Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

The introduction and timing of this legislation really reeks of the arrogance that the parliament has come to expect from this government. This bill was introduced only last Wednesday. Members have had just one week to consider its nine separate schedules of amendments to the Higher Education Support Act, the Higher Education Funding Act and the Australian Research Council Act. The time frame has been so short that the Parliamentary Library staff, who have been working extremely hard in the past week dealing with this legislation as well as the two ESOS bills, have not have the chance to prepare a Bills Digest for members.

Rushing this legislation into the chamber and out again means, of course, that members have been rushed in their consideration of its contents and its implications. You could say that we expect nothing more from this government. We have seen it so many times. They seem to treat the parliament with the most extraordinary contempt. That being said, we have certainly considered the bill and the many and varied measures contained within it. We will be supporting this legislation; however, in doing so, we reiterate our criticism of this government’s approach to higher education—of course, characterised by budget cuts, fee increases and a continuing lack of policy direction. I formally move:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House condemns the Government for:

(1)

jeopardising Australia’s future prosperity by reducing public investment in tertiary education, as the rest of the world increases their investment;

(2)

failing to invest in education, training, distribution and retention measures to ensure that all of Australia has enough doctors, nurses and other health care professionals to meet current and future health care needs;

(3)

massively increasing the cost of HECS, forcing students to pay up to $30,000 more for their degree;

(4)

creating an American style higher education system, where students pay more and more, with some full fee degrees costing more than $200,000, and nearly 100 full fee degrees costing more than $100,000;

(5)

massively increasing the debt burden on students with total HELP debt now over $13 billion and projected to rise to $18.8 billion in 2009;

(6)

failing to address serious concerns about standards and quality in the higher education system, putting at risk Australia’s high educational reputation and fourth largest export industry; and

(7)

an inadequate and incoherent policy response to the needs of the university system to diversify, innovate and meet Australia’s higher education needs”.

Today we have seen the release of yet another report condemning the Howard government’s performance on higher education. The OECD’s Education at a glance 2006 is a 454-page in-depth analysis of education systems across the developed world. It certainly shows that this Prime Minister and this government deserve an F for education and training. While the rest of the OECD countries have increased their public investment in tertiary education by an average of 48 per cent—so the rest of the developed world is significantly increasing public investment in its tertiary education—at the same time Australia is the only country in the developed world to see a decline, of seven per cent. That is an increase of 48 per cent for the rest of the developed world and a decline in public investment in tertiary education by the Howard government of seven per cent.

What that means is that Australia is going backwards while everyone else is going ahead. Worse still, the report shows that the Howard government’s HECS hikes mean Australian university students are now paying the second highest fees in the world. The report comments on trends in higher education around the globe and says: ‘Increasing private spending on tertiary education tends to complement, rather than replace, public investment. The main exception to this is Australia.’ Under this government Australian students are footing the bill for massive funding cuts, and we are one of the worst countries in the world.

Before expanding on the points highlighted in the second reading amendment, I briefly want to give the opposition’s perspective on the multiple and disconnected series of amendments in this omnibus bill. Schedule 1 funds government commitments arising from the Council of Australian Governments’ Health Workforce and Mental Health packages, including new medical, general nursing, mental health nursing and clinical psychology places and increased funding for nurses’ clinical training. Labor welcomes the additional places to deal with health workforce shortages, but the government of course has neglected this area for far too long. The government has failed to invest in education, training, distribution and retention measures to make sure that all of Australia has enough doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals to meet current and future healthcare needs.

The bill also increases funding in the Capital Development Pool program for universities from 2007 and funding to the Commercialisation Training Scheme for new postgraduate research places in science and innovation. There is also funding for the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies and the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Labor certainly supports these new measures.

Included in the funding this bill proposes is the application of indexation to university grants across the forward estimates years. This is a very serious matter indeed because our universities continue to suffer from inadequate indexation. The rate of indexation being applied to university operating grants this year means that they will increase by just two per cent. By comparison, average weekly earnings rose by an average of 4½ per cent annually between 1998 and 2004. As salary costs are the largest component of university operating expenses, ranging between 45 per cent and 70 per cent, this gap between indexation and wage costs continues to rise. Since 1995, the gap between rising average salary costs and the rate of indexation provided by the Commonwealth has accumulated to more than $500 million. So adequate indexation is essential to sustain and strengthen the quality of university education in this country. Labor does support the indexation in schedule 9 of the funding cap for research spending in the Australian Research Council Act 2001.

The significant measure in schedule 2 of the bill is to increase the FEE-HELP limit to $80,000 for most students and to $100,000 for medical, dental and veterinary science students. This was announced in the budget and is the second proposed FEE-HELP increase this year. These changes to FEE-HELP are significant, increasing the total debt available to students. There are now almost 100 full-fee degrees in Australia costing more than $100,000, so it is clear that these increases in FEE-HELP are not sufficient to meet the real cost of these degrees. We now know that under this government you can pay as much for a university degree as you do for your home. The average new mortgage today is about $222,000 and, according to the Good Universities Guide 2007, a full fee paying place in medicine-arts will set students back a staggering $237,000 at the University of New South Wales and $219,100 at the University of Melbourne. Medicine at Bond University costs $233,100 while medicine-law at Monash University would rack up a debt of $214,600. These are the fees being imposed on students by the Howard government and are nothing more than a disgrace.

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