The Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) has cancelled the registration of 10 "critically non-compliant" providers since November 2024 as part of an ongoing campaign to weed out "non-genuine" or "bad faith" providers.
The Federal Government allocated $4.7 million in the 2025-26 Budget for ASQA to undertake a "surge" in enforcement activity to respond to "large-scale fraudulent issuance" of Vocational Education and Training (VET) qualifications, ASQA's website states.
A spokesperson for ASQA told The Weekly SOURCE, "Where providers were found to have issued qualifications without the appropriate training or assessment, regulatory action is taken to cancel qualifications and/or statements of attainment they issued.
"As part of this work, ASQA has cancelled more than 25,500 qualifications and/or statements of attainment held by more than 23,000 individuals.
More than 3,800 qualifications or statements of attainment relating to Ageing Support have been cancelled as part of this regulatory action."
Aged care operators help staff re-qualify
A spokesperson for Opal HealthCare, Australia's largest residential aged care provider, told The Weekly SOURCE, "A very small number of Opal HealthCare team members have been impacted by the Federal Government's ASQA cancellation of RTO licences and we are committed to supporting them to regain their qualifications and continue their careers with us.
"We are working with those team members, to help them regain their qualifications through training provided via the Opal HeathCare Academy and partnerships we have with reputable RTOs.
"They are continuing to work with us, in supervised roles, while completing their re-training."
Tim Humphries (pictured right), CEO of private aged care provider Homestyle Aged Care, told The Weekly SOURCE that four of their 1,700 staff have had their qualifications cancelled.
Homestyle has been able to work with those staff to have their qualifications recognised by a different VET provider.
Tim added that the organisation has since changed its recruitment procedures.
"Given this issue, we now check on certificates from the cancelled RTO's for candidates for roles with Homestyle," he said.
