Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I thank my friend the classy member for Cunningham for her question.

Can't get anything past you, Daz! Under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, the number of kids finishing high school jumped from about 40 per cent to 80 per cent. That was nation-changing reform. It created businesses and a workforce that otherwise wouldn't exist. A couple of years ago, I released the Australian Universities Accord. What that says is that, over the next few decades, we'll need a workforce where not just 80 per cent have finished school but they've gone on to TAFE or to university as well, and the accord sets out a plan for us to get there. Over the last few years, we've bitten off a big chunk of it. We've cut student debt. We're rolling out paid pracs for teaching students, nursing students, midwifery students and social work students. We're rolling out free TAFE and study hubs in the bush and now, for the first time ever, in the outer suburbs, and we're funding more places at university.

This week we took the next step. Just yesterday, we passed legislation to set up the ATEC. That's the Australian Tertiary Education Commission. That'll help us to break down the barrier between TAFE and university, make it easier to move between the two and make it easier to get a degree more cheaply and faster. It'll also help to end the hunger games, where universities are eating each other alive for students. Instead, the ATEC will allocate places to individual universities. It will also help more kids from poor families, from the regions and from the bush to get a crack at going to uni in the first place. In the next few months I'll introduce legislation that will guarantee a place at university for kids from poor families, from the regions and from the bush. If you've got the marks or you've got the skills to take on a degree—if you've got what it takes, you will get a place. The Australian Tertiary Education Commission will help us to roll all of that out. That'll change what universities look like.

But we've also got to change the way universities act. Students have got to be their top priority, and that's what the National Student Ombudsman is all about. The boards of universities have got to become more accountable, and that's what the next stage of reform is all about—including the use of consultants. And the university regulator, TEQSA, needs better powers to be able to act where universities don't or won't. That legislation is coming too.

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