Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am really pleased to rise tonight, following the member for Brand, because I felt that the member for Brand took this debate to a higher level, to an aspirational level. It was fantastic to hear from somebody who understands the university system but who, most importantly, understands the aspirations of higher education.

We say 'higher education' in this place—we say it every day—but what does it mean? The member for Brand asked some really important questions. She asked the critical questions: what is driving this so-called reform? Is improvement in higher education what's driving this reform? Is access to higher education what's driving this reform? Is excellence in higher education what is driving this reform? Sadly, I believe it is none of the above. What is driving this so-called reform are savings and cuts, because whenever you hear this government say 'savings' you can understand clearly what it means is 'a cut'.

You have to ask yourself: what would the great thinkers in our history make of this? The bean counters are in charge of learning in this place. We just heard from a member opposite who has had the value of a higher education, and he can turn bean counting into oratory, supposedly. The value of higher education is about the value of our society. It is about what we aspire to be. It is about what contribution we, as individuals and as a collective, are going to make to the rest of the world. If the bean counters are in charge of the learning then we are going to have what we've got here tonight: dumb policy, dumb legislation and dumb cuts, from a government who understands the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

As someone who came from education, I have spent my life talking to children, young people and adult learners about lifelong learning. What I see in this legislation is the end of the aspiration for lifelong learning for many of the young people and middle-aged people who live in the electorate that I represent here. As a teacher I spent 27 years in schools, working with students towards building aspiration and motivation from prep through to year 12, telling every student that they can learn if they are given the appropriate levels of support and the appropriate levels of challenge. The primary tenet of teaching is a belief that everybody can learn if given the appropriate levels of support and challenge.

Since coming and joining this parliament I find myself in schools telling children very clearly: 'I'm in the federal Parliament of Australia, and I can tell you that you can do anything,' because when I look around this chamber I can see many of us here who wouldn't have thought that this is where we'd end up. But it does not happen by accident. The people who find themselves in this chamber as members of the House of Representatives in the federal parliament have had aspiration and they have had motivation. They have had supports put into their lives to assist them to reach for the stars. So we here are examples for the young people that we're talking about.

Tonight we're talking about a piece of legislation that is going to rip away that aspiration and stomp on that motivation that I know is being built in schools in my electorate as we speak. As a former educator, I believe in the transformative nature of education and the transformative nature of higher education in particular. I represent a community where 47 per cent of people are not born in Australia, where 72 per cent of people have at least one parent born overseas and where 56 per cent of people have both parents born overseas. All parents in my electorate want to see their children do well, whether they are from families where no-one has gone to university or whether they are from families with the first person going to university or whether they are from families for whom there's a long tradition of tertiary education. Everybody wants to see their children do well. This is particularly the case in my community. People have come to this country to make the most of our story and to join us here. A lot of what drives them is a relentless drive for their children to get that tertiary education. They are motivated. They are encouraged to achieve as much as possible because in this country, while we have some way to go, there are fewer barriers to a person realising their potential than in a lot of other parts of the world.

People in my electorate work hard so that their children can achieve academic success. Whenever I meet with people at graduation ceremonies, they are hopeful that their kids will be able to access the skills they need to make a better life for themselves. In my electorate, as recently as this weekend I was at a local festival, where I often seek out the mums and the kids to talk to them about what their aspirations are and what schools they're attending. I'm always thrilled to hear from parents that they think that our school system is doing a great job. They think that their child is having that aspiration instilled in them in their classroom and that they're getting appropriately challenged.

I want to talk specifically about the kids in my electorate. I made a call today to friends at Werribee Secondary College. Last year, 2016, of a cohort of 205 students completing year 12, 124 students went on to higher tertiary education, 60 went on to TAFE, 12 are completing an apprenticeship and 16 are in full employment. Of those that went to university, 27 went to Melbourne and Monash, 68 went to Swinburne, RMIT, Deakin and La Trobe, and 23 went on to Vic uni, ACU and other tertiary institutions. That was unheard of 15 years ago in my electorate. I congratulate the teachers involved in those journeys, and the parents with them, to build that aspiration and expectation and to build an understanding that lifelong learning will change lives. But, if this bill passes and this government gets its way, students will be faced with 7.5 per cent higher HELP fees and the threshold for when they begin to pay them back will be lowered—that is right: lowered. The loan repayments currently kick in at around $55K and will be reduced to $42,000. That's just a few thousand dollars more than the minimum wage. Changes to the indexation from average weekly earnings to CPI will also increase the burden on students.

