Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I table a revised explanatory memorandum relating to the bill and move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The Bill amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 (HESA) to provide funding to support the implementation of the Research Quality Framework (RQF). 

It will also make important changes to our higher education sector by implementing a revised set of National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes.  The revised Protocols will provide greater diversity within our higher education sector by allowing new types of institutions to operate in Australia. 

The Bill will also make other amendments to the Higher Education Funding Act 1988 and the Higher Education Support (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Act 2003.

The Bill highlights this Government’s commitment to achieving both excellence and relevance in research, by providing around $41 million to assist universities and other higher education providers with the implementation of the RQF.

The RQF will ensure taxpayers’ money is being invested in research of the highest quality which delivers real benefits to the higher education sector and also to the wider community.  However, the Government recognises that there will be implementation costs associated with the adjustment to the new RQF system. 

The funding contained in this Bill will support this implementation process, particularly the activities and systems required for participating institutions to engage effectively and efficiently with the RQF.  The Australian Scheme for Higher Education Repositories programme will support the establishment of digital repositories throughout the higher education sector. The Implementation Assistance Programme will provide support to assist institutions with new administrative and information systems for the RQF.

The Bill also amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 (HESA) to reflect changes to the National Protocols for Higher Education Processes. The National Protocols were first agreed by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs in 2000, and regulate the recognition of new universities, the operation of overseas universities in Australia and the accreditation of courses offered by higher education institutions.   In other words, the National Protocols are the “gateway” to our higher education system.

In July 2006, Ministers approved a set of revised National Protocols to take effect from 31 December 2007, which will require legislative change in all jurisdictions.

Revisions to the National Protocols are the outcome of extensive consultations involving State, Territory and Commonwealth Governments, as well as the higher education sector.   The revisions make possible the emergence of specialist universities, concentrating teaching and research efforts in only one or two broad fields of study. 

The revised Protocols provide pathways for more institutions to become self-accrediting, where they have a strong track record in higher education delivery and quality assurance.  They also allow new universities to develop from provisional “university colleges” under the sponsorship of an established university.

Another significant change is the extension of the National Protocols to apply to all new and existing higher education institutions.

All of these changes align very well with this Government’s vision for a more diverse Australian higher education sector.  While prestigious, comprehensive universities will always have a place within a diverse sector, the revised National Protocols will encourage new types of institutions to operate in Australia.

Australia needs a high quality higher education sector with a range of institutions servicing different communities and varied requirements.  A diverse higher education sector will have the flexibility to respond to volatile international markets.  Further, greater diversity will promote choice for students, staff and employers, and encourage competition and excellence amongst institutions. 

In separate measures, the Bill allows for the first time, cross-institutional arrangements to be extended to Commonwealth supported students at non Table A higher education providers.  Previously, Commonwealth supported students were only able to undertake study in Commonwealth supported places in a cross-institutional arrangement between Table A providers.   This amendment provides greater flexibility for providers and extends the range of study options available to Commonwealth supported students.

The Bill also sets a six week time limit for the provision of corrected information by a student that affects their eligibility for Commonwealth assistance. 

Further, the Bill contains a number of technical amendments that will clarify existing Higher Education Loan Programme (HELP) and Commonwealth supported student arrangements and ensure the legislation reflects original policy intent. 

The Bill clarifies the overseas study requirements in relation to eligibility for OS-HELP assistance by enabling a student to apply for OS-HELP assistance if they are already overseas. 

The Bill ensures that higher education providers may determine the campuses at which units of study will be offered to Commonwealth supported students.  This amendment will allow providers to stipulate that a student may be Commonwealth supported for their units of study, only if the student undertakes those units at a particular campus of the provider. The Bill requires that Commonwealth supported students must reside in Australia while undertaking their studies (although provision is made to ensure entitlement to Commonwealth support and assistance where a student is required to be overseas for part of their course of study).

The Bill will ensure that permanent residents will not be entitled to Commonwealth support or HECS-HELP or FEE-HELP assistance if they are undertaking their entire course of study overseas.

In addition to these measures the Bill contains some minor technical amendments which will improve the overall operation of the Higher Education Support Act 2003.  One such measure is to ensure that the suspension of approval as a higher education provider under the Act will be a legislative instrument and therefore made publicly available on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments.

This Bill before the Senate is a clear expression of the Australian Government’s strong commitment to higher education and will enhance the quality and diversity of our higher education system and the choices available to our students. It reflects the government’s commitment to ensuring that Australia’s research and higher education sectors continue to play a vital role in our economic, cultural and social development.

I commend the Bill to the Senate.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak to the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007. The Labor Party do not oppose this bill. We are, however, very critical of aspects of it and highly sceptical about others. The measures which directly affect the establishment of the so-called research quality framework were not addressed in the budget last night. These measures in this bill relate to revising the maximum funding amounts provided by the Higher Education Support Act 2003 for the funding of the so-called research quality framework. This bill also seeks to amend the Higher Education Support Act to reflect changes to the national protocols for higher education approval processes. The national protocols regulate the recognition of new universities, the operation of overseas universities in Australia and the accreditation courses offered by higher education institutions. The bill also seeks to introduce a number of measures relating to the administration of the Higher Education Loan Program and arrangements for the Commonwealth to support its students.

Last night’s budget went particularly to the issue of the national protocols, and we will have more to say about that later on. It did not do so openly; it did so by stealth. These provisions provide for a fundamental change in the way universities are run in this country, and they will have very serious implications for our regional universities and for universities outside the Group of Eight. The RQF, however, is the most contentious component of this legislation. This legislation amends the Higher Education Support Act to ensure universities can gain access to funding for the government’s so-called research quality framework.

As the shadow minister responsible for this area, the more I understand this issue the deeper are my reservations about the research quality framework. I believe it to be fundamentally flawed in its approach to the measuring and assessing of research quality for our universities. While I am firmly of the view that we need a quality assurance mechanism within our research programs in our universities, there are clearly fundamental problems with the measure the government is proceeding with.

Those problems go to the fact that this measure will be extraordinarily expensive to administer, that it sets the bar too low on quality measures, that it emphasises a poorly defined impact measure and that it has at its core an adoption of an RQF which will mean that university ratings will be based more on where an academic is now working than on what groundbreaking research the academic has undertaken. This is a recipe for the poaching of staff and for the cooking of the books within our national research programs.

It is not just the Labor Party that has profound reservations about this measure; these are questions that are being drawn to our attention by the Group of Eight universities, which have expressed considerable concern about the legislation. While they support the original intentions of the legislation, they dispute the claims that have been made by the government—namely, that the ‘higher education sector has consistently indicated that the approach used in the RQF provides the best approach to conducting a quality based assessment process’ and that ‘the sector has continued to indicate a broad level of support’. These are claims that the government has made about what universities think is good for them. These claims are just not true. The government has tried to mislead the parliament and it has certainly tried to mislead the Australian public with regard to what universities themselves say about these measures.

