Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do recall that, when I was a new teacher in the western suburbs of Melbourne, the culture of university attendance for local students was low in my beginning years. The area had poor year 12 retention rates; indeed, year 10 was the norm for most. This was because retention to year 12 was not a priority for anyone in those days—certainly not in the education sector. Many saw secondary school as a sorting system to determine whether students left at year 10 or went on to try their luck for entry to university. Attendance at university was not something that was aspired to by most children in the west of Melbourne. This culture, however, was slowly changing. The Whitlam years had opened up access to university for many from my era. This impact took longer to reach the west of Melbourne, but slowly it did. I would argue that teachers raised in the west, who had been the first in their families to attend university, made it their business to ensure that the talented and capable students in their classrooms in the west were encouraged, supported and urged to pursue tertiary education.

Over time, much was done to increase access for the students that I taught. A new emphasis on year 12 retention by state governments meant that many students who completed school could apply for and be accepted into university places in the later years of my teaching. In more recent times, I saw the impact of the changes by the former Labor government—indeed, by my predecessor in Lalor, Julia Gillard—continue to grow that expectation and continue to grow the numbers of students from Lalor attending university.

The previous Labor government had a proud record of investment in Australia's universities. We boosted real revenue per student, including government and student contributions, by 10 per cent. That was an extra $1,700 for universities to spend on quality teaching for every student. Overall, Labor lifted government investment in universities from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013. That is $8 billion to $14 billion in six years. Labor committed to proper indexation for university funds. If the Howard government funding model had been kept, universities today would be worse off to the tune of $3 billion.

There are 750,000 students at Australian universities today, and one in every four is there because of Labor. We put 190,000 more students on campus, we boosted Indigenous student numbers by 26 per cent and we boosted regional student numbers by 30 per cent. We have more than 36,000 extra students from low-income families in universities now compared to 2007. Labor also invested $4.35 billion in world-class research and teaching facilities through the Education Investment Fund, something that was highly valued by the university sector, and those facilities, of course, are being well used now. This included $500 million earmarked for regional Australia so that country kids would have the same access to quality courses, and universities would be able to attract and retain world-class researchers. We did this because we on this side understand, in a way that the coalition never has and never will, what universities mean. These changes meant that suddenly students from my community could clearly see a pathway to university and beyond. And, yes, they did make a financial contribution through the HECS program. But the electorate knows the difference between an affordable contribution—paid most often after the fact through an affordable contributions scheme—and this scheme, which will create long-term unaffordable debt with interest and impede access for many—and, worse, possibly the most able.

These Labor reforms are now at risk. Students in Lalor come from families that do not like debt. The thought of taking on a $100,000 debt in order to obtain a qualification is very scary, and the government know that—they know it very well. It is why they run election campaigns on debt and deficit. It is why they cynically use our personal aversion to debt. They cynically use it to claim that Medicare is unaffordable and throw numbers like confetti to blur the arguments. Then they stand here, salesman after salesman across the last two days, to convince those same families that government debt is bad but that student debt is good. They put forward this unfair higher education reform that will lead to unheard-of and unaffordable debt levels for students. They know—and, if they do not, they would if they gave it a moment's contemplation. These changes will slow or stall the number of young people from my electorate and from the electorates of Bendigo, Rankin, Gellibrand, Newcastle and Chifley—from working-class areas.

The effect is already there. This summer when I ran into former students, they had received good ATAR scores and were expecting to receive university offers, but there was a hesitation to go forward. Would the rules change part-way through their degree? Would the debt be too great? Was finding a job now and entering the workforce a better option given the rising youth unemployment figures? That is why these $5 billion cuts to higher education are so destructive. These cuts mark the end of Australia's fair and equitable higher education system. These cuts will bring the curtain down on the Whitlam university legacy of university based on merit, not pay cheques, and of aspiration regardless of postcode.

I will vote against these cuts to university funding and student support. Labor will vote against these cuts. Labor will not support a system of unfair, unaffordable fees, bigger student debt, reduced access and greater inequality. I will not stand by and see a system that for students in Lalor will mean that the quality of their education will depend on their capacity to pay. I wall vote against that not just because it will create inequity in our system but because it is the wrong thing for the country. We need our best and our brightest in our universities. We need our young people to be more educated than ever before, not less educated. As a country we cannot afford to go backwards in student retention and university numbers. To maintain our living standards and to build our economy, we need more students—students with the most capacity and the most commitment—in our lectures theatres, laboratories and tute rooms. This is at risk under this reform.

The Minister for Education and Training, Christopher Pyne, often claims his higher education changes will actually benefit students from low socioeconomic backgrounds because they include the so-called 'Commonwealth scholarships'. Indeed, again over summer we have been subjected to a huge advertising blitz, costing almost $15million, making those claims.    This is possibly the biggest con in the whole package. The scholarship scheme will receive no Commonwealth funding. It is to be funded entirely by students. Under the scheme universities will be required to direct 20 per cent of the additional revenue raised by higher fees to providing equity scholarships. Christopher Pyne has not released any information about just how big he expects the fund to be. That is because, if he does, we will be able to work out exactly how much he expects most low- and middle-income kids to pay to fund other kids who are just a little smarter or a little poorer. Remember, $1 in every $5 of the additional revenue universities raise above their current per-student incomes will go towards this fund. This means that the extra amount students are paying—that is, the extra above the 30 per cent hike needed to make up for the funding cuts—will be five times the size of the 'biggest Commonwealth scholarships fund in Australia's history'.

Tweaking the so-called Commonwealth scholarships will not make them fair or sensible policy. Like so much of this package, the scheme is fundamentally flawed. The tweak in this bill is, of course, the regional transitions fund—a fund that, by its inclusion, is further evidence of the unfairness of the bill itself. If the bill were fair there would be no need for this fund. It is somewhat sad that the Nationals MPs sitting opposite could only wrangle $100 million for this fund as a token to their regional communities to counter the unfairness of the bill and its impact on the students from the regional communities they represent.

These are not the only issues I take with this bill. The bill contains $1.9 billion in cuts to Australian universities and the potential for $100,000 degrees for undergraduate students—and yes, I have heard speaker after speaker from the government side of the chamber claim that Labor are running a scare campaign on this. They have stood here, one after the other—salesmen of something they cannot actually sell because they cannot predict the cost. There is no price tag being set on the other side of the chamber.

The bill includes $171 million in cuts to equity programs, $200 million in cuts to indexation of grant programs, $170 million in cuts to research training, fees for PhD students for the first time ever and $80 million in cuts to the Australian Research Council. And these cuts are masquerading as reform. This bill may have been tweaked from the one we saw last year, but the massive cuts to universities remain. The new fee imposts for students remain. Students in Lalor, having made inroads to university attendance, will find their numbers dropping.

The worst of this, for me, is that the universities asked for a national conversation about higher education reform and deregulation, and in its place they got these cuts. In its place they got a rushed piece of policy—no national conversation. In fact, the first time the bill was brought into this chamber, very few members opposite stood to speak about it or debate it at all. Instead of planning in response to that conversation, this government has given us cuts hidden in a chaotic plan for deregulation.

The Australian people have got a broken promise and a breach of the social contract on higher education. The community got an expensive advertising campaign because they signed petitions clearly stating what they thought of the plan. They got a Prime Minister deaf to Australians' public concern for equity and a fair go. They got a government determined to turn back the clock to a time when your future, regardless of your ability or commitment, was determined by your postcode and your family income and when privilege was perpetuated by access to quality education determined by birth. What they got today is a government that says it has listened but is taking action that the electorate has resoundingly rejected.

