Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

It does indeed sound like the carbon tax lie. I fibbed before: I said that the argument that student union and associations were like a fourth tier of government was the argument that annoyed me most. But I fibbed, I must confess. The argument that is the most belittling and condescending to students is that a compulsory amenities fee is needed to ensure a vigorous campus life. Give me a break. I kind of think that if you have young people, clever people, curious people, energetic people, then you do not need a compulsory fee to ensure that there is a vigorous campus life. These are young, clever, curious, energetic students. I will let you in on a secret: put people like that together, and maybe even throw in a keg, and you are going to have a vigorous campus life. You do not have to have a compulsory fee to generate that. And some opposite have never left the university campuses.

Assurances by the government that money will not be used by student unions for political purposes are completely meaningless for the reason that funds are fungible. Every dollar that is passed to a student union by a university administration frees up a dollar that the union already had to then redirect to political purposes. Funds are fungible. It does not matter which particular accounts you have or what dividing lines you have between accounts. A dollar that is raised in one place frees up a dollar somewhere else that can be spent on a political activity. The argument that this does not help the political activities of student unions, which most students have no interest in, is completely fallacious.

The passage of the former coalition government's 2005 Higher Education Support Amendment (Abolition of Up-front Compulsory Student Union Fees) Bill helped lift a substantial financial burden from students in Australia. For the first time it empowered students to make their own decisions about the services they needed and it enshrined freedom of association on campus. The results were not surprising. Student unions, bereft of the power to force their members to pay their fees, had to radically cut the cost of membership and tailor their services to the demands of students. Thanks to VSU, students at campuses across Australia saved hundreds of dollars every year, which they were able to put in their pockets and spend as they saw fit.

I did mention the money wasted on extreme political campaigns, but ultimately this debate was never about whether student unions promoted left-wing causes or right-wing causes. Student unions should be free to engage in whatever political activities they wish, provided their membership and funding base is entirely voluntary. That is what we call freedom of speech. To many these changes did seem long overdue. After all, compelling Australians to join a representative organisation against their will is regarded as objectionable in every other part of society. Workers long ago won the right to freely associate and, today, no government—well, maybe not this government—would even think of making union membership compulsory in the workplace. But for some reason university administrators and the Australian Labor Party believe that student unions should be the exception and that, for some reason, the services they offer and the value they provide to their members are so high that students should be forced to join them. If an organisation offers value for money, it has nothing to fear. If an organisation offers the services that students want, it has nothing to fear. They will have members and they will succeed.

With this legislation Labor, on or after January 2011, plan to slug Australian university students with a new tax of up to $250 per year. It will rise annually, with automatic indexation, and students will be struggling. The policy is a clear breach of a commitment, which is something that, with this particular government, we have become extremely familiar with. The idea that this is not a return to compulsory student unionism is nothing more than a con and a sham. Sure, students can choose under this package not to belong to a union, but they still have to pay the fee as though they were a member. To quote former National Union of Students president David Barrow:

Unis get the fee, students get the services, but student unions get screwed.

That is his view of what the current government is proposing. But, in reality, back when the consultations took place in 2008, he was doing what any good unionist would do: he was making an ambit claim. Student unions are secretly delighted at again being able to levy a compulsory fee, despite the fact that they say, 'This is not adequate and this is still lousy legislation.'

Ordinary students cannot afford this and nor should they be forced to put their hand in their pocket to give the money to the institutions as a mechanism to pass the money on to student unions. The ones who tend to get forgotten in the debate on university fees are the part-time students, those who work several days a week to support themselves. In many cases they will be charged the same as wealthy students living in colleges on campus with family support. Mature-age students with young children, who may only ever attend campus for classes, will pay the same. There are also students who study off campus, online or at a small regional branch of the university, and they will be slugged the same amount as students who can easily access the services on the main campus. It is these students, the ones who most need the support, who will be hit by these fees. They are the students who struggle financially; they often do not have the time to enjoy the benefits of union funding of a club or a society and do not have the time to attend the free lunchtime beer or take advantage of the barbecues or band sessions. Those students who have the time, those who have the financial security to do so, hardly need other students to subsidise their experience.

In one sense this bill is a relatively small matter. People often say, 'Why on your side of politics do you get so excited about this legislation? What really turns on voluntary student unionism?' Partly, the explanation is that it matters so much because it is a relatively small thing. If a government cannot protect freedom of association, or cannot protect freedom of speech, or cannot protect the right of an individual to keep their own money in their pocket in a university environment, if a government cannot do these things in what is a fairly small area of public policy, what hope do we have to expect government to protect those things in the wider community.

This is bad legislation. The former Howard government did nothing to obstruct a vigorous campus life. It did nothing to obstruct student unions. It did nothing to obstruct student associations. All it did was usher in freedom of choice—the freedom to belong to or not to belong to a student union or association, the freedom to keep your money in your pocket and buy the services of your choice, if that is what you wanted. This legislation seeks to remove that freedom of choice. This is bad legislation. It should be opposed. On this side of the chamber we will always stand up for freedom of association. We will always stand up for the right of an individual to join or not to join.