Security report
ASQA has published the findings of its national strategic review of training for the security industry.
ASQA Chief Commissioner Chris Robinson said inconsistent licensing arrangements across states and territories and poor quality training and assessment were posing fundamental challenges to ensuring licensed security personnel were equipped to safely carry out their duties.
“A key driver of ASQA’s review was concerns raised in successive reports by Coroners investigating the deaths of patrons during or as a result of restraint or intervention by security personnel in the course of incident control, particularly around licensed premises,” Mr Robinson said.
“ASQA’s national strategic review has confirmed many of the issues raised by Coroners, and by other stakeholders in the vocational education and training (VET) sector.”
Mr Robinson said that while qualifications for security roles were national, the regulation of security licensing in state and territory-based, making it more difficult to ensure consistency and alignment between qualifications and licensing requirements.
“Until the inconsistent licensing arrangements are fixed, people will continue to cross borders to attain licences in jurisdictions with fewer requirements,” he said.
“Other key finding of our review is the threat posed to quality training by the prevalence of extremely short courses which do not allow people to gain the required skills and competencies.
“While this issue is systemic across VET, it is endemic in security training.”