Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (2009 Budget Measures) Bill 2009. Since coming to government in late 2007, this government has shown that it is squarely committed to improving education outcomes in this country. Indeed the budget that was delivered earlier on this year has once again delivered for and focused on delivering education opportunities and outcomes from early childhood right through to adult education. The budget was really dedicated to lifelong learning for all Australians. This is true for a number of different areas, including our tertiary education system.

Last year the government took the very bold step of actually commissioning Denise Bradley, a very widely regarded tertiary educator, to conduct the Bradley review of higher education. That review made it clear that urgent investment was needed and reform was also needed to make sure that our university system was world-class. This government’s policy and this bill represent our response to the challenge issued by this review—the challenge of ensuring that there is quality in our tertiary education sector and that this quality is maintained to support the continued economic and social progress of the nation.

The Higher Education Support Amendment (2009 Budget Measures) Bill 2009 amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to implement the Australian government’s reforms to higher education and the whole system. The bill also amends the act to give effect to measures to address key findings and recommendations of the review of the national innovation system and the recent House of Representatives inquiry into research, training and workforce issues. As a member of that committee that heard significant evidence on things that could be improved, I am very pleased that the government has taken up these issues and acted—compared to 12 years of neglect by the previous government, who seemed to think that education reform was about ripping money out of universities and ripping money off students.

This bill represents the launch of the government’s reform agenda in tertiary education, and I must commend the Deputy Prime Minister for driving this agenda and this vision. The reforms proposed by this bill transform Australia’s higher education sector, providing unprecedented opportunities and quality in university education, unmatched in Australia’s history. These reforms are part of an integrated policy approach to higher education, and the government’s policy involves structural change to our university system, improves the financial sustainability of our universities and guarantees quality education and research outcomes.

Most importantly, under this bill the government will provide funding for growth in universities and will do so by opening the doors of universities to students from all walks of life. It is these people, our future workforce, who are finally, thanks to the government and this bill, at the centre of the higher education funding system. I know from my own electorate, where not as many students end up going to university as perhaps do in other parts of Adelaide, that this has been widely welcomed by parents and schools hoping that their students will get an opportunity and find tertiary education attractive.

This bill is part of a broader investment in higher education. We know that in the last budget we saw significant investment and in the budget this year there was another significant investment. This broader investment has been welcomed by many South Australians. They have welcomed the $200 million for the Health and Medical Research Institute which was announced in the May budget. This institute will provide world-class facilities and make a significant contribution to our national and international research in the medical area. The investment has been welcomed by all three universities in Adelaide. As the Vice-Chancellor of Flinders University, Professor Michael Barber, said:

The Institute will encourage collaborations between the various parties, draw on the skills and strengths in our respective institutions, and produce positive results from an enhanced research effort.

New and innovative research will help solve the medical mysteries that compromise the health and lifestyle of our people and communities.

I sincerely wish everyone involved in the institute the best for their important work.

Similarly, Flinders University was deserving and received two grants from the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Projects scheme for an investigation into Australian crop species and for research into climate change. This climate change research will focus on the patterns of gene flow at a landscape scale in declining and common birds in Australia and abroad. The project builds on a strong international link to the Galapagos Islands as well as having a regional focus for South Australia. The outcome will also inform climate modelling for the state and Australia and will prove incredibly useful for governments in proposing measures to adapt to climate change. I would like to congratulate Flinders University on being very successful in receiving these grants. It is another example of the government really investing in our higher education system.

It is research like this that will be an integral part of our universities. In recognition of this, the bill amends the act to provide appropriate funding for continuing Commonwealth scholarships and other research grants. Specifically, the Australian government will commit $512 million over four years for a new Sustainable Research Excellence in Universities initiative to address the gap in funding for the indirect costs of research. This is in addition to the joint research engagement measures which will create a funding stream that prioritises and provides incentives for collaboration between universities, industry and other end users to produce the highest quality and most useful research outcomes.

These outcomes are driven by the people in our tertiary education system, and that is why this bill focuses on giving as many talented people as possible the opportunity to study, research and develop new ideas. To this end, from 2012 all public universities will be funded on the basis of student demand. This means uncapping the amount of places in particular courses and allowing the interest of students to determine how much funding our universities should receive.

To ensure that universities have time to prepare for the new demand driven system, the current funding floor for universities will be maintained for the years 2010 and 2011. The current cap on overenrolment will be raised from five to 10 per cent in funding terms for 2010-11. These are important first steps to realising a higher education system that is well resourced enough and accessible enough to achieve this government’s ambition of increasing the proportion of 25- to 34-year-old Australians with a bachelor level qualification to 40 per cent by 2025.

It is with this similar ambition that the government strives to support our best and brightest postgraduate students through its commitment to doubling the number of Australian postgraduate awards by 2012. Building on this commitment, the value of the APA stipend will be increased by more than 10 per cent, from $20,427 in 2009 to $22,500 in 2010. I notice the member for Tangney is also in the chamber tonight. As members of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Innovation, we looked into some of the barriers to research around our country. We know that the amount of the APA stipend was regularly raised as an issue that needed to be addressed, and I am very pleased that this government is taking steps to address it.

This commitment to opportunity is also represented in the bill’s landmark measures to improve the rate of participation in higher education by students from disadvantaged backgrounds. As I said earlier, this move has certainly been welcomed by many schools in my electorate. The bill does this by injecting additional funding for universities to support low-SES students participating in higher education. This follows the international experience, which shows the importance of outreach in the early years of secondary schooling in inspiring university education aspirants.

I would just like to make a comment about one initiative that already exists in my local area, and that is Christies Beach High School and its relationship with Flinders University. The university has available space and computers for students from the local area to use who might be studying at university. It also enables those students to interact with university students who are perhaps not unlike themselves and to make that connection between the school and the university just down the road.

Another part of this initiative is why the government is allocating $108 million over four years for a new partnerships program, to link universities with low-SES schools and vocational education and training providers. As I mentioned, Flinders University of South Australia has already been actively engaged in looking at these programs and certainly this extra funding will have a significant impact on some of the schools in my electorate. This funding will expose students to the opportunities on offer at universities, whether it be the University of South Australia, Adelaide University or Flinders University. It will allow them to have hands-on activities provided by the program and therefore that connection will most likely lead them to enrol in university. Getting into university, however, will not happen due to inspiration alone, so the government has allocated $325 million over four years to provide universities with a financial incentive to expand their enrolment of low-SES students and to fund the intensive support needed to improve their completion and retention rates.

The existing Higher Education Equity Support Program will be replaced and incorporated into these new funding arrangements. In addition to this bill, the government is also introducing major reforms to student income support to assist access and retention of low-SES students. I think this is an incredibly important initiative, because for too long under the coalition government people who perhaps wanted to go to university but were disadvantaged due to where they lived or the income of their parents could not access, or were not encouraged to access, higher education. These important initiatives will allow many more students to be able to access higher education and perhaps fulfil a dream. For a lot of them, it will be the first time that anyone in their family has gone to university. It is an initiative that will be welcomed by many people in my electorate.

