TAFE FEES

Mr PISONI (Unley) (14:27): My question is to the Treasurer. How much extra revenue was the government budgeting to collect due to the increases in the TAFE fee cap and students' take-up of the federal government's FEE-HELP program?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Treasurer, Minister for Workers Rehabilitation, Minister for Defence Industries, Minister for Veterans' Affairs) (14:27): The fee cap from?

Mr PISONI: I will give it to you again. How much extra revenue was the government budgeting to collect due to the increase in the TAFE fee cap and students' taking up the federal government's FEE-HELP HECS-style funding program?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING: The whole purpose of the Skills for All reforms was to move towards a system where those lower qualification levels—so, certificate I and certificate II—were the most heavily subsidised and, as a person moved up through the various qualifications, the extent of the public subsidy would taper off. For those higher level qualifications people would be expected to make a greater contribution themselves, the idea being that, for South Australia and our workforce needs, we need to increase levels of workforce participation. We have low levels of workforce participation compared to interstate and we have lower levels of qualification attainment. We have large pools of underutilised labour in South Australia that need qualifications to enable them to move into the workforce.

In terms of allocating public subsidy where taxpayers' money can provide the best results, the greater subsidies for those lower level qualifications are where we think it is best utilised. As people move up the ranks of qualification attainment, particularly towards those diploma and advanced diploma qualifications, then they should bear a greater burden of the cost of that. It is not an attempt to increase revenue to the government in any sense: it is simply about people doing those higher level qualifications bearing the cost themselves.

In fact, the government is making a massive increase in our investment into vocational education. As part of the Skills for All reforms, we have committed a substantial amount of money over the next six years to increase the number of South Australians who undertake vocational education, but for those higher level qualifications we expect them to bear a greater share of the burden. The exceptions are, of course, the higher level qualifications that we identify as being important to our skill needs as a state.

Obviously, with regard to engineering and mechanics and areas relevant to the resources sector, it is very important that we identify and provide a high level of public subsidy to those areas of critical skill needs. The Training and Skills Commission provides us with advice on what those high demand skill needs areas are and are likely to be over the coming decade, so we continue to subsidise those.

As well as that, we also want to make sure that those fees for higher level qualifications do not become a barrier to people obtaining those higher level qualifications. That is why this state has negotiated with the commonwealth to extend, for the first time, an ability to access HECS-style loans to enable them to undertake those qualifications, so that those fees will not be a barrier for people undertaking those qualifications.

The answer to the member for Unley's question is that there is no revenue gain from these fees and from changing the fee structure in vocational education. It is against a backdrop of a massive increase in the investment that this government is putting into vocational education, and it is simply a restructuring of the way we subsidise vocational education to ensure that low-level qualifications receive the highest amount of government subsidy—in fact, certificate I and II courses generally, I understand, are free—but that the subsidy tapers off as people climb up the skill qualification ranks.