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

I rise to speak on the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019. We all know university can be a stressful time. There can be pressures both internal and external to do well. Expectations of parents, the high cost of courses and a highly competitive job market weigh on the minds of most students. In particular, there can be additional pressures on international students whose parents and extended family may have expended significant resources to get them here. However, cheating is never justified.

Businesses that seek to leverage the stress and anxiety of students to provide cheating services are not just acting dishonestly; they are also doing enormous damage to our university sector as a whole. University students, both domestic and international, need to know that when they make the largest investment of their young lives they are investing in a quality product which is untainted by scandal and deliberate attempts to deceive, because every time a student gets away with cheating, they devalue the qualifications of all those who have graduated from that institute of higher learning. They in fact devalue the institution itself and they devalue Australia's higher education sector more broadly. In my home state of Tasmania the University of Tasmania have leveraged their quality education with the liveability of the cities of Hobart, Launceston and Burnie to bring income into our state. Education has become a real export industry in the same way that exporting our raw products and manufactured goods is. Nationally in 2014-15 the Australian Bureau of Statistics valued exports from international education at—

Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Bilyk. You'll be in continuance.