Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak once again in the House of Representatives chamber in the Australian parliament as the federal member for Ryan representing the wonderful and beautiful western suburbs of Brisbane. I continue to have a strong passion in the area of education that this bill, the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Budget Measures) Bill 2007, is all about. Like so many Australians, I have a very keen interest in the quality of our higher education—not only as a member of the Howard government but also as someone who now sees education with different eyes because I am a new father. For me, looking down the track to when my young son might be eligible for education at a tertiary level, it is very important that he is in a position to enter university if that is his choice and that the quality of his education is first class—indeed, not only first class in this country but world class. So as the federal member for Ryan I want to speak in parliament today on this terrific bill and to commend it very generously.

The Howard government has made some very important changes to the university sector since it was elected in 1996. I think the benefits of those changes have gone unrecognised. I am very proud of what the Howard government has done. It has transformed the way universities operate. It has certainly put emphasis on quality teaching to ensure that students in the university and higher education sector are getting value for their money. In the Ryan electorate the University of Queensland is located at St Lucia. I think it is the premier university in the country. As a graduate of that university I am very proud to continue to lobby for it and to represent it and all the students who graduate from it. The quality of our universities is very important. Professor Ian Frazer, who was the 2006 Australian of the Year, developed his vaccine for cervical cancer from the campus of the University of Queensland. We can all be very proud of him and of that university. I know Queenslanders are very proud of that university. I am very pleased that in the budget the government supported the University of Queensland to the tune of some $100 million to fund the university’s new Diamantina Institute for Cancer, Immunology and Metabolic Medicine, which is headed by Professor Frazer.

Contrary to some of the aspersions cast by the opposition, the Howard government has increased funding to the higher education sector by $2.5 billion in the last decade. This commitment is very worthy and we should be front and centre in promoting this in our electorates and to the people of Australia. It is important that they are made aware of the enormous investment of funds being allocated to universities across the country.

Education is the fourth biggest expenditure item behind social security, health and defence in our annual budget. The government spends $17.7 billion in education, which is clearly an enormous amount of taxpayers’ money, and all taxpayers are entitled to expect that their dollars are fully utilised by those who have stewardship over and administer the university sector. Based on the most up-to-date figures that I am able to get my hands on, that amount represents approximately $4,500 for every Australian currently in primary school, high school and university for this financial year alone. It is a lot of money and it is important that it is spent strategically and wisely in the interests of our students and the entire education sector.

In realising the government’s initiatives, the 2007-08 budget represents additional expenditure totalling $3.5 billion over the next four years, increasing from $534 million in 2007-08 to approximately $970 million in each of the following years. The lion’s share of this extra funding, some 57 per cent, will go to the education sector—24 per cent for schools and 19 per cent for vocational education and training.

This bill will realise our potential in higher education initiatives contained in the 2007-08 budget as announced by the Treasurer. It will revise the maximum funding amounts in accordance with the budget announcements for the Commonwealth Grant Scheme, other grants and Commonwealth scholarships. The Commonwealth Grant Scheme is, of course, a scheme through which the Howard government delivers HECS places across the country. Under the budget initiatives implemented in this bill, some $559.6 million over four years will see the Commonwealth grants structure significantly improved and the funding increased.

Funding will be increased for Commonwealth supported places in mathematics and statistics, allied health, engineering, science and surveying, clinical psychology, education, nursing, behavioural science and social studies, medicine, dentistry and veterinary science. As well as increasing the funding for the 2007-08 budget initiatives, there will also be important changes to provide greater flexibility to universities to allow them to allocate places across different disciplines and to respond faster to the demands of students and the requirements of employers. Some of these important initiatives are streamlining the current 12 funding clusters into seven and providing $223 million over four years to relax the caps on Commonwealth supported places and domestic full-fee-paying undergraduate places.

Under the relaxation of the caps on Commonwealth supported places, universities will now be fully funded rather than penalised for overenrolments of up to five per cent in Commonwealth supported places. This will give universities much-needed leeway in allocating HECS places as well as effectively eliminating unmet demand. Unmet demand is currently estimated to be around 12,000 places. However, the ability of universities to overenrol by five per cent has the potential to make room for an extra 21,000 students. This is an additional 2,244 HECS places in the state of Queensland alone. We are talking about a significant number of students—some 21,000 students—having access to places at universities that they would not otherwise be entitled to. Additionally, while universities will be required to deliver specified Commonwealth supported places in nursing, teaching, medicine and engineering, they will now be allowed to adjust student numbers and course mixes to meet student demand and the needs of employers and the marketplace.

The final measure designed to give universities greater flexibility in tailoring their courses is the much publicised removal of the current 35 per cent cap on domestic full-fee-paying places. I listened to the Labor member for Rankin talking about this and I have never heard so much claptrap in my life, especially from someone who is trained in economics, has a PhD and was an adviser to a former Prime Minister. I find his understanding of this policy quite unusual and, at the end of the day, his and the Labor Party’s position will detrimentally affect thousands of students across the country. He says that students will not have access to places in our universities, notwithstanding that the merit of their academic grades will allow them to enter those universities, given that all full-fee-paying places are available.

