Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tertiary education brings invaluable benefits not only to those who pursue a degree but also to the nation. Our Australian universities are world class. Our top-performing institutions consistently rank in the top 50 in the world. Our Group of Eight research-intensive universities are at the forefront of research and innovation. I am proud that my electorate of Ryan is home to the University of Queensland, an institution which is world renowned. It is said that the purpose of education is to turn an empty mind into an open one. As a nation, we should and do take pride in the calibre of our universities. That is why it is important that we encourage participation in tertiary education and break down the barriers for students who want to obtain a degree. It takes commitment and dedication to complete a university degree and for young people especially that commitment and dedication may also prove to be a sacrifice. It is difficult to put a price on the many benefits a tertiary education brings: higher earning potential, increased and diverse opportunities, and perhaps most importantly the ability to analyse and to be encouraged and enthused to learn.

The Higher Education Support Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2012 in items 1 to 9 is intended to 'clarify the application and operation of the indexation provisions of the Higher Education Support Act'. As a result of the government's delay, the original service and amenities amendments were not passed by the parliament. Therefore, instead of an original commencement date of 1 January 2010 with subsequent indexation, the start date will now be 1 January 2012. In line with the government's keen intent to take as much money as possible from tertiary students in Australia, the fee as at 1 January 2012 is $263 and indexation will occur from 2013.

Some might say that this is a very minor amendment, that the bill is only about some minor details. But most Australians are learning to their cost that this government is really not very good with attention to detail, especially financial ones. This is a government which still has not told Australians who the so-called top 500 companies are who will be the basis of revenue gathering under the carbon tax—another minor financial detail. And we know the Gillard Labor government was not really paying very much attention when it began to rack up more than $167 billion of accumulated deficits—more minor financial details.

Today, the government are paying a lot of attention, however, to one financial detail: making sure they increase the student amenities fee from $250 per semester to $263. And yet again there will be no choice in the matter—it is a compulsory charge for every single student. Whether you are full time or part time or perhaps only doing one subject after hours one evening a week, depending on your institution you will also pay the same.

In the past, this government under former Prime Minister Rudd demonstrated that, far from being about a fair go, it would not even allow people in this country the choice about how to improve their lives. It removed full-fee-paying places in universities. Under that program, students had the option to pay upfront for their degree. By abolishing that program, it took away a source of funding for universities to reinvest in their students—another minor financial detail.

Australians are already doing it tough and full-time students are one of the worst affected by cost-of-living pressures. And it is not always possible to work more to cover your costs when students are also supposed to be devoting 40 hours a week to their studies. If members opposite had spent more time in their classes at university and less time at their union offices, they would be aware of this. Yes, payments can be deferred through FEE-HELP, but we know that there is no such thing as a free lunch, so in the future students will then incur an interest bill from the government for their FEE-HELP debt.

So the consequence of this increase to fees is another contribution to Australia's net debt. The Labor government have already accumulated $167 billion in deficits, so I guess that their approach is, 'Well, what's a little more added to Australia's bill?'—yet another minor detail.

The coalition does care. This is why, when we form government, we will look to review this service-and-amenities fee, just as the Howard government did. The government want to maintain the proposition that this is a very minor bill, but it will cause major problems for the tertiary education system as well as the science and research industry in this nation. Reintroducing compulsory student unionism by proxy was bad enough, but the Labor government also halved the rate of upfront discounts for students from 20 per cent to 10 per cent and they halved the reduction for voluntary payments in excess of the minimum requirement. They changed the conditions under which a student is eligible to receive Centrelink benefits to make it virtually impossible for them to get a job, work hard earning money and then study knowing that they have the support of their government. Tertiary students in Australia are not supported by the Labor government.

The Labor government have abandoned their commitment to NCRIS, the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, implemented by the Howard government in 2005. The NCRIS provided $542 million between 2005 and 2011 so that universities could actually ensure they had access to world-class technology with which to do their research. Even more importantly, this program meant that world-class professors and researchers had a reason to come to Australia to do their research and to share their knowledge with Australian scientists. In 2011, the government threatened to cut more than $200 million from medical research. In 2012, they are cutting the funding by stealth by not recommitting to this very critical scheme. Knowing the poor and reckless financial mismanagement that the government practises, I would be very concerned if even a single dollar were being taken by them from taxpayers. In a small way, it is fortunate that the money goes directly to the university. It is even more fortunate for the residents of Ryan at the University of Queensland that there is a very professional and well-organised team managing the student union who I know will spend the funds wisely and judiciously. I have spoken before in this House of their very laudable successes. Indeed, many businesspeople have commented to me after their dealings with the University of Queensland Liberal Club and Fresh team that they would be more than delighted to employ them in their own companies.