We have to know—I do after four years in this place—that, where there's a change like that, there's a calculated save, so that means a cost to the students. One could be cruelly ironic and suggest that, after the penalty rate cuts, the government is lowering the repayment threshold to account for reduced wages, but surely that would be too cruel. The justifications come back to bean counters looking at education as a cost rather than as an investment—rather than from the point of view of what we as a country should aspire to be: a highly educated population of people committed to lifelong learning so that we can continue to change and shape this nation, change and shape our economy, change and shape our industry and change and shape our science. The bill's practical application risks entrenching poverty and enshrining privilege. It risks locking out our best and brightest because of the family income or the travel costs and the time. All manner of things go into motivating young people to pursue and fulfil their potential. The measures in this bill will make that harder.

Another objectionable measure is the changes for permanent residents and New Zealander students living in Australia. They will be moved from Commonwealth supported places to full-fee places with access to FEE-HELP loans. This is an injustice and I cannot speak too passionately about this. I spent Saturday morning in my electorate at the Rugby Union junior finals. As you can imagine, there were a few Kiwis there—a few taxpaying, hardworking New Zealanders who've spent their lives in this country and are raising their children in this country—and they are furious about this measure. How dare a government in this country determine that their children don't deserve the same chance as the kids they're sitting next to in the classroom? What manner of government cannot foresee what this means? Let me take it from a simple perspective. It means that those families will have to think about sending their child back to live with relatives in New Zealand so that they can access higher education or take on enormous debt by paying full fees. This is unfair and it is cruel.

Let's think about the other ramifications. I know, as a classroom teacher, a senior English teacher and someone who taught years 11 and 12 for years and years, that, if you set up this double class system and say, 'You can go to university, and you can't because of cost,' you've just destroyed my senior classroom, because I've got children I can't motivate. I've got children whose aspiration has been killed before they walk through the door. This is crazy—absolutely crazy. To do this to these people is beyond belief. The impacts will be felt throughout the country. It's just the cruelty of it that I do not understand. I really do feel for those New Zealanders who I know who live and work in my electorate, who work hard every day and whose children go to our schools. They are going to be cut off from the contribution that they might make to this great country.

This legislation is all about cuts. I want to go to one of the areas where we're not sure yet what the ramifications are, but we should have known that this minister, once he had finished gutting schools, would move next to universities. We should have known that, although they couldn't get the last tranche of their changes to higher education through, they would be back with a different version, a slightly adjusted version, but a version with mostly bad news. One of those things is the lack of modelling and the unknown implications of the legislation that's before us. One of those things is, of course, the extension of the demand-driven sector to sub-bachelor for universities. We don't know what impact this will have on our public TAFE sector, which states around this country are desperately trying to rebuild. We don't know what the impact will be on that TAFE sector, and that is a crying shame. This government should have modelled that, and this government should make sure that, whatever it's doing in higher education, it's not doing anything that will stop TAFE being re-established and back in public hands where it belongs.

The other area that I'm really concerned about—I'll go back to the notion of lifelong learning—is that they are going to now charge people for what has been called an enabling course. In my neck of the woods, we call it a bridging course. They're courses that I have worked on in schools with students who have gone off and got a job and perhaps lost the job. Then they reconnect with the school, and careers counsellors sit with them and say: 'You always had the potential. You just never made the commitment. How about you do one of these bridging courses and pursue the dream you had when you were in year 10 of going to university? Why don't you do that?' These aren't kids from families who can just splash out $3,000. If they've left school, had a job, taken on debts—probably a car loan—and lost their job then their parents are already helping out, and now we're going to put a charge on their bridge to tertiary education.

It's not just young people. The figures will reflect the number of mums, the number of women with children, who decide to establish themselves in a bridging program with the hope of pursuing tertiary qualifications and being able to cut themselves free from any kind of government support and raise their children on a decent salary.

There are so many elements of this bill that are not good news for Australia. There are elements of this bill that reflect poorly on this government. They reflect poorly because in a time when we should be investing in our young people, in our adults, in our future and in our training, and in a time when we should be aspiring to be the best in the world and we are in a highly globalised and competitive market, it is the time to invest in our people. It is not a time to let the bean counters loose so they can find money for a $65 billion tax cut for multimillionaires and corporations. This is not that time.

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