Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) when the previous Government introduced the Jobs Ready Graduates Scheme, many students, education experts, universities, and members of the then Opposition criticised the scheme as an inequitable and damaging attack on students, and on the humanities and social sciences in particular;

(b) the subsequent Australian Universities Accord final report found the Jobs Ready Graduate Scheme had been a policy failure and an expensive impost on students, and recommended it be replaced with a more equitable funding arrangement; and

(c) despite three years in power and 18 months since the Universities Accord Report, the current Government has failed to act in the best interests of students and has left the Jobs Ready Graduates Scheme in place; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) urgently repeal the Jobs Ready Graduate Scheme; and

(b) implement a return to fee-free first degrees for Australian citizens.

Australia is one of the richest countries in the world, and it's more than capable of ensuring that higher education is accessible and affordable for any Australian with the desire and aptitude to pursue it. Unfortunately, though, that's not what successive governments have chosen to do. In fact, the previous coalition federal government chose to drastically increase the cost of degrees in the arts and humanities, in particular, with the jobs-ready graduates scheme—a scheme which was rightly criticised at the time by the then Labor federal opposition as being inequitable and damaging. So imagine the subsequent frustration among students, parents and many others in the community that, after three years in power and almost two years since the Universities Accord final report, this Labor government has yet to repeal and replace this appalling scheme. Yes, the government have made welcome steps in reducing student debts, which have been ballooning rapidly, but what they seem to not understand is: you wouldn't need to forgive student debts if you hadn't loaded students up with mountains of it in the first place. If the government doesn't act to address the fee structure, the problem will only re-emerge again for students in a few years time. In other words, the one-off cut to student debt is really just a bandaid on a bullet wound.

It's clear, I suggest, that we need a return to first principles. If you ask me, that should come with a re-examination of our attitudes and approach to education across different stages of life. At the moment we don't look at education holistically, choosing instead to adopt a fragmented approach to early childhood education, primary and secondary education and tertiary education. Even within the tertiary sector, we've got fragmented approaches to vocational education and university education. Frankly, somewhere along the line we lost sight of the inherent value of knowledge and that learning is a continuum, and that education is inherently a public good and, for that matter, a human right. In other words, it doesn't start at age four and finish at age 16 or 18; it starts the moment you're born and extends to the moment you die.

It's not hard to find the basis for a different approach. We already accept that free compulsory primary and secondary education for all students should be provided on the basis that all citizens deserve an equal right to education regardless of their financial capacity.

But it shouldn't stop there. I think we should apply that same principle to education across the entire spectrum of learning. In other words, higher education shouldn't be in some esteemed class of its own. This is why I have long called for a return to fee-free first degrees for Australian citizens. I'd hoped such an approach would find favour with the current federal government, because it was, of course, the Whitlam federal Labor government that introduced fee-free degrees in the 1970s. This spoke well of our country back then—that we valued education so highly that we prioritised investing in education and in educating Australians. Of course, we could and should extend this approach to early learning through early childhood education and care and into other tertiary education by extending fee-free TAFE to cover all TAFE courses. Sadly, though, the Whitlam-era reforms were, of course, unwound during the 1980s by another Labor government.

But back to today. The Job-ready Graduates scheme exemplifies a narrow, individualistic and hard-nosed economic view of education, as does the other, often-touted alternative of setting fees based on future earnings. But, of course, neither is the right approach, because Australia surely needs tradies, carers, artists and other critical and creative thinkers every bit as much as it needs engineers, doctors and teachers. Indeed, there is an inherent value to the community of a broad education, and the fact is that a smarter, better and more diversely educated community is not only more employable; it's also healthier, happier and more adaptable.

All of this is to say that it's beyond time the government acted on the principles they claimed to have just three and a bit years ago and finally addressed access and affordability in the higher education system. A great place to start would be scrapping the Morrison-era Job-ready Graduates scheme and returning to Whitlam-era fee-free first degrees. The country would be all the better for it if they did.

Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there a seconder to the motion?

Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In my first speech, I spoke about the importance of higher education. I'm going to quote from myself here, which I don't do often. I said at the time:

If we can get this right, there is a kingdom that awaits us all, one made up of highly skilled and fulfilling jobs, an economy that is productive and makes the most of our talents and where imagination is valued.

