Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010. In commencing my remarks I will say that it is another day and—guess what?—another tax by the Labor Party. On 17 August 2009, I spoke on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities, and Other Measures) Bill 2009. This was a bill that was twice put before the Senate and was defeated on both occasions. But did the government actually learn its lesson? Clearly, no, it did not. What do we have today? We have the government introducing, yet again, a piece of legislation that is substantially the same. All that has changed is the date. It now refers to 2010 as opposed to 2009.

Having studied the 2010 bill, the most offensive part of the former bill, the part which forces students to pay for services that they cannot or will not be able to use, has stayed the same. Under the 2010 bill, consistent with the 2009 bill—again, I repeat that it was a bill that was defeated in the parliament—every one of Australia's one million students will be forced to pay $250 a year regardless of their ability to pay and regardless of their ability or willingness to use the services their fees will be financing. Only a Labor government and one with a strong socialist bent could introduce such insidious and morally objectionable legislation. Then again, this is a Labor government that is in a very unholy alliance with the Greens. Anyone who has read the speech given by the member for Melbourne in the other place on this bill would have to agree with the comments made by the member for Indi when she said, referring to the member for Melbourne's speech:

… once a Trot, always a Trot—you can put a suit on, you can wear a nice, trendy silk tie, but once a Trot, always a Trot.

This bill amounts to a $250 million new tax on those in our society who can least afford to pay it. Students are already struggling under the current tough economic conditions that the Labor Party keeps telling us about.

What does this bill mean? This bill means for students $250 less for textbooks, study materials, transport and the cost of living or, at best, $250 more in a HECS debt. Do you know what the height of hypocrisy is surrounding this bill? It is the annual indexation of the levy. Under this bill, we have a government that is committed to annually indexing a tax on struggling students to ensure they pay more each year. But when it comes to supporting families who are struggling to meet the costs of child care, the Labor government takes the exact opposite stance. Remember the pain that those opposite, the Labor government, inflicted on families by capping the childcare rebate at $7,500 per annum for the next four years and suspending the annual indexation of the rebate for parents? The capping of the childcare rebate and the suspension of the annual indexation, we were told, was to compensate in some small way for Labor's mismanagement of the economy because it would generate savings. So the Gillard Labor government's profligacy and poor financial management means that there will be a reduction in the childcare rebate for approximately 20,700 families who struggle to meet the costs associated with child care.

What it comes down to is that you just cannot win with the Gillard Labor government. This is a government that, by its actions represented in the legislation that we see coming before the parliament, likes to slug the most vulnerable of those in society. But it is also a government that, on the promises it makes before an election, says all bets are off when it actually assumes power. We have before us a government that has manipulated the trust and the confidence of the Australian people by making specific promises to them in the run-up to an election when at the very same time it had a secret political agenda that was based on its intention to never, ever carry out those pre-election promises. The Rudd government and the Gillard government have shown that the Labor Party is big on promises but consistently fails to deliver on them. The Rudd government and the Gillard government have shown to the Australian people that they are prepared to deceive the Australian community by making pre-election promises without any intention of actually carrying out those promises. We have seen that in so many portfolio areas. Remember that, in relation to the 2007 election, the Labor Party told the people of Australia that it would not introduce what it likes to refer to as an amenities fee, but is, for those of us who see right through Labor Party rhetoric, a compulsory student tax. The then shadow minister for education and now Minister for Defence, the member for Perth, Mr Stephen Smith, said during a doorstop in May 2007:

I'm not considering a compulsory HECS-style arrangement and the whole basis of the approach is one of a voluntary approach so I'm not contemplating a compulsory amenities fee.

That was in 2007, just five months before the election was called. It was a time when, one might say in hindsight, Labor tongues were rather loose with the truth. This was a clear and unambiguous promise not to introduce a compulsory amenities fee. But, as we all fall come to know, for the Australian Labor Party that was merely an election promise—a little like the promise the now Prime Minister gave to the people of Australia the day before the 2010 election. When asked whether she would introduce a carbon tax, the now Prime Minister responded: 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.'

One can only conclude—the Australian public can only conclude—that election promises mean absolutely nothing to the Australian Labor Party. We had the emphatic ruling out of a carbon tax the day before the 2010 election. Lo and behold! When Ms Gillard took office what did she do? She did a complete backflip and, as we saw last week, presented to the parliament the legislation whereby the most blatant, deceptive lie that has ever been told to the Australian public is about to be perpetrated on them. Does the Labor Party care? Of course not. The horrid truth of ALP powerbroker Graham Richardson's statement: 'Labor will do whatever it takes to succeed and retain power,' has yet again been confirmed. Then of course we have the famous line from the member for Kingsford Smith, Mr Peter Garrett, just prior to the 2007 election, who said, 'Once we get in, we'll just change it all.' Principles and sound policy mean absolutely nothing to those opposite. They are motivated solely by a self-serving desire to retain power and sit on the government benches.

Despite the Labor Party's protestations, there is no good news for students in this bill. This bill slugs university students with a $250 tax that will be indexed annually. The Labor Party can dress the wolf up in sheep's clothing and call it an amenities fee, but the plain truth of the matter is that this is a tax; it is nothing more and nothing less. It is more spin over substance by the Australian Labor Party. The spin prior to the 2007 election, the line that was being fed to the Australian people, was that the Labor Party would not impose a compulsory amenities fee. The substance of that promise, as was evidenced in the 2009 bill and is now evidenced in the 2010 bill, is that the Australian Labor Party always intended to slug university students with a $250 compulsory amenities fee. In introducing the 2009 legislation in the other place, the then Minister for Youth and Sport said in her second reading speech, 'This bill is not compulsory student unionism.' This is exactly where the problem lies. The Australian Labor Party has a history of saying one thing but actually meaning another. With the Australian Labor Party it is all about semantics. We should be very concerned, therefore, when we hear the relevant minister say that this bill is not about compulsory student union unionism. Because based on the Labor Party's history on this matter and having regard to the tricky and devious way they use semantics to shroud their real intentions, it is very likely that the bill is compulsory student unionism or a clayton's form of it. There we have it; nothing more and nothing less. This bill represents a return to compulsory student unionism in Australia.

Changing demographics and culture mean that most students today simply do not have the time, the inclination or even the opportunity to actually access the services that are offered. Universities today are mainstream; they are not elite. More students are older, more study part time and in the evenings due to competing work and family commitments and many more take advantage of greater flexibility and competition, as well as opportunities that new communications technologies bring, to study externally. For example, there are around 130,000 students studying externally and they are going to be slugged by the $250 annual fee, but they will never have the opportunity to access services.

Students themselves, unlike student politicians, are not interested in student unions or the services that student unions provide. In a poll commissioned by none other than the Australian Democrats, 59 per cent of students voted against compulsory fees. At most, five per cent of students ever vote in student union elections. A similarly small minority currently voluntary joins student unions and pays the fees. What does this mean? In black and white, pretty much, on those statistics it means that the majority of students, not that a majority has ever worried the Australian Labor Party, does not want to pay a compulsory student fee. On the face of it, there is nothing remarkable about this bill. It provides universities with the ability to implement a services fee capped at $250 a year. However, as with much of the legislation put forward by the Labor Party, one needs to read it very carefully. When one reads this legislation one realises that the devil is in the detail. On closer examination, the provisions of this legislation fail even the most cursory tests of impartiality and accountability. The system remains open to political abuse and is devoid of effective enforcement mechanisms. While the bill prohibits universities or any third parties that might receive money from spending it in support of political parties or political candidates, there is, low and behold, nothing in the bill to prevent the money being spent on political campaigns, political causes or quasi-political organisations per se, whether or not students want their money spent on such causes. But choice has never been flavour of the month for the Australian Labor Party.

Even with this prohibition on the direct support for political parties and candidates, one has to wonder how this prohibition will be policed. There is nothing. There is no credible enforcement or sanction mechanisms provided for in the bill. This is hardly surprising. The bill merely states that it is up to the universities to ensure that the money is not spent on political parties and candidates without providing the universities any power to enforce this. Student guilds or unions target individual issues and run politically motivated campaigns against parties or groups. Yet, what do we have? Nothing in the legislation prevents them from still doing this. But, again, we expect nothing less from the Australian Labor Party.

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of these provisions is that there appears to be nothing to prevent student unions using the fees in an approved way to run the university cafeteria, for instance, but then using the profits generated from the university cafeteria to fund political activities, political campaigns and political propaganda, which is explicitly disallowed by the legislation. This is a tricky form of political money laundering, if you will, and it is a loophole which the minister is completely aware of, but which I doubt those with a philosophical bent towards student unionism will ever change.

Despite the Labor Party's rhetoric, this bill represents compulsory student unionism by stealth. Freedom of association, including a concept that is very new to those on the other side—that is, the freedom not to join an association—remains one of the core beliefs of the coalition. This bill attempts to reintroduce compulsory student unionism, which in turn may fund the activities of student unions. In the past, student unions have proven themselves to be very adept at using the profits from allowable activities to effectively cross-subsidise activities for which direct funding was disallowed.

The coalition will continue to oppose this legislation if and when this legislation is brought before this chamber again. It was bad legislation when it was debated and defeated in 2009; it continues to be bad legislation in 2011. The Australian people, but in particular the majority of university students who do not want to be slugged this $250 by the Australian Labor Party, know that this legislation is nothing more and nothing less than compulsory student unionism by stealth by the Australian Labor Party. They are not fools and they will not allow the Australian Labor Party to treat them as is if they are fools. We have in this place today a bill that the Labor Party swears is not compulsory student unionism but which is supported by the Australian Labor Party, who are committed advocates of compulsory student unionism. For all intents and purposes, the bill has a fee structure much like a previous version of legislation that has been debated and which was nothing more and nothing less than compulsory student unionism. Despite the rhetoric from those opposite, this legislation is without a doubt compulsory student unionism by any other name.

I am proud to be part of a political party that believes in upholding the principle of freedom of association for students. I am proud to be part of a party that will continue to fight to preserve the fundamental rights of students to choose to belong to or, more importantly, not to belong to a student union, student guild or student association. The Liberal Party will continue to stand up for the rights of university students and will continue to expose the Gillard Labor government for what it is—that is, a high-taxing government.

As I have previously said in this place, the Liberal Party wants university students to succeed, because when our students succeed we as a country succeed in this competitive global environment. The last thing university students need is an additional financial burden being imposed on them at this time when there is massive economic slowdown in Australia. I say to the Australian Labor Party: do not crucify our students in an attempt to advance your own cheap political agenda. Unnecessarily taxing students is bad policy; it is bad for this country. This bill should patently not pass this chamber.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with pleasure I rise today to speak on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010. This bill delivers on the Gillard government's election commitment to rebuild important university student services and to ensure that students have representation on campus. This bill is a component of the Gillard government's education revolution, which will not only help ensure the delivery of quality student services but also help secure their futures. I listened quite carefully to the previous speaker, and I do not think she actually understands the content of the bill. What I heard for a good half of her speech was a lot of vitriol but no substance—just more negativity about this government. I do not think she has actually spoken to too many students. It is shameful that coalition members still do not understand that university support services can help ease the stress for many students. It is shameful that they do not understand that these support services can make a significant difference between students completing their studies or not completing them. It is shameful that the coalition remains in an ideologically extreme position while the Gillard government advocates a new and balanced way forward.

This bill is the result of extensive consultation with the higher education sector in 2008—extensive consultation. I doubt that those on the other side even spoke to students. Those consultations found that approximately $170 million had been stripped from funding for services and amenities in the higher education area.

Senator Cash interjecting—

Who was responsible for stripping that $170 million from the higher education area? It was the Howard government. It is a shame that Senator Cash was not a member of the Howard government; she might have actually stood up and supported the students, because she has got this born-again fervour about what she believes students want. I doubt she would know a student if she tripped over one, let alone consulted with one. As I said, those consultations found that approximately $170 million had been stripped from funding for services and amenities in the higher education area. It is shameful that members of the coalition believe that it is acceptable to undermine the quality of our higher education institutions, because all students suffer when universities are forced to shift funding away from teaching and research. This obviously has a negative impact, compromising the service for which the money was originally meant.

What services and amenities are we talking about here? I heard the previous speaker mention child care. What she did not mention was that the reduction in funding by the Howard government stopped students from being able to access child care at university. We did not hear that from the previous speaker. She did go on for quite a while about child care but she did not seem to want to throw that into the argument. Other services that we are talking about include dental services, Centrelink advice services, legal services, welfare services and athlete support programs. These are all fundamental services to help students through university life and to help them participate in the university community. There is a community at university, and I do not think those on the other side have ever found it.

This bill has support from organisations that matter. I did not hear that in the arguments of those opposite. Universities Australia, the peak industry representing the university sector, said:

Universities have struggled for years to prop up essential student services through cross-subsidisation from other parts of already stretched university budgets, to redress the damage that resulted from the Coalition Government's disastrous Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU) legislation.

On 3 November 2008 the Group of Eight, the coalition of leading Australian universities, stated:

The Federal government's decision to allow universities to support essential student services through the collection of a modest fee is a sensible compromise that will enhance the quality of Australia's higher education system.

Studies conducted by Universities Australia in regard to voluntary student unionism showed that universities struggle to prop up essential services, and this is because of the need, as I have mentioned, for cross-subsidisation. This is a direct negative result of the Howard government's disastrous VSU legislation. Cross-subsidisation has resulted in budget cuts in teaching, learning and research budgets. Add to that the degrading levels of public funding for higher education from the former Howard government and it is no surprise that staff to student ratios have risen from 1 to 12 in 1990 to 1 to 20 today. They are figures that were given to me by people I did consult with on this issue—the National Union of Students.

Whilst this bill ensures access to vital campus services at threat from VSU, the bill is not a return to compulsory student unionism. This bill will require higher education providers that receive Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding to comply with a new set of Student Services, Amenities, Representation and Advocacy Guidelines. Under the new National Student Representation and Advocacy Protocols, students will have access to advocacy support services to support student appeals, and help for students who may need extra assistance on matters that can be at times overwhelming. The national access to services benchmarks will ensure important health, welfare and financial services.

In addition, the National Student Representation and Advocacy Protocols will ensure an opportunity for student organisations to have an independent voice. Through these protocols, student organisations should be able to have the opportunity to voice their concerns though national bodies such as the National Union of Students, the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations and the National Liaison Committee for International Students in Australia Inc.—who present the true student view to the state and federal governments as well as education, welfare, immigration and public transport departments, parliamentary committees, peak sector bodies and the media.

The Higher Education Support Amendment (Abolition of Compulsory Upfront Student Union Fees) Act 2005, as implemented by the previous Howard government, prevents a compulsory fee for facilities, amenities and services that are not of an academic nature. It is obvious that universities have been dealt a great blow from the previous Howard government's VSU legislation. The Gillard Labor government is committed to restoring essential medical, health and dental centres, advocacy and support services, shops, car parking facilities and accommodation facilities at a reasonable price to students. As I have said, VSU has resulted in services which were once provided at an affordable price, rising to a cost well above the consumer price index. We must remember that universities are not a private club, nor are they an industrial relations setting. Student unions do not have signs on the door saying 'members' only'—and nor should they. They should be inclusive and welcoming to all students. Yet many students are suspicious of the word 'union', as are all those opposite. This suspicion has only been encouraged by the former Howard government, with its obsession to destroy the union movement and any organisation that might have the word 'union associated with it.

Student unions strive to independently represent students throughout their student lives. It is the backbone of student life and the Gillard Labor government is keen to restore it. Unfortunately students are the ones that have paid the ultimate price for the Howard government's VSU legislation, financially, vocally and culturally.

The global financial crisis has reminded Australians of the need to maintain strong economic performance. Australia is fortunate in that we have a skilled and educated workforce. However, compared with other OECD countries Australia's higher education ranking fell from seventh in 1996 to ninth under the previous government. It is shameful that, while Australia prospered from the resources boom, the previous government saw fit to make life more difficult for many people across Australia to access university.

