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Business View Oceania - October/November 2017
skills to advance their careers or opening
up a different career path.
Most Australians would unfortunately
be familiar with the stories about vulner-
able students being ripped off or conned
into signing up for courses they would
never complete after Labor changed VET
FEE-HELP and opened the floodgates to
shonky providers. Once data emerged
highlighting the issues with VET FEE-
HELP, the Coalition acted to close La-
bor’s loopholes. While the 20 measures
our government put in place over 2015
and 2016 have stemmed some of the
losses in VET FEE-HELP, with total 2016
loans projected to be hundreds of mil-
lions of dollars lower than in 2015, it is
also clear that a completely new pro-
gram was essential to weed out the rort-
ers and restore credibility to VET.
The new safeguards we’ve put in place
through our VET Student Loans program
mean students can have confidence that
the training they are receiving is aligned
to workplace needs and strong employ-
ment outcomes, and is being delivered
by training providers who have met the
tougher benchmarks we have set. At the
same time, taxpayers can have confi-
dence the loans the Government is pro-
viding are for genuine students, learning
skills that will contribute to the economy
and increasing the likelihood the loans
will be repaid.
One of the key changes has been to
acknowledge that while our education
system should include opportunities for
students to pursue particular passions,
taxpayers rightly expect that their loans
for VET courses should be aligned to
employment opportunities which is why
we’ve worked with states and territories
to determine which courses we will sub-
sidise per the skills they have determined
are in demand.
In the broader skills space, we are com-
mitted to creating more opportunities for
Australians to complete apprenticeships.
We know that this model of training,
combining study with real world experi-
ence, produces job-ready graduates with
the skills needed in modern workplac-
es. We’re exploring a range of reforms
to support students into and through ap-
prenticeships, and to ensure the design
of the system meets the needs of both
students and employers.
For students that choose higher edu-
cation to start a career, the Turnbull Gov-
ernment will this year detail reforms to
ensure the system fosters excellence, ac-
cessibility and fairness but we also want
to ensure it is sustainable for future gen-
erations. The costs to taxpayers of high-
er education, have, over recent years,
grown dramatically. Since 2009, with the
demand driven system, taxpayer fund-
ing for Commonwealth supported plac-
es in higher education has increased by
67 per cent as compared to 33 per cent
growth in nominal GDP over the same
period of time.
An important principle however is that
while the Commonwealth is the principal
funder of universities, that they retain
their autonomy. We need to give them the