This bill is comprehensive in its approach to initiating Labor’s reform of the higher education sector in this country. The bill ends a decade of underfunding. It ends the decline in investment in education and it ends the political interference with research. It begins a series of reforms that will see more students at better funded universities, undertaking better resourced and more independent research for the benefit of Australian society as a whole. I can see that the Minister for Sport is in the chamber and I know that she has a very good relationship with Professor Ian Chubb, the President of the International Alliance of Research Universities. He said:

Of course, Grumblers will say there should have been more, but let’s be realistic here. An investment of more than $5 billion in higher education and research is to be celebrated. Let’s get on with the job of using the investment wisely.

This bill does mark a huge investment in our higher education sector and I am sure that these investments will be made wisely. I am also sure that this bill marks the beginning of increased support, attention and focus on making Australia’s universities truly world class, and I commend the bill to the House.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Higher Education Support Amendment (2009 Budget Measures) Bill 2009 is very important, given the significant role universities play in the Australian economy and the community. However, any sentence which contains the words ‘Labor’ and ‘budget’ in close proximity should send shivers of fear down the spines of every thinking and taxpaying Australian. The debt burden imposed by this government has reached horrendous proportions, which is why this government is trying every trick in the book to raise extra revenue except, of course, the most obvious ones. In fact, I am beginning to think that the Prime Minister is aping his Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts and starting a rock band. It looks like being an echo of a famous British band the Animals, the difference being the name of the lead singer. Instead of Eric Burdon, we are seeing ‘Tax Burden and the Animals’ and their first smash hit ‘The House of the Rising Sum’—that ‘sum’ being the massive debt which the next generation of Australians will owe—or perhaps he and the Deputy Prime Minister are Australia’s Ike and Tina Turner, with the outpouring of cash being ‘river deep’ and the scale of debt ‘mountain high’.

All Australians by now are aware of the appalling levels of debt being incurred by the Prime Minister to buy the next election—debt which we will all have to pay back, with younger Australians having to shoulder the lion’s share of that burden. Despite this, the Prime Minister is continuing with the good old Labor first option: when there is a problem throw taxpayers’ money at it. This is definitely the case with this bill. Yet again, the root cause of the problem is Labor’s tired old ideology, which is a nightmarish flight back to the 1970s and Gough Whitlam—the ideology of class war, bloated bureaucracy and making people fit the system, not tailoring the system to fit the people. The most egregious ideological financial blunder this government has committed in tertiary education is a direct attack upon Australians and their freedom of choice by banning full fee-paying students. On one hand, the government is saying that the sector needs more money and, on the other, Labor is deliberately not only denying this sector a significant source of finance but trying to play the ‘bash to rich’ card by denying full fee-paying students a chance to attain higher education.

I reminded the House of this class war mentality two years ago when debating the excellent legislation introduced by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition when she was education minister. What a contrast to the current incumbent. I said of Labor’s contempt for full fee-paying students:

This is yet another attempt to dress up tired, old class warfare and the politics of envy—ideological wolves—with the sheep’s clothing of concern for students.

In fact, this expressed disdain, bordering on hatred, of the so-called rich people, has never been better exposed than in the words of a close friend of the member for Kingsford Smith—who would fall into the despised category of ‘rich’ himself. Rob Hirst, former drummer and songwriter for Midnight Oil, described the permitting of full fee-paying students in the Bulletin of 26 January 2007 as:

We’re getting thicker. Our unis are filling up with dumb, rich kids whose daddies have paid to queue-jump them over the heads of their brighter, poorer peers.

Nothing has changed, has it?

The government claims that universities are in need of money, yet Labor is happy to deny universities this source of funding because of some stupid inbred hatred of people who want to stand on their own two feet and take responsibility for their own education—people who are prepared to accept the financial cost of doing this without help from the taxpayer. How intolerable! How incomprehensible to Labor this self-sufficient, independent kind of thinking is. More importantly, how dangerous! Imagine if we had our universities flooded with people who showed such subversive tendencies of independence and self-reliance. Who knows? These fiscal dissidents might even infect other students with their revolutionary ideologies, and then what would happen? More people might start thinking they could actually manage something on their own, by themselves, without using the crutch of the taxpayer. Who knows? They might even turn into—shock, horror—liberal thinking people. We can’t have that, can we? So the Labor government would deliberately starve our universities of funding just to keep out seditious types who have the gall to think they can get something by paying for it themselves.

The government also cannot seem to see the difference between people paying for the cost of their own university education and buying a degree. Despite having paid full fees, these students would still have to pass exams, so there is no suggestion of unfairness or privilege, except the privilege of choice. And of course these students are not necessarily rich. They and/or their families may have to go without a lot to pay for this education, which would tend to make them better students because they prize and value the education more because of the sacrifices they have to make. Not for them the lifestyle of a dilettante who wanders through a smorgasbord of courses being a perpetual student with absolutely no intention of paying their massive HECS fees back. Many of these full fee-paying students have one, two or even three part-time jobs, as do many HECS students, and yet they are denied a chance to better themselves by this callous, ideologically hidebound government.

Here is the irony. Full fee-paying students are only permitted if they are from overseas. How can the government discriminate so disgracefully against its own people? What other national government shows such contempt for its own citizens in comparison with overseas citizens visiting here to study? Only Labor. Instead of alleviating the financial situation of universities by permitting these students, the government is forcing the students already here to add to the HECS debt many are incurring by imposing the disingenuously entitled student services and amenities fees. Fortunately that has, I think, gone down in the Senate today. Again, there is no freedom of choice—as is espoused by coalition governments—but there is a blatant extortion of money from students, most of whom neither want nor need these services. In many cases those students are already paying for those services via the normal taxation system, as in the case of subsidised child care.

Returning to the big picture of funding, despite the financial chest thumping of this inept government on how much money they are putting into universities, it is a bit like a socialite heiress making a big deal about a donation to charity—it is easily done when you have not had to work for it. Even the $11 billion funding of higher education is a typical sleight of hand by Labor. We are all aware of the $22 billion surplus left by the Howard/Costello administration, which was blown by Labor to the tune of the odd hundred billion or three in the blink of an eye. However, in addition to that surplus there was funding specifically set aside for higher education. Under the coalition government it was called the Higher Education Endowment Fund. Labor is trying to make it appear as though their $11 billion fund—called the Education Investment Fund—is somehow new, or its own achievement.

So let us have a look at this $11 billion of funding and see exactly where it has come from. The first $6 billion—more than half—is a direct steal from the Higher Education Endowment Fund established under the coalition government by the then Treasurer eighteen months ago. This was the same coalition government under which a record 186,000 Australians were offered a university place. So more than half of Labor’s higher education funding was actually coalition higher education funding. No surprise there.

Furthermore, as my colleague the shadow minister for education, the member for Sturt, has observed, the Labor government has not only used our higher education funding and promoted it as theirs but topped up our $6 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund funding with $2.5 billion from the last Howard-Costello surplus, naturally changing the name again to hide its fiscal origins. Finally, as also pointed out by the member for Sturt, the final $2.5 billion is only going to happen if there is sufficient budget surplus next year, which, given the looming massive deficit, is about as likely as the sun rising in the west. Therefore this ‘new’ $11 billion fund is actually just an $8.5 billion fund entirely paid for by the excellent economic management of the coalition government. This rebadged, renamed reiterating of the coalition funding has been launched under the banner of the Bradley review into education.

