20533 (2025). Francisco Hernandez to the Minister for Vocational Education

20533 (2025). Francisco Hernandez to the Minister for Vocational Education: How much, if anything, did the Minister's departments, agencies, crown entities and any other bodies that the Minister is responsible for, if any, spend on flights in 2025 to date, broken down into international and domestic flights?

Hon Penny Simmonds: The following attached table shows spend on domestic and international flights. This is shown by financial year in line with the Tertiary Education Commissions (TECs) Responses to Education and Workforce Committee 2023/24 Annual Review Questions. The Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) continued reducing its domestic air travel as part of its cost savings and carbon reduction initiatives. No international travel was undertaken by TEC in 2024/25 (as of 30 April 2025). In 2023/24 TEC had one staff member travel internationally to the United States of America (USA) to attend the annual DREAM conference. In 2022/23 TEC began travelling internationally again after COVID-19 restrictions lifted. This included travel to Singapore for an Advanced Management Programme Seminar, USA for the annual DREAM conference, South Africa to attend the Siyaphumelela Conference, and to the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland to share and exchange knowledge. There were no international flights in 2020/21 and 2021/22 due to COVID-19. In 2020/21 TEC received a refund for a trip to London, UK that was scheduled for March 2020 but was cancelled due to COVID-19. In 2019/20 TEC had three staff members travel internationally to the USA to attend the annual DREAM conference. It’s Chief Executive also flew to UK to meet with key personnel in UK education agencies. This is also my response to written parliamentary questions 20540, 20542, 20544, 20547 and 20555 (2025).