Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I move opposition amendment (1):

(1)    Schedule 1, item 11, page 5 (after line 7), after subsection 9A(1), insert:

     (1A)    A designated authority for a State must use a risk-management approach when considering whether to recommend that an approved provider should be re-registered.

I talked about this earlier so I will not hold up the Senate much longer, except to draw the attention of the Senate to a passage in the letter from the Deputy Prime Minister to Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, which she tabled yesterday, in which the Deputy Prime Minister talked about the draft guidelines being finalised with states and territories in developing a risk management approach to re-registration as agreed by the Ministerial Council for Tertiary Education and Employment in September 2009. So I repeat the point that I made yesterday: the government, the rhetoric from the government, is telling us that they are already doing it and that they will be doing it. We think it is important enough for it to be enshrined in the legislation and we do not really understand why the government have a problem with this, given that the government have said on many occasions now that they actually agree that this is something that should happen. Combined with the second reading amendment which the Senate supported yesterday, which was moved by Senator Hanson-Young for the Greens, as well as the statement that was made by the Deputy Prime Minister in the letter to Senator Hanson-Young, I think it is an absolute no-brainer. I strongly commend this amendment to the Senate.