Katie Allen (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This year will be like no other. The changes and pivoting required to deal with and navigate the COVID crisis have seeped into every part of our lives, not just here in Australia but overseas as well. The nature of our universities, with large-scale lectures and small, intimate tutorials, meant that, when social distancing restrictions came in, universities were one of the first sectors to close and were forced to move to online platforms.

I think it is worth noting that they've done remarkably well and should be commended on their quick transition to online learning. But the COVID-19 pandemic has also exposed our dependence on international students enrolling in higher education, which is our fourth-biggest export. Universities are working hard to ensure that the strength of this sector continues, and I know that they've had productive discussions with the Minister for Education in order to ensure the dynamism of our international student programs remains. But, at least in the short term, our universities will need to strengthen their focus on domestic students. That is because we know higher education is countercyclical. When the economy suffers, as it indeed is doing with the COVID pandemic, more people turn to higher education to improve their skills and training. The public understand that higher education helps them with the skills to succeed in areas of future job growth. That is why they turn to the sector, because they know it will help them to get a job.

The Morrison government understands that, in this COVID crisis, we now need to pivot to a job-ready workforce with job-ready skills. The job-ready graduates reforms in this legislation will support increased demand from school leavers and provide more options for upskilling and reskilling workers who have lost jobs due to COVID-19. The job-ready package will create 39,000 new university places by 2023 and 100,000 by 2030 and provide additional support for students in regional and remote Australia.

Despite Australia's strong health and economic response to COVID-19, there will still be more to come globally and we need to know how we're going to deal with this going forward. We know international travel is not going to come back very quickly. As the rest of the world continues to battle the virus, now is the time for Australia to look to our future and to prepare for the post-COVID world. The Morrison government is ready to support universities to educate the next generation for the opportunities that a new post-COVID economic order will indeed present. The future might be uncertain, but what we do know is that Australia must create a workforce that is prepared for the future. We know that will be dependent on our ability to innovate, to be ready for technology and to be ready for the 21st century, and the best way to do that is through our university sector and to encourage students to enrol in subjects with specific vocations in mind. Ensuring every student has the opportunity to access education, to learn, to upskill or to reskill will form a good base for Australia building its way out of the economic pressures that COVID presents. To do this we need to better educate and train the next generation in subjects such as science and technology so that we can grasp the opportunities with both hands as they present themselves.

We know that when unemployment rises the biggest impact is on the young. I know this because my four children are in this age group of 16 to 23. I know they and their friends are looking to the future, and they know that they need to be focused on how to be ready for the jobs of the future. Projections show that the overwhelming majority of new jobs will require tertiary qualifications. With health care, science and technology, education and construction projected to provide 62 per cent of total employment growth over the next five years, these are the opportunities we need our children to hear about. These are the focuses that our children need to grasp with both hands.

Recently, the parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth, of which I'm a member, handed down the inquiry report Trade transformation: supporting Australia's export and investment opportunities. The report reiterated what we all know: Australia is an export nation and we have a growing opportunity to build on our service exports, particularly in health, professional services and financial services, as well as travel when the restrictions are lifted.

Amongst other growth areas, the future of energy in this country will be dependent on a trained and educated workforce, and this particularly includes the renewable sector and other novel technologies, which have been outlined by the Morrison government's Technology Investment Roadmap, the draft of which was released last month. If we are to carve our own future, we will need to pivot to new market opportunities as the resilience on our resources shifts in the new energy order.

For the last decade, our pretertiary education system has focused on students' participation in the STEM disciplines—the disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. That has been supported by both sides of the House and indeed by the crossbenches, because we do understand the importance of STEM in primary schools and secondary schools. I am sure every local member in this House has been down to their local school to celebrate the wonderful science and technology innovation happening in our primary and secondary schools, from prep students right through to students at the highest levels of secondary school.

I want to alert you to something that's happening in my electorate of Higgins. I was approached by a young girl, Grace Halifax, who is eight years old. Grace understands that coding is the ABC of mathematics. She had a meeting with me and her mother, and she said, 'I would like to teach other children about coding.' This is an eight-year-old girl in my electorate, Grace Halifax. She had a great plan, which was to have a community hall with laptops and volunteers.

