Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill. Before I talk about the bill, I'd like to rebut a couple of the points made by Senator Ayres. It is worth noting that when students come to this country they have to have sufficient funds for 12 months. That is a part of the contract. So I think the idea that somehow the federal government is ignoring the contract is false. It's also worth pointing out that the federal government gives $17 billion in funding to higher education. There's a $70 billion outstanding debt on higher education, and universities happen to have a tax-free status on profits earned from higher education.

As I pointed out in my first speech, there were over 700,000 foreign students in this country who are allowed to work up to 20 hours a week, so they get very generous entitlements in this country. And that extra supply in the labour market can actually push wages down for hardworking Australians. I think the idea that the federal government doesn't look after international students is absolutely wrong, and for it to come from the party that introduced the Dawkins reforms in 1990, which absolutely trashed higher education—and the party that in 1989 brought in HECS for teachers and nurses, the same year as they introduced the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax, which gave a 15 per cent uplift on foreign multinationals investing in oil exploration in this country—is a little bit hypocritical.

As for suppression of speech, I don't think Senator Molan was talking about Geoffrey Blainey back in the sixties. He was referring to Drew Pavlou today, who has very courageously stood up to certain interests at the University of Queensland. He's been demonised. And I'm pleased to say that, despite the fact that many of us on the conservative side probably have different views to Drew, we are more than happy to stand up for freedom of speech and we'll happily back Drew. Anyway, back to the bill.

Sadly, it is becoming increasingly clear that education in Australia has been on the decline for the past 20 years—yes, think Dawkins reforms. According to the 2018 PISA report, education standards in Australia had hit an all-time low, with maths falling below the OECD average and science being the lowest it has ever been. Teacher quality has also been called into question as school test results have fallen, with some citing low ATAR requirements for teaching degrees and poor university results as the culprits. However, there could also be a more sinister factor at work here to explain falling academic standards among graduates—that is, cheating. It is becoming increasingly common for university students to hire cheating services to write their essays or sit their exams. This means that students are graduating without the necessary skills to succeed in the workplace, and cheating providers are profiting from this breach in academic integrity. The Higher Education Standards Panel has advised that legislation is needed to address this growing problem and deter third-party academic cheating services.

This bill is an amendment to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 that will make it illegal to provide third-party academic cheating services to students. In academic circles, this kind of cheating is called contract cheating, which is where a student outsources or contracts their work to someone else, often in exchange for money. Contract cheating can take the form of a third party sitting a student's exam or, more commonly, the provision of bespoke essays or other academic material. Successful businesses have been set up to cater to this emerging market and are colloquially known as essay mills, referring to how they grind out essay after essay. According to Australian research from 2018, 2.2 per cent of students in Australia self-reported buying essays, representing approximately 33,000 students. This puts conservative estimates for the market for cheating services in Australia at between $10 million and $23 million. These are alarming numbers, and it's time the Australian government stepped in and did something about it.

In 2014, there was a significant cheating scandal that erupted in the major universities of New South Wales, where it was revealed that students were buying essays from the MyMaster contract cheating website. Up to 70 students were facing academic penalties or suspension, and at least two were expelled. The MyMaster website was in Chinese, targeting international students, and in 2014 had a turnover of $160,000. Anecdotal evidence surrounding the MyMaster scandal, due to its publicity, revealed that the integrity and quality of Australian higher education was brought into question in the minds of foreign regulators. It is precisely situations like this that this bill aims to prevent by providing a strong deterrent, enforced by legislation to prosecute businesses like MyMaster and prevent them from providing cheating services that erode academic standards and damage the reputation of Australian education in the process. The provision of academic cheating poses a real threat to academic integrity and the reputation of Australian higher education. Employers need to be confident that graduates of Australian universities and TAFE colleges are truly qualified for their jobs—especially when it comes to positions such as engineering or medicine, where the consequences of incompetence are extremely high. By not submitting to an appropriate level of academic discipline by doing the work themselves, students fail to master the content or achieve the necessary skills to earn their degrees and sustain a career.

Further—and this is crucial—international education is Australia's largest service based export industry, contributing $35 billion to the national economy in 2018. Should the international reputation of Australian universities take a hit, even in part, because of these cheating services, it will have a significant negative impact on Australia's economy. Passing this bill will send a message to international students and their parents and guardians, foreign governments and overseas employers that Australia takes its education standards seriously and is doing all it can do to maintain high levels of academic integrity.

Currently, there is no law directly prohibiting contract cheating in Australia, only indirect legislation by the states and territories in allied areas, which are often difficult to pursue and hard for a state or territory to justify prosecuting in terms of cost. This bill will send the message that academic cheating is not only unethical but illegal in Australia and will make the consequences clear, commensurate and easier to prosecute.

The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency will be given the power to enforce the legislation through monitoring, intelligence-gathering and investigating and prosecuting identified offenders to ensure the legislation's positive effect. Practically, TEQSA will be able to seek court injunctions to block cheating websites and their ability to be found on search engines. They will also educate students about the changes and disseminate information to universities and overseas regulatory authorities about cheating websites and their users, while safeguarding the identity of students.

The bill is designed to directly penalise third parties that operate cheating services rather than bring charges against the students themselves, who remain subject to their institution's academic integrity policies. The maximum criminal and civil penalties will be two years in jail or up to $100,000 in fines. These penalties may seem harsh, but they must be harsh to be effective as a strong and comprehensive deterrent. To this end, even advertising cheating services qualifies as an offence under the proposed legislation.

There is also the further point that some commercial cheating providers are so successful that fines may not be much more than an inconvenience. Therefore, the fines in such cases are higher and offences are subject to possible jail terms. After consulting with the sector the government has clarified the legislation to ensure that parents and friends who might edit a child's essay or provide suggestions on how to improve an assignment will not be impacted.

If academic cheating is allowed to flourish, it will damage the reputation of Australia's higher education sector by degrading our academic institutions and placing future education exports at risk. Those exports accounted for $35.1 billion and were Australia's third-largest prior to the devastating impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. Going soft on cheating will almost certainly lead to a fall in academic and professional standards and impact Australia's ability to compete in the global marketplace. The consequences of academic cheating could also put the public at risk if graduates are not thoroughly qualified for their jobs. Cheating certainly carries significant personal risk for students. If they are caught, they risk their degree and if they are not caught, they will be inadequately prepared for the workplace and will lack the necessary skills to excel fully in their careers.

The bottom line is that this kind of third-party academic cheating is bad for students, bad for our institutions and bad for the economy. It is in Australia's interests that we act now. I commend this bill to the Senate.