Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to rise today and speak on the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Charges) Bill 2021 and the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Cost Recovery) Bill 2021. I've heard all of what the member for Sydney had to say in her contribution, and I would say that the notion of cost recovery by various government agencies in the areas that they regulate is something that has been done many times elsewhere. I think it is more than a fair reflection that this government first announced these changes in the 2018-19 budget, but deferred putting those changes in place in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. But, at some point, we need to proceed with what we proposed in the 2018-19 budget.

The important role of TEQSA, as the nation's independent national quality assurance and regulatory agency, is to ensure that they protect student interests and the reputation of Australia's higher education sector—and all organisations that offer higher education qualifications in or from Australia, as we know, must be registered. As I said, this delayed introduction of the increased cost has been for several reasons but is particularly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Importantly, when I look at other industries that I have an interest in—financial advice being one of those—I look at the very significant increases in cost recovery that ASIC has recently levied on financial planner across the industry, in what has been a difficult time for them as well, which has put significant pressure on them. So the argument that we shouldn't pursue the recovery of costs for the agency, in my view, doesn't hold water when we see that it has been done in other sectors.

Currently TEQSA's cost-recovery levels are probably around 15 per cent of total costs, and the taxpayer currently bears the burden of funding for the vast majority of it regulatory activities. The increased cost recovery will involve increasing the application base fees to recover the true cost of these activities. The increase to the application based fees will be enabled by a new fees determination to be issued. The introduction of a new annual charge on higher education providers to recover the cost of the risk-monitoring and regulatory oversight activities and the new annual charges are the subject of these bills.

As I outlined, TEQSA's role is important. There are some 1.5 million students studying in Australia's higher education institutes, and in 2017 the sector had a revenue of almost $38 billion. We're fortunate in this country to have a world-class tertiary education system and, by extension, vocational education sector. We have a large number of our universities who appear in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and six of them feature in the prestigious top 100. The University of Queensland ranks at No. 62 on that list and at No. 4 in the top Australian universities. I am pleased to say that, more locally to me and also to the member for Rankin, the Griffith University's Logan campus does a tremendous job and is located just outside of my patch in the member for Rankin's electorate. But many of those who live in my electorate—in the Logan area but also in the southern part of my electorate, in Upper Coomera, on the northern Gold Coast—would go to the Griffith University campus on the Gold Coast. I regularly have conversations with the leadership of both campuses about the terrific work that they do in helping their students, across our community, to realise their dreams of getting a degree and pursuing a career, whether it's in health, medicine, business, education or even politics. Griffith University is one of the great examples of the higher education facilities provided across this country.

This commitment to excellence is why this bill is important. We need our Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency to be well funded, and it is appropriate that the sector themselves have a higher stake in contributing towards these costs. As I've outlined a couple of times, there are a number of other industries in which we do exactly this. These changes will enable a new annual charge to be collected from registered higher education providers to recover the costs of their risk-monitoring and compliance-monitoring investigations, compliance management, stakeholder engagement and other regulatory activities. These costs are currently not recovered and are borne by the taxpayers. They will be phased in over three years to moderate the impact. The amendments in this bill will require higher education providers to pay the annual charge as and when it falls due, including any penalties for late payment. Failure by a higher education provider to pay the charge will constitute a breach of its conditions of registration.

Despite what the member for Sydney had to say—and what I suspect some of those opposite who are going to contribute later in this debate will say—this government does care about education. We've delivered record funding for education in our schools sector since we've come to government. Recently I was speaking with one of our local Indigenous groups, the Beenleigh Housing & Development Company. Several years ago we provided them with a $750,000 grant to ensure that they can provide the backbone support needed for families in our Indigenous community, for their jarjums, or kids, to be engaged at school and to allow them to take further studies at university. We do recognise and understand the value of education and we know how important it is to have a high-quality tertiary sector.

Our budget commits $9.4 million in 2021-22 to provide grants of up to $150,000 for eligible higher education and English-language providers to support innovative online and offshore education delivery models. We're extending the existing FEE-HELP loan exemption by six months to reduce the financial burden for eligible students. We are lowering the eligible fees and charges for smaller education providers registered with TEQSA from 1 January 2022, as part of the revised cost-recovery arrangements. We're also providing $1.1 million over two years from 2020-21 to create new employment pathways for students and boost financial incentives for universities to enrol students in industry PhDs.

That is something that I find particularly pleasing, because I think—from when I go out and talk to the business community and to people at our local university campuses—that it is one area where we can do a much, much better job. That is the intersection of academic education with practical, on-the-ground work experience in the businesses that students are studying their degree for. I've had a number of discussions with businesses and the universities about exactly these sorts of models, because one of the things that we see is that, despite the quality of the academic education that our students are receiving at our universities, at times and in certain courses it lacks the practical application on a day-to-day basis, and employers find that, when they get graduates, there is still a lot of work to do with those graduates to bring them up to speed on the practical application of what they've learnt academically.

I am going to continue to work with industry and our local university campuses to ensure that we can continue to develop those relationships and build those bridges between the academic work students are doing at university and the practical skills they need in the industry. I think that will benefit the students greatly. I think it will benefit the universities, and I also think it will benefit business. A lot of people in business maybe haven't had a lot of recent interaction with our universities and what they're teaching. Equally, there are times when what is being taught at universities is maybe not up to pace with what's happening in industry. I think this is one of the areas where we can do an awful lot more work to make that much more effective.

I'll give a local example. I recently met with the owner of SDI Plastics in Beenleigh. SDI are incredible innovators, supplying moulded plastic products through a process of design, tooling and injection moulding. They are looking at engaging a PhD student to work on a project with the University of Queensland that involves plastic waste and recycling and the use of home-compostable plastic made from biologically based and sourced bacteria. This is an exciting project that could be completely transformational for the plastics sector, and it is a terrific example of what I've just spoken about—the tertiary sector partnering with the business sector to jointly innovate. I commend this bill in its original form to the House.

See this speech in context