Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, I am speaking in continuation, having first got up to address this issue on the 14th of last month and being interrupted after only a short time by the adjournment debate. We know that the purpose of the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2006 Budget and Other Measures) Bill 2006 is to amend three acts: the Higher Education Support Act 2003, the Higher Education Funding Act 1988 and the Australian Research Council Act 2001. Among other things, this bill will provide new funding to cover the COAG Health Workforce and mental health package, which includes about 2,000 new places for students commencing studies in medicine, nursing, mental health and clinical psychology. It will also provide $6.2 billion over three years, which Labor supports, as it is so desperately needed given the skills shortage that the government has created.

The bill will increase the FEE-HELP limit—and this is an issue which I addressed in my short contribution on the 14th of last month—to $100,000 for medical, dental and veterinary science students and to $80,000 for other degrees. Currently, it has been capped at $50,000. The effect of this change is to increase the debt available to students. The reason the government is making this change is apparent; it is because of the spiralling cost of full-fee degrees. As I mentioned last time, more than 100 full-time degrees at various Australian universities now cost more than $100,000—even after the infamous promise of 1999, which we all recall, when the Prime Minister said:

There will be no $100,000 university fees under this government.

But, broken promises aside, the fact is that the government’s proposed increases to the FEE-HELP available to students taking these outlandishly expensive degrees are still not enough. Increased funding for higher education and the additional places for students wishing to study medicine, nursing and mental health are things that Labor supports. However, we have to condemn the complete gutting of Australian universities that this government has presided over and the standard of education that it is able to provide Australian students.

Whilst there is a great deal of concern about falling standards as a result of the pressure upon universities and the availability of courses, particularly in regional universities, there have been some bright spots, and we need to recognise them. Not the least of them is the recording, as a result of a global academic ranking published in London, of the ANU as the best university in the country. The ANU came out top of the Australian institutions and was 16th overall in the latest annual survey of the world’s universities by the Times Higher Education Supplement. This is something that we need to commend. We also need to recognise other Australian universities, including the University of Melbourne, which was in 22nd place. The University of Sydney was also involved, as was the University of New South Wales. Macquarie University finished, I think, 82nd. But they disguise what is happening on the ground in most parts of Australia. It is for this reason that I strongly endorse the second reading amendment moved by the member for Jagajaga.

I can scarcely imagine an area where this government has been so poor and so appallingly bad in the development of public policy than higher education. It is clear that the government does not have a commitment to it and that it does not know how to deal with it properly to ensure that all Australians will have fair and reasonable access to higher education services. We need just to look at the standards that are being applied. We need to be clear about one thing: I do not want to talk down, nor would I, the work being done by our tertiary institutions, the lecturers and the administrators. Given the circumstances they have been placed in by this government’s record since 1996, they confront a very difficult world. By and large, they are working assiduously and, as far as they possibly can, doing a great job. But we know that there is a belief that the quality of our university degrees is declining. It was acknowledged by one of the government’s own working groups in June this year, the Asian working group appointed to advise the PM’s Science and Innovation Council. Whether or not this is an actual decline, the perception is there. It means that our universities will have increasing difficulty over time in attracting foreign students.

What we now know is that, under the Howard administration, we have much higher staff-student ratios. Class sizes have increased massively. The result is that the student-to-staff ratios have gone from 15.6 to one in 1991, when the government came to power, to 20.7 to one in 2004. No doubt they are higher as we speak. There has been a reduction in tutorials, which are so important for developing in students the ability to debate and to participate and engage in discussion. I recall my own days at university. It was a long time ago, no doubt; nevertheless, what was good about them, what was one of the most pleasing aspects of them, was the discourse, dialogue and argument that took place during the tutorial discussions. I am sorry if it is the case that universities are now in the position of being unable to provide tutorial services or of having to provide them on a limited basis. We know that there are more online courses, which is a great teaching innovation, especially for distance education—and a thing which is particularly important in a vast electorate such as Lingiari—but overreliance on these reduces the level of interface between the student and the lecturer, and is a point which I think we need to mention.

I had cause to discuss this matter only the other day with a colleague of mine in the Northern Territory whose partner is doing a Masters of Business Administration at Charles Darwin University. He had enrolled in courses fully expecting those courses to be offered and then discovered that two of the courses—and he had taken leave and was paying for this himself—which he had been enrolled in and which were offered by the university were no longer being provided. He was forced to take one of them online through James Cook University. That is just not acceptable. While we acknowledge the important work that James Cook University does, what we need to comprehend here is that it is unacceptable in a regional area like the Northern Territory when you commit yourself to doing further education—in this case, a masters—go to the university and are offered the opportunity to do a course and register for the course only to find that they do not have staff to teach it. This set of circumstances should not be allowed to prevail.

The higher education sector is suffering from overregulation. Universities are having to account for student patterns months in advance and are being penalised in funding when they get it wrong. We also know that universities are being underfunded. The OECD put out figures last month in its report Education at a glance 2006. This 454-page report—an in-depth analysis of education systems across the developed world—delivered a damning indictment of the state of higher education under the Howard government. Australia is the only developed country to have reduced investment in TAFEs and universities between 1995 and 2003. According to the OECD, investment in these areas declined by seven per cent.

In contrast, other countries increased their investment in higher education by an average of 48 per cent: in the US, it was 67 per cent; in Canada, 37 per cent; in Japan, 32 per cent; and in Switzerland, 74 per cent. At the same time, HECS fees have been spiralling ever upwards. Australian university students now pay the second highest fees—behind only the United States—in the world. The Americanisation of Australia’s higher education system that the government has sought to introduce is happening. We need to comprehend what the negative impacts of that are on educational services being provided across this country.

