Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Hansard source

On reflecting upon the contribution by Senator Pratt, who spoke before me, I would like to comment on a few issues before I go into my substantive address. She accused coalition senators of having an ideological obsession, which some of us would say is consistency. The fact that coalition senators and members on this side of the House have fought for this particular principle for over 30 years actually says something about consistency in politics—not something for which the current Labor government is necessarily thought of when that word comes to mind. Senator Pratt talked about how we should get politicians out of our universities, but apparently we should let student politicians back into students' wallets. That we should not at all be concerned that letting student politicians and politicians into students' wallets is somehow inconsistent.

She refers to the words of the vice-chancellors—in particular in this case, Richard Larkins, formerly of Monash University. The vice-chancellors over 30 years have been nothing short of the shop stewards of our university campuses. They have stood by and watched hundreds of thousands of student dollars be misdirected in an attempt to buy peace for them from the various left-wing and Trot groups that try to break down their doors like they did at Melbourne uni many years ago.

Senator Pratt interjecting—

Of course Vice-Chancellor Larkins would not understand what the coalition and coalition senators are arguing when they put forward this case. It would be like asking Senator Cameron or, indeed, potentially you, Senator Pratt, to be defenders of voluntary unionism. You cannot be asked to defend something when you do not understand the reason for its existence. When it comes to the issue of equitable funding, I will go into this in much more detail later. The truth is: how the Labor Party can justify a poll tax levied on people regardless of means and somehow call that equitable funding of student services is beyond me.

This bill is repugnant. The ALP and their Greens fellow travellers attempt to say it does not somehow constitute membership. However, you are actually forced to pay. You are forced to pay a membership fee for the student union, and this shows the insanity of the new-speak that now exists. Your name might not be on the roll of members of the student union but you are still going to be sent the bill. You are going to have to pay as much as a member of the student union, you are going to subsidise the same services of a student union, and in fact by exercising your vote to not be a member all you are doing is choosing to not be able to have any influence over how the money that is compulsorily acquired from you is spent. This bill actually goes as far as to say, 'We are going to levy the fee regardless of your capacity or willingness to use the services that this fee provides.' Section 4 of the bill explicitly outlines that this payment is required 'regardless of whether that person chooses to use any of those amenities and services'. So regardless of your ability to use the services, regardless of your willingness to use them, regardless of the fact that they may or may not be of any interest to you, you are required to pay for them via a poll tax. This is an admission that these services are not demanded by the great bulk of students. If they were, they would not need to be funded by this means.

This bill does nothing to prevent the abuse of student funds that happened for decade after decade under the compulsory student unionism environment that Labor wishes to re-impose on students. There is a prohibition on the use of these funds for explicitly political purposes that goes as far as to say that you cannot support the election of a political party or a person as a member of a state, territory or Commonwealth legislature or a local government body. It is a fraud to suggest that is a protection against political misuse of funds. I lived under this regime in Victoria after it was passed through the Victorian parliament in the mid-1990s, and a very similar list of services and a very similar prohibition was put in place. Money is fungible. Money that is not used for one purpose can be used for another. What happened at universities in Victoria under that regime is that the caff might have been subsidised and the money was taken out of the till of the cafeteria and used to pay the affiliation fees to the National Union of Students to run political campaigns. It was a sham to suggest that student funds were not being used for political purposes.

The attempts to define political activity in this bill are incredibly narrow. They do not stop political campaigns. You might not be able to advocate the election of someone in particular, but you can advocate the opposition to an election of someone in particular. You could print stickers or posters during a campaign that ran a political message if it dies not specifically promote the election of a specific candidate to political office. To say this stops compulsory funding of political campaigns is nothing short of a fraud on students. If the government were serious about stopping political misuse of funding, apart from not passing this bill, it would actually put in place several provisions. It would put in place rules that require revenue for subsidised services to be bound by the same rules as the student fees themselves. But it has chosen not to do so. The money that goes into the till in the subsidised cafeteria can be taken out of that till and used to pay the wages of student politicians right around Australia. The cafeteria at Melbourne uni when I was there—extraordinary though it may be—managed to lose a quarter of a million dollars a year in 1992.

Senator Sterle interjecting—

I remember, Senator Sterle, when that was a lot of money. How it managed to lose that is a legitimate question. But why on earth the money could be taken out of that till and the revenue from that cafeteria that was subsidised and then be used to fund political activities shows exactly how empty this provision is. What that government could also do, but will not do, is provide options for students to take action themselves to address the misuse of funds. There is no capacity here for students to take action to prevent the misuse of the funds that are compulsorily acquired from them. As it is, they rely on the university to do so. These are the same vice-chancellors who have enforced compulsory unionism provisions for so long, the same vice-chancellors who have been the shop stewards for student unions in an attempt to buy peace, as they have done at campuses all around my home state of Victoria for many years.

