Now lawSchools & Uni Introduced in the House of Representatives, 29 Oct 2025

Colleges' past use of tax file numbers made lawful

Job training colleges and government staff handled students' tax file numbers for years. The law never clearly allowed it. This law says that handling was legal all along, from January 2017 to September 2025.

Official name: VET Student Loans (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2025

Who it affects

• Students who took out a VET Student Loan since 2017: Their loans still stand, but legal claims about how colleges handled their tax file number may now fail.
• Training colleges approved for VET Student Loans: They cannot be sued or charged over how they handled tax file numbers for loans in the past.
• Government staff and the head of the tax office: Their past sharing of tax file numbers with colleges for loans counts as legal.
• People with a privacy complaint already decided: Complaints and court cases that finished before the law started are not touched.

Tax file numbers lacked cover

Job training means hands-on courses, like a diploma in nursing or building. Private colleges and public colleges run them.

The government has loans that pay for some of these courses. They are called VET Student Loans. VET stands for vocational education and training, which means job training. You pay the loan back through the tax system once you earn enough. The loans started on 1 January 2017.

To get a loan, a student must give their tax file number. This is your own number with the tax office. The tax office uses it to track your tax. It makes sure the loan goes on the right person's tax record.

Students fill in an online form. Colleges could see the tax file numbers in that form. Then they sent them to the government through a reporting system.

The problem the government found

The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations runs the loans. It is the federal jobs department. It looked closely at how they worked. It found the 2016 loans law gave colleges no clear role in handling tax file numbers.

Tax file numbers are strongly protected by tax and privacy laws. Asking for, keeping or passing on someone's number without legal permission can be a crime. It can also break privacy law.

So for almost nine years, colleges and government staff may have done something the law did not clearly allow. The government says they acted honestly, in good faith, to help students get loans.

How the systems were fixed

From early 2025 the department changed its computer systems. On 28 March 2025 colleges could no longer see tax file numbers in the online form.

The last changes went in on 30 September 2025. Tax file numbers are now hidden from colleges. They move between government systems by themselves. So the law does not need to allow anything from now on.

Past handling made lawful

The main part of the law says some past acts count as if the loans law always allowed them. It covers the time from 1 January 2017 to just before 1 October 2025.

It covers asking for, collecting, writing down, storing, using or passing on a student's tax file number. The act must have been done to deal with a loan form or the loan itself.

It protects colleges and their staff. It also protects the head of the department, the head of the tax office and other federal staff. They cannot be sued, charged or found to have broken privacy rules for those acts.

Say your college stored your tax file number in 2019 so it could fix a mistake on your loan later. That now counts as legal. If the college used your number for some other reason, the law does not cover it.

Court cases and privacy complaints

The law applies to court cases that had started but not finished when it began. It applies to new cases too. A court must take the law into account.

It also applies to complaints not yet decided by the privacy watchdog (the Information Commissioner). Cases and complaints already decided before the law started are left alone.

The law might take away something a person owns, such as a right to sue. Then the federal government must pay them a fair amount. If they cannot agree on how much, the person can go to the Federal Court, a national court that hears many government cases.

Safeguards that stay

The government says the old protections still apply. Colleges must pass a test that they are fit and proper to be approved. That means honest and able to run a college well. They must tell the department when student data leaks.

Misusing student details is still a crime under the loans law, or can bring a fine set by a court. The government's notes on the bill say no student has complained about how their tax file number was handled.

Start date

The law started the day after it was signed. Its effect reaches back to 1 January 2017.

Skills Minister Andrew Giles brought it to the House of Representatives on 29 October 2025. The House passed it on 26 November 2025.

The Senate passed it on 27 November 2025. The Senate is the second house of Parliament, which checks bills.

The Governor-General signed it into law on 4 December 2025. The Governor-General is the King's stand-in in Australia. It became Act No. 77 of 2025.

Its journey through Parliament

Official sources

• Bill page on aph.gov.au
• Text of the bill
• Explanatory memorandum

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