Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable the Leader of the Opposition proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The Prime Minister Americanising our universities and condemning Australian students to a debt sentence.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For two days now, the Prime Minister has travelled around from federation lectures to the parliament pontificating about how we should all think for the long term. This Prime Minister, the most narrow, negative politician in Australian history, is now trying to lecture Australians about planning for the future. Who does this person think he is—that a leopard cannot change his spots after 20 years of relentless negativity? When their unfair budget is failing desperately, the Prime Minister seeks to run up an emergency beacon saying, 'Hang on, we want to have a sensible, mature discussion about the generations ahead.' Well, Tony Abbott, here is our advice about your sensible discussion: demonstrate your bona fides in higher education. Nothing can be more important to the future of this country than higher education and the opportunities that our young have to better themselves and to contribute to this nation.

This Prime Minister has the temerity and the cheek, and he almost convinced me that he is so out of touch except that I just do not believe him. He knows that his plan for Australia is to radically recast it and to create two Australia's. He has a chance to demonstrate—don't shake head over there, Sunshine! You know I'm right.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition is always keen to have people referred to by their proper titles and will in fact observe that.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Okay, thanks. The Prime Minister needs to come out of his hiding place. We know he never goes out to mix with real people any more. He does safe picture opportunities at medical research facilities or he talks to Liberal Party faithfuls at fundraisers—oh, that is right, he did go to the Peter McCallum after the fundraiser. The real test here today is that education is one challenge the parliament should not fail. No parliament, no government and no Tasmanian backbenchers should ever look back and say, 'We failed the test of making the education system better. I do not know how a single Tasmanian Liberal can be backing these higher education changes. Opportunity in education is a pact between generations.

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

The member for Bass is interjecting but he is not in his seat, Madam Speaker.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Bass will not interject if he is not in his seat.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Tasmanian Liberals need to stand up along with the Labor Party and understand that the solemn responsibility of every government is to pass on an education system better than the one they inherited. Now the government has abrogated this responsibility and has failed this test. Labor believes if you work hard, you get good marks, that if you can do well, you deserve to go to university. Destiny should not be predetermined by your parents' wealth or the postcode for where you live. We should be opening doors to children from the bush, to children from poor families, to first generation migrants. We should be helping mature age Australians, dislocated by economic change, to get new skills and retrain for the jobs of the future. We should be supporting the opportunity of women to get access to higher education.

Labor believes that a university system that gives every Australian the chance to fulfil their potential, to strive, to seek and to reach for higher ground, is a fair system. That is the system we built from the great Gough Whitlam onwards. It is the system that is under attack from the backward looking government, from this Prime Minister of negativity and narrowness, to the partition pretender, the education minister. Look at the schemes they want to introduce, at the changes they are creating.

A nursing degree in Victoria—that is state, by the way, members of the government. We do not expect to see the Prime Minister visit before the state election, although we hope he does. Mind you, we do not expect to see him and Premier Denis Napthine does not want to see him. A nursing degree in Victoria under the government's rules is now $23,000 over eight years. Under the Abbott empire, the Minister for Education and Prime Minister model, it will cost $63,000 over 17 years. What a marvellous contribution to education this education minister is making—$40,000 more and nine years longer to pay off!

Talk about a teaching degree in Victoria: $31,000 over nine years, under the so-called Minister for Education and the Prime Minister it will cost $81,000 over 14 years—that is, courtesy of the government, $50,000 more and five years longer to pay off.

Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Did you model that, Bill? Who did you modelling?

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Calm down, Member for Bass. I know you are upset about how I pinged you before. The other problem we have about education is the unfairness for women who take time off to start and to raise a family. They know these costs are impossible for mature age students. The students of Australia and their families, they know this government is fundamentally changing access to universities. They understand Australians. They understand exactly what this government is doing. For months and months, this education minister has been asking the divisive dog-whistling question: why should the 60 per cent of taxpayers who do not attend university contribute to the 40 per cent who do? Why should those who have not been to university contribute to the fees of those who do? The answer is simple, Minister for Education. Not all Australians are like you. They do not believe that education is just a private privilege; they believe it is a public benefit.

Australian university graduates also pay for their education not just through HECS but through their economic and social contribution. They pay to their countries and they pay to their communities. Now we see that the changes the government are making are indeed creating anxiety. The numbers at open days and the numbers of potential enrolments are down. Why should the future doctors and nurses who will keep us healthy, the teachers who will educate our children, the architects, engineers and city planners who will shape our infrastructure, the scientists who will make discoveries that will determine our future health and opportunity all be slugged with doubling and tripling of their university fees?

Australians are smart enough and generous enough to reject Liberal ideology. They understand that greater access to higher education is in fact an advantage to all of us. I have never met a parent or a grandparent who had not gone to university who begrudged the chance for their child or their grandchild to go to university. I have never met a parent or a grandparent who complains about the taxes they pay because their loved ones are getting a better start in life than they had. Anyway, we are in this debate now and higher education is absolutely one of the issues for the next election. The next election will be a referendum on the best ideas and the real vision for a prosperous and fair Australia—absolutely.

