Ms SAFFIN (1:53 PM) —I am pleased to speak in support of the Higher Education Support Amendment (VET FEE-HELP and Providers) Bill 2009and, indeed, any bill that has to do with education. For me, it is about personal commitment, it is about policy, it is about politics and it is about access, fairness and equity—all the issues that come to the fore when we are talking about education. That commitment to education flows right across the members of the government, and this is just one of the commitments of the Minister for Education, Ms Gillard, to education reforms. This particular reform is important because it is about giving help and support where it is needed. It is also about credentials, about people getting the credentials they need to improve their lives, get the jobs they want, be able to do the extra study and be in a position where they have some choices in life. This bill addresses both of those important issues: help and support, and appropriate and proper credentials.

In this contribution I will give a brief outline of the bill and then go into some details and the rationale for the bill, as well as make some general comments about how it is of relevance to the people in my electorate of Page.

Vocational education and training, which the bill addresses, is a key plank of our education system and indeed our higher education system. There is a wonderful TAFE in my area, the North Coast TAFE, which is headquartered at Port Macquarie. Its director, Elizabeth McGregor, is a very fine public servant who is dedicated to the educational needs of our region, which are substantial. In fact, I met with her only last week to talk about some of those needs. I know that they have put in a submission to try and secure some more funds for their capital infrastructure works. I wish them well and I hope they are successful with their bid.

It is really important that students are able to access loans and the variety of support that they need, particularly if they are undertaking vocational education and training, because that is the basis of a lot of our skills and skills development. It goes to the heart of building up our skills in Australia, because we know that they have been run down over the past period and they have not been addressed in a national framework. There has been some good work done, much of it due to the goodwill of local providers—not through working cooperatively within an overarching national framework, and that is one of the key parts of this bill.

To return to my electorate, we have the TAFE and many campuses across Page. They run fine courses. I have studied at the TAFE in my own local area—it helped me get some of the skills that I needed—and I have also taught there. So I have had the privilege of being both a student and a teacher there, and I stay very engaged with that community and with the teachers and the students. We also have really good adult community education through the North Coast adult community education centres. They are right across my electorate as well. I have also worked in those centres and studied in those centres and run the local adult community education centre. I sat for some time on the New South Wales adult education ministerial advisory council, so I was in a position to give advice in that area and thoroughly enjoyed it.

There are 97 primary schools across Page. That is a substantial number of schools. All those schools, the children, their parents, the school communities and tradespeople, or tradesmen primarily, are the direct beneficiaries of the government’s economic stimulus package, of which 70 per cent is directed towards infrastructure. That is a lot of infrastructure across Page. Eighty-four of those schools are primary, special or K-12, and they are all sharing in the Building the Education Revolution infrastructure package as well as the national pride program.

This bill goes to the heart of the support that students require. It will ensure that students’ access to assistance under VET FEE-HELP is limited to VET units of study that are essential to the completion of the relevant VET course of study. This is so that the students get the appropriate level of credentials and skills required to access those further training and education opportunities and access the jobs that they want. It ensures consistency between the FEE-HELP and VET FEE-HELP assistance schemes. The bill will also apply previous amendments made to the higher education—

The SPEAKER —Order! It being 2 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 97. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member for Page will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.