I have a message for the government. Because we have had quotes thrown at us so many times in the last six months—usually Labor Party leaders in the Australian government—this time I will quote Abraham Lincoln: 'With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.' This is not a debate that a serious government would have on higher education. This is a spending cut dressed up as a reform. Like my Labor colleagues, I will oppose this bill and continue to oppose any reforms to higher education that have not been the result of a serious conversation as a nation. I look forward to a time in the future when that serious debate might occur; although I note that it might take a change of government for us to have a conversation about higher education.

Russell Matheson (Macarthur, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the House for the opportunity to speak on today's bill, the Higher Education and Research Reform Bill 2014. My electorate of Macarthur in south-west Sydney spans an area that has some of the finest agricultural land in the country. It is also one of the most economically significant and fastest-growing metropolitan regions in Australia. Even though we have much to be thankful for in Macarthur, there are still many people in my electorate who struggle to make ends meet and simply cannot afford to go to university or who live too far away to realistically commute. The reason I support this bill is that it implements reforms to higher education that seek to spread opportunity to more students, especially disadvantaged and rural or regional students.

A large section of the Macarthur community will benefit from this bill because hundreds if not thousands of people will reap the rewards of higher education who otherwise would have been unable to. When I finished school in 1975, soon after university fees were abolished by the Whitlam government, it was considered free to go to university. The notion that a student's merit rather than a parent's wealth should decide who benefits from tertiary education was fine in principal; however, in reality, there were so few places on offer for my generation that going to university was nothing more than a pipe dream for any but a very select few.

In 2015, I am happy to say that participation rates at university are much higher but there are still many people in Macarthur and throughout Australia who are denied the opportunity to go into higher education. Of course there are a number of existing programs aimed at addressing the divide between those that can go to university and those that cannot. The University of Western Sydney, for instance, which has a campus in my electorate of Macarthur, is participating in the Bridges to Higher Education project. This $21.2 million project, funded by the Commonwealth government's Higher Education Participation Program, improves participation rates of students from communities under-presented in higher education by breaking down the barriers to entry for anyone looking to receive a tertiary education. This bill significantly bolsters HEPP to create a new scholarship fund within this program to assist disadvantage students into higher education. I am delighted to notify the House today that the University of Western Sydney will be eligible to participate in the new scholarship fund through HEPP because of its high intake of low-socioeconomic students.

In addition, the government will create a Commonwealth Scholarships scheme, the greatest scholarship scheme in Australia's history, so that universities and higher education providers can provide tailored, individualised support to disadvantaged students. Through this scheme, higher education providers have the potential to offer needs-based scholarships to help meet costs of living as well as cover fee exemptions, tutorial support and assistance at other crucial points in their study. In an opinion piece published in the Australian Financial Review last year, Professor Alex Cameron, the deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Western Australia, said that a person's proximity to a university campus is a major determinant in setting an individual's expectations and aspirations of attending university. As Professor Cameron says:

In the absence of financial support the compounding of low socioeconomic status and a lack of a local campus can represent an insurmountable obstacle to moving and meeting the costs of living away from home.

Professor Cameron qualifies this statement by saying that although a lack of income support is a major access barrier for disadvantaged students, deregulation will give universities the opportunity to address this problem. This is not lip-service to the benefits of deregulation. Professor Cameron explains that the University of Western Australia's planned tuition level of $16,000 a year will give them the capacity to provide substantial scholarships at their student residences for all of their rural students on top of their current scholarship programs. Equally, the University of Sydney has pledged to create a fairer and more diverse institution if the government's higher education reforms succeed. In October last year, vice-chancellor Michael Spence made it clear that deregulation of fees would allow Sydney University to double its existing $80 million scholarship program.

With the establishment of the South West Growth Centre in the heart of Macarthur, which has the capacity to create over 22,000 jobs, not to mention the thousands of jobs that will be created through Badgerys Creek airport and the Western Sydney Infrastructure Plan, it is now more important than ever that we get more people into higher education so that people in Macarthur and New South Wales can take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity. This reform will allow the next generation of residents in Macarthur to benefit from the Western Sydney infrastructure boom that this government has already set in place.

Those currently denied the opportunity to receive higher education because of where they live or how much money they have will now have more choice and more pathways into higher education than ever before. This reform will also provide equity throughout the higher education sector by extending Commonwealth funding to all Australian higher education students studying bachelor courses in non-university higher education institutions. This reform will-mean that we will no longer discriminate against students who want to undertake vocational education and training by removing all FEE-HELP and VET-HELP loan fees which are currently imposed on some students undertaking higher education and vocational education and training. This is a fair and long-overdue change. Why should someone wanting to be a bricklayer or a plumber pay a 20 per cent fee on a VET loan when a person studying to be an accountant or a lawyer pays no fee on their HECS loan? Under these reforms those wanting to study higher education at a TAFE can do this and receive financial assistance. Those wanting to study a higher education diploma can do this and receive financial assistance as well. Anyone wishing to study an accredited undergraduate qualification will be able to do so with Commonwealth support.

Under these reforms, no student needs to pay a cent upfront for higher education and no one needs to repay anything until they are earning over $50,000 a year. This will guarantee that higher education is affordable and accessible to all. As you can see, the guiding principle of these reforms has been to widen opportunity and give everyone a chance at finding a place in higher education who wants it. As the Minister for Education explained late last year, the government wants universities and other higher education institutions to compete with each other including on price. The government wants each institution to be accountable to their students for the type and quality of courses they offer. Fee deregulation will enable our institutions to set their own direction and serve their students and communities as well as they possibly can and compete with the best in the world.

Signs of this positive transformation can already be seen at the University of Western Sydney. After last year's Budget, UWS vice-chancellor Barney Glover recognised that the university is firmly part of the Greater Western Sydney community, and that there is a need to provide students in the Macarthur region with high-quality, accessible higher education. Accordingly, UWS became the first institution in New South Wales to freeze fees for the rest of the year, ensuring that all enrolled students at the university would have their fees capped for the duration of their courses.    This fact flies in the face of Labor's scare campaign that the university sector would introduce standard $100,000 degrees. We hear that scaremongering every day of the week. Incidentally, Geoff Sharrock investigated Labor's $100,000 degree claims for TheConversationand found them to be misleading. Sharrock explains that Labor have arrived at these artificially high estimates by assuming worst case scenario tuition prices, applying a six per cent interest rate which is not applicable and then presenting a graduate's total repayment in nominal dollars without adjusting for inflation. UWS's response to fee deregulation—making their tuition fees more competitive—proves that the measures in this bill can and will work.

When Labor were in office, they cut $6.6 billion in funding to higher education. They keep denying that. Yes, they cut $6.6 billion in funding to higher education. People out there in my community are aware of the fact that Labor were prepared to make significant cuts, including cuts that they are now blocking in the Senate. Labor's cuts were ultimately a desperate grab for funds to help their ballooning deficit, which led them to borrow the equivalent of $9,500 for every man, woman and child in Australia.

