This paper argues that the Tertiary and Further Education system in Australia has responded to globalisation in two paradoxical ways; the pro-active response of internationalisation and the reactive response of competency-based training. Competency-based training currently has a strangle hold on the TAFE sector and education has become a process of domestication and reproduction rather than liberation and inspiration. Using Bateson's systems model and Foucault's notions of discourse, it is argued that direct resistance to competency-based training is not an effective strategy and may even prove counterproductive. Given that internationalisation is a discourse that is allowed in TAFE in the current context, it is argued that educators can use this as a tool to critique competency-based training and gain space for education that is liberatory and constructive.