The list of permitted services in section 5 is incredibly broad and provides no protection against students' money being misused. To take one example, in subsection (3) there is a reference to allowing the provision of legal services to students. If I could give you an example, Mr Acting Deputy President Parry—I believe you sat through the inquiry into the previous bill with me on this—that provision of legal services empowered a university many years ago to pay for the legal expenses of a student who had been charged with breaking down the doors of the Vice-Chancellor's office suite—

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

Student fees also paid for the axe, Senator Hanson-Young. I question whether taking an axe to the door of the Vice-Chancellor's office is somehow representing the interests of the broad majority of students. That is an outrageous abuse of student funds and that happened on multiple occasions in the 1990s under legislation very similar to this. So let us drop the pretence of political activity being prohibited from accessing these funds. It can be accessed directly through the very broad list of services, like I have just mentioned, or by a process of the money being fungible and coming out of the revenue for subsidised services to find its way back to political activity.

We all know why the ALP and Greens want to pass this bill. They want to reinstate the abuse of students' funds as was the case for decades. They are unaccountable to students because so few students bother to vote, and it is not as if there has not been the odd electoral scandal in student union elections over many years. The money will come out of the till, it will head to NUS, that bastion of accountability—I served my year on the national executive of the National Union of Students—and it will be used for political purposes for Greens and Labor Party political apprentices.

But we get to the more important issue here which is the equity issue I heard so much about from the contribution of Senator Pratt. Where is the equity of charging students a poll tax for services that they may or may not use. In fact the bill specifically says 'regardless of whether they use it'? Where is the equity in saying, 'regardless of your means to pay'? It does not matter if you are a distance education student and you never visit the campus, it does not matter if you are working two or three jobs and coming to university after hours, you are still going to pay this fee regardless of your ability to do so. The government has decided what students will pay for and that they will pay for these services regardless of whether they use them.

Of course, we have heard a lot about child care and health care from previous speakers this afternoon and this evening, and now we get to my favourite example, Mr Acting Deputy President—and I think you know where I am going here—we get to the palatial ski lodges of Monash and Melbourne universities at Mount Buller. And I know some of the Sydney universities have them too. I want to know how this, somehow, should be something that every student will pay for.

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

I remember this particularly well, Senator Hanson-Young. Melbourne University ski lodge was famous for being booked out by March because certain people would manage to book it out before anyone else had a chance. We do not hear about the very expensive services that the universities do not want students to know about. You do not want to highlight these. You do not want students to know that you are going to force them to pay a fee, defer it and then pay it back over the course of their working life for services that, if many of them tried to use, they would not be able to. You are charging them this poll tax regardless of their means to pay in order to subsidise the skiing at Mount Buller. Let us put this in context; that is just one of the many things. Sports union activities are all designed around a much smaller number than the great bulk of students participating.

I do not expect much less from the Greens, who have always had a particular view of what the proletariat should pay for, as the parliamentary descendants of the old Left alliance and non-aligned Left. But I expected more from the Labor Party. The truth is that this is basically unfair. We have 130,000 external students that can be forced to pay an amenities and services fee. How is it fair, if you are an external student and you have no ability to access the services, that you actually subsidise those who can?

Secondly, we have the students that many speakers have mentioned before that people on this side actually care about through not forcing them to pay student union fees. They are working their way through university part-time. They are the people that might be pushing trolleys around at Woolworths, working at Myer or doing many, many things. A great number of students work a lot more than they did 20 years. These people have little opportunity to access services, many of which only exist during the day on campus. If you walked through a student union building after 5 pm in Melbourne a lot of these services would not be available.

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

They did before, Senator Hanson-Young. There was nothing like the shutdown that happened when five o'clock came. These services are specifically designed to exclude those part-time students.

Thirdly, we have the issue of health care, child care and like services. We get back to the point of why on earth should these services be paid for by a poll tax levied on every single student? Healthcare and childcare services are important and we spend a great deal of the Commonwealth budget on providing them. They are the responsibility of government if they are not private. Yet we say to every student going to university that you should actually provide these for other select students. It does not matter if there are not enough places. The few who are there and who are lucky enough will have access to it when they need it. This does not meet a basic test of fairness.

One of the things that has changed are students with a disability. Many more of them are at university now than 20 years ago. Historically student unions did not do a great deal on this space, partly a reflection I would imagine of the fact that there were not as many students on campus with those particular challenges, but I also say that they did not have as loud a political voice, because the truth about student union budgets is that they tended to be directed to those with a loud political voice rather than those with need. By taxing all students with a poll tax regardless of their means to pay in order to pay for child care is like charging every young person under 40 a poll tax to pay for child care. We do not do that. We do it through a progressive income tax system. Yet what the Labor Party is proposing now is to actually institute a poll tax on many of those people it claims to be protecting. God knows how they are actually going to pay for this if they are actually in such challenging circumstances.

Of course, the true farce of this fee and the alleged services it provides—because student union services were far from the example of what you would actually expect—is that students were so poor that they did not really want to access these services. People on the other side bleat about how somehow these student unions have fallen over. If anything, that is a reflection of the fact that the unions were not serving their members. That does not provide the justification to corral students. That would be like Myer or David Jones saying: 'We're going to force you to go shopping here. Every time you walk into a Westfield you have to go shopping here, because we don't like it that you shop somewhere else.' These principles seem to apply only to universities.

Most bizarre is the fourth-level-of-government argument: that somehow we have a fourth level of government in this country—that below the Commonwealth, states and local governments we have the student unions. The argument that is so often thrown out—and I am surprised I have not heard it yet—is that a university is much the same as a local government area, where you have to pay rates for services you might not use.