Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have this chance to speak on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2006 Budget and Other Measures) Bill 2006 as it provides me with an opportunity to not only condemn the government for their failures in higher education but also espouse the nation-building approach to policy that we on this side of the House take in this very important area. On the Labor side, we are justifiably proud of our record on education and we are especially proud of our commitment to ensuring that all Australians have access to higher education if they so desire. It is Labor’s belief that higher education is the foundation of Australia’s social and economic prosperity. This is why my colleague the shadow minister for education recently released Labor’s policy white paper Australia’s universities: building our future in the world.

In stark contrast to the Howard government’s neglect in this area, Labor have released our proposals for much needed reform in this sector. It is our view that this government have failed Australian students and potential students. That is a great, big ‘F’ on the Howard government’s report card. The comments on that report card might read something like this: ‘While the government tries hard to impress with its commitment to education to all and sundry, the effort is often a case of too little too late. They have consistently chosen to ignore others except when it suits them, and even then it is only to bully and harass. Their refusal to properly index university grants leaves little to the imagination. All up, a very poor effort.’

Under this government, successive education ministers have tried to put their stamp on the sector in one way or another, each only managing to ensure that more and more Australian students miss out on the quality education that their parents were able to receive at a much better price. The bill currently before this House does have the support of Labor. It is a bill made up of a series of disconnected amendments to Australian higher education legislation. Some of the amendments within the bill arise from commitments made at the Council of Australian Governments. These commitments include long overdue funding for capital development, new medical places, new nursing places, new mental health nursing places and new clinical psychology places. Of course, these are very welcome announcements and ones that should have been made many years ago.

An article in the Australian on 28 September is yet another indication of this government’s policy failings in education and of its total lack of ability to plan for the future. The article discusses the 650,000 Australians who are currently languishing on waiting lists for publicly-funded dental care and says that the Australian Dental Association heavily criticised the government for failing to properly fund dental education. The article states that the ADA had:

... warned that young dentists were now unwilling to work in the public sector because they needed the higher pay offered by the private sector to cover their massive student debts.

That is very bad news for all those people in my electorate on those public dental waiting lists. This is mirrored in many other professions where graduates are being forced to go where the money is rather than stay in their local communities where their particular profession is needed the most. That means that they are deserting the regions in favour of lucrative private practices in the big cities. And who can blame them with this government’s massive increases in university fees and debt.

In that same article, the Australian pointed out that the ratio of dentists to population in regional areas is 33.6 per 100,000, while in the capital cities the figure is improved at 56.2 per 100,000. The figures are even worse in remote Australia, with just 22.9 dentists per 100,000 people. These failures are hurting the Australian people. In every electorate, especially regional and rural ones, there are huge numbers of constituents who cannot see a dentist or a medical specialist and in some cases they have to travel many miles from home to have a necessary procedure undertaken or to have their baby delivered. In many electorates, it is more like a Third World health service rather than a first-rate system that we as a prosperous nation should have in place.

I also point out that on top of the government’s failure to properly fund education, they have also forgotten about Indigenous Australians when it comes to higher education. The level of commencements of Indigenous students in higher education is at its lowest level in five years, having dropped by six per cent last year and by eight per cent over the past two years. This drop is being directly attributed to this government’s tightening of the eligibility requirements for Abstudy as well as the huge increase in HECS fees and the removal of student services under voluntary student unionism.

I turn now to some of the specific provisions in the bill starting with the Capital Development Pool. Schedule 1 of this bill increases funding to various sectors and groups, including the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies and the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. It also increases funding for the Capital Development Pool and the Commonwealth training scheme for new post-graduate research places in science and innovation. The increase in funding for the Capital Development Pool is welcome. The pool provides funding for infrastructure projects across our universities and any funding increase in this area is of course a positive step.

The bill also makes provision for the COAG commencements announced earlier this year. The additional funding for new places announced as part of the COAG health workforce package and prescribed within this bill are certainly a welcome move. This is finally a step in the right direction after 10 long years of neglect. Rural and regional Australia have been crying out for more doctors, more nurses and more mental health practitioners, and all this time the government has been doing nothing.

Specifically in this bill the new funding allocated in 2007 goes towards 1,036 new nursing places, 200 new medical places, 431 new mental health nursing places, 210 new post-graduate clinical psychology places and an increase in the Commonwealth contribution for nursing units. The new medical and mental health workforce places will increase in number over the next few years as a result of these measures. This is definitely a positive step and one which has our full support, though, as I mentioned previously, it is a case of being 10 years too late.

