Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

As the member for Cowan says, that legislation should be called dream taker, because this is what, in effect, this government is delivering for young people: American sized university debts hung around the necks of Australian students. These are debts that will continue to hang around their necks, making it so much harder to save a deposit for a home. Think about these young people with close to $60,000 worth of debt for, say, a three-year arts degree with a year of honours. They are graduating with $60,000 worth of debt at the same time that housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable, and at the same time they are trying to start a family and childcare costs are through the roof. On top of that, they're going into a labour market that is less certain and less secure. Wages have been flatlining, so university costs keep going up. Their debt goes up but their wages continue to flatline. It really is such a tough start to adult life for so many young Australians.

When the Prime Minister announced those so-called 'job-ready' changes, he said that they would promote the study of engineering and science—in fact, that was the stated intent of these changes. The entire purpose of the bill, apparently, was to channel people into studying engineering, maths and other selected areas. But, as you often get with this Prime Minister, you only need to scratch the surface, dig a little bit deeper, and you see a very different story. When you look at the detail of the fee changes from this government, you find that, in the academic areas the government says that it wants to encourage young Australians to pursue, universities actually receive less money to teach students in those disciplines. In the areas that the government says that it wants to discourage students from going into—and, for a start, just think about the government saying, 'We want you to study this and we don't want you to study that'—the universities will actually receive more money to teach students in those areas.

Who could actually spend all this time and energy designing a package that puts those kinds of perverse incentives into the funding arrangements? Because of this government, universities will receive 32 per cent less to teach medical students. They will receive 17 per cent less to teach maths students. They will receive 16 per cent less to teach engineers. They will receive 15 per cent less to teach clinical psychology. They will receive 10 per cent less to teach agricultural students. They will receive eight per cent less to teach nurses. How do you come up with a mess like that, if you say you want to encourage people into these disciplines? When you cut the money that supports engineering and science courses, either you're actually going to get lower-quality courses or you're going to have universities changing their offering to students. You'll get fewer scientists and you'll get fewer engineers from a failure to support these departments.

This legislation really shows such a shockingly bad contrast between what the government says it wants and what it does in practice. The government says: 'We want more young Australians studying STEM subject. We want more people going into science as a career.' So do I. I think we all think that's a great idea. So why, if you want more young people choosing a career in science, would you cut research funding? We have thousands of researchers, including brilliant scientists, hanging up their lab coats and walking out of their laboratories for the last time because their grant funding has dried up. The funding has dried up because the international student revenue that used to fund research in universities is drying up; it has gone. On what planet do you say, 'We want more young people studying to be scientists' and, in practice, make it impossible for them to continue their research careers here in Australia? If we're worried about a brain drain—and we should be—we should stop sending these mixed messages to our brilliant young researchers. We should stop saying, 'We want more of you to dedicate your lives to discovery and innovation and invention' when, in fact, we're making it impossible for them to put a roof over their heads and bread on the table for their families.

That's the background to these bills, a government that has spent eight long years systematically undermining our university system. They started by trying to introduce those $100,000 degrees. We stopped them the first time because of overwhelming community opposition. They have just continued down this line of making it harder and more expensive for young Australians to get an education. They've tried to cut overall funding, Commonwealth funding, to universities three times. They've spent the pandemic watching on, sitting on their hands as thousands of university workers lost their jobs, without giving any meaningful support. They've doubled the cost of degrees for thousands of Australians. And, now, just as universities are struggling to make it through the worst of the downturn in their budgets, the government are trying to claw revenue back through this new charging regime.

There is very clearly a pattern here. It is a malicious pattern. Labor opposes this bill. It is not the time to be adding further cost to universities—not after universities have just spent a year trying to survive with no support from their government.

See this speech in context