This report has been welcomed by the opposition, and was an extremely thorough review. Dr Bradley and her team considered 353 written submissions and held discussions with hundreds of representatives of student bodies, businesses, academic institutions and governments. This is a most significant review, but as the opposition has pointed out, it is also the 25th such review since Labor was elected, which is more than one a month.

Since receiving the Bradley report, the government has done what Labor does best—hold a review into a review! Labor held a series of roundtable discussions into this most extensive review, which in itself held wide-ranging and inclusive community consultation, as I have mentioned. So we had a roundtable into a review of a conference into the discussions of the inquiry into a paper on the summit into the examination of proposals regarding higher education. The only really concrete decision that is apparent so far from all this consultation is a decision to scrap Commonwealth Scholarships, with the replacement appearing sometime in the future.

One result of all this consultation which the opposition would really like to see is the philosophy re-emerging of providing educational services with the focus on the students. Unfortunately, the Labor mindset is to favour the organisation over the individual. The ideal is for universities to be responsive to both students and business.

The introduction of vouchers, or student learning entitlement, is a great idea, which came from the Bradley review. Instead of the federal government funding courses directly, students would receive vouchers which they would be able to use at any university prepared to admit them. This would change in a major way how universities and their funding are organised, by giving more power to consumers—in this case, students. The students’ fees would, however, remain capped and universities would not be able to set their own.

Australia’s universities play a vital role in our community, firstly by providing a first-class education for our students. This high level is reinforced by the number of overseas students who wish to avail themselves of this education. The universities also provide valuable research and development resources for the benefit of our whole society.

Secondly, our universities build on our proud heritage of critical and creative thought. As my colleague Senator Brett Mason has said, universities are an important part of our ever-changing world, and therefore must be flexible enough to respond to these changes. The last thing universities and students need is for these institutions to be so bound up in red tape that any meaningful response to these changing circumstances is almost impossible to make.

The Bradley review has provided a very thorough examination of our higher education system. It is now up to the government to make sensible changes which will improve our tertiary education system. I live more in hope than expectation.

Jodie Campbell (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If nothing else, I think the member for Tangney’s contribution showed a certain degree of compassion, even if the content leaves a lot to be desired. Over the course of the last decade under the previous government, Australia’s higher education sector suffered tremendously. There was an overall decline in public expenditure, particularly in comparison with other OECD countries and as a percentage of GDP. Righting this imbalance is one of the many reasons why I am adding my voice in support today of the Rudd government’s Higher Education Support Amendment (2009 Budget Measures) Bill 2009. It fulfils in part Labor’s longstanding commitment made whilst in opposition to substantially increase public funding to the higher education sector. It is a commitment I supported then and am proud to support now.

The bill amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 and moves to implement the government’s 2009-10 budget measures. Included among the legislation’s key features, the Commonwealth Grants Scheme is to be amended to see introduced a demand-driven system of Commonwealth supported places from 2012. From 2012 all public universities will be funded on the basis of student demand. These are the first steps to a higher education system with students at its centre. It supports achievement of our higher education attainment ambition to increase the proportion of 25- to 34-year-old Australians with bachelor level qualifications to 40 per cent by 2025. This legislation also increases the cap on overenrolment of Commonwealth supported places from five per cent to 10 per cent in funding terms for 2010-11.

The bill amends the act to introduce increased indexation for higher education. The increased indexation of all amounts under the act will commence in 2012. It provides for a new performance funding grant element under the Commonwealth Grants Scheme to reflect the conditional indexation payment in 2011 and new performance-funding arrangements from 2012. The government’s legislation amends the act to specify the maximum annual student contribution amount for a place in a particular funding cluster or part of a funding cluster. Education and nursing units of study will be increased to the maximum annual student contribution amount for the band 1 rate for new students from 2010. The bill amends the act to remove the 20 per cent loan fee on OS-HELP loans from 2010. This will practically assist to support universities in encouraging students to travel abroad on student programs as part of their studies, and I am hopeful that it will receive wide support, as it should. The bill amends the act to add a new item to the other grants provisions for the structural adjustment fund. The new fund will encourage institutions to consider their strategic direction and focus their activities and missions to achieve long-term sustainability. It will lay the groundwork for the provision of more sustainable higher education, particularly in regional and outer metropolitan areas.

One of the key components not only of this legislation but of the government’s wider approach to higher education is a measure to support increased participation of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. The government’s review of Australian higher education was undertaken last year by Professor Bradley. This legislation is the result of that review. Among its well-researched observations was that this country is at a critical juncture in the history of higher education. Professor Bradley’s final report commented on and recognised that there is an international consensus that the reach, quality and performance of a country’s higher education system is one of the key determinants of social and economic progress. That was a theme adopted by the Deputy Prime Minister as she introduced this bill to the House.

Through this legislation, the government is fulfilling its commitment to ensure that by 2020 some 20 per cent of higher education enrolments at an undergraduate level are filled by people from a low socioeconomic background. The government has allocated $108 million over four years for a partnerships program which will link universities with low socioeconomic schools and vocational education and training providers with the aim of creating leading practice and competitive pressures to lift the aspirations of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds to higher education. This is recognition and acknowledgement of international experience, which has shown that interventions in the early years of high school are effective and indeed vital if we are to lift the aspirations of students to go on to further study at university. We have also allocated $325 million over four years as a financial incentive for universities to expand their enrolments of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and to fund the intensive support needed to improve completion and retention rates.

We face tremendous challenges both as a government and as a country. The Bradley review highlighted the fact that Australia is falling behind other countries in performance and investment in higher education. We are falling behind, and I find that absolutely unacceptable. It has the potential to limit our social and economic progress. Professor Bradley noted that if we are to maintain our high standard of living, our robust democracy and a civil and just society then we need also to maintain an outstanding and internationally competitive higher education system. They are inextricably linked. It is something which this government recognises, but instead of capitalising on the strength of the economy during their time in office those opposite presided over a decline in an overall performance and investment in higher education. Ten years ago Australia was seventh out of 30 within the OECD in the proportion of our population aged between 25 and 34 with degree-level qualifications. Twenty-nine per cent of our 25- to 34-year-olds have degree-level qualifications, while other OECD countries have set targets as high as 50 per cent. Faced with this uphill challenge, as a government we are aiming for 40 per cent by 2025.

There are many fundamental differences between this government and those opposite. Chief among them is an unwavering commitment to education of all levels, underpinned by the belief that education is at the core of our society. It is essential to our society and to economic prosperity. It is why we committed to computers in schools; it is why we have embarked on an investment program the likes of which this country has never known. Our Building the Education Revolution will see students provided with the learning environments necessary to promote lifelong learning.

