Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Education is life-changing. It can change your trajectory in life. It can change your entire family's trajectory. We know that people with more education tend to have higher income and all the opportunities that having additional income brings. They also tend to have better health outcomes. Their children are healthier and more likely to complete education. Education can also change the trajectory of an entire country. A higher educated, higher skilled workforce is necessary for higher-income-generating industry and manufacturing, for the production of goods and for the services that bring wealth to a country. We absolutely want good-quality, high-paying, secure jobs for Australians, and we are committed to rebuilding the manufacturing services and supply chains onshore to achieve this. We, therefore, need Australians who are educated, skilled and qualified to take these jobs and also to create these jobs and to develop new knowledge, new research, new skills, new businesses and new industries.

Education is a key to opportunity. When my grandparents left poverty in Northern Ireland to seek a better life for their family and when my parents left the UK to seek a better life for their family, for me and my brother, here in Australia, they knew that education was the key to accessing the opportunities of their new homes. I, like many in this place, was the first in my family to go to university, and it certainly changed my life. It gave me career opportunities that I would otherwise not have had. I was lucky that my family had a culture of valuing education. I was trained from kindergarten to expect that I would concentrate at school and achieve, that I would finish high school—there was no question—and that I would go to university. I was taught that this was the normal course of education, and I was taught that it was achievable for me. I was one of the lucky ones.

But, if we're going to change this country to the economic powerhouse, advanced manufacturing hub, leading scientific nation and country with world-leading health and other services that we know it can be and that it needs to be in the future, we need to ensure education is available to all and that that education is world class. There are too many that get left behind, too many whose families don't see that education is achievable for them, that it is something that they can do in their family. There are too many that face barriers that I didn't face, and we need them to be able to see that education is achievable for them as well.

That was why Minister Clare commissioned three reviews on education—early childhood, schooling and the tertiary sector—which resulted in the Australian Universities Accord. This Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill 2023 is a response to the Australian Universities Accord interim report. They are priority recommendations, and we have a final report expected in December 2023.

The Albanese Labor government is committed to opening the door of opportunity for more Australians to go to university. Whether or not you see university as an option for you shouldn't depend on your postcode or your family background. We need to ensure that students who don't come from a university educated family can thrive and succeed in tertiary education.

The following were identified in the recommendations of the interim report and addressed in the measures of the bill: firstly, that we create more study hubs, not only in the regions but in our outer suburbs—it's amazing how a simple thing such as travel, the unfamiliarity of a big city, or parking can form a barrier to someone feeling confident enough to enrol and attend university; secondly, that we scrap the 50 per cent pass rule and require better reporting on how students are progressing; thirdly, that we extend the demand driven funding currently provided to Indigenous students from regional and remote areas to cover all Indigenous students; fourthly, that we provide funding certainty during the accord process by extending the Higher Education Continuity Guarantee into 2024 and 2025, with funding arrangements that prioritise support for equity students; and, lastly, that we work with state and territory governments to improve university governance. Importantly, the government has confirmed it will implement each of the interim recommendations.

Recommendations 2 and 3 require legislative amendment, which this bill provides by amending the Higher Education Support Act to extend the current demand-driven funding for regional and remote First Australians students to all First Australians undergraduate students studying bachelor or bachelor-honours level courses, other than medicine, from 2024. It also removes the pass rate requirements for students to remain eligible for Commonwealth assistance and introduces new requirements on universities and other providers to support students in successfully completing their studies.

Currently students are required to pass at least 50 per cent of the units they undertake to continue their eligibility for Commonwealth assistance. The pass rate is assessed after they've completed eight units in a bachelor's degree, or higher, or four units in a shorter course, and students who fail more than half currently lose eligibility for Commonwealth assistance. The pass rate requirements were originally introduced in January 2022 by the former coalition government as part of the Job-ready Graduates program to dissuade students from continuing in courses they're not academically suited to. However, the practical effect of these measures has been overly punitive for students. Sometimes you have a bad year. Sometimes it doesn't all come together. Life outside university impacts on your ability to focus, to study and to pass. The impact of the pass rate requirements has disproportionately affected students from First Nations communities and those of low socioeconomic status and other underrepresented and educationally disadvantaged cohorts. These are the cohorts that we want to encourage to see university as something that is for them and their families; we want them to know that they can achieve.