Nothing is more important to the future prosperity of our nation than education. We believe in affordable education which is accessible to all Australians. That is why we will fight to stop Tony Abbott's plan for $100,000 degrees and more. We will never support a two-tier, Americanised higher education system which divides between different levels in our society and entrenches disadvantage. This Minister for Education loves to talk about 80,000 scholarships. But he never talks about the 700,000 domestic students currently enrolled. He is proposing to provide 80,000 scholarships, but students in the remaining difference between 700,000 and 80,000 are going to pay more fees. This is not a bargain. This is a tricky, slippery Minister for Education who loves to talk about one aspect of his package but never tells the full picture.

Let's look at what the government want to do in higher education. We have seen the Minister the Education propose doubling the rate of HECS repayments. Imagine if what we did in Australia on home interest rates before an election was say, 'No problem,' and after an election, upon forming a government, we said, 'We want to double the rate of payment.' That is what this government, this education minister and Tony Abbott have done. They are changing the interest rate for HECS payments for nearly one million Australians.

This government love to talk about debt and deficit. They never talk about the debt and deficit they are putting onto ordinary Australians and their families. Labor will never consign Australians to generations of debt on higher education. Labor will never tell Australians that the quality of their education depends upon their capacity to pay. I love hearing the government members crow in disagreement and feigned outrage. Because what they know and we know and the Australian people know is that this government cannot be trusted on higher education. However loudly they complain about what we say, it does not change the truth of what we are saying.

Make no mistake: for higher education, the game is on. We will talk to every student. We will talk to every family member of every student. We will talk to the parents of secondary students. We will talk to everyone who is interested in higher education. There will be a choice at the next election. There will be a choice between this government issuing students a debt sentence by deregulating universities to the point where students simply cannot afford to go to university—shame, government, shame— (Time expired)

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

I am very pleased to respond on this matter of public importance. I thought that the fact that it was moved by the Leader of the Opposition meant that it would be a serious debate about a very serious issue: the future of Australian universities. But instead, unfortunately, I feel I have been drowning in a sea of cliches. In such circumstances, often the response is to match cliche for cliche, but on this side of the House we take government policy very seriously.

When the public elected us a year ago, they wanted to elect adults to run a serious country in a calm and methodical way—and that is exactly what we are proposing to do. In higher education, we have put on the table and passed through this House the most substantial reform to higher education since the Dawkins period, a reform that will free and deregulate universities in a way that will allow them to focus and concentrate on their areas of excellence so they can have more of them and have them be even better, so they can keep up with their Asian competitors and stay in front of them and so they can defend and grow our $15 billion international education market. Our third largest export industry, after iron ore and coal, is education, followed by gold. We take this seriously.

At the same time, we want to give Australian young people the opportunity to get a higher education qualification because, if they do, they will be able to earn 75 per cent, on average, more over their lifetimes than people without a higher education qualification. They will actually have a longer life expectancy, better health outcomes and the lowest unemployment rate of anybody in the community. We want to spread that opportunity to more Australians. We want to follow in the footsteps of Sir Robert Menzies, the real father of education in Australia.

Do not take my word for that. It was not me who first said that Sir Robert Menzies was the father of higher education in Australia. It was, in fact, Gough Whitlam, who we have been hearing a lot about in the last week since his death, in a speech to the Harvard Club of Australia in June 1973, the first year of his prime ministership. Mr Whitlam said: 'No Australian has done more to serve the cause of university education in this country than Sir Robert Menzies. Under the responsibilities accepted by his government, more young Australians were given access to universities and more money was spent to equip universities.' This was followed by Lindsay Tanner in his book of much more recent times. He wrote: 'Sir Robert Menzies began the transformation of higher education in Australia, and he helped to change attitudes to education. Thousands of Australians of my generation benefited from Gough Whitlam's university reforms, but the changes in public attitudes that helped to make them possible came from the Menzies era.' So what we on this side of the House are doing is continuing the relationship that the coalition has had with valuing and expanding higher education for decades.

In the Whitlam period of three years, so-called free education was introduced, where all taxpayers paid for the privileged few to go to university. By 1988 the Hawke and Keating government reintroduced fees, through the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, because they recognised the inequitable nature of what the Whitlam government had done. Maybe it was with good intentions, but the demographic breakdown of universities in 1988 was no different to what it had been in 1974 when so-called free education was introduced. All that had happened was that the poorest Australians had transferred wealth to the richest Australians. The same people went to university in 1988 who had gone to university in 1974. That has only changed—not because of the Whitlam period, not because of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme—because of programs implemented by the Howard government and then by the Rudd and Gillard governments to expand, in a very direct way, the access to universities of low-socio-economic students. In this reform we want to expand that; we want to continue that work. One thing that Julia Gillard did not do too badly was education reform. She was a very bad prime minister, but she did actually put in place a number of measures to expand education to low SES Australians, which we supported then and we want to expand now.

