Wednesday, 4 March 2026

 Bridget VALLENCE (Evelyn) (11:13): As the Victorian Liberals and Nationals lead speaker on the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Free TAFE Guarantee) Bill 2026, I first wish to take a moment to give a big shout-out to the 5000 hardworking TAFE teachers right across Victoria doing an amazing job in the face of some very challenging conditions. Our state relies heavily on our TAFE teachers to educate and skill up Victorians and provide them with the qualifications that they need to get decent jobs and help grow our economy. TAFE teachers play a critical role both in the education system and in our community, and I want to personally acknowledge our TAFE teachers and record my appreciation for the work that they do educating Victorians.

In recent times TAFE teachers have been overworked and underpaid. Under the Allan Labor government, an alarming number of TAFE teachers have been required to work unpaid overtime, which has resulted in burnout, unwarranted stress and anxiety.

This has resulted in many teachers leaving the TAFE network, which has put incredible pressure on other teachers and students as a result. It has also resulted in the current shortage of TAFE teachers, which is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. It took almost three years of campaigning by our TAFE teachers, fighting for TAFE teachers and fighting with this government, for our TAFE teachers to be finally recognised and to be provided a decent pay offer by the Allan Labor government. To all the TAFE teachers, thank you. Thank you for the incredible work that you do in helping give the next generation of Victorians the skills that they will need for the jobs of today and the jobs of the future.

Vocational education and training is a critical part of our economy. In so many respects VET is an essential component if Victoria wants to continue to grow its economy and maintain a strong standard of living. The Victorian Liberals and Nationals support a strong VET system that includes a TAFE network that delivers for students and industry. I am a huge advocate for TAFE. My older brother went to TAFE, he got qualified and he has done very well ever since. I have many in my family – almost all of my cousins – and many friends who have attended TAFEs or registered training organisations and have obtained qualifications that have allowed them to embark on successful careers in electrical, plumbing, manufacturing, automotive, construction and horticulture, just to name a few, owning and operating small businesses as a result of their VET training.

I am also proud of the fact that in my electorate of Evelyn we have one of the highest proportions of residents with trade qualifications and one of the highest proportions of residents who are employed in a technical or trade occupation, and I count many of them as my close friends. On a personal note it is wonderful to see so many of my son’s friends who are now undertaking various trade and VET courses as the first stepping stone to their future careers, and my son himself is considering training options and opportunities as he works part-time in a local gas supply business. I wish these young people all the best in their training and their future careers. Whether it is the chippies, the sparkies, the brickies, the health and aged care workers, the early childhood educators, the hospitality staff or emerging farmers, we value the tradies and skilled workers in my local community and across Victoria.

The bill that is now before us represents, regrettably, a missed opportunity for our state to truly strengthen our VET sector. Nonetheless the Victorian Liberals and Nationals will not oppose this bill. But it has to be said that the bill from this tired Labor government is big on spin and rhetoric but very lightweight on substance. On Labor’s watch Victoria has been plunged into a skills crisis. This tired Labor government, in power for 12 years, has mismanaged and underfunded Victoria’s VET system, and we now see a massive skills shortage across a range of sectors. According to the Victorian Skills Authority, Victoria will need an additional 373,000 new skilled workers to enter the Victorian workforce by 2028 and 1.5 million new workers by 2035 just to meet current demand. The most recent data released by the Productivity Commission earlier this month found that Victoria has the lowest VET completion rates per capita in the nation, with the exception of the ACT, and student satisfaction levels were at or below the national average. To add insult to injury, real recurrent VET expenditure per annual hour in Victoria under the Allan Labor government has plummeted by 18 per cent, from $23.77 per hour in 2020 to $19.44 per hour in 2024 – the lowest in the nation. Labor’s disgraceful record on VET funding and completion rates has plunged Victoria into a skills crisis.

This bill represents a massive missed opportunity to introduce real reforms and measures to combat Victoria’s skills shortages and reverse the consistent decline in the skilled workforce after 12 years of Labor rule. Youth unemployment in Victoria is currently sitting at 10.3 per cent, which is 6 per cent higher than the current adult unemployment rate in Victoria. What is even worse is that in Melbourne’s west the youth unemployment rate is currently at a staggering rate of 14.2 per cent.

Right now, 8.5 per cent of Victorians between the ages of 15 and 24 are not in work or education. These young Victorians are at serious risk of becoming part of the long-term unemployed. We need policies from a government that will engage these young Victorians and provide a pathway to a productive future that will enable them to earn a decent salary and allow them to save to buy a home and contribute towards Victoria’s economy. This bill will not achieve any of that. As it was made clear during the bill briefing – and I do thank the minister’s office and departmental officials for their time and information – this bill essentially, in almost all respects, puts into law what is already the status quo. Almost everything that is contained in this bill is already happening. There is really nothing new to see in this bill. All of it has been happening for years, and the government ahead of the election is just after another headline to reannounce what is already happening. It seems this government is completely bereft of policy ideas and just decided to put a fancy title in the bill that will do nothing to fix Victoria’s skills crisis and nothing to create more jobs for young Victorians.

Labor members will claim in their speeches that follow mine that they had to enshrine free TAFE into law to protect it from a future government – what absolute rubbish. The bill is 45 pages long, but only five pages actually deal with the free TAFE guarantee and funding. The rest of the 35 pages give significantly more power to the minister for an interventionist approach in a TAFE network that is struggling under Labor’s rule. It is disingenuous for the government to spruik this bill as merely about free TAFE guarantee, because it is not. It is not until page 38 that the bill even deals with the substantive measure of creating a free TAFE guarantee. The first 37 pages of this bill have nothing to do with free TAFE courses or funding. Rather, they are full of new provisions providing the minister with new wideranging powers, including veto powers, to intervene and control the operations of TAFE. This bill is more about ministerial control and power than anything to do with free TAFE and funding, so the title of the bill is completely misleading. Instead of being called the ‘free TAFE guarantee’ bill, it should be renamed the ‘Labor’s power grab over TAFE’ bill. That would be a more accurate title and would truly reflect the proposals contained in this bill.

While Labor members will likely trot out prepared lines from the minister’s office, such as ‘nation-leading free TAFE’ or ‘free TAFE has been a game changer’, this bill will not do anything different to what the government has already been doing for the last four years. It does nothing to improve that at all – no additional funding, nothing. It has already been doing this for the last four years, so there is no game changer here. TAFEs have already been receiving 70 per cent or more VET funding for the last several financial years. There is nothing on offer to fix Victoria’s skills crisis, and there is nothing that will put more young Victorians into jobs. It is just more of the same from a tired Labor government after a decade of mismanagement.

Part 2 of the bill concerns the creation of a TAFE network, which only consists of TAFE institutes and dual-sector universities. It does not include independent registered training organisations, which are a valuable part of Victoria’s VET system. The bill sets up a TAFE network as the principal provider of vocational education and training in Victoria, and it is not clear why RTOs have been specifically excluded from the network, especially given that the independent sector in Victoria does well and supports approximately 88 per cent of all students in skills training.

Interestingly, one of the key objectives of this network will be to deliver the critical skills required by Victorian industries, employers and local communities. Whilst this objective is desperately needed, there is no detail as to how the network will actually meet this objective. Under new division 1B inserted by the bill, the minister is required to issue a statement of priorities to the TAFE network, and the statement of priorities will include strategic priorities for the TAFE network, which may include financial priorities and performance targets. At the bill briefing, the officials advised that this was not a new measure and that the minister has been issuing statements of priorities to the sector since 2022.

I have reviewed the statement of priorities for 2025, and it is a fairly uninspiring document. Most of the contents is what any student or teacher would expect from the network as a bare minimum. It does not set out any performance benchmarks or key performance indicators, and it says absolutely nothing about financial priorities. It does not mention anything about the massive skills shortage that Victoria is experiencing, and it does not say a thing about how Victoria is going to supply 1.5 million skilled workers by 2035. I would have thought that if you were going to have a statement of priorities, then your number one priority as a government would be measures to address the skills shortages. Labor has let the skills crisis spiral out of control during its 12-year rule.

After the minister issues a statement of priorities, each TAFE will be required to provide a response to the minister as to how they are going to implement the strategic priorities and meet performance targets. The minister is then required to approve the TAFE response, and if the minister is not satisfied with the TAFE response, the minister can refuse to approve it and can impose their own response on the TAFE. In a nutshell, the minister can impose her own veto power on a TAFE’s response and unilaterally impose her own response on how the TAFE will be required to achieve the targets and priorities. This is the Labor Party way. If they are not happy with something, they just ride roughshod over it. You only need to look at the gaslighting this government has engaged in when it attacked Geoffrey Watson SC for daring to put a conservative estimate on the $15 billion that has been corruptly stolen from taxpayers under this government’s watch on the rotten Big Build.

