Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Service Economy, Small Business and Independent Contractors) Share this | Hansard source

Labor supports the Higher Education Support Amendment (Extending FEE-HELP for VET Diploma and VET Advanced Diploma Courses) Bill 2007 and the second reading amendment moved by the shadow education minister and seconded by me. Most particularly, we would like to see the extension of these arrangements. The current legislation limits eligibility to FEE-HELP to those courses that give credit for higher education or university qualifications. We have come a long way now. It was only a few years ago that there was the suggestion that, if an income-contingent loan were made available for a vocational education course, it would be heresy. It is a pity that after 11 years of government the coalition has just come to this idea. It always made sense. The coalition, to its credit, when in opposition supported the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, which enabled the then Labor government to obtain a contribution, based on income subsequently earned, from university students, all of which was then put back into the university sector. The purpose of that was to expand the number of university places in Australia.

It was an inspired scheme. It was designed by Professor Bruce Chapman at the Australian National University. It has become a model for other countries that were fascinated by the fact that we administered this income-contingent loan scheme through the tax office—that is, if and when people who have been through university and obtained a degree earn an income above a particular threshold, the tax office takes a share of that money above the threshold, which is then a contribution to the cost of their education.

It would be marvellous if we could afford in this country a free university education. The Whitlam government captured the imagination of the Australian people by making university education free but, unfortunately, that was also restricted in terms of the numbers. Ultimately, there is no such thing as a free lunch and taxpayers had to fund all of that. So the concept of an income-contingent loan was a good one. It was applied by the previous Labor government and the coalition, when in opposition, supported it. It was always logical that this concept be capable of being extended to vocational education, most particularly because a lot of people from lower income backgrounds choose to take on a vocational education rather than a university education. Just as the HECS arrangements were designed to avoid shutting people out of universities, it made sense that such an income-contingent loan arrangement applied to technical education would help avoid shutting them out of a technical education.

Our concern with the legislation now is that it does not go far enough. Why have this distinction between universities and TAFE colleges and other vocational education courses in terms of eligibility for an income-contingent loan? If it is good for university students, surely it is good for any and all vocational education students. I do accept that the cost of a vocational education course usually is lower than that of a university course; therefore, the barrier to entry for people from lower income circumstances is lower. But it still makes sense that, if it is good for uni students, surely it is good for students who are going through a vocational education course. That is why Labor is moving the second reading amendment, welcoming the extension of FEE- HELP but noting that it has been unnecessarily restricted in this legislation by limiting eligibility to those courses that give credit for university or higher education qualifications.

The second part of the second reading amendment notes that the Senate committee inquiry into this legislation shared Labor’s concerns, as reflected in its recommendation that the government consider the practical examples raised in that inquiry regarding the exclusion of the vocational graduate certificate and vocational graduate diploma to ensure that the legislation adequately meets its stated objectives. To be perfectly honest, I am now aware that there are amendments that the previous speaker, the former minister for vocational education, says reflect those Senate concerns. That is a good thing, if that is the case. If the government has now moved to address those concerns, that does go a further step towards Labor’s second reading amendment. I have been in this parliament for the best part of nine years and I think this is the first time I have seen a second reading amendment actually have an effect on government thinking—or certainly on the thinking of this government. I suppose it will claim it had no effect whatsoever and it just saw the light of day at five seconds to midnight.

This is a good piece of legislation, but it is unduly restrictive. In a book that I wrote last year, which was released in March, entitled Vital Signs, Vibrant Society, I talked about the virtues of income-contingent loans. I talked about the possibility of the private sector, indeed, investing in the talents of our young people going through universities. But I also went on to say that, if it makes sense—as it does—for income-contingent loans to apply to university degrees, surely it also does towards vocational education courses. So today there is a little bit of satisfaction there. One part of one chapter of Vital Signs, Vibrant Society is being implemented and, I am pleased to say, on both sides of politics, a number of its other chapters are being implemented too. There is a contest of ideas. Labor is winning that contest, but at least the government very belatedly is doing something right by those young people who choose the vocational education stream.

I want to use some of the remaining time available to me to talk about those choices. We heard the previous speaker, the member for Moreton and former minister for vocational education and training, talking about ‘highbrow arrogance’. This reminds me of a single word that the former minister for education, now the Minister for Defence, has used repeatedly in relation to Labor’s championing of university education—and that term is ‘snobbery’. He has accused Labor of snobbery and now we hear this term ‘highbrow arrogance’. It is as though there is some deadly choice to be made where, whenever Labor says that a university education is good, we must automatically be saying that a vocational education is bad.

It is horses for courses. Some people prefer a university education. They prefer the opportunity to think expansively, creatively and imaginatively—and that is good. I believe that every young person who wants to should be able to go on and do a university education. But that does not mean for a moment that Labor believes that young people who choose the vocational stream are in any way lesser. They are not. It suits them and, in many circumstances, taking on a trade provides them with a wonderful standard of living and a lot of job satisfaction. So why do we have to have this schism in the national debate about tertiary education between higher education—that is, universities—on the one hand, and a vocational stream on the other? Let us just allow young people to make those choices free of the values that seem to be imposed on the government side, in suggesting that whenever Labor talks about a university education it must be saying that a vocational education is bad. They are both good.

It is true today more than at any time in Australia’s history that good social policy and good economic policy coincide. The campuses of our preschools, our schools, our training colleges and our universities are the places where economy meets society. It has been the persistent Labor argument that the best investment we can make as a country in sustaining and improving prosperity is in education. But it is also socially right. It is a good thing to do in terms of fairness. So, if we want, as I do—and I am sure the member for Gorton and all Labor members and, I hope, coalition members do—a prosperous and fair society, then the one investment can achieve both: investment in quality education, whether young people decide to go into the vocational side or the university side.

