Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, let me thank the member for Rankin for his contribution on the Student Assistance Legislation Amendment Bill 2005. I sat earlier this morning and listened to the member for Jagajaga, the shadow spokesperson, give her speech in this second reading debate. I was attracted to many aspects of that, and I will come to those in a moment. I also heard the member for Maranoa make his contribution. I must say that, oddly, there were some aspects of his contribution that I was quite supportive of, but I hope he reads his contribution and reflects upon it, in terms of not only this legislation but his government’s own position on education, particularly for those people who live in geographically isolated communities and other communities in rural and remote Australia where educational access is an issue.

I note that, in his contribution, the member for Maranoa referred to the need to provide access to affordable education for students, regardless of where they live. I am personally very attracted to that proposition. My electorate, the seat of Lingiari, covers all of the Northern Territory, except Darwin and its immediate environment around Palmerston. It covers 1.34 million square kilometres. It has a very widely dispersed population, and the issue of education is high on the agenda of the community.

Whether people live in small Indigenous communities spread, as they are, widely across the electorate, whether they live on Christmas Island, which is part of the electorate, or the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, whether they live in a small town like Borroloola, Tennant Creek or Alice Springs, or whether they live on a pastoral lease in the Northern Territory, education is high on the list of concerns that people have.

As the member for Rankin pointed out, as a result of the government’s attitude to, and its policies on, higher education, we have seen a drop-off in student numbers as reflected in the enrolments for last year. The affordability of education is of grave concern, particularly for those of us who live away from metropolitan centres—and even there it is cause for grave concern as well.

We heard the member for Rankin refer to the issue of full fee paying students and the penchant of universities, because of their need for funding, for full fee paying students so that they can provide the resources required to run their institutions. I had a conversation with a person only last week whose son or daughter was applying to go to university this year. They had achieved a TER score of around 93.8 per cent—a very good score—and had applied to go to Melbourne university. When that person did not get a first round offer for the course, they received a second round offer. When their parent rang the university, they discovered that the second round offer required full fees to be paid. The second round offer was conditional on the student paying full fees. I understand that this is not an isolated occurrence. It has happened at more than one university, but this instance was a major cause of concern to that parent and no doubt to the student.

This indicates that students with a very high tertiary entrance ranking, as in this case, are unable to get their first course option. They are offered a second option at the same university, provided they pay full fees. That is unfair, it is unreasonable and it is un-Australian, but it is happening today in the contemporary environment and it has been brought upon us by the way in which the government has developed and implemented policies on higher education. This young person lived in a capital city. How much more difficult is it for people who live away from home, away from their communities, because they have to travel to a higher education institution? How much more difficult is it if they need the assistance of their parents, not only to provide them with accommodation but also to address the cost of their HECS? You do not have to be Einstein to work it out.

I note that the member for Jagajaga, in her contribution, talked about a report from the Melbourne University Centre for the Study of Higher Education, which was released in June last year. The report demonstrated that students from rural backgrounds are twice as likely as their urban counterparts to defer studies at university. The research was titled—and I am quoting from the shadow minister’s speech—The first year experience in Australian universities: findings from a decade of national studies. The research found that one in five students from rural areas deferred university compared to around one in 10 students in capital cities. On page 70 of the report—and again I am referring to the shadow minister’s contribution—it says:

The reason for this difference is … likely to be the greater need for rural students to accumulate savings to meet their additional costs of attending university ...

That is absolutely correct. I live in Alice Springs and I know for a fact that there are a number of students leaving Alice Springs on this very day to go to university—students who finished high school, not last year but the year before, and who worked all of last year to save money so that they could afford to go to university. It is not an insignificant cost. As this research has indicated, it is now almost a practice for people in the bush who come from isolated communities or rural and remote areas to defer their university studies because they know that, in the first instance, they cannot afford the cost. How much more difficult is it for them if they miss out on their first round offer, get offered a place on a second round and are told they have to pay full fees?

What does that do to their capacity to attend university? What does it do to their horizons in terms of where they might see themselves next year and the year after, or in 10 years, 15 years or 30 years time? How much more limiting must it be for them if they know that, to get access to a course in medicine, they will be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees—fees they cannot afford? The answer is very simple: unless they get a scholarship, they do not go. And that is a direct result of the policies which have been implemented by this government.

The member for Maranoa spoke about the aspirations of young people who live in the bush to have an opportunity to get a higher education, yet he is part of a government that by their very policies have undermined the capacity of young people in the bush, in remote communities and in rural areas across Australia, to get a higher education. They have done it. In my case, there is a university in Darwin—Charles Darwin University—which has a small campus in Alice Springs. Batchelor college provides higher education courses and post-school TAFE courses for Indigenous students across the Northern Territory, but it is located at Batchelor out of Darwin. That is it. Charles Darwin University is severely underresourced because of cuts made to its budget over successive years by this government.

It is little wonder then that most of the students—I would say as many as 90 per cent; it may even be more—who aspire to go to university who live in Alice Springs leave Alice Springs. They do not attend the Charles Darwin University campus because of the limited number of courses that can be provided. They go elsewhere: Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane or Sydney—you name it. You will find students from Alice Springs go there because they do not have access to the range of courses in their home community that they would otherwise have if they lived in one of these major metropolitan centres. I can understand that, in part, because clearly a small town like Alice Springs will not have a campus the size of Melbourne university. But the bottom line is that those students, if they want to go to Melbourne university, are now confronted by these roadblocks, and the most significant of those roadblocks is the cost of going to university.