The National Tertiary Education Union, which represents the staff at universities, has also argued that it does not support this legislation. It says that the critical details from the final model are simply not known. It says that there is a ‘lack of adequate funding to compensate universities for the real costs associated with the introduction of the RQF’ and that, from the program, there are—and this is quite an important observation—‘risks to the international reputation of Australian universities and the professional and industrial rights of their staff’.

I go to other organisations—ones which have shown themselves to be quite friendly towards the government in recent times, such as the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies. Even though they support the intent of the RQF as an approach, they remain concerned about it in a number of areas. I argue that what we have now is a situation whereby a wide cross-section of the Australian university community is now saying to the government, ‘This program should not proceed.’

It is not just in universities that this case is being put; other things are being said to us. Even the nest of advisers within DEST surely should have heard this advice. What the high priests of the market-driven approach to universities, such as the Productivity Commission, are saying is particularly ironic. What are they saying? In their final report Public support for science and innovation, which was released in March, they say, ‘The costs of implementing the research quality framework may well exceed the benefits,’ and ‘while the RQF may bring some benefits, the UK and NZ experiences suggest that these would have to be substantial to offset the significant administrative and compliance costs’. What you have is not just the universities but major advice to government from normally highly friendly sources saying that this program is fundamentally at odds with the best interests of the Australian universities.

The government’s current plan is to conduct a review of research performance under the research quality framework model every six years. The Productivity Commission argues that if the RQF model is to continue beyond 2008—and I can indicate that if there is a change of government at the next election we will not be proceeding with these arrangements as they are—then one or two things should occur. The Productivity Commission say that, if the government were to be re-elected, the government should provide an early basis for assessing the effects of the RQF by bringing forward the 2014 round or by conducting a partial round in the intervening period. You do not need to be a code breaker to understand that the Productivity Commission is politely but firmly telling this government that the RQF is no good and should be scrapped.

Concerns have also been expressed by the higher education sector with regard to what they argue are the linkages with industry and the negative effects that will come about as a result of the implementation of the RQF. What others within the higher education sector say is that this program will in fact weaken the collegiate efforts among researchers and academics from different universities—and that will undermine collaboration across the sector—and that there will be problematic impacts on the assessment of quality and that the measurements of the so-called impact provision are too difficult to define. In the course of the review that was undertaken last year, the Productivity Commission received submissions outlining the acute deficiencies in the RQF from organisations and agencies right across the higher education sector and the research community, as well as from private industry.

So we have a situation where the government has been essentially heavily criticised for this program right across the board. The government is in the thrall of a small group of public servants within the department of education who have misled this minister about the impact of these arrangements and the quite damaging effect that they will have on our research capacity. The collective concern is: ‘There is a prospect that an RQF could become a burden to researchers, be expensive to administer and deliver very little reward to support and simulate the best quality research.’ I suggest that, despite all of these concerns on the effect that the RQF will have on research in our universities, the government has essentially sought a whitewash. In the Senate inquiry’s majority report—on which I understand additional remarks will be made by Senator Marshall later in this discussion—the government say, ‘It is highly likely that criticisms made of the legislation—bearing mostly on detail—will be addressed as implementation proceeds at least to the extent that the current concerns of stakeholders require alteration.’

This is not about mere detail of implementation; these are fundamental concerns about the design and construct of these arrangements. While we have very grave concerns about the RQF, I would like to emphasise just how important it is to ensure that there is a policy of quality assurance within our research communities. We will be pursuing approaches that will demand the highest quality of research in our universities. As that forms the bedrock of our scientific discovery, critical thinking and learning within universities, it is essential that the public have confidence that public moneys are spent wisely and that value for money arises whereby our researches are able to enjoy considerable increases in the level of public support.

We argue that any quality assurance framework must be robust, rigorous and support an open and transparent process of peer review. Labor want a research quality assurance scheme that is of international standing, and we believe that the government’s approach on these fronts is fundamentally flawed. We believe there are far better ways to achieve these outcomes. We will be arguing that an alternative model be established that is rigorous, transparent, fair, equitable and efficient and that must be recognised, accepted—

Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Cliche!

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You would not know what a cliche is, apart from when you chase the odd sheep around your Gippsland properties. That is absolutely true. On the Collins Street farms, that is probably what they get up to—that is about all they get up to. Senator McGauran would like to engage us on the question of research policy. I look forward to Senator McGauran’s contribution about how this proposal is internationally acceptable and what measures are being taken within the Liberal Party to ensure that it is world’s best practice.

What you have here is a need to ensure that funds, which are inherently short in supply because we cannot conceivably fund all options that are available for research inquiry, go to a program that will: transparently reflect research quality and achievement in our universities; allow universities to concentrate on their research strengths; reward genuinely high achievers; weight research costs accurately by field and by discipline; promote university autonomy and decision making on research funding and policy; recognise and reward groundbreaking, long-term fundamental research whose full impact may not be apparent within a limited or arbitrary time frame; and provide separate and objective measures that reflect research quality in each of the broad discipline areas—the arts and humanities, the performing arts, the social sciences and the sciences and technologies.

We argue that if you have a quality assurance mechanism in place it is important that it actually works. We are obviously not opposing the additional moneys that are being provided, but the government’s approach is fundamentally wrong and a completely different strategy is needed to deal with the issue of quality assurance within our universities. We support efforts and measures to increase the overall level of research undertaken by universities. These measures, as we saw last night, will not lead to any increase of money being provided by the government through the Australian Research Council or through research training. You will not see any direct benefit to the universities; only costs. Labor believe that the money can be more effectively used in the development of an alternative research quality assessment regime.

I will turn to other areas within this bill, particularly the National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes. The national protocols regulate the recognition of new universities, the operation of overseas universities in Australia and the accreditation of courses offered by higher education institutions. The protocols were first approved by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs back in 2000 and were subsequently amended by agreement of the states and territories in July 2006. In the 2006 amendments, it was identified that there needed to be: nationally agreed criteria and approval processes for all higher education institutions; criteria and processes for the registration of non-self-accrediting higher education institutions and the accreditation of their higher education courses; and criteria and processes for awarding self-accrediting authority to higher education institutions other than universities. This is extremely important stuff because it goes to our international reputation for the provision of higher education in this country. It is fundamental that we have, once again, a rigorous process that provides, as the Group of Eight argue in their submission to the Senate committee inquiry:

... appropriate protection for the use of the term ‘university’ in an Australian context ... So long as the Government remains vigilant about ensuring that the quality assurance mechanisms contained in HESA are rigorously enforced for all current and new entrants to the sector, the Go8 believes that the introduction of New Protocols will be a positive development for Australia’s higher education system.

However, my concern is that those criteria actually be identified and carried out. We know from the sorry saga of the Greenwich University affair on Norfolk Island just how perilous a course we sail with this government because of its preoccupation with the quick and nasty little stunts that it pulls to try to get around these important quality assurance issues. I think it is important that there is provision to allow for the establishment of centres of research and teaching excellence within universities and which allow for greater attention to research expertise. It is appropriate that there are clear mechanisms established for institutions with strong track records in higher education delivery and quality assurance to become self-accrediting, particularly when they are under the stewardship of an established university. It is also appropriate that there be an extension of the application of the national protocols to all new and existing higher education institutions. That is basically what these arrangements perform.

