Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the contributions of those people I have heard in this debate thus far. Three of them are from Western Australia. Those are the member for Swan, the member for Perth and the member for Tangney. And then there was also my friend the member for Bendigo. I will make some observations about their contributions a little later on.

I am very pleased to be able to participate in this debate. As has been expressed by others, we all know that the purpose of the bill is to amend the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011, the TEQSA Act, to give effect to the government's decision to implement recommendations arising from the independent review of higher education regulation. This was commissioned by the Labor government and conducted by professors Kwong Lee Dow and Valerie Braithwaite. The bill is broadly consistent with the review. The review was established by the former Labor government. The key recommendation of the Bradley review said, of the way forward:

We must increase the proportion of the population which has attained a higher education qualification. To do this we need to reach agreement on where we need to be; provide sufficient funds to support the numbers we agree should be participating; ensure that the benefits of higher education are genuinely available to all; establish arrangements which will assure us that the education provided is of high quality; and be confident that the national governance structures we have in place will assist us to meet these goals.

The Bradley review recommended the establishment of a national regulator to reduce complexity in accreditation processes and quality assurance in Australia's higher education system. The report stated:

There is a strong case for a comprehensive and independent national regulatory body to carry out accreditation and quality audit functions in the higher education sector.

Amongst the 46 recommendations made by the Bradley review was that, after consultation with the states and territories, the Australian government establish a national regulatory body by 2010. This was to be done after consultation with the states and territories. I make the observation that, in the lead-up to the introduction of this bill, there has been very little consultation with the states and territories or, indeed, anyone else.

The need for a national body was driven by a number of existing factors and future developments. The increasing complexity and diversity of the higher education system has resulted in the need to improve consumer protection and risk management and to maintain standards in order to protect Australia's reputation for quality provision. This bill addresses the 11 recommendations that the review made to reduce red tape. In October 2013, this current government committed to implementing the 11 recommendations commencing with the ministerial directions given to the chief executive officer of TEQSA and so on.

The bill seeks to change the way TEQSA operates by: spilling the positions of all five commissioners; changing the minimum number of commissioners to two, including the chief commissioner; allowing any commissioner to be part-time; separating the role of CEO and chief commissioner; removing TEQSA's quality assessment function so it can focus on its core duties; allowing TEQSA to extend registration periods of higher education providers and accreditation periods for courses; changing the nature of directions that the minister can give to TEQSA, removing the requirement that they be 'necessary to protect the integrity of the higher education sector'; and extending the range of activities which TEQSA may delegate within and outside its organisation. This is an important piece of legislation that goes to addressing what is a very important question for all Australians: what should our higher education system look like? As the Bradley review said in its overview statement, The way forward:

We must increase the proportion of the population which has attained a higher education qualification.

In doing so, we must make sure that we maintain and, indeed, improve the standards that are applied across the higher education sector so that within the university system we can guarantee that every student who goes through the doors of the university will come out with a qualification which has got national and international recognition and we will know that each student who goes through the doors of a higher education institution will come out with the best possible education available to them.

That is important. It is important for a whole range of reasons. We know the difficulties that many Australians are confronting in finding work. This is particularly true for young Australians. Having a degree is no guarantee of a job so we should not confuse the objective here. We do need to make sure that we increase the number of Australians getting a higher education outcome but we need also to appreciate that there is a lot more to do to make sure that every Australian who achieves a higher education actually gets a job. Obviously, whilst there are shortages in particular areas like maths and engineering—and I do not know why but we seem to find it very difficult in this country to get young Australians to study the physical sciences—and I think that it is important we try to increase that number, we do need to get those people into the research areas referred to by the member for Tangney in his contribution. It is extremely important. If we want to get the doctors, lawyers, engineers, town planners, optometrists, ophthalmologists—and there is one here, sitting in the chamber, Dr Laming, and I am pleased to see him arrive and I am sure he will make a great contribution—it is just as important to make sure that we have got good teachers, good social workers, good youth workers, good people involved in mental health, the sorts of things that make our community go around. But getting a qualification, as I said, is not a guarantee of a job and we need to do a great deal more work in that space to make sure that young graduates understand the nature of the job market whilst they are at university and have them provided with some extra advice on career paths and opportunities that may exist. I know from firsthand experience from my own family the difficulties that young Australians are confronting once they finish university. There is a limited number of jobs and it seems to me that the job market is shrinking for them.

