Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition will not be opposing the Higher Education Support Amendment (2008 Budget Measures) Bill 2008, because the government made it quite clear before the election last November that it would be implementing these arrangements. However, I would make four points with respect to this legislation. First of all, the policy reflected in this bill assumes that more university students will take up maths and science with the reduction in HECS that has been announced. The assumption, of course, is that students base their course choices on cost—or at least principally do that. I am not yet convinced that that is the case. I think there are all sorts of reasons that students take up particular courses, and I am not sure that the cost of the course is in fact the prime inhibitor or, indeed, the prime motivator. This has happened before in the context of nursing and education. I suppose over the next few years the government, as it should, will be looking at the effect a reduction in the HECS costs has on the retention of students at university and how many students choose to take up these courses. It will be interesting to monitor over the next few years whether, with a reduction in HECS, more students take up the offers. Let us wait and see.

Secondly, the issue underlying much of this legislation, and this bill in particular, is about teacher shortages. This is a serious issue that I know the federal government is looking at in a serious way—perhaps more seriously than some of the state Labor governments. I would make two points about that. I think it is worth remarking on the fact that the teaching profession, to my mind, is too industrial rather than sufficiently professional—that being dominated by the union movement has not necessarily helped the profession of teaching. In the same way that lawyers, accountants and engineers having professional bodies to organise their professional arrangements has meant that those professions have higher status, perhaps in the future, as I know the federal government is concerned about this issue—