Jess Teesdale (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education. How is the Albanese Labor government progressing on its reforms to make the university system better and fairer for students? How does this compare with other approaches?

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank my friend the beloved member for Bass for her question. We've cut student debt by 20 per cent. That means we've cut the debts of millions of Australians by thousands of dollars. As I told the House this week and last week, more Australians will start a uni degree this year than ever before—that's more teachers, more nurses and more doctors too. This year we're taking the next step to help make getting a university degree quicker and cheaper. If you've done a TAFE course in the same area, it should cut the length and the cost of your degree. This year I'll also introduce legislation to help more young people from poor families and from the bush to get a crack at going to university. If you're from a poor background, if you're from regional or rural Australia, and you get the marks and you've got the skills then you'll get a place at university—a Commonwealth-supported place.

We've also got to fix some of the things that have put universities on the front pages of our newspapers this year for all the wrong reasons. Our universities do great things, but if you think that we don't have challenges with the way some of them are governed then you've been living under a rock. That's why we set up the National Student Ombudsman, and this year we'll take the next step. This year, for the first time, the Remuneration Tribunal will get involved in the setting of salaries for vice-chancellors. University boards will have to become a lot more open and a lot more accountable. I'll introduce legislation to strengthen the powers of TEQSA—that's the university regulator—so they've got the sorts of powers that they need to act when universities don't or won't. At the moment, they've effectively got a sledgehammer or a feather and not much in between.

There's also more work that we need to do to weed out antisemitism. As part of that, we've appointed David Gonski to chair the Antisemitism Education Taskforce. David is a man who I'm sure is respected by everybody in this chamber and who knows the education system inside and out. This is an intense 12-month piece of work right across the education system, from pre-school to school, TAFE and university. But it's not just antisemitism we have to tackle. We're not a racist country, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist—of course it does—and it's a problem in our universities as well. The report I released a couple of weeks ago and the 76,000 submissions from students and staff make that clear. We've got to tackle all of this. It's not about belting universities; it's about making them better.