In February 2008 the government undertook consultations and invited stakeholders to lodge a formal submission on the impact of the then current VSU policy and findings were published in TheImpact of Voluntary Student Unionism on Services, Amenities and Representation for Australian University Students summary report. The report found that: the abolition of fees had the greatest impact for student organisations at smaller and regional universities and it forced student organisations to rationalise services; many universities gave assistance but had to redirect funds from teaching, learning or research through service level agreements; VSU had a lessening effect of the vibrancy, diversity and, to an extent, attractiveness of university life; and VSU again resulted in a reduced capacity for student advocacy and democratic student representation. In some cases some universities reported the dissolving of their student union, which I know would make those on the other side happy.

Opposition senators interjecting—

I can see Senator Cash nearly jumping out of her seat with excitement over that. At other campuses outlets such as cafes have had to become self-funding or profitable. Discounted lunches are a thing of the past with an average lunch special at a uni cafe or refectory costing more than $6, rising from as cheap as $2.50 almost overnight after 1 July 2006. And you have the gall to come in here and tell us you care about students.

The first funding rationalisations were obviously job cuts. Jobs were slashed at a rate of at least 20 per cent across the country, and there was no exception within my home state of Tasmania in the University of Tasmania, or UTAS, student organisations. At the two UTAS student organisations 10 jobs were lost. You care about students, you care about people, you just do not care if you slash their jobs. It is part of that Work Choices program you have on the backburner ready to drag out. The former student association also faced a loss of at least three staff prior to its merger with the TUU. Budgets for expenditure and capital works were slashed as well with some facilities either closing or continuing to operate in a dismal state of affairs.

UTAS has worked hard to keep the cultural life of the university alive through an enthusiastic student activities focus and the inevitable merger of the two student unions. As student groups folded across the country the TUU and the SA worked hard to keep student life alive prior to VSU. One of the challenges was the ownership of student services. Both the TUU and the SA felt that the student union should be student driven. Students over the years have realised the importance of student activities. It is simply amazing to note how many comedians got their start in a university review, how many athletes participated in university games and sporting endeavours, how many politicians from an array of political parties were once student politicians and how many journalists started off editing the campus newspaper or producing student radio. Indeed, the Tasmanian government's Premier, Lara Giddings, once performed in the Tasmanian uni revue. Charles Woolley first put pen to paper when he wrote for the UTAS publication, Togatus.

There have been many comments made from those on the other side and, as I said, I found their views fairly limited. They did not actually care about the students. What they cared about was political point-scoring against the Gillard government. They did not once mention the $170 million that they cut from services and amenities in the higher education area when Howard was in government. They have a paranoia about anything to do with any type of union or anything that has the name 'union' associated with it.

These funding cuts have been the result of the hatred of student unions by the former Howard government. You hate the student unions and you were going to do whatever you could to get rid of them. What the Howard government did not value was the fact that student activities had enormous public benefits following on from teaching, learning and research activities. Student activities' participation such as being an active member of a society or simply being involved in a robust campus life is very important. The impact of the VSU alone was enough to seriously damage those student activities.

In my home state of Tasmania the TUU Societies Council has limited funding, decreasing from $141, 411 in 2004 to $80,000 in 2006 and then to a miniscule $10,500 in 2008. This year it is better with $24,000 but, when spread over about 90 societies, it is still not much compared to what it was in 2004. The TUU Sports Council is in a similar state of affairs. Pre-VSU, the Sports Council received $250,000 in 2004 and in 2007 it only received $45,000. This year the figure is $85,800 but about $60,000 of that is for ground use. And, of course, ground fees have increased enormously. UTAS sports clubs have lost preference for grounds to external hirers. The only thing the TUU can continue to offer clubs is insurance and even that is fairly risky financially.

The National Party has stated that they are willing to support this bill because it is providing funding for health and sporting services as well as amenities. I congratulate them for that. However, I call on the Nationals to realise that there is more to be done. Students do not always think about the what ifs. They are not planning for a major health issue or becoming involved in a legal dispute. They expect life to run smoothly and that it will all work out one way or another. The student and amenities fee will fund student health and legal services which, if needed, will be available without the cost of private services. Think about that, and ensure that these protective measures are in place for the times they are needed. I encourage all those in the Senate to vote to support this bill.

In the last few minutes I have, I want to reiterate that we are working to rebuild vital support services and amenities for higher education students and to secure student advocacy and representation. The bill allows universities to choose to charge a fee of up to $263 for student services and amenities of a non-academic nature for 2012. While students can pay the Student Services and Amenities Fee up-front if they wish, most will be able to take the option of deferring payment through the HECS system until they are earning a decent income. This will ensure that the fee does not act as a barrier to accessing higher education. It is estimated that the Student Services and Amenities Fee will provide universities with more than $250 million over four years for much-needed student amenities and services.

The Gillard government recognises that students have a clear interest in having a say on how and when their fees are spent. Universities will be required to consult with students on the specific uses of proceeds from any service and amenities fees charged. The National Union of Students has made a number of suggestions on the guidelines that sit under the legislation, with a view to ensuring that the consultations universities undertake with students are genuine and give students a seat at the table. I understand those concerns, and people are giving further consideration to how the guidelines can ensure that students have a proper say in how their fees are spent. In fact, just this afternoon I saw a media release by the minister relating to that exact issue.

We need to get on with it. We need to get the legislation passed, because there have been so many years of this ideological attack on students by those opposite. Students need to have access to better services when they start university next year. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010 seeks to impose a compulsory student amenities fee—that is, a compulsory levy for university students for non-academic services. This legislation is based on a complete misapprehension of what voluntary student unionism is and on a complete misunderstanding of the effect of the Howard government's voluntary student unionism legislation.

I want to make clear at the outset what the Howard government's VSU legislation did not do. The VSU legislation did not ban student unions. It did not ban student associations. The Howard government's legislation did not ban the collection of fees by student unions. It did not ban the collection of fees by student associations. What the VSU legislation did was prevent the levying of compulsory fees for non-academic services. Note the word 'compulsory'. The VSU legislation ensured that membership of student unions and associations was no longer a prerequisite for university enrolment. We used to have this ridiculous situation whereby a non-academic service, membership of a non-academic organisation, was a prerequisite to undertaking academic activities. It was a ridiculous nexus, and it was one that the Howard government broke.

The effect of this legislation, far from being the doom and gloom and catastrophe presented by those opposite, was to put money in the pockets of students. It allowed students to decide what services they wanted to support and which organisations they wanted to join. That is all it was about: putting money in students' pockets, giving students the choice and respecting the right, the capacity and the ability of students to make their own decisions.

Why is it that we think university students possess the critical faculties to decide which university to attend, which degree to undertake and which subjects are right for them but, for some reason, we think those critical faculties depart them when they are faced with the decision as to whether or not to join a student union or a student association? Why do we think their critical faculties depart them when it comes to determining whether those unions or associations are offering value for money for the services they provide? We on this side are of the pretty simple belief that students' critical faculties do not depart them—that if they can make those important life decisions such as which uni to go to, which degree to take and what career to eventually embark upon then surely, for heaven's sake, they have the capacity to work out what is value for money.

This legislation before us represents an election commitment which Labor has previously tried to break. In the 2007 election the then opposition promised not to reintroduce compulsory student unionism and not to introduce a compulsory amenities fee. A question was put by a journalist to the then shadow minister, Mr Smith: 'Are you considering a compulsory amenities fee on students?' Smith said:

No, well, firstly I am not considering a HECS style arrangement, I’m not considering a compulsory HECS style arrangement and the whole basis of the approach is one of a voluntary approach. So I am not contemplating a compulsory amenities fee.

That was Stephen Smith, the shadow minister for education and training, on 22 May 2007.

The amenities fee proposed by the government today is the same proposal that was put forward by student unions and sports unions as an alternative to the coalition's 2005 VSU legislation. What Labor is seeking to do with this legislation is to circumvent the intention of the Howard government's legislation by having the university act as the collection agency for a compulsory fee rather than the unions and associations collecting that money. Students will not technically be compelled to join a union under this legislation. Students would, however, be compelled by a participating university to pay a fee equivalent to a union fee, which would then be passed to the union or be spent by the university on services that the union previously provided. The effect is the same. It is really just a technical work-around of the coalition's legislation. The reintroduction of a compulsory fee has been supported and championed by student unions since the implementation of voluntary student unionism in order to underwrite student unions that have been unsuccessful in attracting members.

Our colleagues opposite put this question: why not a compulsory fee for non-academic services? Our response is pretty straightforward: if unions and associations provide services that students want and need then students will willingly join those organisations and use those services. There are many service organisations in the community. There is the NRMA and the RACV, who provide valuable services. But they are not granted the capacity to compulsorily levy motorists for fees and nor is any other body given the authority to levy fees on their behalf. People who are convinced that NRMA and RACV provide a good service and it is worth signing up and paying the membership fees do so. Why should it be so different on campus?

The argument that I perhaps have the least amount of time for in favour of a fee for non-academic services is this idea that student unions and associations are somehow a fourth tier of government and that therefore they should have the capacity to compel fees for non-academic services. That is the taxation argument. It is the role of federal, state and local governments to provide the safety net for all Australians. No carve-out exempts universities. We have governments to provide that safety net for people. We do not need student unions and student associations as some fourth tier of government, even if they present themselves or see themselves in that role.

Let us be clear: financially stretched students—and students are financially stretched—are not assisted by having a compulsory fee levied on them. It is not an act of kindness. It is not something that will help them. The best way to help struggling students and assist them with their budgets is to allow them to keep more of their own money. This comes down to a fundamental difference between this side of the chamber and the other side of the chamber: we believe that individuals are in a better position to know how to spend their money than someone else, while those on the other side of the chamber are of the belief that there is always someone else who knows better how to spend an individual's money than that individual.

The argument that is often mounted and which has been canvassed here today is that compulsory fees are needed to provide services such as child care, counselling and sport. The truth is, such services are often more conveniently accessed by students off campus, particularly for part-time students and for external students. If students have more money in their pockets, they can contribute those funds directly to the service of their choice, whether it be on campus, off campus, close to home or close to their place of work. Let them make the choice. Do not have someone else make that choice for them. Let them spend their dollars where they want to put them. Let them spend their money where it is most convenient for them.

The government has, I must acknowledge, conceded that paying a compulsory fee will be hard for students. The government has therefore proposed a loan scheme. The government is proposing to put students into debt to pay for a compulsory fee that students cannot afford. If you do that, you kind of have to come up with a loan scheme to help the students who you put into debt in the first place. Those opposite often draw analogies with HECS. That is not relevant. HECS is a scheme that is designed to partially fund tuition. The proposed compulsory fee is not for academic services. I will revisit Mr Smith, who also said this before the 2007 election: 'I certainly do not have on my list an extension of HECS, either voluntary or compulsory, to fund these services, so I absolutely rule that out.' That was the first election commitment that the current Labor government sought to breach.

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It does indeed sound like the carbon tax lie. I fibbed before: I said that the argument that student union and associations were like a fourth tier of government was the argument that annoyed me most. But I fibbed, I must confess. The argument that is the most belittling and condescending to students is that a compulsory amenities fee is needed to ensure a vigorous campus life. Give me a break. I kind of think that if you have young people, clever people, curious people, energetic people, then you do not need a compulsory fee to ensure that there is a vigorous campus life. These are young, clever, curious, energetic students. I will let you in on a secret: put people like that together, and maybe even throw in a keg, and you are going to have a vigorous campus life. You do not have to have a compulsory fee to generate that. And some opposite have never left the university campuses.

Assurances by the government that money will not be used by student unions for political purposes are completely meaningless for the reason that funds are fungible. Every dollar that is passed to a student union by a university administration frees up a dollar that the union already had to then redirect to political purposes. Funds are fungible. It does not matter which particular accounts you have or what dividing lines you have between accounts. A dollar that is raised in one place frees up a dollar somewhere else that can be spent on a political activity. The argument that this does not help the political activities of student unions, which most students have no interest in, is completely fallacious.

The passage of the former coalition government's 2005 Higher Education Support Amendment (Abolition of Up-front Compulsory Student Union Fees) Bill helped lift a substantial financial burden from students in Australia. For the first time it empowered students to make their own decisions about the services they needed and it enshrined freedom of association on campus. The results were not surprising. Student unions, bereft of the power to force their members to pay their fees, had to radically cut the cost of membership and tailor their services to the demands of students. Thanks to VSU, students at campuses across Australia saved hundreds of dollars every year, which they were able to put in their pockets and spend as they saw fit.

I did mention the money wasted on extreme political campaigns, but ultimately this debate was never about whether student unions promoted left-wing causes or right-wing causes. Student unions should be free to engage in whatever political activities they wish, provided their membership and funding base is entirely voluntary. That is what we call freedom of speech. To many these changes did seem long overdue. After all, compelling Australians to join a representative organisation against their will is regarded as objectionable in every other part of society. Workers long ago won the right to freely associate and, today, no government—well, maybe not this government—would even think of making union membership compulsory in the workplace. But for some reason university administrators and the Australian Labor Party believe that student unions should be the exception and that, for some reason, the services they offer and the value they provide to their members are so high that students should be forced to join them. If an organisation offers value for money, it has nothing to fear. If an organisation offers the services that students want, it has nothing to fear. They will have members and they will succeed.

With this legislation Labor, on or after January 2011, plan to slug Australian university students with a new tax of up to $250 per year. It will rise annually, with automatic indexation, and students will be struggling. The policy is a clear breach of a commitment, which is something that, with this particular government, we have become extremely familiar with. The idea that this is not a return to compulsory student unionism is nothing more than a con and a sham. Sure, students can choose under this package not to belong to a union, but they still have to pay the fee as though they were a member. To quote former National Union of Students president David Barrow:

Unis get the fee, students get the services, but student unions get screwed.

That is his view of what the current government is proposing. But, in reality, back when the consultations took place in 2008, he was doing what any good unionist would do: he was making an ambit claim. Student unions are secretly delighted at again being able to levy a compulsory fee, despite the fact that they say, 'This is not adequate and this is still lousy legislation.'

Ordinary students cannot afford this and nor should they be forced to put their hand in their pocket to give the money to the institutions as a mechanism to pass the money on to student unions. The ones who tend to get forgotten in the debate on university fees are the part-time students, those who work several days a week to support themselves. In many cases they will be charged the same as wealthy students living in colleges on campus with family support. Mature-age students with young children, who may only ever attend campus for classes, will pay the same. There are also students who study off campus, online or at a small regional branch of the university, and they will be slugged the same amount as students who can easily access the services on the main campus. It is these students, the ones who most need the support, who will be hit by these fees. They are the students who struggle financially; they often do not have the time to enjoy the benefits of union funding of a club or a society and do not have the time to attend the free lunchtime beer or take advantage of the barbecues or band sessions. Those students who have the time, those who have the financial security to do so, hardly need other students to subsidise their experience.

In one sense this bill is a relatively small matter. People often say, 'Why on your side of politics do you get so excited about this legislation? What really turns on voluntary student unionism?' Partly, the explanation is that it matters so much because it is a relatively small thing. If a government cannot protect freedom of association, or cannot protect freedom of speech, or cannot protect the right of an individual to keep their own money in their pocket in a university environment, if a government cannot do these things in what is a fairly small area of public policy, what hope do we have to expect government to protect those things in the wider community.

This is bad legislation. The former Howard government did nothing to obstruct a vigorous campus life. It did nothing to obstruct student unions. It did nothing to obstruct student associations. All it did was usher in freedom of choice—the freedom to belong to or not to belong to a student union or association, the freedom to keep your money in your pocket and buy the services of your choice, if that is what you wanted. This legislation seeks to remove that freedom of choice. This is bad legislation. It should be opposed. On this side of the chamber we will always stand up for freedom of association. We will always stand up for the right of an individual to join or not to join.

Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this very important bill, the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010, which will amend the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to allow higher education providers to charge a capped compulsory student services and amenities fee. I speak in support of this bill because it is incredibly important to students in this country and, in being important to students, it is important to our society and to our future. It goes to the role and capacity of our universities, to whether we continue to support a vibrant higher education sector in this country, whether we continue to support academic environments that are conducive to learning and supportive of discovery and whether we believe that all students should be able to fully participate in their student life and fully engage with their studies.

Universities are places of profound scholarship and sources of constant expansion of the knowledge of humanity. They are places of debate, of academic rigour and peer review and of advancing our understanding, enlarging our imagination and enriching our culture. Universities have been responsible for the development of the philosophical, scientific, artistic, technical and professional skills that have been responsible for so many of the great changes of modern society. They are places where the capacity and contribution of those who want to engage deeply with some aspect of a vast body of human understanding are recognised through degrees, diplomas, research and publications, but of course they are much more than that.

Universities are no doubt institutions of scholarship and of qualification. They are academic and they are vocational. But equally they are the tinderbox which sparks new and exciting systems of thought, cradles for social movements and sites for communities to gather, share knowledge and think deeply about the issues and the opportunities that confront us. Universities are the crucibles in which young minds—and minds still gentle enough to open to instruction and intrigue—shape and are shaped by the world around them. They are places where eager minds and curious souls drink in new experiences, dispelling old ways of thinking and realising new things about the world and about themselves.

University study is in many ways a formative time that not only crafts the skills with which a student will contribute economically to our nation but also moulds the kinds of citizens we want in our democracies. Indeed, it is perhaps appropriate to borrow the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum's recent rallying cry for supporting the humanities in education and apply it broadly to higher education: we must not simply turn our universities into institutions for creating 'useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticise tradition and understand the significance of another person's sufferings and achievements'.

This attribute of the university, this part of the tradition and, I would argue, this responsibility of the academy is plainly about education, but it is about more than that; it is about the learning that one has access to, both inside and outside the lecture theatre or the classroom. It is about exploring the interests that students have that may not fit into a course of study offered at an institution but that enable that learning to take place or are the source of inspiration and innovation for new fields of study and new types of opportunities. It is about supporting the kinds of services that support students, the kinds of communities and networks that enable students to concentrate on their studies or to develop, grow and explore new passions which they might not have access to at any other time in their lives and of which they may never be aware if these opportunities are not visible, active and alive on campus.

In 2006, the Howard government completed their campaign against vibrant campus life by passing the voluntary student unionism legislation, undoing the revenue stream that supported so many essential services on campus. This bill seeks to redress that gravest of the consequences of that move, a move that was motivated principally by the Howard government's determination to snuff out student representation that was opposed to the conservative agenda. This bill will enable higher education providers to require students to contribute to the services and amenities available to them and their peers, many of which either cannot or will not be provided at an affordable price by commercial providers. This bill looks to support students in the places that students need support—that is, on campus—and at rates that enable most in need of those services to have access to them, supported by those who share their student experience.

I will just give one example of that very need for those supports on campus. It is a personal example from my time as a university student at the University of Tasmania in the early 1990s. Part way through my undergraduate degree at the university, I became pregnant and forthwith had my first child. If it were not for the support services provided at the university, namely the childcare centre, I would not have been able to continue my university degree. It is something that has stayed with me through all the years, especially during the years of the Howard government introducing voluntary student unionism, because, if it were not for those services provided to me—and I am sure I am an example of many other students across this nation—then I might not be here today. I might not have been able to go on to finish my degree and complete the career that I have had from my days as an undergraduate student at the university. I am very thankful for the fact that we did have compulsory student services and amenities fees in my time at university and I am very thankful for the fact that those services and amenities were delivered—and at a high-quality standard—at my university and that I was able to be a beneficiary of them. This is exactly what we are talking about here today: ensuring that, in the future, a student like me who may need those services—a childcare centre or some other type of service—at their university has them on offer and that they are not disadvantaged because of their circumstances and because those services are not provided because the university can no longer afford them, through the change of process that has come about over the years with voluntary student unionism.

There are a number of pressing considerations surrounding the debate around voluntary student unionism and universal student unionism—whether life at our universities should be restricted to attending lectures and then going home, whether students should be restricted in their pursuit of a quality education because they do not have access to convenient and affordable services. I think I have just outlined my own personal example of that.

I want to consider for a moment the situation of the Tasmania University Union, the student representative body at the University of Tasmania. Since the introduction of VSU, the Tasmania University Union, the TUU, has seen a funding shortfall of $2.2 million. The TUU and UTas joined in good faith to negotiate a service level agreement designed to enable the services delivered by the TUU to continue to be delivered even when the TUU's direct revenue was severely curtailed. I and students at the university are very appreciative of that collaborative arrangement that was reached.

Since VSU, the Tasmania University Union has had to cut back the opening hours of food outlets on campus, to cut costs. This results in students not having access to proper food after 3 pm. Students have also been robbed of cheaper meals at what is commonly known as the refectory. Another outlet of the TUU that has suffered badly is the uni bar. The bar used to be a gathering point for students after classes, with its cheaper drinks and counter meals. It was also of course a place to debate and discuss the learning that had gone on in the lectures throughout the day on campus. Now the bar has to shut down early to cut costs, and we have seen the number of students meeting on campus after hours reduce significantly.

Sports and societies—the backbone of uni life—have greatly suffered. Sports clubs continue to be billed with exorbitant ground-hire fees and competition costs, while not having access to the same amount of money they used to have. The Sports Council operating budget has shrunk by almost 75 per cent since the introduction of VSU, and the university has been unable to send the best of its athletes to uni games and world games due to the lack of funding. Student societies are not being able to hold the kinds of vibrant and inclusive events that they once were able to.

So there are a number of examples, at one university alone, of where VSU has caused damage in various areas. Senators opposite, in their contributions on this bill, choose to completely ignore the current environment of student life compared the past environment of student life at our universities.

Student representation has greatly suffered as well. Remuneration for student representatives has been cut tremendously. Student reps are required to commit at least 10 hours a week to their role, for as little as $250 per annum in recognition of their services, when they could be earning that same amount in a week working elsewhere. All this simply diminishes the independence of the student organisation. Student councils have also lost access to a research officer who used to help the students come out with policies. The most pressing issue is the lack of ability for students to be adequately represented in academic matters, because access to advocacy has also suffered. Currently the Hobart advocate is overrun with students seeking help and is unable to hire a second advocate, due to funding issues. It struggles to get emergency food parcels for students as well.

These are a number of examples of how the current situation has brought about the need for this government to redress the disadvantages, the difficulties, for students and staff working at universities. Student life in general—with all the positives that come from it—has suffered over the years as a result of voluntary student unionism.

Those on the other side of this chamber come in and denigrate the bill and talk down its components. They do so in complete ignorance of the fact that student life in Australia, now and in the past, has been difficult and disadvantaged. The government does not support denying students a campus life, a life that I am sure many senators in this place have positive memories of. We were more than happy to contribute our fair share to those student services and amenities, which we all took advantage of and perhaps took for granted. Yet here today we have coalition senators who went to university conveniently ignoring their time of taking advantage of those services, enjoying those amenities. They now come into this place and say that those services that they had the benefit of should no longer be available to students in our universities. I think that is very unfair. Not being able to support the system as it currently is, as they once had the privilege of enjoying, shows complete contempt for it. It is something that government senators on this side of the house take seriously in the sense that we believe that every student, no matter what their circumstances, should have those services and amenities available to them. Whether they are a student who needs them or does not need them, the services and amenities should be there for all to be able to participate, utilise and seek the benefit of so that they can have a fulfilling university life, so that they can ensure that their academic time was one of intrigue, of discovery and of ensuring that they had all the balls in the air, so to speak, being able to not only participate in the knowledge learning but also the knowledge sharing and the supports and services that they need to make all of that happen. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to join my colleagues in opposing the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010. I have listened with keen interest to the debate on both sides and I sympathise with some aspects of it. The regrettable point to be made is that we really see the spin cycle going around yet again. History is simply repeating itself, as it is always bound to do.

If my memory serves me correctly, this was an election promise of the then Labor opposition going into the 2007 election, that they would not return to some form of compulsory student services and amenities fee. It has come as no surprise to learn that in government these changes are made and positions are changed. It is endemic and unfortunately it is simply symptomatic of what we have come to expect. That, I think, is severe. The second matter of history repeating itself is that it is yet another Labor government tax, this time on a million students—a straight-out figure of $250; no alteration of the figure depending on the service that might be used; $250 per student for each and every one.

If I can reflect on the changes—and Senator Singh very kindly reminded us of our days at university—whilst it was some years ago that I was there as an undergraduate, I was a member of faculty at Curtin University for some 12 or 13 years, so I obviously had some ongoing contact with students. I also had the pleasure of being a member of faculty at the University of California and the University of Kentucky, so I was able to observe a range across time. To see the comparison and the contrast of students in different countries was most interesting and relevant to this discussion. Of course, in an earlier era, we were nearly all full-time students. We basically went from school straight to university and we were full-time students.

As I recall, I happened to be a member of a faculty in Brisbane that used the services very sparingly. Even as a student paying 50 per cent higher than Queensland students as a non-Queenslander, I used to rail against the fact that we were paying this compulsory student union fee because, even in those days, I could not see where the money was going. I mention this straight figure of $250 per head and it deserves being examined in greater detail. Some $32.5 million will be a donation from 130,000 external students who, they would argue and I would argue with them, will never use the services. These students are not on campus and, if they are, it is only of a weekend. So they will never have access to these services and amenities for which they will be paying $1 a day of the working week. Where is the fairness for those 130,000 external students? I simply cannot find it in this legislation.

I go now to what is becoming a predominant group within the complement of university students, particularly undergraduate but also graduate students, and that is part-time students, those already in full or near-to-full employment, those who do not look to the university for their social outlet, for their amenity or for their provision of services. They go to the university for the purposes of attending lectures, tutorials, seminars and prac classes and on balance they then either return to their workplace or home to families. It is delightful to see this increasing proportion of part-time students as, indeed, it is tremendous to see the number of older Australians who are returning to university study. This is very encouraging for our country. But I ask again: where is the equity for those people, paying the same sum of money as those who will in fact enjoy it as a full-time student? Clearly, it is not there. Clearly, the legislation as it is drafted is deficient for this purpose and clearly it needs to be reviewed if we are to approach anything by way of equity and fairness in this situation.

What happened to the concept of user pays? What happened to the concept of a demand for a service, a need for a service and a payment for that service? It is interesting, and I have not been able to find the answer, but I know of many students who are enrolled at two tertiary institutions for various reasons. Do they pay $500 a year? This is something I have not as yet been able to establish but will hope to in the committee phase. We know where the damage and the difficulty comes, particularly for part-time students, but also for many full-time students. They are struggling to get to and remain at university. I speak particularly of students from rural, remote and regional areas of Australia who are already having to pay the cost of rent, transport and sustaining accommodation where their city based colleagues do not, either living at home or being supported. This $250 bill annually is just another impost on top of them.

So what loses out? Senator Singh was talking about all of the experiences you have at university. They will be the poorer for the loss of the $250. HECS fees will go up. What is the actual compounded cost of that $250 through a four- to-five-year university course?

I understand it is indexed, so it will actually increase over time. What will be the compounded cost to a student by the time they eventually pay their HECS bill back? Again that is a question that I believe we need to explore. The fee is going to come out of the funds that they have available to them for books, for laboratory fees and for these other sorts of activities.

So, as you would always do in a democracy, you turn to the student group and ask them: do you want to return to the amenities fee? My understanding is that the last time this was canvassed some 60 per cent of students polled said no, they did not, and I would venture the opinion that those who responded were probably full-time students on campus anyhow. It is highly unlikely that an external student would have responded and even more unlikely that a part-time student who turns up to the university just to attend classes would have responded. So when 60 per cent said no, they did not, I think that would be a very conservative estimate.

Where the real concerns come to me in this whole exercise, and it has been mentioned here this evening, is that the executives of the universities are all heavily in support of this. I ask the question: is it not the responsibility of the universities to provide these services? Universities already cost money. The Commonwealth government already injects significant sums of money. Why is it that the university executives are themselves demanding this $250 fee?

If I may, I will draw the attention of this chamber to a motion which was moved by my colleague Senator Brett Mason on, I think, 18 August or around about that time. He moved a motion to refer for investigation by the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations References Committee the adequacy and effectiveness of the current funding arrangements and alternative penalty options for the higher education and public research sectors. This was surely the ideal opportunity in which many of these questions that have been canvassed by Labor senators this afternoon could have been examined. This was the forum in which the opportunity would have been presented for this chamber to have addressed itself to those very questions. It would have given universities the opportunity to come before a committee of the Senate to put their case for funding.

It is regrettable, particularly while we are debating this bill, to note—and it is on the record—that both the Labor government and the Greens failed to support Senator Mason in his bid to have that investigation undertaken. As he said: 'This is a missed opportunity. Two parties which supposedly care about education showed with their votes today just how little they are really concerned about the question of adequate funding for higher education.' He mentioned that it is some 20 years since there was such an examination of university funding, and the points he made were three. First of all, university student populations have doubled. Secondly, the number of international students has increased more than sixfold. But, thirdly and more importantly, Commonwealth funding to universities has tripled in that period of time. Surely this would have been the opportunity for us to examine many of these questions. The university administrators have indicated to the Senate and to the parliament that they are behind this $250 push per student across the board—full-fee-paying students, overseas students, full-time students et cetera.

That brings me to the question of the funding itself. Who gets to spend the money, who gets to oversee it, who controls it and who does the auditing? We are back to the bad old days which necessitated the Howard government moving in the direction that it did at that time. I have not yet seen in the legislation any answers to those questions. The universities collect the money. How do they disburse the money? How much of it do they keep for administrative purposes and how do they ensure that the funds are actually used for the purposes for which they are intended?

I will turn for a moment to a comment made by Senator Carol Brown in her contribution this evening. She was talking about the difficulty now of the smaller and regional universities. She is absolutely right. She is 100 per cent right about the economic demise in which so many of them find themselves. But I can assure Senator Brown that the limited number of students at these campuses multiplied by $250 is not going to go anywhere near solving the problems. They are not problems associated with student services and amenities fees; they are deep seated problems associated with administration.

Of course, only this afternoon did the Senate agree to my own motion, which was to refer to the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations References Committee for inquiry all aspects of higher education and skills training to support future demand for agriculture and agribusiness in Australia. There are five or six paragraphs to that motion. This goes to exactly the point that Senator Carol Brown was making—and that is that these institutions have been starved of resources to the extent that they are now unviable.

I have made the comment in this place and elsewhere in the parliament that, if you look at the traditional agricultural institutions, I think the only one left, ironically, is the private sector Marcus Oldham College in Victoria. The one at which I was an academic for 13 years, the Muresk Institute at Northam, has now ceased as a tertiary institution. In South Australia, Roseworthy is now principally a veterinary faculty. Dookie and Glenormiston in Victoria are no longer there. Richmond and Hawkesbury in New South Wales are no longer agricultural colleges. Gatton in Queensland is now multipurpose.

So, yes, there are problems associated with the regional and smaller universities. They have their origins back in the 1970s, when these institutions which at that time were independent were forced to come under the umbrella of larger city based universities. The universities revelled in it for a period of time because funding supported it, but as soon as funding went the other way, as we have found with the city based universities in Australia, the regional campuses in many cases were no longer core business for those universities. These are matters that need exploring. These are matters that will be dealt with by the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations References Committee. But they do not go to a reason for reintroducing compulsory amenities and services fees for students. They certainly will not be helped by a $250 payment.

