DODD, Ms Jenny, Chief Executive Officer, TAFE Directors Australia [by video link] MARKS, Dr Andy, Executive Director, Australian Technology Network of Universities [by video link] WEBB, Mr Alec, Chief Executive Officer, Regional Universities Network [by video link] [12:00] ACTING CHAIR: Welcome. I understand that information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses giving evidence to committees has been provided to you. We are still waiting for ATN Universities. Why don't we kick off with who we have? I invite each of you to make a short opening statement, and at the conclusion of any remarks we will go to some questions. Mr Webb, would you like to go first? Mr Webb : Sure. I can do that. Thank you, Chair. The Regional Universities Network believes that regional Australia is essential to future national productivity gains. Today, regional Australia hosts one in every three working Australians, is responsible for two-thirds of Australia's export wealth and collectively generates 40 per cent of total national economic output. Yes, regional Australia punches above its weight, but it's doing so with one hand tied behind its back. The full potential of Australia remains obscured by lower levels of skill attainment in the regions and by inconsistent access to educational opportunities and infrastructure. Consider this: if regional Australia were its own country, it would rank 39th out of the 40 OECD nations for bachelor's degree attainment by the age of 35. Metropolitan Australia, meanwhile, would rank sixth. The sobering reality is that a worker in metropolitan Australia today is almost twice as likely to have obtained a tertiary qualification by age 35 as their regional peer. This is despite the regions having many world-class universities and training providers. Regional student cohorts have remained disproportionately underrepresented in our national skills tallies. Almost 80 per cent of regional students who move to a major city for university will never come back to the regions to work and live, yet 70 per cent of regional students who study at regional universities will remain living and working in the region years after graduating. That's where they'll be utilising their skills to transform their communities. This staggering chasm shows the 'have versus have-not' nature of skills distribution in Australia today, and it's a chasm that must be closed quickly, because Australia's future is regional. The most pressing challenges and opportunities we face as a nation are primarily based within regional Australia. Think about food, soil and water security; natural disaster response and resilience; border and biosecurity capabilities; Australia's energy transition; mineral, resource and energy security; and. of course, revitalising national productivity. It is crucial, therefore, that more regional Australians can train in our regions and have access to strong regional universities. A strong regional university is one that offers an equitable standard of education, opportunities, facilities and research offices and services compared to those that are afforded to metropolitan Australians. As such, in closing, we believe there are five core actions that would strengthen Australia's regional universities and increase the opportunities for growing Australia's productivity. First, we would want to reduce unnecessary regulation so that smaller unscaled regional universities can devote more of their limited resources towards students rather than red tape. We would like to see a boost in regional skills attainment and retention so that our regions have the workforces that they need to grow and thrive. We would want to see greater activation of Australia's regions in national research and development activities so that our national R&D capabilities are better positioned to where they are most needed. We also believe that enabling regional Australia and regional Australians to partake in international education opportunities will yield significant benefits for communities and workforces, not only through the provision of stronger pipelines of Australian trained and highly skilled international graduates but also through the experiences that those Australians will reap from those opportunities. Finally, we would like to see the building of tertiary education infrastructure in the regions so that regional Australia can meet the skilling challenges of the future. Thank you. ACTING CHAIR: Thank you very much. Ms Dodd, would you like to go next? Ms Dodd : I have a few statements to make about TAFE Directors Australia. First off, TAFE builds human capability, and labour capability is what improves productivity. Australia's productivity needs a skilled workforce. TAFEs are contributors to building human capability, addressing skill shortages, enabling technology adoption and ensuring the least advantaged can participate in learning to grow skills for workforce participation. TAFE recognises that its role is to ensure the workforce is skilled and can adapt to change. TAFE's priorities are threefold. Firstly are priorities for students, and those priorities are enabling students to gain skills and enabling students to gain qualifications and enabling students to meaningfully participate in learning that can enable both skills acquisition and qualifications. Secondly, TAFEs are linked very closely to their local employer partners. It's not just the skills they need for their industries that TAFE are involved in enabling but also helping students adopt new technologies for the employers they will be working with. It's a fundamental component of a learning environment that helps students, especially those who have had less advantage in our environments, to be able to gain those very important employability skills, from communication through to problem solving