In my electorate of Bass I have been fortunate enough to see the real effects of this government’s investments in schools. I have been to schools like Winnaleah District High School, where the multipurpose hall being built will serve not only the school and its students but the entire community. I have seen firsthand the degree of degradation suffered under the previous government to facilities such as the science laboratories at Flinders Island District High School and I have been fortunate enough to be able to work closely with the school to see much needed upgrades funded through the Building the Education Revolution program. From the $50,000 awarded to Branxholm Primary School for refurbishment of a classroom and an upgrade of student toilets under the National School Pride Program to the $2 million gymnasium for South George Town Primary School in the Primary Schools for the 21st Century program, big and small these funding projects speak of a commitment to education which is simply not shared by those opposite.

The Rudd government is investing $200 million in Better TAFE Facilities to support the jobs of today and the jobs of tomorrow. Communities like mine in Northern Tasmania will benefit from this investment through improved teaching facilities and a skilled workforce, and from the economic activity generated by such infrastructure projects. The Better TAFE Facilities initiative is part of the Rudd government’s $500 million Teaching and Learning Capital Fund for vocational education and training. Under Better TAFE Facilities, all TAFE institutes across Australia are eligible to receive a grant of between $2 million and $8 million to undertake maintenance needs, small capital works and equipment and plant purchase. The Rudd government announced the Teaching and Learning Capital Fund for vocational education and training last December as part of a $4.7 billion nation-building infrastructure package to support Australia’s economy.

We are committed to education of all levels and we recognise the importance of higher education to the future of our country. This bill recognises that performance funding will focus universities firmly on the need to meet our shared objectives for the higher education sector. What greater incentive to develop effective performance-lifting strategies than to have the outcomes of those plans linked to funding? Unlike the previous Learning and Teaching Performance Fund, universities will be able to negotiate individual targets and will have an exact idea of where they are at in relation to meeting those targets. Universities will be working towards targets they themselves have negotiated. This is an initiative which will assist in meeting the government’s 20 per cent target of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds by 2020.

There is a clear government agenda being put in place to ensure that, from primary school through to university, our students have the ability to access education and facilities which will secure Australia’s economic prosperity. Australia will need more highly-skilled, well-qualified people as the 21st century progresses. Professor Bradley observes that by 2010—that is, next year—Access Economics predicts that the supply of qualified undergraduates will not keep up with demand. In part it is why the government is committed to ensuring that those people who are underrepresented in our universities, those from low socioeconomic backgrounds, are offered every opportunity to participate. We are also acting to ensure that those from rural and remote areas are offered the opportunity to contribute through higher education.

Twenty years ago, Australia was one of the first countries to restructure to enable wider participation. As a government there is a philosophical underpinning to our policy. At the heart of Australia’s strategy for research and innovation are our universities. Analysis of our existing performance points to the need—an urgent need—for increased investment coupled with structural reform; otherwise we will simply not be where we need to be by 2020. We should aspire to be in the top group of OECD countries in terms of both participation and performance. I am pleased to say that, as a government, we recognise that need to act.

I commend the Deputy Prime Minister for her commitment to setting targets and supporting the attainment of those targets through government policy and through funding. It is in stark and welcome contrast to those opposite who adopted a ‘slash and burn’ mentality to funding for the education sector while at the same time fostering an outdated, elitist approach to university access. From 1995 to 2005, the public contribution to higher education in Australia remained unchanged—the only OECD nation where this was the case. Well, times have changed. This government is committed to primary and secondary education and the TAFE and vocational sector through Building the Education Revolution.

Through this legislation, we are broadening the scope of the higher education sector and at the same time moving to secure the standing of Australia’s educational reputation. Make no mistake about it: to not act is not an option. Professor Bradley’s review makes for alarming reading. It is indeed a wake-up call, one which this government has heeded and acted upon. I commend the Higher Education Support Amendment (2009 Budget Measures) Bill 2009 to the House.

Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Higher Education Support Amendment (2009 Budget Measures) Bill 2009 is the perfect opportunity for me to contribute to this debate, not so much to be critical of the proposition that the Minister for Education has put forward in response to the Bradley review but more to point out that, regardless of how good or how bad the education system at a tertiary level is in Australia, it simply fails all of the prospective tertiary students who live in the more remote areas of Australia. Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I am sure you will share most of my views. It is not a case of how good or how bad the education system is at a tertiary level; it is whether you can afford to access it.

Many will say, and rightly so, that the HECS system, which gives students access to higher education, has served Australian students well—and I accept that. But, if you cannot afford to eat or shelter yourself whilst you attend tertiary education, it matters not whether somebody is going to pay the fees and it matters not whether the finer points of tertiary education are addressed by new regulations, budget measures or a well-meaning minister. I do not for a moment accept that this minister has set out to dud rural students. But her lack of understanding, her lack of experience and her general lack of acknowledgement of rural Australia result in her ignorance about the plight of tertiary students whose place of residence is naturally more than 50 kilometres from such an institution. I say 50 kilometres because, if you cannot travel to and from that tertiary institution reasonably within a day, you do not have the same opportunities that are there for people whose parents are residential, within 50 kilometres of a university.

Most of these institutions, be they classic or modern, are associated with our capital cities. If you are fortunate enough to be the child of a metropolitan-dwelling family and you have done well in secondary education and qualify to attend a tertiary institution, you will have all of the necessities to serve you well in that tertiary education. You will generally have Mum and Dad at home, living at an address where you can get pretty much free board and lodging. You might get to borrow the family car from time to time. You will have your friends—the support group that is your peers and has been around you for a number of years in your education—attending those tertiary institutions with you. You will not necessarily have to work through your tertiary education, because of the financial benefits of living at home, being familiar with the city and its surroundings, catching public transport—doing all those things that city kids do. If you want to be supported by the government, not only will you have your HECS fees paid upfront but you will also—if your parents are below, it would seem in this new proposition, $44,000—get the full youth allowance. The full youth allowance, at nearly $400 per fortnight, will serve you very well to live at home and attend university.

However, if you are a country kid and you live 50 kilometres or more from a university—and how about 2,000 kilometres from a university—and during your secondary studies you have perhaps been supported by the federal government to the tune of more than $6,000 per year as assistance for isolated children, when you have done well with that federal government assistance and got your TE marks necessary to attend a city institution and continue with your education, you are on your own. If you live in the bush and your parents are earning an income, it stands to reason that they are not going to be earning less than $44,000 as a household income, and therefore you are not going to qualify in full for the youth allowance.

Much less than that fortnightly youth allowance is not going to serve you very well living alone in a capital city. So what you do presently is manipulate your lifestyle to qualify whilst attending tertiary institutions by having the independent youth allowance. That is fine. Under the old rules you took a gap year; you went away, found work and earned about $19,000, and that would qualify you to go to the big smoke, attend university and get the princely sum of $375 a fortnight—or something like it. It was enough to take the pressure of having to support your accommodation, your transportation, your clothes and your books—all of the things that you would get almost as a matter of course living at home in the city—off your parents. You are presently confronted with taking a gap year and leaving your support peer group behind. I should say ‘being left behind’, because they have attended university immediately from secondary school. You spend 12 or 18 months working and you earn the money. You then attend university and you find yourself a year behind your peer group. You find yourself struggling. That is not the perfect way to a degree through university.