In this reform that will go before the Senate tomorrow we want to expand the demand driven system to sub-bachelor courses. These are the pathways that low-SES and mature age students typically use to get back into undergraduate degrees to improve their education. Let's put some facts on the table rather than the hyperbole of the Leader of the Opposition. The facts are that the Kemp Norton report that I initiated after our election said that students from a low-SES background who have done pathways programs had two per cent dropout rate; when they did not do a pathways program and went straight to an undergraduate degree they had a 24 per cent dropout rate. What this government wants to do is expand opportunity to those low-SES students. I would have thought that the Labor Party would have supported that. I would have thought that Labor would have supported expanding opportunity to more low-SES students, but they are not going to do that because they just want to play politics. With Labor it is all about politics—it is never about policy.

Through our plan to expand the Commonwealth Grant Scheme to the non-university higher education providers, through our plan to have the largest Commonwealth scholarships fund in Australia's history and through our plan to expand the demand driven system that I have already described, we believe that by 2018 80,000 more young Australians from low-SES backgrounds will get the opportunity to go to university and get that higher education qualification I had. Labor is running a scaremongering campaign—it is as simple as that—and they are prepared even to talk about the so-called Americanisation of Australian universities. Never mind the fact that America does not have the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, which is the envy of the world and the most generous loan scheme in the world. Before you have to pay any money back to the taxpayer that you have borrowed up-front, you have to be earning over $50,000 a year and even then you can only be charged two per cent of your income at the best interest rates you will ever receive on any loan in your life.

Labor is scaring students in most disgraceful way and I would have expected better from the member for Kingston. In a speech on 1 October this year, Mike Gallagher from the Group of Eight said:

Students … deserve to be rid of the scaremongering. One example of just how cruel and dangerous are the misrepresentations—at recent University Open Days, many students were under the impression, on the basis of statements made by some senior politicians—

including the member the Kingston—

…that tuition fees would have to be paid up-front because HECS HELP was being dismantled.

… … …

Interestingly, once the prospective students were advised that HELP was staying and there would be no reintroduction of up-front fees many of their concerns were allayed …

In other words, Mr Deputy Speaker, when students knew that the Higher Education Contribution Scheme was remaining unchanged and when it was stated that they could borrow every single dollar up-front from the Australian taxpayer, their concerns were immediately allayed. That does not suit the Labor Party because they do not want students to be comfortable about our reforms.

I can tell you that it was reported to me that, when students were convinced that the HECS scheme was staying, their concerns were much less than they were before. I have been all over Australia visiting university campuses and I find I am very much welcome at them. In fact, the students at the La Trobe campus at Mildura had to bus in protesters from Melbourne because they could not find anybody in Mildura against my reforms—they could not find any and so they had to get a busload from Melbourne of NUS activists to come to Mildura. I refused to speak to them. I said, 'Go back; stop spreading your misinformation among students.'

Labor created this mess and the adults in the room are going to fix it. We are going to work with this Senate to bring reform to higher education that delivers more opportunity for students and higher quality for universities. At the next election in two years' time, this will be one of the great achievements of the coalition government—that we made the decisions that Labor refuse to make for six years.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak on this matter of public importance. While the Minister for Education tells us about the reports he has been getting I am assuming from his staff who are talking to university students, it has been the Labor members and senators listening to the Australian people. You can imagine members and senators hearing a lot of anger and dismay from the community, because, of course, they were never told about this plan before the election. They were never told that fees would be unlimited under this government; that university fees could go as high as the universities wanted with the Americanisation of our university system. The debt sentence that students will be lumped with, if this legislation goes ahead, is not just a debt that is big at the beginning but one that grows and grows and it does not stop growing—because this legislation has real interest rates attached to student debt.

We hear that there has been absolutely no modelling of this legislation. This is an ideological frolic from those of opposite because no modelling was done and there was no mention before the election. We can only look to overseas where we have seen in the UK only two universities out of 123 go to the top threshold of university fees. Of course we hear about America—America where students are facing $1.2 trillion worth of student debt. Student debt there, now, is greater than credit card debt. This is the type of system that is being put up by those opposite.

We always hear from the Minister for Education that his reforms are universally accepted by the university sector. We know they are not supported by students, or parents, or grandparents; but they are also not universally supported by the university sector. In the Senate estimates evidence that was given, the Chief Executive of Universities Australia, Belinda Robinson, stated:

We are not backing the package as it is currently presented, far from it. Of course we do not support a reduction of 20 per cent to the revenue of Australian universities. That translates to an almost $2 billion cut to the revenue of universities. Of course we don't support that.

That was very recent. There is no support from Universities Australia for the package, despite what the Minister for Education would have you believe. We have the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra, Professor Stephen Parker, who said:

I … think it is unethical for a generation of leaders who by and large benefited from free higher education to burden the generations behind them in this way.

