Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion regarding university funding and fees, a private member's motion from the member for Sydney. In 2016, we had Monash University in my electorate of La Trobe. Monash University's Berwick campus offered, from memory, four courses. Then we got the incredible news that the Monash campus in Berwick had decided to close shop and were planning to move out. That was of great concern, obviously, for the students currently undertaking courses, whether it be for business or for nursing.

The approach of the Labor Party at the time was basically to just attack, attack and attack, but they came up no solutions. What we realised we needed in our electorate was—and this is something the Prime Minister has been a great advocate for—innovation and research, and ensuring that, when our students graduate from university, they actually have jobs in their field rather than leaving university and not having a job to go to. I know that is something Minister Simon Birmingham has been a great advocate of. Also, we need to make sure business actually works with universities. There is no use in students going to universities and doing degrees if there are no jobs at the end of their university courses.

I am very proud to say that, working with Minister Birmingham, the great news is we now have Federation University Australia coming to the old Monash-Berwick campus. This is something we said right from the start. We want to focus on innovation. We want to focus on research. The courses they will be offering include a Bachelor of Community and Human Services, a Bachelor of Business and a Bachelor of Business (Human Resource Management). There will also be a number of marketing courses, accounting courses and education courses. There will be a Bachelor of Information Technology, a Bachelor of Information Technology (Business Information Systems) and a Bachelor of Information Technology (Mobile App Development). To me, it is so important to have young people in Australia—and, obviously, locally in La Trobe—want to get back into research and developing apps, which not only are great for the community but also potentially create businesses for them. So this is something that we in La Trobe are very much looking forward to. There will also be a Bachelor of Veterinary and Wildlife Science, and they will have flexible modes of delivery for nursing courses.

At the same time, the Turnbull government recognises that this system must be affordable and provide a return on investment for both the student and the nation. Remember that taxpayers across the country are paying for students to go to university. That is something we support, but it is something which needs to always be remembered. A key challenge is how to make the system sustainable for generations of students in the future. The Turnbull government released the policy paper Driving innovation, fairness and excellence in Australian higher education on budget night last year and invited submissions on how best to ensure we keep the system sustainable and affordable for future generations of Australians. The Turnbull government legislated a package of higher education reforms in the middle of the year to provide the sector sufficient time to implement the new arrangements from 1 January 2018.

Australia has one of the most generous student loan schemes in the world: the Higher Education Loan Program, otherwise known as HELP. This means that Australians can go to universities or other higher education providers without paying up-front fees, and that is something that is very important. We will keep the loan system in place. Our policy option paper released on budget night proposed that all students be charged the same loan fee to partly recover the costs their fellow Australians are subsidising. I repeat that; this is something really important. The local tradie may be an apprentice, but their apprenticeship will not take four or five years, whereas someone else is actually going to university. We want people to go to university and we want to support those in university, but it has to be fair and balanced. That is what the Turnbull government is endeavouring to do. Unlike Labor, who cut $6 billion from research, we support research, we support innovation and we support students to get the best out of their university qualifications.

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