I do want to make an observation about the contributions made by the member for Tangney and the member for Perth particularly in relation to the importance of university research and research funding. I noted the observations made by the member for Tangney around the Australian Research Council and the need for it to look at the way in which it allocates the resources and make sure that we get some more high-risk investments. In that regard I do agree with him—and I do not think that I agree with the member for Tangney on much. I think that there is an important role for the Australian Research Council to be more adventurous in the way in which it allocates research funding. I also think that we need to be looking at what our national priorities are and tying those priorities to the ARC's research funding allocations. We need to make sure that government has a role in talking to the research sector about its priorities.

I had the great privilege in the previous government of being the minister responsible for DSTO, the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. It is second only to the CSIRO in terms of government-funded research in this country. It is a very, very important organisation. Indeed, the member for Tangney was a former employee of the DSTO. It is a very important organisation which provides cutting-edge research and it interfaces not only with foreign governments and the university sectors here and overseas but also with industry. If you look at the way in which DSTO and the CSIRO work, the interface with universities and industry is extremely important in making sure we maximise the outcome for all Australians. So I say to the member for Tangney: I am in broad agreement with some of what you said, but I do not agree with other aspects of what you said.

The member for Perth made the very good observation about the need for us to extend and to try to get more resources into research. It is very important that we do that. It does not matter whether it is the ANU or the University of Western Australia or Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory, we should have the objective of trying to put more resources into research in this country. There needs to be greater thought given to how we set those research priorities.

I want to make some observations now about the importance of universities in regional Australia. Whilst this bill is what it is, we need to comprehend the importance of making sure that we get a greater proportion of people into universities, as the Bradley review said. But most important, in my view, is to give greater opportunity to people who live in regional Australia to get access to universities.

In my own case, I live in the town of Alice Springs, a very small town in the national scheme of things with around 28,000 or 29,000 people. It has a campus of Charles Darwin University, and Charles Darwin University of itself, based in the Northern Territory out of Darwin, is not a big university. It only has around 7,000 or so students and around the equivalent of 15½ thousand students altogether, including VET students, as I understand it. That is not a large number but it is crucial that we maintain the integrity of that university and make sure that it has the standards that attract students from the Northern Territory, and indeed elsewhere, into its courses. It works closely with the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education which is a very important organisation of itself. It is an Aboriginal-run organisation providing courses in and around, about and for Aboriginal people primarily, in the past, around health and education.

We know the government's mantra about the importance of education and it is one which we all accept. But if we want to get good educational outcomes for our students, we have to make sure we get good educational outcomes for the teachers. Good educational outcomes for the teachers require additional resources. In the case of Batchelor, it has a remit of providing courses for Aboriginal students to become teachers. I want to make sure it understands that that remit requires it to produce students of the highest possible calibre, because only then will we continue to make sure we get the best possible outcomes for the students they are going to teach. That applies across the spectrum.

Having experience of a number of university campuses, we are privileged in this country with what we have got and we should acknowledge what we have got. We have to do all we possibly can to reinforce the strength of the university system and make sure that we maintain the integrity of the standards which we are so proud of in the university system. We also have to make sure that universities are accountable for what they produce. That is why I think this piece of legislation is quite important. We do know that they are big organisations; in most cases, they are big businesses. Smaller regional universities require a lot more care.

Whatever the government might be planning in the context of funding, I ask them to ensure that they provide the resources required to make sure universities like Charles Darwin University are able to function and provide the broadest range of courses for their students. If they do not then what will happen is what has happened with students in Alice Springs—they have to leave the town. When students leave the town, they will go to Melbourne, Sydney or Adelaide, or they may go to Darwin, but you can bet your bottom dollar most of them will not return to Alice Springs. In that situation, you are pulling the intellectual resources out of that community that we need for the future of that community. It is very important that we provide opportunities for people in regional Australia.

Finally, I ask the government to commit itself to funding Flinders University to provide medical students with the opportunity to do their full medical degree out of Alice Springs. It is a proposal that has been on the books for some time, something which we were looking at in government, something which I was unsuccessful in achieving in the last budget but something I was looking forward to achieving in the next budget. Unfortunately, I am no longer in government so I cannot make that happen. I am sure that Dr Laming will put the case that medical students should have the opportunity to do their full degree out of Alice Springs through Flinders University. I commend the bill to the House.

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