Here is the fundamental question policymakers must confront: if you design a policy so successful that enrolments surge beyond expectations, but the workforce delivering it collapses, have you actually succeeded?
On paper, the Albanese Government's TAFE expansion looks like a genuine policy win. In just 18 months, 508,000 Australians enrolled in free TAFE places, with 131,000 entering care, 48,900 moving into digital and tech, and 35,000 into construction. The government committed $1.5 billion to expand access, targeting workers left behind by economic change. By any measure of access, the policy worked.
But strip away the talking points and what remains is a crisis that deserves serious policy attention. The Australian Education Union's 2026 State of Our TAFE report, based on responses from 1,696 teachers across the country, reveals that nearly two-thirds have considered leaving their job in the past year. Almost half do not expect to be working in TAFE within five years. Eighty-eight percent knew a colleague who departed in the past 12 months.
The problem is structural. TAFE staff report rising numbers of students presenting with mental health needs, literacy gaps, and digital skills deficits. Yet institutes have not received proportional increases in learning support services or infrastructure investment. More students are walking through the door. The people meant to help them are walking out.
The counterargument deserves consideration: TAFE needed expansion, the policy is working, and growth creates transition challenges. Fair points. But consider what happens when the workforce that delivers this expansion becomes unsustainable. Teacher shortages now mean reduced course offerings later. Experienced educators leaving means institutional knowledge walks out the door. Burnout culture spreads to new recruits.
Voters deserve honest government about what this costs. Expanding access without adequately investing in the educators delivering expanded access is not fiscal responsibility. It is borrowing from the future. AEU Federal President Correna Haythorpe stated plainly that decades of underfunding had stretched teachers to breaking point. That indictment applies equally to this government's choices.
The policy succeeded in one dimension and failed in another. That is not a mixed result. That is an incomplete policy awaiting completion.