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Wednesday, 29 February 2012
Page: 1309

Senator CHRIS EVANS (Western Australia—Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (18:49): Thank you, Senator Rhiannon. The reason I objected to the last part of your original amendment is that we have not done that consideration and I was not able to be clear yet which groups ought to be represented—so I did not want to do that on that run. Clearly, your amendment, which will now become part of the bill and hopefully the act, provides for people having 'qualifications or experience relevant to the operations of providers from across the international education and training sector'. So it will be representative of the various sections across that—obviously, university, VET, private and public—but I do not want to try on the run to define those things.

I can give you an assurance that someone with experience in the ELICOS area would need to be part of that, and we will work our way through the group. But, clearly, by the insertion of this clause it has to be representative of the breadth of the sector, and I am quite happy to indicate that ELICOS is an important part of the sector and it will need to be part of that representative group.