My concern is this: in allowing international higher education providers and specialised higher education providers to establish themselves as universities or university colleges we have to ensure that these very rigorous provisions are in fact implemented. I am concerned, however, that the government’s approach to the greater specialisation in the sector is one of stealth. It does not actually spell out what it is proposing here, but the essence of these changes goes to the issue of whether we are going to have teaching only universities and university colleges in this country. Under the name of competition this government is opening up the destruction of the unitary system as we have known it in this country for 30 years. This could have serious consequences for regional universities and for the so-called blue gum universities in that financially weaker members of the university community in this country may find that they are effectively deprived of the capacity to undertake serious research. We must therefore ensure that the accreditation regime that is introduced here is able to guarantee that the high standards of our higher education providers will not be eroded and that our international reputation for having first-class institutions is not undermined.

We do have a serious problem with the placement of our universities on an international scale; however, the answer to that problem is not the dumbing down of our institutions. It is about investing in the future and ensuring that our institutions are genuinely able to measure their performance on an international basis. My worry is that the lack of details in the provision of the guidelines on how these protocols will be applied to existing higher education providers opens this government to the charge that it is about destroying the unitary system and imposing a whole new set of arrangements.

Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the Democrats’ higher education spokesperson, I rise to speak on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007, which in many respects continues this government’s reform of the higher education sector. As we have heard, this bill has a number of measures; some are quite minor and others are less so. The bill places some of us in a quandary. Senator Carr referred to the recommendation in the submission from the National Tertiary Education Union that the bill not proceed until the other plans in relation to the RQF, for example, are put forward. But, while many of us would prefer to see the specifics in place, we do not want to hold up funding to the sector that may help them with the implementation of some of these programs, the RQF in particular. So, like the Labor Party, we are in a bit of a bind. As I outlined in the supplementary report to the Senate committee on this, the Democrats are not going to stand in the way of this legislation. Of course, we can read the numbers in this place and can see that this legislation will go through. But there are a couple of issues that should be addressed.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Have you read the budget?

Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do acknowledge the budget; it is nice to be able to acknowledge good things in a budget from this government, and there were some positive developments for the higher education sector last night.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You have had 12 opportunities to do that now.

Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Do not get too excited, Minister Abetz! It is a bit like your higher education policy: there is always going to be a bitter pill at the end of it. When I see headlines like the one in today’s higher education supplement in the Australian saying ‘$1.7bn boost exceeds hopes’ I get pretty excited. Of course, I remember the headline—as Senator Carr would—in 1996-97: ‘$1.8 billion cut out of the higher education sector’. So what took you so long? It is nice to be able to say good things; it is nice to see a budget that does reinvest in the sector. But, guys, how long did this take? Ten years! Ten years ago a lot of changes took place and those changes have had deleterious effects on the sector in research, capital funding, infrastructure, student financial support and income support.

I am the first to congratulate this government on its decision in the budget last night to make rent assistance available to Austudy recipients. It is something I have campaigned on long and hard in this place. In fact, I think I threatened not to leave the parliament until you did make that change.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is why we did it!

Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So I have worked out how to get results—threaten to leave, and what do you know! But that is $25 million—an incremental, small amount in the bigger picture of higher education funding. Yet we know income support is so valuable; it is one of the key factors in determining that people, particularly from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds, can access and participate in higher education. So, well done! There is still a lot more to go. There are other aspects of the budget, and I will turn to them after I have addressed the aspects of the legislation before us. There are good bits but there are also some aspects of the budget that are particularly worrying.

To return to the bill in question: as I mentioned, the Democrats do not have any in principle objections to the specific amendments proposed in this bill before us but we do have problems with the overarching policy that this bill seeks to support. In particular, the bill revises the maximum funding amounts of the Higher Education Support Act 2003, the HESA, to provide funding for the implementation of the RQF, the research quality framework. The RQF is the government’s attempt at creating a performance management framework for the university sector. The principles behind the RQF—that universities should be rewarded for excellence—are sound enough. I do not think anybody has a problem with that rhetoric. Indeed, I think few would advocate that there should be, if you like, a free ride or a lack of accountability for or responsiveness to the spending of taxpayers’ money, and a well-implemented performance management framework could focus funding where it is needed and where it will have the greatest effect.

The danger with frameworks like these is that it is incredibly difficult to measure impact in all its myriad forms, and trying to specify what constitutes impact and what does not can generate all sorts of unintended consequences. As the Macquarie University researcher Russell Downham wrote in the Australian last year:

... novel solutions to practical problems are often found where they are least expected.

And:

Given the increasing complexity of our knowledge and its potential interconnections, there is little reason to believe we could predict which research programs will have the greatest impact beyond the short term.

As Senator McGauran would know—but he has gone and I was looking forward to his involvement in this debate—the RQF was intended to replicate the United Kingdom’s research assessment exercise, the RAE. The RAE was found to be too complex and quite burdensome for university staff and it has since been scrapped. It has been abolished in the United Kingdom and replaced by a system of metrics such as the impact of published papers or the amount of income earned in research and grants and contracts.

In recent times I have been visiting many vice-chancellors, as I have done over the last 11 years as the higher education spokesperson for the Democrats, to talk about this issue. I know that there is a public veneer of support from the AVCC and individual vice-chancellors, but when you start talking to some of these men and women you find they are very concerned about this framework and particularly about its implementation. Most are concerned, of course, about the administrative burdens and the likelihood that it may generate some perverse outcomes. It would be interesting to know where the impetus to establish the RQF is coming from within the government when the UK model on which it is based has since been scrapped and when there are few in the tertiary education sector who believe the RQF will result in positive change.

I am also curious that a government that supposedly favours small government is establishing a scheme that will dramatically increase the administrative burden for the higher education sector, both for the universities themselves and for the Department of Education, Science and Training, so much so that the government has allocated $87.3 million to address these costs. Obviously, it is anticipating some administrative problems.

I note that this bill also amends, as Senator Carr has noted, the HESA to change the National Protocols for the Higher Education Approval Processes. As with the RQF, it does so before the whole policy is actually set in stone. After extensive consultations, the national protocols were revised and approved by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, MCEETYA, in July last year. MCEETYA will now develop guidelines to give effect to these national protocols, but these have not been finalised. Like Senator Carr, I have a lot of sympathy for the position put forward by the National Tertiary Education Union during the Senate inquiry into this bill, when they said that the bill should be withdrawn until the final policy settings for both the RQF and the guidelines for the national protocols are finalised. That seems pretty sensible to me. This is further evidence of how the government has dealt with higher education policy—and probably policy generally—over the years, pushing through the legislation aimed at implementing plans before the plans have actually been fully developed. We are being asked today to pass legislation providing funding for the implementation of the research quality framework before we know how the model is actually going to work in practice.

