Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens have a number of amendments to this bill, and I am pleased to say that the government has agreed with quite a few of those amendments. I do want to thank the many higher education advocates, supporters and stakeholders who have worked with us to make sure that that does happen.

These amendments include making ATEC more independent. That was one of the key issues that was raised by literally every single stakeholder and every single witness to the inquiry into this bill. Otherwise, we were told again and again—and I agreed with that sentiment—ATEC risks becoming just another administrative arm of the education department. It is absolutely vital, especially after the turmoil that the sector has been in, that it has independence from the government, so I'm glad that that amendment was agreed to by the government.

But there needs to be stronger independence provided to ATEC. I was hoping that the government would agree to the Greens amendment for the minister to basically not retain effective veto rights on the publication of ATEC's work, because that undermines their ability to publish the independent work that they have done. I hope the government can consider that in the future.

The government has also agreed to support Greens amendments on research in particular, because a strong research and development sector is crucial for higher education, for our society, for democracy. The recent release of the final report of the Strategic Examination of Research and Development—the SERD review—highlights that importance. Also, the government has agreed to make sure that the commissioners of ATEC have expertise in research.

One of the really important amendments that the Greens pushed for was around the purpose of higher education. We were quite surprised to see that, in the objectives of the ATEC bill, there was actually no purpose that highlighted this mission of higher education. So I'm really glad that we will now have an amendment which puts into the objectives of ATEC 'to recognise the public focused mission of higher education, the importance of academic freedom and the crucial role of higher education in developing knowledge and critical inquiry for the benefit of society'.

But I do have a few questions for the minister, because I want to come to their refusal, I guess, to include student contributions as part of the ATEC remit. One of our amendments goes to the heart of that. This is the amendment on sheet 3671. This amendment adds to the functions of the ATEC in order to ensure that the commission can examine not only the total cost of degrees and Commonwealth contributions but also student contributions, because, without those, in effect we have only half the picture.

Students at the moment are being crushed under spiralling student debt. A one-off 20 per cent debt cut by the government really does nothing for those who start university this year or after. What is even more devastating is that there are those who are now considering never starting university at all, because the cost is becoming prohibitive. They want to do arts degrees, which are now more than $50,000, but they can't study what they love, because it is so expensive. This Labor government knows that the fee hikes and funding cuts of the Job-ready Graduates Package have been an unmitigated disaster. Of course they have been an unmitigated disaster for young people and for students, but they have also been an unmitigated disaster for staff and universities. We know that, in opposition, the Prime Minister spoke in strong opposition to the JRG. But he's now been in charge for four years, and he won't even allow ATEC to provide advice on replacing this dog's breakfast of a policy. The Albanese Labor government could undo the Job Ready Graduates fee hikes and funding cuts today. But the real sad story out of this is that they won't even let ATEC look at student contributions.

So, Minister, my question to you is: Why is the government refusing to include student contributions as part of ATEC's remit and only having a half cooked cost estimate of higher education?