through a VET course.

The VET Student Loans program has been helping Australians access training since 2017, but during a recent review we found something important—that the law didn't clearly allow providers to handle tax file numbers, even though they needed to at the time for the system to actually work. We're fixing that, and that's something this bill is doing. Since early this year, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations has upgraded its IT systems so providers will no longer see the tax file numbers. They're now masked and transferred automatically.

This government is investing $42.2 million over four years to build a modern VSL platform. From 2026, the program will run on a new secure system for assessments and payments. The bill starts the day after royal assent, so it's really urgent that we get this bill dealt with. It confirms that past practices were lawful, but it also introduces a safer and more modern way to handle that sensitive data like tax file numbers and that data that students have. Why does it matter? Well, it matters particularly because VET student loans make training more accessible. They let students defer fees and gain skills in our areas that the economy needs most around science, technology, engineering—in our licensed trades. They help tackle skills shortages and create better job outcomes.

In Braddon, the area that I represent in Tasmania, that means that there will be more nurses in a hospital—we need a lot more of them—and more skilled trades for housing projects. We are working on that really hard as a government, and we need more people to come on board to get the skills to be able to build those homes. There will also be more technicians for renewable energy. As I said earlier, we have a very big renewable energy hub right on the north-west coast of Tasmania, and I want to see our young people have opportunities to get trained to be technicians and work in those renewable energies that provide really great future jobs and good, secure jobs for the future for those young people. It means stronger local businesses and a stronger regional economy.

This bill is about doing the right thing for students, for providers and for the integrity of our loan system. It ensures that VSL can keep supporting Australians without the complexity that's there, without uncertainty. Really importantly, it is with the privacy protections that the public rightly expects.

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