We have this independent youth allowance that is not designed for that purpose. It is designed for people who are independently living—people who are older, people who may have partners or may have partners working. The independent youth allowance is not designed as a plum for country students to fight for by taking a gap year to artificially put themselves into a situation where they can be termed ‘living independently’. I add at this juncture that, if you live in the city, take a gap year and qualify for the independent youth allowance, you can still go home and live with Mum and Dad on the crest of the wave, borrow the family car, be amongst your mates and get the independent living allowance. If the minister wanted to solve the problem of rorting that she and the Bradley review talk about, why did she not simply put in the regulations that if you are receiving the independent youth allowance you may not live at home in the parental abode? Simple. Instead of that, she has thrown the baby out lock, stock and barrel—if I can mix my metaphors!

We currently have a situation of gross imbalance. Depending on where you live, you may get good support whilst you attend a tertiary institution, with very little necessary outside support; or, if you live in the bush, you have to fight tooth and nail or have extremely wealthy parents who can afford about $20,000 in the first year and at least $10,000 thereafter to support you. Most people who live in the city think that anyone who lives in the bush is a squillionaire. That is the impression I get. So they all believe that it would therefore be irregular for those people to get youth allowance, because that is means tested. They also believe that the independent youth allowance is inappropriate. We have now made that almost impossible to get, because you have to take almost two years off. So what is left? What is the minister saying to the current group of students who have taken 12 months off to work—effectively 18 months off to start in the first semester? They have done their damnedest to earn enough money to qualify for this artificial status of independent youth allowance. Now, having done so or having the intent of completing that acquisition of funds by first semester next year, they are being told: ‘Too bad; you no longer qualify, because—guess what—having started the game and having been influenced by principals of high schools and advice from Centrelink, we have changed the rules, and the arrangements you put in place no longer apply. So either make arrangements for another 12 months gap or have your parents cough up to support you in the city whilst you attend a tertiary institution.’

I would point out that what we have as a foundation for country students attending tertiary institutions today does not serve the purpose. It has been considered for many years now that rural students who were more than 50 kilometres away from an appropriate educational institution received in excess of $6,000 a year from the Assistance for Isolated Children scheme. Having qualified, they now get dumped. Why isn’t a minister who talks about the education revolution—quite frankly, my rural parents believe it is the education dissolution—endeavouring to develop a program that will give some equity between children of city based parents and children of country based parents? Why is it that those in the bush have to fight tooth and nail to get a tertiary education, given that we say so much in this place about the lack of professional services in rural Australia?

Why wouldn’t a minister with so much foresight, as she insists on telling us, understand that one of the first solutions to getting professionals into rural Australia would be to allow rural Australians to be educated to a professional level and to then go back and serve their communities? It seems to me a perfectly logical conclusion. But we see nothing of it. We see instead a draconian impact on the lives of those students where this mean-spirited minister says: ‘Even though you have abided by the rules, and you intend to qualify under those rules for independent youth allowance, from January next year you will not qualify. You are out in the cold.’

Mr Deputy Speaker, you may believe that this is simply my point of view, but I have received a great deal of correspondence on this matter. It will not surprise you, if you listened to the presentation of petitions in the House today, you would have heard an announcement of hundreds and hundreds of petitions all pertaining to youth allowance and access to tertiary institutions. One letter that is worth quoting from comes from constituents of mine in Karratha, Western Australia. It says in part:

My oldest daughter is in her first year at Curtin University studying speech pathology and has recently completed and passed her first semester exams. My daughter’s intention is to complete her degree and return to Karratha with her qualifications and live and work in the town she calls home. My younger daughter is currently in year 12 and is on track for a university placing next year. She hopes to move into the science field of some sort, specifically in the animal sciences. She, too, plans to return to Karratha, when she has completed her studies, to live and work. As children growing up in a rural area, they are well aware of the shortages in service that country people experience every day. They have developed a sense of loyalty to the town they live in and would love to return something back to that community. As such, their wish is to return to the town with qualifications that will assist the community, and obviously give them a comfortable lifestyle that will allow them to live in an incredibly expensive town such as Karratha.

Unfortunately, the cost of keeping our children in school—and now, university—has reached a point where my wife and I are struggling beyond our financial means. Our older daughter, along with a large study load, has worked to support herself to the best of her ability. She will meet the current requirements to qualify for the independent youth allowance, which will obviously reduce our financial burden if it were to remain in its present form. The changes to the current structure will prevent her from qualifying for the allowance as she will not have been working for a full 18 months before the end of 2009. Along with punishing us, it also decreases the time available for our daughter to study as she is required to work longer hours in order to keep herself.

The stopping of this allowance for my older daughter, and subsequently my other children as they commence their tertiary studies, will make living in the country financially unsustainable for my wife and I. Without the support of this allowance we will be required to move to Perth and I will be forced to work away from the family home, possibly as a fly-in, fly-out worker in the north-west in order to provide for my family. By moving to Perth, our children will be able to live in the family home and therefore reduce the burden of supporting them in other accommodation and all the expenses that come with young adults living away from their parents. With their parents and siblings in Perth, it is very unlikely that our children will return to the country. Once again, the rural community will suffer through the further erosion by government of opportunities to bring professional services to the country.

In case the minister does not believe that that is a reasonable testimonial, let me quote from the Victorian Parliament’s education and training committee—I might add chaired by Labor member Geoff Howard, and with the effect of a Labor majority. It investigated the issue of rural disadvantage in relation to the government’s youth allowance measures. That committee’s report was supported unanimously by its participants. On this issue it commented:

The committee believes that the removal of the main workforce participation route will have a disastrous effect on the young people in rural and regional areas.

That is a group of the same colour, if you like, that understands that rural kids are disadvantaged when it comes to accessing tertiary education.

This debate about the quality of tertiary education and the bells and whistles that may be attached or may be removed or whatever is of little consequence if students cannot access that tertiary education. What we need, as I have said before, is a fund that will support tertiary students, similar to the currently available assistance for isolated children, that each year will give a student living further than 50 kilometres from a tertiary institution assistance to provide themselves with food and shelter—food and shelter that would be automatically available if that student were the child of a city based family.

I do not know why we have survived so many years as a parliamentary institution without recognising this difference. It has always been the case. Since HECS was introduced, we have had this maintained disadvantage, this inequity, this uneven playing field where country students have to fight tooth and nail to get themselves up to the same level as city based students. The minister has made much of the new access to an accommodation scholarship of $4,000 in the first year and $1,000 thereafter. Consider a three-year university degree. That gives you $1,750 a year to feed and shelter yourself, as a variation from a city based student. What is truly laughable—or it would be if it were not so serious—is that this minister seriously believes that that is levelling the playing field, that by giving somebody $1,750 a year they will now be able to go to the big smoke, find a bed and feed themselves for the year. If you put that to a person who is living in the city, they would say, ‘No way, Jose; it cannot be done.’ (Time expired)

James Bidgood (Dawson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Higher Education Support Amendment (2009 Budget Measures) Bill 2009. This bill is about increasing funding for our universities and supporting the removal of caps on some student places. The bill also increases the cap on overenrolment of Commonwealth supported places from five per cent to 10 per cent, in funding terms, for 2010 and 2011.