Getting rid of the cap on full-fee-paying places was encouraged by the universities. They were in the ridiculous position of turning away students willing to pay for their courses—for example, business courses—while being unable to get enough students into funded places. This policy position from the opposition harms students across the country and impacts directly on their potential to earn a qualification or degree and to have an academic experience that will improve their job and career prospects.

It is fair to say that Labor’s policy is very ideologically driven, whereas the government’s is a nitty-gritty policy that impacts directly in the community amongst our young Australians who are seeking to have a very bright future commensurate with their ambitions, their aspirations and, of course, their talent. I want to quote Professor Gavin Brown, the very distinguished Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney. He summed up the situation quite well when he commented on Labor’s policy. He said:

I am saddened that for ideological reasons thousands of students would be denied educational opportunities of their choice.

The minister has of course made it very clear that where a university does not choose to offer additional full-fee-paying places it will have to have already offered all its Commonwealth allocated funded places. There is no inconsistency and no further impact with this policy or with the position that the government holds, so I very strongly commend it to the students across the country who might benefit enormously from having access to these university places. Given that the University of Queensland is in the Ryan electorate, this will be of especial interest to the young students of the high schools of Ryan who will be graduating at the end of this year and looking to get into university. So domestic full-fee-paying places do not in any sense at all rob any domestic students of a Commonwealth place. They are available only once all Commonwealth places in that course have been exhausted, and are above and beyond those places provided by the Commonwealth government.

Another Vice-Chancellor, Ross Milbourne from the University of Technology, predicts that the number of domestic full-fee places might actually fall due to ‘expansion in Commonwealth supported offers and the fact that universities can move Commonwealth supported places to high demand areas’. The University of Queensland’s own Vice-Chancellor Professor John Hay is on the record as saying:

Lifting the cap on full-fee paying Australian students may seem politically audacious, but the levels of demand at present are very low and unlikely to increase for some time.

So there is no detrimental impact whatsoever and this spurious attack by the Labor opposition really shows that they have absolutely no depth at all in policy. Behind the PR, the marketing, the package, the advertising and the pretend fiscal conservative that the opposition leader tries to portray himself as, there is no depth or substance. Behind all that superb five-star Oscar-winning PR campaign, there is absolutely no depth and no substance whatsoever in the federal opposition. And I think that when the time comes the people of Australia will certainly see through the facade of the Labor opposition.

I know that the people of Ryan will take a very strong interest in the policy depth of the opposition. I wonder whether on this occasion they will be sending all their shadow cabinet ministers into the Ryan electorate to campaign for the local Labor member, as they did last time. It might be interesting to note for the House that for the last campaign when one Mark Latham was seeking to be the Prime Minister of this country, half the shadow cabinet of the day came into the federal seat of Ryan to try to campaign for him. What happened? The vote went up in Ryan for the Liberal Party, which is fantastic of course.

In terms of this bill, the Howard government is very keen to ensure that the students of Australia are full recipients of the wonderful economy that we have and the wonderful stewardship of the nation’s economic prosperity. I think that is critical to present to the community because we are in the business of ensuring that the prosperity of the nation does go towards investing in the people of Australia and of course in the generations to come, and education is front and centre in the future of our nation. With the budget the government will provide some $208 million over four years to assist universities to specialise and diversify. This really does complement the Howard government’s previous higher education reforms and further implements the policy to remove the one-size-fits-all model in the sector.

Complementing the Realising Our Potential higher education initiatives in the budget is the very innovative Higher Education Endowment Fund, and I want to comment just briefly on this. The Higher Education Endowment Fund really is very visionary and practical, a policy for the future of this nation. It will stand the young people of Australia tremendously well. The Higher Education Endowment Fund will ensure that a strong, well-resourced higher education sector is in place for the students of tomorrow—$5 million is locked up in the bank to ensure that the students of tomorrow prosper from that.

I want to refer to some comments by the very distinguished JD Story Professor of Public Administration at the University of Queensland, Kenneth Wilshire. I point out that Professor Wilshire chaired the review of the Queensland school curriculum under the Goss Labor government so he is someone with a very fine reputation, respected by both ends of the political spectrum in our country. In last week’s Australian, on 7 June, he described Kevin Rudd’s education revolution as being: ‘about six dot points in search of a rationale’, containing little detail of how the measures would be implemented. He went on:

There’s no guarantee whatsoever just because the state governments are the same political party Mr Rudd is going to get their co-operation ...

Public policy by definition should have content, its rationale, the tool of implementation.

But the ‘education revolution’ has no costing, no delivery mechanism; it needs to be spelt out in far more detail.

He continued, and this is the very significant point here:

I fear Mr Rudd’s creating a noodle federation, with some states referring powers to the commonwealth and some states not.

I could go on. He was making some very salient points and I would commend Professor Kenneth Wilshire’s comments about Rudd’s professed education—

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