I then addressed myself to what these services about which we speak and that apparently have got to be returned are about. Senator Singh made a point of all those that are no longer available. We could talk for a week on the reasons why they are no longer available. Some of them might relate to fees, others of them relate to the economy but, most importantly, they all relate to demand. What are the services? Who else provides these services in the community? For the non-university student sector, who provides these services? Be they counselling services, psychological services or legal aid services, who else in the community provides them? We know that the university population is a very limited population of people, so therefore they must be offered elsewhere. I ask again: for those external students and part-time students who are paying the $250, how do they access these services for which they are now so richly paying? Clearly they are subsidising those students who will be availing themselves of the services.

Others have spoken about the recreational side of things, such as the amenities of the bar. I actually did run the student bar for some period of time and if anybody cannot make money out of selling alcohol on a university campus then I can assure you that $250 is not going to help; it is merely going to hinder. It goes back to the point I made about accountability, because anybody can understand that the running of a bar not only should be a profit centre but also should itself be subsidising other services on campus.

I then go to the question of amenities. I ask again that question: 'Who else in the community is providing the sort of amenities that have been mentioned by others here this afternoon?' I turn to local government in both city and country areas. Local government is now a tremendous provider of amenities. We know it is of recreational facilities, sporting facilities and wider community activities. We also know—and it has been stated by others—that the tendency now to form and be members of clubs is very much less than it was years ago. These days there are people saying, 'If I want a game of squash I will go and find a person to have a game of squash with me, but do not ask me to be a member of the squash club.' It then becomes a question of who should be and who is subsidising.

But it also becomes a question of competition between universities. If indeed these amenities and services are as important as those opposite say they are, surely it provides an opportunity for entrepreneurial universities to team with industry and business, to go out and develop a marketing plan and to put these facilities and services on campus and use them as a hub for the wider community to come in and use, be they sporting, cultural, arts or recreational. By all means charge non-university people a hire fee to access those services, but in the same way do then turn that into a profit centre. There are all sorts of activities and mechanisms, and it should not fall to students, especially those who will never use these services, to be subsidising either the universities or those who will be using the services. Senator Singh in her contribution—and I agree with her completely—said that part of the role of development of a student is to nurture them and to see them grow and explore new passions. But it should not be at the expense of those students who will not be part of that process. It is not up to other students to be subsidising the development, growth and exploration of new passions of a limited number of fortunate, full-time students.

It is the case that in a democracy we should have choice. We should have the choice to use services and amenities and pay for them. We should have the choice to not do so. We should have the choice to take our trade where it suits us. If we do not like the legal advice on campus then we should have the opportunity to seek it elsewhere, be it legal aid or paid for. The same applies to every other amenity.

I will conclude my comments with a reminder to everybody in the chamber what the students are doing at university and institutes of higher education. They are training for skills, attitudes and development so that they themselves will become leaders, be it in industry, commerce, business, academia, research or elsewhere. This is definitely not the sort of message to be sending to an undergraduate student: 'You just simply pay $250 and get subsidised by other people and that is the type of lesson that we want you to take into your career as a graduate.' I urge that this bill not be supported.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise this evening to speak in favour of the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010. I appreciate that we will be breaking for dinner very shortly, but I look forward to continuing my remarks later. With this bill the government seeks to put to bed another one of the extreme and, I feel, unwarranted measures pursued by the previous government for no reason other than to satisfy its own ideological, childish preoccupation.

Why 'childish'? We know that what really lay behind the Howard government's obsession with so-called VSU legislation was that some of those opposite were on the wrong side of the odd debate in student organisations some decades ago. Once they got into government, they decided it was payback time. This was about as logical as a bunch of senators deciding to abolish school sports because they did not make the third grade cricket team. Some might think that the term 'childish' is a little harsh and a little bit over the top. Well, it is not my term. It was used by Professor Richard Larkins to describe the motivations of those opposite in relation to this matter.

Sitting suspended from 18:30 to 19:30

Before the dinner break I was talking about the ideological obsession of the opposition with regard to the VSU legislation. I supposed that those senators and members must have been on the wrong side of the debate in student organisations some decades ago, and so they had decided it was payback time in relation to their childish VSU agenda. That might seem to be harsh terminology to people, but the word childish is not a term that I have coined in relation to the opposition's VSU agenda; it is a term that has been used by Professor Richard Larkins. Professor Larkins is not a long-haired radical who haunts the imaginations of those opposite. He is not a postmodern theorist against whom John Howard loved to wage culture wars. No, he is none of those things. He is a scientist with a distinguished career in medicine and research, specialising in diabetes and endocrinology. Until his retirement, he was also the vice-chancellor of our nation's largest university and chair of Universities Australia.

Professor Larkins rightly pointed out, when the Howard government introduced VSU legislation, that the so-called reform was not about freedom of association or compulsory unionism. It was about whether universities were allowed to levy a modest fee on their students in order to fund essential services and amenities and enrich campus experiences for students. It was about whether the cost of such services and amenities was to be spread equitably across all students. It was about whether these services would be funded by user-pays charges, which would see some services priced out of the reach of many of those students in most need of assistance—that is something that I recall from my own experience. It was about whether universities would be forced to cut already overstretched teaching and research budgets in order to cross-subsidise services such as academic advocacy and extracurricular activities on campus. It was also about whether essential on-campus services such as child care and employment advice were simply even going to exist anymore. And it was about whether the quality of the student experience would be downgraded, as societies and activities that were once such an integral part of campus withered and died because of a lack of secure and sustainable funding resources.

Upon coming to government, this government instituted a review into the impact of VSU. That review demonstrated quite clearly that all of these adverse outcomes that had been speculated about did in fact eventuate. The review found that a growing number of campuses had no independent student representative organisation—that was certainly a problem in Western Australia. It found that the adequacy and autonomy of academic support and advocacy services was undermined on many campuses. It found that there had been a massive reduction in funding to the student services sector. It found that institutions and student organisations had been forced to offset cuts by doing things like closing or curtailing services, shedding jobs, increasing prices, instituting new user-pays charges and cross-subsidising services from other parts of their already tight budgets. The review found that there had been a direct negative impact on campus life and on the student experience, including on things like participation in sporting activities. How typical of the former government's short-sighted and reactionary approach to public policy in this country that it implemented a policy that led to job losses in the university sector and reduced the capacity of universities to offer Australia's young people the opportunity to develop into academically successful, well rounded and healthy individuals. And how typical of it that it undermined our capacity to support employment in troubled economic times and to confront the challenges that Australia will face into the future.

Professor Larkins struggled to understand why VSU was such a totemic issue for those opposite. He said at the time:

What we are really talking about is micro-regulation and control by a government that purports to have small government and deregulation as its article of faith. Far from deregulation, we have it prescribing in minute detail what our universities should do in terms of industrial relations and forbidding them from charging a small fee for services that allow community-building on campus and a richer experience for all.

Professor Larkins suggested that, rather than focusing on ideological trivia, the Howard government might have liked to focus on why public expenditure per student had fallen 30 per cent since 1995, the biggest fall of any OECD country; on how it could have supported the $7 billion dollar export industry which universities have developed by providing quality education experiences to overseas students; or it might have liked to consider what could be done to encourage the development of innovative new industries in high-technology manufacturing through investment in research and development. The Howard government, Larkins argued:

… should have a collective feeling of shame that its childish and ideological preoccupations should have made it oblivious of the real totemic issues.

Ideological trivia and childish preoccupations—not my words. Unlike the Howard government, this government is committed to addressing the real issues in higher education. Upon coming to power, Labor commissioned, received and publicly released the most comprehensive review of higher education in a decade—the Bradley review. We know that the then Deputy Prime Minister announced the government's response to the Bradley review into higher education: a whole new approach to higher education that she summed up as 'politicians out and students in'. In the words of the Australian newspaper, generally no champion of the Rudd government:

University vice-chancellors have given Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard a rousing and extended round of applause, relieved that the Government had finally given them a broad vision to work to.

Nearly two years on, our higher education revolution is on track. We have lifted publicly funded places by 7.5 per cent; we have increased Australian postgraduate awards; payments to universities for enrolling students from disadvantaged backgrounds have dramatically increased; we have had 100 Super Science Fellowships for young researchers, and 1,000 future fellowships for mid-career researchers have been created, half a billion dollars of extra funding over four years have been committed for the indirect costs of research; and a massive $2.9 billion investment has already been delivered for higher education infrastructure. In total, a massive injection of $5.7 over four years to higher education and innovation reform, which is helping achieve our target of increasing the number of 25- to 34-year-olds with bachelor qualifications to 40 per cent by 2025. We have a commitment to a revolution in higher education after many years of coalition neglect. This commitment is further evidenced by the fact that higher education spending will jump from 0.82 per cent of GDP in 2007-08 to 1.1 per cent of GDP in 2010-11. Here we are at that point in time today. This bill is part and parcel of that commitment.

The second reading speech of the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations said it would support universities and students to help undo the damage done by voluntary student unionism. But this bill does not compel students to join organisations against their will, and it will not allow student service and amenities fees to be used in support of political parties or to support candidates for public office. In other words, as we said at the time, 'politicians out'. But it will encourage students and universities to work together to ensure adequate academic support services, independent student representation and advocacy, an enriching campus experience, and welfare services that support those that most need assistance. In other words, 'students in'.

Now I want to focus specifically on the question of student representation. The bill we have before us will formally ensure that all of our publicly funded universities will provide students with opportunities for democratic representation and participation in the governance of our universities. That is through the new national student representation and advocacy protocols. This is a first for the history of higher education in this nation, and as a former student representative I welcome this initiative wholeheartedly. As Minister Ellis has rightly said, 'Students' views should be heard in the decision-making processes of our universities as these decisions vitally affect their future—that is in line with the democratic values that underpin our nation.'

Student involvement in university governance has also played a vital role in ensuring the quality of university programs and support services, and the value of the broader student experience on campus. This is a fact that is widely recognised in the United Kingdom where publicly funded higher education institutions participate in what is a rigorous quality assurance regime administered by an independent quality assurance agency. A key role of the quality assurance agency in the UK is to establish objective and comparative benchmarks of quality and performance in the higher education sector. So it is terrific that Labor has secured the agreement of the states to establish an agency with similar responsibilities here in Australia. Since 2005, the quality assurance agency in the UK has been publishing outcomes and papers based on the audits it has undertaken. These papers reveal that a focus on quality has led universities to value effective representation as a critical tool for improving and evaluating academic programs and the wider student experience on campuses. We know that in the UK, as a consequence of these reforms, senior institutional managers are taking care when they are fostering close links with student representative bodies at their institutions. This is something that more care needs to be taken with here in Australia, and we need to mandate these standards across the nation.

Students are generally represented at the institutional level in Australia by student organisations and, at the operational level, by student representatives elected by department or by program of study. These arrangements, as in the UK, are also common with our own institutions in Australia. However, in the UK the desire to ensure that student representation is effective, and not merely a form, has led institutions to implement a range of initiatives to enhance student participation in decision making. These include appointing paid student liaison officers and representation coordinators. It includes things like developing guides to assist staff to make the most of student representatives. It is things like enshrining rights to representation in student charters. It is about using virtual learning environments to facilitate communication between student representatives and the student body. It is also about transferrable skills modules designed for student representatives that carry academic credit—all terrific things. There is much that our own higher education institutions can learn from these developments in the UK, and I would really look forward to seeing them underway here. However, it is not the job of government to dictate to our institutions exactly which steps they should take to ensure effective student representation. That is the job of those charged with the management of our universities, in partnership with students and their organisations. The most effective measures for enhancing student participation will vary across campuses, depending on the nature of the institutions concerned, the characteristics of their student organisations and the composition of their student body.

I am very confident that the Student Representation and Advocacy Protocols introduced by this bill will ensure that effective student representation is given the priority it deserves by our universities so that student representation can strengthen the quality of the academic programs provided by our universities and reinforce democratic traditions amongst Australian students. This evening, for this reason, as well as for the very significant beneficial effects this bill will have on student welfare and campus amenities more generally, I commend the bill to the Senate.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On reflecting upon the contribution by Senator Pratt, who spoke before me, I would like to comment on a few issues before I go into my substantive address. She accused coalition senators of having an ideological obsession, which some of us would say is consistency. The fact that coalition senators and members on this side of the House have fought for this particular principle for over 30 years actually says something about consistency in politics—not something for which the current Labor government is necessarily thought of when that word comes to mind. Senator Pratt talked about how we should get politicians out of our universities, but apparently we should let student politicians back into students' wallets. That we should not at all be concerned that letting student politicians and politicians into students' wallets is somehow inconsistent.

She refers to the words of the vice-chancellors—in particular in this case, Richard Larkins, formerly of Monash University. The vice-chancellors over 30 years have been nothing short of the shop stewards of our university campuses. They have stood by and watched hundreds of thousands of student dollars be misdirected in an attempt to buy peace for them from the various left-wing and Trot groups that try to break down their doors like they did at Melbourne uni many years ago.

Senator Pratt interjecting—

Of course Vice-Chancellor Larkins would not understand what the coalition and coalition senators are arguing when they put forward this case. It would be like asking Senator Cameron or, indeed, potentially you, Senator Pratt, to be defenders of voluntary unionism. You cannot be asked to defend something when you do not understand the reason for its existence. When it comes to the issue of equitable funding, I will go into this in much more detail later. The truth is: how the Labor Party can justify a poll tax levied on people regardless of means and somehow call that equitable funding of student services is beyond me.

This bill is repugnant. The ALP and their Greens fellow travellers attempt to say it does not somehow constitute membership. However, you are actually forced to pay. You are forced to pay a membership fee for the student union, and this shows the insanity of the new-speak that now exists. Your name might not be on the roll of members of the student union but you are still going to be sent the bill. You are going to have to pay as much as a member of the student union, you are going to subsidise the same services of a student union, and in fact by exercising your vote to not be a member all you are doing is choosing to not be able to have any influence over how the money that is compulsorily acquired from you is spent. This bill actually goes as far as to say, 'We are going to levy the fee regardless of your capacity or willingness to use the services that this fee provides.' Section 4 of the bill explicitly outlines that this payment is required 'regardless of whether that person chooses to use any of those amenities and services'. So regardless of your ability to use the services, regardless of your willingness to use them, regardless of the fact that they may or may not be of any interest to you, you are required to pay for them via a poll tax. This is an admission that these services are not demanded by the great bulk of students. If they were, they would not need to be funded by this means.

This bill does nothing to prevent the abuse of student funds that happened for decade after decade under the compulsory student unionism environment that Labor wishes to re-impose on students. There is a prohibition on the use of these funds for explicitly political purposes that goes as far as to say that you cannot support the election of a political party or a person as a member of a state, territory or Commonwealth legislature or a local government body. It is a fraud to suggest that is a protection against political misuse of funds. I lived under this regime in Victoria after it was passed through the Victorian parliament in the mid-1990s, and a very similar list of services and a very similar prohibition was put in place. Money is fungible. Money that is not used for one purpose can be used for another. What happened at universities in Victoria under that regime is that the caff might have been subsidised and the money was taken out of the till of the cafeteria and used to pay the affiliation fees to the National Union of Students to run political campaigns. It was a sham to suggest that student funds were not being used for political purposes.

The attempts to define political activity in this bill are incredibly narrow. They do not stop political campaigns. You might not be able to advocate the election of someone in particular, but you can advocate the opposition to an election of someone in particular. You could print stickers or posters during a campaign that ran a political message if it dies not specifically promote the election of a specific candidate to political office. To say this stops compulsory funding of political campaigns is nothing short of a fraud on students. If the government were serious about stopping political misuse of funding, apart from not passing this bill, it would actually put in place several provisions. It would put in place rules that require revenue for subsidised services to be bound by the same rules as the student fees themselves. But it has chosen not to do so. The money that goes into the till in the subsidised cafeteria can be taken out of that till and used to pay the wages of student politicians right around Australia. The cafeteria at Melbourne uni when I was there—extraordinary though it may be—managed to lose a quarter of a million dollars a year in 1992.