Ordinarily the Democrats would be loath to support such a bill. Call us quaint or old-fashioned, but we believe the logical approach would be to set the policy first and then make the required administrative changes to implement that policy. But we face a dilemma. This bill includes a funding package to help the higher education sector adapt to the significant administrative burden that the RQF will impose on universities. So while I think that this is bad policy and I disagree with the way the government is going about it, both in method and substance, I am realistic about the numbers in this place. I also do not like standing between universities and some money. Let us face it, they have been starved for funds for long enough and they are desperate for money not only to assist with the new models and policies being imposed on them by this government but more generally.

On that note, there has been a lot of talk about the national endowment fund today. Certainly, no-one would baulk at the suggestion that $5 billion is anything but a good injection of money into the sector—or $200 million or $300 million per annum, depending on whose assessments we are looking at today. That said, why is the government so determined to ignore the issue of indexation for universities? It is the one thing that vice-chancellors and others in the sector have been calling for for years. It is not just this government, I might add. Labor dropped the ball on this issue as well. Labor were marginally better on the issue of indexation through a complex arrangement of borrowing and loans but, nonetheless, no governments have ensured that universities have been able to keep up with the costs of inflation through realistic, sustainable indexation in grants and operating costs. That would have been a logical way to proceed with issues such as research infrastructure or capital works or a range of other areas that apparently the endowment fund is supposed to deal with.

We also do not know the mechanics of the national endowment fund. How is it going to work? Who will be responsible for determining the criteria? I note the comments on the front page of the higher education supplement today quoting, as an administrator, Patrick Woods, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Technology, Sydney, in his reaction to the budget last night. He said:

The mechanism for accessing the Higher Education Endowment Fund is unclear. It appears to be a disguised process for giving greater funding to the Group of Eight [universities]. The Government has given us more university places. We don’t want more places, we want funding for the places we already have.

This is a message that has come through loud and clear over the last decade or so and yet the government has been slow to respond.

I see that this bill also includes changes to the Higher Education Loan Program, HELP. Again, I do not necessarily regard the amendments in themselves to be particularly problematic. But the policy behind them is problematic. I acknowledge that HECS, the forerunner to HELP, was about as gentle a way of getting students to pay for their university education as you could have, but I also recognise that this government distorted the original HECS architecture and the principles behind that system, and I do not resile from the fact that the Australian Democrats have never supported fees for education. Thousands of HECS-HELP students now have debts in the order of $40,000. Full-fee students under FEE-HELP are many times worse off, with some full degrees now costing more than $200,000, as we have heard repeatedly. This is directly contrary to the Prime Minister’s promise that no degrees would cost even $100,000 under his administration.

One of the big problems, again, with the budget which relates to this and the issue of income support and the pressures on students and the fact that this is a debt-ridden generation of students and graduates, is that the cap on the proportion of full-fee paying places in relation to domestic undergraduate places will be removed across all disciplines. That was the real nasty little part of last night’s budget that I am not sure people have paid attention to yet. A dramatic increase in the number of students who are burdened with full-fee debts is surely just around the corner.

It is well recognised now that students and graduates have financial burdens of mortgage-like proportions—around $40,000 or $50,000. I cannot understand how that would be a good start in life for any student—and I am not just talking about young people; I am talking about mature age students as well. We know that that will have an impact, and has been shown to have an impact, on other significant purchases, such as cars or a house. It has even been shown to have an impact on the timing of decisions on such things as marriage and children, and these are serious issues. The government may want to boast about having surpluses or being debt free, but we have a seriously debt-ridden generation among us, with more to come. By removing the cap on the full-fee paying domestic undergraduate places, the government have effectively opened the floodgates on full-fee degrees. There is no pretence now of equity. In some respects I wish the government would just stand up and say that, by saying, ‘We acknowledge we’ve almost completely deregulated undergraduate education, as indeed successive governments have done to postgraduate education, and we are not prepared to put significant money back into income support.’ That might be one way not necessarily of offsetting those costs but of enabling students, particularly disadvantaged ones, to participate in the sector. I acknowledge the money for Abstudy and Indigenous scholarships and, as I mentioned, rent assistance to Austudy students, but it is a really small amount in the total pool that governments should be making available as a priority in investing in education in the future.

So, yes, I acknowledge the good bits of the budget and I certainly welcome an injection of funding for infrastructure and courses. As I say, I am very happy to see the government heeding our calls and the calls of other groups in the sector for changes to income support. But I worry about the removal of the caps and the impact of that, particularly on domestic undergraduates, throwing the long-term equity of tertiary education into doubt, and, again, about the government’s unwillingness to even countenance indexation for the sector.

The Democrats have little choice but to support this bill. As I say, I am very conscious of the fact that universities need what money they can get, but I think that the government should be taking time to reconsider the policy behind such legislation. Are we at a point now where we put forward the money for administration before working out a policy? I suppose that in one of my other portfolio areas—the human services area—the access card has made it entirely clear that governments are prepared to allocate money and distribute funds but not to get the specifics of the law, the policy, the model or whatever it may be not just on the table but also democratically debated, scrutinised, analysed, changed if needed and then passed by a majority in the parliament. I think this is a very sorry approach to take to any policy making.

I hope the government will consider, particularly in relation to the RQF, that there are other ways to evaluate performance and to ensure that the model they are putting forward is clear before this parliament is asked to consider such legislation again. I hope also that the government will look at the legacy their policies on HELP fees are leaving the students and the graduates of this country.

Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is commonplace to hear in Australia that Australia has very good research, particularly in the science and technology field. I think the Treasurer referred to that last night either in his budget speech or in comments afterwards. But the fact is that this government has really not paid due recognition to encouraging and promoting this quality. My colleagues Senator Carr, for the Labor Party, and Senator Stott Despoja, for the Democrats, have gone into some of the detail of the evaluative framework contained in the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007. I want to briefly talk a bit more about research and the way this Liberal government has dropped the ball on research over the past 10 years.

There is discussion in the bill about high-quality, high-impact research and its importance, and the recent Productivity Commission report emphasises the necessity of having high-quality, high-impact research and the effect of that on our country’s economy and productivity. People also paid lip-service to the fact that the value of research may not be immediately apparent and that it may be evident some way down the track. Indeed, when I went through university a lot of the work being done in the faculty of biochemistry at the University of Adelaide was seen to be leading-edge research that did not have any particular impact. But the work on cell walls and other biochemical aspects has had a very evident impact, and a lot of the biotechnology work that is producing profits now is predicated on that. The fact is that, over the past 10 years, this Liberal government, as has been stated by my colleagues, has neglected research. It has neglected funding for research and has neglected the universities and other structures in which research has been carried out. That has had a big impact on the quality, the amount of research and the type of research within those institutions.

