Topics: Labor’s plan for upfront fees for TAFE students; apprenticeships.
E&OE…
TIM WEBSTER:
(start of audio)…fairly significantly out of pocket under Labor’s planned changes to the vocational education loans scheme. I read it and I thought ‘really? The Labor Party are going to do that?’ The Minister for Vocational Education Scott Ryan, and pleased to say a very busy Minister at this time of an election campaign has agreed to have a yarn to us. Scott Ryan, g’day Scott.
SCOTT RYAN:
G’day Tim, thanks for having me.
TIM WEBSTER:
Mate, yeah, I read the story and I thought ‘gee, that doesn’t sound like Labor policy to me’. It is very complicated but basically they want to cap the fees (inaudible) to $8,000 for TAFE students. Is that for all TAFE students?
SCOTT RYAN:
No, what Labor has announced Tim – that we have been busy cleaning up the mess in VET FEE-HELP, the vocational education loans scheme that you mentioned – is that they announced, on the Thursday before the election was called, a cap on the amount a student could borrow. What that means is that a student doing a diploma or advanced diploma at an accredited private college or, in the examples we have talked about today, at TAFEs can, where the course costs more than $8,000, they are going to have find the money to pay it upfront. We are not talking about small amounts here. To just give you a couple of examples for New South Wales: at the Hunter TAFE to do a Diploma of Maritime Operations some students are going to have to find up to $13,000 to pay on top of the $8,000 loan they will have to take out. Having capped fees, they have only capped the amount that students can get access as part of the loan scheme.
TIM WEBSTER:
Oh I see, so if a course is above and beyond the $8,000 you have got to pay it.
SCOTT RYAN:
This is the consequence of what is another ill thought through policy. Labor uncapping the loan scheme created the disaster that we have seen, and we have introduced a lot of measures to clean it up. There is still a lot of legacy cases that we are dealing with and court cases, but they all relate to incidents before the changes were brought in in April last year. But to give you another example, a smaller amount, at the Parramatta South Western Sydney Institute, to do a Diploma of Water Operations someone is going to have to find $500 on top of the $8,000 they can borrow.
TIM WEBSTER:
I see, yes.
SCOTT RYAN:
And students don’t have to do that to go to university.
TIM WEBSTER:
That’s what I was going to ask you. That doesn’t apply to university does it?
SCOTT RYAN:
And this, again, is an ill thought through consequence of Labor’s policies. A unilateral cap that doesn’t take into account that some courses cost more than others, there are examples in childcare, in information technology, there are examples in engineering. There are a lot of courses that cost below $8,000 that would be covered. But to use these examples from TAFE , I don’t see why someone going to a TAFE should have to essentially find $10,000, but if they went to university they wouldn’t.
TIM WEBSTER:
That’s, as I say, it doesn’t sound very ALP to me, Scott.
SCOTT RYAN:
This vocational education mess that we have inherited, the scandals we have seen, the court actions, the rorts the rip-offs, the federal police getting involved in one instance – that is because this area when Labor loosened it all up, it wasn’t thought through. And what they announced on Budget Reply night was another example of something that hasn’t been thought through. Different university courses cost different amounts, why then a unilateral cap on vocational education? It doesn’t make any sense.
TIM WEBSTER:
Okay, so what do we do to clean that up? You are forever encouraging people, not everyone can go to university can they? So you encourage people to go to TAFE, we need tradies all over the joint. Surely you have to make it as easy as possible to do their course and get qualified.
SCOTT RYAN:
The vocational loan scheme only applies to diplomas and above, so not apprenticeship level TAFE courses, which are covered through other schemes. We have introduced a lot of measures banning the free iPads, limited the behaviour of people who have used (inaudible) to recruit students, requiring there be a longevity of course instruction. And it stopped most of the rorts and rip-offs that we have seen, there is more work to do, which we have issued a discussion paper with lots of options we can move on after the election, because it requires legislation to change for 2017. It can’t just be fixed by ministerial announcement. But, to introduce this unilateral cap on fees is again just an ill thought through, knee-jerk reaction that is going to create more problems. And, remember, we are not talking about the private colleges, the examples I have referred to are TAFEs. Today is National TAFE Day, and we have got Labor saying they are for TAFE students, yet they are going to force potentially thousands of them to pay upfront fees.
TIM WEBSTER:
I just think supporting TAFE in general terms in our country is a very important thing to do in the next ten years or so because there is tradie shortages all over the place, we all know that, so we need more of them.
SCOTT RYAN:
And with apprenticeships, I will say, there is an important element here as well because in the end an apprentice needs an employer. Apprenticeships are on the job learning. And Labor in office, they cut nine separate employer incentives to employ apprentices, totalling $1.2 billion. We have stabilised the system, and there is a little bit of an uptick this year in construction, and more plumbers have started than ever before. So, it is slowly improving, but it has a lot of recovery to go.
TIM WEBSTER:
What are you going to do extra if you get in on July 2?
SCOTT RYAN:
We have invested $900 million in the apprenticeships support network. Which is focussed on matching the right students and the right apprentices to employers, providing the mentoring that we know apprentices need – because learning on the job can be tough – matching the right person to the right employer and the right job is very important to the most important outcome, which is do they complete? Not just do they commence. Because the drop-off rate has been a problem. That started last year, we want to give that some time to (inaudible) and make a proper assessment whether more needs to be done in the coming years.
TIM WEBSTER:
Good on you. Thanks for the chat, I know you are busy. Thanks a lot.
SCOTT RYAN:
Thanks Tim.
(ENDS)