through, indeed, to the adoption of new technology. Thirdly, as all members of the panel know, TAFEs are owned by the state and territories. They are part of the federation of government. They are leading together in responding to the federation of governments's priority industries, be that at the Commonwealth level or be that at their local state and territory level. Those who gain full qualifications—85 per cent of government funded TAFE graduates were employed in 2025, but, of those who get part qualifications, 91 per cent of those students improve their employment outcomes. That's a fundamentally important component of human capability and our current conversation around skill acquisition. TAFEs deliver people into work that matches their job and their qualification outcomes. Secondly, TAFEs are focused on national priority industries. As we know, they are state and territory owned organisations, and that means that there can be diverse priorities within those states and territories. I personally have worked in Tasmania, Queensland and the ACT, and it's not always exactly the same environment regarding the priorities of those states and territories. As leaders in apprenticeship delivery, TAFEs are responsible for providing the nation with qualified tradespeople and also qualified other professionals, and, in the latter group, we might look at the Diploma of Nursing students who work as enrolled nurses, and, in the trades profession, TAFEs do a large percentage of fundamental trades and critical trades, such as plumbing and electricians, but it's much wider than that. This links back to Mr Webb's statements. TAFEs are also place based organisations. They are located all around Australia, and, although there are only 28 TAFEs, being the fact that big TAFEs, such as TAFE New South Wales, now deliver now across the country, they are place based. They deliver into their industries and into their communities and that obligation they have into the regions is absolutely fundamental in terms of ensuring productivity improvement for those regions. TAFE are generally intergenerational assets of those regions, where many people from the community will have been part of a TAFE at some stage during their life. At any moment in time, you can have multiple members of a particular family participating in TAFE based learning. They work from a fairly low resource base and, therefore, their cost per unit is very important in terms of being able to deliver into the environments and regions that they deliver into. Fourthly, TAFEs have been enabled, with innovation and applied research, to actually drive into some new areas in the last period of time. The 20 TAFE centres of excellence are partnering with their regional communities in national priority industries and are delivering new forms of qualifications that meet those models. For example, they are really focusing, at times, on microcredentials because microcredentials may get speed to market in certain parts of those industries. If we think about some of the models that have been in place, the self-accreditation pilot for TAFE that was announced in 2022 is now in place. If we look at TAFE NSW, for example, it has been able to deliver the Diploma of Renewable, Sustainable and Circular Manufacturing Management through self accreditation, and they brought that qualification to market within six months. They are now enrolling, to begin in August, four cohorts of students, where some will be looking at doing higher apprenticeships and others doing post-trade qualifications in that diploma. That's different to the national training environment, where it can take 18 months for a course to be accredited. One of the concerns for TAFE is the operational productivity choking that comes about through some of the other systems, so the self accreditation has been a very important movement to get faster workforce skills. Lastly, I just want to draw out the National TAFE Network. The National TAFE Network— ACTING CHAIR: If you could do it quickly, so that we have time for questions, that would be great. Ms Dodd : The National TAFE Network's goal— Senator McKENZIE: Thank you, Chair, they're very short opening statements! Ms Dodd : is to reduce duplication, to work together. Thank you. ACTING CHAIR: Thank you very much. Welcome Dr Marks, as you can see, we're just doing opening statements. If you've got a short one that you'd like to deliver we can then get into questions. Dr Marks : I do. G'day everybody, and thanks for having me. The Australian Technology Network of Universities is five unis: Newcastle, Curtin, Deakin, UTS and RMIT. We've got roughly a quarter of a million students enrolled with us. We train about a third of Australia's engineers, around about a quarter of our IT workforce and roughly a quarter of our building, construction and architecture grads. We're really at the very applied edge of the labour market and all of those productivity enhancing fields in particular. One of the things that we do as well is that we generate over $1.6 billion in research partnerships, predominantly with industry. As the technology unis, we are the ones that are doing stuff that's practically advancing productivity and developing the R&D ecosystem into the economy. We talk less about higher-ed policy and more about economic policy and how we can help the regions, help industry and help Australia get ahead. You won't hear us too much in the higher-ed lane, we're very much practically focused. One of the bonuses about the ATN is that of our international students, or the international students that study with Australian unis, we train 35 per cent of those offshore, so we aren't the part of the problem with respect to really large numbers of internationals coming in to the country and aggravating some of those other issues around