Under Labor, international education went backwards. Export income fell by billions from its 2009-10 peak, due to Labor's neglect, policy weakness and bungled handling of what is now Australia's third largest export. The number of international student enrolments paints an equally damning picture, falling 130,000 between 2009 and 2012. This represents a decline of 16 per cent over the 2009 to 2013 period, which was bad for the university sector and ultimately bad for our economy. Now in opposition, Labor offer no credible alternative to our higher education reforms and yet they continue to reject the advice of prominent Labor figures like Gareth Evans, John Dawkins and Maxine McKew. If Labor do not support reform or at least engage in constructive dialogue with the government, and this reform bill is not passed the Senate, then the consequences could be dire.

If the bill does not pass,    an estimated 80,000 students will miss out on Commonwealth support each year until 2018; around 50,000 higher education students and 80,000 vocational education and training students will face a 25 per cent loan fee for FEE-HELP and 20 per cent loan fee for VET FEE-HELP loans; thousands of disadvantaged higher education students will not receive assistance to access a place at university and they will not receive support for their living costs through the proposed new Commonwealth Scholarship scheme or through the new scholarship fund within the Higher Education Participation Program.

Debt, the deficit legacy left to us by the Labor Party, the political irresponsibility of the current opposition—these are all the kinds of issues that we are dealing with on a daily basis, so I call on the Senate to put an end to this impasse, support our reforms and allow the government to get on with the job of fixing Labor's debt and deficit. Labor are in debt-and-deficit denial. They continue to bury their heads in the sand and are prepared to pass their debt and deficit on to future generations without even blinking an eyelid.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Earlier in the week in this place, I made a contribution on a biosecurity bill. On that occasion, I equated biosecurity with defence, making the point that it was every bit as important. Why? Because both deal with existential threats, one relating to potential attack on our homeland and the other relating to food security and therefore the ability to sustain ourselves. You could probably mount an argument that education also goes to our very existence, but I will not try to make that argument today. I will simply say that education policy, if not an existential issue, certainly goes very much to what we are as a nation—how wealthy and prosperous we are as a nation, where we sit as a nation in the global community, how much influence we exert as a nation—the list goes on and on—and, indeed, how happy we are as a nation. Only this morning we read of a report by UK based economists who are suggesting that, in the absence of change, Australia is very much at risk of sliding down the rankings of countries in the global community and sliding out of the G20, which would be a very, very unfortunate outcome indeed for this country. They equate that largely to where we are heading in terms of our education system.

This is the higher education deregulation bill mark 2. Labor opposed the first bill. I certainly supported that decision. I spoke against the bill and voted for that position, and I will be doing as the Labor Party is doing on university deregulation bill mark 2, and that is speaking against and voting against the proposition. It is fair to say not much has changed in this bill, save for, arguably, the $100 million transition fund. But I will return to that. For those listening to the debate who do not watch these things as closely as those of us here and find the debate somewhat complex, it is all pretty simple: the government are now going to allow the universities to charge whatever they like for university courses. There will be no government control over that. Therefore, they will be allowing universities to charge students more money, and of course there will be no compensation as such for students. We welcome the fact that the government have backed down on the increase in the rate of interest on HECS loans and debt, but there will be no compensation as such for students.

The government is taking $2 billion out of the system over the forward estimates and trying to argue that somehow that is not just a cut but it represents reform of the system. I do not buy that argument. It is a cut. It is a budget saving measure wrapped around a concocted budget emergency, as the government calls it. I heard people in the MPI earlier talking about cost-benefit analyses for things like the NBN and other pieces of infrastructure. Well, when measuring the return on the investment in education, many, many things have to be taken into account. Some of those I mentioned earlier—our prosperity, our wealth, our place in the world et cetera.

I am going to focus today—in this opportunity to make a brief contribution—on how the Higher Education and Research Reform Bill 2014 affects rural and regional Australia. I was somewhat interested that, with bill mark 1, there were not too many coalition members representing rural and regional Australia making a contribution. I think the reason is self-evident: while they had no choice but to toe the party line on that first bill, they were not really supportive of the bill and they were not prepared to come into this place and defend the bill. I see some of them have added themselves to the list this time around, which I find a little bit bemusing, because I have made the point that not much has changed, and I suggest there might have been a bit of influence from the Chief Government Whip and whoever instructs them.

But it is nice to see National Party MPs and Liberals representing regional and rural Australia in here at least attempting to defend what is a very difficult proposition to defend. I saw the members for Lyons and Braddon, in particular, in here—which is very interesting, given the potential impact of this bill on Tasmania. I was trying to check whether the member for Page has made a contribution, but I was not able to because the list has been updated. I do not think he made a contribute last time around—I could be wrong; I will check—and I do not know whether he made a contribution this time, but I suspect he did not. I guess he might be running into the chamber in a moment if I have misrepresented him. But certainly his part of the world is one which will be substantially adversely impacted by this bill.

To those listening, remember this: universities cannot always just ramp up fees to match the cuts being imposed by the government, because their students usually simply cannot afford it. In universities like the alma mater of the Minister for Communications sitting at the table, Sydney University, Melbourne University, the ANU and the sandstone universities generally you will find as a percentage of their student population about six, seven or eight per cent who come from low-socioeconomic backgrounds. If you come to my own region, to Newcastle, to Charles Sturt and like regional universities, you will find that proportion of poor students is around 24 per cent. At Southern Cross, which would be of interest to the member for Page, I think it is more like 26 per cent.

So you have to think about the capacity of universities to recoup these budget cuts by raising fees for their students. Rural and regional students more typically simply cannot afford it. And I am tiring of hearing this rhetoric about new scholarships being created to help these students. The fact is that the scholarships are only coming out of the fee increases. So if the university does not increase the fees, the scholarships do not come. Again, rural and regional universities have a limited capacity to increase the fees, because their students simply cannot afford it.

So we end up having a two-tier system basically, with the big city campuses raking in the money as they ramp their fees up considerably, while the rural and regional campuses struggle through the decrease in funding, unable to recoup it through increased fees—and, as I said, the scholarships are a misrepresentation of the situation. On that basis I fear a two-tier system more generally. I can see the day when our sandstone universities and those close to them—close to their status—will be doing all the research, while the rural and regional universities will be teaching only. That will be a great loss to the economic capacity of this country's great regions.

I heard the member for Macarthur quoting either the vice-chancellor or a senior academic at a Western Australian university. It is a shame that he had to go to Western Australia from Western Sydney to get the quote he was looking for. I did not hear him quote anyone from the University of Western Sydney. I do not know what their position is, but I can be fairly certain I think that they would have grave concerns about this bill, including concerns that the big sandstone universities exercising the scholarships system—and they will have plenty of scholarships because they will be able to substantially raise their fees with no problem at all—will be making decisions about where the scholarships go. They will be looking around for the best and the brightest, whether they be in Hobart, Launceston, Western Sydney or wherever, and plucking, choosing—stealing, if you like—and poaching the best and the brightest around the country into their sandstone universities, with obvious implications and consequences for rural and regional universities.

I have heard a couple of interesting contributions. I heard the member for Lyons say that this was going to be a great thing for Tasmanian universities. He said that it was going to create what he called 'reverse migration'. He declared that, rather than lose young people, Tasmania was now going to have an influx of young people looking for a cheaper university course in Tasmania—cheaper than they can find in Sydney or Melbourne. I find that a rather extraordinary way of looking at things. Even if it were true, I go back to addressing the issue I raised about the sandstone universities being able to poach the best and the brightest, with obvious consequences and implications for others. In any case, who really believes that anyone migrating to Tasmania to do a university degree is likely to stay in Tasmania? If they are from Melbourne or Sydney, obviously the opposite will be the effect. So let us not have any of this folly. The member for Forrest said that her regional students were going to rush to Perth to do their studies and become the best and the brightest and then they would come back to Forrest. That is not my experience. So often once you lose them they never return. But, in any case, how does the member for Forrest think that her students are going to be able to afford to pay the big fees in this deregulated system they might expect to pay in a capital city? It is not likely.

