Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

If that's the flavour of the contributions from those in government, this is a sad day for our democracy—reading those talking points while going through, with the support of the crossbench, with a radical structural change to higher education in this country that is unjustified, unjustifiable and found very, very wanting. It's a miracle we even got two days of hearings, because this government didn't want them. So hardball did they play it with the crossbench that they actually intimidated them. The government did not want any scrutiny of this bill—no scrutiny. We had to fight tooth and nail to get in two days of crammed hearings for this most significant, enormous structural change to our higher education sector.

We've got that nonsense contribution from those opposite: 'Oh, it's good, and we're going to make it sustainable.' The minute they say 'sustainable' the country should say 'cut', because that's exactly what it means. This will be a cut to higher education. It will forever dislocate teaching from research, and that is a recipe for disaster. This is the government that's gone out and kicked higher education to the ground every single year for the last seven years. They've inflicted multiple fractures on the sector to the point where it is a bruised and battered sector, and now they want to get this legislation through. And, with the shameful support of the crossbench, they're going to get it through here. What they will do is lock in, like a plaster cast, a multiple fracture that we will never recover from. That will be the record of this government in terms of higher education. It is an absolute disgrace.

The higher education bill that is before us today, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020, despite its title, like most of the government's other nonsense bills, will do exactly the opposite. There is no support in this; this is about breaking things. As I said, this is about breaking the nexus between teaching and research. This is about breaking the sector that they have been working on breaking for seven years. This is about breaking the hearts of young students who want to go to university and now know that, after the government gets this bill through, their debt will be increased.

The dissenting report from Labor is 36 pages long, which is quite significant for a dissenting report during my time here in the Senate. It reflects the evidence that was received from the large number of submissions and the evidence that was taken, against the government's wishes, in the series of hearings that we had. The subheadings of our report give an indication of just some of what is wrong with this bill. There is a lack of time for proper scrutiny. There is a dangerous extension of ministerial discretion: the minister can pick his own winners when he wants to. The sector is very concerned about getting on the wrong side of the minister, who seems to be able to wield power in the most extraordinary way and advance or withdraw money at his will—or her will, as the case may be. But that's what's getting locked in and baked in with this legislation. There are student fee hikes that have no justification.

Our report goes on to say that the pricing model that underpins the funding structure that has been established is profoundly weak; the incentives in this bill for universities are perverse and they do not match the realities that confront our universities; and the labour market assumptions in this bill are wrong. The barriers to job-ready graduates are well discussed in this document, and we know that those barriers are going to increase as students fear taking on more debt. Many students will pay more, and some will pay much more than others, as this government arbitrarily redetermines the shape of higher education. The worst impact will be on women and First Nations people. An enabling loading will be removed. This is how many Indigenous students—and many older students who recover from not being such good students at school and develop their lifestyles—go to university. This bill plays with that system and leaves it to the discretion of the minister to respond.

There will be punitive and unnecessary interference in students' progress. I will have more to say about that and the severe impact that is likely to have on students mental health and wellbeing—compounding the COVID-19 crisis. This is just what we really need from a government that says we are all in this together! Well, this is about making it a very separate kind of experience for those with wealth, and those without wealth will miss out.

There are consequences for research and the economy from the dislocation of research from teaching funding. There are risks to regional universities. We had Senator O'Sullivan saying how good this is for regional universities, but he wasn't there to hear the evidence from the regional universities. We know there is every chance that, as regional universities lose their research status, they will simultaneously lose their status as universities. There will be massive job losses at Charles Sturt University, just down the road from here at Wagga Wagga in the Deputy Prime Minister's seat. There have been hundreds of jobs lost during the COVID-19 crisis and there are hundreds and hundreds of jobs still to go. What's going to happen to that university and the great town of Wagga Wagga if it loses its status as a university? A failure to attract research from overseas will be a common problem.

All of these issues were aired in our two days of furious receipt of evidence that the government didn't want to have on the record. We will have a loss of university status and private providers. There is a mirage of 39,000 new student places. Don't believe that number for a minute. That's an absolute lie. The last of these subheadings is 'Degrading the sector'. This is just a taste; they are just the subheadings in a 36-page dissenting report from Labor senators. That's how bad this bill is. It's wrong on many, many fronts.

As a former teacher and university lecturer in education, I've always believed in the power of education. Getting a proper education is the best way to build a dream career and a life worth living and to give your talents and capacities the strength that they need to become a vital part of the Australian economy as well. But, instead of supporting those sorts of goals and supporting aspirational young Australians, this government has created a bill that shifts a larger proportion of debt onto students. It's also a bill that, through research funding changes, further empowers the minister to punish or promote universities at his own discretion. In the dissenting report, there is a critical statement that indicates how dangerous what this government is doing is, and I want to read it into the record:

The bill breaks the nexus between teaching and research, and makes no provision for research funding at a time when universities are suffering huge revenue losses because of falling international student numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The cuts to teaching and to research will inevitably result in universities gradually losing their capacity for civic engagement with the communities and regions they serve. This challenges the very notion of a university as it has been understood in this country.