housing, for example. We are actively partnering and building supply chains, soft diplomacy and networks that are great for Australia's sovereign capacity and resilience overseas, predominantly in South-East Asia but also throughout Europe and the rest of the world. We want to have a sustainable balance in that space. Just to close off, we are one of the leading groups within the sector in dual-sector education. RMIT and Swinburne, who's an observer member with us, have roughly over 25,000 dual-sector students enrolled with them. We are quite advanced, for example, in some Victorian institutions—less so with respect to partnering with TAFE and vocations elsewhere across our membership base. There are three things we'd like to see. The first thing is that we'd like to see work integrated learning made universal so that every student who does a university degree or a dual-sector degree has a period in the workforce so their skills are practical. The second thing we want is a truly joined-up system. All the wonderful things that are happening in Victoria around connections with TAFE can happen at scale in New South Wales. They just don't happen, because of the different jurisdictions. The third thing that we would like to see is the government implement the recommendations of its own report, the Ambitious Australia report. It says all of the right things with respect to lifting productivity through increased R&D activity. Let's fire the starter gun and do it. That's it from me. Thanks, everyone. ACTING CHAIR: Thanks very much. We'll go to Senator McKenzie. Senator McKENZIE: That was very succinct, thank you. I'll start with you, ATN. You went to one of the areas in this inquiry I am looking at. ATN has got six member universities, and, from the figures I can assess from the Department of Education, RMIT and UTS are at the top, with 24 per cent international students as part of their cohorts, and the University of Newcastle is at the other end, at 11 per cent. Could you just confirm those figures for me. Dr Marks : I'd have to take that on notice, but I think they sound correct to me. Senator McKENZIE: Given that you were saying that a lot of those international students are trained overseas, can I have that breakdown on notice of on-campus versus—well, do you differentiate off-campus domestic and off-campus offshore? Dr Marks : We do. We can provide you with those figures on notice, absolutely. Senator McKENZIE: I'm really interested in housing and what's going on in that area. What proportion of your combined student cohort are foreign fee-paying students? Dr Marks : I think we have one of the lowest portions in the sector. I'd have to come back to you with a specific figure. But, as I mentioned, of all of the international students that are enrolled offshore, we have the largest share, as a grouping. So we're not part of that problem. But, certainly, with respect to the figures you've cited, we'll come back to you and clarify. Senator McKENZIE: That'd be great. Could I get them as an ATN group but also by institution. And I'd be really interested in the mix. I know historically we've had an overdependence, say, on China. Some universities have chosen to specialise in the subcontinent. I'd really be interested in the mix of your students, particularly with your specialty area being engineering—and amen to that! You can't build anything in this country without a lot of engineers. Can I understand what on-campus accommodation support you provide to your students, your international students? Dr Marks : Absolutely. Every domestic onshore student within our membership base would have access to accommodation support through our member universities. Again, those that don't have found a spot within the private rental market or through other means. But, as I mentioned, given the comparatively low share of onshore students that we have in terms of internationals, that's typically not an issue for us. I do accept your comments around some of the urban settings that, for example, UTS and RMIT operate in. There's a crunch in every urban centre in Australia, of course, around housing, but, wherever possible, we assist them directly or indirectly with accommodation, and we don't feel, given the sustainable share and balance we have, that we're part of the problem. Senator McKENZIE: I'm sure you're not, and you won't be alone in my questioning. Everyone will get this. So, Universities Australia and Go8, I will be asking the same questions of your members. So please don't feel you're being targeted. Separately, I've seen one national survey of over 5,000 international students which found that 26 per cent of them were paid less than minimum wage, trying to keep their heads above water, and they were afraid to report that because of the visa consequences. Is that something your universities are aware of? Dr Marks : I think the whole university sector is aware of that, and, quite frankly, I don't think that we've done enough in that space in ensuring that we help with those protections. Of course, we don't want to see that occurring, and, wherever we can prevent that—much of it is around education too, ensuring that those students are aware of their rights. We do that across the membership, but, in that position, any single person being underpaid is intolerable—so we want to address that. Senator McKENZIE: To RUN: what advice do you provide international students in regional universities? Do you report every case that comes to you to the Fair Work Ombudsman? Mr Webb : I would have to take that on notice. All our universities have offices dedicated to supporting international students, as well as through our employment offices that our universities have, making it clear what their rights are and what the various awards are, and providing that advice. Senator McKENZIE: I