This is bad legislation. The Labor Party opposes it. I oppose it. We do not want $100,000 degrees in this country. We want a country where equity applies. We want to live in a country where, no matter what your background, you have the opportunity to play out your aspirations with have an equal opportunity to get the very best education in this country. We do not want sandstone and city universities plucking the best and the brightest out of Western Sydney and out of our regions because they can afford to do so—with the obvious impact on our average scores in rural and regional universities. We do not want our rural and regional universities to lose their research capacity, with all the implications that has for local economies and local communities. These are not good things.

I said that I would go back to the transition fund. The $100 million is simply an acknowledgement that there is a problem but does not provide the fix. While $100 million sounds a lot of money when quickly said to the ordinary Australian, it will go nowhere near what is necessary to compensate regional universities for the loss of that funding.

I seem to recall that that the Minister for Education, on the day the government folded the tent on the original bill, suggested that he might create a $300 million fund, and the experts saying, 'Well, that would be at least a couple of hundred million dollars short of what would be required to help these regional universities transition to this new deregulated environment. And now, having concluded that half a billion dollars was necessary, the minister is offering a mere $100 million. It will not be enough.

And here is the real problem now—and it is of concern to the Labor Party—the clock is ticking for the universities. They have budgets to implement. They have planning to do for the next academic year in 2016, and they simply do not know what their funding environment is going to look like at this stage. We are well into February and I understand that late March is drop-dead time for most of their planning. Here we are in the House dealing with bill mark 2; and when it gets through this place, of course, it is off to the Senate. And, no doubt, and absolutely justifiably, it will be off to a Senate committee and all the time that takes. So I do not see any prospect of this bill getting anywhere far well before that drop-dead date for the universities.

There is only one group of people in this place responsible for that, and that is the government and the minister, who has completely botched this process, wrapping up cuts as reform first without consulting with the sector. Then he had to go and consult, came back and changed a few things—not much, unfortunately, but changed a few things—and here we are in mid-February and he is still trying to progress this ill-thought-out bill through this place and has yet to run the gauntlet of the Senate.

That is a real problem—it is a real problem for our universities, for our students and for Australia's future. So maybe it is time the minister folded his tent once again, came back to the drawing board and talked to all the interested parties in this place and outside this place, to see whether we cannot get a resolution to this very serious problem we have before us.

So, again, I oppose the bill on that basis and I appeal to the minister and to his Prime Minister—and all those in their cabinet—to reconsider a bill which I think is going to be of great disadvantage to our country, particularly to our regional communities. It is not the bill that we want to put us on track to maintain our position, our ranking and our status in the global community.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I stand here to speak on the Higher Education and Research Reform Bill 2014 this afternoon.

It was interesting, listening to the member for Hunter's contribution. It is like much that Labor has done since they have been on the opposition benches, and that is to whitewash history and fail to talk about the $6 billion-odd that they pulled out of the higher education sector when they were in government. But I will get to that a little bit later.

This bill represents the most significant reform to Australia's higher education sector in a generation. It has major benefits for students. The reason is because we see that it is our job to widen opportunity and to give everyone a chance at university, despite those opposite and the Green cohorts, who are looking to stick to the old outdated model that everybody in higher education knows is no longer working.

Some of the benefits for students in these higher education reforms are that the bill makes possible the world-class education that Australian students need and deserve; it creates the largest Commonwealth Scholarships scheme ever; it provides Commonwealth support for tens of thousands of students who currently do not get it; and it provides pathways into higher education for tens of thousands of students who would otherwise miss out. In addition, this bill abolishes the unfair loan fees for FEE-HELP and VET FEE-HELP students.

As I touched on in my opening remarks, I think it is always constructive to consider for a moment how we got into this position in the first place. The reason we are in this position is because those opposite, who like to whitewash history, cut $6.6 billion from the higher education sector. And, as usual, they offer no alternative but a scare campaign. We have not seen a single credible alternative from those opposite—Labor, who left funding cliffs for research fellowships and university infrastructure. And no-one seriously believes that they have the ability to provide our universities with the resources they need to compete in a global education marketplace. The simple fact of the matter is that they actually have no plan for the higher education sector.

In April 2013, Labor cut some $2.8 billion of funding to universities and students, and capped self-education expenses, which risked leaving thousands of Australian nurses, teachers and other professionals out of pocket for their professional development costs.    Labor's cuts to universities were a desperate grab for funds to help their ballooning deficit and their mirage of budget surpluses that never existed. I am sure the member for Moreton, now at the table—good friend that he is!—put a flyer out in his electorate to say that they had returned to surplus when, in fact they had not.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I didn't, actually!

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, if he did not, he is one of the few on that side who have not. I will give him due credit for that!

Labor's $2,000 cap on the tax deductibility of self-education expenses was desperate and would have hurt many thousands of Australians. Labor left a complicated and unwieldy mess, with large increases in regulation, compliance, reporting and unnecessary red tape and regulatory duplication applying to universities. And it was not only in the university sector: there are plenty of other sectors in our community that I have spoken to that Labor did exactly the same thing to. I think it is something they are good at: red tape, regulation, tying people up and producing nothing productive. This meant universities spent an estimated $280 million per year just on compliance and reporting.

Labor's poor track record is evidenced by the two independent reviews of regulation and reporting that the previous Labor government failed to respond to, in 2013. Labor cut the Sustainable Research Excellence Scheme by nearly $500 million in the 2012 MYEFO. Labor made no provision beyond 2015 for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy and the Future Fellows program for research talent. Labor was therefore happy to let Australia's research efforts fall off a funding cliff.

Under Labor, international education went backwards. Export income from international education fell by billions of dollars from its 2009-10 peak because of Labor's neglect, policy weaknesses and bungled handling of what is now Australia's third largest export and our number one knowledge export. The number of international student enrolments during that period fell by 130,000. This represents a decline in enrolments of 16 per cent. That is bad for our economy and for all those who work in education and support services such as travel and accommodation.

There are many prominent figures—past luminaries of the Labor party—who have noted the desirability of the opposition's actual participation in shaping the higher education reform proposals currently before the Senate. These include the honourable John Dawkins, former education minister and Treasurer; the honourable Maxine McKee; and Professor Peter Noonan, the former adviser to Mr Dawkins. Interestingly, one of their current members, the honourable Dr Leigh, has also noted the benefits of deregulation and shown that the claim it will hurt disadvantaged students is simply false.

I think that is a good synopsis of why we are in this situation. What is our solution to clean up Labor's mess and to help future students in our higher education sector? Firstly, we are looking to expand the demand-driven Commonwealth funding system for students studying for higher education diplomas, advanced diplomas and associate degrees—an investment of some $372 million over three years. We are extending Commonwealth funding to all Australian higher education students in non-university higher education institutions studying bachelor courses—an investment in our students, in the future leaders of our community, of nearly $500 million over three years. By 2018, over 80,000 students each year will be provided additional support. This includes an estimated 48,000 students in diploma, advanced diploma and associate degree courses, and some 35,000 additional students undertaking bachelor courses.