Then we have the Victoria University Vice-Chancellor Professor Peter Dawkins who said:

… unless there are some changes to the plan as outlined in the budget, these risks to look too high.

As we can see, we have a plan in front of the parliament that will really affect the livelihoods of many. It is, quite frankly, appalling of this government to come in here and say this will help students get access. We all know that is not true. No how much huffing and puffing there is from the Minister for Education, it will not mean greater access.

He likes to hang his hat on the Commonwealth scholarship scheme. He invoked Menzies in his speech. Indeed, Menzies did have Commonwealth scholarships; they were paid for by the government. But this government is not paying for—not putting one cent into—Commonwealth scholarships. What they are doing is increasing fees for students and then providing scholarships from that money. What we know is that for every $5 increase in fees above the cost of delivering that degree, $1 will be hived off to go to these scholarships. What that means is the higher the number of scholarships, the higher the fees of everyone else at that university; that means less access for the majority.

The Minister for Education likes to think of himself as Robin Hood. What he is actually doing is making the sector less accessible for the hundreds of thousands of young people who aspire to go to university. They will not make the choice to go to university because of the price point. This is an appalling set of circumstances and I condemn it. I call on the Senate to reject this bill. (Time expired)

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There was a recent article jointly authored by the Vice-Chancellor of La Trobe University and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne. In it, they said:

It is no small achievement when an often divided and fractious sector unites around a major change.

Having lectured and, indeed, been involved in administration at a number of Australian universities, I must say that is an understatement of Goliath-like proportions. It is like herding cats wearing tweed jackets, trying to get universities to agree on anything. But with the notable exception of the University of Canberra, which is sticking out like a sore thumb on this one, there is almost unanimous agreement among the university sector that these reforms should be supported. In the same article it is stated that:

At stake is whether a viable higher education system can endure.

Though much rhetoric focuses on the Whitlam promise of free higher education, the present system was established by the Hawke government from 1989; it abandoned a brief experiment with free places as inequitable. What has been amazing about listening to successive runs of this debate is there is a 1974 argument, with respect to higher education reform, and then there is a 2014 argument. The 1974 policy argument dominated the higher education space for close to three decades—probably 25 years. The 1974 question is this: could Australia increase the percentage of low-income students in tertiary education by making tertiary degrees free for all tertiary students? That was the social policy argument that dominated this space for decades. But the argument was also conducted for decades in an environment where the Australian tertiary sector existed in a global market that was relatively stable—comparatively, amazingly stable.

For decades we were asking ourselves whether universal low fees, or no fees, would achieve greater participation for the sons and daughters of low-income earners. That was a logical question to ask for several decades. It was logical because we were involved, firstly, in a ceteris paribus environment internationally; things were not changing around us. But it was logical, also, because we really did not have the answer. There are two observations to make about that debate. The first is that the central question of that debate has now been unequivocally and empirically answered by every single major factual review of the sector. Does introducing deferred fees for students decrease the percentage of low-income students? No, it does not. Once introduced, does expanding the share of their fees that students are required to fund decrease the percentage of low-income students? No, it does not. Are fees the primary, or even a substantial, determinant of the percentage of low-income students? No, they are not.

In 1996 payments went up, largely under the members opposite, nearly eightfold to $900 million. Higher education participation went up from 400,000 to 525,000. Lower fees, or no fees, do not address the real or actual determinants of participation which are social conditions, parental expectations and secondary school preparation. The social policy question has been answered. No member opposite has offered anything that resembles empirical evidence to suggest otherwise. It is a dead question. The way in which you increase participation is by increasing scale.

More fundamental to that point is that the circumstances which have prevailed for decades while we answered this question have now changed irrevocably, fundamentally and with quite astonishing speed. There are two basic changes. Firstly, the number and quality of Asian universities has increased at absolutely astonishing speed and the number of students that now move from nation to nation to pursue tertiary education has similarly risen in astonishing numbers. Basically, what we are facing is that tertiary education has become a globally traded commodity. What happens if you do nothing in that environment? We had the lesson of that under the members opposite: from the 2009-10 peak, when there was no reform—and, I admit, some bungling along the way under the members opposite—there was a loss of billions of dollars in export income from the tertiary sector. Between 2009 and 2012, the number of international student enrolments fell by 130,000 students. That is not an indicator that the Australian tertiary education sector is in good health; that is an indicator of an education sector in great need of reform. To see the consensus for the grave necessity of reform, you need go no further than the universities themselves. The Australian Catholic University said:

Rejecting the package wholesale is not a vote for university equity. It is a vote against reality.

Universities Australia said:

It is simply not possible to maintain the standards that students expect or the international reputation that Australia's university system enjoys without full fee deregulation.

The Regional Universities Network said:

… the only way the sector can maintain quality and remain internationally competitive is through the deregulation of student fees.

The 1974 argument is over.