For those already facing too many barriers, who might need to work extra jobs to fund their education, who might have family duties and issues that interfere with their studies, this should not be the barrier that means that they don't have the bright future that they deserve. More than 13,000 students at 27 universities have already been hit by this rule. Removal of the rule has been called for by universities right across the country—universities like the University of Adelaide, in my home town, Monash University, University of Technology Sydney, University of the Sunshine Coast, University of New England, Queensland University of Technology and Western Sydney University. This is something that they see the value of, that they understand. We should be helping students succeed, not forcing them to quit.

The bill introduces requirements for universities and other providers to have policies in place to help students successfully complete their studies. Under these policies, universities and other providers will be required to demonstrate how they will identify students who are struggling and how they will connect those students with support services to help them succeed.

The Department of Education will issue a discussion paper to consult with universities and providers on the content of these policies. They are expected to contain measures such as having processes for identifying students who need help; assessing a student's academic and non-academic suitability for continuing study, particularly when they've triggered an alert; connecting students with support and identifying students who are not engaging with that support before their census date wherever possible; and providing sufficient non-academic supports for students, such as financial assistance, housing information and mental health supports. This is important when students struggle because of non-academic issues—because the rest of their life is interfering.

Other measures include having appropriate crisis and critical harm response arrangements; providing access to trained academic development advisers who can help a student identify what's holding them back and come up with the right response for that student—it's not one size fits all; it's not a cookie cutter—ensuring that academic and non-academic supports are age and culturally appropriate, including specific arrangements for First Nations students; proactively offering special circumstances arrangements where a provider is aware of a significant life event for a student; providing access to targeted individual literacy, numeracy and other academic supports; providing provider-driven evidence based additional support, such as peer support; and providing targeted in-course support from academic staff, such as check-ins and flexibility on assessment arrangements. Universities and other providers will be required to comply with their student support policies, and civil penalties will apply for compliance breaches.

The existing demand-driven measure for Indigenous students was implemented in 2021 in response to the National Regional, Rural and Remote Education Strategy. The proposal aims to increase First Nations enrolment numbers by expanding the eligibility of demand-driven funding to include metropolitan First Nations students studying bachelor and bachelor honours courses, except for medicine, at table A universities. This measure directly supports efforts towards achieving Closing the Gap outcome 6: to increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25 to 34 who have completed a tertiary qualification—cert III and above—to 70 per cent by 2031. This means there will be no cap on the number of First Nations students who can enrol in a Commonwealth supported place, and table A providers will receive Commonwealth funding for all Indigenous students under part 2-2 of HESA.

The Department of Education estimates this may double the number of Indigenous students at university within a decade. The measure has strong support in the sector—for example, Universities Australia, ANU, UQ, Western Sydney University, Macquarie University, James Cook University, University of Southern Queensland, University of Melbourne, University of Adelaide, Queensland University of Technology and the University of Technology Sydney. The measure builds on the government's election commitment to deliver up to 20,000 Commonwealth supported places and fee-free TAFE.

This bill in response to the interim report of the Australian Universities Accord is the first step to building a brighter future for all Australians and for our country. Education is the key to better outcomes. Education changes lives and changes futures. The link between education and employment, between education and better-paid jobs and between income and health outcomes for individuals and for their families is well established. Being able to financially support your children and family because you have a well-paid, secure job means better outcomes for your children. Children brought up in poverty are more likely to experience poverty as adults.

My electorate of Boothby is home to a number of excellent tertiary institutions as well as many, many tertiary students and tertiary sector workers. Flinders University in Bedford Park is one of three major universities in South Australia. Its innovative approach to modern manufacturing has seen it establish itself within the Factory of the Future in the Tonsley Innovation Precinct, working into supply chains for the defence industry with many of the local innovative industries that have set up in that precinct. It's also a major medical school with campuses across regional South Australia and the Northern Territory and an excellent record of graduating First Nations doctors and other health professionals.

We also have the Waite campus of the University of Adelaide in Urrbrae, which focuses on agriculture and ag science. Of course, South Australia has an excellent wine industry. The research this campus undertakes will be vital for our important agriculture industries as climate change changes the conditions that they're dealing with. Then we have TAFE at Tonsley, which is developing the tradies for the—

Debate interrupted.

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