A well-connected young Liberal has set up companies that sell diploma courses and harvest job seekers' data for the scandal-plagued taxpayer-funded vocational education sector.
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VET: a conflagration of taxpayer's money
With student debt up by $3billion and shonky operators being caught out, Quentin Dempster investigates Australia's VET sector.
The Melbourne Grammar graduate, Jake Foster, previously owned a business which was accused of targeting vulnerable students and selling them courses at Australia's largest vocational education network.
Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham recently pledged to take a "leading role" in cracking down on the sector's integrity, but new evidence shows members of his own party are beneficiaries of the booming industry.
On Thursday, he issued a blunt warning to the sector: "Anyone found to be rorting the system will be held to account."
The company responsible for selling job seekers' data, Spot Distributors, is run by the 23-year-old Victorian Young Liberal Mr Foster and, until May, was also owned by his best friend and Scotch College alumnus Paul Mitchell.
Mr Mitchell sits on Victorian Liberal Party President Michael Kroger's powerful state administrative committee.
Until last week, job search website jobify.com.au stated in its privacy policy that it was owned by Spot Distributors. The website used information provided voluntarily by job seekers which it then sold to external education brokers. These brokers then used the data to sell diploma courses to would-be students through taxpayer-funded VET FEE-HELP loans.
The practice, known as "lead generation", has sprung up in the wake of the federal government's ban on cold-calling potential students. When Fairfax Media visited the Jobify site several times in July the site contained no contact numbers for employers and had no job links that worked.
A spokesman said the site was undergoing maintenance to ensure compliance with the strictest government requirements. It has since added a "resume writing" portal to its webpage.
"We are satisfied that Jobify meets those requirements and makes it abundantly clear to users that they will experience job & education opportunities as a result of using the site," the spokesman said.
Following Fairfax Media's inquiries, the ownership of the site was changed to LeadOne, a company wholly owned by Mr Foster, who has been photographed by the side of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's recently installed Minister for Revenue and Financial Services, Kelly O'Dwyer.
A spokesman for Mr Foster and Mr Mitchell said that Spot Distributors had no relationship with the website, and that it had been mistakenly entered as its owner in the privacy policy.
Mr Mitchell said he had never heard of the website until Fairfax Media contacted him. His lawyers said in a letter: "Mr Mitchell has never owned or worked on Jobify as published."
Mr Mitchell, who counts senior Liberal party figures among his Facebook friends, has caused social media controversy in the past. He previously sent a topless snapchat image of himself squeezing his nipple to followers with the caption: "Want Milk?"
He has also posted an image of his Hillary Clinton-themed toilet paper on Instagram with the hashtag #crookedhillary, a tagline of Donald Trump supporters.
A spokesman for Mr Mitchell said he has both Trump and Clinton toilet paper rolls as memorabilia from the 2016 US Presidential nominee race.
"Mr Mitchell upholds the highest standards in the community," his spokesman said.
Mr Mitchell's co-founding colleague at Monash University's respected 180 Degrees Consulting group (which runs volunteer and work experience programs), Mr Foster, recently set up another job seeker site, Findtherightjob.com.au.
All five "job search," "read more" and "find a job" links on Mr Foster's new site lead to a request for personal data which it then onsells to education brokers.
Mr Foster also owned an education broker business called Go Careers that sells diploma courses on behalf of colleges.
The company was investigated by the Department of Education after concerns were raised by a former employee that it was targeting vulnerable people to sign up to diplomas.
Documents obtained by Fairfax Media show Go Careers call centre operators how to obtain a would-be student's tax file number through their Centrelink profile.
A spokesman for Mr Foster said the company did not target vulnerable students and denied any wrongdoing. He said Go Careers had not traded since February.
The company was selling diploma courses on behalf of Careers Australia, Australia's largest private vocational education network that had to pay back $44 million in May after it admitted to "unconscionable conduct."
Careers Australia avoided further litigation after acknowledging it targeted vulnerable people in some of the nation's poorest areas to sign up to diploma courses worth up to $20,000 through the promise of a free laptop.
On Thursday, Education Minister Simon Birmingham issued a warning to the sector as he takes personal control over the disastrous VET-FEE Help scheme, which has blown out to $3 billion in taxpayer debt.
Course fees are paid by the loan scheme and do not fall due until a person's income reaches $54,000 a year.
"We pursue any complaints made about misconduct and anyone found to be rorting the system or breaking the law will be found out and held to account," Mr Birmingham said.
"Our redesign of Labor's flawed VET FEE-HELP scheme will seek to smash the business models of anyone ripping off taxpayers or targeting vulnerable people, whether they be VET providers, brokers or data miners."