What is even worse under this bill is that if the minister does not exercise her veto power and unilaterally imposes her own response on a TAFE, there is absolutely no requirement for the minister to consult with the TAFE prior to doing so, and the minister is not required to have any regard to the resources or financial circumstances of the TAFE. It is just a cheap and nasty grab for power by Minister Tierney to impose more control and authority over TAFEs after the network has struggled on her watch. In fact this grab for more power and control is emblematic of the intent of this bill and the way in which the government is seeking to take control of every aspect of the VET sector. The TAFEs will also be required to provide progress reports every six months on whether they are achieving their targets, and if I did not know any better, it would sound like the minister is seeking to micromanage TAFEs and subject them to performance management targets. The additional reporting, red tape and bureaucracy that will be imposed on TAFEs to respond to the minister’s strict reporting directives will only serve to put TAFEs under further pressure and strain.

Unlike the TAFEs, the dual-sector universities are more protected from the minister’s intrusion into their affairs, as a result of the independence that they enjoy under their own acts of Parliament. While the minister will still be able to ask dual-sector universities to prepare responses to a statement of priorities, the minister does not have any power to veto any response provided by the universities.

The ministerial intervention and interfering with the internal affairs of TAFEs do not stop there. Under this bill, TAFEs will be required to prepare annual budgets and submit them to the minister. Under this bill, the minister will have the power to either accept a budget, amend it or veto it entirely. If the minister vetoes a TAFE’s budget, the TAFE will be required to go back to the drawing board and submit an amended budget to the minister. But if the minister is still unhappy with the budget, the minister can veto it and impose her own budget on the TAFE. It is an incredible amount of power that the minister will obtain under this bill if it is passed, and not only will the minister be able to intervene in the internal affairs of a TAFE’s operational activities, but the minister will be able to impose her own budget on a TAFE as she sees fit. What is worse is there is that there are absolutely no protections in this bill from what the minister could do. There is nothing to stop the minister from making cuts to the internal operations of Victorian TAFEs. Basically, all this bill does is centralise all power in the minister and give her complete autonomy and unilateral powers to control every aspect of the TAFE network.

The bill also proposes to insert a new provision in the act known as ‘reserve powers of minister’, which I found quite surprising. This provision sounds familiar to what happened in 1975 when the Governor-General used his reserve powers to dismiss Gough Whitlam.

I found it quite odd that any government, let alone this Labor one, would want to refer to ministerial powers as ‘reserve powers’, but that appears to be the prerogative of this government. These new reserve powers will allow the minister to appoint a ministerial representative to the board of a TAFE if the minister considers the TAFE board is acting incompetently or being inefficient. In short, the reserve powers will allow the minister to appoint their ministerial puppet to a TAFE board in order to further interfere in and control the operations of these TAFE organisations, and the TAFE boards will be required to allow the minister’s puppet to attend board meetings, consider advice given by the minister’s puppet and hand over any information the minister’s puppet requests. Basically, TAFE boards will not be able to sneeze without the minister knowing.

But wait, there are more grabs for power in this bill. This bill will also provide the power to the minister to issue guidelines to a TAFE on how the TAFEs will be required to submit their response reports and budgets in a format acceptable to the minister. Basically, the minister is seeking to take away any self-determination and freedom from the TAFEs in how they conduct their operations, and they will only be allowed to operate in a manner acceptable to the minister. Further, the minister is also provided with general powers under this bill. So not only does the minister get reserve powers under this bill, but the minister gets general powers as well. Under these general powers the minister will be able to require TAFEs to provide her with any information that she asks for, including in relation to any commercial arrangements and third-party contracts a TAFE may have. Under these powers there is basically no information that the minister cannot obtain from TAFEs. The ministerial intrusion this bill will allow into the internal workings of TAFE is truly astonishing.

The bill will also reduce the number of directors on TAFE boards from 15 to 12. This does seem to be a sensible amendment and will likely improve governance. It will hopefully result in some rebalancing of the membership of these boards, many of which are dominated by former Labor MPs, which I am not sure has helped.

When you finally get to page 38 of this bill you finally find something that resembles the title of this bill. Part 3 of the bill inserts what the government calls a ‘Free TAFE guarantee’. It is an interesting choice of words because whilst the word ‘guarantee’ is used in the title of this new section, it does not actually appear anywhere in the actual content of the provisions. All this supposed guarantee provides is that the minister must each year list the VET courses that will be provided on a tuition-free basis by TAFEs and dual sector universities and determine the class of students that will be eligible for the courses free of a tuition fee. That is it; there is nothing else. That is the extent of the supposed guarantee that is being lauded by Labor. Well, newsflash: this is already happening. There are currently around 80 courses that are provided free of tuition fees, and this supposed guarantee will change nothing except allow the Labor government to cut courses and only guarantee, say, 10 courses or even just one course. It can happen under this bill.

This guarantee is completely pointless, because there is nothing in this guarantee that states that there will be a minimum number of courses provided on a free tuition basis or that certain courses will be provided on a free tuition basis. It is a fact: there is absolutely nothing to stop the minister from cutting the number of free tuition courses that are currently being provided under this bill. And if you need any further proof that this guarantee is a complete hoax, then I encourage members to turn to page 38 of this bill and read new section 3.1.1A(4), which states:

This section does not create a legal right in any person or give rise to any civil cause of action.

It is there in black and white: Labor’s so-called guarantee is not creating any legal rights under this bill. The section confirms that under Labor no Victorian has a right to free tuition courses, and the Labor government will have complete immunity if it fails to comply with its hollow guarantee. Clearly this guarantee is a total artifice. It does not guarantee the number of tuition-free courses that will be provided, it does not guarantee whether courses will be free in the future and it does not even guarantee that tuition-free courses will not be reduced in the future under Labor. That is why I said at the top of this contribution it is just spin in an election year. It is nothing but a very shallow attempt by this tired Labor government to try and deceive students into thinking their free courses are guaranteed in the hope of scoring some political points.

The next guarantee provided under this bill concerns TAFE funding. At the 2022 election Labor committed to ensuring the TAFE sector received the majority share of government funding and expanded free TAFE to ensure that more Victorians have access to free courses. Four years later, the government has finally decided it is going to introduce legislation to give effect to its 2022 election commitments.

The proposed TAFE funding guarantee will require the government to direct 70 per cent of all VET funding to TAFE institutes and dual-sector universities. As I mentioned before, this is nothing new. As was made clear during the bill briefing, in the 2024–25 financial year TAFEs and dual-sector universities received 73 per cent of VET funding. In the current 2025–26 financial year TAFEs and dual-sector universities are on track to receive 80 per cent of all VET funding. TAFEs and dual-sector universities are already receiving this amount of funding, so this is hardly groundbreaking stuff.

The other thing to remember, but the Allan Labor government conveniently forgets to mention, is that it relies heavily on Commonwealth money to fund its VET programs. Under the National Skills Agreement Victoria will receive $3.1 billion in Commonwealth funding over a five-year period until 2028. Commonwealth funding represents at least one-third of all expenditure on VET programs in Victoria, and in the 2024–25 year Victoria received $558 million in VET funding from the Commonwealth government. What this Labor government is also conveniently forgetting to mention is that as a condition of receiving VET funding from the Commonwealth Victoria must spend at least 70 per cent of all Commonwealth funding on either TAFEs or dual-sector universities, so it is not like this guarantee is making some massive new investment in our TAFEs or universities. Rather, all the funding guarantee is doing is giving effect to Victoria’s obligations under the National Skills Agreement and continuing the funding that it has already been providing.

In addition, the 70 per cent funding guarantee can be averaged over a three-year period. The question needs to be asked: what is the point of a funding guarantee if you can average it out over a three-year period? It is not a guarantee at all; it is just another way for this Labor government to give itself wriggle room if the funding gets tight in the future. Like with most things, you can never take this tired Labor government at their word. The devil is always in the detail. These guarantees are anything but ironclad. All these provisions do is give effect to the current status quo, and what is of most concern is that none of these provisions will do anything to fix Victoria’s skills crisis.

