Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We have seen overnight, with the latest OECD report, that Australia lags well behind comparable countries in public investment in education. In fact, for public investment in education Australia ranks 29th out of 34 countries in the OECD report. Those countries that choose to put more public money into education have better educational outcomes and do better economically. The GDP of those countries that choose to invest public money in education is higher than that of Australia.

We have the opportunity here in Australia to invest more public money in education so that we cannot only improve the quality of education but improve our society and our economy. The Greens call on the government to invest an additional $5.5 billion of public funds in education each year. If the government invested an additional $5.5 billion each year in education, that would put us among the top 10 comparable countries in the OECD—it would bring us up to about seventh—in terms of public investment in education.

The Higher Education Endowment Fund Bill 2007 relates to a $5 billion education announcement that occurred on budget night. It is not a decision to invest $5 billion each year but rather a one-off payment to go into a fund, the interest of which will be invested into capital infrastructure and research at Australia’s universities. Five billion dollars for education is a good thing, and the Greens support this bill because it puts public funds into education. But we have a variety of different ideas about how you might choose to invest $5 billion in higher education. One of the things the Greens have been advocating for many years now is that we return to a situation where students are able to get into university based on their ability and their merit rather than their capacity to pay. Five billion dollars could go a long way to removing the exorbitant HECS fees that students have to pay right now in order to get into university. The Greens would like to see the federal government investing money in higher education for the purpose of making higher education more accessible. Let us ensure that all the students who qualify academically are able to access a university rather than just those who are able to pay the fees associated with it. We would like to see our whole society benefit from a government investment in higher education that allows more people to access higher education. Our whole society would benefit from more people having the opportunity to access higher education. Funding that would remove HECS fees and full fees that prevent students from accessing higher education would be a worthwhile investment. The Greens would like to see the government put funding into higher education to do that.

We have other priorities and ideas about what might be the best way to invest $5 billion in higher education. We are concerned that these bills fall well short of what could be achieved with this kind of money available to the government. We are also concerned that the control over the distribution of the income generated by these funds leaves too much power in the hands of the education minister. On budget night, the Greens were the first to point out that the $5 billion headline could amount to less government investment going into university research and infrastructure than currently occurs. These concerns have been borne out by the ambiguous statements from the minister and the department about whether the income in this fund will be additional funds. The minister was reported in the Australian saying that these funds would ‘eventually supersede other capital funding sources such as the Capital Development Pool’. Yet in her second reading speech on this bill, the minister assured us that this is not intended to be a recurrent funding stream. That would be nice, if you could believe that.

The thrust of the way in which the government has been funding education—or not funding education—over the 11 years it has been in office has resulted in a shift away from government money to private funding. That is another thing we found in the OECD report that came out overnight—that shift to fund education in this country has moved onto the shoulders of students and their parents, as the government has pulled out funding. The government has reduced the amount of public investment in education and, instead, put the burden onto students and their parents. There has been an overall shift by this government in relation to education funding. I think we need to look at this bill in that context—that the government has reduced public funding and has put the funding burden onto individual parents and students.

Another confusing aspect of policy in this bill relates to philanthropy. The kind of philanthropy that the minister talks about that occurs in the US and the UK to encourage the university sector in those countries would not be effectively stimulated by this fund. The legislation fails to show how potential donors would be encouraged to contribute when the funds would be swallowed into the government fund. It does not allow the kind of support for specific projects that donors usually require. The reality is that most donors will continue to contribute directly to the institutions which they are interested in supporting and this fund will remain largely a public fund.

The way in which this fund is significantly different to other funds paid for from taxpayer surplus funds is not clear. What does it matter to the university or the taxpayer that the investments that have generated the funding have been labelled the Higher Education Endowment Fund rather than some other label where the surplus is invested? The key difference seems to be that this fund allows even greater power over the direction of research investment to rest with the minister.

The Greens share the concerns of others about the lack of transparency about the decision-making process that the minister would follow in approving projects paid for from this fund. The previous minister showed a willingness to ignore the advice of the Australian Research Council in rejecting research funding applications. Why does the government think that it is appropriate for a minister to reject the advice of expert panels without having to give reasons to the parliament? Why does the government think it is appropriate to make the determinations of the minister not subject to disallowance or approval by this parliament?

The government seems to have set up a fund which made great headlines on budget night but which fails to deliver on any significant educational or public interest grounds above what already happens. The Greens conclude that the government would be better off investing the $5 billion directly in the higher education sector now. Failing that, the government should put more government revenue—and that is all this fund is, just revenue with a different name—into recurrent funding of research. They should not add to the complexity of the research funding competition by introducing another competitive funding source. Instead, why can’t we see more funding going through the Australian Research Council block grant model?

Investing $5 billion in higher education is a good and necessary thing. The Greens call on the federal government to put an additional $5.5 billion into education each year so that we can go from being right at the bottom of comparable OECD countries in terms of public investment in education to being up in the top 10. The Greens have pointed to other ideas about how the government could spend its $5 billion by investing in higher education, including the abolition of HECS and making universities accessible to those who have the ability to get into university rather than simply being able to afford it. I foreshadow that I will move a second reading amendment on behalf of the Australian Greens.