The party is over for the cowboys, shonks and shysters who grew drunk on billions of dollars in taxpayer funding through the government's failed vocational education scheme.

The great equaliser of the Gillard government turned bipartisan disaster cost the public at least $2.9 billion in 2015, while students in some of Australia's poorest communities have been saddled with debt they will never repay for courses they never needed.

"It is hard to avoid, whoever put this scheme together did not think it through very much," Federal Court judge Nye Perram​ said in July.

Justice Perram was generous. This scheme was not thought through at all.