At this point it is worth considering the assessment of VET and TAFE in Victoria by Helen Silver AO in her independent review of the Victorian public service, commissioned by this Labor government. To that end, let us come back to the provisions that make up the majority of this bill, being the conferral of significantly expanded powers to the minister to control the TAFE network. I read with interest the following comments made by the minister in the second-reading speech:

Our reforms to date have seen the TAFE Network operate more efficiently and collaboratively to deliver services that draw on the full capability of the Network, maximising value for money and student outcomes.

If the minister is right that the TAFEs are working more efficiently and collaboratively, then why does Minister Tierney need all these additional powers to control the operation of TAFEs? The minister’s remarks do not align at all with the findings made by the recent Silver review. The Silver review was scathing of the performance of Victoria’s VET and TAFE system under Labor. It found:

Performance of the VET system is mixed, with continued skills shortages in priority industries, completion levels lower than the national average, and student satisfaction at or below national averages. The system also has financial challenges: the Review understands financial viability remains an issue for several TAFEs.

These are the findings of the Labor government’s own review. The Silver review has absolutely called out this government on its abject failure in the VET sector. Silver found continued skilled shortages in priority industries, completion levels lower than the national average and student satisfaction at or below national averages. That is a damning assessment from the government’s own appointed reviewer, calling into question Minister Tierney’s performance, or lack thereof, and nothing in this bill seeks to fix these appalling findings.

As Silver also noted, the financial viability remains an issue for several TAFEs. You do not have to just rely on the Silver review; the Auditor-General has already been saying this. In July last year, after undertaking an audit of the TAFE system, the Auditor-General found that only eight of the 12 TAFEs reported a net surplus in 2024. However, only five TAFEs would have achieved this outcome if the government had not provided additional one-off capital grant income. You only need to look at the annual reports of some of our TAFEs to see the financial distress they are currently in under this Labor government. In the 2024–25 financial year the Box Hill Institute recorded an $18.3 million loss, the Chisholm Institute recorded a $14.8 million loss, William Angliss recorded a $6.1 million loss and Melbourne Polytechnic recorded a $1.2 million loss.

While TAFEs are not expected to make large surpluses, generating a small surplus is important to ensure they have sufficient funds for future operations. Ideally these surpluses can be reinvested to maintain and improve the quality of education and services offered by the TAFEs. If this underlying net deficit trend continues for these TAFEs without effective management or expenditure or own-source revenue growth, their long-term financial sustainability is at serious risk. In the 2024–25 financial report, it was discovered an additional $93 million has been taken out of the Treasurer’s advance to fund various TAFE programs.

Whilst the government likes to wax lyrical about how much funding it has put into the TAFE programs, we have a TAFE sector that is facing massive financial problems under Labor, while at the same time Victoria’s skills crisis only goes from bad to worse. In order to address the financial crisis that many TAFEs are confronting the Silver review recommended that TAFEs should be looking to merge and TAFE assets should be sold off. The Silver review found there was significant underutilisation of assets across the TAFE network. In its response to the Silver review, the government accepted these recommendations. This Allan Labor government needs to come clean with TAFE students, TAFE teachers and the sector and tell them which TAFEs they intend to merge and what TAFE assets will be sold off.

This Labor government’s policies are failing Victorians. While TAFE teachers continue to work incredibly hard and students continue to get into these courses, the government continues to fail on every measure to deliver a TAFE network that skills the workforce Victoria desperately needs. In 2024 Labor reported that only 53.7 per cent of free TAFE students had completed their four-year course. Whilst Labor are always quick to say this rate is higher than university completion rates, it does hide the fact that they are failing still. Since this time, the government has refused to release free TAFE completion rates other than to say they are improving. We want students to complete their qualifications and be part of a growing skilled workforce, and because the current skills shortages are having a massive impact on the economy, we absolutely must do this.

It is something that we will introduce. We intend to introduce amendments in the upper house, in the Legislative Council, to this bill to require the minister to include in the department’s annual report student completion rates for VET courses that are provided on a free tuition basis. Also, like many policies of the Labor government, they pick winners and losers, and the funding allocations in this bill completely ignore the essential role that the independent registered training organisations play in skilling up Victorians. If the government were serious about addressing the skills crisis, it would absolutely have a holistic approach.

 Colin BROOKS (Bundoora – Minister for Industry and Advanced Manufacturing, Minister for Creative Industries) (11:44): I will come to a response to that fictional essay that was just read out to the chamber. But before I do and before I come to some of the components of the bill, I want to just talk about the importance of TAFE to working families and relate that to my own personal experience and other people that I know. As people would know, I began my working life as an electrician – the supreme trade, top of the tree. I acknowledge the other tradespeople that might be in the chamber at the moment – carpentry and plumbing and so forth – but people know that the electrical trades are the top of the tree. The people that were at TAFE with me when I did my TAFE course, which was a great course, a great educational foundation, were predominantly young people – there were some mature-age apprentices – from working-class families and families who wanted their kids to have a solid occupation, a trade to always have with them through life that they could rely on to produce a good income. It was that bargain of working hard in a trade or vocation and having a good, solid and secure career for the rest of their lives. So it is a really important foundation for working families, not just here in Victoria but right across the country.

In my own personal journey, I went back to TAFE a number of times through my trade career. I went back to do a refrigeration course and a business course, and then when I was moving from that trade work into helping in the offices of politicians, I did IT and computing courses and those sorts of things to get the skills that I needed to change trajectory. TAFE has always been there for me, and I am sure for many people in the chamber and many people in Victoria, TAFE is a constant and important source of education and upskilling for people to give them a good career and a step up. In fact I think as we reflect back on the 1980s, as the Australian economy was opened up to global competition, part of the contract, if you like – it might have been unspoken, but part of the contract with people between government was: we are going to open up the economy, and the industries that you have worked in that have been secure for a long time are going to be open to competition, but we are going to give you the skills and give your kids the skills to compete on that global scale. It is, in my view, a fundamental contract that governments have with people to provide a really solid public vocational and training system, the TAFE system that we have here in Victoria. I think that is the reason – and I remember this very clearly because I remember this place – when the Liberals and Nationals were in government and we saw those savage cuts to TAFE, why the community was so angry. They felt that the rug was being pulled out from under their feet.

There was a comment made by the honourable member opposite in her contribution that TAFE is struggling under Labor’s rule, which I disagree with. I nearly choked when I heard that, because I remember the cuts to TAFE under the Liberals and Nationals. I remember $1 billion being pulled out of the TAFE system, 22 campuses being closed and around 2000 TAFE teachers sacked. For those on the other side of the chamber: you do not thank TAFE teachers by sacking them. You do not support TAFE by closing campuses and ripping $1 billion out of the system. The member for Eltham is at the table, my honourable ministerial colleague. We both remember so well the closure of the Greensborough TAFE campus, which was in the member’s electorate at the time and with boundary changes is now in my electorate.

That local TAFE was shut, and I remember walking through the TAFE months after and it was like a scene out of a horror movie. There were pieces of paper on the floor as if people had just been told to leave, with semester timetables printed on them – semesters that never happened, for students that were never able to study at that TAFE because the Liberals and Nationals shut the TAFE down. I have never seen a government so heartlessly and callously rip the rug from under people’s feet like they did with the cuts to the TAFE sector back at that time. I remember standing on the front steps of Parliament with the member for Eltham and others with a huge petition – thousands of signatures of people saying, ‘Reopen that TAFE campus.’ The Liberal–Nationals did not reopen that TAFE campus. It took the election of a Labor government to reopen that TAFE campus. One of the proudest moments of my time in this place was going along to the opening of the Greensborough TAFE campus after it had been closed.

Importantly, as we head towards an election in November where people have to make a decision about who to vote for, we know the Liberal Party has $11 billion of cuts in store across government, and it is almost certain that a part of those cuts will apply to the TAFE sector. We have heard the opposition speak already with their concerns about the TAFE sector – this is just warming the sector up for the cuts that are to come. I hear the murmuring from those opposite; there is one way to put this to bed, and that is for the Leader of the Opposition to walk into this debate and rule out cuts to TAFE – rule out any cuts if she were to be elected.

Bridget Vallence: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, on relevance. This bill actually allows this Labor government to cut funding to TAFE. On relevance, I would ask you to ask the minister on his feet to come back to that relevant point and be factual in his contribution.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): The member was being relevant to the bill before us in discussing TAFE.

Colin BROOKS: That point of order was an attempt to protect the Leader of the Opposition, who will not rule out cuts to the TAFE sector. They will not rule out cuts to the TAFE sector, because we know that TAFE cuts are coming. With that $11 billion the opposition have not outlined where those cuts will apply. They have not said how they are going to make those cuts, so the opportunity here is for them to start ruling out things like TAFE cuts. We will see if that actually happens.

