Senator NETTLE (12:14 PM) —The Australian National Training Authority Amendment Bill 2003, together with the related legislation—the Vocational Education and Training Funding Amendment Bill 2003—gives expression to the government's continuing inability to recognise the significance of education in building this nation and, therefore, to invest properly in the sector. The ANTA bill we are dealing with today seeks to remove the requirement for government to incorporate the details of each ANTA agreement, when resolved, into the principal act by way of amending legislation. The Minister for Education, Science and Training has failed to adequately explain the need for this change, and I look forward to his response in the chamber to those comments. The change clearly removes an opportunity for parliamentary review of the agreements.

These agreements touch the lives of millions of Australians. The minister himself noted in his second reading speech that the VET sector currently involves over 1.7 million students. He might also have noted that thousands of staff, most Australian communities and, as a result, the vitality of our society and our economy are also affected by these agreements. Yet the minister does not see the need to have the details of these agreements debated as a matter of course, instead offering a one-off tabling of the current agreement in order to make the details public.

The Australian Greens are keen advocates of open government, of disclosure and of transparency. We will be supporting amendments that require the government to table the contents of the agreements for parliamentary scrutiny. I will also be moving an amendment to ensure that ANTA agreements are made available on the web. Indeed the amendment of the ANTA Act is the only opportunity that the federal parliament has to debate VET policy, once every three years. This legislation proposes to remove that level of scrutiny and opportunity for the federal parliament to discuss the VET sector.

The history of this government's commitment to the funding of VET is not a happy one. Perhaps it is not surprising that the minister seeks to downplay the parliament's capacity for debate on this issue, given their woeful record in the funding of VET, in particular their support for Australia's world leading public VET sector—the TAFE sector. The public TAFE system meets the needs of the overwhelming majority of the 1.7 million VET students and this system is in desperate need of increased levels of public funding that reflect the real growth pressures that the sector has and continues to experience. The tragedy is that TAFE should be the real success story of the Australian public education system. TAFE has been accessible and relevant to millions of students who have enjoyed the benefits of further education when all other avenues were closed to them. The TAFE sector is the envy of other countries.

The success of TAFE says a lot about Australia's commitment to equity. It, along with the public school system, is perhaps the greatest contributor to the maintenance and development of Australian society as a place of equity and opportunity for all, regardless of their background or their ability to pay. It is only through the provision of a strong, accessible, well-resourced and high-quality public education system that we can build the vibrant, diverse and cohesive sort of society that we all want to live in. But this is a vision that the government has shown by its actions that it does not share.

Education is not just about equipping people for the job market. To limit the scope of our educational institutions to that narrow focus is to sell short the future of our kids and our communities and it is to underestimate the true value of public education services to the whole community. This is no more true than in the TAFE sector. For millions of Australians, TAFE is the provider of their future education needs. It is the source of continued growth through education for far more Australians than those who attend universities. It is also the sector that services the largest proportion of those students who have done it tough at school and who are second-chance learners.

TAFE provides vital retraining opportunities for those who fall foul of an uncertain job market or who make an active career change. Among my own group of friends, I know of many in those circumstances who have utilised the TAFE sector in order to make those changes in their lives. These kinds of opportunities are being lost by the continued underfunding of VET, particularly the underfunding of TAFE. Opportunities last year were denied to 40,000 applicants who could not find a place at TAFE. That is 40,000 lives put on hold largely as a result of the underfunding that is perpetuated by the coming Vocational Education and Training Funding Amendment Bill 2003.

But funding is not the only issue. The government are not content with having starved the TAFE sector of funds over the last seven years; they are also hell-bent on the introduction of a competitive market in the VET sector—that is, the privatisation of the VET sector. It is an ideological move, not just a mean cost-saving measure. The current ANTA negotiations will no doubt reflect this approach, as they did last time. We know this not because of any leaks from the department, not because of any up-front approach by the minister, but because this government's vision for TAFE is part of a well-rehearsed ideological script for a play that we have seen before in a whole range of different sectors. The record in the TAFE sector and the VET sector is there to see.

In 1996-97 the government introduced a so-called efficiency dividend, which actually resulted in a five per cent reduction of funds provided to ANTA, coupled with the abolition of real growth funding to the value of five per cent of total funding. The screw was tightened again in 1998 with further reductions in TAFE funding of $20 million, again in the name of efficiency. When we use the term `efficiency', we mean of course doing more with less money.