The amendments to the act will support an increase in the participation of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and will have significant benefits for families from low socioeconomic groups. There will be flow-on effects of higher education aspiration and attainment for both the students and their families, including improved future employment, economic and social outcomes. Through this bill, the Rudd government is launching a reform agenda for higher education that will transform the scale, potential and quality of the nation’s universities and open the doors of higher education to a new generation of Australians. More people can go to university as a result of this bill, and that must be a good thing.

I am passionate about education. I believe in lifelong learning and believe that as many eligible and willing people should go to university as possible. Having taken on a trade as a young man, it was as an adult that I enrolled at a correspondence university and completed a bachelor of science honours degree in social science over six years by education through the Open University. I truly do understand the benefit a university education can have for those who are willing and able to undertake the study.

Through this bill, the government is giving more people the opportunity to study than ever before. This bill will improve the financial sustainability of our universities, guaranteeing quality in a system that delivers funding for growth and participation by students from all walks of life and recognises the vital importance of research. I am particularly proud that the bill introduces landmark measures to improve the rate of participation in higher education by students from a disadvantaged background. The bill amends the act to provide for an increase in funding to address Australia’s historically poor record in increasing participation by students from a low socioeconomic background. Our commitment to ensure that, by 2020, 20 per cent of higher education enrolments at the undergraduate level will be of people from a low socioeconomic background is furthered with the provisions in this bill.

The injection of additional funding for universities will support these targets. From 2012, universities will receive performance funding if they meet their targets and agree to new targets for the forthcoming funding period. The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency will provide an independent assessment of whether universities have met their targets. The funding will be fair and assessed fairly.

The bill amends the act to introduce a demand driven system of Commonwealth supported places from 2012 with transitional arrangements in 2010 and 2011. The bill also includes a new structural adjustment fund to support continuing transformation in the sector. The structural adjustment fund will be available to universities and will enable them to develop diverse missions.

In conclusion, this initiative is encouraging excellence in our universities and continuous improvement across the breadth of our higher education sector. It is also about fairness. Fairness is assured, as universities will be working to achieve the targets that they have negotiated for themselves. I commend this bill to the House.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I indicate that the opposition will be supporting the Higher Education Support Amendment (2009 Budget Measures) Bill 2009. However, we have substantial reservations about the timing of this debate. One of the consequences of this bill is the abolition of the Commonwealth scholarship programs. The government wishes to replace those scholarships as a part of its changes to the youth allowance arrangements. We all know that those changes are contentious, and the opposition have indicated that we will be moving amendments to them when the government introduces that bill. The Greens have announced their opposition to sections of that bill, which I expect we will see in the very short term future.

However, those changes, to be detailed in the forthcoming Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill, are inextricably related to the abolition of Commonwealth Scholarships in this bill. It is quite unreasonable for the government to expect the parliament to abolish the existing Commonwealth Scholarships when they have yet even to introduce legislation providing for their replacements.

We know, by the way, that there are problems with the government’s changes to youth allowance too. The abolition of the workforce participation route for youth allowance eligibility as an independent will make it harder for thousands of young people from rural and regional families to go to university—a debate that we have been traversing in this House over the last week and a half of the sitting. Young people in rural and regional Australia have to move to the city if they are to pursue further study and are not necessarily able to rely on financial support from their parents, even if their parents’ income or assets mean that they are ineligible for youth allowance under the parental means test. There would be many such young people in the electorate of Mallee—

John Forrest (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear!

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and the electorate of Deputy Speaker Scott. The government’s own figures show that 30,000 students will be denied youth allowance under these changes, beginning next year. The Deputy Prime Minister is clearly out of touch with the issues confronting rural and regional Australia, and unfortunately she has demonstrated that in the chamber in answers to questions today, yesterday and indeed over the last sitting week. In fact, before the parliament rose after the budget session the Deputy Prime Minister indicated a complete lack of understanding of the issues that young rural and regional Australians face. On the Q&A program on the ABC about 10 days ago, the Deputy Prime Minister affected a Marie Antoinette approach to this problem by virtually saying that young people should eat cake and she could not understand what they were complaining about.

The Deputy Prime Minister’s changes fly in the face of her rhetoric about increasing higher education participation from all sections of the community. They will actively discourage rural and regional students from attending university. Many of those rural and regional students currently access the scholarships that are being abolished in this bill. We are not satisfied that the replacement arrangements are adequate. While we are allowing this bill to pass through to the Senate, it is clearly unsatisfactory that it is being debated in isolation of the youth allowance changes. If the government had any integrity then the minister would finally introduce her long-awaited Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill so that these bills might be considered together.

Putting aside the scholarships issue for the moment, the Higher Education Support Amendment (2009 Budget Measures) Bill is the legislative instrument that delivers the measures included in the government’s response to the Bradley review. By no means does this bill represent an implementation of the recommendations in the Bradley review, as the minister has often characterised the changes. For one thing there is significantly less funding for the higher education sector than was recommended by Professor Denise Bradley. The Bradley review contained 42 recommendations covering a wide range of issues—from funding arrangements to allocation of places, quality frameworks, student support mechanisms, support for increased participation from disadvantaged and lower SES groups, increased encouragement of philanthropy, the extension of certain forms of government support to private institutions and other matters.

The Bradley review also set out ambitious targets for increased participation in the higher education sector—for 40 per cent of all 25- to 34-year-olds to hold a qualification of at least bachelor level by 2020. Australia’s current rate is 29 per cent. Targets were also set for participation amongst low SES Australians and other disadvantaged groups. By 2020, it is proposed that 20 per cent of all undergraduate enrolments in higher education be students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. To achieve this it was proposed that:

All qualified individuals will have an entitlement to undertake an undergraduate qualification unlimited in duration or value …

Such a system allows institutions flexibility to decide the courses they will offer and the number of students they will admit.

It is effectively a deregulation on places, which is to be applauded. It is difficult to imagine that the Labor Party would ever have supported such a market approach when in opposition, so this new flexibility is to be commended. However, the government will still dictate how much a degree will cost, meaning that those universities that are able to attract higher numbers of high-value international students will always have a significant resource advantage.

No review is perfect, and a number of Professor Bradley’s recommendations were criticised as being inadequate, contradictory or missing the point in certain areas by commentators and some stakeholders. However, even most critics of the review expressed a preference that a number of its measures be supported. The total cost of implementing all measures contained in the Bradley review would have amounted to approximately $6 billion to $7 billion in new funding over four years.

The government initially said it would respond to the Bradley review in February or March. In early February, Minister Gillard announced she would be having a review of the Bradley review, involving roundtable discussions with stakeholders. It is worth noting that during this period the government announced its second stimulus package in which it spent all of the money that might otherwise have been directed to higher education. This is typical of the government’s low prioritisation of higher education, as pink batts and cash handouts took priority over many of the Bradley review’s recommendations.

