Australia’s consumer watchdog has filed a cross-appeal against a private training college that according to a court ruling earlier this year engaged in "systemic unconscionable conduct".
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Commonwealth filed a cross-appeal against the embattled Unique International College in an ongoing Federal court litigation.
Following an ACCC legal action, in June this year, the court found Unique International College made misleading representations and engaged unconscionable conduct in recruiting students from vulnerable and disadvantaged.
The Federal Court of Australia found that the use of gifts including laptops and iPads was part of a system of conduct used to “supercharge the exploitation of the disadvantaged group that was being targeted”.
Unique appealed against the Court’s ruling. The ACCC and the Commonwealth on behalf of the Department of Education have now filed a cross-appeal saying the court should have found that the systemic conscionable conduct also occurred in Victoria and Queensland.
“Unique exploited vulnerable and disadvantaged members of our community. We are taking this further action as we believe that Unique’s conduct in its dealing with Victorian and Queensland students was also unconscionable,” ACCC Commissioner Sarah Court said.
“Our case is that students in NSW, Victoria and Queensland were misled by Unique and, as a result, being saddled with significant debts. Unique made representations that courses were free, when in fact students would incur a debt up to $25,000 per course under the VET FEE-HELP scheme,” Ms Court said.
The college sold now scrapped-VET FEE-HELP diploma courses that cost between $10,000 to $25,000.
The ACCC is seeking redress for affected consumers by cancelling enrolments and debts. The ACCC and the Commonwealth are seeking orders for the repayment of the funds paid by the Commonwealth.
A Full Federal Court will hear the appeal and the cross-appeal on a date yet to be fixed.
The ACCC and the Commonwealth began action against Unique in October 2015 following a joint investigation with NSW Fair Trading into the training colleges sector.
In the 2014-15 financial year, Unique enrolled over 3,600 students in its diploma courses and was paid approximately $57 million by the Commonwealth for those enrolments under the VET-FEE-HELP scheme.