In my current portfolio of industry and advanced manufacturing I see on a daily basis the importance of the skills sector here in Victoria. Instead of running down the sector like those opposite do, I will tell you what, when I talk to international defence companies and advanced manufacturers, the reason that they want to come to Victoria is because of our highly skilled workforce. Our TAFE sector is one of the most highly regarded training systems in the world. On Monday I was at RMIT in the city launching our skills solutions partnerships, which is a program run under my portfolio that targets important areas of skills training and fills gaps, if you like, in the training sector. This is round 2 of our skills solutions partnerships and we announced $1.7 million for five grants. This was a particular grant for RMIT University, Navantia – who are a Spanish naval shipbuilding company – MEMKO Systems, Engineers Education Australia and LEAP to come together to develop micromodules for training for the AUKUS program. It is a highly competitive area, and Victoria again in these courses on AI, cybersecurity and autonomous systems is leading the pack.

One of the most important things in this bill is to allow the minister to set the strategic direction for the TAFEs and coordinate the TAFEs as a system. I am a big believer in both the TAFE sector and the public education system more broadly. A systemic approach is the correct approach to make sure that each part of the system is working in concert to deliver the very best outcomes for the people that it is supposed to. Of course it also legislates the importance of free TAFE and a minimum of 70 per cent of training and skills funding going to the TAFE sector, and I think that is probably what has upset the Liberals and Nationals the most, because we know that they do not believe in public TAFE.

After those cuts that I talked about earlier on, we have had a Labor government that has reopened campuses, that has backed TAFE. We have invested $16 billion in new and base funding in TAFE since 2014.

Tim Bull interjected.

Colin BROOKS: I am getting irrelevant interjections here. Free TAFE was introduced in 2019, and since then it has benefited more than 225,000 students – 57,000 of those in regional areas the member for Gippsland East would be happy to hear – and the majority of those people benefiting from free TAFE courses, I think 59 per cent, are women. Overall that has meant savings of $727 million in fees for Victorians who are undertaking this training. We reject the cuts of the Liberal Party in the past. We will fight against the cuts that they want to implement if they get into government at the end of this year. We will continue to invest in TAFE. The Minister for Skills and TAFE is doing a great job, and this bill is another reform to deliver a stronger, better TAFE system for Victorians, which so many working families rely on. I commend the bill to the house.

 Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (11:53): I rise also to make a contribution on the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Free TAFE Guarantee) Bill 2026. Let me just say at the outset and let me say this clearly: I, along with the Nationals, support a strong vocational education and training sector, because often that is how training and upskilling is delivered in the regions where the uptake of tertiary education is quite low, despite having a magnificent La Trobe University campus in Mildura which now has a world-class nursing wing, the Dr Deb Neal Wing. But our TAFE in Mildura, the Sunraysia Institute of TAFE, has been calling out for more investment from this government for a decade or more now. I have been to visit on several occasions the campus in Mildura. I actually attended as a student, in my younger years, the Swan Hill campus of Sunraysia Institute of TAFE. But more recently I was invited to SuniTAFE by the CEO Brett Millington, who is doing a wonderful job there. He is a very good man, Brett Millington. He is a Maffra man I am led to believe.

He invited me in to just have a look around at particularly the trades area of the campus. With the explosion, like I said, of TAFE education and vocational training in the regions, it is not only an education provider, it is a funnel to industry. We have to grow our own workforce in the regions. We have no other choice. If we do not grow our own, then we are left without a workforce, which is what we are facing now and which is why we are inviting in more of the tertiary education, such as the end-to-end GP training through the likes of Monash School of Rural Health. Latrobe University have the world-class Dr Deborah Neal wing now for nursing training. I was at Latrobe University doing some engagement stuff last week with Katrina Umback actually, who is part of a team doing incredible work towards a catheterisation lab in Mildura. But that is beside the point; I will come back to TAFE. They are actually restricted now with how many students they can train, particularly in mechanics. There is a need for more diesel mechanics, and we need mechanics that can work on EVs now, because as you can imagine, the remit of working on an electric vehicle is very, very different to a combustion engine or a diesel engine. They are stuck with the facilities that they have had since moving into that campus. There have been little bits of investment here and there, but when I hear the other side talk about how much has been invested in TAFE, that is fine in Labor electorates. I invite the minister, who has been to Mildura several times, and I would love to take the minister for a tour, and I am sure the CEO would love to take the minister for a tour as well. There is desperate need for expansion through the trades area there. Also there is an interesting point here, and this is something that took me a little while to get my head around: the Sunraysia Institute of TAFE actually sits on land which is college-leased land. College-leased land will mean nothing to most people in this place, but the college lease was set up by the Chaffey brothers; without getting too technical, the land was leased, and all of that lease money was supposed to go into setting up an ag college in Mildura. Right now the college lease funds and the trust funnel it to the schools in the region – great; it means they do not have to do raffles every week. However, SuniTAFE, which is arguably the college that the college lease was set up to fund, actually pays a quarter of a million dollars a year in lease fees to the college lease, which is a little befuddling. No-one has been able to unscramble this egg, which is unfortunate, because it crosses over so many different portfolios such as education; we have tried many times. But it just seems a bit strange; the college lease is quite complicated. Anyway, it is an interesting point to note that despite the very reason that the college lease was set up, it is now paying a lease fee to the college lease.

So the Sunraysia Institute of TAFE, which is the campus that I am very, very familiar with and visit often, actually did a refurb of their student learning communal area a couple of years ago, which is fantastic but not helping to accommodate more students in the trades in terms of mechanics, pre-apprenticeship courses and those types of things. Let me just say, as I mentioned earlier, the access to vocational education and training in the regions is so vitally important, and it has changed a lot in recent times, with the ability now to do that vocational education while still at high school and complete a pre-apprenticeship course, which is incredible, but we need more of that.

I want to get to the title of the bill, though – the free TAFE guarantee – and we heard the member for Evelyn, as she was delivering her contribution, talk about the 45-page bill, yet the title of the bill – the free TAFE guarantee – only takes about five pages of the free TAFE guarantee bill. There are a few issues that we have found running through this bill; the remaining 40 pages are largely dedicated to expanding ministerial control over the TAFE network.

So when the government is telling Victorians that this bill is about guaranteeing free TAFE, it is not exactly that. The minister must determine the list of courses that will be free, but there is no minimum number of courses, as we heard the member for Evelyn point out, required to be on that list. There is no requirement for any particular course to remain free, and there are no legal rights created for students. In other words, that guarantee is not really a guarantee at all. At any point the minister can expand or reduce the list of free courses at their discretion, so the number could grow with a changing workforce and the changing needs of the workforce. It could grow, but there is nothing to stop it from sinking down to one, because there is no guarantee in there whatsoever of the number of courses that need to remain free. The government says that this bill locks in free TAFE, but the reality is that the minister decides what is free and that decision can change whenever the government chooses. So it is not quite the ironclad guarantee that the title and the marketing would suggest.

The second element of the bill is the TAFE funding guarantee. The rhetoric sounds impressive. The government says it is guaranteeing that 70 per cent of vocational education funding will go to TAFEs and public providers. But when you look at the detail – again, the member for Evelyn did state that the devil is always in the detail, and she is absolutely right – this simply replicates an existing requirement under the National Skills Agreement with the Commonwealth. Under that agreement, states and territories must direct 70 per cent of Commonwealth funding to TAFE and public training providers. So this is not bold new policy; it is just rehashing things, and we see that time and time and time again. It is simply legislating something that the government already has to do in order to receive that Commonwealth funding.

On top of that, the bill allows the government a fair degree of flexibility through the averaging mechanism. The requirement can be met if 70 per cent of funding is delivered on average over a three-year period, which gives no guarantee to any particular TAFE campus that they will have concurrent funding to deliver that. When we talk about other vocational education or adult learning spaces, neighbourhood houses in this state face exactly that problem right now. There is no guarantee of their funding, and every year they are having to reapply for funding. It makes no sense. The work that neighbourhood houses do in this state – they go over and above every single year with this stress hanging over their head that they may not get the funding required to actually do their jobs and provide for their community. They do their jobs and then some and then some every single year. They are desperate, as we saw on the steps of Parliament a few weeks ago. The neighbourhood house network in this state are desperate to keep their doors open. And Sunraysia Institute of TAFE is desperate, of course, to expand their capability leading into the future so that we can grow our own workforce.

