Senate debates

Tuesday, 25 August 2020

Bills

Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019; Second Reading

1:56 pm

Photo of Paul ScarrPaul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a few short comments—which I expect will take us up to question time—in relation to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019. I just want to provide in my contribution a bit more analysis with respect to the core issue which this legislation is seeking to address, and that is the corrosive nature of cheating. I want to talk about it from the perspective of five different stakeholders: firstly, the students themselves.

The provision of these contract cheating services and the temptation for these students to engage and procure contract cheating services leads them, potentially, to a slippery road which involves the corrosion of character. It is absolutely crucial that all of our institutions across all parts of our society support integrity and ensure the integrity of our processes and procedures. The student who cheats in an assignment today is potentially the professional or worker of the future who is going to cut corners and compromise on issues, to the detriment of their community.

It also actually deprives the student of that great opportunity to look at a subject which they're having trouble handling—maybe it wasn't their specialist subject—and work hard on that subject; to take the hard and more difficult road of becoming talented in that subject and being able to pass that subject with proficiency. It actually deprives the student of that opportunity. It also deprives fellow students who don't engage in cheating with respect to the opportunity to get full recognition of their achievements. It impugns the students who choose not to take advantage of contract cheating services and the integrity of their results if their fellow students engage those services. It also attacks the integrity of academia, including tutors, who invest so much substantial effort and some of whom became mentors to many of us who are serving in the Senate today. It detracts from their efforts. It undermines the reputation of the universities themselves, their standing in society and on the international stage. That is a bad thing.

But, more than anything else, cheating—be it in universities, high schools, sport or any other endeavour—is a corrosive behaviour which undermines the entirety of a society. In my earlier life I worked for a mining company which worked in South-East Asia and many other parts of the world. We had to grapple with the issue of corruption. One of the lessons we always remembered was that it didn't matter how high the stake involved was, it didn't matter whether or not it was a policeman seeking a 50-baht or something bribe to let you go through a roadblock and it didn't matter whether or not it was a senior government official; it was cheating, it was corruption and you could not tolerate it for a second, because once you compromised in any way with respect to those principles it had a corrosive impact on the organisation itself, on the institutions in the country and on the community: 'If they're doing, it why shouldn't I do it?'

The corrosive impact of cheating is addressed by this legislation. I'm happy to support this legislation and I commend it to the Senate.

Debate interrupted.

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