Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill 2023. I commend the minister for commissioning the important work of the Australian Universities Accord. This work, being led by Professor Mary O'Kane, is tasked with looking at higher education holistically to set Australia up for the future with the skills and knowledge we need to continue to grow our economy and capitalise on the changing nature of work.

The transition to a green economy will require a range of new tertiary skills and trades. We're also witnessing the emergence of artificial intelligence, and the world is making progress towards quantum computing. All these changes will require new skills and knowledge sets, and we need to ensure our higher education system is equipping future generations with the skills and wherewithal to capitalise on the opportunities.

In Warringah in the next five years some 90 per cent of new jobs will demand tertiary education, yet we are seeing a decrease in the completion of bachelor degrees, to the lowest level since 2014, and a worsening skilled worker shortage looms. I know businesses in Warringah and around the country are already feeling the shortage of skilled workers, and I have advocated previously more aggressive policies to support innovation in this country.

To meet Australia's needs and create the future we want for our society, our education system needs to be equitable, especially for marginalised groups. Thirty-six per cent of my electorate have a bachelor degree, 10 per cent more than the national average—I acknowledge that—because there is opportunity and access. So we need to ensure that higher education is more accessible, regardless of socioeconomic or geographic location.

It's a national shame, as stated by the current Minister for Government Services, that an Indigenous teenager is more likely to go to jail than university, or even finish high school. It really highlights the inequities we still very much have in this country.

This interim report is important. The Australian Universities Accord interim report recommends initial tweaks to Australia's higher education system to align with national needs. This bill addresses two of the five recommendations from the interim report—specifically, to cease the 50 per cent pass rule which disproportionately disadvantages students from equity backgrounds and really was acting as a deterrent to young people getting into and completing their tertiary studies; and expanding eligibility to all First Nations students, including those in metropolitan areas like Warringah, not just those in regional communities, because it's important we up the percentage of completion when it comes to tertiary education. These two provisions are important to restoring equality, and they enhance the accessibility of higher education.

The first provision, the 50 per cent pass rule means—or meant, because we are now hopefully getting rid of it—that any student who fails to pass at least 50 per cent of their subject in a year of study is denied the ability to study further. These kinds of one-size rules just don't work and don't take into account the circumstances students might find themselves in and need to address. It's an incredibly punitive measure that disadvantages those that can least afford it. It expels people from university without the opportunity to course correct and puts no incentive on the universities to assist students through those early years, which might be difficult. I strongly opposed it when it was implemented under the previous government, so I strongly support the repeal of that provision.

The second provision introduced aims to increase the access of Indigenous students to higher education. In light of the debate on Closing the Gap outcomes, it's incredibly important for this amendment to pass. The practical impact of this amendment would extend the guaranteed funding for students in remote and regional areas to students in metropolitan areas. It will assist in reaching the ambitious Closing the gap report target of 70 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young adults having a tertiary education by 2031. Access to higher education has many positive flow-on effects on broader First Nations families and communities, as well as individuals, embedding generational accessibility to tertiary education.

There are recommendations from the report that aren't included in the bill, so I call the government to implement the additional recommendations of the interim report, including those that address safety on campuses, particularly for women. In particular, in this place we have had a debate and have seen what the outcomes are when we don't have safe enough practices. It's incredibly important that universities very urgently engage with this problem. I've previously spoken in this place about the scourge of sexual harassment and violence on university campuses and in workplaces around the country and the need to urgently intervene with targeted programs to improve safety on campus.

It's incredibly important to remember that tertiary education at university level is where these young people are starting their independent adult journey, and the statistics of the occurrence of sexual harassment, violence or assaults on university campuses are just unacceptable. The statistics are devastating. Some 85,000 students have experienced sexual assault on campuses since 2017. As a parent, that is just staggering. These are our children that we send to universities in the hope they are going to learn and develop the skills to be the leaders of tomorrow, and so many of them are having such a negative experience.

I welcome the government's commitment to address the issue and its willingness to engage with those with lived experiences, such as the STOP Campaign and Fair Agenda. But I should note that it took for young people to come into this place, meet with so many of us and raise it on social media to pressure the minister to meet with them and include them in this process. They still report a process to me, though, whereby universities are not facilitating the programs they are trying to put forward, they are not making rooms available and they are putting obstacles in the way of these very good programs that are student led and for students, to keep them safe. I urge universities to engage proactively in the process and take action on the ground now. Don't wait. It's already gone on for too long. Facilitate prevention programs and recovery programs for those already impacted.

The interim report also recommends providing funding certainty through extending the Higher Education Continuing Guarantee to 2024 and 2025. We need to look at funding for the sector to ensure that it is sustainable and adequately supported by government, to ensure that we don't end up with a US-style education debt burden for future generations. The recent Intergenerational report shows that this generation has a huge burden on its shoulders. We will be the generation retired when they will be expected to carry the load, and they will be burdened by massive student debts. I recently wrote to the Minister for Education expressing my concern about the sudden spike in HECS debt due to the high rate of inflation this year. HECS debts were indexed to 7.1 per cent. That is a huge increase in burden for many people, and I fear numbers like that will both add to the anxiety for those who have already accumulated debts and deter others from entering university.

I believe that indexation should be linked to the wage price index, as it is in the United Kingdom, or the lower CPI or the official cash rate. We must ensure we are not burdening students with unrealistic interest rate hikes on their HECS debts. That way we will ensure that student debts rise incrementally rather than astronomically if inflation gets out of hand once again. Students with debts should not be paying the price for poor government control from the past government in allowing inflation that really has got out of hand.

In conclusion, I welcome these initial moves and urge the government to commit to the full implementation of the remaining recommendations of the interim report. I look forward to the outcomes of the final report and trust that it will address two key areas: the long-term funding arrangements for universities and indexation, and the balance of funding allocated by government to humanities degrees as opposed to STEM. As someone who has studied a humanities degree, I strongly oppose and reject the previous government's attempts to disadvantage some students over others. We need all areas of tertiary education to advance us as a society and to develop young people with the skills to come up with solutions. Picking areas that you want to support over others is not the way to guarantee a strong and productive Australia of the future.

The interim report begins with a mission statement for higher education. Higher education's mission is to make a better future possible for Australia. Let's work with the sector and future students to make sure that mission is achieved. We need to ensure we hear the voices of young people a lot more in this place. We need to make sure the education minister is hearing the voices of young people, because the decisions that are being made by government are going to impact on the future of those young people. We have a number of big challenges ahead, but we also have amazing opportunities. As a parent of a number of students at university myself, I know what an important opportunity this is. It is an incredible privilege and opportunity to do this, to study for qualifications for jobs. But we need to ensure it's a safe environment. That should be an absolute necessity. The university sector needs to be a safe one. And it should be forward thinking. It needs to address future challenges. So I look forward to further discussions with the minister to ensure we keep progressing in this area.

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