Senator Sterle interjecting—

I remember, Senator Sterle, when that was a lot of money. How it managed to lose that is a legitimate question. But why on earth the money could be taken out of that till and the revenue from that cafeteria that was subsidised and then be used to fund political activities shows exactly how empty this provision is. What that government could also do, but will not do, is provide options for students to take action themselves to address the misuse of funds. There is no capacity here for students to take action to prevent the misuse of the funds that are compulsorily acquired from them. As it is, they rely on the university to do so. These are the same vice-chancellors who have enforced compulsory unionism provisions for so long, the same vice-chancellors who have been the shop stewards for student unions in an attempt to buy peace, as they have done at campuses all around my home state of Victoria for many years.

The list of permitted services in section 5 is incredibly broad and provides no protection against students' money being misused. To take one example, in subsection (3) there is a reference to allowing the provision of legal services to students. If I could give you an example, Mr Acting Deputy President Parry—I believe you sat through the inquiry into the previous bill with me on this—that provision of legal services empowered a university many years ago to pay for the legal expenses of a student who had been charged with breaking down the doors of the Vice-Chancellor's office suite—

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

Student fees also paid for the axe, Senator Hanson-Young. I question whether taking an axe to the door of the Vice-Chancellor's office is somehow representing the interests of the broad majority of students. That is an outrageous abuse of student funds and that happened on multiple occasions in the 1990s under legislation very similar to this. So let us drop the pretence of political activity being prohibited from accessing these funds. It can be accessed directly through the very broad list of services, like I have just mentioned, or by a process of the money being fungible and coming out of the revenue for subsidised services to find its way back to political activity.

We all know why the ALP and Greens want to pass this bill. They want to reinstate the abuse of students' funds as was the case for decades. They are unaccountable to students because so few students bother to vote, and it is not as if there has not been the odd electoral scandal in student union elections over many years. The money will come out of the till, it will head to NUS, that bastion of accountability—I served my year on the national executive of the National Union of Students—and it will be used for political purposes for Greens and Labor Party political apprentices.

But we get to the more important issue here which is the equity issue I heard so much about from the contribution of Senator Pratt. Where is the equity of charging students a poll tax for services that they may or may not use. In fact the bill specifically says 'regardless of whether they use it'? Where is the equity in saying, 'regardless of your means to pay'? It does not matter if you are a distance education student and you never visit the campus, it does not matter if you are working two or three jobs and coming to university after hours, you are still going to pay this fee regardless of your ability to do so. The government has decided what students will pay for and that they will pay for these services regardless of whether they use them.

Of course, we have heard a lot about child care and health care from previous speakers this afternoon and this evening, and now we get to my favourite example, Mr Acting Deputy President—and I think you know where I am going here—we get to the palatial ski lodges of Monash and Melbourne universities at Mount Buller. And I know some of the Sydney universities have them too. I want to know how this, somehow, should be something that every student will pay for.

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

I remember this particularly well, Senator Hanson-Young. Melbourne University ski lodge was famous for being booked out by March because certain people would manage to book it out before anyone else had a chance. We do not hear about the very expensive services that the universities do not want students to know about. You do not want to highlight these. You do not want students to know that you are going to force them to pay a fee, defer it and then pay it back over the course of their working life for services that, if many of them tried to use, they would not be able to. You are charging them this poll tax regardless of their means to pay in order to subsidise the skiing at Mount Buller. Let us put this in context; that is just one of the many things. Sports union activities are all designed around a much smaller number than the great bulk of students participating.

I do not expect much less from the Greens, who have always had a particular view of what the proletariat should pay for, as the parliamentary descendants of the old Left alliance and non-aligned Left. But I expected more from the Labor Party. The truth is that this is basically unfair. We have 130,000 external students that can be forced to pay an amenities and services fee. How is it fair, if you are an external student and you have no ability to access the services, that you actually subsidise those who can?

Secondly, we have the students that many speakers have mentioned before that people on this side actually care about through not forcing them to pay student union fees. They are working their way through university part-time. They are the people that might be pushing trolleys around at Woolworths, working at Myer or doing many, many things. A great number of students work a lot more than they did 20 years. These people have little opportunity to access services, many of which only exist during the day on campus. If you walked through a student union building after 5 pm in Melbourne a lot of these services would not be available.

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

They did before, Senator Hanson-Young. There was nothing like the shutdown that happened when five o'clock came. These services are specifically designed to exclude those part-time students.

Thirdly, we have the issue of health care, child care and like services. We get back to the point of why on earth should these services be paid for by a poll tax levied on every single student? Healthcare and childcare services are important and we spend a great deal of the Commonwealth budget on providing them. They are the responsibility of government if they are not private. Yet we say to every student going to university that you should actually provide these for other select students. It does not matter if there are not enough places. The few who are there and who are lucky enough will have access to it when they need it. This does not meet a basic test of fairness.

One of the things that has changed are students with a disability. Many more of them are at university now than 20 years ago. Historically student unions did not do a great deal on this space, partly a reflection I would imagine of the fact that there were not as many students on campus with those particular challenges, but I also say that they did not have as loud a political voice, because the truth about student union budgets is that they tended to be directed to those with a loud political voice rather than those with need. By taxing all students with a poll tax regardless of their means to pay in order to pay for child care is like charging every young person under 40 a poll tax to pay for child care. We do not do that. We do it through a progressive income tax system. Yet what the Labor Party is proposing now is to actually institute a poll tax on many of those people it claims to be protecting. God knows how they are actually going to pay for this if they are actually in such challenging circumstances.

Of course, the true farce of this fee and the alleged services it provides—because student union services were far from the example of what you would actually expect—is that students were so poor that they did not really want to access these services. People on the other side bleat about how somehow these student unions have fallen over. If anything, that is a reflection of the fact that the unions were not serving their members. That does not provide the justification to corral students. That would be like Myer or David Jones saying: 'We're going to force you to go shopping here. Every time you walk into a Westfield you have to go shopping here, because we don't like it that you shop somewhere else.' These principles seem to apply only to universities.

Most bizarre is the fourth-level-of-government argument: that somehow we have a fourth level of government in this country—that below the Commonwealth, states and local governments we have the student unions. The argument that is so often thrown out—and I am surprised I have not heard it yet—is that a university is much the same as a local government area, where you have to pay rates for services you might not use.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That sounds like a tax.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It does sound like a tax, Senator Cormann. I do not know anywhere where we there is a fourth level of government. It is ridiculous to assume that somehow student unions have acquired the legitimacy of our local government authorities, but that is what those opposite are actually proposing.

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

I had a great time at university, Senator Hanson-Young. These services are designed around most students never being able to access them. That is particularly true of the sports unions and the palaces that have been built in sports unions right around this country. Senator Hanson-Young, I remember the days when left-wing activists like you would actually oppose the palaces built with student money that were the sports unions.

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

Senator Ryan, I would ask you to direct your comments through the chair. And I remind Senator Hanson-Young that constant laughter is disorderly.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry. Through you, Mr Acting Deputy President, I remember a time when left-wing activists would complain about the compulsorily acquired student money that was directed to build the palaces at Mount Buller and around the sports unions all around Australia, but that obviously was in a day gone past.

This will cost students a substantial amount of money. It is easily $1,000 for a basic three-year degree when you include indexation and the time taken to pay it back. It could easily be $2,000 for a five-year degree when the same factors are taken into account. And for what? For nothing more than fulfilling the ideological promises of those opposite, which is to reinstate the slush fund that was student union money. They must be getting particularly desperate regarding the next election.

Those on this side have been fighting this battle since 1977 and the famous Clark v The University of Melbourne case, named after Robert Clark, the current Attorney-General of Victoria. While they may think they have a temporary victory out of this, we will not rest until this injustice against students is addressed. Those opposite do not have an argument. They only have a prejudice, and that is that somehow students cannot be trusted to purchase the services they need, that somehow they must be forced and corralled into purchasing the services and subsidising the political activities of what those opposite believe.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will try to keep my laughter at bay while I deliver my speech. I rise to speak to the government's second attempt to rebuild important university services through the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010. This is at least the second time—it could possibly be the third—I have risen to speak to legislation to restore student services on campuses since I was elected to this place some years ago. We still see the negative impact that the Howard government's regressive voluntary student unionism has on universities. it has slaughtered the advocacy, the support services and the creativity of universities.

It is not just me saying that; universities themselves believe that. Vice-chancellors who are as proud of their university campuses as anyone would be shake their heads at the types of attitude and argument put forward by the coalition against the restoring of student services. We know it plays a very important part in how university life is conducted, the services students access in order to complete their university degrees and the type of vibrancy that comes to a university campus—the experience young people have when they are getting their education and formulating their skills and their attitudes towards the rest of their careers. It is a very important time for us to be ensuring that they have access to the full suite of services they may need to complete that university career.

I am particularly concerned about the impact voluntary student unionism has had on regional campuses in our rural areas. I know this is an area that it is very difficult for the coalition to weigh up. The Nationals rightly believe and have advocated for some time that we need to return to having services on campus, because it is a very important part of ensuring that students in rural and regional areas get the same level of education and support for that degree as their city cousins. It is very difficult, of course, for any of those services to be delivered without that subsidy and support, because they are in those more regional and remote areas.

While the Greens are indeed supportive of the moves under this legislation to charge a levy to breathe much-needed life back into campus culture—back into the experience of the university career, back into the quality of education that young Australians who are embarking on their future learning will have—we remain concerned that student representation in the true sense of the word will not be fully restored under this bill. That is because we are not actually guaranteed, for all the fire and fury that has been thrown at us from the other side over there, that the money that is collected from students will go directly back to student representation. That is a concern that the Greens have. Students should be able to advocate for the services that they pay for. We believe that services are important and students should have a say in how those services are run. We believe that students should have a say in how the money that they pay is spent.

It has been almost six years since the introduction of VSU and campuses around the country—and indeed in regional areas—have increasingly felt the impact of the reduced cash flow. While the opposition will continue to whip up misinformation about what the bill actually does—and we heard a classic example from Senator Ryan only moment ago—that does not deal with the crux of this legislation or the history of how important student unionism has been to our universities over many years. We heard nothing from Senator Ryan about the vibrancy of university culture and the services that add to the value of university degrees for students. Some of our universities have remained as some of the top ranking universities in the world because of that holistic university experience and service delivery.

We heard about none of that from the opposition, and we will not, because they are fundamentally opposed to the idea that young people may need services when not all of them have the ability to pay for them as they see fit. But that is the reality. This type of student services levy sets a capped amount that students pay. That ensures that they have access to the services and support that they need when they need them. It is all well and good for the people in the opposition, Liberal Party members who were members of the Young Liberals back in the day, because they could access whatever they wanted as they had the money and the support outside of the university—perhaps at home; perhaps from mum and dad. They could access those services. But do you know what? Not everybody is that lucky. Not everybody can just click their fingers and access the services and supports that they need. If we want well-trained, well-educated, strong and productive contributors to our economy we need to invest in their education and in their ability to gain that education right at the forefront—that is, on university campuses.

The opposition will continue to say that this bill does a whole lot of terrible things. But we must not forget the dire state that some campuses now find themselves in, and particularly in their ability to provide basic and essential services to their students. And this is solely due to the opposition. Almost six years ago, the opposition introduced voluntary student unionism in this place. There was a rubber stamp from John Howard. They cut services from students because they do not think that students should be able to access them. And some of them might vote for parties other than the Liberal Party, so of course they should not be helped through their university studies. That is the level of tripe that we have heard from the opposition tonight on this particular legislation.

Student advocacy services have traditionally been regarded by universities as a very important provision for campus culture and student life. In particular, they ensure that adequate processes for transparency are in place when dealing with university appeals. It is not just about ensuring that there are childcare and health services on campus, although they are very important. What about the student who is constantly failing to get the grades needed in their classes, not because they are not intelligent enough and not because they are not showing up to the tutorials but because they have not been able to engage with their lecturer or tutor in a productive way?

What about that student who gets marked wrongly on their exam? They studied hard and knew the answers, but the exam was marked inaccurately. What does that student do? Do they waste three or four years studying a university degree, pay exorbitant amounts of HECS and have to then sit back and say, 'Ah, well: no-one seems to care, so I will just have to start all over again'? This happens on university campuses, and who is standing up for these students? The opposition is not. It is very difficult to have a good transparent process and proper advocacy unless there is such a service provided to students and people who will stand up for them.

The loss of advocacy services following the implementation of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Abolition of Compulsory Up-front Student Union Fees) Act 2005, the famous legislation passed by John Howard had a devastating effect on campus culture. These advocacy services are particularly important for those least able to advocate for themselves in matters affecting university rules and decisions that adversely affect them. These are issues that are right of the heart of students getting a fair go at university.

Following the Australia-wide consultation process undertaken by Minister Ellis in 2008 as part of the government's election promise to restore campus amenities, services and representation, the Department of Education and Workplace Relations, in its summary report, stated that the abolition of upfront compulsory student union fees had impacted negatively on the provision of amenities and services to university students, with the greatest impact on smaller and regional university campuses. So for all of the criticism that is thrown from the opposition, what are we doing about students in rural and regional areas, who we know have been impacted the most by the introduction of voluntary student unionism and the stripping of services to these campuses?

We know the devastating impact that VSU has had on campus culture. In my own state of South Australia—and a number of us in this place first cut our political teeth in student politics—we have seen firsthand the devastating impact that VSU has had on our three universities. The University of Adelaide, where I was student president in 2003, has seen the absolute destruction and dissolution of the student association and the postgraduate student association. Who is standing up for the postgraduates at the University of Adelaide? It is very difficult for them when they are without a representative body to advocate for their needs. And, while the sports association, the clubs association and the overseas students association have continued to exist, they have lost their professional, administrative and policy support staff. So they are nowhere near as capable of advocating for their fellow students, for their peers, as they should be and once were.

Some of the visible impacts this has had on Adelaide University students have been the loss of $3 million in annual revenue; the diminished capacity for effective representation on university decision-making bodies; and the increased social isolation experienced by international students. We know about the significant impact on the international student sector, not just in Adelaide but around the rest of the country. International education is our third-highest export industry, following iron ore and coal. It has suffered extremely badly because of the introduction of voluntary student unionism.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That has nothing to do with it. It is the incompetence of this government.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, it absolutely is true. The impacts on student services include a 40 per cent drop in participation in sporting clubs and the closure of arts and crafts centres. Flinders University, another wonderful university in my home state, arguably the hardest hit by VSU in South Australia, has seen the six student controlled organisations dissolved—the student association, the sports association, the clubs and societies association, the international student association and the postgraduate student association. That is basically the entire student population directly impacted by the callousness and lack of foresight of this opposition policy, which was introduced six years ago.

The services that have been affected by the former government's regressive policy have seen millions of dollars lost. Incomes now come only from commercial operations and from the introduction of a user-pays system to access services. This means that many students are paying more than they can afford or are opting out of accessing services. At Flinders University we have seen the closure of quality and affordable childcare services. The collapse of the international students association has increased the social isolation experienced by international students. That is not me making that up; that is what international students have said to us. There is also the loss of student media—the ability of students to get those important add-ons that put them a cut above the rest once they graduate from university. Not just a bit of paper but the proof to say, 'I know how to apply this.' These are the things, beyond advocacy, that students have lost under VSU.

The University of South Australia, which is home to the largest tertiary international student population in my state, has seen funding of sports clubs reduced from $140,000 a year right down to only $21,500. It has had a significant impact on the ability of students to work as a community, because of the impact on their sporting clubs. It has diminished the ability to pay affiliation fees to maintain state and federal coordinating and representative structures. This means that students at the University of South Australia do not get the benefits of coordinated access and advocacy that a nationally run, coordinated student representative body would be able to offer them. So, when legislation like this comes to this place my constituents back in South Australia do not have a representative body to advocate for them at a federal level. It is no surprise that it has taken over three years for this legislation to come before the parliament to a point where it can be voted on, because there is no-one who is able to lobby and advocate for the rights of students. That was the sting in the tail of the opposition's entire strategy. It was: 'Let's cut student services, let's cut advocacy, let's rip out the heart of university campuses and student life and, ah, once we do all that no-one will be able to advocate otherwise.' It absolutely undercuts the ability of our future leaders to advocate for what is best for them.