 Paul EDBROOKE (Frankston) (12:03): Well, we did bring it back to TAFE there at the end. That is great. This amendment that is before us has been one that I have been champing at the bit to speak about. It is a free TAFE guarantee, of course, guaranteeing access for all Victorians for all time to TAFE. It is a TAFE funding guarantee which mandates that a minimum of 70 per cent of training and skills funding is provided to TAFEs, and it enshrines the TAFE network in the act. We know that network collaboration and innovation leads to better results for all Victorians.

It was with some disdain, I must admit, that I sat here and listened to the Shadow Minister for Jobs and Skills. Frankly, you do not get to wreck TAFE, create a skills crisis and then act pious like you have got a solution to the problem. In 2012 the Liberal government ripped around $1 billion from the TAFE sector. Campuses closed, thousands of teachers lost their jobs and about 80,000 students disappeared from the sector. They did not just cut TAFE; they ripped opportunity from Victorians. And we saw that in Frankston. We saw that in working families.

Right now, under the Labor government, we have seen a resurgence. We have seen the Labor government in Victoria save TAFE and rebuild TAFE, injecting more than ever – a $16 billion funding injection – into building our TAFE and training sector. It was with the minister in the other place last week that I was able to stand in the $30 billion stages 1 and 2 at Frankston Chisholm TAFE, the flagship TAFE of the south-east, and help announce and launch the federal–state partnership of the centre of excellence for AI and digital.

I will say that the issue is bigger than TAFE, though. What we saw when the Liberals cut TAFE, and again I will say that a billion dollars was ripped out of TAFE in 2012, 80,000 students had to take a walk and thousands of teachers lost their jobs. But the Liberals cutting TAFE showed a real misunderstanding of how modern economies work, and I think people in this house who are standing up and speaking today should probably educate themselves on the value of that higher education TAFE format in any modern economy.

Advanced economies rely on three pillars of skills and education, one being vocational education – TAFE – the other being universities, and of course we have got on-the-job apprenticeships as well. Nordic countries – Germany, Switzerland – dominate advanced manufacturing because they understand this. They dominate technical industries because they understand this. They protect their vocational systems and they have for decades. They treat them as economic infrastructure for their nations that should not be touched, and that is what we are doing here today by encoding this into law. The Baillieu–Napthine–Geoff Shaw governments reforms in 2012 treated TAFE as if it were just another service –

Mathew Hilakari interjected.

Paul EDBROOKE: Indeed. It was just a driver, I think. I am trying to be objective here. Without any judgement, I think what happened was the Baillieu–Napthine governments treated TAFE as if it was just another government service competing in an open market, and I can see what they were doing. But vocational education is not a normal marketplace and training tradies, electricians – yes, member for Bundoora – nurses aides, mechanics and builders carries with it huge public benefits. It supports industry and productivity, and we have seen that across the last couple of weeks with the opening of the amazing Footscray Hospital. It does not have a helipad, but I will tell you one that has and that is Frankston Hospital. For these TAFE students, we have created a pipeline from kinder to primary school to high school, to the VCE vocational major, to TAFE, to university, straight into a job. From Chisholm you can walk to your job site where you are completing your apprenticeship and becoming an absolute master of your trade. It stabilises employment. It allows people who do not go to university to break that glass ceiling that some people experience in our communities.

When governments do treat TAFE as just another play in the marketplace, it is quite predictable what happens and we saw that from 2012 into 2014. What we saw were private providers, some really, really shoddy, flooding the system, providing fairly useless, I might say, short courses and not the courses that are quite expensive and deserve government subsidies and that society needs. Engineering trades, construction and technical apprenticeships all collapsed because they cost more to run. When the Liberals cut the funding in 2012, they did not just cut TAFE, they shifted the incentives of the system and the result of that was that campuses closed, teachers were made redundant and fewer people were entering those skilled trades. Then you have a skilled trade shortage, and that is what we saw. I am sitting here listening to the shadow minister say ‘I am friends with TAFE. I love TAFE. I want to thank our TAFE teachers’ when only a short time ago they took the axe to TAFE and destroyed TAFE.

Even in that member’s own electorate gates were locked, so to stand here now and deliver that revisionist history and act pious is absolutely stunning. The Liberals treated TAFE like a marketplace experiment, frankly. I think we have learned – and we have learned the hard way – that skills and training are not a market commodity; they are economic infrastructure, and they deserve government support. That is what this government is doing today.

You could hear me rave about Chisholm TAFE in Frankston for the next 24 hours. I could talk that long about it. The investment in stage 1 and stage 2 of Chisholm is about $130 million. Every day I see the students – young and mature-aged – stepping into TAFE, and sometimes I just take a walk over there and chat to the CEO to see for myself what is going on. We all get parliamentary briefings, but sometimes it is nice just to go and hear at the coalface what is happening and what the challenges are that they have got. I was speaking the other day to a young lad from – I think it would have been the seat of Nepean. I think there is something going on there at the moment, isn’t there? A by-election – that is right. This young bloke is studying a trade at TAFE, and he comes all the way from Rosebud West. I said to him, ‘The thing about this is that you can study at Frankston and then you’ll have a job to go straight to, because what is happening in Frankston and what is happening in Victoria is a pipeline of skills and jobs.’ That is what we have seen.

We hear those opposite talking down construction workers and talking down trades, just like when they cut TAFE in 2012. There is no revisionist history here, it is actually fact. We know it is fact. You can spin as many stories as you want. What that did was decimate not just TAFE but a whole industry, and we have had to build that back up over the last decade. We are starting to see the fruits of that now with these major projects that are opening – it is just amazing. Victoria has not seen anything like that before. With $16 billion invested and over 200,000 students engaging in free TAFE, we have unlocked the value of that TAFE network, and we are delivering an ambitious growth agenda too.

I might just note in my concluding remarks that the only positive thing that I think the Shadow Minister for Jobs and Skills noted was that there are some governance amendments that reduce the maximum number of board members from 15 to 12. That reduction seemed to be something that she embraced. She said that was a good thing, and that is on trend: when you reduce something, they love it. It is just like when they ran away from a training system in 2012 and did not deliver the courses that our community needed. TAFE is not just about education, it is the bridge between working-class opportunity and also a productive economy. I see today that state final demand is up again this month. When the Liberals cut, they weaken that productive economy, they weaken that working-class opportunity, and it is electorates like mine, electorates like Nepean and electorates like, well, everyone’s electorate here in this place that suffer. We have seen the results of those cuts, and we are guaranteeing today that will not happen again.

 Wayne FARNHAM (Narracan) (12:13): I am pleased to rise today to talk about the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Free TAFE Guarantee) Bill 2026. Right from the start I am just going to correct a couple of things that have been said by previous speakers, and the first will be the Minister for Industry and Advanced Manufacturing. He got up and said electricians are the best tradies in the world. Well, to you, Minister, I will say, through the Acting Speaker, that carpentry is the most noble trade you could ever do. Even from when Jesus was a boy, we knew this. Electricity was not even invented then. I just had to pull you up on that, Minister. You were totally wrong; carpentry is the noblest trade of all trades.

Members interjecting.

Wayne FARNHAM: I have got a few adjectives for you, but I cannot say them in the chamber, member for Frankston. The minister will know very well that I love TAFE. I was there.

I was also at tech school, which no longer exists. The TAFE system is a good system. It is required. We need it in this state. We need it for our future generations of tradies.

Unfortunately, I think the absolute worst thing that happened in this state was the abolishment of tech schools. I went to Warragul tech. We had Warragul high and Warragul tech side by side. It was in about the mid-80s when that started to change. It was actually the Cain–Kirner governments that started to get rid of the tech school system in this state. For kids like me – I was not an academic; I was never going to be an academic – that tech school system was brilliant. I ended up going there in year 11 after I got kicked out of Marist-Sion in Warragul for being a little bit unruly.

Members interjecting.

Wayne FARNHAM: No shock there. I know that does not shock the chamber. I went to tech school. I ended up going to tech. I was a failure at Marist-Sion. I went to Warragul tech and it was brilliant. I had all the options I could do as a tradie. I could do fitting and turning, boilermaking, panelbeating and carpentry.

A member interjected.

Wayne FARNHAM: No-one wanted to do electrical. I think they cut the course, it was that unpopular – only joking. The minister is 100 per cent correct there, electrical was in there as well – any trade you could think of. You got the advantage at a technical college, from a very young age – if you were not academically brilliant, if you went there in year 7 – you learned your maths, your English and everything else, but then you got trained up as you were there. By the time we hit year 10, 16 years of age, we were fighting to get out to get into apprenticeships. That was the beauty of the tech school. It gave kids that training from a very young age and actually placed those kids into a workforce where they wanted to be. Not every kid wants to be at school. Not every kid wants to go to university. We have to have a space for those kids. Unfortunately it was under Cain–Kirner – and Kennett was responsible too. I will throw him under the bus on this one.

