Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to join my colleagues in opposing the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010. I have listened with keen interest to the debate on both sides and I sympathise with some aspects of it. The regrettable point to be made is that we really see the spin cycle going around yet again. History is simply repeating itself, as it is always bound to do.

If my memory serves me correctly, this was an election promise of the then Labor opposition going into the 2007 election, that they would not return to some form of compulsory student services and amenities fee. It has come as no surprise to learn that in government these changes are made and positions are changed. It is endemic and unfortunately it is simply symptomatic of what we have come to expect. That, I think, is severe. The second matter of history repeating itself is that it is yet another Labor government tax, this time on a million students—a straight-out figure of $250; no alteration of the figure depending on the service that might be used; $250 per student for each and every one.

If I can reflect on the changes—and Senator Singh very kindly reminded us of our days at university—whilst it was some years ago that I was there as an undergraduate, I was a member of faculty at Curtin University for some 12 or 13 years, so I obviously had some ongoing contact with students. I also had the pleasure of being a member of faculty at the University of California and the University of Kentucky, so I was able to observe a range across time. To see the comparison and the contrast of students in different countries was most interesting and relevant to this discussion. Of course, in an earlier era, we were nearly all full-time students. We basically went from school straight to university and we were full-time students.

As I recall, I happened to be a member of a faculty in Brisbane that used the services very sparingly. Even as a student paying 50 per cent higher than Queensland students as a non-Queenslander, I used to rail against the fact that we were paying this compulsory student union fee because, even in those days, I could not see where the money was going. I mention this straight figure of $250 per head and it deserves being examined in greater detail. Some $32.5 million will be a donation from 130,000 external students who, they would argue and I would argue with them, will never use the services. These students are not on campus and, if they are, it is only of a weekend. So they will never have access to these services and amenities for which they will be paying $1 a day of the working week. Where is the fairness for those 130,000 external students? I simply cannot find it in this legislation.

I go now to what is becoming a predominant group within the complement of university students, particularly undergraduate but also graduate students, and that is part-time students, those already in full or near-to-full employment, those who do not look to the university for their social outlet, for their amenity or for their provision of services. They go to the university for the purposes of attending lectures, tutorials, seminars and prac classes and on balance they then either return to their workplace or home to families. It is delightful to see this increasing proportion of part-time students as, indeed, it is tremendous to see the number of older Australians who are returning to university study. This is very encouraging for our country. But I ask again: where is the equity for those people, paying the same sum of money as those who will in fact enjoy it as a full-time student? Clearly, it is not there. Clearly, the legislation as it is drafted is deficient for this purpose and clearly it needs to be reviewed if we are to approach anything by way of equity and fairness in this situation.

What happened to the concept of user pays? What happened to the concept of a demand for a service, a need for a service and a payment for that service? It is interesting, and I have not been able to find the answer, but I know of many students who are enrolled at two tertiary institutions for various reasons. Do they pay $500 a year? This is something I have not as yet been able to establish but will hope to in the committee phase. We know where the damage and the difficulty comes, particularly for part-time students, but also for many full-time students. They are struggling to get to and remain at university. I speak particularly of students from rural, remote and regional areas of Australia who are already having to pay the cost of rent, transport and sustaining accommodation where their city based colleagues do not, either living at home or being supported. This $250 bill annually is just another impost on top of them.

So what loses out? Senator Singh was talking about all of the experiences you have at university. They will be the poorer for the loss of the $250. HECS fees will go up. What is the actual compounded cost of that $250 through a four- to-five-year university course?

I understand it is indexed, so it will actually increase over time. What will be the compounded cost to a student by the time they eventually pay their HECS bill back? Again that is a question that I believe we need to explore. The fee is going to come out of the funds that they have available to them for books, for laboratory fees and for these other sorts of activities.

So, as you would always do in a democracy, you turn to the student group and ask them: do you want to return to the amenities fee? My understanding is that the last time this was canvassed some 60 per cent of students polled said no, they did not, and I would venture the opinion that those who responded were probably full-time students on campus anyhow. It is highly unlikely that an external student would have responded and even more unlikely that a part-time student who turns up to the university just to attend classes would have responded. So when 60 per cent said no, they did not, I think that would be a very conservative estimate.

Where the real concerns come to me in this whole exercise, and it has been mentioned here this evening, is that the executives of the universities are all heavily in support of this. I ask the question: is it not the responsibility of the universities to provide these services? Universities already cost money. The Commonwealth government already injects significant sums of money. Why is it that the university executives are themselves demanding this $250 fee?

If I may, I will draw the attention of this chamber to a motion which was moved by my colleague Senator Brett Mason on, I think, 18 August or around about that time. He moved a motion to refer for investigation by the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations References Committee the adequacy and effectiveness of the current funding arrangements and alternative penalty options for the higher education and public research sectors. This was surely the ideal opportunity in which many of these questions that have been canvassed by Labor senators this afternoon could have been examined. This was the forum in which the opportunity would have been presented for this chamber to have addressed itself to those very questions. It would have given universities the opportunity to come before a committee of the Senate to put their case for funding.

It is regrettable, particularly while we are debating this bill, to note—and it is on the record—that both the Labor government and the Greens failed to support Senator Mason in his bid to have that investigation undertaken. As he said: 'This is a missed opportunity. Two parties which supposedly care about education showed with their votes today just how little they are really concerned about the question of adequate funding for higher education.' He mentioned that it is some 20 years since there was such an examination of university funding, and the points he made were three. First of all, university student populations have doubled. Secondly, the number of international students has increased more than sixfold. But, thirdly and more importantly, Commonwealth funding to universities has tripled in that period of time. Surely this would have been the opportunity for us to examine many of these questions. The university administrators have indicated to the Senate and to the parliament that they are behind this $250 push per student across the board—full-fee-paying students, overseas students, full-time students et cetera.