Indeed, you could argue that the Liberal government, despite paying lip-service to the quality of Australian research, have actually brought a lot of research into disrepute by their mocking of it—and I am talking particularly of the former Minister for Education, Science and Training Dr Brendan Nelson. This was highlighted by Professor Peter Hoj when he left the Australian Research Council recently. In speaking about his time in the Research Council, which began in 2004, he said that, within months of his being in the Australian Research Council, Dr Nelson vetoed three projects that the ARC board had recommended for funding. He went on to say that Dr Nelson vetoed another seven the following year, created an outrage when he appointed three lay members to the ARC board and then finally abolished the board. In the process, Dr Nelson and others of his philosophy cast a lot of doubt on the quality of the research that was being done in Australia, taking out individual projects and project titles and mocking them and the quality of research that was coming out of a number of institutions—and this was done by the minister for higher education. At the same time, funding was cut and, subsequently, the grants were tied to government and workplace reforms within universities. Ideological obsessions, such as workplace reforms, have replaced policy ideas within this government. This government lacks forward thinking, it lacks policy ideas and it puts in place ideological obsessions that skew the kind of work and research that is being done by universities, at a time when it has become more important than ever that we get good quality research coming out of our institutions.

I will concentrate on the scientific area because that is my particular area, but there is good research coming out in the arts and humanities and there are good reasons that that research should continue. In the area of scientific research it is extraordinarily important that we get good quality and good value out of the research. A lot of our manufacturing is being taken over in other countries where labour is cheaper and regulation is less severe, and it is very important, as many have noted, that this country develops a much more cerebral type industry, where we rely on our ability to innovate, to produce technological change and to sell our ideas as our exports rather than particular goods. There has been talk about the ‘clever country’ and the export of our ideas—all of which has a lot of value—but, in order for us to achieve that, we must come up with those ideas and the pure research and then come up with the ability to translate those ideas into commercial reality or at least to prototypes.

That second area is where the government has most signally failed. This is particularly so in relation to climate change. We talk about the necessity to tackle climate change on the basis of scientific fact, but a lot of the science on how we should address climate change has not been properly supported or funded by this government. Not only do we have to ask ourselves whether the research that is being done is being approached by this government in a stepped and strategic way but we also have to look at the implementation of that scientific research. I have friends who work in the hydrogeological area, which plays a fundamental role in how we deal with climate change. Funding to that area is cut all the time simply because it is an implementation area. It does not get the government great kudos if the hydrogeological work is done, and the recommendations are not put forward. It is only when we reach crisis point that the need for that kind of work is evident—and we are now rapidly reaching that crisis point.

The government is in a catch-up phase, because it has not looked to the future for its policy over the last 10 years. It has not recognised climate change and it has not recognised the scientific research and the value that it has. In this budget and through other measures, the government is looking at catching up. Before we get too excited about the value of what is contained in the current budget, we should remember those last 10 years of reduced funding, the mocking of research, the blocking of research and the underchampioning of research in areas of scientific and technological advances. It has been 10 years of mismanagement—and, where it has not been mismanagement, it has been 10 years of neglect.

Last night on one of the television programs, Mr Laurie Oakes asked the Treasurer where the idea of the endowment funding came from. It was a question that the Treasurer avoided, but it is a very interesting question because it is a reasonable idea. I will not discuss the implementation or what its effect will be; I will leave that to further discussion of exactly what is involved there. But at least it does show some vision and innovation, and that has been severely lacking under previous ministers for education in the Liberal government. It is an interesting question. Would it have come from the current Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop, who has so far shown no signs of vision or innovation in this education budget, or would it have come from other areas? I do not know, but what we need in education—higher education in particular—is much more vision and innovation. We need to recognise that if Australia is to be the country that we want it to be then we have to support good quality, high-impact research at our universities.

The fact that funding for education in Australia has lagged behind other countries illustrates that this government does not have a true commitment to Australia as a country that relies on the brain power, innovation and ability to adapt that would take us further into the next century—past the mining boom and into a future where everyone in our country can take advantage of higher education and, to the best of their ability, use their talents in research within a framework which is properly measured and properly supported by the government. It is a fact that we do not have in this country the level of private endowment that other countries might have, but that is all the more reason why the Australian government needs to pay proper attention to the way in which it develops research institutions in this country and to the way research is valued in this country.

Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition (Social and Community Affairs)) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too wish to contribute to the debate on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007 and to support the concerns that have been articulated by Senator Carr, Senator Stott Despoja and Senator Hurley about just what this bill will achieve. While we on this side of the chamber are not opposing the bill, I want to focus on what are probably the most contentious parts of the bill, which are those relating to the research quality framework and its implementation. I do so from two points of view: firstly, from the point of view of the impact of the RQF on the regional universities and their future and, secondly, from the point of view of not thinking about the RQF in isolation but considering the impacts of the RQF together with the learning and teaching performance framework that is also being put in place and how that can create a teaching-research nexus in many universities as they try to struggle with the implementation of the RQF.

I want to make some broad comments about the bill, which clarify the requirements of the Higher Education Loan Program. Senator Stott Despoja, who passionately understands all of those issues, reflected on those very carefully this morning and highlighted just what those impacts are going to be for Commonwealth supported students. The bill also amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to implement the revised National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes, and it amends the Higher Education Support Act, the Higher Education Funding Act 1988 and the Higher Education Support (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Act 2003 to limit the time when students will be able to claim entitlement to Commonwealth support. So there are important amendments to higher education legislation that need to be recorded.

I want to move to the research quality framework issues and the concerns that have been raised today. I agree with the previous speakers who have said that the insistence on the research quality framework proposal and model is fundamentally flawed. This has been reflected in submissions to the inquiry into this bill. There are major concerns about transparency, about broader impacts on publicly funded research and about the onerous provisions that will be placed on universities in the reporting framework that is being developed. The message has been very clear and consistent from the Group of Eight universities, which includes the Canberra based ANU. The Group of Eight, who are responsible for 60 per cent of Australia’s university research and manage more than 70 per cent of the national competitive grants that are provided in higher education, have outlined very clearly in their submissions to the working party of the department on the research quality framework implementation group and to the committee investigating this bill that it is hugely problematic for them. Last year, Professor Glyn Davis, Chair of the Group of Eight, said:

... it is very important that any new research assessment model is robust and tested to ensure it is accurate and cost-effective before implementation. It will be difficult to achieve this in the proposed 2008 implementation time-frame.

There are some lessons to be learned from overseas experiences. This RQF framework model moves to implement something that has been dumped in the UK. That in itself seems to be a fundamental reason for not proceeding and for learning from the experiences of overseas countries and for moving on from what is a flawed model.

There are clear messages from other overseas countries too. In New Zealand, the lesson is very clear: the universities there found it very difficult to plan for the RQF. At the time that they were considering it, they did not have the funding algorithm. Universities in New Zealand found it impossible to work out what the impact would be and how they would be able to report on it. They needed to see how it operated in the first round before they could understand how their universities were going to be affected financially. In this legislation, a very minimal amount of money has been provided for the implementation process—far, far less than the universities indicated that they were going to need to implement the RQF as it is proposed. While the Group of Eight have consistently supported an efficient cost-effective research quality assessment mechanism, they are advocating for something totally different. The universities have a preference for a validated metrics based approach to quality and impact assessment, and that is the model that the UK have implemented since they dumped their similar RQF assessment exercise. We are going back to the future here with the frustrating, devilishly complex and quite divisive model that the Minister for Education, Science and Training is trying to implement.