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today we have heard people from the government benches try to justify this incredibly terrible attack on higher education in this country. They should be ashamed. What they are doing is making it harder for working- and middle-class kids to get a higher education—and they know it. They should think twice about this terrible, regressive policy. They should think twice, because they know as well as anyone else in this chamber just how terrible this policy is. They have had the backlash from the working people of this country, from people on low and fixed incomes.

People are not standing for these attacks on higher education. People are not going to stand for funding cuts of up to 37 per cent for undergraduate courses. They are not going to stand for it. They are not going to stand for the wholesale deregulation of university fees that is going to lead to $100,000 degrees—a lifelong debt. They are not going to stand for higher fees, nor are they going to stand for real interest rates on higher education fees. They are not going to cop fees for higher research degrees either. Most of all, they are not going to somehow start thinking those fees are a good idea just because the Minister for Education threatens to cut research—as he has so shamefully done.

These changes are atrocious. We are talking about changes that are going to see cuts to higher education funding. Where will those cuts be recouped from? They will have to be recouped from the deregulated fees. We have already seen some of the research and some of the modelling showing what the costs of these courses are going to be in the event that fees are wholly deregulated. Universities Australia tells us that, to make up for the cut to funding, the cost of engineering and science degrees will have to increase by 58 per cent, nursing degrees by 24 per cent, education degrees by 20 per cent, agriculture degrees by 43 per cent and environmental studies by 110 per cent. These are terrible figures because they speak to the gross inequity that this government is perpetrating on the Australian people. They are saying that people should not go on to higher education unless they are prepared to take on a lifetime of debt. It is the Americanisation of our university system—the sort of system where you see people paying off debt their entire life just for the privilege of getting a higher education.

On our side of this chamber we believe that higher education is a right not a privilege. We believe that education is a fundamental right. We know that the government understands that Australians think that too. Why else would Tony Abbott, when he was making every promise under the sun in a desperate attempt to get elected last year, have said that there would be no cuts to education? Because he knew that the Australian people wanted there to be no cuts to education. He understood the backlash that would come if people knew his real plans for the higher education sector. Now people do know and they are not going to stand for it.

These sorts of funding cuts of up to 37 per cent for undergraduate degrees are going to mean that universities will have to recoup those moneys from students and their families. Why would anyone think that a lifetime of debt might not be a consideration when a young person is deciding whether or not to go to university—the choice of whether to go in the first place? That is not to mention mature age students. What are mature age students expected to do with hundred-thousand-dollar degrees? How are they meant to reskill?

I have spoken in this House before about a mature age student who has written to me worried about the effect of a real interest rate on the HECS fees that she has already been incurring—and she is not the only one. A lot of students have spoken to me about their concern about what such an interest rate would mean—and not just students. From a workforce planning perspective those industries where jobs are lower paid than those at the top end of town—for example, corporate lawyers—are worried about whether people are going to be prepared to come and work in those lower paid jobs when they have such a big debt with such a high interest rate.

People who work in a not-for-profit organisation, for example, or a smaller firm or a lower paid occupation already pay a penalty in the form of lower wages. But they are going to have to pay an additional penalty. Not only are they going to be slugged with a massive debt, but because it will take longer to pay off that debt, they will pay more because of the effect of the real interest rate. That is why people who are running those small not-for-profits are very worried about the effect that these changes are going to have on their ability to attract good quality staff.

It is not just a question of what might happen to those people who are worried about workforce planning. This is a policy area that has led to a massive backlash across this nation from people concerned about the way that this government intends to change the shape of this nation.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So much to say, so little time. I will begin by calling this what it is: one hell of a scare campaign. I would love to say I am not a punter, but I am—and I would be prepared to lay odds that the Labor Party have focus-grouped the words 'Americanisation', 'debt sentence' and 'hundred-thousand-dollar degrees'. It would be nice to come into this place and have a mature debate about an important structural reform that this country needs. But that is not what we are getting. In the lead-up to question time, during 90-second statements, the member for Perth came in and talked about a constituent who was already, as a result of the 'changes', modifying the way she was going about her tertiary degree. These are changes that would come into effect, if we legislate them, in 2016!

Because this is a scare campaign, the debate is being reframed by the Labor Party. It is no longer about increasing competition in the tertiary sector. It is not about telling the Australian people that they will not need to pay for their degrees up-front and that they will only be asked to repay the cost of their degree once they are earning over $50,000. It is not a debate about the fact that currently 60 per cent of the Australian population subsidise the 40 per cent to get a tertiary degree to the tune of 60 per cent and that this legislation will recalibrate that to a split of fifty-fifty; but rather, disingenuously, it is a debate about, effectively, free education—a debate that was put to bed in the seventies.

I thought I might just reflect on a once proud leader of the Labor Party, Paul Keating:

There is no such thing, of course, as "free" education. Someone has to pay. In systems with no charges, those somebody's are all taxpayers.

