Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a continuation of my contribution in this debate on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2006 Budget and Other Measures) Bill 2006I had started my remarks last night but had only about two minutes then. In recent weeks we have seen yet another report, an OECD report titled Education at a glance 2006, with some very unfavourable comments about Australia in relation to higher education. It certainly shows that this Prime Minister and this government deserve an ‘F’ for education and training. There can be no doubt about the meaning of this report: ‘F’ signifies failure. While the rest of the OECD countries around the world have increased their public investment in tertiary education by an average of 48 per cent, Australia is the only country in the developed world—I emphasise: the only country—to see a decline, of seven per cent. Surely that must be not only a national but an international disgrace.

Let me give you some comparisons. In the OECD report we see the increases by other countries in their funding contributions to tertiary education. In the United States, the increase has been 67 per cent; in Canada, 37 per cent; in Japan, 32 per cent; and in Switzerland, 74 per cent. But what we see in Australia is a decline in public investment of seven per cent—so not an increase but, in fact, a decline. And it is not as if we do not have the money. This government boasts of its enormous budget surplus; we often hear about good times and economic prosperity in this country. It is simply down to the government’s short-sighted ideology and its blind desire to turn our higher education system into an American copy. So Australia is going backwards internationally while everyone else is going ahead. No wonder we have a massive skill shortage impeding our future development and prosperity—a skill shortage brought about solely by this government and its lack of attention to higher education.

Furthermore, the report shows that the Howard government’s HECS hikes have meant that Australian university students are now paying the second highest fees in the world. Under the Howard government Australians are paying more and more simply to get a degree. These massive increases in university fees are forcing up the total debts faced by students and graduates by $2 billion a year, taking Australia further down the track of an American style university system. The new Senate estimates figures from the Department of Education, Science and Training show that university graduates and students will owe $18.8 billion—that is billion, not million—in HECS debts by 2008-09. We have the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Minister Bishop, trying to spin herself out of trouble by saying that the massive rise in debt is simply due to the rise in student numbers. Try again, Minister. That is simply wrong, as the student numbers have risen by only a small percentage, in fact 0.2 per cent, according to DEST’s own figures, between 2004 and 2005, compared to the rise in student debt. What we have seen from this government is a deliberate shift: a decline in university funding and the onus being moved onto students through their HECS increases over the life of this government.

Included, of course, in the funding this bill proposes is the application of indexation to university grants across the forward estimates years. This is a major matter—indeed, our universities continue to suffer from inadequate indexation, as they have done for 10 years under this government. The rate of indexation being applied to university operating grants by the government averages around two per cent per annum. By comparison, average weekly earnings rose by an average of 4.5 per cent annually between 1998 and 2004. Salary costs are the largest component of any university’s operating expenses, ranging between 45 per cent and 70 per cent—more like 70 per cent or more, I would have thought. The gap between indexation and the growth in wage costs continues to rise. In fact, I understand that what is needed to compensate universities for the gap between indexation and the rise in wage costs is somewhere around $500 million. As the gap rises, so do the financial pressures on universities—their staff, courses, class sizes and students. The ratio of students to tutor or lecturer in higher education in 1991 was about 15.6 to one. That ratio in 2004 was 20.7 to one. So there has been an increase in class sizes.

In particular, the shift in responsibility from the Commonwealth and public purse to either students or universities themselves has been most significant in the last 10 years. For example, Commonwealth grants to universities in 1996 when this government took over represented about 57 per cent of total university revenue. More than 50 per cent of funding going to universities was from the Commonwealth government. In 2003 around 41 per cent of university revenue came from the Commonwealth. So we have seen a downward shift of 16 per cent.

What has been the reaction from the sector? The universities have no other option but to impose fees. Somehow the 16 per cent difference has to be made up. In 1996 universities had 13 per cent of their revenue base made up of fees from students. In 2003 universities relied on about 24 per cent of their funding to come from student fees. So from 1996 to 2003 we have had a 16 per cent decline in the funding coming from the Commonwealth to universities. At the same time, universities have compensated for that by imposing fees on students which have risen from 13 per cent to 24 per cent of their revenue. So it is not surprising that we do not come up to the mark in an international report such as the one produced by the OECD.

Let us look at the impact on regional universities, and in particular Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory. Charles Darwin University has about 17,665 students—people, that is, not equivalent full-time students or TAFE students, but actual bodies—according to their 2005 statistics. Out of that about 5,380 people are in higher education. Charles Darwin University suffered a $6 million cut in the first year of this government coming to power. We know what that meant at the time for the then Northern Territory University. It meant that they had to abolish courses, areas of faculties and departments. The English faculty, for example, was one that was abolished to much hue and cry from the local community. The arts department suffered as a result.

