Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to oppose the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (Student Loan Sustainability) Bill 2018. I do so because, as we heard the member for Bruce say, it is an attack on students, it's an attack on young people and it's especially an attack on people from the lower socioeconomic group—people who need help and assistance, people who are willing to get an education to better their lives.

As we know, there is no better way of getting out of a particular rut or out of poverty than education There is no other tool that is as effective as education to ensure that you go on to get a career, go on and get a decent job, go on and be able to participate in this world and do all the things that we all aspire to. This particular bill is one that attacks all those things. Increasing participation in universities and reducing barriers to higher education should be a priority of governments. It should be a priority but, instead, what this bill will actually do is decrease participation at universities and bring barriers upon people who wish to undertake a higher education.

As I said, the priority of governments, whether they be Labor, Liberal or Callithumpian is to make sure we get more participation and reduce barriers to higher education. But instead, we see a government that's doing the exact opposite. We're seeing a government that's having another attempt, after six months, at cutting funding to universities. We see a government that, through this bill, would make it harder for people that perhaps won't get an opportunity to go to university thereby ensuring that they don't get to better their lives because of their social background, because of their circumstances, maybe perhaps because of their parents' circumstances. So that's the reason we, on this side, will not be supporting this bill.

We know that every dollar spent on education is an absolute investment in this country's future. Whether it be through industry or through technologies, investing in education ensures that we make this place a better world. This, I think, is the government's fourth attempt at cutting university funding. This time around it is to a tune of $2.2 billion. You can't cut $2.2 billion out of a system, out of a particular area and expect that it would not have an adverse effect. Those adverse effects will make it harder for people to get a higher education. But the government still remain committed.

The government are cutting $2.2 billion from education but they are absolutely committed to supporting a $65 billion tax cut for Australia's richest people—that's a $65 billion cut to their mates on the other side of town. At the same time, on the other side of town, they are making it harder for kids and young people to go to university to better their lives and perhaps get out of a particular situation that they are destined to be in because of where they were born, for example. We know they have also cut penalty rates. Students have lost a considerable amount of their income yet they are still the most likely to work those antisocial hours on weekends—Saturdays and Sundays. We saw the Fair Work Commission hand down that dreadful recommendation to cut penalty rates. We had a proposal in this place to overturn that. The government refused to do so. That will have an adverse effect on students as well.

We've seen the mismanagement of Centrelink. Waiting times have ballooned out. One in five calls to Centrelink are made by students and young people. The government have removed the student start-up scholarship and installed a student start-up loan. They have done nothing about the wage stagnation in this nation and the casualisation of our workforce. And now they are saying that students and graduates will have to repay their HELP debt when their earnings have reached a lower rate, making it harder for those students who are already struggling, who are already working hard to balance study, home life, education and work—in many cases low-paid work, where students depend on the penalty rates on the weekend to get through university. The members opposite recognise these significant social issues. It's not hard to recognise these social issues. But instead of addressing them they intend to make the system more unfair for those people on the other side of town and take from the back pocket of vulnerable Australians while at the same time pursuing and insisting on that $65 billion tax cut to Australia's richest people.

This government has already done its damage to students, and they're saying that there's still more to come. And that doesn't surprise me one little bit. Why would it? They cut from pensions and they cut from working people, and we have the worst wage stagnation in the history of Australia. We have enormous casualisation and part-time work. Why wouldn't you be surprised? This is not a government for students or graduates. This is not a government that is committed to investing in education. And that is a real shame, because when you invest in education you're investing in this nation's future, you're investing in the next generation of Australians and you're investing in the stability of the nation. Pricing people who are seeking qualifications or retraining out of higher education, as this bill would do, is not the reform that this nation requires or needs. And of course we've seen the other path as well—the $100,000 degrees that they have been pursuing for many, many years in this place.