A major report was released today and was the subject of much debate and heat in question time. It was the 2007 edition of the OECD’s annual report on these matters, called Education at a glance. By the way, it runs to about 500 pages, so it is perhaps inappropriately titled! But the point is that the early part of that report released today talks about the value of investing in higher education. For the edification of the Prime Minister, who has been very critical of Labor’s approach to all of this over the last 20 years, I point out that the average unemployment rates amongst early school leavers are compared with those of year 12 completers, people who have undertaken vocational education and people who have undertaken university education, and the results are very clear. The greater the level of education that you undertake as a young person, the more the average unemployment rate falls. That is why it is so important. But the Prime Minister in March 2005 on the Sunday program lamented what he called an obsession with staying on till year 12. He said: ‘What’s all this fuss, what’s all this obsession, with finishing high school? People should be able to leave early and go and get a trade—all this stuff about universities.’ Well, last year’s Education at a glance report and this year’s report expose that as being wrong. The greater the investment that you make in education and the longer you stay in the education system—other things being equal—the better off you will be.

Labor understands—far more than the coalition, I think—that these decisions need to be made at a very early time. It is good policy today that we are debating. But what really keeps young people from disadvantaged backgrounds out of university and out of TAFE is much more than the fees that are applied. It is much more the fact that, from a very early age, they do not often get the basics of literacy and numeracy and the whole ethic, if you like, of learning. The reason for that—and I am being very direct here—is that the children of parents who have had a very bad education experience themselves, parents who do not have great literacy or numeracy skills, parents who do not have books at home, are far more likely to follow the same pattern. Take, for example, a single mother who has not had the opportunity of a good education and perhaps got pregnant at the age of 14 and had to leave school. She is trying to cope as best she possibly can. Her partner may well have disappeared. How can you expect her to even have the resources to ensure that when the kids come home from school they have that extra support at home, that thirst for knowledge, when perhaps the single mother has had a bad education experience herself?

Where does this take us? Right back to the beginning, to early childhood development, even before preschool. The member for Jagajaga outlined in this parliament today that more than 100,000 four-year-olds miss out on a preschool education in Australia every year. Most of them are disadvantaged, and there is an enormous representation of Indigenous kids in that number. But it goes back. The problem does not start at four years of age. Often it can start in the womb. If, when mothers fall pregnant, they do not have a home environment where they can nurture that child, then things go very badly very early on. Fortunately for the United States, there is a program that has been running there since the early 1970s called Nurse-Family Partnership. The Blair government, and now the government led by Gordon Brown, have picked this program up in the United Kingdom, where they have initiated 10 pilot programs. The idea is to get to an at-risk mother as early as 16 weeks into her pregnancy and to have a nurse caring for, advising and encouraging that mother—encouraging the mother if she is a heavy smoker to get off smoking, if she is a heavy drinker to get off drinking, if she is a drug user to get off that—and helping her to bring that baby into the world with a decent opportunity. The nurse supports that mother, not for a day or a week or a month after birth but right through to two years after birth and then comes back again and gives support wherever that is needed.

That is the sort of program that James Heckman, a Nobel laureate, has been talking about—investing very early in the young. They have a full lifetime over which that investment is returned. It is great for the kids, it is great for society—the best investment that we can possibly make. Yet in this country—and I am not just going to score some sort of cheap political point here off the government—we have really a very badly organised early childhood development system. The Commonwealth invests virtually nothing in it. The state systems are improving but they are all trying different schemes and basically the refrain is that you cannot have these sorts of arrangements like nurse-family partnerships where you have a nurse looking after one mother with one baby all the way through from 16 weeks of pregnancy to two years and coming back again, because it is so expensive.

The answer that is given in policy terms is often: let us do something cheaper. Well, you get what you pay for. If you are not prepared to put much of an investment into early childhood development, then in disadvantaged communities, you will not get very much early childhood development. This is the big debate, the coming debate, of this part of the 21st century. Whoever is in government must make a total commitment to early childhood development in this country for the good of the country and in the interest of what is good and fair in our society.

How does that relate to this bill tonight? The answer is: if we had a far fairer system, a bigger investment in early childhood development, there would be a lot more kids who would say, ‘I am going on past year 10. I am going to year 12 and I am going to university.’ Or, alternatively, they would complete year 12 but at the same time do some vocational education along the way. There is nothing wrong with two streams from year 10 through to year 12—a vocational stream and a higher education stream—with kids switching from one to the other as their taste or experience dictates. But none of that can happen if, by the time the kids arrive at year 10 they cannot read, cannot write and have no interest in an education because their background has not given them the sort of thirst for knowledge and creativity that is so important to this country’s future. If we are going to ensure that those young people are able to have happy and fulfilling lives, that they are going to be creative, then, yes, of course these sorts of arrangements of income-contingent loans can play a part. But we have to get the fundamentals right, and getting the fundamentals right means a big investment in early childhood development. This is a good piece of legislation.

Unfortunately the OECD’s report out today, whether it has some shortcomings or not in terms of coverage and years and so on, is an indictment on the government. Any way you read it, the OECD report is an indictment on the present government that has been in power now for 11 years. This government has greatly undervalued investment in early child education. It has undervalued investment in schools and in vocational education and university education. That is why we do need a change of government. I can say with great certainty that everyone on this side of the parliament really highly values education. We know what disadvantage is. We know what needs to be done. It is no good calling people bludgers. Let us lift them up, give them a hand and make sure that every young person in this country has a flying start in life and a fair chance for a happy and fulfilling existence on this planet. I commend this bill to the House.

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