Members interjecting.

Wayne FARNHAM: I am happy to. I will call it out, but Cain and Kirner started it, Kennett completed it – exactly like the SEC. Exactly the same as the SEC: Cain and Kirner started it; Kennett completed it. The worst thing to happen to Victoria was getting rid of technical colleges – tech schools, as we called them. They were good.

The problem I can see with the TAFE system at the moment and the thing we have to invest in in this state into the future is getting tradies back out there. I know over the last few years we have probably lost about 22,000 or 23,000 tradies in this state. We need to get that workforce back up and going again. The problem we are having in the TAFE system is we are not having people complete those apprenticeships or complete that training. Roughly about 50 per cent of apprentices now finish an apprenticeship. We need that to improve. How do we improve that? What mechanisms have the government got in place to make that number a better completion rate? Because I think that is a really valid point. You can invest in TAFE, you can put all the resources into it you want, but if we are not having the completion rates we need for our next generation of tradespeople to come through, then that is going to be problematic for this state. It is going to be problematic for house building, infrastructure building – anything you can think of – and this is where we are failing.

I was visiting a TAFE down in my area, and the one thing they said to me was they are struggling to get the teachers to train the next generation of tradies. Should the government look at maybe incentivising ex-tradies to retrain them as TAFE teachers? That would be a good step forward, because we need trades – we do – especially the construction industry. It is one that is really failing at the moment to attract people – I do not know why – or to get apprentices to complete their apprenticeships. When you invest the money into the TAFE and they do not have the resources then to deliver what the government’s intent is, that is problematic.

There are a lot of ex-tradies out there at the moment that have had a gutful of the industry, and that is an opportunity for the government to retrain these older electricians, like the minister over there, although his battery drill is flat on tipping. He is probably colourblind now and does not know the difference between red, black and green either, and that is a problem for a sparkie. But we have an opportunity here where we should, I think, incentivise ex-tradespeople – plumbers, electricians, carpenters, all those – and get them into that TAFE system to train our next generation. Because if that is becoming a problem as to why we cannot get apprentices to complete or to train them up, we need to fix that. We need to look at that.

The TAFE system is very important to Victoria. I went to TAFE. I went to Yallourn TAFE when I was about 18, and you had to fight to get a place there, there were that many kids, and all our teachers were ex-builders or tradespeople. It was great; I loved it. I loved TAFE; it was fantastic. I loved the tech school, and then I went to TAFE. It is something that should be invested in and, as I said, there are certain aspects that I think the government is failing in. It does concern me that the Silver review really rated the performance of our VET system not well. It states:

The performance of the VET system is mixed, with continued skill shortages in priority industries, completion levels lower than the national average, and student satisfaction at or below national averages. The system has financial challenges: the Review understands financial viability remains an issue for several TAFEs.

I take on board what the government says about their investment – I am not disputing that – but there is still obviously a problem here. Now we are passing this into legislation, and it has been the same for the last four years, so I do not know why this is new, but it is passing into legislation. But we have a review there that says there are still problems in the system. I see a lot of problems within the system, but as I said at the start, my main concern on this system is the completion rates, especially in those trade-based apprenticeships.

We need this future workforce. We need it for the state. The government itself has housing targets, which they cannot meet, but we also have trade shortages which will be contributing to the reason why they cannot meet the housing targets. If you have got a shortage of labour and a house is now on average taking 12 months to build, you are not going to meet the targets you have set for yourselves. This is where the government has to look at this problem within the VET or the TAFE system. As I said at the outset, I love TAFE, I went to TAFE, and we just need to really, really focus on that. We need those completion rates to get up, because if they do not, our skill shortage into the future will be a lot worse than what it is now. With tradies becoming older and older and bodies wearing out and leaving the industry, we need to look to the future for that – unfortunately, some do get into politics, but that is what we should focus on. Just in closing, I will remind the member for Bundoora: chippies are best.

 Michaela SETTLE (Eureka) (12:23): I am truly delighted to stand and speak on the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Free TAFE Guarantee) Bill 2026. It has been extraordinary to sit here and listen to the contributions from those on the other side, each and every one of whom has professed to be friends of the TAFE system, and yet we all know so well what happened when last they were in government. What I find particularly interesting is that, even more than that, they all seem to be reading off a set of notes without any true understanding of this bill.

I would just like to correct a couple of things. The member for Mildura in particular talked about the impact in regional Victoria. I would like to point out that of the 22 campuses that were shut, 18 of those were in regional Victoria under her government. There is also lots of detail missing. The member from Narracan, who we all hold dear to our hearts, seemed to want to make a suggestion that what we need to do is to incentivise people to go into TAFE teaching.

I have got great news for him: we are already doing it. TAFE teaching is a free TAFE course – how about that? We also offer scholarships for people that are coming out of a trade to become a TAFE teacher.

Wayne Farnham interjected.

Michaela SETTLE: You should join our side. You have got our ideas, and we are already doing them.

I also took umbrage, and it made me giggle, because the member for Mildura liked to talk about the devil being in the detail. Well, indeed it is, and perhaps if they did a little more than read notes and actually got into the detail, they would realise what rubbish is coming out of their mouths. They talked quite a bit about the notion of ministerial control, no minimum number of courses, no requirement to remain free, and out the other side of their mouth they were talking about the fact that we have skills shortages. What they fail to remember is that this government in 2021 established the skills authority. Guess what the skills authority does. The skills authority looks at where there are skill gaps across the state and makes recommendations for free courses. The free courses that we are enshrining here today are about making sure that they move with the needs out there in the community. As I say, they do not seem to particularly understand what the skills authority does, and that shows a basic misunderstanding.

The other one that I particularly love – the devil in the detail – was about the fact that nothing has changed and this is a federal requirement. Guess what, those on the other side: this was an election commitment. The 70 per cent expenditure into TAFE was an election commitment of this government, and the federal government picked it up because it was such a damn good idea. Perhaps if they did look at a bit of detail and less in the eyes of the devil, they might understand a bit more about it.

Let me now go to what this bill is really about. This bill is about people. Last Thursday I was honoured to attend the Federation Uni TAFE awards for excellence. It was a fantastic night showcasing all of our wonderful students, and I really want to congratulate Fed Uni on the night. I was truly – and I mean this genuinely – moved by a speech which was given by the recipient of the teacher of the year award. I want to say a big thank you to Sharon Bartholomew for her commitment. If I may read to the house just a small part of her speech, it will tell those on the other side why we are here and what this bill is about:

What makes adult and vocational education so powerful, is who we teach.

Our classrooms are filled with people rebuilding their lives, changing careers, supporting families, learning a new language, or returning to education after years … Living in rural Victoria, many of our students face significant barriers: financial hardship, limited prior education, cultural and language challenges, caring responsibilities, or simply a lack of confidence shaped by past experiences.

Yet they show extraordinary courage.

They walk into a classroom not knowing if they belong – and leave knowing they can succeed.

Thank you, Sharon Bartholomew, for reminding us of what this is all about. This bill is about people and giving people opportunities.

Since its inception in 2019 Fed Uni has had a total of 6296 free TAFE students. What I really want to point out is 60 per cent of those are women. Free TAFE has been an absolute game changer for women re-entering the workforce. Fed Uni is also very well known for its pathway. As a dual-sector it offers people the opportunity to start a TAFE course, use what they have learned and go on to an undergraduate. You know why I think this is incredibly important? Because that is what happened to me. I needed to get back into the workforce after being a stay-at-home mum for 10 years and decided to retrain. I went to Fed Uni because I did not have the confidence to go off to uni. I was not sure if I could do it and manage the kids. I went to Fed Uni; I started a TAFE course and absolutely loved it. I will always give a shout-out to Irene Warfe, who was my wonderful TAFE teacher who gave me the confidence to go on and do an undergraduate and then finally a masters in politics and policy.

I owe my spot right here today to TAFE. They gave me the courage to get back out there and retrain and get into the workforce. So this bill is about enshrining that right for all of those people out there like me. Those on the other side begin every speech saying they are friends of TAFE. They are not friends of TAFE; they are not. They cut $1 billion. The member for Evelyn brought up how much she loves the 7000 teachers; there would have been 5000 under them because they cut 2000 teachers last time. The member for Mildura talks about the neglected regions; under them we had 22 campuses shut, and 18 of them were in regional Victoria. We need them in regional Victoria.