This government needs to address the problem. The member for Maranoa is in an important position to influence what the government does—and I wonder why other members of the National Party are not in here talking about this, but they are not. The very pathetic performance of the National Party in defending the rights of students from isolated and remote parts of Australia is to be condemned. We know that they are a diminishing power in this place. Despite the artifice that they have put up about how important they are to the coalition, the fact is that they are a diminishing power. They are diminishing because they are not representing the communities that they are supposed to represent. They are not representing the interests of the people in the bush with regard to education. They have failed miserably in providing higher education and post-school education services to people who live in rural Australia. Yet we see the member for Maranoa supporting this piece of legislation, a piece of legislation which has the potential to cause great difficulty for students in the future.

I am mindful of the contribution made by the member for Jagajaga and her reference to the Bills Digest, in particular the commentary on schedule 2, part 2 of the Student Assistance Legislation Amendment Bill which will allow the Department of Education, Science and Training broader regulation making powers under the Student Assistance Act. The Bills Digest points out that these amendments ‘will limit the parliamentary scrutiny of important aspects of obligations set out in section 48 and the connected penalty provisions, and can create a certain vagueness of the law which may be impermissible from a constitutional perspective’.

Section 48 is a provision relating to the reporting requirements of people receiving student assistance. But it also restricts the operation of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003 and allows DEST greater regulating power. Departmental decisions and guidelines may well replace regulations made by the parliament. The explanatory memorandum explains that this will remove the need for DEST to:

… make new regulations under the Act whenever guidelines for the non-statutory ABSTUDY and Assistance for Isolated Children schemes are altered.

As we heard again in the member for Jagajaga’s contribution, the Abstudy and Assistance for Isolated Children schemes have supposedly been removed from the scope of the bill. One wonders what we are doing. What are we doing? Whether the Abstudy and Assistance for Isolated Children schemes are affected by this legislation in the end, I do not know, but I think it is a worrying reflection and a major concern that the government intends to remove parliamentary responsibility and oversight on the making of regulations arising out of this bill.

I have spoken before about these sorts of matters. But I read the Bills Digest with a great deal of interest and with a great deal of alarm. The commentary in the Bills Digest is worth reflecting upon. As the Bills Digest says, ‘proposed section 48(2) warrants further remarks’. It further states:

Section 48 of the SAA—

that is, the Student Assistance Act—

as it currently stands, creates an obligation to notify Centrelink when certain so-called ‘prescribed events’ occur. These prescribed events are currently set out in the Student Assistance Regulations 2003 (the Regulations) and include—

and it lists a number of things. It also states:

… provides that a notification under this section must occur within 14 days in accordance with the procedure set out in these Regulations.

To ensure compliance, there is a matching offence provision. Under that provision, a person may be liable to imprisonment for 12 months, unless there is a reasonable excuse for contravention of section 48. The Bills Digest also states:

Under the current regime, the Regulations enliven the obligation … are subject to parliamentary scrutiny and disallowance procedures—

as they should be. It goes on:

Under the changes proposed in this legislation, the Regulations can make reference to other instruments and written documents. These may not be subject to parliamentary scrutiny, but rather—

and the Bills Digest tells us—

may be an emanation of the will of the Executive.

What does that tell us?  It tells us that we might have changes made to the requirements and the obligations of students that will not come before this parliament. In the end, if they are not met, they may be punishable by up to 12 months imprisonment. I do not believe that is either fair or reasonable and we in this place should not contemplate it. Indeed, I think it is totally objectionable. We in this place ought to do all that we possibly can to ensure that the executive is not given this sort of power and that, in conjunction with the bureaucracy, it cannot come up with a new set of requirements that do not get the oversight of this parliament. It is already difficult enough for young people to get access and meet the requirements that they are required to meet under existing legislation.

I note, by the way, that I attended a Centrelink seminar on student assistance recently. I discovered, apart from a range of other things, that, if you are a young student wanting to claim youth allowance, the claim document is 36 pages long. I regard myself as someone with a reasonable amount of education—I have a degree, I have been a schoolteacher, I have been in parliament for a long time—and I found this difficult. I found it difficult because I cannot understand how it could come to pass that we are asking young people to fill out a form of 36 pages to get access to youth allowance. Imagine if you are from a family where literacy is an issue or where English is a second language and you get hold of a document like this which you are required to fill out to gain access to student assistance. Within this document it asks you—and this I found particularly interesting—to do and report on a number of things, including reporting whether or not persons of the opposite sex have stayed in the same premises as you for two nights or more and describing who those persons might be.

What are we on about here? This is a requirement in this form to attract youth allowance. Let me read it to you:

Do any people of the opposite sex regularly stay at your address?

Include:

• people who regularly stay at your address two or more nights per week.
• people who work away from home (e.g. sales, travelling, tourism, fishing, or mining industry, members of the armed forces, public servants).

I have to say I find it rather alarming that we should be invading the privacy of people in this way. I understand what it might be on about, but what a ridiculous proposition to put in a form of 36 pages for a young student trying to get youth allowance. Under this legislation, which will be changed today, other requirements could be put into documents like this which would go beyond the power of this parliament to scrutinise because they will not come here as regulations—they will be done by fiat by the executive and the bureaucracy. They could be requirements which, if not met, could be punishable by up to 12 months imprisonment.

What we should be doing here is ensuring that all Australians have access to affordable education. Instead we are seeing pieces of legislation such as this which in the end will limit opportunities for people, and we are seeing policies implemented by this government which are removing the opportunity for young people, wherever they might live, to attend university and other institutions of higher education. What we need to do is provide more opportunities, not fewer. What we need to do is make university and higher education more accessible, not less. The only way to do that is for this government to review its policies and practices and provide greater resources to people who live in the bush in particular. I invite the member for Maranoa and other National Party members to call on the government, as I am, to provide more money for people in the bush for education.

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