Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too do not agree with these amendments that we see before us today. It's a rotten day when you have to stand here in this parliament and defend higher education and the opportunities available to young people in this country. This should be a non-partisan matter. What happens to this country when we stop supporting higher education and stop supporting universities and the students that attend them, day in and day out, to get themselves a better life? This should be non-partisan. Why is it that the Liberal Party always pick off the low-hanging fruit? The low-hanging fruit for them is universities.

There are a number of universities around this country. I'm proud to have worked for one for about 10 years, at the University of Western Australia. It's where I learnt so many things. I was also an undergraduate there. Like many people on this side of the House, and I'm sure on the other side of the House, I'm the first in my family to graduate from a university. I was a state schoolkid—I went to Safety Bay Senior High School—and I've got to say, in speaking for the first time at the despatch box as a shadow minister, I'm very proud to have been a state schoolkid and to be defending higher education and universities in this country.

As I said, I worked at the UWA for many years, and I've had a lot to do with the five universities in my state: Curtin University in Bentley; Murdoch University in South Street, close to my electorate and the member for Tangney's electorate—I don't see him speaking against the cuts to Murdoch University, which is desperately in need of good, adequate funding to help its research program; Edith Cowan University; and the private university, the University of Notre Dame Australia. The poor public universities need this funding to help the young people of Western Australia. A $2 billion cut to their income, to the competitive grant that they get, which is an effective freeze on places for Western Australian students in Western Australian universities, is denying Western Australian young people the opportunity to go to university.

This government has no idea how the university sector is funded. We heard the Minister for Education and Training, Senator Birmingham, cry about the rivers of gold that he thinks universities have inherited over the last couple of years through the demand-driven system. What the demand-driven system did was allow more people—young people who would never have thought university was accessible to them—to go to university. That's what the demand-driven system, introduced by the Gillard government in this place, brought to the young people, to all people, of Australia—greater opportunities to go to university. And what does the current minister for education, Senator Birmingham, have to say about it? He calls it 'rivers of gold'. Well, go tell that to a vice-chancellor who has to spend several millions of dollars of their annual income trying to maintain things like, I don't know, libraries, museums or expensive art collections that they don't necessarily collect themselves but which have been gifted to them by people that are generous benefactors. They are great gifts to universities. These are some of the things universities have to maintain.

What should we have? Should we have 100-year-old institutions just crumbling to the ground so that these rivers of gold can go elsewhere? Why do the government ignore the fact that there's a cross-subsidy between research and education in this country? The reason we have a research-teaching nexus in universities in this country is so students who attend universities as undergraduates can learn from the best researchers in the country and in the world. That is of great benefit to all of us. The members on this side spoke about the Prime Minister's ridiculous and empty innovation agenda. We saw where that went. Where did it go? It just popped up, we had a nice couple of graphics that whirled around for a while, and then it all petered out. Do you know where the real innovation is happening? It's where the actual science is happening, and that's in universities. It is done by students, research students as well as undergraduate students, and their lecturers.

The bill we see today, which is going to bring down the threshold for when students have to pay back their HECS and HELP fees, is going to deny more people access to the greatest kind of education you can get. It's an amazing opportunity that this government are seeking to deny young people. It's an outrageous attack, and a continual, persistent and consistent attack, on young people in this country. The government just keep piling on the pressure on young people. They won't do anything about housing affordability. Oh, no, they won't do that. They won't do anything about penalty rates. Most young people are working in pubs and bars to try and make ends meet while they're at university, but they won't do a thing about penalty rates. Instead, the government are just going to make it harder for vulnerable people, for people from low-SES areas to go to university. That's a crying shame, and they should be ashamed of themselves.

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