Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to be able to speak on the Higher Education Endowment Fund Bill 2007 because there is no doubt that, given the ever-increasing importance of higher education in Australia, as Australians compete in all spheres on the global scale, this is a very welcome initiative that will ensure higher education that is relevant to all Australians who aspire to it. Countries such as the United States are considered to have the world’s best universities and, with emerging economies in our neighbourhood such as China’s and India’s, it is important that Australia aims to compete with the world’s finest universities and is at the forefront of tertiary education.

Our first priority should be ensuring that all young Australian school leavers who are capable of, and aspire to, higher education have that option available to them at the highest possible standards achievable. This bill ensures such a future for higher education in Australia. It is a very forward-looking piece of legislation. It looks to the future.

One of the main objectives of the government in announcing this policy initiative is to provide and conserve funds for future generations. With the only money spent coming from the earnings of the fund, this will ensure that there is a constant steady flow of money into tertiary education in perpetuity.

The endowment fund bill provides for an initial amount of $5 billion to be credited to the endowment fund, with the first round of funding to higher education institutions being available in the second half of next year. Subsequently, the Treasurer announced an additional $1 billion in the 2008 budget to boost initial higher education endowment funds by January 2008. The government estimated in the budget that this would generate approximately $300 million per annum, and perhaps we can anticipate this being a little higher due to the announcement of a further $1 billion being put into the fund.

The bill also increases the scope for philanthropic donations to be made to the tertiary sector, as the Future Fund Board of Guardians is able to accept gifts of money to be included as part of the endowment fund. This is a very welcome move. To encourage a culture of philanthropy in Australian universities, this bill will provide for the Australian public to be able to make unconditional tax deductable contributions to the endowment fund. Australian universities in the past have not been as successful as some of their overseas counterparts in attracting philanthropic donations. In fact, less than two per cent of the income of Australian universities comes from such donations. Comparable universities overseas attract philanthropic donations as high as 15 per cent to 20 per cent. So this is a splendid opportunity to add to the taxpayers’ investment through the government by allowing for individual donations. There is no doubt that more and more wealthy Australians are prepared to give generously to future research in education, and we have continued to see increasing numbers of people prepared to invest in diverse fields of study from medicine through to pharmaceuticals, history and technology. As Chair of the Parliamentary Diabetes Support Group, I am certainly aware of very generous private donations into research in that particular field. So we do have a great opportunity to boost this fund significantly.

The main purpose of the endowment fund is to make grants of financial assistance to eligible higher education institutions in relation to expenditure and research facilities. It will be used in a strategic way to promote excellence, quality, diversity and specialisation in Australian universities for years to come. The fund is clearly focused on driving universities forward, allowing them to keep up with the latest advances through excellent facilities.

Australia is a vast continent with diverse communities, and it is essential that we do not have a situation, such as that which has been proposed by the opposition, where the best education is concentrated simply in one small area, making it difficult for the wider public to access it. There needs to be attention given to ensuring a fair distribution across the states and within the regions. In determining where the money is to be invested we also need to know how decisions are made through the assessment process. This process should be made public and should be as transparent as possible.

I represent an electorate, the electorate of Pearce, which is diverse in its urban, rural and regional constituencies. I have been particularly grateful to our ministers, the former Minister for Education, Science and Training, the Hon. Brendan Nelson, and the current Minister for Education, Science and Training, the Hon. Julie Bishop, for the support they have given to locating a university campus in Midland, which is on the edge of the Pearce electorate, and for the recent announcement that an Australian technical college is to be located in Midland. I acknowledge the support given by the member for Hasluck in ensuring that one of the Australian technical college campuses will be located in the eastern corridor in Midland. Although Midland is not in the electorate of Pearce, many of the students who aspire to higher education, whether it be university education or technical education, come from the hinterland of Midland, much of which is in the Pearce electorate. Through having access in the eastern sector, many of those people who aspire to higher education, both younger and older people, now have that opportunity.

