Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Rankin says, ‘Some of them are okay.’ Let me tell you, through you Madam Deputy Speaker, that Professor Davis privately probably concedes that I was one that got away from him. He is a good supporter of the other side of the House. I think his efforts in the Goss administration were at the behest of the current Leader of the Opposition, actually. Professor Davis was brought in to give the advice on how to destroy the public service in Queensland sufficiently to turn it away from being an independent public service into a Labor Party public service. I must say that it was a masterstroke of the Leader of the Opposition to bring Professor Davis in, because he managed to do that. But Professor Glyn Davis, almost right on cue—as much as I respect my former teacher—put out a press release today that stated:

The Productivity Commission’s final report on the value of Australia’s public investment in science and innovation—

this is the research quality framework he is talking about—

... provides much food for thought ...

…            …            …

The Commission has found that Australia’s significant annual investment in its science and innovation systems results in widespread economic, social and environmental benefits—with the benefits likely to exceed the costs.

…            …            …

The Commission remains committed to the overall finding that the current level of public funding for Australia’s science and innovation systems is about right.

As I say, right on cue, Professor Davis says:

The Go8—

and this is a bit like Mao Zedong in a lot of ways—

looks forward to hearing the Government and Opposition’s responses to it, ...

I am sure this is what the member for Rankin will be contributing in the debate tonight—asking for more money without actually offering some sense of trust or indeed some sense of challenge to individual institutions to do a bit more of what Griffith itself has done; that is, to go and generate some more money based on its merits from the private sector.

This bill tonight obviously will support activities and systems required for participating institutions to engage effectively and efficiently with the research quality framework. It will help with the establishment of digital storage systems which become repositories for institutions throughout Australia through the Australian Scheme for Higher Education Repositories program. There is another acronym here, a five letter one this time—it is ASHER. That will allow the various types of research outputs to in fact be stored in an accessible digital store. There will be some $25 million in current year prices for that. Assistance will also be offered, some $16 million in current year prices, for new administrative and reporting systems and other compliance costs through an implementation assistance program.

So the government again is backing institutes and providing some of the additional grease for their various wheels—some of the wherewithal that they need. The Productivity Commission, of course, has said that the funding is right. The reason it would say that is very plain; that is, if you fund it without challenging the receivers of that funding to also play a role in being innovative and looking for ways to gather support from other quarters then they will simply become quite fat and lazy and will fail to be as innovative as they should be.

One of the key reasons is that the entire education system in Australia is essentially funded on a mistaken premise of supply rather than demand. We have this circumstance where we should never question the institutes of learning—where the institutes of learning should be the ones that control the way the business community engages with them. In my book the partnership between enough of these institutes and the business community is not sufficiently strong—because they are not responding to the demands of the real world; they are simply supplying what it is they believe the world actually needs. This kind of institutional arrogance, I hope, will not be further furnished.

Indeed, if a Labor government were elected later in the year, I think it would be. We would see a return to huge levels of taxpayer dollars going to fund friends in academia—to go and fund student union activities to go and then get a return, if you like, for the Labor Party on that kind of misuse of taxpayer funds during the political processes that might actually take place. If you like, the beaker of left-wing politics being the university sector would have to be resourced with larger sums of money if a Labor government were elected.

We on this side actually trust people with ambition to succeed, to grow and to learn things. We trust that these people will bring an energy to the task and that they will create the demand that should drive the response from the education sector. So I welcome the Productivity Commission’s observation in their final report on the value of public investment in science and technology, which was commented on today by the Group of Eight universities, that the balance is about right. I think in a lot of ways that completely defeats what the member for Lingiari was saying.

I will speak now about a number of the other matters contained within the bill’s measures. There are revised national protocols for higher education approval processes. They were agreed to by all states and territories at the MCEETYA meeting, the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, in July 2006. All ministers, state and territory as well as federal, after extensive consultations with the higher education sector, agreed that the revised national protocols would take place from 31 December 2007 and that legislative changes in all jurisdictions would be needed to bring that into effect. That is what we are doing here tonight. Stakeholders had the opportunity to comment on the new national protocols at two separate national workshops, face-to-face consultations and during two written submission processes. You could not get a more open approach to legislative reform than this particular approach that has been taken by Minister Bishop.

There are also technical amendments to clarify the Higher Education Loan Program, HELP, and Commonwealth supported student arrangements. We simply want to see, through these technical amendments, some clarification of the existing arrangements. The member for Lingiari was, somehow or other, saying that there was going to be a new group of victims created because students were being put under pressure that if they change their arrangements then they must tell people within six weeks. I do not understand what the member was in fact on about. What we are seeking is to clarify the overseas study requirements in relation to eligibility for the OS-HELP assistance. We want to make sure that this is in fact reflecting the original policy thrust and intent. We want to clarify the requirements for eligibility for Commonwealth supported places, particularly in relation to providers’ ability to actually offer a student a Commonwealth supported place—and of course that it is restricted to a particular campus of a provider. We do have universities in this country based in one part of Australia opening up shopfronts in other parts of Australia and saying, ‘Study in Sydney through Central Queensland University,’ for instance.

I am not picking on CQU, but I suppose in one sense I have used them to highlight the point. The University of Canberra has a Brisbane campus and so forth. There is nothing wrong with it, providing that students understand that they are not exactly a part of a major campus when they study at any of these locations. When you drive down some of the main streets of Sydney, you can see the shopfronts of some of the great universities and some of the smaller universities. Nevertheless, they are shopfronts; indeed, you can see them all around Australia. If the Commonwealth is going to support any of those places, we want to make sure that we clarify their requirements. We also want to clarify the residency requirements in relation to Commonwealth support for study undertaken offshore. At the end of it, tightening up matters such as the census date by limiting the time after the census date that a student can correct information is a reasonable and responsible measure that is within the government’s control to deal with.

We are also allowing for any provider with a Commonwealth supported place to offer a place to a student who is undertaking study across various institutions. This particular legislation is changing the circumstance where only providers known as ‘table A providers’ can offer cross-institutional students a Commonwealth supported place while they are undertaking units of study with another table A provider that counts towards their course. There is a deal of flexibility and clarity being brought into this. Whilst it seems like a simple thing, a minor technical amendment, to deal with, what was known as the Victorian University of Technology—which was trading very strongly in providing support across a wide range of subjects, both academic and practical—will now be known as Victoria University.

On every front, this legislation is timely, worth while, sensible and well thought out. Minister Bishop is doing a very good job in following on the tradition of good jobs done by ministers in this government when it comes to higher education. In determining our approach to public policy on universities, we are not blinded by the demands of student unions, who represent an ever-receding group of people and we are not blinded by the left-wing activists who are demanding that everybody must pay a student fee or they cannot study. What we are determined about is backing with resources those who want to back themselves. We are also about giving strong advocacy to those who choose not to go to university. The 70 per cent of kids who left school at the end of last year and who will not start a university course are given an enhanced status under this government, because only 30 per cent of kids leaving school in any given year actually start a university course and only about 30 per cent of them complete it.

If you listen to those opposite, the sky is going to fall in, the world is going to come to an end, unless you give the universities and, in particular, the student unions everything they want. This legislation is sensible; it is balanced. The Productivity Commission backs it. I commend it to the House.

See this speech in context