know everyone has an international student officer. I'm interested in hard data. Mr Webb : I've had no data reported to me from any of my member institutions about that occurring. But, where it does occur, there are processes that our universities have in place to support those students. Senator McKENZIE: If you could reach in and ask the question directly of your member universities about Fair Work Ombudsman reporting of underpayment of international students' wages, I would appreciate that. To both the universities: the 2025 Graduate Outcomes Survey found that a lack of permanent residency is the single biggest barrier that international graduates identify to getting a job that matches their quals. Jobs and Skills Australia's own 2025 study found that the likelihood of gaining permanent residency shapes both student and employer decisions from the outset. How many of your international students are employed while studying, and how many go to work in their chosen field after graduation? Dr Marks : I'll come back to you on notice with the exact breakdown. We are concerned—particularly in fields of high demand like nursing and midwifery, where those skills and that workforce capacity are desperately needed—that these challenges are preventing that from occurring. We work in that space very actively, and we initiated some great programs during the COVID period, about getting people into those fields in a fast-track way, that still run today. In terms of other disciplines and other professions across the Jobs and Skills Australia list, I'll come back to you on that issue; we can clarify. Mr Webb : I would echo the words of my colleague there. It's not something I would have at hand. A lot of those circumstances around where a student is working during their study are something that is between the student and the employer, not the university. It's up to the industry partner and the student to make sure that they are compliant with their visa conditions. I don't think our universities would have access to that data. In regard to employability after the fact, that's something I can definitely come back to you on. Senator McKENZIE: Yes, I think everyone has to collect data on that. What would be the impact if the Australian government said foreign students had to return home after completing their studies, with no pathway to permanent residency? What would happen to your international student intake? Dr Marks : More concerning for us would be the impact on the workforce. Going to the particular professions I cited, we simply don't have enough of a domestic workforce in those areas of aged care and health, in particular, to fill the gaps. Senator McKENZIE: That wasn't my question. What would happen to your enrolments? Dr Marks : I think they would take a hit, absolutely, simply because we have that Jobs-and-Skills-Australia-advertised series of gaps in workforce capacity. They are responding to the signals that the Australian government sends with respect to workforce demand. It's not just the sector; it's what would happen with the Commonwealth's capacity to fill critical labour market gaps. That's what they're looking at—not just at what universities alone are offering. Senator McKENZIE: That wasn't my question, though. To RUN: what would happen to your international student enrolments? Mr Webb : I believe there would be a negative impact on those enrolment numbers. As part of the sector, the RUN only enrols four per cent of all international students in the higher education sector. We would expect to see that decline. As Dr Marks outlined, there are students who are genuine students who do wish to seek a pathway to work in Australia and are responding to signals that the government has put forward. We would imagine that if that was closed it would impact those students in particular. Senator McKENZIE: Would it be fair to say that the Australian qualification is effectively acting as a gateway drug to permanent residency rather than an education qualification in and of itself? Dr Marks : No, I would disagree with that. I think it's to that point around those workforce opportunities, which, again, the Commonwealth government is very forward about. Senator McKENZIE: I have a question for RUN specifically. We have the Southern Cross share of international students. My understanding is that they're 26 per cent international students, and Charles Sturt is at three per cent, the widest spread of any of the university groupings. Could you confirm those numbers? Mr Webb : I would have to take that on notice for the individual provider level, but those numbers sound accurate, to my understanding. Senator McKENZIE: Yes. So perhaps you could give me, by institution member, what proportion of their combined student cohort are foreign fee-paying, to explain that gap, and where the bulk of them come from by institution and how accommodation is provided for these students in their regional settings. And I know some of the regional universities have city campuses, which often are their most lucrative. Is that the case? Mr Webb : Our members do have campuses in capital cities, as do metropolitan universities. They have campuses in— Senator McKENZIE: Well, of course; they're metropolitan universities. But for RUN universities, my understanding was that sometimes the most lucrative campus is that city campus, which then cross-subsidises, if you like, the work for the regions. Is that the case? Mr Webb : Yes. They have metropolitan campuses that do provide revenue streams into the full range of regional university operations, which includes operating campuses in regional locations. Senator McKENZIE: Yes, absolutely, which we're very thankful for. But in the breakdown of the question on notice, perhaps you could also, where a university has that cross-subsidisation model, tell