Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Higher Education Endowment Fund Bill 2007 is a bill of great importance, as it sets a precedent for the university sector. It is good policy. The cognate bill, the Higher Education Endowment Fund (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2007, will protect the $5 billion that the government has provided in the budget for an endowment fund that will guarantee resources to the university sector for capital works and research in the future. The Higher Education Endowment Fund is consistent with the government’s Future Fund, which has a target of some $140 billion to meet the superannuation responsibilities of the taxpayer—those who continue to be in, or were in, unfunded superannuation arrangements that typically, over decades, were funded from the general budget.

The changed demographics that are predicted for this nation would make it totally unsustainable to pay those amounts of money to the Australian Defence Force, the Australian Federal Police and others who will be eligible for superannuation in future years. It is all right for people to say that a future government has a responsibility and should meet it and that future governments will take account of the capacity of the taxpayer base and other matters when determining their expenditure. Without the superannuation based Future Fund, in particular, persons in employment today might worry about their otherwise determined superannuation entitlements being delivered. It would not be the first time that a government has bailed out on the commitments of past governments.

There have been statements made in this place that are an absolute threat to these endowment funds. The opposition has made it clear that, in the case of the Future Fund, to quote the member for Hotham: ‘This is only for the purpose of funding the superannuation of public servants. Therefore, if we think we have better ways of spending it, we will.’ The consequential amendments bill is designed, as was the additional Future Fund legislation, to ensure that governments cannot undertake that course nor direct the guardians of the money to make investments or divert moneys for other than proper purposes. The Higher Education Endowment Fund is therefore a particularly valuable contribution to the university sector. To the best of my knowledge, it is universally accepted and applauded.

I will refer in brief to the member for Perth’s remarks. He started to quote statistics about undergraduate places and many other factors of that nature. I will put on record that, shortly after the introduction of Medicare and bulk-billing, when it became so profitable for certain medical practitioners that one managed to buy a football team and when there were people playing grand pianos in the reception areas of general practices, the Hawke government panicked that they had a tiger by the tail. Their response was to say, ‘We’ve got to reduce the number of doctors. We obviously have too many, as they are getting out there and adding significantly to the costs to government.’ It was quite interesting, because the result of that concern was to reduce by 4,000 the number of undergraduate places that were available to students throughout Australia. As we all know, it takes at least 10 years to get such a student from the starting post to being a self-reliant general practitioner. When one works out the timing, one might wonder why Australia is now desperately short of Australian-born, -bred and -educated general practitioners. Of course, this government has not only increased those places dramatically; it has opened new medical schools in, I think, Cairns and other places.

We well remember the decision of the Whitlam government to create free university education and the decision of the Hawke government that that was unsustainable, notwithstanding its retention by the Fraser government. We had a situation where governments could not afford that process. Then there was the issue of natural justice, in that people asked the question: ‘If my kid goes to TAFE and pays up-front for an education, why should someone who could anticipate earning in today’s monetary terms a $40,000 or $50,000 starting salary not make some financial contribution to their education?’ The Higher Education Contribution Scheme threshold at which people start to repay that money has been extended to about $39,000, if I recollect the sum. The reality is that those people do not pay up before that time, before they have earned that money.

Debate interrupted.

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