Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Data Streamlining) Amendment Bill 2023. As a constructive opposition, we've always said that we will assess each of the Albanese government's proposals on its merits. We note the amendments in this bill seek to support changes to the way VET activity data are collected and submitted by registered training organisations to the National Centre for Vocational Education Research, the NCVER, and modernise the way that VET activity data can be accessed and used by authorised users. We share the government's commitment to resolving the situation in national VET activity data collection, which can see data lags of up to 20 months. That is certainly not an acceptable situation, and it is one we sought to address when we were in government.

Specifically, I note the bill's purpose is to improve data collection as part of the VET data streamlining reforms by imposing an obligation on registered training organisations to report data under the act. The bill amends the act to allow the skills minister to delegate their powers to agree to all or part of the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Data Provision Requirements) Instrument 2020—the DPRs—to other individuals or bodies, such as senior officials of the Commonwealth or the states and territories. The bill will enable the Secretary of the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations to release information which excludes personal information, unless the personal information is the name of the RTO, to the public about VET training, subject only to ministerial agreement. The bill specifies that the secretary may make a determination permitting the collection, use or disclosure of information for the purposes of designing, building, operating, maintaining, or testing a VET data system.

These reforms were first pursued under our previous coalition government, with the aim of better facilitating the government collecting and reporting on data extracted from the vocational education and training system. They were also an aspect of the Heads of Agreement for Skills Reform agreed to in July 2020 between the Commonwealth and state and territory governments. The bill seeks to implement some of the recommendations outlined in the Braithwaite review's All eyes on quality: review of the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Act 2011 report. This review was commissioned by the previous coalition government, which in turn responded by supporting, in principle, the recommendations relevant to this legislation.

For these reasons, we will be providing support for the aims of this bill, but we should note that there are concerns in the training sector about these changes. It is on that basis that we have sought a commitment from the government to subject this bill to a thorough committee process to allow those concerns to be aired and addressed. I am pleased the government has agreed to make that commitment. I welcome the ongoing and constructive relationship between the office of the minister and my office. It enabled a constructive outcome on Jobs and Skills Australia, and I believe it will assist here as well.

The coalition's record in skills and training is a strong one, and these reforms echo the approach we took when we were in government. We had a strong focus on ensuring the skills and training sector would be fit for purpose in the 21st century. While we did a great deal there and achieved a lot, there is always more to do. The fact that the Labor Party inherited a booming skills and training sector from the coalition government is testament to our record. There was real momentum in skills and training thanks to the Liberals and the Nationals. However, since Labor has taken office, we've seen a concerning trend which is of note for this legislation. There has been a clear bias towards prioritising TAFE over all other providers. We absolutely support a strong and well-funded TAFE system—of course we do—but the minister has explicitly said that TAFE should sit at the heart of the VET sector. If we're going to make the skills and training sector fit for the 21st century, we need students to be at the centre of the VET sector. That needs to be our focus. Without industry-led approaches, we will not be able to build the AUKUS submarines, nor will we be able to meet the demands of our ageing workforce or our stretched childcare sector. We need all providers on the field, a level field, working towards skilling Australians. When governments put any one provider on a pedestal over another, it creates unnecessary friction and risks losing sight of what matters: skilling Australians. Just as, culturally, governments need to stop creating issues on VET and university pathways in the minds of young Australians, they need to stop creating barriers within the VET sector itself. We need young Australians to see a career through a trade as holding the same status as a career through university—not more, not less, the same.

So why is the government sending the message to Australian students that studying at TAFE is any more worthy than studying at an industry-led training organisation? Skills and capabilities need to be our focus, and government reforms need to reflect that. We recognise the whole training sector is worthy of our time and our focus, which is why we have worked to secure a committee process for this bill. What works for one part of the training sector may not work for all. Seeking the widest possible consultation is vital to getting this right, and I would encourage those opposite to engage with the entire training sector, not just the same contacts.

