Subjects: Polls; Coalition’s plan for jobs and growth; Bill Shorten’s spending; Labor’s up-front-fees for vocational education students.
EO&E………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
Welcome back to the program, as promised I am now joined by the Vocational Education Minister, Senator Scott Ryan. Thank you very much for your company.
SCOTT RYAN:
Good afternoon Peter, thanks for having me.
VAN ONSELEN:
Are you panicking yet? Today’s Newspoll, is it time to start running around like headless chooks and think ‘hang on a second what is going on here’?
RYAN:
Peter, I think you have asked me that question when I have been on over the years. That is something for people like yourself to talk about, I have always said that every election is a close one. I think, and I think I have said to you before, that particularly since what happened in Queensland a few years ago that any politician that takes any election for granted is a mug. And that is not what the Government is doing, we know that we need to earn the trust of the Australian people with our plan for economic growth and for jobs for the coming three years.
VAN ONSELEN:
How do you square this interesting dynamic that has developed, which is that you are trailing in the polls and it is very close – it may be different in key marginal seats we know that with candidate names and so forth coming into the mix – but how do you square on the one hand you are trailing – according to Newspoll now you haven’t been in front for the last seven polls – yet two thirds of voters still believe that the Coalition is going to win. Most of the money has been on the Coalition, so much so that you are well ahead on the betting odds. How do you square voter expectations that you will get back with what they are telling pollsters when asked which seems to suggest a vote for the other side?
RYAN:
Peter, to be honest I don’t try to. Every voter I meet, every opportunity I have, I try to convince people of the need to support the Turnbull Government. I don’t take anyone from granted, you probably need to get Mr Newspoll or Galaxy on to talk about what they think about that. But that is not something that I am in a position to comment on.
VAN ONSELEN:
Equally, looking at some of the specifics from the campaign though, Bill Shorten we heard him at his media conference just at the start of this program, turning this into a fight of goof vs evil. You know, now both sides do this to some extent, but how do you combat this idea that Shorten is running on, which is that you’re trying to give the big end of town a break whereas he is trying to deliver working families better funding for health and education. It is a simple line, but how do you combat it? Because I suspect that people’s natural tendency is to think good of that, rather than think bad of it.
RYAN:
I saw in your introduction Peter that you said that there were two separate arguments going on here, one from the Government. We do have a plan for economic growth. We do have a plan to balance the Budget. We make difficult decisions that are in the national interest like freezing GP and Medicare rebates, and we are honest about that. You know the one word that never comes out of Bill Shorten’s mouth is ‘jobs’. He campaigns on a list of grievances, all completely un-funded; he gets caught on camera making a flippant joke about ‘another million dollars on the spend-o-metre’. Between his million dollars there, and his $3 billion today, I mean even Bill Shorten has to start thinking that that is going to be real money at some point. He doesn’t talk about jobs, we have got a plan for jobs, we have got a plan for economic growth, and we believe that is in the national interest. We believe, and so do I, that we put our case (inaudible) to the Australia people, that they will support a Government that is serious about difficult decisions, having a plan for economic growth. Up against the Labor Party who we know can’t be trusted on our borders, we know that they can’t be trusted with the Budget. In 2007 it was Kevin Rudd who said ‘the reckless spending must stop’ and then we saw the greatest Budget blow-out in 40 years. Now we have Bill Shorten promising $66 billion, at the most recent count and with six weeks to go, of unfunded promises which means more debt and higher taxes.
VAN ONSELEN:
You can’t be too confident about your plan for jobs, the forward estimates show that the unemployment rate is staying the same.
RYAN:
Every year to keep the unemployment rate where it is, you actually need to have strong jobs growth. That was part of the success under the Howard government, we had record jobs growth then, the best in decades. And you need a strong economy just to deal with population growth and the workforce. We also like to make sure our Budget forecasts are realistic because we all lived through the Rudd-Gillard-Swan disaster of constantly saying there is a pot of golf at the end of the rainbow next year. Labor would spend up big on that premise, and then we would end up with tens of billions of dollars in unforeseen deficits. They were foreseen by commentators, they were foreseen by the opposition at the time, when we were in opposition. And Labor is promising to do that again. Now, Australia under Labor will be much more exposed to economic risk, will be much more exposes to an economic downturn. We are making sure that Australians get job opportunities as our economy changes, and that we bring the Budget back into a sustainable position. Labor and Bill Shorten don’t have a plan for that. Bill Shorten just has got a plan to get elected.
VAN ONSELEN:
This is a bit of a Dorothy Dixer, but quite frankly I find the topic interesting and I do want to hear your response to it. The Labor Party are planning to reimpose a cap on vocational places, or at least a cap on the capacity for you to receive funding. A lot of vocational courses go beyond that, I don’t understand – I can understand, I guess, at one level fiscally why you might try to do this – but the problem with it surely is that if you have got a (inaudible) access point into university, how can you then turn around and limit it for people learning a vocational trade? I get the economics of this area, but surely there is another way?
RYAN:
Well Peter, you raise a very good point. All the disasters that I am dealing with in this vocational education space – the dodgy providers, the rip-off of students, the outrageous charging of disadvantaged students and even indigenous students more than other students, the free laptops the dodgy brokers, the court actions – they’re all a direct result of Labor’s scheme in 2012. Which we started to reign in over 12 months ago, and we’re dealing with tens of thousands of legacy cases from 2013 and early 2014. But you’re right to highlight the risk of the approach that Bill Shorten announced in his Budget Reply. He announced an $8000 per student per year loan cap. Now that means there are thousands of students at TAFEs right around the country let alone the ones in private providers of reputable standing that are going to face up-front fees in the hundreds or thousands of dollars to finish their courses or to start their courses. Labor has no plan for vocational education. They created this mess, we’ve been busy cleaning it up and what they announced three weeks ago actually means up-front fees for TAFE students. That’s what it all means.
VAN ONSELEN:
But what is the answer to that though? I mean I realise it’s not your job to spruik their policy, but what is – I haven’t heard it directly from them – what is the Labor answer to why it’s okay to expect people studying for a vocational educational qualification to not receive the HECS equivalent benefit so that they don’t incur up-front fees? I would have thought that if you look into the demographics of who is studying vocational education courses versus who is studying university courses, notwithstanding the opening up of universities, I suspect that it is still less privileged people that are more disproportionately doing vocational studies than that are doing higher education studies?
RYAN:
And this is the true grievous element of Labor’s screwing up of vocational education in this country through their disastrous VET FEE-HELP scheme. It has impacted on the most disadvantaged. Vocational education has a critical role to play, particularly for those who may not have had every educational opportunity or success in their schooling years, for those who are seeking re-training and particularly in regional areas. Labor has just imposed this unilateral number, and there are courses in information technology, courses right across nursing, engineering, other courses that involve computers, high-capital costs, pilots – all these courses, including at public TAFE institutions, and private colleges with no issues around probity that have been in place for decades -not the ones we’re reading about in the press due to the mess Labor created like Phoenix and others – all those students will now face the risk of up-front fees, which they wouldn’t face if they went to university. Now, they’ve run a scare campaign unfounded in reality on deferred costs for university students that you don’t have to pay upfront, now they’re willing to impose them on some of our most vulnerable students. It’s another Labor vocational disaster.
VAN ONSELEN:
Scott Ryan, appreciate your company, thanks for joining us.
RYAN:
Thanks, Peter.
[ends]