I was pleased to attend the opening day of the university campus—I think it was two or three years ago; how time passes—and I was thrilled to hear individually from the students that without the campus in Midland they would not have been able to access higher education. In the past, people in the eastern corridor have been thwarted in their ambitions because most of the universities in Western Australia are located in the western suburbs south and north of the city, making accessibility a considerable barrier to eastern area students.

My ambition for the region is to add to the university campus and the Australian technical college and to have a state-of-the-art agricultural college in the eastern sector. We now have two colleges. One is Muresk, a tertiary institution which is attached to Curtin University of Technology. I endorse the comments from the member for Swan about Curtin university. It is a university that all Western Australians can be proud of. It is the university that I studied at, so I am particularly proud of its achievements. In fact, if it had not been for the cooperation of Curtin university, it would have been difficult to have a structure for the places that our minister made available to Midland, because it was Curtin university that took up the role of managing those places. I am very grateful for the support that we had from Curtin university and, indeed, from Alan Robson of the University of Western Australia. Although he was not directly involved in the management of the places, he gave every assistance in their establishment and in recommending a structure for the development of those places. He recognised, as I did, that many of the people in the eastern corridor were people who had considerable social disadvantage and yet had the least opportunity and the most difficulties in attending universities based in the western north and south areas of the Perth metropolitan area. I welcome the support of Professor Toomey, who was then heading up Curtin university, and I acknowledge Alan Robson for his early support of the concept.

My electorate also has a very large number of Indigenous Australians, and I want to see those young people have the same educational opportunities as others in the community. In that respect I again pay tribute to the work of the former minister for education, the Hon. Brendan Nelson, who acknowledged the difficulties in retaining young Aboriginal students in schools in my area and agreed to fund some support facilities at Swan district high schools to make sure that these young people had every encouragement and support to remain in school till their final year and not drop out early. That has been very welcome and it has been a very successful program.

I think we can be informed by this. There is no doubt that, for many people who come from less affluent areas, the travel and cost of living away from home is prohibitive. There was a study done in the rural area of my electorate through Muresk—the former head of Muresk was part of this committee—that looked at the barriers to young people from rural areas entering university. Of course, some of those barriers go back to folklore. For many farming families, there has been a view in the past that you do not need a university degree to succeed in farming. That is probably true in many ways. But in this day and age, and in the global environment and highly sophisticated agricultural sector in which we now operate, it seems to me that the best education in these areas would be of great advantage to anyone hoping to succeed in these occupations in the future.

My ambition and dream for the region is to improve the state of agricultural higher education. Both Muresk, which is attached to Curtin University of Technology, and the Narrogin agricultural college, a secondary college devoted to agriculture, do an outstanding job of providing education for those who wish to specialise in agriculture. These institutions play a vital role in the state of Western Australia and, more broadly, the nation because a high proportion of our country’s rural exports are produced in Western Australia. I would like to see a lot more attention paid to resourcing the Muresk Institute, which might benefit from this measure. I would also like to see improvements made to and continual upgrading of the Narrogin agricultural college. It is a secondary college and probably does not fall within the scope of these measures, but I am sure that there are other opportunities through the portfolio to assist that particular institution. I am a former student of Narrogin Agricultural High School—or Narrogin High School as it is now called—to which the Narrogin agricultural college is attached, so I know what a great institution the college is.

In the true sense of the word, Australia is a lucky country with its great diversity. The reality is that we live in an increasingly global environment where there are unparalleled opportunities for our young people. It is paramount that graduates are able to meet the high demands of the global and local workforce and to meet the very highest standard possible. While our priority should always be our citizens when it comes to places at university, we also have a vibrant export market in education, and more and more students want to come and study in Australia. If we are to capitalise on those opportunities, it is necessary that we continue to strive for the best possible tertiary education facilities. The attractions of students coming from diverse backgrounds and other countries are many. Apart from the obvious income stream, these students bring different experiences and perspectives and open up opportunities for the development of exchanges in research and trade both now and in the future.