Our university sector is vital and student choice is critical to its success. Education is our children's future, but equally it is our nation's future. Every barrier we remove will be repaid countless times over. Every step we as a nation take to improve access to education will open not just minds but hope, reward and opportunity.

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Higher Education Support Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2012. This bill is a straightforward but necessary bill to clarify some aspects of the Higher Education Support Act, which, among other things, is the vehicle by which our universities are provided with Commonwealth government funding.

To start with, the bill clears up some problems relating to indexation arrangements that arose due to the passage in 2010 of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Indexation) Act. That act had the effect of introducing some ambiguities into the application and operation of the indexation provisions of the Higher Education Support Act. Specifically, the indexation arrangements cleared up in this bill are for amounts including Commonwealth contribution amounts under the Commonwealth Grant Scheme, maximum student contribution amounts, the FEE-HELP limit, the maximum OS-HELP amount, and the maximum amount of the student services and amenities fee on 1 January 2011. The bill makes it clear that indexation should have been applied to all amounts in the act on 1 January 2011, as provided for under the previous indexation provisions. It also makes clear that the amounts that are indexed on 1 January 2012 are the 2011 indexed amounts.

As I said, the bill is technical in nature but nonetheless the changes included in it will benefit the higher education sector in Australia—and, indeed, you could say that about any bill that the government brings into the parliament relating to higher education. We have been determined as a government to undo the damage done to the sector by the Howard government—damage that started with savage cuts in 1996 and continued as that government pursued a course of chronic underinvestment in universities coupled with constant meddling in their internal administration. This government, in contrast, sees universities as important partners in an agenda that recognises education in all its forms as core to achieving our objectives for economic prosperity and social equity in this country.

Following the advice of the Bradley review we have set ambitious targets for participation in higher education in the medium term. By 2025 we want 40 per cent of Australian 25- to 34-year-olds to have a bachelor level qualification or higher degree. It was with great pleasure that I noted the announcement earlier this month by the education minister that we have achieved significant progress on that measure. Thanks to the government's investment in the higher education sector and much fairer and more generous support for students, there has been a 27 per cent increase in the number of student places at universities since 2007, or an increase of 150,000 extra university students in Australia.

There are further targets for universities to meet in terms of the participation and graduation of people from traditionally underrepresented groups, such as Indigenous people and those from low-socioeconomic backgrounds as well as those from rural areas. I just note in that regard the announcement by my local university, CQ University, just last week of its appointment of the first Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Indigenous Engagement, Dr Bronwyn Fredericks, and welcome Bronwyn back to Central Queensland to take up that very, very important position at the university and one which is going to open up incredible opportunities for Indigenous people throughout Queensland.

The targets that I have talked about are bold targets and they have been matched by equally bold reforms to help the higher education sector to meet them. Chief among those is the shift from 1 January this year to demand-driven funding. No longer will the Commonwealth government decide how many students will study what course at which university, effectively setting caps on course numbers according to how many Commonwealth funded places go to each university; instead, under the demand-driven funding model, universities are free to make their own decisions about how many students they are prepared to enrol in particular courses. Students who meet those enrolment requirements set by a university will attract Commonwealth funding to match those enrolments.

Such a big change has required universities to think about what they have to offer and what they need to do to meet the needs of students in the broader community. To help universities make that transition, the government has made available structural adjustment funding and numerous rounds of funding to boost infrastructure and to reward quality teaching. I am pleased to say that my local university, CQ University, has received a handsome share of that structural adjustment funding in a very competitive and rigorous assessment process. So the education reforms that I have talked about are evident in our region in a very tangible way.

In response to the reform agenda under way in the higher education sector and to the economic growth going on in our region, CQ University has looked closely at how it can best meet the needs of local industries and communities and provide opportunities for people wanting to fill the skills gaps that exist in so many important occupations in Central Queensland. One way the university is doing that is by greatly increasing the courses on offer in allied health disciplines. Last year the university established programs in ultrasound and sonography, nutrition, mental health nursing, paramedic science, pathology and clinical investigation, among others. These new courses have proved popular, with enrolments meeting the first year targets and continuing to demonstrate strong support from students in 2012.

I am pleased to say that these courses have now been added to. In 2012 the first students were welcomed into courses including physiotherapy, podiatry, speech pathology, chiropractic and occupational therapy. I note that one of the amendments in this bill makes a change to the definition of 'a course of study in dentistry'. Students are able to use FEE-HELP to pay their tuition fees up to the amount of the FEE-HELP limit. There is a higher amount of FEE-HELP available to students enrolled in certain courses, including dentistry. For example, the general FEE-HELP limit in 2012 is $89,706. However, the limit is higher for those students enrolled in a course of study in either veterinary science, medicine and dentistry—up to an amount of just over $112,000.

