The Federal government is currently concluding its deliberations around the content of the next Commonwealth/State funding agreement. The AEU campaign, underway since June 2011, to persuade the Federal government to pull back from requiring further competition as a condition of access to federal funds in the agreement has had some success. Training and Skills Minister Evans has made some positive public comments about the role of the public TAFE system, and the need to support it, but the government has fallen well short of guaranteeing funding for TAFE.

The Federal government is arguing that it is up to state governments to organise their TAFE systems as they see fit. The emerging disaster in Victorian TAFE should sound a clear warning to other states, but South Australia, Queensland, NSW and Western Australia are all contemplating increased competitive allocation of funds in their states.

The AEU is co-ordinating a strategy of lobbying targeted federal politicians in the first half of 2012. CoAG meets in March, and this will be a focus of our lobbying, and the new Skilling Australia's Workforce agreement has to be concluded by the end of June 2012.