It's also worth noting that we're now six months on from the much-hyped Jobs and Skills Summit, where the Prime Minister announced an additional 180,000 fee-free TAFE places for 2023. Of course, we now know the much-vaunted training blitz was more of a whimper than a bang. We know, of the 180,000 committed places, more than 66 per cent already exist and will only be further subsidised. And we now know just 45,000 will be new, and all of them were already announced as part of Labor's fee-free TAFE pre-election commitment. Most incredibly, at Senate estimates the department confirmed 15,000 would be aged-care places, announced in the coalition's March budget through its JobTrainer Fund. So the Labor Party did indeed reannounce 15,000 new places that we had already announced when we were in government this time last year. Thus far, Labor's free TAFE policy has been way more spin than substance. Six months on, this Labor government is doing its level best to pick winners across the skills sector, rather than supporting student choice. We know private RTOs do 70 to 80 per cent of training across our VET sector, and according to ITECA they train 79 per cent of all women across the skills system. We need an even-handed approach to the entire skills sector that provides choice to the next generation of Australian workers.

While we support this legislation, we're keeping a watching brief on this policy area, because we know that Labor's record on skills is not one of success. When last in government, Labor delivered system-wide policy failures. Apprenticeship numbers took a nosedive. Apprentice and trainee numbers were in freefall, with the number in training collapsing by 22 per cent, or 111,300, between June 2012 and June 2013. This was a direct result of funding cuts by the Gillard Labor government in 2012. Labor's loose approach to wage supports oversaw widespread rorting of training incentive payments that were supposed to help apprentices get a skill but instead just subsidised existing worker salaries. Labor's VET FEE-HELP disaster saw the reputation of the Australian skills system hit rock bottom, as tens of thousands of Australians were loaded up with debt for doing courses that would never land them a job. The taxpayer is still picking up the tab for this enormous policy failure, which is now more than $3.3 billion.

The VET FEE HELP scheme, established by the Labor government in 2008 and expanded in 2012, was plagued by systemwide rorting with the exploitation of these loose rules and charging students substantial debts for training that they never undertook or benefitted from. It also targeted people with disabilities and substance-abuse issues, public housing residents, non-English speakers and others with offers of free laptops and other incentives. The stories are quite harrowing. The young single mother who travelled to Cairns to enrol in what soon became apparent as a dodgy diploma, taught by a teacher that didn't have a clue, racked up $12,000 in debt with nothing to show for it. There are literally thousands of stories like this. After cleaning up the skills sector when we were in government, we handed the Albanese government a skills and training system, not just training up but powering ahead, on the back of record investments guaranteed by a strong economy.

Our policies invested more than $13 billion in skills in our final years of government, but we didn't just clean up Labor's mess. We made the most significant reforms to Aussie skills in more than a decade. Guided by an expert review we commissioned the Joyce review and we got on with bringing our skills system into the 21st century. We overhauled and put in place industry led clusters to speed up qualification development, so our skills system could keep up with the evolving needs of our modern economy. We reformed and increased training incentives through new apprenticeship incentive systems, including introducing direct payments to apprentices to see them through their studies and into a job. Our policy settings got apprenticeship numbers up to record levels. For the first time in our history we hit more than 240,000 Australians taking up a trade apprenticeship.

We did all of that while saving a generation of Australian workers from the biggest hit to Australia's workforce since the Great Depression. That's our record, and it's one which will stand the test of time. Today is part of that record as we vote to improve the accessibility and use of data across the skills sector. We will be watching the data closely, and it will be a test for this Albanese government as we look at this data. We will watch what happens to training numbers, and we will watch what happens to the numbers of apprentices in training. There is a reason why this Labor government should not maintain those record numbers that we were able to achieve. Labor talk a big game on skills, but if they cannot maintain the numbers of apprentices that we did then we will know that they've dropped the ball. That's why we support today's legislation, because the data does not lie, and, when you weigh up the numbers, the coalition's record is strong and Labor's record does not fill Australians with confidence. Once again, we will be watching.

Debate adjourned.