This bill also makes provision for increases in the limits for FEE-HELP. I am sure we all remember this government’s paper, Our universities: backing Australia’s future. This paper was the government’s effort at higher education policy. Wasn’t it a beauty when it was released! As has become the norm with this government, Our universities: backing Australia’s future was bursting with motherhood statements designed to appeal to anyone who took a cursory glance. But, in fact, it was a statement of intent for this government to further exert its influence over the tertiary education sector and ensure that the independence of our universities was a thing of the past. Something else we all remember is the Prime Minister’s assertion that there would not be $100,000 university degrees under this government. I guess this is like the ‘never, ever’ GST statement or perhaps like the Work Choices being good for Australia statement, or of course the government’s pledges on lower interest rates. Of course, we now see that almost 100 university degrees in this country cost over $100,000. I remember a certain Prime Minister announcing in the 2004 election that it would be the election about who the Australian public trusted the most. Well, Prime Minister, going from no $100,000 university degrees, which was your promise, to 100 degrees now costing over the $100,000 mark, I think answers that question.

The provisions within this bill increase the general FEE-HELP limit to $80,000 and to $100,000 for students studying medicine, dentistry or veterinary science. Obviously, with almost 100 courses costing over $100,000, this increase is still insufficient to meet the needs of full fee paying students in those courses. In recent months we have seen the Australian Medical Association warning potential medical students and their families away from full fee paying degrees, as they do not have the certainty of attaining a clinical training place that HECS students have—and because of the massive debt that they are left with at the end. Medical students can face a university debt the size of an average mortgage, with many medical degrees now costing upwards of $200,000.

Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, President of the AMA, has reiterated Labor’s view on tertiary education, in this case on medical degrees, by stating:

Wealth should not be a prerequisite for getting into medical school.

A medical school place should be earned through achieving the necessary tertiary entry level and having the ambition and ability to acquire highly specialised knowledge and skills, not the ability to pay exorbitant fees.

Just last week, the Rural Doctors Association of Australia issued a press release titled ‘Full fee degrees “a major barrier” to rural practice’. Similar to the dentists example I spoke of earlier, the release stated that high fees, attributed to full fee medical degrees, will stop graduates from working in rural areas. The President of the Rural Doctors Association, Dr Ross Maxwell, stated:

Charging an enormous fee deters rural origin students from studying medicine and deters graduates from seeking a career in the bush.

He continued:

It is absolutely essential that more HECS-funded medical school places and scholarships are made available in our universities, particularly for medical students coming from rural communities—given they are much more likely to return to the bush to practise after graduation—and also for other medical students who are committed to going rural after graduation.

Dr Maxwell concluded:

There is a critical need to get more home grown doctors into rural and remote practice. Full fee paying places are not the way to meet this need.

In this period of inflated real estate prices, rising interest rates and high fuel prices, the thought of graduating from university with a debt of hundreds of thousands of dollars will deter even the wealthiest of students. When is this government going to recognise the massive public benefits provided by a properly funded tertiary education sector? The economic benefit of a highly skilled workforce is much higher than the initial outlay required to properly fund universities.

This bill also introduces authority for the government to allow for differential HECS application. It allows for higher education providers to apply differential contribution amounts for students in the same course at the same institution. This is troublesome, especially in light of the fact that the minister is yet to make available the list of factors that institutions can use to determine these differential fees. While the potential to assist students from disadvantaged backgrounds exists with this amendment, there is a need to view the guidelines containing the issues that can be used to determine contributions. We would be happy to see this amendment applied to provide lower fees to students from low socioeconomic backgrounds or rural areas but do not want to see the fees for other groups raised so as to constitute a general increase in fees.

