Friends of TAFE are pleased with the Victorian Government’s budget promise of $86m to create the Victorian Skills Authority

The now imminent agency was recommended by the Macklin Review of post-secondary education and training (CMM February 4). It will develop a Victorian skills plan and develop a VET funding model to implement it.

And won’t people at the Commonwealth’s National Skills Commission be pleased! The NSC has built a comparative price model to identify what the states and territories charge for the same subject, (CMM April 9), perhaps in the hope of using the data to create a national approach on pricing.

But now the Victorians will have the data to support doing it their way and ignoring the feds.

As CMM oft, remarks – federalism – ain’t it grand!