me what proportion of that metropolitan campus is international students. For instance, Southern Cross: I'm sure they're not all in Lismore—although they should be, because Byron Bay is just down the road, and they could learn how to surf as well, while studying at one of our best soil universities. Anyway. I look forward to the answers to those questions on notice, gentlemen. Thank you. ACTING CHAIR: Have you concluded, Senator McKenzie? Senator McKENZIE: I did have a little one for TAFE, if I can keep going. ACTING CHAIR: Yes, keep going. Senator McKENZIE: I'm just conscious of hogging the call. Ms Dodd, with respect to TAFE's international student cohort, I would like to understand whether TAFEs have foreign fee-paying students and, if so, what proportion of enrolments they are. Ms Dodd : Yes, they do, and they are tiny. The TAFE proportion of international students in vocational education and training is very, very small. And of course many of our TAFEs are also higher education providers, and they have international students in one or two of their higher education courses. But, again, it's very, very small. The proportion is well under five per cent of the total international students across the country. Senator McKENZIE: Does that differ by state? Are some states more attractive to international students than others in the TAFE sector? Ms Dodd : It differs by state. It probably differs as well by states' desire to encourage international students, not just being attractive. If you look at Western Australia as an example, Western Australians TAFEs do not recruit their own international students at all. There is a body called TAFE International Western Australia, which works within the department, which is the recruiting body for international students and then positions those international students into one of the five TAFEs that they recruit for. That's a very different model than those on the eastern seaboard, where there are international students in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria—in Tasmania, it's tiny—and South Australia. All TAFEs have a very small number of international students. Senator McKENZIE: On notice, can you provide some accurate data and where the predominant numbers of international students are? Has that been shrinking? Is that because TAFEs have been going backwards or because the university sector's been growing as a proportion? I'd like to understand that tension. You might have to take that on notice. Ms Dodd : I suspect it's been fairly stable as a proportion. Senator McKENZIE: Yes, that's what I think. When people say that TAFE's proportion is shrinking, it's as a result of the proportionality, not the actual hard, nominal numbers. Ms Dodd : International students have never been a big part of the TAFE student population. Senator McKENZIE: It might be different if it's university and TAFE together. I would also like RUN to provide the data around the employment status and the accommodation. That's it for me. ACTING CHAIR: I have a question for RUN first. In your submission, you talked about the challenges faced by regional universities in comparison to your urban counterparts, particularly around regulatory challenges. Can you take us through what those things are in particular and how they impact on this question of productivity? Mr Webb : In the university sector, we all agree that we need good governance. We're not asking for less governance; we're asking for better governance and better regulation. Universities are primarily governed by the state and territory acts that enshrine universities' existence, but then we are regulated primarily by Commonwealth entities that sit over the top of this. As you can imagine, that creates huge areas of duplication. I saw a study that said they've estimated that there is about a 63 per cent increase in compliance related costs for universities in the last decade. That means that, for universities, you need more people doing more things, which is detracting from spending the scarce public resource that we do have on teaching and research. Regional universities are not like all the other universities. We operate multi-campus models, often in thin, scarcely populated markets. That presents itself in a different operating model and different fiscal challenges that are associated with that. When we see additional regulation coming in, that requires a whole new person to do it, as opposed to simply going with a scaled-up model for a university that operates a single campus model. ACTING CHAIR: Is there duplication between the states and the Commonwealth? Is it different or is it a combination of that? Mr Webb : It's a combination of duplication between the states and the Commonwealth, but it's also a duplication within the Commonwealth, where you have different bodies seeking very similar information multiple times, as opposed to what we think should occur, which is a 'report once, use often' approach to regulation. ACTING CHAIR: Can you give a practical example of that? Mr Webb : In regard to that, we see things like the request for data from TEQSA, from the newly established ATEC and from the Department of Education. They'll often request very similar information from the universities. On top of that, the universities have to provide information to state governments as part of the state audit process, for instance. If you would like additional examples, I'm happy to go in and provide them on notice. They do get quite technical as I start reading out long bits of legislative names and provisions, but that's where we see this duplication occur. You set up a gender based violence regulator and they then seek additional information from a university which was already provided to TEQSA, for instance. Then, when you have dual-sector universities, they also have