Introduction
Every October, Australia’s Vocational Education and Training community converges for its landmark gathering: the National VET Conference. In 2025, the event marks its eighteenth edition and returns to the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre on 30–31 October. Hosted by Velg Training, and long regarded as the sector’s premier professional forum, this year’s conference is both a celebration of VET’s collective achievements and a practical workshop for the road ahead, where policy, practice, technology, compliance, and community meet under one roof. The fundamentals are set: two days, one venue, and a program expressly designed to help practitioners turn ambition into action. The dates, venue and two-day format are confirmed by both the official conference hub and the venue listing, underscoring the Gold Coast’s role as home base for #2025NVC.
A theme with intent: “painting the future”
In 2025, the conference carries a theme that is more than a slogan; it’s a working philosophy. “Painting the future” positions VET as a shared canvas, built brushstroke by brushstroke through responsiveness, adaptation and continuous improvement. The official overview frames it directly: the future we are shaping relies on collective contribution and a commitment to quality that becomes greater than the sum of its parts. That is the promise of #2025NVC: not abstract inspiration, but a deliberate, collaborative act of making the sector better, fairer and more effective for learners, employers and communities alike.
Why this conference matters now
The sector stands at a point where technological change, regulatory reform and shifting labour-market needs are converging. The most effective RTOs and TAFEs are those that keep pace on all three fronts, integrating AI and digital tools where they add value, embedding self-assurance and quality systems that meet evolving regulatory expectations, and designing learning that actually changes workplace capability. The National VET Conference is where those threads are pulled together. It is where you can hear policy updates first-hand, road-test edtech and audit solutions on the expo floor, and return to your organisation with a plan that is both ambitious and compliant. The official program structure reflects that balance—plenary intelligence paired with targeted electives, so delegates leave with ideas they can deploy the following week.
Who comes and why the cross-section matters
With a history of drawing more than 1,200 delegates, the conference reliably assembles the full spectrum of the VET ecosystem: RTO owners and managers, TAFE leaders, trainers and assessors, compliance and QA specialists, Jobs and Skills Council representatives, learning designers, edtech innovators, researchers, consultants and students. That breadth isn’t incidental; it is precisely what turns presentations into practical progress. When policy architects, auditors, designers and teachers share the same sessions, conversations move from “what if” to “how soon.” The 2025 site makes that scale and mix explicit, noting the historic delegate numbers and the dual emphasis on management and practitioner streams.
What to expect from the program
The 2025 program blends headline updates with domain-specific sessions. Day One opens with an ASQA update from Chief Executive Officer Saxon Rice, followed by a Jobs and Skills Australia briefing from Commissioner Professor Barney Glover AO, setting the regulatory and labour-market context before delegates disperse into electives. From there, streams traverse assessment quality, AI and online delivery, student support, and the evolving role of Jobs and Skills Councils, with practical sessions that translate policy shifts into classroom and operational change. Day Two sustains the momentum with a keynote designed to reconnect purpose with practice and a schedule that balances pedagogy, compliance, digital transformation and industry engagement. The published program confirms the cadence and many of the session anchors, making it easier to plan your two-day pathway.
The Welcome Function, connection as a capability
Community is not a side-show; it is a core capability in VET. The conference’s Welcome Function has become a miniature institution of its own, giving delegates a relaxed setting to reconnect, form new partnerships and trade notes after Day One. This year’s “Beachside Bliss” theme is a nod to place as much as to purpose, offering a laid-back coastal backdrop for serious networking. The social program underscores the event’s personality: warm, inclusive, and geared toward forging relationships that persist long after the final session.
The presenters: a cross-disciplinary faculty for a sector in motion
A conference is only as strong as its faculty, and #2025NVC’s roster is deliberately diverse. Regulators and policy leaders anchor the plenaries; seasoned practitioners and consultants lead the electives; digital and AI specialists frame the opportunities and the pitfalls of a rapidly changing toolset. The official presenters hub showcases this breadth and depth, spanning compliance strategy, assessment quality, AI-enabled innovation and learner-centred design. The result is a program with enough variety to let each delegate build a tailored journey—without losing the shared narrative that makes a national conference feel, in the best sense, like a national conversation.