I quote myself because I want all members to know how importantly I value higher education. Sadly, the Job-ready Graduates scheme has failed to do all of those things. It was introduced by the previous Morrison government and it didn't do the things that they promised it would do. It didn't improve job outcomes like they promised. It didn't boost enrolments in priority areas like they promised. It didn't deliver value for students like they promised. I agree with many of the points that the member for Clark has made.

But we have to be upfront about the challenges that faced this government when we came in in 2022. The higher education sector, under the leadership of the former Morrison government, had been treated with utter contempt. They didn't just neglect it; they undermined it, they underfunded it and they undervalued it.

But we're not standing idly by. We're rebuilding the higher education sector. We promised to fix the system and now we're delivering. We're taking bold, practical steps that will ease the burden on students and graduates. We made a promise to the Australian people to wipe 20 per cent off all student debt. Australians overwhelmingly voted for it, and now we're delivering on that. It was the first piece of legislation that we introduced when we came into this parliament, and, backdated to June this year, we're delivering $16 billion in student debt relief for more than three million Australians. And we're delivering a fairer repayment system. From this financial year, students and graduates won't start repaying their loans until they earn around $67,000 a year. That's more time to build your career, to get established, before you have to start making these repayments.

We've already delivered a fix to the broken HECS indexation system so that there's no more student debt growing faster than your wages. It's a structural fix that protects students now and into the future. This isn't just policy; it's progress. They're not just promises; it's delivery. When Labor says, 'We'll back you; we'll deliver for students,' we'll make it happen. But we're not just delivering change; we're making the system fairer—fairer for 70,000 students a year receiving a Commonwealth prac placement who would have had to give up paid work to complete mandatory placements in essential care professions such as teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work. No-one should have to choose between finishing their degree and paying their bills.

We're making it fairer for students in FEE-FREE Uni Ready courses who need a stepping stone to get into university. We're giving thousands of Australians the foundational skills and confidence they need to succeed at university. We're making it fairer for students in disadvantaged, regional and outer suburban areas studying in our new university study hubs, where access to higher education has been out of reach for far too long—because where you live should never determine whether you can go to uni. That is what a fairer system looks like. But reforming a system as complex as higher education, a system that has been neglected for more than a decade, takes time. As the Minister for Education has said, the Universities Accord isn't just about one or two budgets or short-term fixes; it's about delivering a sustainable tertiary education system that works for students and for our country. So we're working with universities, students and communities across Australia to build a system that's responsive, inclusive and future focused. And, yes, we should work through the accord's recommendations, and we're doing that the right way—systematically, sustainably, with students at the very centre of it.

Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor is clearly not the party of Gough Whitlam anymore. I'd love to imagine today's Labor Party doing something as groundbreaking as making university free. In 1974, I was one of the very first to benefit from Whitlam's free university reforms. It's no exaggeration to say that it had a huge impact on my life and many others. There was a really striking difference between our cohort and the previous year. The previous year were clearly comparatively privileged families who could afford uni fees.

Our year represented a real cross-section of Australian society, opening up higher education to many who could not access it before. The transformative effect of that on Australia is still being felt. The Hawke Labor government ended free university in 1989. They introduced a flat fee at first, which was then refined by the Howard government into tiers depending on how much they thought you could theoretically earn from your degree. If you ended up going into a different field, too bad. Then there was the Morrison era's utterly shameful—shameful!—Job-ready Graduates scheme, which caused huge fee hikes for some degrees, saddling young people with tens of thousands in debt that many will carry for their whole lives. It's not immaterial. It's deducted from your income in this cost-of-living crisis and affects your ability to buy a home, as if buying a home isn't difficult enough at the moment. But there is a better way. Germany, Austria, Finland and countries all around the world know there is a better way, as we did back in the seventies. It is possible to make university free again. It's an essential investment in our country's future.

Our tax system is so broken that HECS collects four times as much revenue as the royalties from giant multinational oil and gas companies, and that's the PRRT. Students should not be paying four times more tax than gas companies. In 2023-24, students paid a collective $5.1 billion. In stark contrast, the PRRT raised only $1.1 billion, which is a comparative pittance for an industry that's sudsidised by taxpayers and generating $70 billion in revenue. You might say, 'Well, they pay income tax,' but so do students. Students collectively pay much more income tax and GST than the gas industry. Norway taxes its fossil fuel corporations properly and is able to offer free university, a life free of student debt. Instead of taxing our mining corporations, we make students and graduates fork out—in some cases for the rest of their lives. Those fossil fuel corporations are also taxing us all in another way, worsening the climate crisis. Why is this happening? Labor takes millions in donations from gas corporations. Woodside is their 10th biggest donor, and Labor literally had them in the room when they were writing reforms to the PRRT a few years ago. It's no surprise then that while students get fee hikes, Labor's mates, the gas corporations, get tax breaks.

