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Victoria's TAFEs in turmoil

This is an except transcript from– ABC Mornings With Jon Faine...

By news@gippsland - 27th July 2016 - Back to News

FAINE

RYAN

The board appointment process Labor has gone through has been utterly dysfunctional, we are now months on since TAFE boards actually spilled and communities still don’t know who has been appointed, we don’t know who the chairs are, the government has failed to adhere to its own timeframe spelled out in legislation it passed last year.

The Minister has had almost 12 months since this legislation was passed to appoint new directors…

FAINE

[interrupted] Is this for all TAFEs, or just some of them.

RYAN

This is for all TAFEs across the board. These are government entities, Jon, that are running multi-million dollar budgets the Auditor-General has pointed to risks around their financial sustainability and they have been left in limbo … We put in a request for the names of the directors from the government two weeks ago, and they haven’t even acknowledged this request. At the end of the day, you have to wonder if Steve Herbert, as the Minister, is incompetent, or if he is covering something up.

FAINE

Or is it just that things take longer than people expect when you have got a big task. It is not just a matter of grabbing the first people you can find and whacking them on the board of a TAFE?

RYAN

He has had seven months since the legislation was enacted, the legislation came into effect on January 1, they ran a wide process calling for nominations … they have had seven months to go through that process, finalise those appointments and put them in place before these boards actually spilled. They didn’t do that and we now have TAFE organisations that we do not know who the boards are, we do not know who the directors are and we do not know who the chairs are.

Media contact Emma Manser 0437 225 386 emma.manser@opposition.vic.gov.au