to provide information to ASQA, the regulator there. ACTING CHAIR: So your recommendation is that there's a review and then a streamlining of this once-used-often model, as you've called it. Who do you think is best placed to do that? Mr Webb : This was also recommended by the Australian Universities Accord. We believe the ATEC, as the system steward on the tertiary side, should be the body that instigates and takes carriage of this work in terms of doing the review to understand the regulatory environment. My understanding is there is a Better Regulation Working Group that has been established. It's not exactly clear to me—I'm not on that group—as to where that working group is heading in the process of reforming, or at least reviewing, the regulatory impost upon tertiary education providers, but I believe it should sit with the ATEC in the first instance as the system steward. ACTING CHAIR: Ms Dodd and Dr Marks, do you have similar challenges in this regard? I know that we're particularly talking about the regional context, but do you see similar issues? Ms Dodd : From a TAFE perspective it is a bit different, but it's similar in some ways in that there is a lot of reporting. There's reporting through to state training authorities as well as to the national regulatory arm, if the TAFEs are indeed regulated by ASQA—remembering, of course, that two states have their own regulator: Western Australia and Victoria. Of course, most TAFEs—the majority of our members—are actually higher education providers as well, so then there's the reporting to TEQSA, too. In many ways the reporting structures are probably one of the significant things, to quote one of my members, 'choking the system' a little bit, because there's a lot of reporting required at various different points for any one of our members. Dr Marks : The reporting issues—I would absolutely endorse what my colleagues have said. One of the critical problems would be the cross reporting and the conflicting way in which university data is used. In respect to productivity, I'd love to see and the ATN Universities would love to see university data on research partnerships, applied research and those skills gaps I mentioned earlier run closer to data in the central agencies around the government's employment agenda, its productivity or its energy renewal agenda et cetera. I think it's not so much too much reporting, but it's perhaps wasted opportunities with respect to getting better transparency and better joined up use of data. Those workforce flows into areas like AI, for example—we have fantastic data on the capacities we are building into our curriculum, yet they're not making it to those areas in government, for example, where they would be incredibly useful. It's wonderful intelligence to have, to know what we have in AI. I'd love to see it used and taken outside of the higher ed lane. Senator McKENZIE: Unleash! ACTING CHAIR: That's a good segue, perhaps, to a question for all three of you. I think you've all talked in various ways about this place based situation that you have, and I think what you're all saying in different ways is that there's a link between what you're training your students in—in whatever ways you do that—and the jobs. And it sounds like, particularly in terms of the work placements and the applied learning, working with communities and local employers—that is really at the crux of having this very direct pipeline of qualified and skilled people going into jobs. What would you say about what could be improved, from your own experiences, in being able to do that more effectively and to supercharge it? That is emerging as a key theme, as something we really need to get better at. What are one or two practical recommendations that we could take? Ms Dodd : In my opening, I mentioned the self-accreditation for TAFE. TAFE works within the national training system—which is different to my colleagues who are representing the universities here. We need to keep that in mind. The national training system has been driven on consistency. One of the things that that consistency can prohibit is actual local responsiveness. In our world, in the TAFE world, the self-accreditation that three of our TAFEs were part of the pilots of—TAFE NSW, Bendigo Kangan and the TAFE arm of Central Queensland University, which is dual sector, did a pilot last year where they developed qualifications for their local industry, for their local responsiveness, and they did that qualification development in a much shorter period of time than the national system would have allowed. They did it within six months and they are now employing, or starting to train people, into those businesses. From our point of view, we'd say we need more of that. We need to recognise the value of the national training system but not make it the only solution to how we can meet local needs in the TAFE environment. TAFEs have got curriculum capability. They have got the ability to be responsive. These sorts of self-accreditation processes for TAFE are happening in the non-licensed trades area—AQF level 5, diploma level, and above. We think there needs to be more of that so we can actually listen and take a local response to what is happening in industry. That also will contribute to the harmonisation conversation, because, in that conversation, it's possible, then, for TAFE to work closely with the university partner in that local context to find the right solution for that particular employer or that suite of employers in that environment, which might have a little bit of vocational education and might also have a little bit of higher education. There are many opportunities we need to look at that are about innovation and how research is enabled across TAFE and university to meet local needs, especially when we think about the