There will be more opportunities for students from low socio-economic status backgrounds through new Commonwealth Scholarships, the greatest scholarship scheme in Australia's history. This will effectively mean free education for the brightest students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. In addition to Commonwealth Scholarships, there will be a dedicated scholarship fund for universities with high proportions of low SES students. This will be funded directly by the Commonwealth, on top of university-based scholarships.

We will free universities to set their own fees and compete for students. This competition will enhance the quality of education, and make higher education providers more responsive to the needs of students and the labour market. By creating a situation in which universities and colleges compete, students win.

Domestic fees will be required to be lower than international student fees, less the Commonwealth subsidy. The government will also direct the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to monitor university fees.

As part of these changes, we will also strengthen the Higher Education Loan Program, which sees taxpayers support all students' tuition fees up-front, and ensures that students repay their loans only once they are earning an income of over $50,000 per annum. There is no change to the current arrangement whereby no-one needs to pay a cent up front—despite some of the comments from those opposite in their scare campaign.

We have also introduced an interest rate pause on debts for primary carers of children aged less than five years who are earning less than the minimum repayment threshold. We are removing all FEE-HELP and VET FEE-HELP loan fees, which are currently imposed on some students undertaking higher education and vocational education and training.

Importantly, we are starting to reinvest in our research sector, with $150 million in 2015-16 for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy; $140 million to deliver 100 new four-year research positions per year under the Future Fellowships scheme; $26 million to accelerate research in dementia; $42 million to support new research into tropical disease; and $24 million to support the Antarctic Gateway Partnership.

In closing, I think it is safe to say that this package of reforms is clearly designed to create a foundation and a framework for the long-term sustainability and growth of our higher education sector. Our higher education reform package, I believe, is a fair and balanced package that aims to spread opportunities for students and ensures Australia is not left behind in the global competition, both in terms of skills and education.

Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Monday of this week, the Prime Minister told the Australian public that 'good government starts today'. He told his party room that, if they just gave him a chance, if they gave him six months, he would change. There would be no more captain's picks, no more asking for forgiveness instead of permission and no more knighting princes. Well, you do not have to be Dr Phil to be sceptical about a repeat offender like this Prime Minister promising that they would change, five years into a relationship. Talk is cheap. As the Prime Minister knows full well, promises are easy to make and hard to deliver on. It is actions, not words, that count.

That brings us to the Higher Education and Research Reform Bill 2014. While the Prime Minister promises change, what he is actually delivering is more of the same: another bungled, broken promise, another ideologically driven attempt to change our country under the cover of a manufactured crisis. This bill in particular is deja vu all over again. Fresh from the Minister for Education's humiliating defeat at the hands of the Senate last year, the minister is once again trying to push through his toxic plans to inflict $100,000 degrees on Australian students and their families. This is not change; this is more of the same, and more and more Australians are beginning to speak out against it, including the 39 members of the coalition backbench—some of whom may be leaving the chamber as we speak.

This week the Vice-Chancellor of Victoria University, Peter Dawkins, from my own electorate, in Footscray, spoke out against the changes to funding that would pave the way for $100,000 degrees in these reforms. He is one of a growing number of voices who deplore the ad hoc, high-handed policymaking of this fractured and disunified government. Professor Dawkins argues:

The federal government's initial package represents a radical move toward deregulation, with minimal safeguards against associated risks.

Professor Dawkins joins a growing chorus of criticism by experts and members of the university sector about these proposed changes. They have also failed to gain support from Stephen Parker, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra, who said that the proposed changes to higher education funding could 'blight the lives of a generation, unless Australia comes to its senses'.

Any MP need only stand on the corner of any street in their electorate, and they will soon hear directly from the voters what Australian families think of these reforms. It begs the question: how are we still talking about the higher education and research reform amendment bill? On the eve of the 2013 federal election, Tony Abbott sat in front of a camera and made a last pledge to the Australian public before they entered the ballot boxes. While being interviewed on SBS, the now Prime Minister said there would be 'no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS'. Now we all know that, as the Prime Minister himself has said in the past, you really need to get it in writing from this Prime Minister before you can have too much faith that the commitment is going to be kept.

So let us turn to the Real Solutions policy pamphlet, a policy pamphlet that dare not speak its name amongst those opposite. Page 41 of Real Solutions tells us that an Abbott government would 'ensure the continuation of the current arrangements of university funding'. So we have got him on TV and we have got him in writing: no cuts and no changes to university funding.

Unlike many other coalition promises, this one seemed to survive the transition from opposition to government. Two months after the federal election, in November 2013, the Minister for Education was asked on Sky News whether he was considering raising university fees. His answer was unambiguous. The minister remarked:

… I am not even considering it—

that is, raising university fees—

because we promised that we wouldn't and Tony Abbott made it very clear before the election that we would keep our promises.

Well, we have all seen the footage, and we have read the transcripts.

In stark contrast to these promises is the bill before the House today. It is just as unpopular and unfair as the Abbott government is itself. It is quite clear to the majority of Australians that these cuts to higher education are an affront to the dignity of our egalitarian society. This bill is really about promoting elitism and exclusion rather than equity and equality of opportunity. However, more than its ideological extremism, this bill best illustrates this government's ham-fisted approach to reform.

There has been a lot of talk from conservatives in recent time about the implications of recent election results and the challenge to the Prime Minister's leadership—the fastest challenge of a sitting Prime Minister since Federation—and many are suggesting that our democracy is somehow broken. The Australian's economics correspondent, Adam Creighton, has written that Australian democracy is 'probably not sustainable'. Melbourne radio host Neil Mitchell stated that the recent election result in Queensland showed that Australia had become:

… ungovernable. Nobody will be willing to make tough decisions

Another radio presenter in Melbourne, Tom Elliott, went so far as to say on 3AW:

We need a benign dictatorship, we need a committee of proven, talented people, give them 5 years

Instead of blaming the voters, conservatives need to look in the mirror to understand why reform has stalled under this government and under the state Liberal governments.

This government has thrown the reform book out the window. The OECD's Making Reform Happen project, a long-term, multicountry study of the effective ingredients of successful reform processes in developed countries, offers a tool kit for effective reformers. It is one that the Abbott government could learn a thing or two from. The major findings from this report process were:

It is important to have an electoral mandate for reform.

Now, as I have already outlined to the House, the Abbott government has failed on this measure comprehensively with respect to these higher education reforms. It is no way to make the biggest changes to our higher education system in 25 years by dropping them on both the Australian public and the sector in two lines in a budget speech after promising at the previous election that there would be no changes.

The next recommendation of the OECD is:

Effective communication is essential.

No, the OECD did not mean a taxpayer funded advertising campaign, as has been recently launched by the education minister—another direct broken promise of Tony Abbott's, who said that there would be no government funded advertising program of any initiative in the budget. What is required is an articulation of the need for reform. As I say, this government has confected a crisis in our university system—a university system that is regarded by international observers, particularly in the United States, as a model worthy of imitation.

The next recommendation from the OECD is:

Policy design must be underpinned by solid research and analysis.

