Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Early in the life of the Whitlam government a commitment was made that Australians would all have free access to university education. The Fraser government struggled with the ever-increasing cost and discovered that, in fact, the subsidy was not going to the poorer sections of our community; it was just a subsidy to many people who previously had been able to pay for their children’s education anyway. But the Hawke government was eventually obliged to confront the situation. It had a committee, I think it was run by Neville Wran, and they invented HECS. But if you heard the member for Jagajaga today you would think it had all been invented by the Howard government.

It is pretty interesting when you hear Labor members of parliament not recognising that history, nor recognising that the free education was not taken up to a substantial degree by those who could least afford to otherwise pay. Knowing all of that, and knowing that many of their voting constituency would prefer more help through the TAFE system, we hear this standard promise that the Australian taxpayer will find heaps more money or the government finances will revert to deficit so that a group of people, most of whom anticipate through their education to have very highly paid jobs, get it for free and do not even contract loans as a 25 per cent contribution to it.

It is amazing that three of the amendment clauses proposed by the Labor Party to the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2006 Budget Measures) Bill 2006 deal with this matter of ‘jeopardising Australia’s future prosperity by reducing public investment in tertiary education’. That, of course, is completely rejected by the financial impact statement to be found in the explanatory memorandum, and an obligation to include in legislation a financial impact statement was introduced by the Hawke Labor government. It is just a litany of increased expenditure: there will be increases in the overall appropriation of $6.23 billion for the period 1 July 2006 to 31 December 2010; the estimated financial impact of increasing the FEE-HELP scheme will be $78 million—in fact there are three figures there; there is the estimated financial impact of introducing winter schools; and it goes on. In the financial impact statement are clause after clause that tell us very clearly that the Howard government is substantially increasing its financial commitment, which makes a farce of clause 1 of the amendment.

Then the amendment mentions ‘failing to invest in education, training, distribution and retention measures’, and it goes on about doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals. It was as a result of Medicare that the Hawke government—because they got terrified by bulk-billing costs and came to the conclusion that too many graduates from the medical profession were just moving into cities where on a free service they could get as many customers as they wished—cut back the intake of medical undergraduates by 4,000. When one thinks back 10 or 15 years one realises the impact of that decision has only been felt in the last three or four years. They are crying crocodile tears in this place that that is the situation when in fact, as the Minister for Education, Science and Training told us in the second reading speech:

The government will fund 605 new commencing medical places and 1,036 new commencing nursing places, as well as funding a significant increase in the contribution to support clinical training for nursing students ...

It goes on:

This bill also includes $25.5 million in capital funding to support new medical places at James Cook University, the University of New England and the University of Queensland.

In addition, this bill provides funding for 431 new mental health nursing places and 210 new clinical psychology places ...

In their typical fashion, the opposition tell us that the government has failed in these areas, when the first thing we had to do when we came to government was replace the 4,000 places they removed from the system during the Hawke government.

They complain in this amendment about ‘massively increasing the cost of HECS, forcing students to pay up to $30,000 more for a degree’. I have made the point already: students graduating from the higher cost courses in particular almost immediately receive very high incomes—I think the figure cited was three or four times that which might be earned by a working-class person. But I have never heard the opposition suggest that some of those working-class people should be loaned $100,000 to buy into a taxi or a couple of hundred thousand dollars to buy into a delicatessen. They have to go and make their own commercial arrangements if they want to be involved in those sorts of business activities. So why is it unreasonable to ask somebody who gets their business created for them through education—and I certainly welcome the fact that they take that option—to pay for it? Why should it be that the Labor Party stand up and differentiate between them and all those other people, who are more than likely to vote Labor, who want to move into private business or increase their income and typically and frequently work extremely hard thereafter?

If you are going to earn the sort of income that a medical practitioner can earn, is it unreasonable to pay $100,000 for your education over the period involved and be grateful to a government that lends it to you, either through FEE-HELP or through HECS? People might want to go and work in the mines for a few years in the Pilbara or somewhere else and save good money up there, and then come back to a metropolitan area and buy a small business. We do not hear the member for Jagajaga putting a case for those people to get a government loan and only pay it back if they are making a profit—and the income threshold is already close to $30,000 a year before you start repaying HECS.

I am unable to understand the mentality of that. This is an education legislation amendment bill and we heard not one word during the member for Jagajaga’s speech about other areas of tertiary education and how it is funded. Of course, tertiary education is typically a service provided by state governments, all of whom are of the Labor Party persuasion—and we are not allowed to criticise them.

These Labor amendments have no foundation. They are refuted by the financial impact statement to be found in the explanatory memorandum. They are refuted by the minister’s second reading speech, which clearly designates all the new places that will be created and funded under these arrangements.

To its great credit the bill highlights new regional universities opening up schools of medicine where it has been well proven that students are more likely to stay having achieved graduation, be they nurses or otherwise. To me, that is one of the better aspects of the bill. The minister advises us there will be some bonded places whereby the bonding is associated with a scholarship payment—I think it will be about $20,000 a year. Of course there is a bond because if you take that option as compared to paying as you go or working at night or something like that for your pocket money then you have made a commitment to go and work in remote and regional areas, where there is still a shortage of medical practitioners.