I want to acknowledge the Minister for Skills and TAFE. She has been there since the outset. I mean this genuinely: she is one of those ministers who has gotten a portfolio – and this matters – and she has fought long and hard over this government to rebuild TAFE from what it was. We stand here proudly now looking at places like Fed Uni, where they have had this absolute growth in enrolment through the free TAFE courses. We look at the people out there who have been given new opportunities because of free TAFE. We look at those skills gaps that are being filled because the skills authority which the minister established is identifying who we should offer free TAFE courses to or what skill sets we need to fill. I know at Fed Uni in Ballarat the nurses courses are just producing so many more wonderful people in our healthcare services.

I am pretty passionate about this bill – TAFE changed my life. I listen to people like Sharon Bartholomew, who talked the other day about her passion for her students and about changing people’s lives – that is what this is about. Those on the other side have got some pretty ordinary speaking notes which are trying to tell us that this already all existed; well, the 70 per cent guarantee was our idea, and I am very glad the feds picked it up. Free TAFE will be enshrined; it did not exist under them. What did exist under them was an absolute decimation of what is an incredibly important part of our whole-of-life educational system. It has been under this government that TAFE has been rebuilt, and our minister is determined that those people will have those opportunities going forward. That is why it is so important to enshrine it through this legislation, because if God forbid those on the other side ever get into power we will see those padlocks go back on those TAFE campuses, we will see those teachers sacked, we will see those students left high and dry and we will see those skills shortages grow and grow.

This bill is about making sure that the people out there that we are here to fight for have a better, easier life. Free TAFE saves on average $3000 a year. That means that there are people out there who can enter the workforce when they may not have been able to afford it before; they certainly would not have been able to under the private providers that those on the other side support so much. This bill is about making sure that lives for Victorians are easier, better, fairer and cheaper. This is such an important bill for so many people out there. I commend it wholly to the house.

 John PESUTTO (Hawthorn) (12:33): I rise to speak on the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Free TAFE Guarantee) Bill 2026. I will begin my remarks by noting that we are debating this bill at a time when the TAFE system has been let down by this government and when TAFE students have been let down by this government. We will go through some of the data points in a moment; do not worry, it is coming. I think the most serious indictment of this government when it comes to our TAFE system – which, despite the blathering of those opposite, is a crucial part of our system, and we will not fill the skills shortages without a strong VET sector – is this government does not get how to build the VET sector. It actually does not, and it has dropped the ball on it. It wants to talk a big game, but when you look at the results the evidence is damning.

We had a universities accord a few years ago, and one of the take-outs from the universities accord was the idea that academic qualifications and VET qualifications are going to increasingly be intertwined. The sorts of skill sets, the aptitude and the capabilities that we want of all of us working in the workforce are increasingly going to be driven by the needs of a high-tech economy where skills can easily cross over. What the data against this government shows, and what the dearth of aspiration in this bill shows, is the government does not get that. We do not have a bill here today that says ‘We are going to address the massive skills shortages that we see in construction, in the energy sector, in hospitality, in small business and in tech.’ The government has no story to tell on that. Instead it comes here with a bill which is designed to sanction what it is already supposed to do. It wants a gold star for meeting a requirement it is already required to meet. It is extraordinary that they should come here, those members opposite, and pat themselves on the back as if this bill does something that is going to improve the lives and opportunities of TAFE students. It is not going to do anything to do that.

I said I would come to the data in a moment, but I am concerned that at a time when we are competing for skills, domestically and internationally, this government shows no aspiration or plan for how it is going to address those skills shortages. You can look at Skills Australia, which points out the number of occupations that are facing critical shortages across some of those areas that I mentioned, but many more. There are hundreds of qualifications and occupations where in Victoria – to be fair, in other states as well – we are facing massive shortages. This bill does nothing to say ‘We are actually going to produce more VET graduates who are going to fill these roles and enjoy thriving careers in these occupations’ – not a word. It is just a stunt in some ways to say ‘Hey, aren’t we good that we’re going to legislate to do something we’re already required to do?’

I said a moment ago that the evidence is damning. It is true that under this government – and we are in the 12th year of this government – the VET sector is smaller; it is actually smaller than it was before. We have fewer VET providers. We have, even on the government’s own concession of a couple of years ago, a little over half of the graduates in free TAFE courses actually completing their courses. You have to ask: what is the government doing wrong? And why hasn’t any member on the government benches explained that important and unavoidable data point? They cannot explain it. They cannot explain why real recurrent VET expenditure per person has gone backwards under this government. They are not spending more per person in VET, they are actually spending less per person. There are fewer VET providers. There are fewer VET locations. On just about every measure the VET sector is smaller, and the skills shortages are more acute under this government the longer it goes on. Yet we debate this bill today with not one word about how this government is going to address it.

We had the Silver review, on top of those data points, which are sourced out of the report on government services. You can go and check it out for yourselves, those opposite. Go and see how damning the data is about your failed stewardship of the VET sector. It is appalling, because for 12 years you have boasted about how committed you are to the sector, but when it comes to actually delivering, the evidence just is not there. In fact you talk to employers who are crying out for workers with the skills they need, and what do they say? They say, ‘We have a government that’s stuck in the past. It doesn’t understand the modern economy, the needs of a modern economy, the versatility’ – I spoke about that before – ‘and the increasing cross-fertilisation between academic qualifications and VET qualifications.’ There is none of that going on.

You talk about young people who are looking for a job. If you talk to employers who are looking for graduates of the VET sector who have the skills they need to give them a long and lasting career, after 12 years you still hear the same complaint: ‘We can’t find graduates who can do the jobs we need.’ We are talking to government and telling them they have got to be able to deliver on this, and the government are not listening.

There is an exciting transition going on across the country and across the world in terms of looking at qualifications as being more modular and looking at them as being stackable. I am quite happy to acknowledge some of the public commentary that Bill Shorten, who is now the vice-chancellor of Canberra University, has been making on this, but he is not alone and he is certainly not the first. It is the idea that your qualifications and your experience are dynamic. It is not set and forget. It is not that you come out with a piece of paper or a digital certificate and there you go for the rest of your life. You can go back and you can obtain further credentials. Some people call it micro-credentialing, but it is actually broader than that: it is the idea that we can build into the VET sector and the tertiary sector a system of skills accumulation and qualifications that can respond to your particular needs. This government seems to be stuck in a decades-old approach to education. Everything is changing, and it is changing before our eyes. We, under this government, are being left behind. I know that in other jurisdictions they are responding to this whole concept of modular learning that responds to individual needs and micro-credentialing that can ensure that we can give young kids a real job that will set them on their way for a future that for them will be very fulfilling.

We do not see that in this bill. I do not know what the government’s plan for TAFE actually is. But what we do know is that there is an absence of any explanation of a plan from them. I have outlined some of the aspirations I see for the sector as one that is increasingly integrated, not siloed like the government seems to see it. It still sees a siloed approach. You have got VET and you have got the tertiary pathway. That is just wrong. It is outdated, and it is not giving young people the opportunities they deserve.

As our lead speaker pointed out, this bill does no more than, if you like, codify what the government is already required to do. But as our lead speaker pointed out, the government is giving itself an opportunity to lowball its own commitments so long as it meets a three-year average, and that is pretty cute by any standard. It should be saying ‘Every year we are going to do more to produce more graduates who complete their courses, we are going to ensure that the funding meets the needs and we are going to ensure that the courses that we are funding are actually leading not just to jobs but leading to careers, careers that give the graduates the agency that they want.’ People want more agency over their careers, and the idea that there is a straitjacketed approach to this where it is one size fits all and it is top down is not only wrong in terms of policy but it is short-changing the futures of people who choose the VET sector, increasingly, I hope, a sector of education that is more, as I say, ingrained.

As the lead speaker said, we will not be opposing this bill. But I do want to end where I began. This government does not deserve plaudits for a system that is smaller, a system that is producing fewer graduates, a system that has fewer providers and a system which says to young people that it is not going to give them the flexibility and the choices they deserve in their education and their career.

 Chris COUZENS (Geelong) (12:43): I am pleased to rise to contribute to the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Free TAFE Guarantee) Bill 2026, and I want to start by thanking the minister in the other place for the work that she has done on this really significant bill. I have to say, this is one of the reasons why I joined the Labor Party and why I wanted to be a member of Parliament, because it is these sorts of supports in our education system that are so important to my community.

