David Fawcett (Wakefield, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to address the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Budget Measures) Bill 2007. I support this bill because it continues the Howard government’s strong investment over the past 11 years in education and, in particular, its work with the education sector to ensure innovation and vision and to find better ways to educate our students and to get better outcomes from the people and facilities that we have to support education in this country. I will go through some of the provisions and measures of the bill and I will then talk about a couple of the specific outcomes that will impact on the electorate of Wakefield, which I have the privilege to represent in this place.

The bill will amend the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to revise the maximum funding amounts in several sections that impact on the Commonwealth Grant Scheme, other grants and particularly Commonwealth scholarships. This has a number of benefits for people, particularly my constituents in Wakefield. Of note, it also amends item 9 of the Higher Education Support Act to provide for the new diversity and structural adjustment fund, which will promote structural reform by universities to support greater specialisation, diversity and responsiveness to local labour market needs. Some $209 million has been allocated specifically to this area. This is an important measure because it will enable universities to be responsive to the world around them and the people who are, at end of the day, a key stakeholder group in that they look to employ the people who go through higher education.

The bill will also revise the Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding clusters and contributions to reflect new funding clusters and amounts announced in the budget. Importantly, the number of funding clusters will be reduced from 12 to seven, which will give universities greater flexibility to move Commonwealth supported places between disciplines in response to student and employer demand. There is no greater example of the need for this than in South Australia, which has seen a growth in the defence industry, mining sector, automotive and components manufacturing sector and a range of other sectors. As a result, the demand for particular courses has increased, and in the past universities have felt some constraint in their ability to offer places. The $557 million that has been allocated for this measure will enable a focus on mathematics, statistics, allied health, engineering, science, clinical psychology, education, nursing, medicine, dentistry and veterinary science, and it is a welcome measure. I will come back to the engineering and veterinary science in particular later in my remarks.

The bill also extends the funding agreement from a yearly basis to a three yearly basis, which will give the higher education sector much greater certainty and ability to plan for the future. This provision takes full effect from 2009, but I welcome to the fact that higher education providers will have the option of entering into these three-year funding agreements from 2008 if they so wish.

As part of the flexibility that the government is seeking to give higher education providers, they will still receive funding for overenrolments of up to five per cent, whereas previously this was limited to one per cent. There will also be no penalties for overenrolments above that amount. The government is seeking to give institutions the maximum flexibility to meet either immediate or future student demand.

The bill amends provisions that restrict a proportion of domestic undergraduate fee-paying places. I note that the unis are required to offer all Commonwealth supported places before full-fee-paying places. There has been a deal of concern shown in the community, fed largely by the opposition, about the impact of full-fee-paying places and that somehow this is going to remove the right or opportunity for other Australian students. The opposition are putting forward some kind of perverse inequity: that we celebrate the great export value and provision of international education in Australia and that we welcome and actively promote our education institutions to people from other countries, yet the opposition would deny that same right to Australian students. It is important to look at the context in which this is happening and at the fact that, unlike in 1992—when the number of people who were eligible to go to university but were unable to obtain a place peaked at around 100,000—at the moment that number is at a record low. So we are seeing access increasing. With the 2,300 additional Commonwealth supported places, you can see that every effort—successful effort—is being made by the Commonwealth to ensure that those who wish to study in a supported place have the opportunity to do so. At the same time, we provide the choice to Australians to have the same rights as people from overseas if they wish to take up a full-fee-paying domestic place at university.

The bill will enable the expansion of the number of Commonwealth scholarships. I welcome the fact that at a cost of some $91.4 million over the next four years the number of scholarships will increase from 8,500 per year to 12,000 per year. Two thousand of these scholarships will be available to students who may not otherwise qualify for a higher education place to study a two-year associate degree as a pathway to a full degree. The bill provides funding for an additional 700 Commonwealth education costs scholarships and 210 Commonwealth accommodation scholarships for Indigenous students undertaking higher education enabling courses. The Commonwealth scholarships program will also be expanded to include a one-off payment of $4,000 to eligible Indigenous students to assist with the cost of attending university, as well as up to 1,000 higher education students who will be assisted under the Indigenous scholarship program.

Having been part of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Vocational Training, which last year produced the Top of the Class report, looking at teacher education, I am pleased to see measures in this bill to assist higher education providers who deliver courses in teacher education by providing additional funding for three- and four-year course students to supplement the costs of delivering the practicum component of teacher education, with some $77 million allocated towards this. Feedback from schools, universities and students undertaking teacher training highlighted consistently across the inquiry that quality practicum was invaluable in preparing students. One of the limiting factors was the time frame and resources that could be applied to this. So I very much welcome this measure in the bill.

To go back briefly to the comments on engineering, in South Australia at the moment we are seeing a considerable expansion in the defence industry sector—in land projects, sea projects and the aerospace sector. We are seeing a considerable upskilling at a technical level and also in systems engineering—particularly the air warfare destroyer and the Joint Strike Fighter—where systems integration is a key part of the capability that those platforms will represent.

We are seeing initiatives being taken to increase the availability of training, requiring that universities have the flexibility to offer places that are relevant. So I particularly welcome the funding which is going to encourage universities to provide engineering, science and maths based places. We also need to have the students to go into those places. I mention here the Concept 2 Creation program funded by the Australian government and supported heavily by industry in South Australia such as Tenix, BAE Systems, General Motors Holden and other components suppliers. In this program, industry, in partnership with the Commonwealth, work with local high schools to encourage young people to see what happens in science and engineering so that they are encouraged to take up those subjects. Teachers are provided support so that they are professionally developed and helped in the practical studies and projects they are to give their students. The students have the opportunity to go into the workplaces so that they see where they can end up if they persevere and choose to go down the maths and sciences route. There is no point having places in universities and jobs open for people if the students are not encouraged. I strongly support the Northern Adelaide Advance Manufacturing Industry Group and their Concept 2 Creation program. I look forward to the funding for that program continuing into the future.