I mentioned the issue of the learning and teacher performance framework which the government is implementing as part of the process and parallel to the RQF. That is a fairly inexpensive exercise and is built around performance measures that largely existed prior to its introduction. But the RQF is going to be far more expensive for the sector and it is going to be very difficult for universities as a whole to do a cost-benefit analysis of going down this path. Whether or not the inclusion of quantitative metrics could enhance the RQF by reducing the amount of qualitative assessment required is difficult to determine, especially where the impact is concerned. Those people who have been talking to me about the RQF are concerned that the impact essays and statements that will be required for significant work will be both difficult and onerous to produce and then to assess. From the universities’ point of view, the system is fundamentally flawed and is not going to deliver the outcomes that the government wants. The irony of it all is that if the government had taken the advice of its experts—the universities who are trying to advance research and higher education in Australia and to contribute to the productivity gains of the 21st century—then they would know that this will be very difficult.

With the trial of this and then with its implementation in 2008, we could see a very serious nexus emerge between the teaching and research functions of universities. We will have two streams of universities, some that are researching and garnering the research dollars and others that are trying to teach skills and that will be very disadvantaged. Labor has a very different approach to higher education. Its strong messages, which have been gathered and promoted through Kevin Rudd’s education revolution, are really about valuing lifelong learning and building our international competitiveness based on a massive investment in education from cradle to grave. That is not what we are going to see in this RQF.

Coming back to the bill before us: Senator Stott-Despoja made comments in the debate this morning about the debts that students are now going to be carrying for higher education and the fact that we are going to see, as a matter of course, $200,000 university degrees. These are the things that are going to come into effect through this legislation in front of us, and last night’s announcements confirmed that that is the case. We are going to see an accumulation of higher education contribution debts. We are going to see massive burdening of young people as they start out in life in their professions. We had the minister saying that we should increase HECS for those courses from which there is going to be greater reward in a person’s professional life. What we are going to see from that is a much greater Americanisation of higher education. People will start their working lives saddled with a debt that will take them decades, perhaps, to deal with. It is a disappointing piece of legislation for Labor. We believe that there were much better ways to deal with higher education. But we are supporting the amendment bill simply because getting some funding into higher education is better than the government’s record. I will leave my remarks there.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007. I have some comments about the bill but also some comments about the process of the Senate inquiry into the bill. It is an increasing trend with this government that when legislation is referred to committees it is done so with a very tight timetable. This is raising concerns across many committees, not just the committee which I am deputy chair of, that there is not adequate time to take public submissions or adequate time after the inquiry process for the committee to reflect on, digest and come to a considered view of the information that has been presented to the committee.

In this particular case the government insisted that the committee report on 1 May, which is a non-sitting day. While initially Labor Party members on the committee protested about the day and the logic of it, the government insisted. As a consequence, it is our view that our fundamental concerns with legislation have not been adequately reflected in the report that was tabled out of session on 1 May. I cannot understand why this report could not have been tabled yesterday. If it were a serious problem where the government wanted to see that report in advance of this debate taking place, it could have been tabled out of session last Friday. In any case, it would have given more time, and therefore probably more adequate time, for our concerns to be properly reflected.

While Labor does not oppose this legislation, it is appropriate that our concerns are properly placed on the record. The Senate committee process, unfortunately on this occasion, did not allow us to adequately do that. As deputy chair of the committee and on behalf of the Labor members of the committee I have produced some additional comments which I will be seeking leave to table later in the day along with the tabling of the report that will be accepted by the Senate—the report that was tabled out of session on 1 May. Those additional comments will go into the detail of our concerns. The time that I have to speak to this bill today will not enable me to do that in full.

I will go through and summarise our concerns. We have grave reservations about the research quality framework. We believe it is a fundamentally flawed approach to measuring and assessing research quality in our universities. Labor support measuring the effectiveness and impact of research undertaken in our universities but we do not believe that the RQF is the right approach. The RQF will be expensive to administer, it sets the bar too low on quality measures, it emphasises a poorly defined impact measure and its adoption will mean that university ratings would be based on where the academic is now working, not necessarily where the academic has done groundbreaking research. Many of these concerns were expressed in a submission to the inquiry into the legislation and I note that these concerns, while picked up in the body of the report, were rejected by the government majority on the committee with the following throwaway line:

It is highly likely that criticisms made of the legislation—bearing mostly on detail—will be addressed as implementation proceeds at least to the extent that the current concerns of stakeholders require alteration.

As a passing observation, most criticisms are usually of detail because it is in the detail that the problems will usually be found. That is why we have had concerns about the RQF model expressed by universities, the NTEU and, perhaps most objectively, by the Productivity Commission itself in its final report Public support for science and innovation. This research report, released in March, reported adversely on the proposed framework and noted: ‘The costs of implementing the research quality framework may well exceed the benefits’ and ‘While the RQF may bring some benefits, the UK and New Zealand experiences suggest that these would have to be substantial to offset the significant administrative and compliance costs.’

While Labor do not oppose the legislation, we believe it is flawed. While we remain concerned about its ultimate effectiveness, we do not oppose it. It is not just in relation to the RQF that we have concerns. The amendments made by the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007 are also required to give effect to the revised national protocols for higher education approval processes which were agreed by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs in July 2006. The problem here is that the government still does not have in place the guidelines that are to govern the protocols, which are not expected to be completed until June 2007 at the earliest, meaning that these guidelines will not come into force until the end of this year at the earliest as each of the states and territories will have to amend their existing legislation to allow for the national protocols to take effect.

In relation to Commonwealth assistance for FEE-HELP and OS-HELP, concern has been expressed to us that the requirement that Commonwealth supported students must reside in Australia while undertaking their studies may be to exclude students studying overseas, via distance education or on exchange, from accessing FEE-HELP. More broadly, by allowing international higher education providers and specialist higher education providers to establish themselves as universities or university colleges, the changes may lead to the further liberalisation of the university sector. While we support greater liberalisation as a pathway to greater competition and better educational access, we would not be prepared for this to lead to a diminution of quality standards.

Not one of these points was properly or adequately picked up by the majority report. It is for this reason that Labor will, as I have said earlier, seek leave to table additional comments to that report into the legislation. We do not oppose this legislation, because we support measures aimed at improving the overall quality of our higher education sector. Despite our criticisms of this legislation, that is still its aim.

Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Treasurer is trying to convince people to believe that last night he announced money for education. The Higher Education Endowment Fund is not money for education; it is education money being put into the bank. The $5 billion put into the Higher Education Endowment Fund should have been spent on education and on students. If you look at the budget papers you will see that the proposal sets aside $300 million per annum to be shared between 38 universities for capital works. That is not investing money in education.

