Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

That was an interesting contribution—on the one side whingeing and whining that we are not charging students thousands of dollars for their education and then complaining about the introduction of a fee of $250 to provide services at university. A comment by Senator Barnaby Joyce to Patricia Karvelas in the Australian on 26 February 2009 summarises some of the realities of this issue. Senator Joyce quite correctly said:

I still believe that university is more than just the academic, it’s the development of the person as a whole, but this issue is now secondary to the state election in Queensland and the global financial crisis.

While the Queensland election is on, I’ll have to fall into line … but (if the vote comes after the election) it’s a different kettle of fish.

He articulated on a number of occasions, as did National Party members, the reality of the campuses that this was particularly hurting, such as the University of Western Sydney, the universities that more recently have emerged in the suburbs of Australia and those in rural and regional areas.

I must confess that my university period was not associated with university politics. I did not have the slightest interest in it, so I cannot be accused of coming to this after those battles. I do, however, believe that there are very strong reasons for the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010, and I think we have a reasonable compromise here. On the one hand the postgraduates association and others say that we are not giving enough power to students in this compromise position, and then we have the more extreme elements of the opposition going to the barricades in opposition to this minimal change.

I agree with Senator Joyce that university is not just about the exams; it is about the fuller life. One of the characteristics of the Howard government was to set up a conflict between a rounded education—the arts and a broader education—and rhetoric about how they only wanted to put people through TAFE colleges and the Labor Party was not interested in anyone but the elite. That came through in the previous speech. But this is just a guise for the opposition’s belief that funding of universities should be shifted from the taxpayer to become more dependent upon the private sector and thereby the universities should jump to the tune of the private sector with regard to who is produced and in what manner and where academic studies go. We are even seeing the picture, particularly in areas such as pharmaceuticals, of a very disconcerting line between the demands of private enterprise and genuine academic research.

The previous contribution essentially ridiculed the need for debating, as though anybody from the working class or the western suburbs would never be interested in it. I can assure him that in schools such as Granville Boys High School in my former electorate there is great pride and interest in having a debating team. Going up against more select areas is something that is very much to the benefit of the school. There were rather puerile shots at the art that might be produced, as though nothing worth while could ever come out of universities with regard to artistic pursuits, and there was philistinism about how it is all superfluous and unnecessary. I must confess that, whilst not having been active in university politics, I actually appreciated many of the things that were available. A lifelong interest in cinema was probably created by Wednesday afternoon films at the theatre. The availability of other entertainment around the university did not really hurt me in life. This is a thing that is worth funding.

Where the decline has occurred is not in the elite universities. We have had comments about rugby union at the University of Sydney. This is such a furphy. The speaker before me actually understands that the revival of the University of Sydney rugby union club has been accomplished by a very effective utilisation of their alumni—actually going out to them and raising money from those sources. Sydney university’s rugby union club is no way dependent upon these fees. Quite frankly, they are piddling compared to the amount of money that that club needs to survive and which it does raise.

When we talk about sport at university, we are not talking about the University of Sydney first grade rugby union team or the rowing. We are talking about interfaculty sport. We are talking about the provision of squash courts in the university for those who are interested. We are talking about the provision of tennis courts for those who have the time at any time during the week.

These services are reasonable and necessary. The argument that because everyone does not utilise them and therefore we should not have a fee from the general body to support them is the kind of logic we have seen from the Liberal Party recently in the Liverpool council in Sydney, where they are seeking to close down public libraries because, as they see it, a lot of people—including most of the councillors, apparently—do not read books. That is the kind of logic: because everyone does not utilise a service, it should not be cross-subsidised by the general public.

Quite frankly, these services are not going to be viable in many cases without the ability to fund them. As I say, if you go around the campuses of this country, you will find that where they are really being hurt is in those more recently established universities which do not have as strong corporate support as the more established—those that have not had the history and the time to have put those facilities together.

I know from my own dealings particularly with the University of Western Sydney that the concern over the previous government’s legislation is not just coming from a few university radicals who want to spend the other students’ money in regard to gay liberation, environmental causes, Fatah or Hamas. That is a very, very minor ingredient in how these funds would be utilised. There is once again a contradiction by the member for Mitchell. On the one hand, he is carrying on about the fact that the government is prescriptive in regard to what the money can be spent on. It is the nanny state, according to him, in that we actually have a list of what it can be utilised for. Of course, if we had not left out political causes and radical efforts at university, that would be his biggest complaint. We prescribe that it is not to be used for these political mechanisms, and that is why there is a list that encompasses what is reasonable.

I think it is more than reasonable that those things that are prescribed are assisted by a general fee. We know that they cover the areas of sports recreation and various clubs and societies. Isn’t it reasonable that the university body would help fund faculty associations, annual dramatic performances and various language groups, whether they are an Italian students’ group at Sydney university or an association for ancient Greek? Is there something deplorable about trying to promote those kinds of activities? As to child care, certainly I think it is more than reasonable that a facility is provided for those students who need that, and similarly counselling. He lampoons advocacy. Apparently there should not be a voice there for students, they should not have the ability to articulate a position around issues that are important to them and they should not have legal services.

As we have seen, I believe that this is a sensible compromise. Some people might say that it has not gone far enough, but, as we see around this country, there is broad support for it from the university leadership. I believe that concerns with the legacies of 25 years of juvenile university politics are not a reason why we should not have a reasonable compromise on funding reasonable facilities in universities around this country.

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