Privatised Vocational Training Certification A Crooked Business
The neoliberal mantra has been privatise, privatise, privatise. For profit operations do it better, apparently. The reality, however, is a different story in Australia and elsewhere. Privatised vocational training certification a crooked business. Ten years of LNP Coalition federal governments saw a big uptick in the privatisation of training colleges. This largely unregulated sector is rife with bogus certificates being issued by dodgy operators. It is estimated that a third of the 4 000 training and certification businesses in Australia are crooked and issuing false certificates for fast bucks. Why is this happening?
“Privatisation was supposed to improve the range and quality of training offerings, make the sector more responsive to the needs of industry, and to provide greater transparency. None of these promises has been met. The lack of transparency seen with Vocation is far worse for unlisted providers and for unregistered providers party to subcontracting arrangements.”
Regulation Lacking In The Training Certification Sector
Once again the regulator is a toothless tiger, underfunded to meet the demands of the sector. This is the Australian way, to privatise sectors and then rely on the integrity of those operating in the industry. Self-regulation is very popular downunder. The neoliberal philosophy endowers profitability as the sacred cow over and above all other concerns. Criminal intent and infiltration by organised crime is neither here nor there for the Czars of privatisation. Once privatised the politicians move on and look the other way until investigative reporters force the issue, as they have done via the ABC in this instance.
https://iview.abc.net.au/show/7-30/series/0/video/SEGS2025104929734
Bogus Certification Rife In Workplaces Around Australia
The upshot of this is that tens of thousands of Australians working in roles requiring vocational certification are not properly trained or trained at all for the jobs they are doing. Child care and aged care is rife with this in Australia. Those looking after your kids and aged parents or grandparents may well not be adequately trained for the roles they are performing. This is contributing to the serious problems we have seen in these sectors, in aged care particularly. Building sites have workers engaged in potentially dangerous activities who lack the proper training to be on these sites. This is what Australia does, it pretends to conform to more onerous occupation health and safety requirements but fudges their enforcement.
Slack Coalition Enforcement Of Standards
The Albanese government regulators have picked up 18, 000 false and inadequate vocational training certificates since they started cracking down on this Morrison LNP government lax left over fiasco endangering Australians. Privatised vocational training certification a crooked business downunder and an example of how neoliberalism fosters it. Let the market take care of business is the motto of neoliberal economics. Well, the market gets flooded with crooks and shonks. Issuing bits of paper and charging folk hundreds and thousands of dollars for them is attractive business. Fast money for worthless pieces of paper. Lack of regulation equates with scammers and corrupt practices. When are people going to wake up to this obvious fact?
Trump & DOGE Fostering Corruption in the US
Over in Trump land, Elon Musk and DOGE are stripping regulatory bodies from the American federal government and this will result in a fiesta of crime and corruption. Vulnerable ordinary citizens will pay the price, as they always do. Stupid people applaud this today and yet tomorrow they will wake up and get taken to the cleaners by some shonky business now free of checks and balances. The whole US economy is cannibalising itself via the financialization of everything. When you make housing, health and education investment products to be traded you are f*****. These essentials are the bedrock of human life and you mess with these at your peril. Housing is unaffordable in America because Wall St firms are buying up the housing stock to trade for profit. Health in the US is a minefield of private equity investment firms buying up hospitals for profit. Private health insurance companies are raping the citizenry for profit. Pharmaceutical companies charge more in the US for product than anywhere else. Higher education is a veritable sea of investment via financializing degrees to the detriment of student affordability. Ruthless manipulated capitalism eating its own everywhere you look. Oligarchs and billionaires preying on the lives of the working poor. Monopolies and duopolies via the overconcentration of corporate consolidation through mergers and takeovers means no competition and no consumer economic power. America sucks big time for the average Joe and Joanne. We do not want Australia to go this way, which is what the LNP Coalition and Peter Dutton want for OZ. Neoliberalism and its macro corruption rife everywhere you look.
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
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