The Federal Court judge hearing the case of Unique International College has said that the amount of $130 million earned by Unique between 2013 and 2015 was an “enormous number”.
"That is an enormous number. It is a huge number for a small school on top of a shop in Granville,” said Justice Nye Perram.
That is an enormous number. It is a huge number for a small school on top of a shop in Granville
The remarks came during the final hearing of the case in which the ACCC is pursuing Unique International College for $47 million in Commonwealth funding. The ACCC has alleged that the college resorted to unconscionable conduct by recruiting illiterate and disabled students from Aboriginal missions by alluring some of them with free laptops.
Unique is the first of several colleges being pursued by the ACCC to be taken to court in a bid to reclaim more than $300 million in public funding.
During an earlier hearing, the court heard that over 3100 of total 3600 students at Unique failed to complete even a single unit of study of courses they had enrolled in.
The judge also criticised the Commonwealth’s funding of private VET course for allowing hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers to flow out with minimal oversight.
Mr Singh is an honest and decent man. It's not a Ponzi scheme where you are given a huge amount of money and no one knows about it
Acting on behalf of Unique’s owner Amarjit Singh, David Pritchard SC said that Mr Singh made profits by providing proper services.
"Mr Singh is an honest and decent man. It's not a Ponzi scheme where you are given a huge amount of money and no one knows about it,” he said.
He said just 0.16 per cent of Unique’s more than 3600 students were called to testify. He also said that the ACCC had tried to make up for the flaws in the VET FEE-Help system by accusing Unique of unconscionablility.
