The Australian 24 May 2012
Victoria risks losing up to $196 million in vocational training funds after the Commonwealth government slammed it over TAFE budget cuts. Tertiary Education Minister Chris Evans told an “emergency meeting” with Victorian TAFE directors that the Commonwealth has serious concerns that the cuts would eat away at the training effort by jeopardising the viability of TAFE courses and campuses. He issued a veiled threat that he could withhold funds earmarked for Victoria under a Council of Australian Governments agreement. There’s a process by which the Victorian government will have to come to the Commonwealth to access that extra funding, and you can’t see how these changes fit in with [national] objectives, Evans said.
How do you grow quality training and cut $300m out of TAFEs? It doesn’t seem to be a proposition that you can defend.
In perhaps his most extensive comment to date, Victorian minister Peter Hall defended the budget measures and slammed Evans as disingenuous for not seeking a meeting to discuss his apparent concerns. He insisted that Victoria will meet all its training obligations under the COAG agreement reached between the States and Commonwealth in April. He said that in a contestable funding environment, TAFEs have a number of competitive advantages. They benefit from a significant asset base across the state, they have deep and enduring connections to their communities and most importantly, they are able to use the TAFE brand, which is synonymous across the country with high quality training.
The continued talking down of TAFE and speculation about “cuts” and job losses is doing potentially irreparable damage to the TAFE brand…The future of Victoria’s training system, including its world class public TAFE providers, is positive. As I have travelled around the state in the last few weeks to discuss how the sector is adapting to our reforms, this view has only been reinforced.
Meanwhile Swinburne University of Technology has estimated that the cuts will cost its TAFE division $35 million, which will necessitate “difficult decisions” including course cuts and redundancies.
Interstate bureaucrats have given a scathing assessment of the Victorian reforms. South Australia, which launches its own training market in July, said it had been “looking over the border” at the Victorian developments. TAFE South Australia chief executive Elaine Bensted said the SA system had been designed differently to allay “an enormous amount of concern that our reforms would simply replicate what happened in Victoria”.
- Hall – Evan’s claims disingenuous
- TAFE cuts threaten courses, jobs, campuses
- Evans doorstop interview