This government, and therefore this country, is way below the OECD average for government spending on education. In fact, this government needs to invest $7 billion per annum in education just to get to the average for OECD countries. Yet, last night, $5 billion—supposedly for education—was put into the bank rather than invested in education. It is there in the bank. The budget statements say that there is $300 million to be shared between 38 universities for capital works. Last year’s budget had an announcement of $310 million per annum to be spent at universities on capital development and research infrastructure. Does the $300 million in last night’s announcement replace the $310 million in last year’s budget? The government needs to answer this question. The government said, ‘Here is our big expenditure on capital works—$300 million per annum, shared between 38 universities.’ Last year it announced more than that. Does this replace that?

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It’s on top of. Read the papers.

Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not clear from the papers. Let us make it clear that what is in the papers is that there is $300 million per annum to be shared between 38 universities on capital works. That is not investing money in education and in students. And we need to do that. We need $7 billion each year put into government spending on education just to bring us up to the OECD average—the kind of public money that comparable countries are putting into education. We are way below that average. And just to bring us up to that average, we need $7 billion. And we did not hear that last night.

In fact, there was a small amount of money—smaller than even the year before—put aside for capital works. It was not for spending on education and students. Due to the announcements last night, more students will now be charged full fees. That means that more students will have a larger student debt at the beginning of their working lives. That is not good for the Australian economy. That is not good for Australia’s future prosperity. To do as the government did last night—saying that more students can be charged full fees—means that more students will have a larger debt when they start their working lives. That is a clear indication from this government that it does not want to be the one to invest in university education in this country. It wants students and their parents to pay for it. That is what the announcement last night was: more students paying full fees—that is, transferring the cost of investing in education away from government coffers and on to the shoulders of students who are going to universities and their families. That is what we heard from the federal government last night.

The Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007 brings in two major changes to higher education in Australia. It seeks to legislate changes to the national protocols which define what a university is, and it provides funding for the implementation of the new research funding regime formulated by this government—that is, the research quality framework. Before I go into the detail of the legislation, I want to set the context in which this piece of legislation is being proposed. I came into this parliament in 2002, and since then there has been an almost endless stream of pieces of legislation that have rearranged or modified the higher education sector. We have seen a whole range of different ministers seek to fiddle the figures in the way in which they have explained this expenditure, and we saw that again last night. In this period of time we have seen them trying to hoodwink university management, bullying staff and betraying students. And we saw more of that last night.

We did not see $5 billion invested in education; we saw it put into the bank, and we heard students told that they could pay more money for going to universities. Students can pay more to go to university, and money will not be invested in education; it will be put in the bank. That is what we heard last night.

Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The $5 billion investment.

Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Five billion dollars is being put into the bank. Of that, the budget papers state that $300 million will be spent per annum, shared between 38 universities. Last year, there was $310 million to be spent on capital infrastructure. This year, $300 million is to be spent on capital works, shared between 38 universities. That is not money invested in education and in students. And, at the same time as doing that, the government is saying that students can pay more to go to universities—that is, the government funds universities less and students fund universities more. That was the government announcement that we heard last night. And it fits in with the pattern of the way in which the government has approached higher education—to rip government funding out and to seek to replace that with costs that they want students to cover. That is why we are seeing students starting their working lives with massive debts. The announcement we heard last night is going to mean that more students start their working lives with a larger debt, because this government does not want to be the one putting money into the education of students; it wants students and their families to do that.

We have seen 50 pieces of legislation about higher education go through this parliament in the time that I have been here. We have seen so many aspects of the higher education landscape moved, and these goalposts have been moved so often that it is very difficult for people in that arena to even work out what is going on. We have seen changes to core funding, to grants, to research grants, to governance, to student support, to student loans, to student unionism, to quality frameworks, to private provider status, to overseas student arrangements, to overseas provider status, to industrial relations conditions and to Indigenous participation. There is a whole range of these areas that we have seen the government make changes to. Ten years is a long time. Of course, it is the job of the government to manage the education system to the benefit of the nation, and it is its right to move legislation in order to do that. But you have to wonder whether the level and the rate of change produced by this stream of legislation have been of benefit to the Australian people. Perhaps all this change would not have been such a bad thing in the context of a government which, like governments overseas—most notably Scandinavian governments—put higher education at the top of its priority list and devoted generous funding to the sector.

Driving a change agenda fuelled by generous government backing might not have been such a bumpy process after all, but unfortunately it has been in Australia. The fact is that, despite Australia becoming significantly richer as a nation over the past 10 years and despite the government receiving record tax revenues, as we saw again last night, Australia has not kept pace with public investment in higher education. We are the only country in the OECD whose public investment in higher education as a proportion of GDP has gone backwards—in the most recent figures we recorded a minus seven per cent investment. Meanwhile, countries like Ireland, which has also experienced good economic times, are translating their wealth into investment in universities. They have boosted their investment in universities by over 50 per cent as a proportion of GDP over the same period—and we have gone backwards by seven per cent.

The Minister for Education, Science and Training says that, in real terms, spending on higher education has gone up under the Howard government, but what she does not say is that her figures include the money loaned to students to pay fees and that over this period student numbers have increased. If we take these two factors into account, we see that, in fact, per student spending on higher education is over $1 billion less each year than it would have been had the federal government not modified the funding models it uses to fund universities. Each year $1 billion less is being spent on higher education because of the new funding model that this government brought in for universities. All of this means that the sector has been starved of funding whilst being forced through change after change because of this government’s obsession with casting the higher education sector into the seas of a private marketplace. We saw more of that last night with the announcement of further deregulation of student fees. Last night’s announcement says to students: ‘You can pay more to go to university.’

With all the changes to higher education that we have seen under the Howard government, the Greens have been concerned that the higher education sector has not had the opportunity to consolidate itself throughout this period of quite violent, consistent and all-encompassing change. We are concerned that there has not been sufficient focus on assessing the impact of these changes or on the time taken to reconsider changes that have not worked. Indeed, we are sceptical about the impact of most of the changes that we have seen in the past 10 years, but no sooner has one been enacted than another is introduced.

The first aspect of this bill does nothing to allay these concerns. The changes to the national protocols that this bill seeks to enact go to the heart of what the university system will look like in this country and fundamentally threaten the integrity of a system that has been in operation for over a century. The national Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes have been in place since 2000 as a means of protecting the provision of quality higher education by regulating which institutions can claim the name ‘university’ and how an institution may go about becoming a university.

The changes proposed in this bill have been agreed by the Ministerial Council on Education ‘Employment’ Training and Youth Affairs and as such do not come as a great surprise, but the Greens are still concerned about their impact. The key change will allow the establishment of two new kinds of institution—the university college and the specialist university, neither of which will be required to meet the same criteria as existing universities. Essentially, the proposed change to the protocols will allow an institution that does research in fewer than three areas of discipline to use the word ‘university’ in its name.

I am unsure as to why the ministerial council agreed to this change or what they perceived to be its benefit. One can imagine a future where the establishment of university colleges and specialist universities improves access to quality higher education opportunities for Australians, but it is perhaps easier to imagine a future where this does not happen. The Greens are worried that, without carefully worded guidelines to manage this change, the quality of university education in Australia will be undermined.

The problem here is one of perception over reality. This change may create a system where bargain basement operations can claim to be universities and attract students away from and undermine the enrolments of genuine universities whilst not delivering the quality education that students would otherwise receive. Over time, such a process could place established universities under considerable pressure to discount their own services at a cost to quality.

