Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Choice in Childcare and Early Learning) | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Reverse Job-Ready Graduates Fee Hikes and End 50k Arts Degrees) Bill 2025. While I appreciate Senator Faruqi bringing this important discussion to the chamber, I indicate that the coalition will not be supporting this bill. This bill, frankly, is about grandstanding rather than just reform. The evidence is clear that it will strip $1.3 billion out of the university sector every single year, and there is simply no mechanism to replace that. The Greens made the decision to introduce the bill in this place; they decided as a party not to introduce the legislation in the House, where they would have been constitutionally permitted to appropriate the consolidated revenue and restore to the sector the money that this bill would strip out. They decided not to do so. They were not prevented from doing so by the Constitution. What that tells you is that the Greens' approach to this bill was not about reform; it was simply about virtue signalling and messaging. It says that the Greens were not serious about this piece of reform, because they knew it would have been incredibly destructive for the sector and that the Senate simply would not pass it.

So what does this bill do? This bill is not a coherent redesign of higher education funding. It's also not accompanied by an appropriation to make universities whole. It does not restore the pre-2021 system. It does not move to a simple, uniform student contribution model. It does not resolve the problems of governments picking winners between disciplines; it merely picks a different set of winners, while leaving universities to carry that financial burden and cost.

The purpose of the bill, as the explanatory memorandum makes clear, is to reverse the Job-ready Graduates fee increases in selected fields, including law, accounting, administration, economics, commerce, communications and society and culture, and to end what its proponents call $50,000 arts degrees. This bill amends section 93-10 of the Higher Education Support Act 2003 by replacing the table of maximum student contribution amounts. Those amended rates would apply to units of study with census dates on or after commencement, whether the course began before or, indeed, after commencement.

This bill is replete with problems. The first and most fundamental problem, which I alluded to just a second ago, is that this bill would massively cut university revenue. That is not a small technical flaw; it is an absolute, fatal flaw of this bill. As Professor Andrew Norton explained to the committee, the Senate may reduce student contributions, but a bill originating in the Senate cannot appropriate money from the consolidated revenue fund to replace that funding with increased Commonwealth contributions. The Greens think that there's this magic pudding that you can draw on or that there's some little tree that you can pluck revenue from. We don't live in fairyland. We live in reality. We live in the real world, and that means that you've actually got to make ends meet; you've actually got to pay your way. If you take that revenue out, what's going to happen? How do you replace it? This bill, of course, as I've said, does not deal with this issue.

The evidence before the committee—the good work that Senator Maria Kovacic, as the deputy chair of the committee, was able to prosecute—revealed this very problem. Universities Australia estimated the loss to the sector to be around $1.3 billion each year. That's not a small sum of money. Where are you going to find that? Where's that money? What magic tree or pudding are we going to draw that from? The University of Melbourne adopted the same figure. Innovative Research Universities estimated the loss at around $1.38 billion a year as well and warned that up to 8,400 full-time-equivalent jobs would be placed at risk. Is that what we want to see? Of course not. No responsible government—no responsible opposition—would support a measure that claims to help students while imposing an unfunded billion-dollar cut on the institutions that are to teach them. A university funding cut of that scale would not be abstract; it would affect courses, staffing, student support, regional provision, research capacity and the quality of student experience.

That is not enough to oppose the bill. There is another problem. The second problem is that this bill gives a partial and selective account of Job-ready Graduates. The scheme not only increased student contributions; it also reduced student contributions in a number of areas. Nursing, teaching, agriculture, mathematics, English and the sciences were among the fields where student contributions were actually reduced. These are occupations and professions greatly needed within our economy, our country and our society. Without nurses, without teachers—without that sort of support in our community—we wouldn't have the kind of workforce that we absolutely, desperately need for our economy to thrive.

The Regional Universities Network acknowledged that the scheme had a favourable cost impact for students in fields such as agriculture, teaching, nursing, health, IT and engineering—fields which, as I've said, are in acute demand in many regional communities. The community evidence also recorded that, for teaching, nursing and agriculture, the maximum annual student contribution actually fell by 42 per cent.

