A number of recent inquiries into Australia's national training system have found it to be on the sick side. This article seeks the causes of this in the recent evolution of training policy, which commenced in the late 1980s. The article traces the demise of the first moderately interventionist National Training Reform Agenda, which union reformers played a role in shaping, through the increasing marketisation of training policy. Under the Liberal National Coalition, budget constraints and the short term interests of employers have increasingly driven training policy. The drift of policy is against the grain of prescriptions drawn from the international literature, which shows the need for interventionist measures to correct ‘market failure’, and to ensure adequate expenditure and the integrity of qualifications.
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