The impact on young Australians should not be overlooked. For those who are still locked up in Melbourne, can I just say, as a senator for New South Wales, how much my sympathies and the sympathies of my state are with you in that situation. But it's not just students in Melbourne but students across the entire country who have been locked up and engaged with a very uncertain path to university, and this is what we've said in our dissenting report:

Year 12 students graduating this year will have endured stressful exams during a deadly pandemic. This bill will ensure that they enter a depressed jobs market with more debt than ever and less opportunities than their parents. According to ABC News reporting, youth workers say instances of self-harm and suicidal thoughts have risen significantly among young people in recent months and The Kids Helpline reported a 40 per cent—

yes, 40 per cent—

rise in demand for counselling services in March. This bill does not take any account of the effect on the mental health of these young Australians, which has already been buffeted by the cancellation of the traditional rites of passage like graduations and formals, and instead presents them with a mountain of debt, rather than an open doorway of opportunity.

That is the general flavour of this bill. It's a vicious and partisan attack on the university sector. Its central premise, its central goal of supposedly creating more jobs-ready graduates, is not backed up by the evidence. The overall effect of this bill, if it continues to achieve the support of the crossbench as has been indicated in mail this morning, will be to cause deep and lasting harm to an already battered and bruised cohort of young Australians. It will result in vast cuts to research and jobs in our world-class university sector. This bill represents a billion-dollar cut to the university sector, and it forces the burden of funding that billion-dollar deficit—that cut, chosen by this government—onto Australian students. There is no merit in this bill.

The bill also seeks to make it cheaper for rich families to send their kids to university, by giving discounts for upfront payments of fees, thanks to the actions of One Nation. This is an obscene and unnecessary discount for those whose parents have the wherewithal to pay thousands and thousands of dollars upfront rather than take out what's basically an interest-free loan. It'll make it harder and more expensive for working-class students and easier for affluent ones to study. This bill will have lifelong impacts on working-class students' ability to accumulate wealth and personal savings or to get a loan and obtain property, while at the same time this bill, as it is baked by this government, will give that upfront discount to rich families who can afford to pay upfront.

As Labor's dissenting report noted:

If the bill becomes law, the difference between the lowest fees paid by students and the highest fees paid will grow to a magnitude of four.

That should tell you all you need to know about Mr Tehan's priorities. Once you strip away the bill's sophistry, if you ignore the lack of empirical evidence around its key aims, you get to the hard core, which is the cuts to funding, to student support and to research. The bill's declared aim is to send price signals to students to entice them into disciplines deemed to be growth areas in a future job market, but there was simply no evidence in any of the submissions or in the evidence heard during our committee hearings to support the government's claims about this method of funding. Researchers who gave evidence to the committee, such as Mr Mark Warburton and Professor Andrew Norton, instead said:

… the evidence suggests that student choice is informed by a more complex set of factors than a simple response to price …

The central premise of the bill is that price will drive students in a particular direction. The central premise is incorrect. That alone should be enough for us to reject this bill. In this time of change the government fails to heed the wisdom of thought leaders across all industries and professions, who know that knowledge is moving so fast that you can't train for today, let alone for tomorrow. Graduates need deep and broad knowledge. It will be historical, but they also need to know that their knowledge will have to be refreshed over and over as change continues apace. In all faculties we need problem-solvers who can think creatively and know how to learn, good communicators who can share their new knowledge with others, and skilled collaborators who work with others. Those things are not related to particular strains of learning or particular faculties; they are about learner disposition, the capacity to bring the knowledge and talent that you have to the fore in an ever-changing workplace.

The bill doesn't only affect students. It will have disastrous effects on universities as well. They've already shed tens of thousands of jobs due to the COVID-19-induced recession, the Morrison recession, and the callous decisions and political plan by Josh Frydenberg to exclude Australian universities from JobKeeper. Yet they didn't miss giving New York University's Sydney campus the opportunity to claim JobKeeper! The bill as it stands is a wrecking ball through Australia's university sector. We're seeing courses cut at the University of Sydney, Macquarie University, Monash and all of our regional universities. The enabling loading, which allows students from diverse backgrounds to achieve, is being removed. They're also putting pressure on struggling students by cutting off government support if they fail over 50 per cent of their subjects. Students live complex lives. As the submission from CQ University pointed out, the implementation of this will be extremely limiting and very, very damaging.

This bill is a major structural reform that's just not necessary. It's not called for and neither is it just. The bill goes to the cruel heart of this government and the national ideology—instead of support for an ailing sector, there are just the empty promises of a minister doing the cutting. The poison is locked in legislation and the antidote merely on the lips of the minister. The bill fails in transparency, in spending and in every possible generous way of considering education. (Time expired)