CAQA in the spotlight
Amid that line-up, CAQA’s presence is set to focus on doing the hard, valuable things well: turning audits into catalysts for excellence, aligning self-assurance with measurable outcomes, and using technology responsibly to lift quality and compliance. Sukh Sandhu—Executive Director at Career Calling International and CAQA—brings decades of experience at the intersection of governance, risk, training product integrity and digital transformation. Expect a pragmatic treatment of how to convert regulatory expectations into everyday routines that make staff life simpler and learner outcomes stronger, backed by case examples and live demonstrations. It’s a session slate built for leaders and frontline practitioners who want to move beyond rhetoric to repeatable practice.
Program streams that meet you where you work
One of the enduring strengths of the National VET Conference is its attention to the different “jobs to be done” across an RTO. Management streams tackle strategy, funding and organisational stewardship; practitioner streams get down into the mechanics of valid, reliable, sufficient assessment and the craft of engaging, inclusive delivery; digital and AI sessions examine everything from fit-for-purpose platforms to academic integrity in an era of powerful generative tools. The published agenda makes clear that attendees can mix and match—building a two-day schedule that lets a compliance manager sit in on pedagogy, or a senior educator drop into a JSC briefing—without losing the thread of their core responsibilities. In short, you can design your own learning pathway inside the conference, just as you ask your learners to do in their courses.
The Gold Coast advantage
Place matters. The Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre offers scale, access and the kind of amenity that makes two dense days feel manageable. For many delegates, the location also makes it feasible to extend the trip by a day on either side—decompressing after the program or using the time to hold team planning sessions while ideas are fresh. The venue confirms the event’s two-day booking and points delegates to practical details, from travel to on-site facilities, making logistics as straightforward as possible.
What sets #2025NVC apart
The first differentiator is leadership. Few events place regulators, policy thinkers, employers, edtech builders and classroom practitioners in such sustained proximity, which is why the National VET Conference so often marks the start of sector-wide shifts. The second is community. The event’s culture is deliberately inclusive and energising—professional, yes, but also joyful—which is why many delegates describe it as the one trip they refuse to skip. The third is utility. Sessions are designed to be immediately actionable, and the expo floor puts you within reach of the tools and partners you need to execute. Finally, there is a voice. With ASQA and Jobs and Skills Australia on the program and Jobs and Skills Councils threaded through the sessions, #2025NVC gives practitioners a channel to be heard where policy is being shaped.
How to get the most from your two days
Arrive with a plan—ideally one shaped with your team before you fly. Map the sessions against your 2025–26 priorities: assessment redesign, self-assurance uplift, AI and academic integrity, training product transition, and industry partnerships. Split up to cover more ground, then reconvene at the Welcome Function to compare notes and refine your Day Two. Make friends with the expo; it’s the most time-efficient way to see what’s maturing in the market. Finally, book time the week after you return to translate learning into action—capture three changes you will make, three experiments you will run, and three measures you will track.
Registration, tickets and practicalities
Registration is available via the Velg Training events portal, which also details ticket types—face-to-face (including Welcome Function) and recordings-only options—and key administrative dates. Online registrations close on 25 October 2025 at 4:00 pm AEST, with manual processing available by arrangement after that. The site also provides an at-a-glance delegate profile, highlights historical attendance and outlines how session recordings will be made available post-event, useful for those bringing larger teams or seeking to share content across sites.
Closing reflections: a shared canvas, a shared responsibility
The National VET Conference endures because it is more than an event. It is the sector’s annual act of collective self-improvement, two days in which we align on what matters, learn what works and recommit to the craft that sits at the heart of VET: helping people build real skills for real jobs in real communities. “Painting the future” is apt not because it is poetic, but because it is practical. The picture only appears when thousands of small, deliberate brushstrokes come together: a trainer refining an assessment, a compliance manager turning policy into habit, a CEO investing in systems that make excellence repeatable, a regulator clarifying expectations, a technologist making tools more transparent and humane. On 30–31 October, the Gold Coast becomes the studio where that picture takes shape. If you see the CAQA team, Sukh Sandhu, Michelle Newman, Stuart Newman, Anna Haranas, Raj Kiran and colleagues, say hello, trade a story, compare notes and add your colour to the canvas. The future of Australian skills is not something we wait for; it is something we make, together.
For program details, presenter bios, registration and venue information, refer to the official conference hub and venue listing https://www.velgtraining.com/.