A complete review of Job-ready Graduates must consider both sides of the ledger. It must consider the disciplines where contributions increased and those where contributions decreased. It must consider whether lower contributions in teaching and nursing help students entering areas of workforce shortages. That should always be the consideration when it comes to funding for higher ed, whether it's in our university sector or, indeed, in VET. We should be putting the money and support into courses where there are job demands. Simply funding someone's educational fantasy is not actually helping, assisting, our country to move further or nudging it closer to being a more productive community and society. So we shouldn't be afraid of actually looking at that and having that as a goal within the funding envelope that we have.

A complete review must also consider whether regional communities benefited from cheaper pathways into priority professions. It must consider the overall coherence of the system, not simply the parts that support a preferred political conclusion.

Our position, on review, has been consistent. We've said, since before the 2022 election, that the job-ready graduates scheme should be reviewed. It's not set-and-forget. Just because we put it in place doesn't mean that we don't acknowledge that it could be improved or amended.

In opposition, Labor complained about it; in fact, they even campaigned against it at elections. In government, they have included it now in five budgets. So they acknowledge that it's actually a good thing—that it has its place, and that, designed right, it can have a real, positive impact.

The third problem that I want to address here is that the reasoning advanced for the bill is internally unstable. The committee report records evidence that only a very small portion of students changed their field of study in response to fee changes. If that is right, then the price signal did not substantially redirect student choice. But proponents of this bill also argue that reducing fees in selected disciplines will improve access, reduce barriers and change student behaviour. But let's face it: both claims simply cannot be true at the same time. It's internally unstable. If students' contributions do not materially influence choices—as was the central criticism of Job-ready Graduates—then lowering them in selected fields is unlikely to have a transformative participation impact. The argument needs much more rigour than this overly simplistic, dangerous bill provides.

The fourth problem is the design of the proposed fee structure. The bill does not simply repeal Job-ready Graduates and restore the old arrangements; it reverses the increases for some fields while retaining the reductions for many others. The result is a fee structure that has not previously existed. It keeps cheaper contributions for some disciplines, introduced under Job-ready Graduates, while lowering contributions in other disciplines to levels derived from pre Job-Ready Graduates system levels. It's a selective rollback which entrenches a new set of arbitrary distinctions.

The fifth issue is responsibility. And this is something that—let's face it—the Greens political party simply can't match, nor are they interested in taking that principle of responsibility. Like others in this chamber, they like to just say things as a statement and appeal to their base, but the reality is that you've got to actually deliver cohesive policy that's actually going to impact.

This bill criticises the scheme. It promises reform. The government criticised this scheme as well. They've promised reform, yet they've actually retained the scheme across five successive budgets. It is Labor policy. The government points vaguely to the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, another excessive bureaucratic body that's been put in by this government. The committee report identifies ATEC as the future vehicle for comprehensive reform, yet this government over here has brought no legislation in to actually fulfil their vision of what they want to see happen. There's no legislation before the parliament that makes it clear. The coalition's position is, however, clear. We support a higher education system that is accessible to students, sustainable for universities and defensible to taxpayers. We support reviewing Job-ready Graduates across the board. We support serious reform that considers the whole funding system, not only selected disciplines. We support reform that deals honestly with both student contributions and Commonwealth contributions, and we support reform that is properly funded, properly designed and constitutionally capable of implementation.

This bill that we're dealing with here today, that we're discussing and debating here today, fails those simple tests. It would reduce university revenue by around $1.3 billion a year. It would leave universities worse off. It would create a fee structure that has never previously existed. It would preserve some elements of Job-ready Graduates while repealing others, and it would replace one set of distortions with another. It would give the appearance of relief to maybe some disciplines and some students. I'm sure those students might like to get these really cheap courses. Yet, in areas of demand within our economy, maybe they're not the sort of occupations that the Greens like to espouse or want to see develop in the country. I don't know. I'm not sure why they would be wanting to attack some of these key occupations and want to see those fees rise yet see arts degrees plummet in their fee structure. So it would give the appearance of relief while failing to provide a sustainable answer.

For all these reasons that I've laid out here in my contribution to this discussion here today, the coalition will oppose this bill. We don't think it should pass. While it's worthy of discussion here—and thank you again, Senator Faruqi, for bringing this before us—it's simply not something that we can support. It's unsustainable. It doesn't meet the test. It simply cannot be supported, because it just wouldn't work, frankly.