These examples of the loss of services experienced by universities in South Australia are only a handful of the examples of the devastating impacts this policy has had on student welfare and support. The opposition carry on and on about how they are opposed to student services simply because they are opposed. It is no different from anything else. They are after all the party led by 'Dr No'. Of course they are going to say no and oppose for the sake of opposing.

This is about advocating for the future leaders of this country, students who are now paying more than ever for their university degrees and deserve to be able to do their degrees with the support of a well functioning, well supported, fledging university campus. We know that, unless we start funding student services to do that, this is not going to happen.

We know that VSU has had a significant impact on the ability of our Australian universities to compete in the global market. This is the case for international students as well as for the abilities and skills and added extras that make our Australian students better equipped, more resourced and better networked to compete in the working world after they graduate. It does not just have an impact on students now. It has a significant impact on their ability to compete with their peers once they graduate. There are a couple of amendments that I moved when this bill was first introduced, and the amendments have been circulated. I need to withdraw the first two amendments on sheet 6183, which was circulated some time ago. I understand that today, after extensive consultation with students and the university sector, the government have announced that they will be amending the guidelines to ensure that higher education providers must have a formal process of consultation with the democratically elected student representatives as well as representatives from major student organisations on how proceeds from any services and amenities fees are spent. That is a welcome development and one that I hope will ensure greater transparency in how the student fee would be spent.

The Greens have a proud tradition of supporting accessible and affordable higher education. In keeping with that principle, we support moves to remove the Howard government draconian VSU provision and to allow universities again to fund a wider range of services and facilities to ensure that the university experience of our students today and tomorrow is what it should be.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Another day, and we are debating another tax from this socialist green government. Another day, and we are debating another attack on personal freedom from this socialist green government. Back in 2005, the Howard coalition government gave students across Australia a tax cut. Back in 2005, the Howard government ensured that students across Australia were able to benefit, like anybody else, from an important freedom, the freedom of association. And, back in 2005, the Howard coalition government ensured that students across Australia had the freedom to choose which services they wanted to access on campus and which services they were prepared to pay for. Let us make no mistake. What we are talking about here today is a tax. It is a tax on students to be imposed by this Labor green government. It is a $1 billion tax over the current budget cycle. Of course, this is a high-taxing, high-spending government. It is a government that has higher taxes as part of its DNA. We had the Henry tax review tell us that we had too many taxes—that we had 125 taxes in Australia, that 10 of those taxes collected 90 per cent of the revenue and that we should have fewer taxes. Guess what? Since the Henry tax review suggested that we should have fewer than the 125 taxes that we had at the time, this government has come up with at least another five. We are talking about the mining tax, the carbon tax, the flood tax, the student tax and the new tax on LPG. This is just one of many taxes, and students are now in a line with everybody else, being on the receiving end of the worst aspects of this high-spending, high-taxing government.

I chair the Senate Select Committee on Scrutiny of New Taxes on behalf of the Senate. We have inquired into this tax. Of course, the Senate Select Committee on Scrutiny of New Taxes has been rather busy, because this government consistently comes up with yet another tax. As we started to inquire into this student tax, government senators on the committee were trying to argue that somehow this is not a tax. 'It's a fee,' they said. 'It's a fee for service.' A fee for service is payable when you access a service. A fee for service is something that you pay when you use the service. It is something you do not pay when you do not use the service. I draw senators' attention to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, which defines a tax as 'a charge, usually of money, imposed by legislative or other public authority upon persons or property for public purposes'. This is exactly what is happening here. It is a compulsory levy. It is a compulsory charge which is supposed to be imposed by legislation which has been put forward by this Labor green government, and it is to be payable irrespective of whether a service is accessed or not. It is supposedly a levy which will fund services provided for public purposes.

If the government think these services are so important, maybe they need to reprioritise some of their other spending. Maybe they need to reprioritise their spending on things like pink batts and—

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

School halls.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

school halls and all the other things that the government are so good at wasting money on. Maybe they need to have a look at their $350 billion budget and find some things that they can reprioritise so that they can fund the services that obviously senators on the Labor side and senators like Senator Hanson-Young think are so important. Why should all students have to pay for the services that Senator Hanson-Young values, irrespective of whether they access them or not? They should not. They should not be required to. This is the crux of this issue.

The Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010 does not introduce a fee-for-service arrangement. If it were a genuine fee-for-service arrangement, students would be offered choice about whether or not to access the service and pay for it. This is a compulsory levy imposed by socialist green government legislation, which the universities would be required to collect as tax collectors. Senators on the government side—Labor and Greens senators—have said universities support this. What a surprise. Universities are in this with the government. They are going to be the tax collectors collecting the tax and they are, of course, seeing a benefit in this for them.

Has anybody on the government side asked the students? Let me tell you what the students think about this. Out of the submissions received by our Senate Select Committee on Scrutiny of New Taxes, 89 per cent of students making a submission to the committee were opposed to this tax. Further, the Australian Democrats actually went out of their way, when this issue first came up, to survey students in their Australian Democrats Youth Poll. Maybe the Greens are so removed now from what happens on campus that they have lost touch with where students are at. Maybe Senator Hanson-Young should do a survey on campus to find out what students really want. Maybe Senator Hanson-Young needs to spend a bit more time on campus and ask students whether they want to pay another tax irrespective of whether they will access the services that are to be funded by it or not. The Australian Democrats Youth Poll 2008 showed that 59 per cent of those surveyed did not believe that voluntary student unionism legislation should be reversed. This is of course a broken promise, yet again. If it is such a good idea to slug students with another tax, if it is such a popular thing to do, if the services are so important, if they are going to be so valued, if this is such a great concept, why didn't the Labor government tell us before the 2007 election that this was something that they would do? In fact, this is what the shadow minister for education said at the time, when he was asked the question 'Are you planning to introduce compulsory student unionism? Are you looking at reversing the voluntary student unionism arrangements?'

No, well, firstly I am not considering a HECS style arrangement, I’m not considering a compulsory HECS style arrangement and the whole basis of the approach is one of a voluntary approach. So I am not contemplating a compulsory amenities fee.

There is a theme here. Why is it that the Labor Party before an election tells us that they are not going to introduce a tax and then after an election they do? Why is it that they keep deceiving people around Australia about what their true intentions are when it comes to taxes like this one?

Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Because they know the people will hate it.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Because they know that people will hate it. That is exactly right. Because, if they told people the truth before an election about their high-taxing intentions, their high taxing plans, they know that people would not support them. So this is where we are.

This is of course a tax that has been considered by the Senate before. This is a tax which has been voted down by the Senate before. This is a tax which has been put forward by the government before and has been rejected by the Senate before. The Senate should reject this tax again. Looking at the make-up of the chamber, I am not confident that the Senate will. Students across Australia will be on the receiving end of the Labor-Greens alliance which will come to play in this chamber. Students across Australia every year when they pay this tax should remember that this is a tax that has been imposed on them by Labor and Greens senators in this chamber. This is the Sarah Hanson-Young tax, because it is the Greens that are going to make sure that this bad tax will get through this chamber. I will walk up and down the campuses of Australia—

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Cormann, first of all perhaps you can direct your comments through me as the chair. The person you are referring to is a senator of this chamber, so you could refer to her as Senator Hanson-Young, thank you very much, while I am in the chair.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. I understand and accept. I do not think that Senator Hanson-Young was that concerned, by the way, about my description of this tax as a Senator Hanson-Young tax. I will make sure, in the years between now and the next election, that students across Australia know that it is Senator Hanson-Young and the Greens who ensured that this high-taxing Labor government was able to get this tax through the Senate, because coalition senators—Liberal Party and National Party senators—have stood firm against this latest tax slug from the current Australian Labor government, and we will continue to stand firm and protect freedoms and ensure lower taxes on student campuses.

Let us just make a few things clear. Voluntary student unionism has been an absolute success. Voluntary student unionism has not been about abolishing student unions—nothing of the sort. Student unions existed under compulsory student unionism; they continue to exist under voluntary student unionism. Student unions continue to be able to charge fees. They have got to demonstrate value. They have got to demonstrate that they have got a service that people actually want to buy. They have got to convince students that the things they stand for actually are the things that the students support.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, that's just a ridiculous argument.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Carol Brown is now interjecting, saying that this is just ridiculous. Senator Brown clearly does not understand what it is like to be forced to pay for something you do not support, to be forced to pay for something you do not access. If you are a financially struggling student, it is arrogant, it is offensive, it is completely inappropriate for a government like this one to force you to pay for something you do not value, you do not support and you will not access. Why should you? If those services are so important, if those services are going to be valued, one of two things can happen. Either they are such important public services that they will be provided by government—and many people in the community and indeed students can and will access those services through Centrelink, Legal Aid and various other government services that are available. If services provided to students on campus are not attractive enough, if they are not responding to a genuine need, then maybe they should not be provided. If they are attractive enough, if they are responding to a genuine need, then students will pay for them when they access the service.

It has been quite interesting listening to this debate. Senator Bilyk was saying that somehow we do not care about students because coffee on some campuses in Tasmania now costs $6. Some other senator said that drinks at the bar are now more expensive and food is no longer subsidised and is more expensive. The logical implication of your argument is that you want all the students who are not going to buy coffee at the student union, who are not going to go to the bar at the student union or who are not going to eat food at the student union to pay for it for those that will. The only way you can make it cheaper by having a compulsory levy is if you are working on the explicit assumption that there will be a whole bunch of students who are not going to go and buy a coffee or a drink or some food at this particular student-union-run coffee shop. That is the only way you can make it cheaper for those who will.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You were picked on at uni, weren't you?

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know the Labor Party is bad at maths, but not even Senator Conroy can be this bad at maths.

Senator Conroy interjecting—

Senator Carol Brown interjecting—

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senators!

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sorry he was picked on at university. I am. I apologise on behalf of us all.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Cormann, please continue. I am sure people will listen appropriately.

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wasn't picked on at university. I should have been, probably!

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Only by George!

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Cormann, I am not going to call you till I think other people are ready to listen. Senator CORMANN: Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. I totally agree with you. It is very important that other people listen, in particular Senator Conroy. I read in the media at the weekend that he is very influential with this government and maybe he can convince the Prime Minister that this is a really bad idea. Maybe he can do some work on the Prime Minister-in-waiting, Mr Bill Shorten. Isn't he your friend, the Prime Minister in waiting? Anyway, this is a very bad tax. This is a tax which will reduce student freedom of association and force students to pay for services they will not access. What is the problem that you are trying to fix?

In my home state of Western Australia, we have a great tradition when it comes to voluntary student unionism. There was a great government in Western Australia—the Court government—and in 1993 the education minister at the time, Norman Moore, introduced voluntary student unionism. So, university campuses in Western Australia have a longer tradition when it comes to voluntary student unionism, which means that university campuses in Western Australia were able to play under voluntary student unionism arrangements introduced by the Howard government. After voluntary student unionism was introduced in Western Australia the student unions had to restructure and change their focus. They actually had to provide services that people wanted. That is a novel thing—provide services that people want. They had to be responsive to genuine student needs. That is a pretty novel thing, isn't it, Senator Conroy.

Let us be clear. Not only is this a high taxing government which looks at students as just another target for its high-taxing ways, it is also a government that wants to do the bidding of its left-wing mates on student campuses. Its left-wing mates on student campuses are not able to raise their own money from students voluntarily. Unless you force people to pay to join one of these left-wing outfits, people will not join and will not pay. What do we do? 'We in government just happen to have a Labor-Green alliance in the Senate so let's use the opportunity to force students to pay this compulsory levy and that way we don't have to go through this pesky effort of trying to convince people that what we are doing is legitimate, that we are responding to a genuine need.'

Here was another one: some Labor senator during the debate said that voluntary student unionism was all about 'snuffing out student representation which was opposed to the conservative agenda of the Howard government'. It is nothing of the sort. I do not care what agenda the students pursue when they are on a university campus, and I am sure that Senator Conroy would have been very active in the Labor movement on campus. Great, that is fantastic. But I do not think that every other student who does not agree with his views should be forced to pay for it. Our government should not force students who do not agree with the views of students like the Senator Conroys of today, whether it is on the Australian National University campus or the University of Western Australia campus. I do not think that the Australian government should force students who do not agree with the Senator Conroys of today to pay a compulsory levy to fund his activities. They should not.

The government says there are all these safeguards and no, this cannot be used for political activity. The only thing for which student unions will be stopped from using this money is direct political campaigning for candidates to elections. You do not have to be Einstein to know that this is a gate that is so large that every single left-wing union representative and every single left-wing student will be able to walk through that in five seconds. You do not have to have a PhD in physics to know how you get through a gate that is that large. Everybody knows that there are different ways to skin a cat. You do not have to campaign for a candidate directly to pursue a political campaign.

Let me stress here again: students are entitled to pursue their political views, students are entitled to associate and organise themselves and campaign. Quite frankly, student associations are entitled in my view to campaign against sitting members of parliament, for somebody, against somebody, for a government, against a government—there is nothing wrong with that. But the Australian government should not be forcing others to pay for the activities of those students if others do not agree with them.

Senator Carol Brown interjecting—

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Carol Brown begs to differ. Senator Brown, on behalf of the government, does think that all students should pay for the activities of the few that happen to have a view that they do not agree with. That is the fundamental problem with this Labor-Green government. They abuse the power they have at present by being the Australian government. They abuse it to force all students across Australia to fund organisations for the few at the expense of the many.

Senator Mason very eloquently talked about the million or so higher education students, many of them do not even—

Senator CONROY: Time!

Senator CORMANN: I am sure that Senator Mason will move an extension of time, but I summarise: this is a bad tax from a bad government and of course the Senate should get on top of it. (Time expired)

Senator XENOPHON (South Australia) (20:44): I rise to speak on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010. I was just warming to Senator Cormann's speech. That does not mean I agreed with it, but I was just beginning to warm to it. I thought I should outline a brief history of voluntary student unionism in the context and then set out my views on this. It is important that we distinguish between what has been very much an ideological debate and one in which we need to have a practical outcome. This is what this bill intends to achieve. When voluntary student unionism was introduced by the Howard government in 2005 it had a number of practical and quite drastic effects. I think they were acknowledged by the Howard government when it provided $100 million of transitional funding to universities through three competitive funding programs. The VSU Transition Fund for Sporting and Recreational Facilities allocated $85 million for 44 projects, the small business and regional campuses fund allocated $5 million for 19 projects and the regional university sports program provided $10 million over four years to Australian University Sport. I think that is a concession on the part of the Howard government that there were going to be quite significant impacts on campus life.

The problem here is that the Australasian Campus Union Managers Association and the Australian Union of Students concluded that the grants available in the VSU transition funds 'do not address the shortfalls in recurrent funding and provide only temporary respite from the pressing capital needs of the sector'. That is the key to this. The fact that the Howard government provided $100 million in transitional funding was an acknowledgement that this was going to have a profound impact on students and campus life, but it was just a stopgap measure. The transitional funding did not address the fundamental problem of not having recurrent funding for these activities.

These are the very sorts of activities that I think this bill will address in a fairer and more structured way. The opposition say it is unreasonable to go down this path, that it is unreasonable to fund these sorts of activities, but they are the very activities that the Howard government funded with its transitional fund. There is some flawed logic or some convenient overlooking of facts in this case. The Howard government acknowledged that those activities ought to be funded, but the Australasian Campus Union Managers Association is absolutely correct in saying that there is not sufficient recurrent funding for these activities. The opposition should acknowledge that these are activities that the former coalition government funded but did not fund on an adequate long-term basis.