Some maths. Let's say you had a $30,000 student debt in 2022; since Labor came to power it would have gone up to $33,454. Labor's HECS reduction takes it down to around $27,000. Within a few years it will be back at $30,000. That's because Labor have actively chosen to keep indexing your debt. Your debt goes up with inflation each year. There's no reason this debt needs to be indexed. This is a choice Labor have made—a choice to not properly tax gas corporations but to keep your debt rising. There's no reason a uni degree should put you in debt in the first place. Labor used to support free university. Labor have also chosen not to reverse the outrageous fee hikes from Scott Morrison. Labor were happy to talk a big game about this in opposition. They opposed the legislation and said it was creating 'an Americanised higher education system characterised by high levels of private debt', but they're not touching it now they are in government.

We have the Morrison-era fee hikes on top of an incredibly unfair student debt system, plus several years of indexation. I won't stand in the way of Labor's small HECS-debt reduction—let's get it done. But then let's demand much, much more.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the spirit in which this motion was brought before the parliament. For many years I've been discussing university student debt and the need to be doing something more in this space, so I acknowledge the spirit which has brought the debate to us. I also acknowledge it is a time when this parliament is also debating one of the most significant reforms to have happened in relation to student debt for decades—that is in relation to the bill introduced into the House in the last sitting to cut all student debts by 20 per cent.

The reason I raise that is it was part of the recommendation in the University Accord, which did talk about the need to have a fairer indexation system. It's a demonstration of how our government went further, by cutting all student debt by 20 per cent. There was a period under the Howard government and, subsequently, the previous coalition government, where student debts did spiral out of control. They were unfair. High inflation did send personal student debt skyrocketing, and many people my age—people in their 30s and 40s, whose higher education experience was well in the rearview mirror—were seeing their debts go up by more in the past few years than what the original debt was to begin with. That prompted Labor to act, to say, 'We need to do something to restore the fairness.' Hence, we brought forward our commitment at the last election to cut all student debt by 20 per cent.

For my electorate, an electorate in regional Victoria, that's about 17,000 people who will have their student debt cut, and three million Australians. This cut isn't just for people who incurred a debt through university, through the HECS—now HELP—scheme but also for people who incurred a debt prior to free TAFE through the student loans that were offered in vocational education and training. It is a welcome measure, and much of the reason we saw a massive shift towards Labor in many of the seats that we now hold.

Apart from that, I'd also like to talk about TAFE for a moment. One of the other key recommendations of the University Accord was to improve the transition from the vocational education sector to the tertiary university sector. We have started to implement some of those reforms. There should be a clearer transition pathway, with recognition of credit and work that has been achieved through VET and through TAFE into higher education.

In my own electorate I met nursing students—early school leavers who have taken the opportunity to go back to TAFE to start studying nursing, and, to their credit, they were doing well. Some of them are now qualifying for another part of the Universities Accord package, the Commonwealth prac payment, when they take their first prac payment later this year. These students have a goal. They are keen to go on to midwifery and nursing at university at La Trobe's Bendigo campus. From early school leavers to being enrolled in free TAFE and transitioning to university, these amazing women are on the path to becoming midwives and nurses, a pathway not possible if not for our Labor government. These are the stories that are seeing real change.

I'd also like to acknowledge some of the other things that we have done as a result of a recommendation of the Universities Accord. Fixing HELP debt indexation was a key recommendation. I've mentioned the Commonwealth prac payment, starting with nursing, teaching, midwifery and social work students. There is another area that we are keen to look at. We've introduced fee-free uni-ready places, another pathway into university, and more student study hubs. But I acknowledge that there is still more work to be done, and I have said publicly as well as to the minister that the work of implementing the recommendations of the accord will not be finished until we've done more about the Jobs-ready Graduates scheme, particularly in relation to arts and humanities students. It is wrong that these students are charged more for their fees than the cost of delivery, and I look forward to working with the minister and our government to see that injustice changed.

Everyone should have the opportunity to go to university and choose to study what they like, regardless of where they're from and the postcode that they have.

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next day of sitting.

Sitting suspended from 13:22 to 16:00