The important point in this bill is to clarify exactly what is meant by a course of study in dentistry or veterinary science. The change means that only students undertaking courses of study in dentistry or veterinary science that satisfy a minimum academic requirement for registration as a dentist or vet surgeon are eligible for that higher FEE-HELP limit. Students undertaking courses of study that lead to registration as a specialist—in other words, going beyond those minimum registration requirements—are not entitled to the higher FEE-HELP limit.

The reference in this bill to a course in dentistry caught my eye because one of the courses that CQ University has been working very hard to make available from the start of 2012 is a degree in oral health. Graduates from the oral health program will be oral health therapists, qualified to perform preventative and operative dentistry—things like examination, risk assessment, diagnosis of periodontal disease and dental caries, scaling and cleaning, and oral hygiene instruction. This is the only oral health degree program being offered in Queensland. It has shifted from Griffith University, where that university has elected to concentrate on its dentistry program and close down its oral health degree. CQ University has now picked that up.

There are 28 students enrolled in this first year of the degree at CQU. The program has strong links into the sector with clinical placements being made available within Queensland Health, including access to two dental chairs in the school dental service and access to two chairs at the community dental clinic at the base hospital. An additional 12 dental chairs will be located at the CQ University public health clinic. The public health clinic is central to the university's major investment in allied health and it is something I am pleased to say has been strongly supported by our government.

The Gillard government is funding the $20 million needed to establish the allied health clinic. That is $6 million from Health Workforce Australia and $14 million from the Structural Adjustment Fund. This facility will allow students in disciplines like physiotherapy, podiatry, speech pathology and oral health to participate in supervised clinical placements in the on-campus clinic. Members of the public will be able to access the clinic for treatment, taking pressure off waiting lists for so many allied health services at the same time as supporting our health professionals of the future.

This clinic will make a really significant contribution to health care in the Rockhampton region. It will allow us to train our own home-grown allied health professionals with a much higher chance that they will stay and practice in the region and relieve the chronic shortages that we have suffered in so many areas of health care. Those students will gain their clinical skills by treating members of the public under appropriate supervision, so the addition to our overall health services will be felt immediately.

Heading up the oral health school is someone who is no stranger to Parliament House and this chamber. I thought those members who have been around for a while—not quite the new parliamentary secretary at the table, Ms Bird, who came a bit later, but certainly the member for Lingiari, the Minister for Veterans' Affairs—might like to know that Leonie Short, the former member for Ryan, has joined Central Queensland University as an associate professor. She has guided the new course through its accreditation and now has the satisfaction of overseeing the progress of those 28 new oral health students. I know how lucky we are to have someone of Leonie's experience, not to mention her passion for education, taking the lead on this program. I welcome her to Rockhampton and wish her and her team all the best in getting the oral health degree firmly established as a top choice for students in Central Queensland.

I mentioned at the start of this speech that the bill seeks to clarify the application of indexation provisions in the act for a range of amounts relevant to the higher education sector. One of those amounts is the student services and amenities fee that we have heard so much about from our friends opposite. The fee, of up to $263 per year, can now be charged by universities to offset the cost of providing student services and amenities. I will list some of those because we did not hear any of them from the other side with their obsession with political campaigns and student unions. These fees go to things like child care, food outlets, legal services and sporting facilities on our university campuses.

The fee was reinstated with the passage last year of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2011. The battle over a student services fee has been a long one. In fact, it is a battle that most of the opposition MPs have been fighting since their own university days and, as evidenced by this debate, even now you just have to say the words 'student union' and you will have them in a lather. Right on cue, as classes commenced for the year at CQ University, the member for Dawson and the member for Flynn put out their template press releases having a go at their local university for asking students to pay a fee for a range of services made available to them on those campuses.

I will describe for the House what these campuses are like. In Mackay and Rockhampton, two of the relevant campuses, the campuses are on the edge of those cities. They are a reasonable distance from other services such as shops, local government offices and service providers. They are not big campuses and do not have thousands and thousands of students. You are talking about much smaller numbers of students than some of the examples that have been given by other members in this debate, like Sydney University with 30,000 students. These are campuses that are a little bit removed from those cities of Rockhampton and Mackay and they do not have a lot of students able to support provision by the private sector of some of those services.

We have heard all the usual ideological arguments from the other side, and certainly from the member for Dawson and the member for Flynn in their media comments and speeches about the evils of student unions. They reminded me that probably the most overt political activity that I can remember on the CQ campus was that engaged in by the member for Dawson with his infamous editorship of The Student Advocate which among other things said how stupid women are. If you want to talk about politics at CQU the member for Dawson is probably the person to talk to.

