Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is appropriate that we have a debate in this House on the state of our tertiary education sector. It is very hard to have a debate on this matter under this government. It is a government which is disengaged from the tertiary sector and which appears to have very little interest in it. Recently, there was a reshuffle and a new minister has taken over the education portfolio. In that time, the Minister for Education, Science and Training has probably answered a question during every question time—certainly, almost every question time; she is a very regular answerer of questions from the government side of the House. The answers to those questions are almost exclusively used as an opportunity to score political points against state governments about school funding.

I stand to be corrected—I could be wrong; I have not checked—but I cannot recall one time when the minister for education has come into the House since she took over the portfolio and answered a question from her side about universities. Instead we have a daily diatribe about the failings of state governments on schools. Of course, schools are extraordinarily important and we need to have a debate on schools, but this government is not interested in debating the state of our tertiary education sector.

The Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2006 Budget and Other Measures) Bill 2006 deals with university funding. It provides increased funding to meet the commitments by the Council of Australian Governments which were reached a few months ago on the health workforce and mental health packages. We support that measure. It creates 605 commencing medical places and 1,036 commencing nursing places. We say it should have been done a long time ago but we support the measure that is before the House today.

But these increases need to be put into context. There is a very frightening figure which we have been aware of for some time but which the OECD confirmed this week—and not only did they confirm it; they confirmed it has gotten worse. In the last 10 years government spending in tertiary education has fallen by seven per cent. We are the only nation in the OECD—the only nation in the developed world—which has had negative growth in the amount of government spending in tertiary education. Every other nation has had an increase, and the average across the OECD is a 48 per cent increase. We have had a seven per cent reduction and the rest of the world has had almost a 50 per cent increase. We are falling behind because of this government’s neglect. If we are to compete in a globalised world, we need to compete on skills; we need to compete on education; we need to compete on innovation. But this government is committed to competing on wages. The government is competing against India and China on wages when we should be competing against the entire world on training and education and innovation.

This government has shamefully—and I use the word advisedly—neglected the tertiary education sector. It is perhaps the most short-sighted aspect of this government’s fiscal policy, and it started at the beginning: in 1996 the government cut funding to higher education by $1.8 billion over four years and it declined to index funding for universities and tertiary education. That reduction in real terms over the past 10 years has had a very real impact. There has been a reduction in real terms in funding because of the government’s failure to index and because of the increases in wages. Since wages make up 45 to 70 per cent of a university’s operating costs in this country, this is something that is out of the control of vice-chancellors—it is not something that they can adjust easily. Wages are the biggest part of their budgets, and average weekly earnings went up 4½ per cent between 1998 and 2004. The failure of funding to keep up with that increase has cost our universities half a billion dollars over the past 10 years. That is half a billion dollars which is not available to educate young people in this country.

This has resulted in two outcomes. First, we see the government getting more of the income to fund our university sector from students and, second, we are seeing fewer resources per student. We now see students paying more through HECS and more through fees. In fact in 1996, when this government came to office, the Commonwealth provided 60 per cent of university funding through their funding mechanisms. On the recent figures, for 2004, it is now 40 per cent. And the contribution from students over that time frame has gone from 11 per cent to 22 per cent. This doubling of the impact on students of revenue raising to run universities can be seen in the HECS debt.

The government allowed HECS debt to rise by 25 per cent. They pretended this was the choice of the universities. But what they really did was squeeze university funding so that no university had a choice; to continue to operate, every single university in this country had to increase their HECS fees by 25 per cent. They left universities so cash-strapped that they did not have a choice. In 1989, when HECS was introduced, the average HECS rate was $1,800 a year. It now ranges from $3,920 to $8,170 a year. In law and medicine, HECS has increased under this government by 350 per cent—27 per cent a year, five times the rate of inflation. We now have, and the OECD confirms this, the second highest university fees in the world, second only to those in the United States, thanks to this government’s increases in HECS.

We can see the results. I had a look at the figures of what people in my electorate owe in HECS. I expected the figure to be high, but I was absolutely astounded. In my electorate, which is in Western Sydney, there is a HECS debt of $60 million owed by people who live in Prospect. Across the country, it is $13 billion. An electorate like mine is not socioeconomically at the top of the scale, it is fair to say, but it has a $60 million debt—and the full impact of the government’s 25 per cent increases are yet to be seen. I had a look at some other electorates and their HECS debts. In Greenway, to my north, it is $56 million; in Lindsay, $47 million; in Macquarie, $49 million. In Flinders—I see the member for Flinders is in the chamber, and I am sure he already know this—it is $29 million. These are extraordinary figures. In your electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker McMullan, there is a very significant HECS debt—which I cannot find at the moment, but I am sure it is very big. We have high HECS debts across the country. As I said, in my electorate the debt is $60 million, a debt which people will have to pay off when they leave university and at a time when they are trying to buy a house and start their lives.

