The federal government will launch a $37.8m “compliance blitz” to crack down on unlawful behaviour in Australia’s vocational education and training (Vet) sector as part of a suite of measures to clean up dodgy providers in international education.
Speaking at the National Press Club on Tuesday, the minister for skills and training, Brendan O’Connor, will announce the establishment of an integrity unit within the regulator to identify and address threats to Vet.
The “significant boost” to the capacity of the Australian Skills Quality Authority will include a new confidential tipoff line, allowing potential whistleblowers to safely alert the regulator to serious allegations of non-compliance and fraudulent practices.
Asqa’s digital and data systems will also be updated to better monitor providers, target potential unethical and illegal activity and support interagency intelligence.
“Not only do we need to lift the standards on behaviour, we need to lift the focus on quality to ensure students are getting the skills they and the economy need,” O’Connor will say during his address.
The multimillion-dollar investment will target providers who may be rorting the system and exploiting international students.
The integrity unit will work in conjunction with the home affairs department, the Australian Federal Police and other law enforcement agencies to conduct intense compliance checks on high-risk providers.
The measures come from recommendations made as part of a review led by the former Victoria police chief commissioner Christine Nixon into the exploitation of Australia’s visa system, and after a recent review into migration.
O’Connor said in a statement that the “sense of drift” regarding Vet was over.
Earlier this year, a parliamentary inquiry heard the Vet sector’s reputation would be destroyed if urgent action wasn’t taken, with Asqa’s CEO conceding the current regulatory model didn’t assess the quality of teaching and graduate outcomes.
In the 10 months to May this year Asqa received 470 complaints and tipoffs about training providers. In the same time period, just seven had their registrations cancelled or suspended.
“We are working to weed out the minority of non-genuine Vet providers, the bottom feeders, who seek to exploit people and traduce the integrity and reputation of the entire sector in the process,” O’Connor said.
“A significant boost to Asqa’s capacity will enable a compliance blitz on unlawful behaviour as we combat the unethical and badly performing training providers.
“These actions are aimed at stopping domestic and international students and graduates from being exploited by unscrupulous operators.”
O’Connor said he would continue to pursue any changes to Vet legislation necessary to ensure Asqa had sufficient regulatory powers to prevent and remove non-genuine training organisations from the sector.
The minister for education, Jason Clare, said the boost to the Vet regulator was an “important next step” in improving the integrity of the tertiary education sector.
“International students are back, but so are the shonks seeking to exploit them and undermine our international education system,” he said.
“This builds on the integrity measures we have already announced to our international education system.”
On Monday, the federal government announced it would ban education agents from receiving commissions for poaching students enrolled in other institutions.
The Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia welcomed the reforms while warning the federal government needed to be ensure arrangements were “robust” so “unscrupulous agents” didn’t exploit quality tertiary education providers.
“They could bypass the new ban by levying marketing fees or other creative ways extracting funds from tertiary education providers,” Iteca’s chief executive, Troy Williams, said.
The minister for home affairs, Clare O’Neil, flagged further measures would be made in the coming days to “restore integrity” to Australia’s international education and migration systems.
“Dodgy training providers have no place in Vet, international education and our migration system,” she said.
“These measures support actions we are looking to take under the Esos Act to issue suspension certificates to high-risk education providers.”