All up, since 1996 Charles Darwin University has faced nearly $40 million in recurrent funding being withdrawn by the Howard government. Forty million dollars over the course of 10 years is a large cost for a university like Charles Darwin University to have to wear, particularly when they do a splendid job in trying to deliver higher education right around the Territory in places such as Gove, Nhulunbuy, Katherine, Alice Springs and even in the remote centres. It is extremely expensive and time consuming to get lecturers out to those places and to service students in those places. This university has had to struggle to survive and to continue offering higher education right around the Territory while they have suffered a $40 million reduction in their recurrent funding under the Howard government. So reduction in funding has a massive impact on small and regional universities such as Charles Darwin University.

At a time when our university system is grossly underfunded and in need of serious attention, all we are getting from this government is an inadequate, incoherent policy response to the needs of our university system to diversify, innovate and meet Australia’s higher education needs.

I want to spend some time having a look at Indigenous people participating in higher education. I have not heard any comment about that in this debate in this chamber or from my colleagues in the House of Representatives. We know that this government set up the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council. Let us give that a tick because that is a good thing. It is time Indigenous people have an avenue in the tertiary education sector through which advice can be given directly to the minister. I notice that we do not have it in the school sector but at least we have it in higher education. I want to commend the government for putting representatives from the trade union movement on it—people like Joel Wright, who works for the National Tertiary Education Union—who have a broad network of connections in the education sector. Their expertise is welcomed and recognised.

On 18 July the new minister, the honourable Julie Bishop, launched the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council’s report called Improving Indigenous outcomes and enhancing Indigenous culture and knowledge in Australian higher education. The report also included the outcomes of the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council 2005 conference—because, remember, there was a commitment from this government to have an Indigenous higher education conference each year—titled Education led recovery of Indigenous capacity: reshaping the policy agenda. The reforms and initiatives in the report aimed to substantially improve the quality of Indigenous peoples’ participation in higher education as staff and students. It put forward, though, one overarching recommendation. The cornerstone or the keystone of that report stated:

A major national project be undertaken to investigate and report on Indigenous education initiatives and strategies in higher education that are successful in improving access and rates of retention and completion.

There were 35 specific recommendations in that area and they went to: encouraging universities to work with schools and TAFE colleges; developing a concerted strategy to improve the levels of Indigenous undergraduate enrolment; improving the level of Indigenous postgraduate enrolment; improving the rates of success, retention and—let us not forget—completion for Indigenous students; enhancing the prominence of Indigenous culture and knowledge; increasing the number of Indigenous people working in universities; and improving the participation of Indigenous people in university governance and management.

But what have we seen since that the report was handed down in July? Each month I carefully look and watch to see if we have got another announcement about how this is going to be implemented, but I suspect that it is going to be another report that sits on the shelf gathering dust without any strategic plan or performance indicators to put it in place. One of the critical issues addressed by the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council report was the ongoing debate about the decline in Indigenous student commencements since the invincible date of 2000. We all know what happened at that turn of events. The report went on to say:

Despite some advances, Indigenous people remain significantly under-represented in Australian higher education. The number of indigenous students commencing higher education rose steadily throughout the 1990s—

that is true—

but dropped significantly in 2000 and has fluctuated since.

In the latest report to the federal parliament on Indigenous education there was a decline of nearly 600 students in the 12 months of that reporting period. Despite the fact that this government continue to deny this, the decline has been brought about by the changes to the Indigenous student income support, Abstudy, introduced between 2000 and 2003. Every significant report I have seen, every academic who has researched this and every person who wants to point to the reason Indigenous education is declining in the higher education sector points to that moment when the Abstudy changes occurred. Everybody seems to recognise this except this government. They are still in denial about that. The Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council report says:

Changes to ABSTUDY with the aim of aligning the means tests and payment rates with those of Youth Allowance and Newstart took effect from 1 January 2000. There was a sharp decline in higher education Indigenous enrolments in 2000 and ABSTUDY recipient numbers in higher education declined significantly in 2002 and 2003 (DEST, 2004). It is likely that both the means test and the payment rates need urgent reconsideration”.

And now we have got the government’s own Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council in a report to government also confirming that they believe that was the trigger for the decline.

One of the most significant changes was the abolition of the Student Supplementary Financial Support Scheme. This provided students in receipt of Abstudy or Austudy with loans to pay for additional living and education costs associated with university study. We know that in the years prior to the abolition of the loans the number of commencing Indigenous students had been steadily increasing from 7,342 in 2001 to 8,871 in 2002 and then to 8,998 in 2003. But the loans scheme was abolished in April 2003, after which there was an almost immediate decline of 12.1 per cent in Indigenous student commencements in 2004, going down to 7,902, and in 2005, based on half-yearly figures, an 11 per cent decline was already evident. So since 2003 we have actually seen 1,955 fewer Indigenous commencements, representing a decline of 21.8 per cent. Under this government we have seen a massive underspending in higher education, a deliberate shift to include the cost—(Time expired)