During March, Minister Gillard gave two speeches supposedly announcing the government’s response to the Bradley review. In reality, apart from indicating that they would be following the student based entitlement recommendation and that they would commit to meeting the Bradley review’s student participation targets—although their commitment to lifting the graduation rate of all 25- to 34-year-olds to 40 per cent was pushed back from 2020 to 2025—the government made no funding commitments, promising instead to do so in the budget.

The Deputy Prime Minister’s claim that the Labor government’s budget package is providing $5.7 billion in new money for universities is clearly a sham. Out of the supposed $5.7 billion in budget initiatives for universities, $2.99 billion is to be taken from a massive raid on the Education Investment Fund—a smash and grab on a fund that was designed and paid for by the previous government as the Higher Education Endowment Fund. Much of this funding was specifically targeted towards research projects. Of this package, $750 million is for ‘future rounds’ of funding for EIF projects, and $400 million of the EIF funding was directed towards environmental initiatives.

None of that EIF money is new money. It is all money that was able to be put away by the previous coalition government as a result of our sensible economic management and our retirement of debt—a concept quite unknown to this government. Therefore budget increases have been $1.2 billion for research and only $1.5 billion for teaching at universities, significantly less than the $6.7 billion recommended by Professor Bradley.

New funding is significantly biased towards expenditure in 2013. In the current financial year there is only an extra $246 million in new funding for teaching measures. This is unfortunately symptomatic of the government’s low prioritisation of higher education. They have been spending money like Paris Hilton on a shopping spree in New York, as the Leader of the Opposition would say, but they still have not returned to universities the money that was ripped out of the system by the abolition of full-fee-paying domestic places last year.

Moving along to the other aspects of this legislation, the coalition is pleased to note that the Labor Party has cast aside some of the ideological shackles so apparent in our Prime Minister’s regular essays to move towards a slightly more demand driven higher education system. The coalition supports the moves towards a more deregulated higher education sector, with more flexibility for institutions and more responsiveness to student demand. It is not a perfect system, and it is certainly not a perfect model, but it is an improvement. We would have appreciated Labor’s support for such reform when they were in opposition, but we welcome their late conversion to a more demand driven system.

Measures in this bill include: removing the government imposed cap on numbers of students in courses offered by universities from 2012, after a transition period that lifts the cap slightly in 2011—this is expected to lead to an extra 50,000 students undertaking undergraduate study over the four years, at a cost of $490.6 million; the creation of the new Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency—$60.8 million over four years; making more generous the indexation measures on basic funding to universities, at a cost of $577.6 million over four years; providing performance based grants of $206.4 million over two years from 2011-13 and grants to universities delivering on equity outcomes of $436.9 million—some of these grants programs replace similarly targeted programs of the previous government, in line with recommendations of the Bradley review; increased funding provisions for research programs—$512 million over four years; increase in postgraduate awards from $20,427 in 2009 to $22,500 in 2010; and, of course, the removal of a number of Commonwealth Scholarships programs—a budget saving of $709.8 million over four years. This saving offsets a number of new student support measures which, as I said before, are not included in this bill. These amendments go some way towards delivering on the recommendations of Professor Bradley’s review, although many Bradley recommendations have been ignored and this amounts to a very slight deregulation of the tertiary sector.

The coalition supports these changes, although we are very concerned that the Commonwealth Scholarships are being abolished when the bill introducing their replacements is yet to be introduced into the parliament. The coalition believes that the government should move immediately to introduce their Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill, which provides for the replacement programs for the Commonwealth Scholarships, so that the measures may be considered concurrently in the Senate. The coalition will support the second reading of this bill, but I put on the record our grave reservations about abolishing Commonwealth Scholarships without at the same time putting in place their replacement. I hope the government will consider what I have said and move to introduce that bill so it can be debated concurrently in the Senate. The government will have the opportunity to correct that situation when the abolition of the scholarships are being debated without the introduction of their replacement by ensuring that, before this bill goes to the Senate, that bill is introduced into this place. We would encourage them to do so.

I am sure constituents in Maranoa, Mallee and all across regional and rural Australia are hoping the government will address in that bill their very real concerns about the changes to Youth Allowance. The coalition has highlighted at least two. There are many. For the government to move the goal posts halfway through the gap year of students who planned their futures around rules that were relevant at the time they made those decisions would be described by many as retrospectivity, which the coalition does not support. Others would describe it as simply unfair and un-Australian.

I am sure there are members of the House on the other side of this place—the member for Flynn, the member for Capricornia, the member for Bendigo, the member for Ballarat, the member for Macquarie, the member for Hunter, the member for Richmond, the member for Page, the member for Wakefield, members for places in Tasmania, like Lyons and others, the member for Forde, and the member for Dawson, who just spoke in this debate and was uncharacteristically silent on the issue of Youth Allowance—who are being inundated in their electorates by young people and by their families, who are deeply and genuinely concerned about the opportunities for their children to get higher education being ripped out from underneath them without any notice and without the opportunity to replan their future in higher education.

Young people in rural and regional areas have already been identified by the previous government and accepted by this government as officially disadvantaged and underrepresented in terms of their access to higher education. The changes to Youth Allowance will make that situation much worse. People in their gap year immediately come to mind as students who will now no longer be able to go to universities because they will not be able to access youth allowance.

Putting aside the grotesque retrospectivity of that move, another aspect of the government’s changes is to require students to have worked 30 hours a week for 18 months in a two-year period to be able to access youth allowance. People in rural and regional Australia know instinctively that that will hurt their families and their young people. Labor members on the other side of the House, from right across the spectrum but particularly from rural areas, must know that young people in country areas will find it virtually impossible to find jobs in which they can work 30 hours a week for 18 months to access the independent rate of youth allowance. It indicates how out of touch the government are—they do not realise that they are making a group of disadvantaged people even more disadvantaged in their opportunity to be represented in higher education.

The coalition have said that we would immediately accept the government pushing the date for the beginning of their changes to youth allowance out to 1 January 2011, from 1 January 2010. That would give everybody in their gap year the opportunity to begin higher education as they had planned at the beginning of 2009. It would cost money, and for that reason we have said that we believe the start-up scholarships for all young people who access youth allowance should be cut from $2,254 to $1,000. That would give the government the money to do so without punching a hole in the side of their budget. We have also said that the government—and we will come up with recommendations arising out of the Senate inquiry into this matter—should have a $120 million scheme for rural and regional scholarships for students to relocate to the places where they wish to undertake higher education. There is also a small amount of money necessary for the children of veterans. Finally, we have said that in government, in 12 months time, we will fix the 30-hour-a-week work test, which used to be 15 hours a week.

I can see members on the other side nodding and recognising that the opposition’s requests are not unreasonable. They are recognising that there is a problem which their minister refuses to acknowledge or see but which they are recognising in their rural and regional seats. I am thinking of the member for Dawson, the member for Capricornia, the member for Flynn, the member for Lingiari, the member for Wakefield, the member for Lyons, the member for Bendigo, the member for Ballarat, the member for Corangamite, the member for Hunter, the member for Macquarie, the member for Richmond, the member for Page and the member for Eden-Monaro. Right across the Labor members in rural areas, they recognise that the Deputy Prime Minister needs to actually listen.

