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

I am pleased to speak to the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007 and to support the very well thought out, measured, logical amendment moved by the opposition which highlights some of the concerns which the shadow minister expressed in his contribution. Later in my contribution I will comment on the more general observations made about the university sector by the member for Fisher.

While I welcome the further investment in Australia’s higher education system that this bill will deliver, I do want to take this opportunity to raise a number of important concerns regarding some of the potential impacts of this bill. It is worth while reminding ourselves of the purpose of this bill. It seeks to provide funding to implement the government’s contentious research quality framework—RQF—which we believe is not well thought out and which we oppose. This will involve an appropriation of $40.8 million over a three-year period. The bill will also regulate the recognition of new universities and courses offered by higher education institutions and limit the time for students to claim entitlement to Commonwealth support.

Labor have a number of concerns about this bill. The first of these relates to the research quality framework and its impact on Australian academics and on our higher education system. We believe that the research quality framework is flawed. It is overhauling the method by which public funds are allocated, with trials to take place at several universities. Under the framework, Australia will become the first country in the world to measure the impact of research rather than just its quality. A panel of academic experts and end users of the research will review the quality and the impact of the research, and funding will then be allocated on the strength of these assessments.

It is worth noting that in Britain the government has decided to review a similar research assessment model in favour of a simpler, mainly metrics based system such as the one Australia currently has in place. The current system includes measures such as research income, research publications, research student loans and completions. The possible impact on researchers and academic positions is quite worrying. An article in the Australian Financial Review on 19 February this year, titled ‘Academics lose jobs as research becomes king’, analysed the research quality framework and said:

Under the federal government’s Research Quality Framework (RQF) scheme being introduced this year, academics regarded by their bosses as “less active in research” may be made redundant or forced to accept teaching-only positions.

The National Tertiary Education Union warned that there is widespread anxiety on campus about the impact of the RQF and that stress levels among the academics were high and rising. I also note the research report of the Productivity Commission, which was referred to by the shadow minister, Public support for science and innovation, where the commission observed, ‘The costs of implementing the research quality framework may well exceed the benefits’ and, ‘While the RQF may bring some benefits, the UK and New Zealand experiences suggest that these would have to be substantial to offset the significant administrative and compliance costs.’

The research quality framework as proposed by the government is clearly not the best system. It has been tried, and it has not succeeded. To pursue this will in our view create undue stress and anxiety for academics. Labor support a policy of research quality assurance and high-quality research in our universities. I will refer again to some of the comments made by the shadow minister. He referred to some of the submissions to the Productivity Commission. One was from the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, which expressed doubts about the value of such an approach. Deakin University said that the RQF will focus on research excellence and will not catch all the important research outcomes. The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy commented:

... the allocation of a single ranking based on aggregate scores for ‘Quality’ and ‘Impact’ ... is confusing—

and:

... these different measures protect interests which are of varying relative importance for different kinds of research.

The Australian Academy of the Humanities said of the RQF approach:

... very little macro and micro-economic benefit analysis has been performed of the contributions of the humanities and creative arts to national innovation.

And:

This is ... due to the difficulty of measuring the impact of humanities research in such terms.

The Group of Eight universities said:

There is a prospect that an RQF could become a burden to researchers, be expensive to administer and deliver very little reward to support and stimulate the best quality research.

These contributions to the debate are damning in what the government is trying to achieve. We on this side of the chamber believe that a research quality assurance system should be rigorous, transparent, fair, equitable and efficient. It should be recognised and accepted internationally as world’s best practice. It should distribute funds in a way that transparently reflects research quality and achievements in our universities. It should encourage universities to concentrate on their respective research strengths. It should reward generally high achievement. It should weight research costs accurately by field and discipline. It should promote university autonomy in decision making on research funding and policy. It should recognise and reward groundbreaking long-term fundamental research, the full impact of which may not be apparent within a limited or arbitrary time frame, and it should provide separate objective measures that reflect research quality in each broad discipline area, such as the arts and humanities, the social sciences, sciences and technologies. Unfortunately, the government’s research quality framework does not do any of these things.

Another concern I have with this piece of legislation arises from the proposed amendment to allow students to correct information six weeks from the census date to establish an entitlement to Commonwealth assistance. The Higher Education Amendment Act will then be amended to clarify that students can no longer establish an entitlement to assistance provided under the act. The bill seeks to amend the Higher Education Support Act 2003, the Higher Education Funding Act 1988 and the Higher Education Support (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Act 2003 to limit the time for students to claim an entitlement to Commonwealth support. Students in Australia are already struggling, and they do not need further obstacles such as the amendments proposed in this bill.

It is worth noting that in 2007 the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee’s survey into student finances, an independent study commissioned by the peak Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee and conducted by the University of Melbourne’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education, found that financial pressure has increased since the previous survey six years ago. In response, as cited in an article in the Australian on Wednesday, 14 March titled ‘The AVCC moves on student poverty’, the federal Minister for Education, Science and Training claimed:

Students should live more frugally ... income support was not intended to underwrite a lifestyle.

Alan Robson, the chairman of the survey’s steering group and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Australia, responded to the minister’s comment with concern. He said:

... she didn’t appear to be taking it really seriously.