predominance of small business in our Australian economy. Mr Webb : From a regional perspective—I need to frame this in the regional context, and I mentioned in my opening statement the participation rates and attainment rates in regional Australia—there's the access and outreach piece that is essential here. You cannot be what you cannot see, so how do we, as a country, raise aspirations to engage in tertiary education? Whether that's in through the vocational system or from a university and then into a vocational system, that lifelong learning is going to be essential to meeting the skills challenges that we need. But the second part around that—and this is very specific to my members—is that 49 per cent of our students are aged 26 or older; 52 per cent of them are part time. These are people that are not the traditional 18- or 19-year-olds, straight from school into the sector. We also know 40 per cent of them study in either healthcare- or education-related fields. For both of those courses, there are significant placement constraints that are placed upon the sector—for more students to study in these fields and train. We've been very supportive of the Commonwealth prac placements as a program to help support those students. That helps the students financially, but what it doesn't do is open up the placement opportunities for students to partake in this mandatory placement component of their education in a location that is convenient to them. If you're a mature-aged student that's having to move thousands of kilometres to do a six-week placement as part of your degree, that is a significant constraint on helping get more graduates into these fields. Dr Marks : I would add to Alex's point. If there's one thing that the ATN universities call for, it is making work integrated learning or work placements available to all disciplines. It's the quickest way to inject productivity into the labour market, simply because one of the criticisms that universities get from employers is that they need to deprogram students once they're graduated because they lack practical experience. The skills matrix is evolving so fast. AI, again, is a classic example of that. We weren't talking about it three or four years ago in curriculum to the extent we are now. The only way we are going to keep pace with those changes in technology and also seize the opportunities around energy transition and defence science technology is if we have students in the workforce during their degree program. That applies to the traditional technology disciplines like engineering et cetera. It also applies to the humanities. The critical skills that come through the humanities in interpreting artificial intelligence and in mapping the way that we engage with that type of technology are just as important. That's why the Commonwealth's prac payment extension is an excellent first step. Let's open it up to everybody. And, to answer Alex's question, he's right. The opportunities for placements aren't always there. Let's build in some incentives for businesses that take on a placement so that everyone has a role to play. Universities are investing. Industries are investing and getting something by way of an incentive, and government's investing in boosting productivity. So yes, integrated learning for all would be the take out from me. ACTING CHAIR: What are the barriers to mandating integrated learning? Dr Marks : I think it's a mix of things. I think it is, to Alex's point, around availability—employers not having the budget, the time nor the accessibility to supervise or to make those placements available. This is why that incentive structure or support structure is important. You have plenty of agencies that could enable that through their existing remit or tweak of their existing remit. I think another element is around mobility. Again, this would apply very much in the regional settings where it's difficult to get to and from those opportunities. The other element might be around, I guess, the capacity to marry up systems between the private sector and the public sector with respect to safety and other regulations to keep everyone well through the process. But I think they're easy nuts to crack within the existing framework of placements. We know what is, for example, required during a nursing and midwifery placement. Many of those frameworks are transferable into other disciplines, and it is really the quickest road to improve productivity because it just builds in that practical capacity and real time capacity into degree programs that otherwise don't have that. ACTING CHAIR: Yes. Ms Dodd, were you going to add something there? Ms Dodd : I wasn't, but I'm happy to. Much of what happens in vocational education and training is applied learning. Work placements are fundamental, but so are authentic based work projects that might have an employer involved but that aren't necessarily a work placement. So I think there are many ways in which this can occur. The most important part of the conversation is employers stepping in to be part of the learning experience of students as they are learning. I think that that's where, in our TAFE environment, we do try and work very hard with local employers to have that authentic experience. Of course, the courses in vocational education and training are actually focused that way, even in recognising the relationship in such a thing as an apprenticeship between an employer, the training provider and the student. ACTING CHAIR: Thank you very much. Unless there are any other questions, I think we might conclude with this session a little bit early. Thank you very much to the witnesses who've attended. We really appreciate your time today. If you've taken questions on notice, they are due by 5 pm on 11 August 2026. Proceedings suspended from 12:49 to 13:36 .