In Geelong we have the Gordon TAFE which, as I have mentioned in this place before, is well over 100 years old. Pretty much everyone in Geelong has either been to the Gordon TAFE, knows somebody that has been or has a family member that has attended the Gordon TAFE. It is held in such high regard in our community. I do want to thank Joe Ormeno, the CEO of the Gordon TAFE, for all the work that he has done.

Free TAFE has been an absolute game changer for my community, and it is always so heartwarming to meet students there who have come from families that have never had any real level of education beyond secondary school. They are so proud of the fact that they are able to get a good education through the TAFE, but even more importantly free TAFE, and to see those individuals and their families attending graduation sessions just makes me think of how important good government policy is to people in my community of Geelong and across the whole state of course. Free TAFE has changed lives when dealing with cost-of-living pressures.

Back in 2014, when we came to government, the Gordon was on its knees. It was almost about to close, because the Liberal government at the time had stripped it of so much funding it was almost impossible to continue. The Gordon and the management at the time – I really felt for them– were in desperate need and trying to scratch together funding to keep their doors open. The Kitjarra Centre, which was the Aboriginal education centre, was shut down pretty quickly. Many programs were lost, and they were just scraping through when we came to government in 2014. To invest in the TAFE was one of the first things that I wanted to see our government do. The minister at the time, Steve Herbert, was really committed to making sure we got our TAFEs back on their feet. That started to happen, and of course the Gordon has been virtually rebuilt, from being on its knees to being a huge provider of education in our community. So I am really supportive of this bill and note that the Allan government has invested more than $16 billion new and base funding into our TAFE and training system since 2014. Such a significant amount of funding was necessary because those opposite had devastated our TAFE – ripped it to pieces.

This bill, as I said, is really important. It is important to me, but it is also important to those students that are there now and to future students, so they know that this is guaranteed into the future so that their kids can have a TAFE education, and obviously that leads to good jobs. They go through the TAFE, through their training, and it leads to good jobs and leads to a better income, and some of those families are now starting to see the benefits. We know that poverty is a huge contributor in our community, and we need to ensure that we are introducing policies that deal with poverty. For me, this is a big one, because it gets people out of poverty, it gets them into good jobs and it also addresses the cost-of-living issues that we know are impacting on people in our community.

The TAFE guarantee bill is significant for my community, and I have had a lot of people in my community say, when they heard that this was coming to our chamber, how much they supported that, how much they supported the continuation of free TAFE. The Gordon has, as I said, been virtually rebuilt since 2014. We have been able to rebuild the culinary school, and the Gordon is renowned for putting out students that are top class through the culinary school – chefs and cooks and baristas all going through that. When we took government in 2014 that facility was so run down there were broken ovens and pretty much appalling conditions really, and when you are teaching students to become a chef or work in the hospitality industry, trying to teach them in dilapidated facilities is pretty difficult.

So we made that commitment and rebuilt that culinary school, which is now a world-class culinary school. Chefs from all around the world in fact have made comments about how good the Gordon TAFE culinary school is. Of course we rebuilt the Kitjarra Centre, the Aboriginal education unit, which has been going in leaps and bounds since it was restarted with its own facilities, and that has been an incredible journey for many of those Aboriginal TAFE students who otherwise would not have a culturally safe space for their education. We have also been able to start construction of the school of excellence in disability and access at the Gordon, and this is another incredible initiative by government and by the Gordon TAFE, given we have WorkSafe and the TAC and the NDIS in Geelong, and that is currently underway – co-designed, I might add, by people with disabilities, both students currently and past students. So that is a really exciting project, but that would never have happened under those opposite; it would never have happened. So we are really proud of that in Geelong.

Our TAFE in Geelong is an incredible opportunity for so many students. As I said, I talk to students over there all the time, and their feedback is really important and I take on board what they say. I know that despite the cost-of-living pressures that are currently being experienced by families, at least they can go to TAFE for free, and we need to guarantee that, and that is what that this bill is about all about. Since 2019 there have been 225 000 students that have benefited from free TAFE, and I am sure that figure will grow. 129,000 of those were women, 57,000 were regional Victorians and 22,500 were people with a disability. They are huge numbers, and now, if we guarantee this, we know there will be many more to come as we move forward. For TAFEs right around Victoria this is really important. As a regional member I see the importance of TAFE in our regional centres and the role that it plays and the opportunities that it does give to young people and to families to build on what they need in terms of getting into better employment and having those opportunities. So I would hate to see those opposite get their hands on our TAFE ever again, because I know what damage they will do because I saw it, and my community lived through that, as did many others in the Victorian community. The damage that they did to TAFE has cost us far more than you could imagine. The billions of dollars that have had to be poured into it, rather than building on what was already there, is an absolute disgrace, and I never want to see that happen again in Victoria. I think our Gordon TAFE and all those TAFES around Victoria deserve to be supported and continue to get the funding that they deserve. I commend this bill to the house.

 Martin CAMERON (Morwell) (12:53): I rise to talk on the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Free TAFE Guarantee) Bill 2025, and in listening to contributions from both sides of the chamber there have been a couple of members that have had a few liberties – the member for Narracan and also the Minister for Industry and Advanced Manufacturing when he was up speaking as well, talking about trades and noble trades, and the electrical trade is a noble trade. The member for Narracan, he can have his noble trade, but the best trade is the plumbing trade. It was long before we had power in the state and long before we were building dwellings and houses that people needed to go to the bathroom and toilet, so from as soon as we could stand up. The plumbing trade has been around the world forever and a day, because we do need to go and we do need to get rid of it in a timely fashion and way.

It is actually really good to be able to stand up and talk about TAFE. It is a huge part of my journey to where I am standing now, the grounding that I did get going to TAFE as an apprentice plumber way back in the day at the Yallourn campus down in the Latrobe Valley. It was a matter of not only winning and obtaining an apprenticeship but the pathway forward teaching you. The only way to get to TAFE normally was to get on a bus, because we were not old enough to drive; back in the day you were getting an apprenticeship at 16 or 17 years of age. That journey of having to get yourself out of bed and get prepared to get to the bus to get to TAFE and then back home again put the ground rules in for having that work ethic before you even got into the mainstream of plumbing.

Today, in terms of TAFE in the Latrobe Valley, we still have the Yallourn campus, but we also have a very modern Morwell campus which now houses the plumbing trade and building trades and the like. It also houses robotics. The expansion of trade levels into actually obtaining jobs is certainly needed. Traralgon also has a TAFE as part of the Gippsland TAFE precinct. They do a lot of hairdressing and beauty at the Traralgon TAFE, so you can see the wide range of skills that are provided.

I think everybody on both sides have talked about the TAFE teachers. These teachers have normally come from a building background, especially in the electrical trades and also the plumbing and building trades that we do house there. These are teachers that have run their own businesses and who step in as they become older and, as the member for Narracan said, cannot physically do the work anymore to be enticed into the TAFE way of learning.

TAFE is very hands-on, particularly in the trades, and you need to be able to hone your skills while you are at that trade school, being able to either build things, safely put electrical components in place or, in my cause as a plumber, being able to do roofing and sanitary and gas. We know that the gas fraternity has been under the pump a little bit, but it is having a return as such through some bills that we do see come through the house. But we need to be able to entice these teachers in and keep them.

Talking about the TAFE structure and free TAFE, they do have a lot of people that come in and start the courses, but a little bit of a concern with the free courses available is trying to keep the engagement so that the courses are completed. The TAFEs down my way talk about how they fill up very quickly, and there are people that actually miss out on being able to do TAFE courses. As the course goes along, people drop out. We need to come up with a plan also incorporating this free TAFE, so that we do get our completion rates as close as we can to 100 per cent. Some of these courses are losing half of the students that are partaking in these courses.

As we said, especially on the building fraternity side at the moment, we are screaming out for trades that we need with our Big Housing Build. We all know that we need to be building more houses. We need to make sure that we have that pipeline, pardon the pun, coming through our TAFE courses so they can move through from being an apprentice to sometimes owning their own businesses, and then it is their turn to teach the next generation coming through.

Stepping into when I did have a tour of the Morwell campus and the modern technology in the plumbing side of things and how it has changed from when I was at the Yallourn TAFE, the Morwell TAFE has also now changed with an incredible amount of modern technology moving through there. It is not only in this robotics side of things that we are seeing this, but we are also –

The ACTING SPEAKER (Iwan Walters): Order! Member for Morwell, the time has come to interrupt debate, and the house is suspended until the ringing of the bells.

Sitting suspended 1:00 pm until 2:02 pm.

Business interrupted under standing orders.