A Local Conversation on a National Issue: Briefing Dan Repacholi MP on Fee-Free TAFE

This week I sat down with Dan Repacholi, the Federal Member for Hunter and my own local MP, to brief him on the Independent Review of Fee-Free TAFE in Australia. It was a good meeting, and a useful reminder of something easy to forget in a national policy debate: the first person any of us can talk to about it is often the member who represents our own street.

Declared interest: Vivacity's RTO advisory client base is disclosed throughout this review's outputs, consistent with the transparency standard we're holding the policy itself to.

Why brief a local member at all

The review isn't a campaign against Fee-Free TAFE, and it isn't a case for any political party. It's an attempt to answer a much narrower question: can the public currently see whether this funding model is delivering value for money? Members of Parliament, whatever their party, are exactly who that evidence needs to reach, because they're the ones who can ask departments the questions an independent researcher can't compel an answer to.

Dan was generous with his time and genuinely engaged with the material, and his office has offered to help make further introductions as the research moves into its next phase. That kind of constructive, cross-party engagement is exactly what an evidence-led review should be able to count on, and it's worth saying so publicly.

What we discussed

The conversation centred on where the evidence currently sits. A few of the headline points:

The money announced isn't the money paid. Of the roughly $1.05 billion Commonwealth commitment contracted under the Fee-Free TAFE Skills Agreement, only around $659 million had actually been paid to states and territories within the first 18 months, a figure we've now had independently corroborated by a second government source. A further $910 million is formally budgeted through Budget Paper No. 3 out to 2029-30. Announced, budgeted, and paid are three different numbers, and the public conversation often treats them as one.

There's a real, unexplained funding gap between provider types. Government funding per hour of delivery sits at $24.00 for TAFE institutes against $9.79 for private training providers, a ratio that has held above 2:1 every year since 2019. We haven't yet found a published explanation for why the gap exists at that scale.

We genuinely don't yet know if it's working. NCVER can't separately measure Fee-Free TAFE outcomes within national data until 2027, and a properly comparable completion rate is unlikely before around 2032, most of the way through a program already committed to well beyond $1.6 billion in ongoing funding. That's not a criticism of the policy. It's a call for better measurement of it, and it's one of the clearest, most fixable gaps we've found.

The encouraging news is how much of this picture has come together from public data alone. Eight of the ten evidence gaps we identified at the start of September have since been closed, or largely closed, using nothing but published NCVER, Productivity Commission, and Budget Paper data, at no cost to government. That's a strong sign the remaining questions are answerable, not just theoretical.

How we know this

None of this comes from modelling or assumption. It's drawn directly from public and FOI-obtained sources: Budget Paper No. 3 2026-27, the Fee-Free TAFE Skills Agreement schedule, NCVER's DataBuilder and historical time series, Productivity Commission data tables, and a DEWR Question Time Brief obtained under Freedom of Information. Every figure in this post can be traced back to one of those documents, and we're happy to point anyone, including government, to the exact source on request.

A couple of common questions

Isn't the answer just "TAFE needs more funding"? Maybe, but that's not a conclusion this review can support yet, and it's not the question we're asking. Higher per-hour funding for TAFE could reflect legitimate cost differences (facilities, specialist trades equipment, regional campuses), a genuine efficiency gap, or something in between. We simply haven't found a published explanation either way, and that absence is itself the finding.

Is this an anti-TAFE report? No. TAFE completions were actually higher than private providers' in the most recent government-funded data we've reviewed, and nothing here suggests TAFE is doing a bad job. The review is about whether the public can see, from the numbers government publishes, whether the money is being well spent, regardless of who's spending it.

What happens next

We talked through the case for the Australian National Audit Office to consider a formal performance audit, and what that request looks like in practice. We also discussed the value of engaging broadly across the Parliament, government, opposition, and crossbench alike, since a review built on evidence rather than allegiance should be able to stand up to scrutiny from any direction.

One concrete date worth watching: we've now formally requested the outstanding acquittal and evaluation documents from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations under FOI. A decision is due by 18 October 2026, and we'll post an update here as soon as we hear back.

The full report remains on track for release in the coming weeks.

How you can be heard

None of this is as strong without the sector's own voice in it. Government data can tell us a great deal, but it can't tell us what's actually happening inside a training room, a workshop, or a regional campus this year. That's the gap only RTOs, trainers, and employers can close.

If you run, work in, or rely on a training organisation, whatever your funding mix, this is your chance to put your experience directly into evidence that's already in front of federal parliamentarians. It takes most people 7 to 10 minutes.

Complete the RTO Sector Survey 2026 →

Every response sharpens the picture. If you've already completed it, thank you, and please consider passing it on to someone else in the sector whose experience hasn't been captured yet.

As Angela Connell-Richards puts it:

"You don't need to already agree with someone's politics for them to take good evidence seriously. That's been true of every meeting so far, and it was true of this one. The same goes for the survey, you don't need to have a strong view either way about Fee-Free TAFE, you just need to tell us what's actually happening where you are."