But do not take it from a former leader of the Labor Party; let's take it from a member of the current Labor Party who sits just down there—I suspect he is just outside being subjected to another re-education program—Dr Andrew Leigh:

Australian universities should be free to set student fees according to the market for their degrees. A deregulated or market based HECS will make the student contribution system fairer, because the fees students pay will more closely approximate the value they receive through future earnings.

That is sensible and it is probably the reason why he is being re-educated as we speak!

In the time I have a remaining I want to highlight the benefits to regional students.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You know what? I am going to give you an example of sub-bachelor degrees. If those opposite new where Mt Gambier was, I could tell that recently a collaboration between the University of South Australia and the world-renowned Australian jazz musician James Morrison was formed to established the James Morrison Academy of Music. That is a collaboration between James Morrison and the University of South Australia. When it begins it will provide sub-bachelor degrees to 70 students. They are diplomas and associate degrees. These tertiary opportunities would not be funded under the existing HELP legislation. Under the current legislation that those opposite support who want to get a Diploma in Music or an Associate Degree in Music from Mt Gambier's jazz centre of excellence, the James Morrison Academy, would have to—wait for it—stump the money up-front. Do you know what they get if those in the other place accept our very sensible reforms? Would they get is an opportunity to undertake that study and become world renowned jazz musicians, and they get it via a mechanism wherein they do not have to pay any money up front—not a cent. Under those opposite they would have to pay up-front every single cent. Under our proposals they are eligible for the Higher Education Loan Program.

I would love the member for Kingston to come to Mt Gambier with me next year and we will talk to those students and we will tell them—the member for Kingston will be honest with them, I am sure, and she will say, 'I wanted you to pay up-front, but that bloke over there, the member for Barker, he was happy for you to— (Time expired)

Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to follow the member for Barker, who was a great loss to Mt Gambier City Council, I must say! I was glad to hear him quoting Keating, because being lectured by the member for Barker is 'like being flogged by a wet lettuce'.

Let's go back to torts on MPIs, because when we go back and talk about the Liberals' higher education policy, we like to go to their source material. We cannot trust what they say; we have to see what they put in writing. Plenty of speakers in these debates have gone to Real solutions, their election policy shield. But I am not going to touch on this today. I am going to go back to the two thought pieces that guided the brains trust of the coalition, and that is Battlelines and Hockey: Not Your Average Joe.

When I turned Battlelines, which is the Prime Minister's manifesto—his bible—can people guess how many mentions of higher education there are in the book.

Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Two.

Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sadly, the member for Werriwa is very optimistic. There are zero mentions of universities. But that actually stands in good stead compared to Hockey: Not Your Average Joe, which, for the Treasurer has been the publication that his damaged his career the second most. Unfortunately, the budget has been the publication that has damaged his career the most. But when you go to Hockey: Not Your Average Joe and I look at his first mention of university and I read from it—this is in chapter 3:

The first of his siblings to make it to university, Joe walked into his class on day one drunk. 'I walked into my first lecture and fell asleep.'

Opposition members interjecting—

Exactly! Sadly, the Liberals' policy on higher education shows all the seriousness and commitment that the member for North Sydney demonstrated on his first day at university. That is a great tragedy, because this is an incredibly serious debate. Education is vital for our economy and vital for our society. What those on the other side are doing is closing the door on a generation of working class students. In the seat of Charlton four out of five graduates are in nursing and education. What these changes do, according to Universities Australian—a group those on the other side are very keen to quote all the time—is that a female nursing graduate could have a debt at the end of the course of $100,000. She would generated a debt of $100,000 for a nursing degree and she will pay it off over the course of 27 years. How is that fair—to have a 100,000 grand debt over the course of 27 years; or engineering—we need more engineers in this country and we need more female engineers? But according to Universities Australia, they could face a total debt to be paid off of $200,000. What a disgrace.

Let us look at the equity aspects, because those on the other side like to talk about the sub-bachelor degree level. One of the great avenues for education in higher education is for mature age students participating in part-time studies. I am proud that the university in my area, the University of Newcastle, has got a great tradition in this. I often hear the member for Newcastle talking about this all the time, because it is a great contribution. Fifty per cent of University of Newcastle are not school leavers and they will face the greatest disadvantage because they are turned off the most by high debt, high interest rates that mean in their limited time left in the workforce they will be paying off this debt.

I was asked earlier for evidence. You do not have to go further than the United Kingdom, where before their changes to university fees they had part-time undergraduate enrolments of 230,000 people. Within two years it fell to 139,000, an almost 100,000 drop in part-time undergraduate students. That is what we face in this country. This is what we face with their Americanisation of the system—a system where you will see registered nurses paying 100 grand and taking 27 years to pay off a degree, where you will see female engineers facing a $200,000 debt. This is the great vision they have for this country—a myopic, short-term vision that will penalise working-class people who want to be the first in their family to get to university. They will stand condemned by history for their focus on petty penny-pinching rather than investing in this nation's greatest asset: our next generation.