The Deputy Prime Minister always believes that she is right about everything—it must be incredibly vexing for other members of the cabinet. The Deputy Prime Minister is always right about everything, but on this occasion she is entirely wrong. Members on this side of the House know that. There must be members from rural areas on the other side of the House who know it. And for the good of young people in rural and regional Australia the Deputy Prime Minister must swallow her pride, put her vanity aside for at least one decision and change these youth allowance reforms in order to give young people in rural and regional areas the same opportunity that their city counterparts have to access higher education.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Higher Education Support Amendment (2009 Budget Measures) Bill 2009, and I have a great deal of pleasure in doing so. This bill implements a suite of measures which complement the government’s national education reforms and which also advance the Rudd government’s education revolution—an education revolution which has seen the Rudd government commit over $62 billion to the schools sector over the period 2009-12. That is an 85 per cent rise, or close to double the $33.5 million invested in the last four years of the Howard government. It is a $62 billion investment that includes $14.7 billion for the greatest school modernisation program in the nation’s history, with every one of Australia’s 9,500-plus primary and secondary schools eligible for capital works funding. I am pleased to say that about $100 million of that has gone to almost 50 schools in the electorate of Makin, which I represent. The $62 billion also includes $970 million allocated over five years to provide 15 hours per week for 40 weeks of preschool education for every child. It also includes $2 billion of school computer funding for secondary schools. Again I note that over 1,900 computers, at a cost of almost $2 million, have been allocated to secondary schools in my electorate of Makin.

The package also includes $2.5 billion of funding for trade training centres, $2 billion of funding for 711,000 vocational education training places, and a $6 billion investment in higher education and research infrastructure—which includes $1.1 billion for the National Super Science Initiative, which will expand key research in the science sectors of astronomy, marine science, climate science, nanotechnology and biotechnology. In fact, it is that $6 billion which effectively forms the basis of this bill.

Currently only around 32 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds attain a university degree. The Rudd government, through its investment in education, has set a target of 40 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds attaining a university degree by the year 2025. On 4 August I was a guest of the Chancellor of the University of South Australia, Dr Ian Gould, when I attended a University of South Australia graduation ceremony in Adelaide. The pride and the sense of tremendous accomplishment glowed in the faces of every graduate as they stepped forward to be handed their degree. It really brings joy to your heart to see people, having gone through almost a lifetime of education in their case, finally being given the ultimate certificate that they had been chasing. So it is important for us as a nation to try to ensure that more and more people are given the opportunity to be able to step up and accept that degree, as the hundreds of students did at that graduation ceremony two weeks ago when I was there.

As we all know, education does not start at primary school. Nor does it stop when you leave secondary school. For many young people, formal education ends well before the completion of secondary school. Across Australia, less than 75 per cent of students complete year 12. For students from low socioeconomic areas, only 59 per cent of students complete year 12. That in itself is cause for concern, because, without completing secondary school, entry into university becomes highly unlikely.

In response to this issue, the Rudd government is partnering with the states in a compact for young Australians. The compact means that every Australian aged under 25 not currently working will be provided with a guaranteed education or training place. The compact also brings forward $100 million of reward payments from the federal government to meet the goal of achieving a national year 12 attainment rate of 90 per cent by the year 2015.

Of course, failure to complete secondary school is not the only barrier to university education. For those young people who come from low socioeconomic communities there are many other barriers that need to be overcome. Those barriers have most likely been with them throughout their primary and secondary school years and are often the very cause of their inability to complete secondary school.

It is widely accepted that a good education is one of the greatest gifts a young person can be given. To quote Nelson Mandela:

Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.

Investing in education is not just about investing in individuals. It is as much an investment in the future of our nation, because a better educated nation is more productive and more prosperous. Young people from low socioeconomic communities who do not maximise their educational ability are limiting not only their own options in life but also their productive contribution to the nation. That is why I particularly welcome the commitment in this bill to provide support for students from low socioeconomic areas.

I have been associated with several groups working in the northern region of Adelaide tasked with the difficult challenge of tackling the associated issues of raising secondary school retention rates and increasing university participation amongst children who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Many of these students, to use Nelson Mandela’s analogy, are the sons and daughters of factory workers, cleaners, farm workers and unemployed parents. In the northern region of Adelaide, university participation rates for young people are at around 16 per cent, or 10 per cent lower than that of the metropolitan area of Adelaide. Over the years, I have been associated with industry leaders who have difficulty in securing the suitably skilled and qualified employees needed to grow their businesses. I have served on advisory groups with secondary school principals who are working diligently to raise the retention rates within their schools, and I have been a member of the University of South Australia’s northern Adelaide partnerships group tasked with the challenge of attracting more young people from low socioeconomic areas into tertiary education. All of these efforts are making encouraging progress. However, we can certainly do more.

I will take a moment to address some of the key measures in this bill that will increase participation at university amongst students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. These measures will work in partnership with and complement the existing programs I have just outlined being run by schools, industries and universities. The bill has a specific target for universities to meet. By the year 2020 the aim is for 20 per cent of people involved in higher education to be from groups that are underrepresented in the system. These underrepresented groups include Indigenous Australians as well as those from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

In order to meet this target, the government has allocated $108 million over four years for a new partnership program to link schools in low socioeconomic areas with universities and vocational education and training providers. The intention of the partnerships program is to increase the aspirations of students of low socioeconomic status to higher education. The intent is to create links between schools and universities and to expose students to people, places and opportunities beyond the scope of their own experiences. Programs might include scholarships, mentoring of teachers and students, curriculum and teaching support or hands-on activities run by university staff in the schools.

A further $325 million will be provided to universities as a financial incentive to expand their enrolment of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and to provide the intensive support students from such backgrounds require, including mentoring, counselling, greater financial assistance and academic support. There is no point in encouraging these students to enter higher education if, once they get there, the support services are not provided to assist them to complete their studies. Better measures of low socioeconomic status will also be developed which are based on the circumstances of the individual students and their families. Performance funding to universities will be based in part on how effective institutions are in attracting these students.

There are other measures within this bill that provide additional support to specific groups of students that I will also briefly address. The first of these is for Australian students who as part of their degree choose to study for a period at an overseas institution. Under this bill, the government will remove the 20 per cent loan fee on overseas help loans to make it easier for students to study part of their course at an overseas institution. The removal of this fee means students now have less to repay long term, should they choose to study overseas for a time. Overseas study partnerships provide a range of benefits to the student and to the university. Firstly, it gives the student a wider experience during their degree. Secondly, the student, upon graduation, may be more attractive to a potential employer because of their language skills and the cross-cultural experience gained during their study. Thirdly, cultural awareness is raised and, fourthly, universities and the Australian economy benefit from international students coming to study here.

The support for Australians studying overseas has particular relevance for universities in my own state of South Australia, as many of the degrees offered, such as international studies or international business at the University of South Australia, either encourage or even mandate that their students complete a semester overseas as part of their degree.

Debate interrupted.