The chorus of opposition to these reforms from academics and experts in education policy really tells the story here. Professor Bruce Chapman, the architect of the original HEC Scheme, has made it very clear that this government is taking the principles of HECS into uncharted waters and that there could be very serious consequences for the equity provisions of this policy system. Joseph Stiglitz has similarly praised the enormous contribution that Australia's higher education system makes to combating the progress of inequality in this country.

The OECD has also said that 'leadership is critical' to the delivery of reform. On this point I will let the Prime Minister's 68 per cent public disapproval rating speak for itself. The next recommendation from the OECD is that:

Successful reforms often take several attempts.

On this one I will give it to Christopher Pyne—he is continuing to try in the face of defeat. The final recommendation from the OECD is that:

It usually pays to engage opponents of reform rather than simply trying to override their opposition.

Now the education minister's ability to build consensus in this chamber is legendary. However, unfortunately, on this bill his efforts to engage his opponents have consisted more of the harassment of Senate crossbenchers by a flood of text messages than any sense to gain a sense of common purpose.

Democracy is not broken in Australia. Reform is not dead. We are not in the last days of the Roman republic. What is needed is a change of leadership. What is needed is grown-up, adult government. Rather than providing the grown-up, adult government, as promised by the Prime Minister in opposition, watching this government try to implement reform in this country in recent times has been like watching a two-year-old trying to eat spaghetti with their fingers. They are getting it all over themselves. It is just a mess.

Instead of attempting to build consensus in the parliament and in the community, seeking compromise or consulting with those affected, the minister has chosen to continue the combative approach to policymaking that has characterised his party's chaotic tactics. When he meets opposition from students, the Senate, the community, families, vice-chancellors, the minister for education simply puts his hands over his ears and tries another advertising campaign. He failed attempts to push through radical changes to higher education funding last year, then immediately jumped onto 7.30 to inform us that he planned to come back with his unfair changes as soon as parliament resumed in 2015. Today, in the first sitting week of the year, there has been no change; there have been no lessons learnt; and we are back where we started. It is indicative of a government ravaged by internal fracturing and poisoned by stubborn ideological zeal.

As I said earlier, the Prime Minister promised before the election that there would be no cuts to education funding. In the first Abbott budget, the first Hockey budget, the government cut federal funding of tertiary education by 20 per cent. If that were not enough, the Liberals then used their own savage cuts to education funding to justify pushing through the deregulation of university fees we see in the bill before us today. In a move that can only be considered masochistic, the government is trying to create an environment that would necessitate these awful policy changes. All of the analysis, from the Group of Eight to the National Tertiary Education Union, says that, as a result of these cuts to base university funding, fees for students will need to go up by around 30 per cent just to make up for this base funding cut.

This legislation would see a further slashing of funding for Commonwealth supported places in undergraduate degrees by an average of 20 per cent, and up to 37 per cent for some. The legislation does not stop there, instead proposing a complete deregulation of student fees from 2016, allowing universities to charge whatever they like, truly bringing the prospect of common $100,000 degrees into the frame.

The education minister wants to take us down the American road of higher education, where your ability to attend a university depends on your parents' bank account, not your industry or intelligence. This is not the Australia that I know. The United States is also suffering from the burden of deregulation in the form of student debt. The United States now has more student debt than credit card debt. Is this really this kind of society that we want to live in?

Likewise, if the US system does not serve as a perfect example of the negative effects of deregulation on universities, attempts at deregulation of universities in the United Kingdom have had similar debilitating results. The UK Higher Education Commission has released scathing reports of the impact that deregulation has had on English universities. Three years after its implementation, deregulation has raised doubts over the sector's quality and reputation as well as its financial sustainability going forward.

Without a white paper, community consultation, an electoral mandate or any sense of common purpose across this parliament, how can this government continue to try and frantically and chaotically force this legislation through? The irony is not lost on me that the only thing that we can now really trust this government to do is to follow through on its broken promises. The Liberal Party went to the last election with a list of promises—promises that quite obviously meant nothing to either the Prime Minister or his minister for education. In fact the minister for education had the gall, late last year, to claim that the coalition did not even have a higher education policy at the last election. That is taking it to whole other level: not only breaking a promise but denying the existence of the promise in the first place.

When they are criticised for cutting funding to universities, the government's media minders tell them to talk about the range of new scholarships on offer. We have heard it from members opposite talking about this bill. They say it as if we had not been inundated with their taxpayer funded ads on television—ads about changes to higher education for a proposed bill that has not yet passed the parliament. This scholarship fund, 'the biggest Commonwealth scholarship fund in Australia's history', as the education minister likes to remind us, will be funded exclusively by other students. This Commonwealth fund is not made up of Commonwealth funding; rather, it is funded by charging students more to go to university. One dollar in every $5 raised by deregulating university fees will go to this fund. This is a direct impost on future students.

Like so much of this proposed bill, the Commonwealth scholarship fund is clouded in a haze of technocratic jargon, misinformation and deception, designed to disguise an extreme ideological agenda. This comedy of errors would be amusing if it were not so destructive and dangerous. It is utterly unsurprising in this context that the Prime Minister's disapproval rating now sits at 68 per cent, and as Leigh Sales said on 7.30 this week to a stuttering Prime Minister hanging by a thread:

Clearly the public is not buying what you're saying there.

Indeed, the Liberal Party itself has not been this unpopular since the Minister for Communications, the white knight who will supposedly save the Liberal-National government, was leading the Liberal Party in 2009. Sadly, while all of this week's news will undoubtedly focus on the fracturing and disunity of the government leading this country down the garden path, effective governance makes way for petty politics. But what we do in this House matters, particularly the contents of this bill. I know that members of my electorate are very concerned about the consequences of this bill for their future and their children's future—for their ability to see a different and better life for their children.

Labor will not support this bill. We will vote against any attempt to cut university funding. We will not support greater inequality and reduced access as a result of higher fees and bigger debts. Finally, we will never tell Australian students that their ability to undertake transformative education depends on the size of their parents' bank account. The Prime Minister said— (Time expired)

David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In question time today, the Prime Minister made the observation that the Leader of the Opposition has been running around the country trying to scare people about fairness or supposed unfairness. Never was a truer observation made and nowhere is it more true than in this area of higher education reform. What the opposition has sought to do is cloud the debate, provide a whole series of falsehoods about the purported impact of these reforms and, frankly, mislead the Australian people about what is actually in these reforms and what their real impact will be on Australians. Let's address directly the issue of fairness in these reforms in some detail. I then want to also touch on some broader aspects of the legislation as well.

Firstly, Under this legislation, nobody is required to pay for a university course up-front. Let's just make that very clear. Despite the obfuscation and the weasel words of those opposite, nobody, under this legislation, is required to pay for a university course up-front. The HECS system as it exists today continues, so nobody has to pay up front.

Secondly, nobody has to repay anything under their HECS obligation until they earn at least $50,000 per year. So if they are out of the workforce, if they are unemployed, if they are working part-time or if they are in a full-time job that pays less than $50,000 a year, their obligation to repay HECS in that year is zero. Nobody has to pay anything up-front and nobody has to make any repayments until they earn at least $50,000 a year. And if they only earn $50,000 a year, the payment is very modest indeed at that level and obviously rises as one's income rises. Again, we cannot emphasise this point enough on fairness.

Thirdly, nobody has to pay an interest rate higher than CPI. Just as it is now, whatever the CPI rate is, under the legislation that is before the House today, is what people will be required to pay in the future. So no payment up-front, no requirement to pay anything at all until you earn $50,000 a year and then, when you do start to make repayments, you do so with interest calculated at CPI.