George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We see from the attitude of the member for Charlton in his speech why they call him 'the nasty Conroy'! The member for Barker was unfairly compared to a wet lettuce; I have to say a head of lettuce is normally fresh and crisp, but the previous speaker was certainly nothing of the two. It showed that he did not even have a head there with what he said about university fee deregulation in the United Kingdom. As the facts show, lower socioeconomic students have actually taken up more university education in that country since fee deregulation.

I speak from personal experience here because I come from a low-socioeconomic background. I was the first in my family to attend university. I did not come from a background with a silver spoon; both parents were on welfare at the time. I went to university through a bank loan to fund the accommodation and set-up costs that I needed. I did not worry about the fees, because I knew we had a system—a system we are still going to have in place—where I could put that on the future. I could put those university fees into a debt system that would be the best ever because I did not have to repay that until I started earning over $50,000, and then it was quite affordable.

That is the experience for many other regional students, I have to say. The biggest challenges for them and their families are the accommodation and set-up costs, not the fees which do not have to be up front and can be paid at a later time when you can afford to pay them. The accommodation, food and electricity—the establishment costs—are the biggest detractors for regional students in particular in going off to university.

We in the regions wonder where the Leader of the Opposition is coming from on this. The member for Barker put it quite rightly that these reforms actually ensure that sub-bachelor degrees are not just going to be the up-front fee degrees. They will be able to be put on the HELP system. These reforms will make it better for those students who are impacted by the tyranny of distance and have to pay all those up-front fees. A university could decide now—and this is something that CQ University, my alma mater, might be deciding upon—to package up a degree which incorporates the costs of accommodation and set-up in their residential college, so you could have students who can move from afar and put the whole cost of the degree, including the living costs, onto the FEE-HELP, which they can pay later on in life when they can afford to do it. That is a better outcome for lower socioeconomic students and a better outcome for regional students.

We have heard about $100,000 degrees, and isn't that ridiculous? The University of Western Australia, one of the world's top 100 universities, has announced that they will charge $16,000 a year for an undergraduate degree under the fee deregulation. A three-year degree will cost less than $50,000; and, if it did cost as much as $50,000, they will not pay a cent until they earn $50,000 or over. When they earn $50,000 or over, they will repay about $20 a week, less than $3 a day, to earn more than 75 per cent of non-university graduates. That is a great investment.

So regional students are supported by these measures, and so they should be. The abolition of the unfair 20 per cent loan fee on VET FEE-HELP loans will benefit another 80,000 students. The abolition of the unfair 25 per cent loan fee on FEE-HELP will benefit more than 50,000 students. The Commonwealth scholarship scheme will be the largest in Australia's history, helping students who, like me, are from low-socioeconomic backgrounds, helping them with their living costs and other supports. That is where the disincentive is, as I said.

I want to talk very briefly about CQ University very briefly. The vice-chancellor there is very keen for these reforms. He said:

There are two types of universities: those that see change, wring their hands and say 'Oh woe is me'. And then there are others that lick their lips. We are a lip-licking university.

These reforms will allow unis like CQU to offer those packages I talked about. That is what regional students need. They do not need the Labor Party blocking this. They should be working with us to develop a sustainable funding model for university education instead of harping on. This opposition leader's MPI is like his name: short in substance, short in truth!

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has been such a significant week for us Labor people as we have celebrated the life and leadership of Gough Whitlam. Gough Whitlam was an enormous visionary, and we have heard over the last week such important statements of that on both sides of the House—of this big man, this big thinker who brought big ideas into this parliament. Gough Whitlam spent a decades-long career in this parliament fighting for a fair go, for the right of all Australian children to have the best quality health care and, most importantly, to have access to education.

Since that time, education and access to education has become an article of faith for Labor. Labor leader after Labor leader after Labor leader has fought for the right of every Australian child to have the opportunity to get the best education. We saw under the Hawke and Keating governments year 12 retention rates go from about 45 per cent of all young people in this country to 77 per cent—one of the great unsung achievements of that government. And every leader since then has joined this fight. We do today in this same tradition.

Mr Ewen Jones interjecting—

I have spoken a little bit about Gough Whitlam, and we know it was a very different Australia that he was the leader of.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Where's the injustice?

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you don't mind, I will have a few moments to have my own words on this.

Australia was a very different place under the time of Whitlam. My mother tells me that people put on a hat and gloves before they went into town. God Save the Queen was our national anthem. But one of the features of that time was that families and parents around Australia had to make very cruel choices about which of their children would go on and access higher education that all of those young people deserved. In my mother's family, they had to make that difficult decision. Three daughters and one son: who do you think got the chance to go on and access higher education? So I say today, in this tradition, that we are opposed to the Americanisation of our system. We are opposed to $100,000 degrees. We are opposed to a system where the young people of this country have their access to higher education determined by the size of their parents' wallets rather than the intellect and motivation of those young people.