Robson continued:

Full-time students are working nearly 15 hours a week, that is considerable work, and we are expecting students during semester probably to be spending 40 hours a week [on their studies]. How does that make for a good university experience?

Students are suffering under the requirements to study full time, to attain good grades, to work and attempt to balance a social life, all at the same time as providing the money that is required by the government under HECS. In the same article, Macquarie University’s Vice-Chancellor, Steven Schwartz, said:

Financial hardship is a way of life for many students ...

The offhand comment by the minister should be seen for what it is: a very disparaging insult to the Australian student population and a disparaging insult to many Australian families who struggle to ensure that their children get access to a university education. They struggle because of the costs involved.

Whilst they might be participants in a happy form of life in one sense, the hardships which they and their families endure to ensure they get a university education and make a contribution to the Australian community in the way we want them all to do should not be disparaged or insulted in the way the minister has done.

The Vice-Chancellors Committee survey found that around 70 per cent of full-time undergraduates worked an average of 14.8 hours a week during the second semester of 2006. Forty-two per cent of part-time students worked at least 38 hours a week, which is equivalent to full-time employment. Up to 54 per cent of students surveyed found that work was having a detrimental effect on their studies. Between 2000 and 2006 the proportion of undergraduates taking out payable loans rose from 10.7 per cent to 24.4 per cent. Average private debt on graduation is $25,000. Indigenous students have bigger loans and work longer hours in order to finance their studies.

In respect of Indigenous students, about whom I have a particular concern, the research commissioned by the AVCC’s committee on student finances states:

A quarter of Indigenous students go without food and other necessities because they cannot afford them.

What does the minister say about that? Do they choose this lifestyle because it is so terrific that they have to go without food as they are too poor? How much more frugally would they need to live? This is an observation made by a minister with no knowledge, who clearly has no heart and no understanding of the experiences of many Australian students at our tertiary institutions.

Indigenous students were more likely to report that money was a worry—72.5 per cent compared with 52.5 per cent for the general university population. Indigenous students worked more hours and missed more classes than non-Indigenous students. Their expenses were higher. They were more likely to have used up savings to fund their education—52 per cent compared with 44 per cent of non-Indigenous students. More Indigenous students had taken out a loan than non-Indigenous students and the loans were bigger—$8,250 for Indigenous postgraduates compared with $6,250 for non-Indigenous postgraduates. Despite all of the obstacles, Indigenous students’ income support applications were rejected more often—13.8 per cent for undergraduates and 8.8 per cent for postgraduates—than those of non-Indigenous students, at 11.8 and 5.5 per cent. This report is an absolute condemnation of this government’s administration of higher education. The observations made by the minister are such a grave insult that they should be rejected out of hand by this parliament.

The 2005 higher education report released by the Department of Education, Science and Training revealed that the debt burden for Australian students has tripled under the Howard government, from $4.5 billion in 1996-97 to nearly $13 billion in 2005-06. 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 the previous year. In an article from the Sydney Morning Herald on 13 September 2006 it was stated that average yearly fees are rising. Medicine is up from $17,658 in 1997 to $49,020 in 2006, law is up from $11,772 in 1997 to $32,680 and engineering is up from $11,772 to $27,917. This government has overseen this debacle.

We know that the impact of the government’s policies on higher education have nowhere been felt greater than in the regional universities across this country. This is a matter which I have spoken on a number of times in this place. It is clear that the situation is getting worse. Charles Darwin University has suffered massively at the hands of the Howard government. According to 2005 statistics, CDU caters to a total of 17,665 students. That is a little less than 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 demographics of the Northern Territory are far removed from the national average and obviously very different from those which prevail in the major metropolitan areas. The Territory has a large population base in and around Darwin of 100,000-plus people and a smaller population base at the centre of Australia 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, as well as smaller places such as Wadeye, Maningrida, Galiwinku, Groote Eylandt, and even smaller places such as Papunya, Kintore and Yuendumu—very small communities indeed.

This university requires resourcing to be able to carry out its work in the Northern Territory. 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 Charles Darwin University alone. We know that with the abolition of compulsory student unionism students are facing a less vibrant life on campus. Under VSU, universities are expected to lose about $160 million annually. The wealthy Group of Eight universities can tolerate this far better. They are largely protected from the legislation through special funding set aside by each institution. This is not the case at smaller institutions such as Charles Darwin University, where students tend to rely more on in-house services and have faced the most savage cutbacks. Let us not beat about the bush: CDU has been hit hardest by these changes.

This much is acknowledged in a national report card put out by the National Union of Students in November of last year. This report card sets out how universities have handled the fallout from the legislation. Students are warned in the union document that they ‘should be very wary about attending’ universities including Charles Darwin, Griffith and James Cook, ‘as they are unlikely to receive the same level of quality service provision and effective support as at other universities’.

According to Rose Jackson, the 2006 president of the National Union of Students, Charles Darwin University has been the worst affected by VSU, with the campus student union left with little support or staff. She said:

It means if you’re a student at Charles Darwin University who wants to appeal a grade, you have nowhere to go but the administration itself, you literally have nowhere to go. They didn’t even produce a student diary this year because they didn’t have the money.

That is another condemnation of this government’s approach. I say to the minister who made those insulting remarks about the Australian student body that she should rethink her attitude and do something a lot better to improve the outcomes in tertiary education in this country.

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