The Greens remind the Senate that these kinds of market driven problems are largely avoidable if the provision of higher education—like the provision of primary school education, for example—is put firmly back into the public sector. The key problem here is that the government has been so keen to turn students and their parents into the decision makers and distributors of higher education funding. Through increases in HECS-HELP fees and up-front full fees, students distribute funds that used to go directly from government to universities. Students also distribute funds through the Commonwealth Grant Scheme, which delivers government funding to universities depending on the courses that students choose. All of this means that funding is delivered according to student choice.

This would not be such a bad thing if students could access all relevant information about competing courses and institutions—if students could accurately assess whether a university college is the same as a university of technology or a university of agricultural science. If students had the time and expertise to make these assessments, then maybe—just maybe—they would be the best placed body to distribute government funding to higher education providers. But they do not.

Instead, it should be the government’s role to ensure that limited public funding is distributed in such a way as to allow a high-quality, accessible and diverse higher education sector to be maintained. The Greens are deeply concerned that the government’s transfer of responsibility for this from public to private hands will continue to have a negative impact on the quality of higher education in this country.

We are already seeing the impact of 10 years of the Howard government meddling and mismanaging the higher education sector. In the newspapers we can read stories of universities’ overreliance on overseas students for funding and the mistreatment of some as cash cows by cash-strapped campuses.

We can see the reduction in enrolments from disadvantaged groups, not least Indigenous Australians, who have been put off pursuing a university education by the new high-fee, high-debt culture of universities under this government, made worse by the announcement last night that students can pay more to go to university. We have also seen a reduction in the vibrant student culture on campuses, with student organisations collapsing under the pressure of the government’s voluntary student unionism legislation.

The changes to the protocols are not likely to turn this sad situation around, and they could make it a whole lot worse if they are not managed correctly. But as legislators we are not in a very good position to assess this because we cannot see the guidelines that are due to put meat on the bones of these changes to the university protocols, because MCEETYA will not have them ready until June. But we are being asked to pass this legislation in May.

The second major aspect of the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007 is the delivery of over $40 million for the implementation of the research quality framework. Again, this money, whilst clearly necessary to enable the implementation of the research quality framework system, is being appropriated when the key details of how the system will work are still under a serious cloud. The Greens note the concerns of the National Tertiary Education Union, who said in their submission to the Senate inquiry into this bill:

It is understood that the results of the quality and impact assessments will be used to distribute in the order of $600 million of public research funding to universities. However, to date there is no detail as to exactly how the assessment results will translate into funding outcomes. The Government is yet to announce details such as:

• the proportion of funding to be allocated on the basis of quality ratings or impact ratings,
• the funding weights attached to different quality and impact ratings,
• the funding weights to be used for quality/impact ratings and the volume of research submitted, and
• the relative cost weightings that will be attached to different disciplines.

The Greens also note that the Productivity Commission’s recent report into the research quality framework sounded a note of caution. Its view was:

... there is no clear objective evidence pointing to deficiencies in the quality of research currently funded through block grants.

This reflects the theme I have been developing in this speech, which is that the government seems determined to push through this change in the higher education sector for change’s sake alone rather than doing an assessment of the change and determining whether or not it provides the benefits to the Australian education system. It remains to be seen whether the research quality framework can be made to work, but at the very least it seems somewhat premature to introduce the scheme whilst critical questions about its operation go unanswered. It is perhaps worth noting that the scheme, which will cost over $80 million to implement and administer, looks rather expensive when it is only designed to distribute $600 million in total.

The Greens do not support the passage of this bill at this time. The government has failed to explain the implications of the significant measures which it contains and has failed to provide in a timely manner the guidelines which would accompany the definitional changes to what may be called a university in Australia. There are no clear guidelines to explain why overseas universities will be allowed to operate in Australia without the same quality control measures that apply to domestic universities. The government has failed to convince the Greens and, more importantly, key stakeholders in the sector that the research quality framework approach is ready to go. Under these circumstances the bill should be withdrawn.

Given the track record of this government in the higher education area it would be best if this were the last bill that we saw on this issue for a little bit of time—perhaps until after the election, when it would be great if we could have a new minister and a new government that understands, as the Greens do, the importance of supporting our public universities rather than deregulating them in the way the government has.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank those senators who spoke on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007 today, and particularly those who actually addressed it. The bill before the Senate is a clear expression of the Australian government’s strong support for quality research and a world-class higher education sector. The bill will provide around $41 million to assist our universities to implement the research quality framework in recognition of the initial costs to participate. Additional support will be provided to the sector for specific requests of the research quality framework, including the remuneration of the RQF assessment panel members and the further development of appropriate metrics.

The research quality framework marks an important reform for Australian research. It is primarily about assessing the quality and impact of Australian research and it will deliver real benefits to the higher education sector and, importantly, to the broader community. The bill also contains measures which will enhance the quality and diversity of Australia’s higher education system. The bill amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to reflect changes to the National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes, and these changes are the outcome of extensive consultation involving state and territory governments and the higher education sector. The revised protocols will also make possible the emergence of specialist universities, aligning well with the government’s vision of a more diverse higher education sector. Greater diversity will benefit students, staff and employers by promoting greater choice and competition.

A number of senators have said that the UK is dumping its research assessment exercise, RAE, so why is the government proceeding down this path? In fact, the UK is not dumping its RAE, in a sense. Essentially, then, the statement that has been made is not true. The UK is simplifying its RAE, as it has been in operation for 20 years, and is combining the full peer review process with a range of metrics. The Australian RQF is a combination of expert reviews and utilises metrics where appropriate.

This bill makes a number of technical amendments which will clarify existing Higher Education Loan Program and Commonwealth supported student arrangements and ensure that the legislation reflects original policy intent. The Higher Education Loan Program is recognised internationally as one of the fairest higher education systems in the world. Today virtually every eligible person who wants to undertake university studies is able to do so in a government subsidised place.

Since 1989, almost two million people have been able to access higher education opportunities through Australian government funded income contingent loans. For every $1 a student contributes to their education, the Australian government contributes $3. There are record numbers of students studying at Australian universities. According to the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee, more than 185,000 eligible applicants received an offer of a university place this year. Offers to school leavers grew in every state and territory. This year, 92 per cent of eligible school leavers who applied for a university place in their home states received an offer. This is the highest figure on record. Unmet demand for undergraduate university places has declined for the third year in a row. The AVCC estimates unmet demand to be 13,200 in 2007—a drop of seven per cent since 2006. This follows a 26 per cent decline in 2006 and a nearly 50 per cent decrease in 2005. This demonstrates that the higher education system has got the balance right. Students are taking advantage of the choices now open to them thanks to the Australian government’s investment in higher education, which is obviously—as indicated last night in the budget—a dividend of strong economic management.

I note with interest the report on this bill by the Senate Standing Committee on Employment, Workplace Relations and Education. I welcome the report’s recommendation that this bill should be passed without amendment. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.