Higher education represents an opportunity for many in my electorate of Hindmarsh and many other electorates around the country, and I want to support those people who want to take up this opportunity—people who are committed to bettering their lives through education, people who want to turn it around—and this bill will not help this one little bit. I've recently been contacted by constituents from my electorate, and I'll give you a bit of an idea of what they've been saying. One constituent who recently reached out to me is a first-year university student at the University of Adelaide. She started university only a month ago and already this government's reforms are affecting her ability to successfully engage in her education. Under financial hardship provisions, my constituent was able to have her youth allowance claim processed faster. However, reforms for the start-up scholarship have become a challenge for her. The start-up loan which has replaced the scholarship requires student payment applicants to opt in to receive the grant. The issue for my constituent is that the start-up funding is no longer processed automatically. So, despite my constituent's youth allowance claim having already been processed, this start-up funding is yet to reach her bank account, causing enormous hardship for her.

Universities deliver increasing amounts of their content online, and my constituent also was dependent on this loan to acquire a laptop for her tertiary studies. I anticipate that when she's able to get this laptop, at some stage in the future, it won't be long before she encounters problems with this government's NBN as well—another burden for this particular student because of the NBN rollout and its poor connectivity. In the meantime, accessing courses and textbooks is an issue for this person as well. This two-part processing for student start-up funding is disadvantaging low-income students by delaying their access to study resources.

Completion of a tertiary qualification absolutely puts a lot of responsibility on the student. We see university students working unsociable hours and balancing family, work and study commitments. Due to deadlines, working commitments and financial stressors, tertiary students are becoming increasingly vulnerable to health issues, especially mental health issues, and this bill will do nothing to alleviate that. The National Tertiary Student Wellbeing Survey of 2016, which was completed by the National Union of Students and headspace, found that only 1.6 per cent of the students who participated in the survey had reported no symptoms of mental health problems that impacted their studies in the previous year—only 1.6 per cent. So, we see that students struggle to cope with tertiary stressors and demands. Psychological distress for tertiary students has become an issue internationally. And we're aware that mental health is a serious problem in this country and certainly for our younger populations and students. Suicide rates in Australia are at an all-time high. Suicide remains the leading cause of death for Australians aged between 15 and 44, many of them students. The 2017 federal budget allocated $115 million in new funding over four years to mental health, one of the smallest investments in the sector in recent years.

Sometimes major family issues impact upon a student's ability to complete a degree. Recently a constituent who had been formerly enrolled at the University of South Australia contacted me. They left study a few years ago to help out with a family situation that wasn't working that well at the time. Four years later, now that family situation has changed and progressed to a more healthy state, my constituent sought to return to university. It was four weeks before he could even find out if he was eligible to return to study as he'd originally hoped for and was planning. It was to be some time before the university accepted him as a student again. Even if they had said he could return, he'd still be four weeks behind all his colleagues. To return to university again, he'll have to undergo a lengthy process and test, and if successful he'll have to apply for recognition of prior courses completed. You can see some of the hardships they go through and how this particular bill will have an adverse effect on these people.

Staying at university is hard, but this government is making it harder for people to even get their foot in the door, let alone go to university and complete a degree. Labor made it possible for 190,000 students to access higher education, and many were the very first in their family to do so. The Liberal government froze university funding at the end of 2017, at levels that hadn't been seen before. They're already making it harder for students to get a place at university, and this bill will make it even harder. Freezing university funding is cutting university funding. It's no different. When you freeze something, it's a cut. You can polish and dress it up in any way you like, but it's a cut. These cuts, delivered in late December last year, were a kick in the teeth for year 12 graduates who worked hard to get into university and now may not be able to do so. It's estimated that 10,000 students missed out. The majority of those would have been from low-income families and perhaps won't get that opportunity ever again. There are reports that some universities are already turning away students and cutting programs. We see it every day. What does this mean for university services, like on-site counselling, that don't bring in revenue? What does it mean for all the other services at university? The university sector needs certainty, and funding to the sector needs to be stable. On this side, Labor and I are committed to fighting these cuts.

Debate adjourned.

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