The impact of VSU on campuses has been quite profound. A principal of a smaller tertiary institution in South Australia has told me how profound the impact has been on student life on his campus. I think it is important to acknowledge the impact this has had on regional universities throughout the country. It is clear that smaller and regional universities and campuses have been most profoundly affected. The consultations that the Hon. Kate Ellis undertook as Minister for Youth in February 2008 indicated:

While a 'user‐pays' model worked for some services (e.g. food and beverage outlets), it was reported that this type of delivery commonly resulted in increased costs to individual students.

Not having a well-administered VSU lends itself to all sorts of inefficiencies and distortions. This is the best and fairest way of dealing with these issues so we do not have those anomalies and distortions. The consultation on VSU that the minister undertook in February 2008 also indicated:

… VSU had commonly resulted in an increase in fees, which had led to a decrease in the number of clubs and/or in club membership.

It is also important to look at the impact VSU has had on student amenities and services. This bill does not actually propose to reintroduce student union fees. I think it has been criticised by the Greens for not going far enough. They said that the bill is quite conservative in its approach to dealing with these matters. For instance, these funds are not controlled by student unions per se. But to the government's credit and to the credit of the Australian Greens and Senator Hanson-Young, who has pushed this point, there will be consultation requirements for higher education providers in the representation guidelines. Higher education providers will be required to have a formal process of consultation with the democratically elected student representatives—and the emphasis has to be on 'democratically elected' student representatives. So there will be a level of consultation, as I think is appropriate.

Higher education providers also need to provide details of the identified priorities for the proposed fee expenditure and to allow an opportunity for students to comment on those priorities. There must be regular meetings or a process for the student organisations to meet with those who are making decisions about the expenditure of funds. They are quite modest measures that do not go as far as I think the Australian Greens have requested—that the funds should be controlled directly by student unions. So this is a fairly conservative approach, a softly-softly approach from the government in dealing with this issue. The issue is the impact that VSU has had on campus life and campus amenities.

I think it is also important to look at the views of the Nationals. Before he became leader, my friend and colleague Senator Barnaby Joyce, now the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate, raised concerns about the ideological nature of this debate. He raised concerns about how country students who played sport had been punished. He said there was some sympathy from Nationals senators about the adverse consequences of VSU and the need to have them addressed. That is important.

The issue as to whether the fees should be compulsory is, of course, one that has driven much ideological debate. But this is about how you administer something for members of a campus and the most efficient, effective and fair way of providing student services which all students should be entitled to.

The fact that the fee is in the order of $250 per year, or capped at that, is quite significant. The government has taken a median approach when it comes to these fees. I think it is interesting that the Australian Liberal Students Federation is concerned that:

There are numerous student organisations that are political in nature that will be eligible to receive monies compulsorily acquired from students, as the majority of political groups on campus would not meet these requirements.

But it seems:

… the Australian Liberal Students' Federation will not be prevented from obtaining money from a student organisation, as it is not a political party per se.

So it will be interesting to see if the Australian Liberal Students' Federation will be seeking to obtain funds under this. If they do, I will not criticise them for it.

I think it is also worth reflecting on the very ideological nature of this debate. A lifelong member of the Australian Liberal Students' Federation did point out how philosophical and ideological this debate has been. It is worth looking at the alternative. The alternative is to go back to the system with the piecemeal, ad hoc approach of the Howard government of having a lump sum that is completely inadequate to deal with these issues. I know that it is not cheap to be a student these days. Most students juggle a part-time job, if not two, with study, and so the very suggestion of a compulsory fee is off-putting for many. However, for me, it comes down to: what do we want a university to be? Do we want it to be a case of students just turning up for lectures and tutorials and then leaving, or do we want it to be a time when young Australians learn skills, participate in activities and facilitate opportunities which will help them in the future? Ultimately, higher education has to be about more than just lectures and textbooks.

I supported this legislation when it was debated in the last parliament and I made a contribution at that time on 17 August 2009 where I referred to my youthful indiscretion as a Young Liberal on campus. We all make mistakes!

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is the only time you did anything good, Nick!

Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Abetz says that was the only time when I did anything good, and that may be the view of quite a few in this chamber! I will not restate what I said back then. I think it is going too far when orientation programs are dropped, student academic advocacy is stalled, regional students are disadvantaged and counselling services are cancelled—and they have been. Recent university graduates have told me that they have literally caught the train to uni for a lecture and then, as soon as it was over, caught the train back home. Young people no longer engage in their university's theatre group, sports team, international exchange group or debating team. On the less social side, who will students turn to if they need counselling or support without the amenities that these fees will allow for? Without these sorts of resources, what sort of university life do we want students to have?

I do believe it is important that if students are asked to pay that they can be assured that what they pay goes into student services and not university coffers. I understand that the government has amended its guidelines to ensure this and this has been supported by universities. I believe that the future of our students, our universities and our nation deserves nothing less than a vibrant and vigorous higher education sector and I believe the end of the VSU and the passage of this legislation is a positive step in this direction.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the first bills introduced by the Gillard government was to get rid of student choice, to get rid of voluntary student unionism. It seems that the greatest moral challenge of our time, climate change, could take second place in relation to this vitally important issue of forcing students back into compulsion! This bill seeks to reimpose compulsory student unionism. They say that a rose by any other name smells just as sweet. Compulsory student unionism by any other name still stinks.

There is no doubt that there has been and there will be a huge financial impost for students in relation to this compulsory student unionism. The reason I can say that is that the government, in lockstep with introducing compulsion, has introduced a loan program so that students can actually borrow money to pay this compulsory fee and then pay it off once they are working. Guess who advocates for this besides the financial beneficiaries of the Greens and the Labor Party? Surprisingly, it is the Australasian Campus Union Managers' Association! What Ms Ellis did in a consultation period was consult all sorts of people other than individual students. They are the ones who will be affected by this but, no, the government consulted the managers because they are the ones who will grow their empires and as a result be able to command higher wages.

The simple fact is that, once it was made voluntary, students were the masters of their own destinies. Students determined that which was saleable on campus and that which was not. It was a pretty simple proposition. If it was a value-for-money product, students joined. If it was not, they did not join and they withdrew.

As I said, Ms Ellis undertook a review in 2008. Here we are some three years later. It is interesting that we will not have the opportunity of a three-year review in relation to the carbon tax. But the review allegedly found fewer services and—horror!—forced rationalisation. How on earth could we allow rationalisation of student amenities and services and ensuring that there was some cost benefit in relation to those services?

But also in this review, with respect to Senator Xenophon and other commentators in this area, we have this arrogant and patronising approach which unfortunately gives expression to the collectivist dogma—'We are talking about the lessening vibrancy and diversity and attractiveness of university life.'

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What rubbish!

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolute rubbish, Senator Fifield? How is it that these outside people can determine the attractiveness of university life? You make university more attractive by charging them a compulsory student fee! Let us ask ourselves some fundamental questions. Did the number of enrolments in university go down as a result of voluntary student unionism? We know the answer to that is no, it did not. So how on earth can you assert that it detracted from the attractiveness of university life? Indeed, more students went to university during this era than ever before.

Government senators interjecting—

You cannot assert that that is the case. We can have a look at the value of the degrees. Are we saying that university degrees that have been awarded over the last six years are somehow of less value?

Senator Carol Brown interjecting—

I could just imagine Senator Carol Brown facing a surgeon, saying, 'I am not sure if I want you to operate on me. Can you please tell me whether you got your degree during the voluntary student unionism era, because your university degree was not quite as robust as it otherwise might be.' Or facing a legal challenge and going to a barrister saying, 'I want to make sure that you only got your degree during an era of compulsory student unionism, because I'm not sure your education would be quite as robust as others.

Senator Carol Brown interjecting—

Of course, even Senator Carol Brown has to laugh at that, because that shows the ludicrousness of the situation. We are told that democracy is somehow impeded by giving people a choice. My goodness, that is really politburo stuff, that you have to have compulsion to enjoy democracy. Then we go on to be told that we need these societies and clubs. I remember, back in my day there was the chocolate fanciers club and the aardvark club. Why did they have all these clubs?

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Chocolate Appreciation Society!

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Exactly, the Chocolate Appreciation Society. The only reason they existed was to tap into the compulsory student union fee and rip out as much as they possibly could. One of the worst features of compulsory student unionism is that it is like a poll tax: every single student has to pay an equal amount, irrespective of their capacity to pay. The poorest student will pay exactly the same student union fee as the richest student. That is the Labor Party and the Greens view of social justice when it comes to coming to campus.

I remember that, when the coalition first promoted the idea of voluntary student unionism, the Australian Vice-Chancellors Association came before a Senate committee. We were told about all the important things that compulsory student unionism did—in fact, some of the matters raised by Senator Xenophon—it prepared them for leadership, it made them better citizens and so the vice-chancellors' representative waxed lyrical. My colleagues were kind enough to let me ask the first few questions. I asked the representative: if all these matters are so vitally important, could he advise the committee whether to get a university degree it was compulsory to play sport? Answer: no. Was it compulsory to join a society? Answer: no. Was it compulsory to vote at student union elections? Answer: no. Was it compulsory to read the student newspaper? Answer: no. Was it compulsory to go to the student dances, to the uni bar or to the refectory? No, no, no. So, in the end, I asked the vice-chancellors' representative: what is the only thing that you therefore require of a student to get their degree if you do not require them to partake in all these things that you said were so vitally important to a student's education? Do you know that the only thing that was required was the payment of the fee? All the rest is window dressing. The students of Australia know that. They know the bunkum of this.

Government senators interjecting—

They know the bunkum of this because they have decided, by their own choice, not to join in these circumstances where they do not believe they are getting value for money. One place where they are getting value for money, as Senator Mason would know, is at the University of Queensland. The University of Queensland union is one of the few student unions willing to say to the student public: 'We are so confident in that which we provide to our students, that they will join.' What is more, they have proven that they can exist without a compulsory fee and they do so exceptionally well. Why is it that some universities can and some universities cannot? The reason is the product that they provide to the students. That of course is the very big difference.

Government senators interjecting—

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Abetz, I am sorry to interrupt you, but I remind senators in the chamber that, while they are allowed, interjections need to be orderly and measured.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President, I thank you for your intervention. I can understand that the Labor Party feels sensitive about this, because it is desperate for this legislation to get through, because it will also, without doubt, be the financial beneficiary of some of the money that will be compulsorily acquired from students.

I remember, and students have told me, that the ski club at the University of Tasmania got heavy subsidies from the student union. What is more, which were the students that were able to afford to go skiing during the holidays? Those from a wealthy background. It was the wealthy students who could milk the extra money out of the poorer students to get a subsidy for their skiing holiday, whilst the poorer students had to work holiday jobs so the richer ones could go skiing. That is the sort of social injustice that the Labor Party, the Greens and others will be foisting upon the student population of our country. As somebody who drove taxis and who worked as a farm hand during university holidays, I have some sympathy for those students who feel the pain of having to pay a student union fee for services that they do not want. I can understand the pain of those part-time students. Senator Xenophon referred to the fact that students nowadays go to university for lectures and tutorials and then leave campus. The old days when you had to be on campus for all your activities—educational and social—are well and truly gone. We now have students who do university degrees online. They do not even set foot on campus, but you can bet your bottom dollar they will be paying the compulsory student union fee.

We have had a number of submissions about this issue. A number of people comment on these matters, such as—just at random—Sheradyn Holderhead from the Adelaide Advertiser, who starts off her article:

Campus culture … could be back in South Australia's universities as early as next year.

To these people I say: what arrogance and what nonsense. Is there no culture today in South Australian universities? Does anybody actually believe that there is no culture? But we are told recklessly, 'Campus culture could be back in South Australia as early as next year.' That is the sort of nonsense they have to dress compulsion up with because they do not have a rational or proper argument to put forward. Why does the payment of a compulsory fee automatically mean that somehow a culture is reinstituted? The only culture that will come to the campuses of South Australia is the culture of compulsion—a culture to which we on this side of the chamber object to very strongly.

In same article, the University of Adelaide Vice-Chancellor said:

Under the present arrangements, the University has diverted funds from other core business areas to ensure services are available to support students.

A lot of people have made that argument. What they never tell us is from where those funds are being diverted. What would they actually be spending the money on if they were not allegedly paying extra money to support students? That is always a blank. They never advise that they would be holding another course in Japanese if they were not doing this. Would they? Of course not. Once again it is all hyperbole that is never backed up by any substance.

We had the same from the Vice-Chancellor of UniSA, not to be confused with the University of South Australia, who said:

Improved student services will result in a higher quality of student engagement and experience in the short term.

Can he explain to the people of Australia how the payment by students of a $250 compulsory fee will result in a 'higher quality of student engagement'? Once again, they are just words thrown out. It sounds good, but when you ask them, 'What does it actually mean?' there is no substance behind the empty rhetoric. There are no arguments being put forward other than that, somehow, campus culture and campus life has suffered. Where is the study, where is the evidence to suggest that the university degrees of the past five or so years are of any less value than those that were obtained during the compulsory era?

Senator Xenophon told us in his speech that higher education was more than just text books and lectures. If that is the case, and he actually believes it, then there should be a compulsory element to university degrees which says you cannot get your arts degree or your medical degree unless you have played a sport, or unless you can shown that you have attended at least 20 student union meetings in your day, or that you have read the student newspaper cover to cover, or that you have drunk half-a-dozen beers every week at the uni bar. But until such time as that becomes an integral part of obtaining your degree, the only thing that remains an integral part of one's degree is the payment of the compulsory fee.

Then we were told by Senator Xenophon that it is a pity that O-Day, as in orientation day activities, no longer exists. I do not know in what universe Senator Xenophon exists in relation to this matter, but I know that at the University of Tasmania, at the ANU and at universities all over the country there are orientation days and the various university Liberal clubs around the country busily sign up new members. I am sure Senator Rhiannon will be able to tell us that the Greens also sign up members on O-Day or during O-Week—the orientation period. To suggest that that has gone from campus is an absolute nonsense, because self-interest of all the clubs will of necessity demand that they be present there at the beginning of the year to sign up as many members as possible. The only difference is that it will be voluntary money, voluntary fees, and those who want to be part of the Greens will contribute and those who want to be part of the Liberal movement will join and pay for it; they will not use the subsidised moneys from other students who only want to get a university degree.

The culture of university life has changed dramatically over the years, and the concept of a compulsory fee, a compulsory levy, is anathema to the students. Universities have shown they can operate very successfully without the need for a compulsory fee. We can have vice-chancellors and we can have all sorts of other people saying why they want compulsory fees, but they never tell us why any of the activities which are funded by these compulsory fees are compulsory for obtaining your university degree, and that is where it falls down. I was never in the league for a Rhodes Scholarship, but I understand that for a Rhodes Scholarship you actually have to show not only academic prowess but also sporting and other prowess. If that becomes part of the university culture, so be it. But of course if it were to become part of the culture then all the universities that are now promoting online studying—the fact that you do not have to go to campus, that you can simply do it on line, attend virtual lectures et cetera—will of course be doing themselves out of business and I think doing a great disservice to future student generations.

The coalition has had a very strong, firm position in relation to this. I conclude on this. Mr Smith, when he was minister for education, promised that there would never be a loans scheme in relation to compulsory student unionism. Another promise, like the no carbon tax promise, has been broken and discarded like a soiled tissue by this government. The coalition remains committed to student choice.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the proposed Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010. Today we have seen legislation introduced into this place by the Gillard government that will see students taxed an extra $250 a year for services they do not want and cannot afford. Another day, another tax, another attack on the youth of this nation by the Greens-Labor coalition. While the political hacks on the government benches get excited by the return of such draconian laws, students around the nation wonder tonight where they will find the money to front such fees.

