Rod Camm has a Wile E Coyote capacity to absorb pain. The president of the Australian Council for Private Education and Training gets pushed off policy cliffs and is clobbered with buckets of public funding his members aren’t allowed to compete for and gets up smiling. But it seems he finally finds the wallopings wearisome.

“I understand the shift to higher education enrolments, but a diverse skilled workforce is fundamental to our countries growth and prosperity. It’s no wonder skills shortages persist. Unfortunately, there are no signs the federal budget, or that of the states and territories, is going to address this failure by governments. … It seems the VET sector is going to be left to slowly decay while higher education enrolments are ‘put on ice’ over the next few years,” Mr Camm told members yesterday.