Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for the Republic) Share this | Hansard source

Labor will be supporting this bill, the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Student Assistance and Other Measures) Bill 2021. We have a long history of supporting financial assistance for students to undertake study and training. From World War II through to the Whitlam government's reforming of Abstudy into a means-tested payment scheme and the establishment of the Assistance for Isolated Children Scheme to assist students in the bush, Labor has been all about ensuring that kids from disadvantaged backgrounds get the opportunity to study not only at our universities but also at our vocational education centres.

This helps to reduce financial barriers to tertiary education and training for First Nations people. Access to education is a key part of the Closing the Gap strategy. Educational attainment is actually one of the areas where there has been some achievement and advance in closing the gap, particularly in the rates of completion of year 12 schooling in Australia.

In 2019-20, the AIC scheme assisted around 13,000 students, enabling children living in rural and remote regions to access continuing and appropriate education. For this cohort, the legislative changes are inconsequential, and real reform is needed to ensure fast-tracking of benefits to families. Updating the respective administrative processes of the scheme doesn't require legislative change; it just requires the political will—and that's what has been missing from this conservative government.

As of January 2021, more than 17,000 people had lost their jobs at Australian universities since the beginning of the pandemic. If you want to sum up this government's approach to education, look no further than what they did for Australian universities around JobKeeper. I make this point: this government provided JobKeeper to casinos in Australia, yet they denied JobKeeper to universities in Australia. That says everything about their philosophical approach to higher education.

We all know that this government is not about assisting students and making it more affordable to get a university education. We've seen that in the fact that they have increased fees across a range of courses, particularly in the humanities, and made it more difficult for kids to pursue their dream of a university education in the humanities. The result has been decreased enrolments in those forms of education. That deliberate approach from this government provides a disincentive to people enrolling in humanities courses in our universities.

We've all seen the job losses that have occurred at universities. I represent an electorate that has one of Australia's most successful and largest universities: the University of New South Wales. There were hundreds of job losses at the University of New South Wales; courses were stripped away because of this government's failure to support the university sector through the JobKeeper payment. Yet the Morrison government stood by while those jobs in that important sector were lost.

It's also bad for our economy, because education is usually in the top three when it comes to Australia's exports. We've all seen the success that Australia has had in marketing itself as a destination for foreign students to come to Australia and get a decent education in the Australian tradition. This government's approach to JobKeeper has made that all the more difficult. It's also been made all the more difficult by the fact that it's going to take our economy a longer time to open up than it is for those of other nations, because the government have completely bungled the vaccine rollout. Remember the promise that the Prime Minister made: four million vaccinations by the end of March. They only fell 3.2 million short of that promise. Again, we've seen the commitments that they've made in the budget about having Australians vaccinated. They are now walking away from a time line—understandably, because they can't deliver anything or meet any of the commitments. The states are now starting to say: 'These guys don't know how to run anything. The Morrison government can't handle the administration of the vaccine rollout. We'll take it over ourselves, to try and boost the numbers.'

In the university sector, we've seen job losses, as I said, and there are more expected to come. Unis have been hit hard by the fallout from COVID and the decline in international students. University education is one of our nation's biggest industries and one of our biggest employers, too, including in the electorate that I represent, but the Prime Minister changed the rules three times to make sure workers in that sector didn't get JobKeeper. They changed the rules to make sure that university staff were not covered by JobKeeper. UNSW was forced to cut 256 jobs last year, impacting many families in our community: academics, tutors, admin staff, library staff, catering staff, ground staff, cleaners and many others trying to make ends meet.

Universities are the ones we've turned to during this pandemic. They're the people that we asked to help research and develop a vaccine and the treatments, to look at the ways the disease was spreading in the community and to try and come up with suggestions for government to reduce the rates of infection. Not only do thousands of Australians rely on universities for their jobs, but it's our brilliant university researchers who we've been depending on to develop those treatments to combat COVID. Yet what's the government's thankyou to the sector? What support is the government's providing the sector for doing this vitally important work? We'll deny you JobKeeper, and you guys have to stand on your own, fend for yourselves and try and make ends meet.

There have been 17,000 jobs lost across our nation's universities, and that's a shameful record for this government. It says everything, as I said earlier, about their philosophy when it comes to higher education. Academics and tutors have lost their jobs, as have workers and admin staff and others who keep those universities running. They've all got families and bills to pay. No other industry of this size has been treated with such contempt, as universities have been, by this Prime Minister and his government.