I would not mind so much if this was part of a compact, if the government had said to students across the country: ‘We need to improve our universities. We need to increase the funding. We need to get funding from all sorts of sources and we are going to increase our commitment. We are going to put more money into universities but, by the way, you need to do your bit too—you need to pay more as well. The taxpayer will subsidise more, but you need to put more in.’ I would have a lot less of an objection, I have to say, if we saw a massive increase in funding from two sources: from students and from the government. I would say, ‘Even though I am uncomfortable with it, it is a lot more acceptable that we are seeing a national effort to improve the status of our universities, and everybody has to make a contribution.’ But that is not what we are seeing. What we are seeing is a reduction in government commitment and an increase in commitment from students. Again, you do not have to take our word for it. The OECD says in the report that was recently released:

... many OECD countries with the highest growth in private spending have also shown the highest increase in public funding of education. This indicates that increasing private spending on tertiary education tends to complement, rather than replace, public investment. The main exception to this is Australia, where the shift towards private expenditure at tertiary level has been accompanied both by a fall in the level of public expenditure in real terms ...

Again, we stand out as the worst in the world. What result does this have? It has the result not only of charging students more but of having fewer resources per student. The member for Bass was in here yesterday making a contribution just before question time. He was boasting that Australia now has more university students than at any time in our history, and he is right. Of course, our population is higher than at any time in our history. But, more importantly, we have seen a reduction in funding per student. We have more students and less money, and the result is worse outcomes. The result is that student to staff ratios have gone from 15.6 to one in 1996 to 20.7 to one in 2004—less money per student.

I do not know why the government has done this. Some people suggest it is to emasculate debates. Some people suggest it is because universities are a source of criticism of the government. Some people suggest it is because universities foster debates about where this country is going, and the government does not like it. I do not know if that is the reason. I shudder at the thought that it is. I would prefer to think it is simply incompetence and short-sightedness and that this government does not have a vision for this country. I prefer to think that; I prefer to give the government the benefit of the doubt because I simply cannot bring myself to believe that any government, even this one, could emasculate funding for universities for its own crass political purposes.

I am going to share with the House another quote. It is a quote that I hesitated to bring in. I did think of leaving it out of the debate. I was very tempted not to raise it because I do not like talking down universities. I do not like criticising hardworking people in universities who are doing their best with the very limited resources that this government has given them. But to have a full and proper debate the quote must be shared with the House. It is a quote from one of the government’s own advisory groups. In June 2006 the Asia working group, which was appointed to advise the Prime Minister’s science and innovation council, said:

There is the belief held by the working group that the quality of our university degrees is declining.

As I said, I was reluctant to bring that into the House because university lecturers, students and administrators are all working very hard, and I am sure they do not like to hear that the quality of the degrees being produced is declining. But the fact of the matter is this government’s funding policy—they admit, their own advisory committee admits—is reducing the quality of our degrees. This government’s short-sighted and shameful higher education policies mean that higher education in this country is being underfunded.

In the time left to me I would like to talk about this government’s tendency to micromanage university budgets. As the honourable member for Kingsford Smith so very eloquently referred to it, we have seen this government imposing its workplace relations agenda through the university funding mechanisms. We have seen this government denying, or threatening to deny, universities funding unless they embrace Australian workplace agreements. This government talks about choice and says everyone has a choice whether they go with AWAs or not but says, ‘By the way, we are not going to fund your university unless you operate through Australian workplace agreements.’

We have seen this so many times. We have seen this in the education department in particular: the use of funding as a very blunt instrument for the government to get its own way. The member for Jagajaga, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, referred to it as using funding to cater for the minister’s latest thought bubble—which I think is a particularly appropriate way of putting it. We have seen in this House recently, and it is also referred to in this bill, the spectacle of the Australian Research Council’s independence being emasculated and the board of the Australian Research Council being abolished. The previous minister rejected applications for funding which had been approved by the expert body, and the minister responding to that by giving himself, and now herself, the power to directly appoint the chief executive, bypassing the board.

We see a range of Brezhnevian type controls on university funding. The member for Flinders agrees with me, I think.

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