The OECD’s report even goes so far as to put the blame for this on the Howard government:

... the main reason for the increase in the private share of spending on tertiary institutions between 1995 and 2003 was changes to the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) that took place in 1997.

We are falling behind because of this government’s neglect. If we are to compete properly in a globalised world and achieve all we want for ourselves and for our children, then we need to compete on skills, education and innovation. The true extent of the government’s pathetic commitment to higher education was revealed in the funding information provided by the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee in February of last year. This document compares government funding of higher education between 1996 and 2003. According to these figures, the level of funding provided by the Commonwealth to universities in the form of Commonwealth government grants has remained constant in absolute terms. But it must be acknowledged that over this period total university operating expenses have increased by 36 per cent. In light of this, the funding provided by the Howard government represents a smaller and smaller percentage of the total revenue required by universities.

In 1996, Commonwealth grants made up 57 per cent of the total university revenue. In 2003, that proportion was 41 per cent. Over the same period, fees and charges have consistently increased. In 1996, universities made only 13 per cent of their revenue base by imposing fees and charges; by 2003, that figure had increased to 24 per cent. Universities have their hands tied in that regard; they have to impose these fees when the government is not bringing the money to them. The government allowed HECS debt to rise by 25 per cent. They have pretended that this was a choice made by universities, but what they really did was squeeze funding so that no university had a choice.

This reflects the Howard government’s user-pays ideology and the Americanisation of Australian universities. This obsession with driving Australia down the American path of higher education is tearing opportunities out of the reach of people in my electorate. It is worth noting that the number of Indigenous students in higher education dropped by six per cent last year. That was not the first year; that is the fourth year of decline in participation by Indigenous people in the higher education system. What does the government take from this? What has it done? What does it propose to do to address this situation?

There is an ever increasing feeling of frustration from not only students but also the community generally about this approach to the higher education system. Student debt is higher than it has ever been. According to Senate estimates figures provided by the Department of Education, Science and Training that have just emerged, students currently owe the government more than $13 billion. By 2008-09, this figure will have increased to $18.8 billion. The average outstanding debt is about $10,560, a seven per cent increase from last year. I saw an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 13 September entitled ‘Student debt $13 billion and rising’ where the Minister for Education, Science and Training tries to explain away these extraordinary increases in student debt by attributing it to the rising number of students. The article states:

... figures from her own department show that domestic student numbers rose by just 0.2 per cent from 2004 to 2005, while the accumulated HECS debt rose by nearly $2 billion.

You do not have to be a mathematician to work out that those figures just do not compute. The same article gives a general impression of the massive hike in fees, quoting average yearly fees for a number of key disciplines. Medicine is up from $17,658 in 1997 to $49,020 in 2006. Law is up from $11,772 in 1997 to $32,680. Engineering is up from $11,772 to $27,916. They are only some examples.

I have spoken time and time again in this place about what the government’s policies are doing to regional universities. When I reflect on comments I have made in previous debates on the various pieces of legislation which have passed through this place, it is clear to me that the situation is just getting worse. Over the past years Charles Darwin University has suffered massively at the hands of the Howard government. CDU caters to 17,665 students, according to 2005 statistics from the university. That is about 10 per cent of the total population of the Northern Territory. Of this number, 5,380 people are engaged in higher education and 12,285 are in VET programs.

The CDU has a very difficult task because it seeks to deliver higher education services to a relatively small and dispersed population. The demographic of the Northern Territory is far removed from the national average. The Northern Territory has one large population base in Darwin of around 100,000-plus people and a smaller population base in Alice Springs of close to 30,000. The remainder of the population lives in widely dispersed communities, from small to large, including towns like Katherine, Tennant Creek and Nhulunbuy et cetera. Providing outreach services to these students is extremely difficult. It requires resourcing. It is worth noting—and I have used these figures before in this place—that, since 1996, the Howard government has removed $6 million a year, or around $40 million to date, in recurrent funding from the CDU alone.

Under that set of circumstances, is it any wonder that the university is having difficulty in retaining staff? Is it any wonder that the number of units being offered by the university is being cut progressively? Is it any wonder that students are starting to feel frustrated by the inability of the university to provide them with courses which are offered in their handbook? Only last week I pointed to the situation that prevailed for one student doing a masters degree in business administration at Charles Darwin University.

Then there is the impact of the change to voluntary student unionism which has been brought about by this government. I note that in last weekend’s Sunday Age, dated 8 October, an article entitled ‘Jobs, services cut as union laws bite’ says that almost 300 staff working for student services in Victorian universities have lost their jobs and that free or subsidised services such as legal services, student advocacy and dentistry have been cut back.

There is a similar situation at the ANU here in Canberra. Without income from student amenities fees, funding for clubs and societies will be slashed from something in the order of $100,000 to about $20,000. That is a cut of more than 70 per cent. It is a similar situation at Charles Darwin University. We now know that the union is running out of savings. The seven staff which were employed have lost their jobs. The services which students need to access can no longer be accessed as a direct result of this government’s programs and the change to voluntary student unionism.

I commend the amendment moved in this chamber by the member for Jagajaga. The people of Australia deserve better from this government in relation to higher education. The Australian community wants better from this government for higher education. The Australian community knows that Labor will give them a better outcome for higher education. When it comes to the next election, there will be a clear choice for the Australian people on the question of higher education: do they believe in the proper and effective funding and higher education reform that Labor proposes or do they want to support John Howard? I know what they will choose. They will choose us. (Time expired)

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