Now we've seen the university sector ignored again in the government's budget. Universities said that they're disappointed with the lack of support for higher education in last night's federal budget, and they're facing another setback, with no return of international students until at least 2023. The chief executive of Universities Australia, Catriona Jackson, said:

"With borders shut until mid-2022 the picture for universities will get worse—with significant flow-on effects for the nation's research capacity and jobs, inside and outside universities,"

That's an important point to make because there are so many jobs in local communities where universities are situated that are related to the health of the university. I see it in Kingsford, in Kensington, in Coogee, in Maroubra, in Eastlakes and in Daceyville, the suburbs that surround the University of New South Wales, where there have been massive job losses. Small businesses in particular have been unable to survive and cope because the university sector has been decimated. So the effect goes way beyond what happens on the university campus, to many small businesses and communities where universities are situated and to those small businesses that do work for the university sector. It's clear that this budget is yet another marketing exercise that can't hide the fact there's no support for our university sector. This is another missed opportunity from this government to really undertake some significant reform and demonstrate philosophical and real support for higher education in this country.

It's vitally needed, because we all know that Australia is falling behind when it comes to our productivity performance. We're actually going backwards; we're one of the few nations in the OECD where productivity in our economy has gone backwards. It's actually the first time in Australia's history, since we began measuring labour productivity, that it's actually fallen, and that's on this government's watch. It never happened under a Labor government and never happened under a previous coalition government either, but it is happening now under this government's watch.

What does that mean? Ultimately it means that living standards will fall because the income per Australian worker that we're generating is falling. There are a host of reasons associated with that. It's associated with the fact that there has been a dramatic reduction in business investment in Australia as a result of this government's lack of support for research and development and for business investment in Australia—and I'm not talking about the investment that comes from buying a ute or a new freezer for a small business. I'm talking about long-term real investment in new technology, new ways of doing business and the next breakthrough around medical, food technology, horticulture or agricultural research. Those next big breakthroughs aren't being encouraged by this government because of their lack of support for business investment, and that's seeing the productivity of our economy fall off a cliff.

This is something that we'll pay for in the future. It means, ultimately, that this large debt we've racked up has to be paid back. It's $1 trillion. Can you believe it or not? Imagine what this government, those opposite, would have done to us if Labor said we were going to institute a trillion dollars worth of debt? That's exactly what they've done; it's the largest budget deficit in the nation's history. How are we going to pay it back when we've got falling and declining productivity, which is going to be a handbrake on economic growth, and make sure that we are getting growth in the economy, more people in jobs, greater income tax receipts and therefore fewer welfare payments? It's not going to happen.

So the forecasts that they're making in the budget are pie in the sky without the necessary investment in productivity-enhancing business investment. That is simply not happening in our economy and will not happen under this budget because there is no decent reform there. It's simply a short-term fix to try, really, to get this government through a successful next election. That's what all this is about. It's about them trying to win an election, it's not about the long-term health of the Australian economy and the long-term living standards of the Australian people.

Despite spending almost $100 billion and racking up a record $1 trillion in debt, the Morrison government is still leaving our universities stranded. While the private and not-for-profit colleges, reliant on foreign students, are receiving a $53 billion lifeline, our public universities, which account for the vast majority of enrolments, are once again mostly passed over and receive nothing.

Australian Technology Network of Universities chair, Iain Martin, said:

… the government has missed the opportunity in this budget to fully utilise our world-class university system.

Group of Eight CEO Vicki Thomson said that the delay in returning international students has now made it more difficult for universities to play their part in securing Australia's economic recovery. She said:

Universities are critical to everything the government has announced (in the budget), whether through our research or the provision of a highly skilled workforce.

She is spot on. There is nothing in this budget that supports that research or the development of skills in our economy. I could go on forever about the skills shortages that we have in Australia because of this government's lack of commitment to higher education and vocational education and training. There are 140,000 fewer apprentices in Australia. Billions of dollars have been cut from the TAFE budget. TAFE colleges are being sold off by state Liberal governments. There is no pathway to securing the skills of the future that we will rely on to, as I mentioned earlier, boost our productivity, encourage business investment and enable us to be the engine room for the next big economic breakthrough that will hopefully spur our economy on into the future.

Although we're supporting this bill, it's disappointing that this government has once again ignored the higher education system in the budget, and we'll pay for it in the future.

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