So the bill is to be recommended for greatly increasing the funds that the government is going to provide, whilst retaining a surplus, I might add. The one thing that was not mentioned by the member for Jagajaga—and the next speaker, the member for Rankin, might like to bring it to our attention—was the cost of some of the proposals she put forward. Tell us where the money is coming from. What is to be cancelled? I do not know, but it seemed to me that she made a straight-out promise of extremely increased financial expenditure on behalf of a group of people who, in many regards, through the benefits that their education will provide, presently have the financial capacity to repay the government.

I have never been able to understand the paranoia of the opposition when it comes to full fee paying domestic students. There are all sorts of reasons that a person may not be able to commence an education or achieve the appropriate tertiary entry level, which in the state of Western Australia was so corrupted that it was no indication of people’s merit, as the member for Jagajaga said. It was all airy-fairy stuff—OBE, as it was known—and even the teachers union revolted against it. A granddaughter of mine was told in an expensive private school, ‘You may as well take the weakest form of mathematics because you will get better marks and your merit will appear to be greater.’

I corresponded with the University of Western Australia on that, and they had a slightly different message—that they were prepared to weight these more difficult maths subjects, which my granddaughter could have easily managed. What is more, to get entry to engineering and other fields, they insist on them. But here we have a secondary education system decreed by the state government in WA that is trying to dumb everything down.

The Labor Party never stop talking about wages sliding to the bottom, while of course they continue to escalate in real terms, but they do not seem to have any concern about the dumbing down of our educational processes. They are still fighting bitterly to prevent giving grades to students, because the teachers know that is an examination of their personal effort. The legislation is all about money. It is all about paying for the additional needs of the tertiary education system and it is therefore to be commended.

The member for Jagajaga also had something to say about giving more freedom and flexibility to the university sector. I think that is a good idea, provided you transfer the buying power to students and their families. A simple solution for that is vouchers. I think the member for Rankin might have some support for that particular idea. He is probably as isolated on his side in promoting things of that nature as I was when my press release was brought out which said I would sell Medicare—and so I would, but do not think anybody else on my side agrees with me.

I am a great believer in funding people, not institutions—in the case of health, through subsidising people to buy private health insurance and, in the case of education, through giving parents, from first bubs up, a piece of paper that can be targeted for both socioeconomic and geographic reasons and says, ‘This is worth X at one of the enclosed group of approved schools,’ which might be state or private. There would be no arguments about which school got the most money because the money would go to parents and they would make a choice. I think, if students wanting a university education had that sort of buying power and the government left it at that, universities would respond to the marketplace and they would have all the flexibility they wanted. It is a very important aspect.

Let me record my concern, relevant to my earlier remarks, that I think it is a tragedy that not enough students are going into the engineering and science disciplines. It is so important to our economic growth that we have those sorts of people in society. I know it is a tough ask and they are sometimes not as glamorous as other disciplines, although persons known to me, having commenced a career, for instance, with an engineering degree, are now highly respected, high-flying stock market analysts because their foundations are such that they are truly analysts. They are not just statisticians; they are people who understand the workings of the mining sector or whatever. They have been there and done that and they have had the opportunity later to take up what might be considered more high-flying disciplines.

I sometimes wonder about tertiary education. I note with approval we are funding another 1,036 nursing places. From personal experience, I spent five months in hospital on one occasion—it was self-inflicted—and I was looked after by nurses that lived at the hospital and were trained in the hospital, right up to the matron and the other more experienced nursing personnel. I still think that is the best way to teach someone to be a nurse. I think the problem with a university education is that it does not properly expose young people to the difficulties of being a nurse. It is a tough job. I do not think university gives them that hands-on experience, and they come out with an expectation that they are just a small step below a doctor. That is not what a nurse is, although I applaud the fact that in some remote areas we are going to have practice nurses and they will have an opportunity to get those additional qualifications, as used to be the case.

I think one of the problems with university education for teachers is that there is insufficient accent on teaching. Teaching is a skill. Knowledge that you need to teach is easily acquired. The most impressive teacher I ever knew was my English teacher at Perth Modern School, who on his first day in our classroom said: ‘You might think I know everything; I do not. But I know where to go and look for it.’ In those days you did not google it. He said, ‘What I don’t know today, I’ll tell you tomorrow.’ The way he, as a quite laid-back person, enthused us to study and succeed in English was quite amazing. He was a great teacher. I think there is a lack of that because the culture of university teaching is not what is needed back at the primary school and the secondary school. I think there is probably insufficient capacity, as compared to the old teaching colleges, for that sort of training. I guess, as with other things I have said today, I am not going to change that.

My time has run out. I commend this legislation. I reject the criticism found in the Labor Party’s amendments. They are not sustained by the facts and I think they are completely incompatible with the Labor Party’s responsibility to a primarily working-class electorate. I have never been able to understand why they take that view and they do not have plans in TAFE and other areas that they lecture us on on these occasions. (Time expired)

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