It is important to recognise that a number of factors have been talked about here which come back to the strong economy that this Liberal and National coalition government under Mr Howard has run. This has enabled the $5 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund to be established, as well as the record $4 billion put into education in this budget. It builds on the vision that this government has had for education which looks at a number of enabling factors, things like the professional development of teachers and getting agreement across the country for a national curriculum. With a defence background, I look at the very negative impact it has on families when they have to move between states. Children end up with different standards and different approaches to education. I welcome the government’s move to take leadership on the development of a national curriculum.

I welcome this government’s real focus on core learning as opposed to some of the fads that have been put forward. We have seen the outcomes based education that different groups have put forward at times that take away from the real focus on literacy and numeracy—some of those fundamental and enabling learning disciplines. I welcome the fact that the government has matched its vision in these areas with funding—the $2 billion that has gone into the literacy, numeracy and special needs programs; the $1.4 billion that has gone into the disability access sector to make sure people who have disabilities can access education; and the $35.2 million that has gone into science education to boost both the quality of and potential interest in science education.

I note that the opposition, in their amendments to the bill, talk about decreases in Commonwealth funding. The opposition love to talk about tricky politics, but this is a classic example of tricky politics. When they talk about decreased funding, they are talking about a percentage; they are talking about a percentage decrease from 7.7 to 7.4 per cent. If they were honest they would admit that the actual dollar value has increased. Why? Because of the strong economic management of the government, the total pie that is available for carving up has grown. So the real dollar value of investment in education has increased. It is really important to note that. It is also important to note that the strong management of the economy is the thing that is leading to the extra demand for graduates. We do not have to look too far back in Australia’s history to see the time when people who graduated from university struggled to find a job, whereas now there is a strong demand for graduates from universities as well as graduates from technical colleges and for people with trade training. Strong economic management has given this government the ability to pay off debt and, instead of paying $8½ billion a year in interest, to make record investments in our defence capability, not only in terms of people but in terms of equipment. Hence the spending on the defence industry, hence the demand for skills and hence the demand for university graduates.

The creation of jobs has not just occurred in defence. It has also occurred in the automotive and component supplier sectors. I look at the companies that have set up in Wakefield recently. The whole expansion of the Edinburgh Parks precinct is based on strong economic management. That has enabled us to invest billions of dollars into the auto industry to make them internationally competitive and to increase their exports. There is also the mining sector. Small and medium-sized enterprises are producing innovative tooling and equipment to support air-conditioning companies with things like ducting, and there is the manufacture of tile-producing equipment which goes around Australia and overseas. There are a range of areas where this government has not only the vision but also the economic credibility to enable the investment in our workplaces and in our educational institutions.

Before I conclude my remarks I wish to come back to the focus on veterinary training, veterinary science, which was foreshadowed in the budget. As I look around Australia, I note that the University of Sydney, the University of Western Sydney, James Cook University, the University of Queensland, Deakin University, the University of Melbourne, Murdoch University and the University of Western Australia all offer veterinary science courses. Young people in South Australia have no option to study veterinary science in their own state. I am very pleased to be working with the University of Adelaide, who are now the people running the Roseworthy agricultural campus, to look towards a veterinary science course, a veterinary school based at Roseworthy, which is supported by the Australian government.

Roseworthy was Australia’s first agricultural college and it was established in 1883. Over the years it has gained an enviable reputation for dryland farming, animal sciences and other areas such as viticulture. In 1991, the college joined forces with the University of Adelaide’s Faculty of Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences. It has now become the key campus for research and education in animal production and dryland agriculture. There is a vision for this college to provide a veterinary school which is a postgraduate school, and that will enable people who have completed an undergraduate degree elsewhere or through the University of Adelaide at Roseworthy to undertake veterinary training, particularly in production animals. Rather than adding to what is sometimes considered an oversupply of people working in metropolitan areas with domestic animals, this is going to be very much focused on working with people in the ag sector who need support for production animals. But it will include new industries, such as aquaculture, and also allow specialisations into areas like biosecurity. That is a growing area of need as we start facing a number of threats both to agricultural production in this country and to human health.

I welcome the focus in this budget on veterinary science. I particularly draw the attention of the House to the opportunities that this partnership between Roseworthy campus and the University of Adelaide offers in providing not only a national focus with a new concept of a postgraduate course, a national focus on production animals and a national focus on things like biosecurity and aquaculture but also the opportunity for young people in South Australia to be able to have a career path and complete their studies without having to go interstate.

I conclude my remarks in support of the bill by repeating a quote that was given to me at one stage when I worked in the Defence Acquisition Organisation. When talking about visions that people had, I was told, ‘Vision without dollars is hallucination.’ That is a very apt remark as we look at education in this country. This government has had vision and it has matched that vision with an economic credibility that has enabled us to make investments not only in the education sector but also in the environment outside that is creating the demand for jobs and for graduates. Compare that to the opposition of the education unions and the Labor Party to many of the initiatives of this government, whether they relate to technical colleges, reforms to curriculum, the implementation of benchmarks, the focus on core skills such as literacy and numeracy, and the impact on the economy that a union dominated Labor government would have with their pattern bargaining and the other things that would undermine the economic growth that this country has seen. Not only would you not have the vision; you would not have the dollars. Not only has this government shown vision but it has also achieved economic credibility, and that is not a hallucination. Education in this country has a strong future with the Howard government. I commend the bill to the House.

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