Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to take note of the answer given by Senator Birmingham to Senator Carr's question today. The answer that Senator Birmingham gave clearly indicated that the Liberals' only plan for higher education is to continue down the path of cutting university funding and allowing universities to set their own fees. Fundamentally, that will lead to the Americanisation of Australia's higher education system, and we know where that leads—that leads to massive student debts and $100,000 degrees.

It is quite a different plan from the one that the now Minister for Education and Training, Senator Birmingham, had for higher education when he was a student activist in the 1990s. Then he ran for student politics on a platform of opposing voluntary student unionism and 'fighting against funding and staffing cutbacks'. As quoted in Adelaide university's student newspaper of the time, On Dit, he said, as part of his campaign for student presidency: 'I'd like to ensure that we can take the fight up to any government, be that Liberal or Labor, state or federal, and indeed make sure that we can lobby the upper house of both parliaments quite effectively.' Now Senator Birmingham is right here in the upper house of our federal parliament, where he could effectively lobby—very effectively lobby—against the funding and staffing cutbacks that his government has foisted on our universities, and which it wants to continue to foist on them, by slashing their budgets. But, from his position as minister here in the Senate of the Parliament of Australia, what does Senator Birmingham do? What has he done since the disastrous budget announcements of 2014? Well, he has not done much. When faced with the backlash of the 2014 budget announcements on higher education, this government has been unable to move away from its passion for deregulation and saddling students with more debt.

As Senator Carr said, meanwhile, in a PBO report, we have seen that, if something is not done, Australia's HECS debt will increase massively and eventually threaten the whole HELP system. That PBO report also finds that, within 10 years—that is just one decade—the annual cost of HELP loans, now $1.7 billion, will have risen to $11.1 billion, a 46 per cent increase in our nation's public debt. That debt will be driven mainly by projected increases in student fees from 2017, due, as the PBO report says, to this government's announced higher education reforms. Those so-called higher education reforms—which consist mainly of cutting funding, with a cut of $5 million more to come—coupled with deregulation mean that universities are forced to claw back funding by enrolling students and charging them more, if the universities are able to get away with it, because that is what will happen, arising from deregulation of fees, if this government has its way. We know from other research, including that prepared by NATSEM, that course fees would double and treble under deregulation. The prospect of $100,000 degrees is not a furphy; it is very, very real.

We know that it is true because overseas experience—including in the UK, where fees were partially deregulated—is that it led to overall course increases. The UK deregulated in 2012. The British government claimed then, as this government claims now, that deregulation would mean universities would be able to compete on price. But, as we well know, what happens in the university sector is that the students, the consumers, believe that a lower priced degree is a less worthy degree, and so they do not enrol in those universities that have lower priced degrees; those universities are forced to increase their fees so that they match the higher-charging universities. And, overall, the fees for all students go up, with the detrimental effect, eventually, of fewer students enrolling in university degrees. Of course that will be fatal to the future of Australia's economy and to our innovation and to ensuring that we have good and decent jobs for all Australians. I wish Senator Birmingham would return to his student activist roots and use his position here in the Senate to advocate for better higher education funding and more support for Australian students.

Question agreed to.