As this funding squeeze continues, access to VET funds for TAFE competitors in the private sector is increasing. In 1995 the total funding for non-TAFE providers was $58.6 million. By 2001 it had increased to $318.7 million. The impact of this government sponsored privatisation of vocational education and training on a weakened TAFE sector is significant. These are not the actions of a government that cares about the TAFE sector and what it provides for our community.

The minister claims that the new funding arrangements incorporate growth funds, but the facts tell another story. With growth running at nearly six per cent, the government's two per cent funding can hardly be seen as providing for growth. In fact, the total 2001 Commonwealth contribution to operating revenue of $912.9 million was $34 million less than in 1997—again, not addressing this growth.

It is important not to forget that it is not just the federal government that has been busy undermining the effectiveness of the TAFE sector. The Labor government in my own state of New South Wales has recently got in on the act. Instead of showing the leadership and the vision to safeguard the accessibility of TAFE, the Carr Labor government has increased fees by 300 per cent. Perhaps most damaging, it has introduced up-front fees of $350 for entry level courses—courses that were previously provided free to students. This comes in New South Wales on the back of all of the state sponsored casualisation of TAFE teachers, reductions in course contact hours, the sacking of over 1,000 departmental staff and rising workloads for the remaining full-time teachers in the TAFE sector.

The Australian Greens absolutely reject this continuing attack on the TAFE sector—a sector that is too often forgotten—and, as a result, becomes easy prey to cost cutting and privatisation. It cannot be said often enough that the public TAFE system is a great Australian education resource that drives equity and opportunity in our society, and it desperately needs our wholehearted support. For the Greens, this means integrating TAFE into a high-quality, well-funded and free-to-all-students public education system from preschool through to TAFE and university. It is only through a public provider that we can focus on the benefits of education for the whole of society: that is, focusing not just on training but on the development of good citizens, focusing not just on the needs of one employer but on the needs of the whole economy, focusing not just on making money but on building a successful and equitable society by recognising the role that education has to play in such a quest.

The Greens are absolutely committed to a well-funded public system of TAFE colleges remaining the dominant provider of vocational education and training and, indeed, increasing its market share within the VET sector. In New South Wales, my colleague Greens MLC Lee Rhiannon has introduced a `Save TAFE' bill, which is to restore TAFE funding and to secure a strong and dynamic future for it as a dominant provider. At a federal level, the Greens are committed to reversing the trends of decreased funding per student. That means we need growth in Commonwealth funding of TAFE to meet demand. It is a pretty simple concept to me: more students going into TAFE and ensuring that more funding goes into TAFE. That means returning to a policy we had in the early nineties where funding increases met that growth in demand. This would involve about $180 million per year—based on 5.8 per cent growth per annum—beyond the existing Commonwealth budget. In addition, the Greens support additional funds of $180 million to remove tuition fees, making TAFE free to the student. The Greens believe that for every one per cent of growth in demand for the TAFE sector an additional $27 million per annum should be made available on a cumulative basis.

There also needs to be catch-up funding for this lack of growth funding since the coalition government came into power at a federal level. That means an additional emergency payment to redress the damage done by Dr Kemp's `growth through efficiency' measures and the absence of growth funding in TAFE and the damage that has done to the sector. The Greens also believe that we need to end the growth in user-choice funding of private providers. That means an immediate freeze on any new funding for private providers. The Greens support a ban on the funding of private providers where TAFE can, or could, provide the training. That means an end to public funding of private registered training organisations that directly compete with the efficient and public TAFE sector. The Greens also call for and support a public inquiry into appropriate standards for registered training organisations. We believe that the current Australian Quality Training Framework proposals would severely undermine the quality of training in Australia and should not be implemented. A public inquiry should be convened to establish and implement appropriate standards.

These measures and visions that the Australian Greens have for the VET sector—and the TAFE sector, in particular—may not appear to be revolutionary. I do not think I would describe them in that way. Certainly, they are not unaffordable, but they would make a huge impact on the vitality of TAFE and, as a result, benefit millions of Australian families, many of whom come from low socioeconomic backgrounds and many of whom are the battlers that this Prime Minister claims to represent.

The government has a clear choice: it can choose to invest in the future—in the education of society that benefits the entire community—or it can continue with its miserly user-pays ideology that cares not about the wealth of the whole society but only about the benefits achieved by individuals. This bill seeks to remove some of the opportunities for this debate on these vital issues to occur in this parliament, and the Greens do not support that. We do not support the shunting of TAFE onto the sidelines. TAFE should be at the heart of an equitable, accessible and top-quality public education system that is supported by government for the benefit of the whole of the community.