I thought, 'What a great idea, but how can we do it when we're in stage 4 lockdown in Melbourne?' So I said to Grace, 'Why don't we host a Zoom?' We advertised it to the local primary schools, for children from grade 2 to grade 5, in the electorate of Higgins. Lo and behold, 250 students signed up for Grace Halifax's 'ABC for Coding' via Zoom! Every Thursday, from four o'clock—please sign up, if you want to; it's still open and it's free—for six weeks, she's teaching the children of Higgins, peer to peer, how to code, the ABC of coding. It's a fantastic initiative. She's using Scratch, micro.bit and machine learning. She is a digital native. More importantly, she's a coding native. That is because she understands that the world that is opening up opportunities for her and her peers, her cohort, is full of maths, and she really understands that coding is a very important part of that. It was an amazing experience, to see these kids enthusiastically participating in coding. I wish I had learned coding.

That is why we as a government understand that nurturing the lifelong love of science makes sense not just for our employment and jobs of the future but for our understanding and place in the world. That is why the government will increase the number of graduates in areas of expected employment growth and demand. These include STEM and IT but also teaching, nursing and agriculture. This growth will seek to complement the Job-ready Graduates Package. We will incentivise students to make more job-relevant choices, which lead to job-ready graduates, by reducing the student contribution in areas of expected employment growth and demand. Our reforms will create an extra 100,000 places at university by 2030.

Importantly, the proposed changes are focused on a unit, not a degree level. This means students studying for a Bachelor of Arts can reduce their total student contribution by choosing electives in subjects like maths, English, science and IT within their degree, because we know these are the skills that employers want and seek in their prospective employees. This, in turn, will encourage students to embrace diversity and not think about their education as a silo degree that remains in one area. Most importantly, the students of today will not be penalised. This scheme is grandfathered. No current student faces increases for the duration of their course. It's also worth noting that continuing students that are set to gain from the policy will do so from next year.

Our government is committed to supporting students in paying back their loans. Our higher education loan program remains the world's most generous income-contingent loan scheme, and these new measures will continue to maintain the arrangements that are currently in place. Overall, more than half of the cost of Commonwealth supported places will continue to be subsidised for students. This funding will be prioritised to the areas of high public benefit and those most needed by the labour market. This means that the Commonwealth supported students studying in key growth areas, including science, nursing, teaching, engineering and IT, will see significant reductions in their student contribution to those units. Students enrolling in teaching, nursing, clinical psychology, English and languages will pay 42 per cent less for their degree. Students who study agriculture and maths will pay 59 per cent less for their degree. And students who study science, health, architecture, environmental science, IT and engineering will pay 18 per cent less for their degree.

We also recognise the importance of a growing burden on mental health, and we know that mental health will be an enduring challenge of our time. The Prime Minister, along with the Minister for Health, is particularly committed to investment in mental health services, so we know we will need more people in these areas. As such, the government will also recognise two more disciplines, psychology and social work, as part of this legislative package. Students completing units in those areas will also see a reduction in the student contribution for those subjects. This will form an incredibly important pathway to employment in these areas—the employment of psychology and social work. These payments are incredibly important because we know this is a particular growth area.

Overall, government policy is to lower the cost for students through fee structures, and our continued record $18 billion investment into the sector will grow to $20 billion by 2024. The 2017 higher education report from Deloitte argues it is:

… crucial that funding appropriately relates to the cost of higher education provision such that the signals that funding sends—to both students and providers—positively influence decision making.

In summary, subsidies offered by the government to students need to reflect the national interest and align with the whole-of-government approach of ensuring Australia's future prosperity, which means an employed workforce with job-ready degrees.

Unsurprisingly, those opposite are whipping up unnecessary anxiety amongst current students through misinformation about the cost of university courses for students already enrolled. This is in the context of Labor's own previous support for this form of incentivisation. A 2008 Rudd government decision saw a reduction in student contribution for mathematics, statistics and science that was aimed at addressing falling enrolments in these disciplines. Importantly, the Rudd government student contribution reduction saw an almost doubling in STEM course participation, from 13,795 in 2009 to 26,272 in 2012—that is just three years later.

Now is the time to prepare the next generation for the jobs in the century ahead. These reforms will deliver more job-ready graduates in the disciplines and regions where they are needed most and help drive the nation's economic recovery post-COVID. I'm proud to support this legislation.

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