It is a great day for all those in the Labor ranks who worked their way up through the radical student wing of the ALP, who spent their youth protesting this or that while others bothered to work hard and attend classes. It is a great day for that bastion of anti-Semitism and bias, the National Union of Students, who know their profligate ways and days of big spending are about to return. Indeed, one Labor staffer was seen crowing today on Facebook that this legislation represented the first step on the march to universal compulsory unionism, and that is what this is all about for the Labor Party—an unbridled commitment to the socialist collective and the destruction of individual choice and freedom.

I find it strange that in the same week that one of the biggest health unions in the country, the HSU, walked away from the ALP, the ALP are trying to force unionism on every single one of the nation's one million university students. I stand opposed to this bill because I believe in the fundamental right of free association. I do not believe, as the Labor and Greens parties do, that students should be forced to pay for services that they neither want nor want to use.

Under this proposed legislation every single one of Australia's one million students will be forced to pay $250 per year to their union. This is regardless of their ability to pay or their desire to use the services they are being forced to fund. This bill represents yet another great big new tax, this time on a demographic that can least afford it. This great big new tax will total $250 million a year—far greater than the $170 million that was compulsorily levied on students in the last year of compulsory student unionism in 2005. This poll tax will be levied on those in our society who can least afford to pay it. This is just another hit to students, who are already struggling in a tough economic climate to make ends meet. This legislation means that they now have to find an extra $250 a year just to stay enrolled in their degree.

For years members of the Howard government toiled to extend the freedom of voluntary student unionism to all Australian tertiary students. We finally achieved this in 2005. The abolition of compulsory student fees has since that time saved students an average of $320 a year. Since the election of the Rudd government in 2007 we have fought hard to prevent this great big new tax. I note that this bill marks the third attempt by this government to impose a compulsory poll tax on students since its election. I also note that, true to form, this represents yet another broken election promise, yet another example of where the Labor government promised not to introduce a tax before the election, only to change its mind once they were elected. This is not good enough.

Those who sit opposite have made all sorts of claims about the desperate state of student unions and university life since the introduction of VSU in 2005. Courtesy of the Australian Liberal Students Federation, I happen to have some facts with me this evening. Can I place on the record my congratulations to the ALSF and also to the Young Liberal Movement for their defence of freedom of association in this country. I would like to address some of the myths that have been promulgated by those opposite.

Myth No. 1: voluntary student unionism has made student organisations lose money. Fact: student organisations that are losing money are those that are typically providing services that are not popular with students. For example, I understand RMIT's student union is just one of those unions that like to cry poor about VSU, but rather than dedicating resources to student advocacy programs they instead have wasted countless dollars on the expensive anticapitalist media program Blazing Textbooks, a radical radio program aired every Saturday morning on 3CR.

Myth No. 2: student services have been decimated since the introduction of voluntary student unionism. Fact: student unions continue to prosper right around the country. Services that are popular with students remain in operation. Rationalisation of services was always to be expected with the introduction of voluntary student unionism, but those services which remain popular with students are still available. If student unions were actually focused on providing services that were relevant to students, membership would undoubtedly be much higher than it is today. Myth No. 3: the government's compulsory amenities fee will make university more equitable for students. Fact: it is my great fear that Labor's $250 amenities fee will in fact increase inequity among university students because it is levied regardless of a student's income. This is a regressive tax and there are no provisions within this legislation to assist low-income students or those from Indigenous or disadvantaged backgrounds. Further still, as my colleague Senator Ryan pointed out earlier this evening, the legislation specifically states that this fee is to be paid regardless of whether the student intends or in fact is able to use the services provided.

Myth No. 4: student life suffers because student unions do not have enough money to fund clubs and societies on campus. Fact: it would seem that whenever student politicians are given the chance to fund either clubs or societies on campus or fund political activities they invariably choose to fund their political activities instead. I highlight the University of Melbourne union that recently reported that it was forced to cut the clubs and societies budget by $18,000 so that it could afford to pay an extra $15,000 to the National Union of Students.

Myth No. 5: this legislation prevents student funds being spent on political activity. Fact: there are insufficient means in this legislation to prevent student organisations wasting money on political campaigns. While sections 19 to 38 set forth guidelines on the appropriate use of funds, there is insufficient scope for the government to enforce such provisions. There are scores of political organisations that are not covered by sections 19 to 38 in this legislation and it is inevitable that student funds will end up in the hands of political activists.

Myth No. 6: VSU has somehow made university more expensive for students. Fact: voluntary student unionism has resulted in huge savings for students who now have the choice to join their union or not. Students who deem their membership of their student union not to be value for money save hundreds of dollars a year. Voluntary student unionism was not about destroying student unions but rather about making them stronger and more affordable. I am told that on average membership of student unions is now $246 cheaper under the current situation than it was in 2005.

Universities have changed significantly over the past few decades. Today, universities are not centres of elitism, but rather mainstream institutions that service a broad cross-section of society. We have seen a demographic shift in the typical university student over time. More mature aged students now attend university and many more students now study part-time, often balancing work and family commitments. Further still, there is much greater flexibility today in learning than ever before with many students choosing to study via distance education, and this legislation makes no provision for that.

This legislation also makes no provision for the 130,000 students studying externally. While these students may never set foot on the campus they are enrolled in, they will still be forced to pay this poll tax. For many students higher education is about just that, education. It is about obtaining a degree—qualifications that will equip them for the real world.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We know that you were a student radical.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not about chalking up the so-called university experience on their personal development CV. Fundamentally at the core of this legislation is a restriction of the freedom of individuals, of grown adults, to determine their right of association. Just as we come here to work and not to socialise, students increasingly see university as a place to gain an education, not to fill in their free time.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are blushing, Connie; what clubs were you in?

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Conroy, I can only imagine what you did at university.

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Obviously not very much.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Obviously not very much, Senator Mason. Not enough.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Come on, what clubs were you in? Come on, fess up.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Generation Y is less committed to the collective and they are less committed to their student union. Students themselves, unlike student politicians, are not interested in student unions or the services student unions provide. In the recent inquiry into this bill Arabella Haddon-Casey put it like this:

The vast majority of students do not have a clue that the government is considering imposing compulsory fees upon them. If it were such a big issue, surely students around the country would be demanding compulsory service fees.

A survey conducted by the Australian Democrats found that 59 per cent of students were against compulsory fees. I am told on average only five per cent of students ever vote in student union elections. The number of individuals who currently opt to join their student union and pay the required fees is similarly small. The only logical conclusion one could possibly deduce from this is that the majority of students simply do not want to pay the relevant fees.

There are many services and activities that are currently provided by the unions that are mostly superfluous. They already exist and are being provided by the universities themselves, by the government or by the non-government voluntary sector. Many of them are free, others are heavily subsidised and all of them are available to university students without any prejudice or discrimination.

When people outside of university need help they go to Centrelink, or legal aid or any number of non-government organisations such as Lifeline. When people outside of university are interested in a pastime, an activity or a sport, they join a club to pursue that pastime, activity or sport together, and they all contribute money to the common pool towards their club or association. Students do not want to be treated differently from everyone else. Outside of the university, they certainly would not expect that everyone in their suburb should be forced to pay a levy or a tax so that they can enjoy beer appreciation or rugby union.

Senator Joyce interjecting—

No, nothing wrong with that, Senator Joyce, but I am sure people do not want to be forced to pay the levy or the tax. In the end, if clubs or services offered on campus are deemed valuable they will earn the patronage of students without any compulsion.

The system remains open to political abuse. Our concern is that it is devoid of effective enforcement mechanisms. We are concerned about the effective enforcement of this legislation. While the bill prohibits universities or other third parties that might receive money from spending it in support of political parties or political candidates, there is nothing to prevent the money being spent on political campaigns, political causes or quasi-political organisation as such, whether students whose money is being spent agree with that or not.

Even with the prohibition on direct support for political parties and candidates, we have to consider how this prohibition can actually be policed. The legislation offers no credible enforcement provisions, and no effective sanction mechanisms are provided for. The bill simply states that it is up to the universities to ensure that the moneys are not spent on political parties and candidates. In the absence of providing universities with any powers to enforce this, it really is a hollow prohibition.

Regrettably, this is compulsory student unionism by stealth. This bill attempts to reimpose a compulsory fee which may in turn fund the activities of student unions. In the past, student unions have proven themselves to be very adept at being creative and using profits from 'allowable' activities to effectively act to cross-subsidise activities where direct funding has been disallowed.

Allow me to deviate to provide an example. In my electorate in the Illawarra I have had occasion to see the University of Wollongong, a very fine establishment, progress to become one of Australia's top universities. Following the passage of the legislation in 2005, the establishment of the Voluntary Student Unionism Transition Fund saw the University of Wollongong receive funds for a multipurpose indoor sports facility of $4.6 million. It also saw a medical services hub for $405,000 and the allocation of funds for a village green oval development project of $2 million.

What has this done? During that time there was a lot of talk about how services on campuses would fold, but this is a very practical example of funds being allocated under the Voluntary Student Unionism Transition Fund to a university to benefit not just the university but also to the community. One only has to attend the University of Wollongong on any day of the week to see how much the multipurpose indoor sports facility, the medical services hub and the village green are being used not just by the university community but also by the wider community in the Illawarra. I was very pleased that the University of Wollongong received such funding following the establishment of the fund. The coalition was very supportive of this university, as indeed we were of other universities. If I am not mistaken, only the University of New England received greater funding.

I will conclude my remarks by saying that the coalition is about freedom of association. We are about allowing people the freedom to not have to join an association. That remains one of the core beliefs of the coalition. Again, this is an act of compulsory student unionism by stealth. I commend those organisations that have fought and fought hard to oppose compulsory student unionism and know that the coalition stands with you on this issue.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President—

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ooh! They are baying at the moon tonight! They have them all out.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sorry, Senator Conroy. Perhaps you should go back to whatever party you have been to.

I also want to contribute to this debate. I had not actually listed myself as a speaker, but Senator Bilyk's remarks earlier encouraged me to take part. Senator Bilyk was trying to suggest to the Senate that the coalition was involved in some sort of conspiracy. She suggested that we are opposed to this sort of legislation and student unions because all of the student unions were won by the Left of Australian politics. She was suggesting that that was one of the reasons why the coalition does not support this legislation. I want to start my presentation by paying tribute to the members of the Young Liberal National Party in Queensland who, under the name 'Fresh', their corporate campaigning name at the University of Queensland, won something like—and I do not have these figures before me—59 of the 64 positions on the student union council at the University of Queensland at the last election. And this was the second year in a row in which members of the Fresh group, many of whom are part of the Young Liberal National Party in Queensland, have swept the pool at one of the biggest universities in Australia and certainly one of the sandstone universities. For Senator Bilyk to suggest that we were opposed to this sort of legislation because we did not like the way that student unions were going politically is shown to come out of the completely myopic view that the Labor Party has of the world.

I want to pay credit to those young people in Brisbane who have put the University of Queensland student union in its current form on the straight and narrow, one might to say. For years, politicians from the Left in Queensland, like Anna Bligh and Andrew Fraser, the current Premier and Deputy Premier—and, I suspect, although I cannot say this with any confidence, Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd were also part of them—have come out of the University of Queensland Labor Left groups that ran the student union for many years. Indeed, the student union at the University of Queensland was shown to be simply a training ground for future Labor politicians. How things have changed. Almost all of the positions on the University of Queensland student union are held by students who have a sensible view on life and who have chosen to join the Young Liberal National Party of Queensland. They have clearly shown that the young people of today understand that the old leftie-socialist regime that used to run student unions in Australian universities is gone.

While I am giving credit to the current group of sensible young people who have taken an active interest in the operation of the services at their university, I also mention with some pride that a few years ago at James Cook University in Townsville, a university of which I am very proud and which is doing great things in many areas but which is particularly recognised for its marine science courses and research, was one of those universities at which the students said, 'We are not going to be part of a left-wing push for students to be forced to pay money so that they can use it to channel into Labor Party propaganda.' Students got involved, got active and had similar sorts of successes to those that the young people at the University of Queensland have achieved in recent times.

These examples put the lie to the Labor argument that these student unions or student groupings have become of no further effect because of the voluntary student union legislation that the Howard government introduced. As previous speakers on our side have said, we believe that it is very important for students to have a choice as to whether they join the union or not. This legislation is the thin end of the wedge in going back to the bad old days of Anna Bligh and Mr Fraser in Queensland and other luminaries when you were forced to join the union. Having been forced to join the union and contribute your money, the union then spent your money on campaigns to support the Australian Labor Party at various elections.

Senator Bilyk said a few things that reminded me of my early days. I am perhaps one of the few in this chamber who has never actually attended a university. I did my university studies many years ago—regrettably, too many years ago—externally while working during the day as an articled clerk. I still remember that in those days I had to pay university fees to get tuition from the University of Queensland. I could not afford to attend the university and was not bright enough to get a scholarship, I have to confess. But it irked me that even back in those days I was forced to join the student union. For the quite considerable amount that I paid—and the amount that I paid for union membership was more than the amount that I used to have to pay for course fees—I used to get two copies of Semper Floreat, the university magazine, every year.

That perhaps has always directed my thinking a little bit on this particular issue of voluntary student unionism. I was not part of the wealthy lot and was not part of the group who are supported by the unions or other scholarships to get to university. But I had to pay this money. The union in those days did absolutely nothing for me except produce a couple of editions of a newspaper every year, which I used to throw away as soon as I received them.

I concur with my colleagues in this debate that this sort of legislation is the thin end of the wedge in bringing back compulsory student union fees. As I understand it, under this bill every one of Australians one million students will be forced to pay $250 per year, regardless of their ability to pay and their ability or willingness to use the services that their fees will be financing. I am very concerned about the effect of enforcement of this legislation. Whilst, as I understand it, the bill prohibits universities or any third parties that may receive money from spending it in support of political parties or political candidates, there is nothing to prevent the money being spent on political campaigns, political causes or quasi-political organisations per se, whether students whose money is being spent agree with it or do not. I mentioned the cases of the University of Queensland and James Cook University. Perhaps it would suit my federal political goals if they were able to collect this money and spend it on political campaigns, because perhaps they would spend it on ensuring the return of the next Abbott government. Even in spite of this attraction, I can understand that there would be many students paying those fees who would not support Mr Abbott, me and other politicians from the Liberal and National side of federal politics, and their funds should not be collected by a central group and used in a campaign that is contrary to their wishes. So it does not matter which side of the political fence you come from; it is important that young people are not forced to pay money that is collected and used by a ruling group of people to campaign for someone else.

In the case of the current holders of office at the University of Queensland I am quite sure they would not use the money for political campaigns, were this legislation to be passed. But, regardless of that, history shows over many years that when student unions have been controlled by the Left of politics they have used these compulsory funds to support political organisations that a fair percentage of the union membership did not support.

One of the greatest political issues of the day is the question of trust in government. All of us remember that well before the last election, and indeed just before the last election, our current Prime Minister, Ms Gillard—Prime Minister for a little while anyhow—promised solemnly to every Australian, to every student in every university in Australia, that there would be no carbon tax under a government she led. This was very important to young people, because, as we all know, young people at university do not have a lot of money. They were very concerned that a carbon tax would add to the cost of living—it would add to their rent and to daily living expenses that they could not afford. So, they were quite relaxed before the last election when both Mr Abbott, on behalf of the coalition, and Ms Gillard, on behalf of the Australian Labor Party, solemnly promised every one of those students that there would be no carbon tax under a government she led.

Had this sort of legislation we are debating today been in force, in those universities with student unions controlled by the Left of Australian politics that money may have been used to support various political campaigns. In some universities—not, I am pleased to say, in Queensland—they probably would have used it to support Ms Gillard with her Labor Party campaign. They could have done it on the basis that, even if they did elect Ms Gillard, they knew there would be no carbon tax, so their cost of living would not go up. But, lo and behold, as we all know, because it is now a matter of history, the carbon tax that Ms Gillard promised would not occur—the carbon tax that will increase the living costs of every university student around Australia—is being introduced in the next week of this Senate sitting. The money that students may well have contributed under this particular legislation before us—

Debate interrupted.