The fact is that, by law, this student services fee cannot be used for political purposes. It is a fee that students are not required to pay upfront; rather, it can be deferred as part of their FEE-HELP debt to be paid back when they are earning graduate salaries. It is a fee that goes towards providing health services, child care, student advocacy, sporting facilities, counsellors, career advice and accommodation support. It is a fee that drew its strongest support from regional universities that have seen the biggest reductions on campus services due to the Howard government's VSU legislation. Again, the examples were given of the big city universities. They may very well be able to go and find private providers for some of these. Someone who knows a thing or two about regional campuses is the Vice-Chancellor of James Cook University, Sandra Harding, who said: 'Regional students were especially dependent on the services that had been weakened since the abolition of compulsory student union levies. Regional students are more likely to have had to move away from their families to attend university and rely more on the welfare and support services that were provided from the previous fees.'

Our regional universities, like JCU and CQU, know what they need to do to attract students and support them while they are completing their studies. On all its campuses CQU has been investing to create an environment which gives students opportunities to get involved in activities beyond the classroom and experience all that university life has to offer. The members in electorates to my north and south, Dawson and Flynn, might want to support the university and some of its applications for funding rather than take cheap shots at it in this ideological crusade.

Peter Slipper (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that this bill be now read a second time. I now give the call to the Hon. the Parliamentary Secretary for Higher Education and Skills and congratulate her on her appointment. I believe this is her maiden summing up.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Higher Education and Skills) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That would be correct, Mr Speaker, and thank you very much. I am sure my colleagues on the other side will give me lots of support in the process of doing my first summing up.

Mr Tony Smith interjecting—

I am sure you are here to help me. I thank those members who spoke on the Higher Education Support Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2012. I have had the opportunity to hear a significant number of the contributions to the debate on this bill. The bill before the House amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to clarify the application and operation of indexation arrangements in the act. It updates the definitions of 'course of study in dentistry' and 'course of study in veterinary science' and updates the Melbourne College of Divinity's name in light of its approval to operate under the title MCD University of Divinity.

The bill also allows for technical amendments to the calculation of the voluntary repayment bonus to resolve rounding issues. The terms 'course of study in dentistry' and 'course of study in veterinary science' are used to determine which students are eligible for the higher FEE-HELP limit of $112,132 in 2012. The bill would amend the definitions of 'course of study in dentistry' and 'course of study in veterinary science' to clarify that only students undertaking courses of study in dentistry or veterinary science that satisfy the minimum academic requirements for registration as a dentist, veterinary surgeon or veterinary practitioner are eligible for the higher FEE-HELP limit. The Melbourne College of Divinity has been approved by the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority to operate under the name MCD University of Divinity until 31 December 2016.

Students can make a voluntary repayment towards their HELP debt to the tax office at any time. Voluntary repayments of $500 or more currently attract a five per cent bonus on the payment amount. When calculating the effect of a person making a voluntary repayment of his or her HELP debt, the act provides for a person to obtain a five per cent bonus and includes rounding rules in calculating whether a person has repaid their debt and the amount of debt repaid if it is only a partial repayment. Currently the effect of the rounding rule is that (a) when making a full repayment the person benefits from the rounding because the amount of payment required to pay off their debt in full is reduced because the cents are rounded down; and (b) when making a partial repayment the person is disadvantaged because the value of the reduction to the outstanding debt due to a payment is rounded down. The bill amends the act to provide that when calculating the effect of a person making a partial repayment towards his or her HELP debt the amount would be rounded up to the nearest dollar. The cents would continue to be rounded down to determine the amount required for the full repayment of a person's HELP debt amount. Effectively the rounding rules will now always benefit a person making a voluntary repayment.

Many members opposite have taken the opportunity in debate on this bill to once again state their opposition to improved student services and amenities on campus, an issue canvassed by the member for Capricornia, who spoke before me. They have rehashed old flawed arguments in opposition to this bill. This government has not reintroduced compulsory student unionism. We have created a source of funding for vital student services and amenities on campus. No university is required to give any of this funding to student controlled organisations but some of them will, because some student organisations—despite all the obstacles put in their way by members opposite—deliver excellent and important services to students.

Members opposite have also suggested in the debate that this bill represents a fee hike. It simply does not. Government members, during the passage of the original bill, were clear that the maximum fee chargeable by a university would be $263 in 2012. Given the history of the Liberal Party in introducing upfront full fees for domestic undergraduates and their hints that, if they should form a future government, they will deregulate fees, it does seem a bit hypocritical that they would express such concerns about $263 that can be put on HECS and will not need to be repaid until a student is earning a good wage.

Passage of time meant that there was ambiguity in the act about the application of the indexation provisions to amounts in the act on 1 January 2011. The government made clear its intention on the indexation of these matters in both the explanatory memorandum and the debate in the parliament. These amendments do not change the intent of the parliament in passing this legislation but do add clarity in that indexation should have been applied to amounts in the act on 1 January 2011 and that the amounts that are indexed on 1 January 2012 are the 2011 indexed amounts.

The bill reflects the government's continued commitment to improving Australia's higher education sector and expanding opportunities for Australians to obtain a higher quality higher education. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.