Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) when the previous Government introduced the Jobs Ready Graduates Scheme, many students, education experts, universities, and members of the then Opposition criticised the scheme as an inequitable and damaging attack on students, and on the humanities and social sciences in particular;

(b) the subsequent Australian Universities Accord final report found the Jobs Ready Graduate Scheme had been a policy failure and an expensive impost on students, and recommended it be replaced with a more equitable funding arrangement; and

(c) despite three years in power and 18 months since the Universities Accord Report, the current Government has failed to act in the best interests of students and has left the Jobs Ready Graduates Scheme in place; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) urgently repeal the Jobs Ready Graduate Scheme; and

(b) implement a return to fee-free first degrees for Australian citizens.

Australia is one of the richest countries in the world, and it's more than capable of ensuring that higher education is accessible and affordable for any Australian with the desire and aptitude to pursue it. Unfortunately, though, that's not what successive governments have chosen to do. In fact, the previous coalition federal government chose to drastically increase the cost of degrees in the arts and humanities, in particular, with the jobs-ready graduates scheme—a scheme which was rightly criticised at the time by the then Labor federal opposition as being inequitable and damaging. So imagine the subsequent frustration among students, parents and many others in the community that, after three years in power and almost two years since the Universities Accord final report, this Labor government has yet to repeal and replace this appalling scheme. Yes, the government have made welcome steps in reducing student debts, which have been ballooning rapidly, but what they seem to not understand is: you wouldn't need to forgive student debts if you hadn't loaded students up with mountains of it in the first place. If the government doesn't act to address the fee structure, the problem will only re-emerge again for students in a few years time. In other words, the one-off cut to student debt is really just a bandaid on a bullet wound.

It's clear, I suggest, that we need a return to first principles. If you ask me, that should come with a re-examination of our attitudes and approach to education across different stages of life. At the moment we don't look at education holistically, choosing instead to adopt a fragmented approach to early childhood education, primary and secondary education and tertiary education. Even within the tertiary sector, we've got fragmented approaches to vocational education and university education. Frankly, somewhere along the line we lost sight of the inherent value of knowledge and that learning is a continuum, and that education is inherently a public good and, for that matter, a human right. In other words, it doesn't start at age four and finish at age 16 or 18; it starts the moment you're born and extends to the moment you die.

It's not hard to find the basis for a different approach. We already accept that free compulsory primary and secondary education for all students should be provided on the basis that all citizens deserve an equal right to education regardless of their financial capacity.

But it shouldn't stop there. I think we should apply that same principle to education across the entire spectrum of learning. In other words, higher education shouldn't be in some esteemed class of its own. This is why I have long called for a return to fee-free first degrees for Australian citizens. I'd hoped such an approach would find favour with the current federal government, because it was, of course, the Whitlam federal Labor government that introduced fee-free degrees in the 1970s. This spoke well of our country back then—that we valued education so highly that we prioritised investing in education and in educating Australians. Of course, we could and should extend this approach to early learning through early childhood education and care and into other tertiary education by extending fee-free TAFE to cover all TAFE courses. Sadly, though, the Whitlam-era reforms were, of course, unwound during the 1980s by another Labor government.

But back to today. The Job-ready Graduates scheme exemplifies a narrow, individualistic and hard-nosed economic view of education, as does the other, often-touted alternative of setting fees based on future earnings. But, of course, neither is the right approach, because Australia surely needs tradies, carers, artists and other critical and creative thinkers every bit as much as it needs engineers, doctors and teachers. Indeed, there is an inherent value to the community of a broad education, and the fact is that a smarter, better and more diversely educated community is not only more employable; it's also healthier, happier and more adaptable.

All of this is to say that it's beyond time the government acted on the principles they claimed to have just three and a bit years ago and finally addressed access and affordability in the higher education system. A great place to start would be scrapping the Morrison-era Job-ready Graduates scheme and returning to Whitlam-era fee-free first degrees. The country would be all the better for it if they did.

See this speech in context