Today Nationals candidate Mark Coulton, Online Direct Democracy Party candidate John Ayton and Greens candidate Matt Parmeter answer the question: How should tertiary and vocational education be funded in Australia?

Christian Democratic Party candidate Glen Ryan and Labor candidate Kate Stewart were contacted to take part in the Daily Liberal's candidate series, but did not respond before deadline.

THE last few years has seen an explosion in the numbers of private vocational education providers. Unfortunately, the incentive scheme utilised by the federal government did not always promote a quality education.

There is now about $4,000,000,000 that has been paid out by the federal government.

While it expects to claim this money back from students, it is likely that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted, without any real educational attainments to show for it.

The Coalition minister responsible for the sector, vocational education training minister Scott Ryan said "It has, quite frankly, been a disaster for taxpayers. . ." of his own sector.

One private education provider is alleged to have received $111M in Commonwealth funds, and to have handed out just 117 diplomas. (SMH 30/4/2106)

The Australian Federal Police has raided the offices of some private education providers as part of fraud investigations.

Tens of thousands of students have been left in limbo by shonky companies "selling online diplomas has become the quickest get rich scheme there is''(SMH 16/9/2015).

There are three tragedies here. Firstly, taxpayers have had their hard-earned money wasted by the federal government.

Secondly, students have been duped, receiving poor training.

And thirdly, society is poorer because the future workforce is less skilled than it should be.

Solution: The Greens want to restore public funding to TAFE, and remove it from private colleges. So the taxpayer funds go toward getting students a proper vocational education.

University Education : The Greens want to move toward a fee-free university education for students, with entrance based on merit.

Paying for it : The Greens will pay for it in the budget. It is about the choices we make. All our costings are checked by the Parliamentary Budget Office. We don't support the Coalitions $50B company tax cut.

I BELIEVE that the Commonwealth government should continue to invest in tertiary and vocational education. However there are many factors that need to be considered to ensure that this investment is made responsibly.

One major factor is that the costs to taxpayers of higher education have, over recent years, grown dramatically with funding of university students essentially growing at twice the rate of the economy.

While the Coalition would continue to invest around $16.7 billion in 2016 alone in Australian higher education and research, I welcome the release of an options paper to consider how to ensure higher education continues to support equitable access, excellence and innovation while also ensuring that the system is sustainable for this and future generations of students. 

Regarding vocational education and training, in 2016-17 the Coalition indicated it would commit around $7 billion to vocational education and training through funding and student loans. 

A key factor for consideration here is the management of unscrupulous behaviour and practices in the VET FEE-HELP scheme which resulted from the previous Labor government’s expansion of the VET FEE-HELP scheme in 2012 but failure to include sufficient safeguards against dishonest providers.

I support the Coalition’s introduction of measures to both protect students and taxpayers as well as the release of a discussion paper to inform the redesign of the scheme for 2017.

There are many things to consider when looking at funding for tertiary and vocational education in Australia. The long term financial cost to the "students", the current management structures we have in place to facilitate tertiary education standards, whether we're talking about public or private educational facilities. 

The end goal would be open the conversation, education is the single most important building block to a healthy, happy and informed nation. We need to discuss bringing down the costs to the student, and raising the quality and consistency of the institutions across the board. Funding plays a key role, however, we need a new plan to go forward.