Finally, if you have a child who is under the age of five and if you are not earning over $50,000 a year—probably because you are looking after that child or perhaps working part-time—not only do you not have to make any HECS payments but you do not have any interest calculated during those five years either. That is a very important point. If we want a focus on fairness, and it is entirely appropriate to consider issues of fairness, nobody is required to pay any interest whilst they have a child under the age of five if they are earning less than $50,000 a year.

It is very difficult to see how a system under which nobody has to pay anything up front, nobody has to repay anything until they are earning $50,000 year and nobody has to pay an interest rate greater than CPI can be a negative thing in terms of access to Australian universities. In terms of access, it is very important to note a couple of other provisions of this legislation. The first one is we anticipate there are about 80,000 students who currently do not receive Commonwealth support for their courses because they are sub-bachelor courses, diploma courses, associate courses and so on that do not fit the strict definitions of what gets Commonwealth support at the moment. But in the future they will. We think there will be about 80,000 people by 2018, in three years, who will have direct Commonwealth subsidies going to their course, which should have a downward impact on what they are personally required to contribute.

In addition, under this bill, we will implement the largest system scholarships in Australian history. So for disadvantaged students and for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, a large pool of new scholarships will come into place and that is a great thing for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Let's run through that list again because they are very important points: no-one has to pay up-front; no-one has to repay anything until they earn $50,000 a year; nobody has to pay interest greater than the level of CPI; anyone who has a child under the age of five who is earning less and $50,000 does not even have to pay CPI—nothing, it does not go up at all; the largest scheme of scholarships in the history of the Commonwealth; and 80,000 more students than today getting Commonwealth subsidies towards their higher education. So if the Leader of the Opposition and those opposite want to run around and talk about fairness, that is a debate we are very willing to have because this bill has some extremely important reforms in it and it is structured in such a way that it does not remove opportunity to attend university. In fact, it substantially expands it for many thousands of Australians.

One of the key provisions of the bill is the ability for universities in the future to set their own fees. This is an important bill. As you know, at present every university in the country charges exactly the same amount, generally the same amount, within bands, for different courses. So if you are at a rural university or if you are at a major metropolitan university, the amount will be precisely the same. It is important to note there is some differentiation in the system already because there are different fees within different bands. When they take on their HECS obligation, students know that there are different fee bands. Some courses have a lower HECS obligation than others. So students are already choosing the amount of HECS obligation they are willing to take on. They are fully aware that some courses have a higher HECS obligation than others.

So this notion that the current system does not involve students making any evaluation between the value of different courses is wrong, because they do. Students now say, this is a band 1 course and it will cost this much, and this is a band 3 course—and so on. They take that into account when deciding what they want to study.

So, under this scheme, students will be able to choose from the options given to them by the universities around the nation what is the course that they want to do. That means that students will be able to choose the course that they believe provides them with the best value. As a consequence, universities will be responsive to those student demands. So, if a university has a particularly strong demand for a particular course, that suggests that course is particularly important and that university will be encouraged to continue to invest in that area and perhaps specialise in that area. And that is a good thing, because universities specialising in areas in which they are particularly strong makes a lot of sense.

Once students make that decision and make that choice to take on the particular HECS obligation, it is important to note that overall across the system the relative contribution of students and government to the cost of education is about 50-50. It varies from individual to individual but across the system it is about 50-50. That is, I believe and I think the Australian people believe, a very fair mix. When you take on a university degree, you get a significant personal benefit. There is a benefit to the community as well of course, because education leads to productivity and further development of our society and economy. But there is a clear personal benefit. So it is appropriate to have a broad 50-50 mix of contribution from the student and the government. It is extremely important to note that nobody is required to pay anything upfront under these rules. Students will elect what HECS obligation they are willing to take on.

Because of the importance of these reforms and the need to set up the education system for the future, they have been the subject of widespread support. Universities Australia, which is the peak body representing Australian universities, has made it clear that it believes that fee deregulation is an important step forward that will allow Australia universities to have the sustainable funding base that they need to invest in the future.

Interestingly and tellingly, we have seen some important interventions from representatives from the Australian Labor Party. I think John Dawkins—the original architect of the HECS system and other important education reforms—made it very clear that he was disappointed in the obstructionist attitude of those opposite on these issues. We also had the former member for Bennelong calling for a less obstructionist approach. And the Business Council of Australia has pointed to the importance of university reform for productivity in the future. And the list goes on.

There is no credible alternative to these proposals. There is an absolute lack of ideas from those opposite. What we see in this space, as we see in so many others, is a sense of simply saying no; no solutions to the problem that they created, no solutions to the lack of funding that they provided to the higher education sector; and a willingness to just run around the country trying to scare people. That is not the task of reforming governments. Indeed it was not the task of previous reforming governments of those opposite. But the opposition that we find ourselves with is an obstructionist, mediocre, intellectually thin and very negative group. Simply running around the country trying to scare people is not going to work, because the Australian people are far more sophisticated than that.

The Australian people know that nobody is required to pay upfront for a university course. Nobody is required to pay anything back until they earn at least $50,000 a year. Nobody is required to pay interest at a rate higher than CPI. Nobody with a child under the age of five is required to pay any interest at all. The scholarship program is the largest in Australian history. There are about 80,000 people who are going to have access to Commonwealth funding who do not have access to Commonwealth funding today. Those points are very important. It is very clear that this is a system that is entirely fair, that provides universities with the framework they need to specialise in the areas where there is the demand.

It is important to not pretend that every university is exactly the same, because there is a differentiation across our university sector. Some universities have fantastic law schools; some universities have fantastic schools of agricultural economics. The variations across our university sector are immense. Pretending that every university is exactly the same is a system that leads to a lack of investment and to a lack of growth opportunities for the funding of the Australian university sector. These are good reforms, important reforms for the university system, and I commend them to the House.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For an education minister Mr Pyne is a pretty slow learner. Last year the Senate sent this government a very clear message. The Senate, representing the Australian people from various points on the political spectrum, sent a very clear message. The Senate said: 'Australia is a country where, no matter how much you earn, you should be able to go to university and should not be deterred from going or forced to make certain choices on the basis of the size of the debt that you might incur.' The Senate sent the very clear message that in Australia you should not graduate from university with a debt the size of a small mortgage. If people have to graduate with a debt the size of a small mortgage, it is clear that people may not go in the first place or, if they do go, they will be forced to make certain choices for the rest of their life that they otherwise might not. People have looked to the United States, where students carry around with them five- or six-figure debts for their whole lives and are forced to make decisions about where they live and what kinds of jobs they will take because they have this debt hanging around their neck and said: 'We don't want that. We do not want Australia to become like the United States where the gap between the haves and have-nots just grows.'

The Senate saw through the blackmail of this government that is encapsulated in this Higher Education and Research Reform Bill 2014 and the last bill. The blackmail was, 'We are going to cut funding to universities by about 20 per cent,' and when the universities said, 'Hang on, that is not sustainable,' they took that as some kind of imprimatur for their policies. People can see through that. They are putting a gun to the head of universities and saying, 'We are going to cut your funding by 20 per cent unless you get together and say you are going to support our bill.' People can see through that because people are not dumb.