I want to talk about some of the issues that we see with this system. When we hear those on the other side of the House argue about this system, they are unfortunately very clouded by their vision of Australia—the chums that they went along to private schools with or that they went to university with; the people who many of them represent in their electorates—but I want to tell them a little bit about what happens in my electorate. I want to talk about the suburb of Springvale—one of the suburbs I am very proud to represent. Do you know what the median income is in Springvale per household? It is $49,000. That means half of the people who live in the electorate of Springvale live in a household where $49,000 is less than their entire family income. I think it is important that we put this into context: when we talk about $140,000 or $100,000 for degrees—that we will see, that we know we will see because Universities Australia have told us this—we are talking about more than double the entire annual household income for one of these families. When I talk to these families about how this will affect their decision to educate their children, they tell me that they would be incredibly uncomfortable with taking on anything like that level of debt, and I think if your household income was $49,000 a year you probably would not feel too excited about taking out a $100,000 loan either.

I really want to spend some time addressing the argument that has been made that because there will be scholarships provided that somehow this will resolve the equity argument. Firstly, I want to point out how profoundly unfair that is. Why should we take a handful of the brightest young people from lower socioeconomic families and decide that they are allowed to go to university while a much broader range of students from more wealthy families will get the opportunity to go to university. In Australia that is simply not how we do things. Secondly, I want to point out that when we look at trying to deal with the equity problem by looking at the experience of scholarships overseas, we see that it just simply does not work. We know that those on the other side are so in love with the American-style system—

An honourable member interjecting —

I will take a lead from there. When we look at a university like Harvard, they have enormous problems getting equity in their undergraduate population. So what do they do? They say to every American family, 'If your family earns less than $40,000 you can come to Harvard 100 per cent for free'—they will pay your fees, they will pay your board, they will pay for your food, they will pay for everything. Of their 1,650 freshman students that came in last year, do you know how many came in under that program? Fifteen. The reason for that is because this is about setting expectations. We want the message to go out to every young person in this country that you are entitled to a fair go, and like every Labor Party caucus before us, we will fight to the end on this issue.

Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The people opposite, they have no shame. I would not think the universities of this great country are normally on the side of the blue team, I would not think so, but right now every university in this country, bar one, is supporting this legislation, with some amendments. That is a fact.

What universities want is to see an end to the uncertainty of funding, and let me give you an example of what happened. When this lot over here, the Labor Party, took the reins of power in 2007, they undertook to make these great promises to the higher education sector to win great popularity and support. And what happened in that six years? That lot over there, the so-called supporters today of higher education, cut $6.6 billion out of higher education funding. They wanted to fund Gonski; where did they find the first $1.2 billion? Higher education. Let us have a look here. Removal of the 10 per cent HECS-HELP discount—I would have thought that would have been a huge help to lower socioeconomic people in this country—for a saving of $276 million, or what they would call a cut. Would you believe it? A cut from the Labor Party! Converting students' start-up scholarships—again, these are for people who need that little bit of help. They converted them into what? Student loans—$1.182 billion; $6.6 billion of cuts from that lot over there. They are hypocrites to the nth degree because those people over there claim that they are the friends of higher education. They are not. The universities of Australia are crying out for certainty. They want to get rid of the uncertainty and the ongoing argy-bargy of funding because they want to get on with educating our young people.

Let us get this right; it is very simple: higher education is the third biggest exporter in this country—$15 billion. Have a guess how much it was when this lot over here, the Labor Party, took power in 2007. It was $19 billion. We have already lost $4 billion because they took their eyes off the ball. All I can say is that the future of higher education under Labor in this country is totally unsustainable. We are already falling behind other competitive areas in the world, behind Asia. We are going to continue to see, if we do not make reforms, fewer and fewer people coming to this country to study. Do you know what that means over there, Labor? It means that the cross-subsidies that are going into the education of our children today will be lost and education fees will go through the roof—but that is under your vision, not ours.

The competition from Asia now is intense. We need to get back in the game and that is what the universities of Australia want; that is what they are asking for. And as I said when I started this speech, they are not normally on our team but on this occasion they are. They are rock-solid behind the education reform of the minister of this government, and that is what they are looking for. They are seeing you as nothing but cheap shooters; you are all about cheap shots, scaring the hell out of everybody across Australia with this $100,000 fee.

I know a little bit about American education, I have got family that are in it, and in this country grandparents do not have to give up their superannuation and their savings to help put their grandkids through university. Parents do not have to take mortgages against their homes to put their kids through university. That is the great thing about this country: no-one will have to come up with one cent of cash. It does not matter how rich or how poor you are, not one cent to enter the best universities in this country. And it is an absolutely dishonest campaign by that party over there, the Labor Party, who have lost their way; they have no vision. They should be ashamed of themselves. They should start telling the truth, and that should start with the Leader of the Opposition—I am not sure the last time I heard a straight sentence come out of his mouth.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The discussion is concluded.