Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

At the end of each sitting week, when members leave the ivory tower that is this parliament building and return to their electorates, some of us see a huge difference between the fairytale world that members of the government speak about and the real world. If you listen to the answers given by government ministers at question time, you have to wonder if they live in the same country. The rosy picture painted by the government seems like a Hollywood film set that hides the reality of life in areas like Western Sydney and many other areas throughout Australia.

That reality does not show itself in the endless list of statistics that the government trots out. It is not obvious in the outward appearances of areas like Western Sydney. The result is not the glaring inequality that can be seen in developing nations. The signs do not show up on the radar of those who measure prosperity in terms of GDP. What must be noted from those figures is the falling share of national income going to wages and salaries.

It is clear that the results of our nation’s prosperity have not trickled down to all Australians. The rising tide has not lifted all the boats, and a good many Australians, especially in electorates like Fowler, are being forced to tread water. Things might look calm on the surface, but underneath there is frantic activity to keep afloat. And to keep their heads above water, families have a limited number of responses.

We know that Australians are working longer hours now than at any time in the last 50 years, and we know that more and more mothers are re-entering the workforce earlier than they did a generation ago. We certainly know that Australian families are borrowing much more than they did a generation ago. We know that Australian families spend more on home mortgage repayments now than they did a generation ago. We know that high interest credit card debt has gone through the roof. On top of that, we have record high petrol prices, at a time when families are more dependent on car travel than ever before. As well, we are beginning to see the full impact of increased prices at the supermarket and higher costs for electricity, water and other services. It is a slow process, but the signs are there for all to see.

In a local supermarket last week, I overheard a remark that will ring true with many people who do the household shopping. One age pensioner remarked to another that ‘the specials don’t seem to be as good as they were’. It is a small sign but an important one of inflation feeding through to everyday goods. So to keep their heads above water, families in Fowler and many other electorates throughout this nation are treading water as hard as they can. They are working longer hours, they have extended their mortgage and they have maxed out their credit cards. The effect of this is not obvious to any observer. That is because the stress felt by families does not register on the national accounts. But it is being felt by a growing number of families, and it will take a toll as heavy as any social upheaval that we have felt as a nation.

For young families, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. We now have 50-year mortgages. Take out a mortgage today and it will be paid off out of your estate when you die. But that mortgage is only for the home. With 96 full fee undergraduate courses costing over $100,000 and five courses costing over $200,000, the debt burden on young Australians seems certain to rise and place even greater pressure on families.

We already see the higher levels of HECS debt, thanks to changes by this government, eating into the incomes of thousands of Australian families. For a teacher or a nurse to see $100 a fortnight taken out of their pay in HECS repayments is a huge slug. But just imagine paying over $2,000 a month in repayment of loans to cover full fee payment courses.

For parents in ordinary families wishing to help their children, the cost of those degrees puts them way beyond anything they could afford. How could any average family afford to pay $100,000 for even one child, let alone two or three, as the Treasurer suggests we should have? While this government boasts about repaying government debt, we can see who is shouldering that debt burden. It is the young families who are forced to take out outrageously high mortgages to pay for inflated house prices and, on top of that, to pay higher HECS fees if they have been lucky enough to gain entry to a HECS course. But just imagine the debt burden for those students undertaking a full-fee course with fees over $200,000. Those fee levels will exclude young people from electorates like Fowler and other electorates from undertaking those courses.

And what will be the result of limiting access to courses to those rich enough to afford such high fees? Just as we have seen with the government’s cuts to technical training, we will face skills shortages in many vital professions. If we look at a list of the full fee paying degrees costing over $100,000, we see courses such as medicine, science and social work—all areas where we definitely have a skill shortage in this country. But, instead of funding those places, this government is placing the burden on individual students—and then the government complains that Australian graduates take their skills overseas, as we have heard in a number of speeches over the last couple of weeks and in this House today. The government’s approach to higher education is as short-sighted as its approach to trade training, and we will pay a heavy price in the coming years as we seek to make up for the shortfall in a competitive world market for highly skilled professionals.

Australia is already at the bottom of the list of OECD countries in terms of government spending on higher education. This government’s growing reliance on individual students to fund the full cost of their education is a policy failure of dire proportions. While we might enjoy the economic sunshine that comes from digging up our minerals and shipping them off at record prices, these times will not last forever. For Australians to retain our standard of living, we will need to rely more on the use of our skills, but this government has set back our advances as a highly skilled nation, and we risk falling well behind other developed nations. By then it will be too late to make a quick recovery. Our best brains will have left for overseas, and we will lack the critical mass to lift our knowledge and skills base to anywhere near that of our international competitors.

I began by speaking about the electorate of Fowler and the impact of stress on families. What we see there today is a taste of the future for all Australia. When mineral and commodity prices return to normal and we have to look to other ways of generating our national income, we will come to regret the folly of cutting spending on higher education. The Treasurer’s chickens will have come home to roost.

What keeps those struggling families going is the hope that there will be some light at the end of the tunnel, that some day they will be able to get on top of the mortgage and be a little bit more relaxed and comfortable. But, for young families of the future, paying off the house will be the least of their worries. The ever-increasing burden of higher education loans for themselves and their children will keep them in debt well into retirement, and few families in Western Sydney can afford that.

We are fast going down the path of an American-style system of higher education. Once again, higher education will be the privilege of the rich, not an opportunity for all Australians. For the past 30 years, affordable higher education has been the ticket out of Struggle Street for thousands of young Australians, including those who came here as children of refugees, found Australia a land of equal opportunity and have gone on to contribute greatly to Australia’s growth. In 1999, John Howard promised there would not be $100,000 degrees under his government. Today we have degrees costing more than $200,000. Another broken promise by this Prime Minister and this government. (Time expired)

See this speech in context