Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak on the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit report 466, the annual report of 2016-17. I want to commend the committee for being one of the most collaborative committees I work on in the Senate.

Senator O'Sullivan interjecting—

Yes. Good call, Senator O'Sullivan—except for the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee. As opposition senators and government senators, we are tasked with ensuring that public finances administered by the Commonwealth government are accounted for. We have a very close relationship with the ANAO. We also have a very close relationship with the Parliamentary Budget Office. I know the chair of the committee has gone to the heart of that relationship, actually farewelling Mr Bowen, who's done some great work, and welcoming our new Parliamentary Budget Officer. The involvement of the committee in that selection process augurs well for coming years, with the committee and the PBO working together to strengthen the financial reporting mechanisms to parliament and, indeed, to the broader public, which is our role.

I briefly wanted to touch on some of the work that the committee has been able to achieve over the past year. Sometimes, we get buried in our ANAO Defence procurement reports. A couple of our members are very, very passionate about this particular area of public expenditure. Even at our last hearing, the changes that have been made over time in reporting and accountability measures by the Defence Force in the spend of public money has been considerable, but there is a way to go in that particular area. I think of Ms Brodtmann's role and focus on that particular area of public policy.

I want to touch on one of the reports that I appreciated being able to be involved in prosecuting—ANAO report No. 31. It's located on page 7 of our annual report. It goes to the administration of the Higher Education Loan Program debt and repayments. This report examined how we could account for the ballooning debt that HELP has been subject to. It is a mature program based on a solid foundation of collecting student loan debt through the income system. Nevertheless, it identified scope for the Australian Taxation Office and the Department of Education and Training to make meaningful improvements to important aspects of the program's administration.

Audit No. 6 found that nine Commonwealth entities involved in the audit had made a solid start in implementing the requirements for the first corporate plan under the PGPA Act. This particular issue has consumed the committee both in the previous parliament and in this parliament in how our government departments are going to be moving to a more public, iterative process of implementing their corporate plans and how that will actually be reported back to parliamentarians and, through the parliament, back to the public.

One issue I raised was that the construction of the corporate plans and the reporting of changes was actually not going to be made in a timely enough manner for Senate estimates. So opposition senators who are keen to prosecute departmental spend and make sure that they are accountable to the outcomes identified within their corporate plans need to have that reported publicly in a timely manner so that that can be of use in Senate estimates. We were able to make those sorts of changes because the committee works in a bipartisan manner to improve the financial reporting of the departments of the Commonwealth.

In terms of ANAO reports, one of the other reports I was quite interested in was on the VET FEE-HELP scheme. We saw an increase in that loan book from $25.6 million in 2009 to $2.9 billion in 2015. That's quite an incredible jump, and it was as a result of inappropriate mechanisms and the program itself being set up in a way that almost encouraged those accessing the program to game the system. We heard horror stories, as the Labor plan rolled out, of vulnerable young people, vulnerable people in a range of communities, being offered iPads as inducements to sign up for education programs that they would never even attempt, let alone complete. It just goes to show that the Labor Party talk big, but, when it comes to actually implementing sound policy that achieves outcomes and is fiscally responsible, fail at every single measure.

It's disappointing, because this program was aimed at assisting those very vulnerable people in our community who do need to engage in the vocational education and training sector to upskill and better improve their chances of getting a job and fulfilling their potential, if you like. Many of these people may not have finished year 12, and as they age, as they mature, they find that there is something that they want to engage in. They find the appropriate training course to give them those skills and they then seek a scheme that they can enter. That was the intent. Unfortunately, because of the way it was set up, because of the failure to set up appropriate checks and balances, this failed on every measure, which is incredibly disappointing not only from a financial perspective but also for those that were taken for a ride by those unscrupulous VET providers.

It's all thanks to the coalition government—which took measures to assist that scheme and, in the end, started from scratch and designed a scheme—that we will achieve the outcomes we need to have a skilled workforce in areas of shortage and that those students can be supported through milestones as they go on that educational journey.

I do enjoy the work of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit. I commend the annual report. And, for those of us that do get a bit busy, the ANAO reports can provide some really useful information to senators in the public policy areas that you're interested in and ensure what we all want, which is the responsible spending of public money. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.