The recent revelation that the Minister for Defence, Brendan Nelson, had sought a personal explanation from Macquarie University Vice-Chancellor, Steven Schwartz, over allegations of left-wing bias shows just how far this government will go to ensure that our centres of higher education are no longer the independent institutions that they should be, but simply another arm of the government. Of course, we have the other moves to remove independence from universities, with the tying of funding to the government’s extreme workplace relations changes. The shadow minister for education, science and training’s second reading amendment sums up this government’s failings in higher education succinctly. It reads:

... whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House condemns the Government for:

(1)

jeopardising Australia’s future prosperity by reducing public investment in tertiary education, as the rest of the world increases their investment;

(2)

failing to invest in education, training, distribution and retention measures to ensure that all of Australia has enough doctors, nurses and other health care professionals to meet current and future health care needs;

(3)

massively increasing the cost of HECS, forcing students to pay up to $30,000 more for their degree;

(4)

creating an American style higher education system, where students pay more and more, with some full fee degrees costing more than $200,000, and nearly 100 full fee degrees costing more than $100,000;

(5)

massively increasing the debt burden on students with total HELP debt now over $13 billion and projected to rise to $18.8 billion in 2009;

(6)

failing to address serious concerns about standards and quality in the higher education system, putting at risk Australia’s high educational reputation and fourth largest export industry; and

(7)

an inadequate and incoherent policy response to the needs of the university system to diversify, innovate and meet Australia’s higher education needs”.

This government has persisted with its so-called reform agenda for universities, which has consisted purely of ideological arguments rather than sound practices. The lack of real reform has stymied universities and allowed Australian students to pay the price—and we know that they have paid that very high price, with student HECS-HELP debt levels at $13 billion and expected to reach almost $19 billion by 2009.

We have the ridiculous and quite alarming situation in which the rest of the OECD nations are increasing their investment in universities while this government sees fit to cut funding. And I must reiterate the phrase ‘investing in universities’, because that is exactly what it is. It is not the drain on funds that this government sees it as. It is clearly an investment in the future economic outlook of this nation. The OECD average has been an increase of 48 per cent of public funding on higher education. This represents a significant increase in public investment. Meanwhile, the Howard government has seen fit to cut investment in this country by seven per cent. You have to ask yourself: does the Howard government know something that our competitor nations do not? I do not think that is the case. This government is simply continuing a very short-term approach to holding on to power rather than governing for the good of the country, both now and into the future.

The funding cuts that I have just outlined have led to universities becoming reliant upon international full fee paying students—some to a dangerous level. Student-to-staff ratios have risen sharply, as have class sizes. These are not the best conditions for a quality education. After 10 long years of neglect by the Howard government, Australia is crying out for more scientists, doctors, nurses, dentists, teachers and more. Instead of tackling the problem and doing something constructive to ease the shortage, the government has increased fees, has cut funding and blatantly refuses to adequately index university grants.

I turn now to Labor’s policy, which is far from the ideological and neglectful policies of the Howard government. Labor firmly believes in the importance of our tertiary education sector. Labor believes in the nation-building and economic growth benefits of tertiary education. This is illustrated by our positive policy direction for higher education, as represented in our recently released white paper. Under our policy all Australian universities would be better off. Of course, the result of this will be that all Australian students will be better off. Labor believes in an Australia that has a world-class education and training system that provides real choice and higher quality.

Our policy would see a new national standards watchdog, the Australian Higher Education Quality Agency, established. The agency would ensure that Australian universities were producing quality graduates, underpinned by quality teaching and research. Labor would properly index university grants, ensuring that our institutions were adequately funded. We would scrap full fee degrees for Australian students at public universities, removing the two-tiered system that currently operates under this government, where students with the ability miss out to those with the bank account. Labor would seek to actively address the current skills shortage by expanding associate degrees to give more Australians access to training in these technical areas.

We would seek to assist regional universities, such as the Central Queensland University, based in my electorate, by encouraging them to play to their strengths, rather than continuing this government’s policy of homogeneous institutions. The most progressive initiative within our policy is that Labor would establish an individual compact with each university. No longer would universities be treated under the Howard government’s ‘one size fits all’ approach. Under our plan, universities would negotiate with the government, allowing them to undertake the activities that they deem most suited to their institution and local needs and opportunities. Labor will also unwrap Australia’s universities from the Howard government’s red tape and allow them to maximise their individual strengths.

I am very proud to stand here today and espouse the positive nation-building approach that is provided for within our white paper entitled Australia’s universities: building our future in the world. This is our approach to reinvigorating a sector that has been allowed to languish under a government that lacks any real vision for the role that higher education plays in strengthening our country and also our regional areas, such as the one that I represent.

Labor supports this bill, as it provides the much-needed funding for extra medical and mental health workforce places, as well as much-needed capital injections for our medical schools. However, we are unwilling to let this government get away with the shocking neglect of our higher education system over the past 10 years. The second reading amendment moved by the shadow minister for education, training, science and research has my full support. I commend that amendment to the House.

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