That brings me to the question of the funding itself. Who gets to spend the money, who gets to oversee it, who controls it and who does the auditing? We are back to the bad old days which necessitated the Howard government moving in the direction that it did at that time. I have not yet seen in the legislation any answers to those questions. The universities collect the money. How do they disburse the money? How much of it do they keep for administrative purposes and how do they ensure that the funds are actually used for the purposes for which they are intended?

I will turn for a moment to a comment made by Senator Carol Brown in her contribution this evening. She was talking about the difficulty now of the smaller and regional universities. She is absolutely right. She is 100 per cent right about the economic demise in which so many of them find themselves. But I can assure Senator Brown that the limited number of students at these campuses multiplied by $250 is not going to go anywhere near solving the problems. They are not problems associated with student services and amenities fees; they are deep seated problems associated with administration.

Of course, only this afternoon did the Senate agree to my own motion, which was to refer to the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations References Committee for inquiry all aspects of higher education and skills training to support future demand for agriculture and agribusiness in Australia. There are five or six paragraphs to that motion. This goes to exactly the point that Senator Carol Brown was making—and that is that these institutions have been starved of resources to the extent that they are now unviable.

I have made the comment in this place and elsewhere in the parliament that, if you look at the traditional agricultural institutions, I think the only one left, ironically, is the private sector Marcus Oldham College in Victoria. The one at which I was an academic for 13 years, the Muresk Institute at Northam, has now ceased as a tertiary institution. In South Australia, Roseworthy is now principally a veterinary faculty. Dookie and Glenormiston in Victoria are no longer there. Richmond and Hawkesbury in New South Wales are no longer agricultural colleges. Gatton in Queensland is now multipurpose.

So, yes, there are problems associated with the regional and smaller universities. They have their origins back in the 1970s, when these institutions which at that time were independent were forced to come under the umbrella of larger city based universities. The universities revelled in it for a period of time because funding supported it, but as soon as funding went the other way, as we have found with the city based universities in Australia, the regional campuses in many cases were no longer core business for those universities. These are matters that need exploring. These are matters that will be dealt with by the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations References Committee. But they do not go to a reason for reintroducing compulsory amenities and services fees for students. They certainly will not be helped by a $250 payment.

I then addressed myself to what these services about which we speak and that apparently have got to be returned are about. Senator Singh made a point of all those that are no longer available. We could talk for a week on the reasons why they are no longer available. Some of them might relate to fees, others of them relate to the economy but, most importantly, they all relate to demand. What are the services? Who else provides these services in the community? For the non-university student sector, who provides these services? Be they counselling services, psychological services or legal aid services, who else in the community provides them? We know that the university population is a very limited population of people, so therefore they must be offered elsewhere. I ask again: for those external students and part-time students who are paying the $250, how do they access these services for which they are now so richly paying? Clearly they are subsidising those students who will be availing themselves of the services.

Others have spoken about the recreational side of things, such as the amenities of the bar. I actually did run the student bar for some period of time and if anybody cannot make money out of selling alcohol on a university campus then I can assure you that $250 is not going to help; it is merely going to hinder. It goes back to the point I made about accountability, because anybody can understand that the running of a bar not only should be a profit centre but also should itself be subsidising other services on campus.

I then go to the question of amenities. I ask again that question: 'Who else in the community is providing the sort of amenities that have been mentioned by others here this afternoon?' I turn to local government in both city and country areas. Local government is now a tremendous provider of amenities. We know it is of recreational facilities, sporting facilities and wider community activities. We also know—and it has been stated by others—that the tendency now to form and be members of clubs is very much less than it was years ago. These days there are people saying, 'If I want a game of squash I will go and find a person to have a game of squash with me, but do not ask me to be a member of the squash club.' It then becomes a question of who should be and who is subsidising.

But it also becomes a question of competition between universities. If indeed these amenities and services are as important as those opposite say they are, surely it provides an opportunity for entrepreneurial universities to team with industry and business, to go out and develop a marketing plan and to put these facilities and services on campus and use them as a hub for the wider community to come in and use, be they sporting, cultural, arts or recreational. By all means charge non-university people a hire fee to access those services, but in the same way do then turn that into a profit centre. There are all sorts of activities and mechanisms, and it should not fall to students, especially those who will never use these services, to be subsidising either the universities or those who will be using the services. Senator Singh in her contribution—and I agree with her completely—said that part of the role of development of a student is to nurture them and to see them grow and explore new passions. But it should not be at the expense of those students who will not be part of that process. It is not up to other students to be subsidising the development, growth and exploration of new passions of a limited number of fortunate, full-time students.

It is the case that in a democracy we should have choice. We should have the choice to use services and amenities and pay for them. We should have the choice to not do so. We should have the choice to take our trade where it suits us. If we do not like the legal advice on campus then we should have the opportunity to seek it elsewhere, be it legal aid or paid for. The same applies to every other amenity.

I will conclude my comments with a reminder to everybody in the chamber what the students are doing at university and institutes of higher education. They are training for skills, attitudes and development so that they themselves will become leaders, be it in industry, commerce, business, academia, research or elsewhere. This is definitely not the sort of message to be sending to an undergraduate student: 'You just simply pay $250 and get subsidised by other people and that is the type of lesson that we want you to take into your career as a graduate.' I urge that this bill not be supported.