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Tuesday, 11 October 2011
Page: 6981

Senator RHIANNON (New South Wales) (15:31): I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations (Senator Evans) to a question without notice asked by Senator Rhiannon today relating to vocational education and training.

In response to my question on TAFE, the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations, Senator Evans, provided some interesting and worrying insights into the government's motivations. The minister failed to explain that federal government policy in VET and TAFE is increasingly based on reducing government investment in the sector, encouraging the growth of private providers, giving more control to business and increasing the contribution to the cost of their education by individual students. The VET sector is the worst funded education sector in Australia and has sustained reductions in government investment for almost 15 years. This is a matter of great interest to the people of New South Wales, where there are more than 550,000 students enrolled at TAFE institutes and campuses—there are 10 institutes and 130 campuses across our state. I congratulate the teachers in the TAFE system for the excellent work they do, despite years of government underfunding.

Governments have introduced income contingent loans into the VET sector to mask the effects of their policies, which have resulted in considerable increases in fees and charges to students. Governments are not proposing to introduce an income contingent loan scheme to help TAFE and VET students who are currently struggling with the cost of their education; they are introducing income contingent loans like VET FEE-HELP to mask the increased costs to students. The federal government argues that income contingent loans will encourage students and workers to enrol in TAFE and VET. That is not true, and history shows how untrue it is. In 1973, the Whitlam government abolished TAFE student fees. That resulted in enrolments increasing from 400,700 in 1973 to 671,013 students in 1975—a 59 per cent increase. That made such a difference to so many people's lives and helped to increase the skills base of this country.

At a time when our nation has ongoing, critical skills shortages and there are global fears of another financial crisis, changes which threaten the quality and affordability of TAFE will deter many from education and training and undermine the type of society we need to be building, particularly at this critical time, when we need to be working on the transition to a low-carbon economy. A variety of skills in our diverse section of our community is urgently needed.

The Productivity Places Program is also relevant to this debate. The PPP was a clumsy attempt by the federal government to cut costs in the TAFE and VET sector, and to increase the share of the so-called VET market held by private for-profit providers. Though it succeeded in these objectives, it failed students, industry and the community. More than 75 per cent of PPP funding went to private for-profit providers. The program was an attempt to privatise the TAFE system, effectively by stealth. You would have to say, when you look at the figures, that it is actually an example of the failure of the market in this area.

The Productivity Places Program was a hastily cobbled together election initiative of the former Rudd government. The $2.1 billion program was supposed to provide 711,000 new or additional places over five years. It did not achieve this. It was supposed to deliver higher qualifications in skills shortage areas, of which we have many. It failed to do so. It was inadequately funded, with many TAFE institutes unable to bid for places in the program because the funding allocated was less than half the cost of delivery. That skewed the program, making it attractive to private providers, who focused their activity on high-volume, low-cost courses, which, again, do not deliver the highly skilled workforce our country so urgently needs

To view the future, we can look at Victoria, where the coalition government has gone on an extensive program to push VET training into the marketplace. VET in Victoria was:

... confronted with an operating deficit of nearly $125m last year, after public payments to non-taste providers rose almost $140m to $275m.

That is nearly a doubling of costs. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.