Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women's Issues) Share this | Hansard source

No, not at all. In fact, the Higher Education Endowment Fund will be an opportunity for universities to access dividends from a capital fund the size of which has not been seen in the higher education sector in this country. The whole idea of the Higher Education Endowment Fund is to enable universities to apply—whatever the persuasion of the government and whatever the government’s particular higher education policy is at the time—to an established perpetual growth fund for access to the dividends from that fund. Now, we expect that this fund will be supported by the opposition—that its creation, its establishment and the legislation surrounding it will be supported by the opposition—so that, whatever the policy of the government of the day on higher education and the funding of higher education, our universities will have access to a perpetual growth fund.

In terms of the consideration of applications, we will be seeking the advice of a committee—yet to be established, because the legislation has not even been produced in the parliament yet. We are seeking to establish a committee that will draft guidelines to advise us on the appropriate application of the dividends from the Higher Education Endowment Fund.

One of the other aspects of the creation of this fund was to encourage a culture of philanthropy in Australia. Our higher education institutions have not been as successful as their competitors overseas in attracting philanthropic donations. In fact, in Australian universities, less than two per cent of their income, their revenue, comes from philanthropic donations, whereas in comparable universities overseas it can be as high as 15 or 20 per cent. Our universities are obviously reliant on federal government funding, and that will continue, but there are additional avenues of funding from business, industry, alumni and state and territory governments that should be explored.

We believe that the existence of a Higher Education Endowment Fund will assist universities that, for example, wish to access funding from their state government. If a state government were approached by a university for the establishment of, say, a dental school or a medical school and it said to that state government, ‘If you commit $5 million’—let us just use a hypothetical example—‘for the establishment of a medical school at this university in your state, which will help us to produce medical graduates for employment in this state, we can then go to the federal government endowment fund and say we have a commitment from the state government and we can then seek to access the Higher Education Endowment Fund.’ But at no time have I or the department ever suggested that it would be a precondition of accessing the education endowment fund that they have matching funds. In fact, we specifically say that we would take that into account, but it is not a prerequisite—nor do I expect the advisory committee to suggest that be the case, because that is not what the government intends. So it would be naive not to look at the opportunities that exist for leveraging the existence of the Higher Education Endowment Fund from state governments, business, industry and alumni.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

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