Independent review after independent review has told us that universities in this country need a boost in funding and yet this government comes along, after having made the promise that there would be no cuts to education, and says it is going to take 20 per cent out of base funding for universities. The Senate stood up to this government and said: 'No, hang on. Not only are you breaking a promise and not only did you not tell people at the election that you were going to do this but this is fundamentally unfair and will grow the gap between the haves and the have-nots in this country.' Instead of saying, 'I hear what you are saying, let us find a different way,' the minister said: 'I will turn around tomorrow and introduce exactly the same bill. I will take some of the worst bits off it because you have called me on it—you have called me on the fact that my original intention was to make women pay more and to give people crippling debts that would keep on growing so when women took time out of the workforce to have kids their debt would keep increasing even though they were not earning anything. You have found me out on that so I will take that bit out, but I will leave the rest in and pretend it is now fair.'

This message was not just coming from the Senate. This message is coming loud and clear from the Australian people. People in Australia know that once you deregulate university fees and say, 'You can just go for it now, guys; you institutions can charge whatever you like,' some courses will have their prices skyrocket out of the reach of ordinary citizens. That stands to reason. We have heard lecture after lecture from members of the government about how price signals are wonderful because they allow people to make choices. Anyone can look at any other commodity in the market to know that if you can charge whatever you want for it then people will charge a very high price knowing that there is a small proportion of the population that is able to pay that price and everyone else can go hang. That is exactly what universities will do.

The universities that are well established and well off and that are currently attractive because of their good institutional reputation or location will be able to charge whatever the hell they like in certain subjects. Each year there are only a few hundred places for subjects like law, medicine and vet science and when the places are limited the prices will go up and up. People saw last year the University of Western Australia and Melbourne University say that $100,000 for a degree is not unrealistic, especially when you look at what international students are paying at the moment. The minister comes in here and tells us that we should be satisfied with this bill because there will be a new cap in it and you will not have to pay more than an international student is paying. Some comfort that is, knowing that some degrees at the moment are in the vicinity of $100,000. He just made the point that we made all of last year and are going to continue to make all of this year.

The University of Western Australia says expect that some degrees could cost in the order of $100,000 and a lot of institutions now require you to do an undergraduate generalist degree before you can go into a specialised degree like law or medicine—these things are becoming postgraduate degrees now, so some students are going to have to do two degrees. If they want to get into medicine or law, they will have to do the generalist undergraduate and then go into the specialist one, so costs are going to go up and up. I would have thought that members of the government would read their journal of record The Australian, which made the point recently that students studying veterinary science are going to be up for around $200,000 at some universities. That will go down well in rural and regional Australia! That will get people staying on the farm. This government is proposing $200,000 to do vet science.

People know that once you say, 'Let it rip,' and people can charge whatever they like for education the cost of some degrees is going to be out of the reach of the everyday Australian. They are not going to want to graduate and then have to find a job, start a family and get a mortgage with a small mortgage already hanging around their neck, but that is what this government is condemning people to. Not only that, but if you happen to graduate and it takes a little while to find a job, heaven help you after six months because they are going to kick you off the dole and you will have nothing except a $200,000 degree. While you look for a job you will be forced to live on zero dollars a week.

If this government gets its way with this legislation and its other legislation, we will see the tipping point in this country, where, as a result of this government's action, future generations and people under 30 are going to be worse off than their parents, and the people who came before them. That is going to be the legacy of this government if this legislation and other legislation is passed. They stand up part of this bill and say, 'It is all going to be all right because there are scholarships,' but what they do not tell you is that they are not putting a dollar towards those scholarships. The funding for those scholarships is going to have to be met from the universities themselves. So they cut university funding by 20 per cent and say to universities, 'You are going to have to fund a bunch of scholarships as well as a 20 per cent funding cut.' Where is it going to come from? The money is going to come from the students in the form of higher fees, so this wonderful scholarship program that you are talking about is actually going to put fees up even further for everyone else.

They came back again at the start of this week and said: 'We're all ears. We hear what the Australian people are telling us and we understand that we might have got a few things wrong.' Obviously this is not one of them. Obviously this government have no compunction at all about making people graduate with a debt the size of a small mortgage before they have even started their working life. That is not off the table. They are pressing ahead with that. I must say that after hearing the government saying, 'We are all ears,' and, 'We hear the message,' I am yet to find one policy that they are firmly committed to scrapping, or one policy that was in last year's budget that they are firmly committed to taking off the table. It seems to be the case that they want to get it all through, and they are coming back and pushing again and again. They are going to be met with the same response and rightly so.

One of the other things that people have picked up on over the last few months is that not only is this bill taking 20 per cent of funding away from universities and then saying to them, 'From your cut funding you have to find money to fund some scholarships'; it is also going to take a pot of money that would have gone to universities and give it over to the private sector. It is going to give to the private sector $500 million that would otherwise have gone to universities. They are, in effect, not only going to deregulate but going to privatise universities as well. I struggled to find that in the government's election platform, but that is what they are going to do.

You do not have to look further than my home state of Victoria to see what the effect of doing that will be. It will rip money out of the public system and public education suffers, and that money then goes straight across to a private provider, who takes a whack of it in profit. That stands to reason; they are in business and they are private operators. That is fine. Good on them, but why should we, the public, be subsidising them at the cost of universities? That is what this government is asking us to do. In the TAFE sector and the vocational education sector last year, according to some research that has just been done, the private providers in the sector made $230 million profit, and that is off the back of public subsidies. So $230 million in Victoria that could have gone into TAFE to skill people up for the future is now going straight into the hands of private operators in the form of profit. And this government, with this legislation, wants to do that with $500 million of taxpayers' money—shovel it off to their mates in the private sector. It will be interesting to have a look at the list of Liberal Party donors. Why should the federal government and the Australian taxpayer subsidise a private for-profit education operator? Let them run their business, and good luck to them, but it is not our job to subsidise them.

I thought this government was all about saying that industry had to stand on its own two feet and that it is going to withdraw industry assistance. It seems that does not apply here; they are all too happy to gut universities and just shovel the money into the pockets of the private sector. What we know, and we have seen it in Victoria, is that when you introduce that kind of model the quality goes down because money that would have otherwise gone to teaching and research is now going towards someone's bottom line and is not finding its way back into the system at all, all courtesy of the taxpayer.

I take my hat off to the hundreds of thousands of students, family members, community members around the country and the National Tertiary Education Union and others, who have campaigned so strongly to say, 'This will fundamentally change the direction of education in Australia forever,' and, 'This will make Australia a more unequal country.' I say to them: thank you for your campaign because you have helped call this government out. If the government wants to find a reason as to why it is languishing in the polls—it is not the salesman; it is what you are trying to sell. People just do not want it.

If you think the answer is to come back here and say that you will just push this bill through as quickly as possible, do not be surprised if what happened in Queensland and what happened in Victoria happens to you again very soon. So it should because you have overstepped the mark. You have broken a fundamental compact with the people of this country, who want Australia to be a place where we look after each other, where no matter where you come from and how much money you earn you will get a good quality health care and a good quality education, and where when you get sick they check your Medicare card not your credit card. They want a place where when you go to university you do not leave with a debt the size of a small mortgage. You have pushed people too far and that is why you are in trouble. People want to make sure that in Australia education is available to everyone and remains so. That is why I am very proud to be opposing this bill. I will continue to fight for more money for our universities and better support for students. It will not be a moment too soon that this bill is defeated yet again in the Senate.

Debate adjourned.