Although the Minister for Finance and Administration and the Treasurer will have overarching responsibility for issuing the maximum grants rules, it will be the Board of Guardians who will determine the amounts to be made available on a year-by-year basis in accordance with the endowment fund investment mandate. This bill ensures that it will be the Board of Guardians and not the ministers that determine the payment amounts and where payments will be directed. It also limits ministerial directions on investments.

Altogether, 42 Australian universities will qualify, along with the Australian Maritime College, which is scheduled to merge with the University of Tasmania next year; the Bachelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, which I particularly welcome; and the Melbourne College of Divinity. This means that Muresk, for example, as a formal campus of Curtin university, could potentially be one of the beneficiaries of the Higher Education Endowment Fund, and I certainly welcome and support any initiatives toward that end. I strongly support measures that maintain the real value of the endowment fund into the future and prevent future governments from making decisions to use these funds for other purposes. If tertiary education is to grow and improve, it is important that government creates the right environment, and a stable, reliable source of funding helps to create the optimum environment.

Credit must go to the Prime Minister and cabinet for the sound management of the economy that has created the budget surplus, which has provided the opportunity for these measures to be enshrined in legislation. It is with an eye to the future that our leaders have created such a fund. Here is a bill that focuses on driving our universities forward. This is not a fund to be used for refurbishment and general maintenance; there are other funds available for that. Rather, these funds are to provide universities with the resources they will need to establish themselves alongside the best in the world. The government’s investment alone will substantially enhance the funds that are available to be invested in the higher education sector. In fact, it will double all the existing financial investments and endowments currently held in the university sector, and I think that is very significant. It creates a legacy to be passed on to future generations.

This fund would have been difficult to establish if it had not been for the Howard government’s sound economic management. By retiring Labor’s $96 billion debt, we are no longer saddled with the huge interest bill associated with that debt. That money can now be applied to and invested back into the community in areas that secure the future of young Australians. Investing in education is critical to securing ongoing prosperity for all Australians. We need to make sure that our young people are equipped and resourced to meet the considerable challenges of the modern world. This builds on the government’s other measures in the education sector, including a $607 million Capital Development Pool and an estimated $1.5 billion over the same period for Research Infrastructure Block Grants. In addition, $59 million has been invested in universities through the Major National Research Facilities Program, with a further $540 million to be spent on the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy.

The minister reminded the House in her second reading speech—and I think it bears repeating:

We must aim for higher standards in education to support Australians in their quest to learn, to discover and to innovate. We must ensure that universities are well governed, are responsive to student and industry demand, and accountable to the taxpayers who continue to provide the majority of funding to the sector. This year the Australian government is providing a $9 billion investment in education, science and training, including the centrepiece of this year’s budget, the Higher Education Endowment Fund.

I have said it before in this place and I will say it again: one of the hallmarks of this government is that it has got the mix and balance right between university education and technical education. Under the former Labor government we had far too much emphasis on university education, and many young people felt defeated if there was nowhere for them to go if they were not capable of or did not aspire to a university education. The mix and balance is very important. Of course, I always recommend and support young people if they want to go on to a university education—they certainly should have the opportunity; we should encourage our young people to develop themselves to the best of their ability in whatever areas they are interested in and capable of developing. But to deny young people the opportunity to undertake other areas of higher education and learning, such as at technical colleges and through other college courses, is a real travesty. It often makes our young people feel that they are not worth while unless they can attain a university education. So I applaud the work our ministers have done to make sure there is that proper mix and balance available to young people and that there are different options.

Again, I have made the point that the best brain surgeon in the country cannot do his job without the technology that other people provide—there are the people who craft the finely honed and calibrated instruments that must be used, the people who care for the electrical equipment required in any operating theatre and the nurses who assist the surgeon. All these people go to make those procedures to save lives possible, and there are many other examples where we need to bring together the considerable talents and abilities of young people in whatever field they aspire to so that they can reach their best and make their best endeavours. This is an excellent, forward-looking measure, and I fully support this bill and commend the minister for her work to bring it about.

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