Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to participate in the debate on the bill before the House, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Removal of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements and National Governance Protocols Requirements and Other Matters) Bill 2008. This bill will amend the Higher Education Support Act 2003 by repealing section 33-17. The main purpose of this bill is to remove the requirement of universities and other higher education providers to offer Australian workplace agreements to employees as a condition of additional funding provided through the Commonwealth Grant Scheme. It will also remove the requirement that universities and higher education providers meet the national governance protocols as a condition of additional funding provided through the Commonwealth Grant Scheme. The national governance protocols have ensured that universities and higher education providers’ governing bodies are effectively overseeing the operations of management and include specific provisions relating to the size, structure, membership and experience of university boards and governing bodies.

Under the prior act, the Higher Education Support Act 2003, universities were required to comply with higher education workplace relations requirements and national governance protocols in order to receive additional increased assistance funding of five per cent in 2006 and 7.5 per cent in 2007 under the Commonwealth Grant Scheme. These requirements were introduced into the Higher Education Support Act 2003 through the higher education legislation amendment act 2005. Higher education workplace relations requirements required that an employee of a university or higher education provider should be free to choose collectively negotiated salary and conditions or to negotiate a common-law contract or an Australian workplace agreement. The requirements encouraged more direct relationships with employees, greater workplace productivity and rewards for higher performers by requiring universities to provide employees with genuine choice and flexibility in agreement making. The national governance protocols required that universities and other higher education providers meet best practice in governance by ensuring that university councils were formed by a diverse range of councillors with appropriate commercial and business expertise and that professional development be provided.

The amendments are being introduced despite the fact that a report is due in the coming months on the review of the protocols by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs and is yet to be handed down. Labor did not announce these amendments as a part of their 2007 election policies, instead announcing their intention to legislate the changes through a speech delivered by the minister to Innovative Research Universities Australia on 5 February 2008.

Consultation with several vice-chancellors, some of whom represent the peak university bodies, has taken place recently. I am informed that most vice-chancellors support the government’s amendments on both removing the conditionality clause of higher education workplace relations requirements and national governance protocols, stating that they were an administrative burden. However, the removal of national governance protocols requirements as a condition of higher education sector funding is a purely ideological amendment.

The coalition believes that removing these legislative conditions with a view to encouraging universities to pursue good governance with a ‘non-legislative’ focus is a backward step in best practice. The protocols include specific provisions to ensure that university boards represent and meet the expectations of the university and wider community. They stipulate methods to achieve best practice in university governance. The coalition believes that removing these conditions from the legislation acts as a disincentive for universities to pursue good governance techniques and allows for a return to governing boards being filled with narrow interest groups.

The protocols also draw on evidence to achieve best practice through those protocols. For example, the Business, Industry and Higher Education Collaboration Council considered that nine to 11 members would be appropriate for higher education governing councils. The existing protocols provide for a maximum size of a governing body to be 22 members, with best practice evidence in mind. The protocols also cap a maximum term of appointment for board members at 12 years to ensure that these bodies reflect the changing constituency of university communities. A non-legislative focus to governance protocols would remove the responsibility of universities to meet community expectations of the administration of universities and would deny the taxpayer the right to expect proper and accountable governance for Commonwealth support to be provided to universities.

In line with the coalition’s approach to wider workplace legislation, we do not oppose the retraction of higher education workplace relations requirements. The repealing of these requirements will allow universities to be subject to the same workplace relations laws as all other employers. Nevertheless, it was implemented in the best interests of the universities and higher education providers to provide them with assistance and recognise the difficulties they faced in attracting and retaining the best quality staff. The staff retention and attraction problem that was being addressed will now only continue to worsen for the higher education sector when this legislation passes this parliament.

I do, however, oppose the provisions of the bill relating to the removal of conditionality with respect to the national governance protocols. I fully support the efforts of the coalition in opposition to seek to amend the bill to remove the section allowing the minister to reduce a higher education provider’s basic grant amount if the national governance protocols are not met.

We have had a review as well, and the minister should include Labor’s plans to abolish the domestic full-fee-paying places as part of the review and then seriously consider the impact it will have on the funding stream of higher education sectors. I remind the government that it was only after the coalition government paid off Labor’s $96 billion of government debt that it was able to make important investments in the higher education sector. This included the groundbreaking $6 billion for the Higher Education Endowment Fund and increases in funding, including $1.7 billion in last year’s budget alone.

I note with interest that Universities Australia was very quick to respond to the minister’s announcement of a review into higher education. It stated that it welcomed the review and that the examination of funding arrangements must look at both private and public contributions and their balance compared to other OECD countries. It was also interesting to read Universities Australia’s recommendations to the review in terms of social inclusion measures and improving student equity and access. It recommended a staged reduction in the age of independence for youth allowance from the current 25 years to 18, so that university students are not assessed on the basis of their parents’ income and assets, and the removal of the assessable income component for all scholarships and bursaries regardless of their funding source.

I support this latter recommendation as it does indeed seem to be an impediment for some potential students to re-enter higher education. As an example, one of my constituents, Mrs Margaret Kous from Collie in my Forrest electorate, was awarded her diploma of education from Edith Cowan University in 2000. Mrs Kous is also in receipt of a widow’s allowance from Centrelink. Mrs Kous has been offered a $20,000 scholarship to enable her to continue her studies at Edith Cowan University with the aim of re-entering the workforce. However, the scholarship moneys are a component of assessable income and are counted as such by Centrelink. If this scholarship was a gift or untied to the assessable income component, Mrs Kous’s pension payments would not be affected.

Mrs Kous initially thought she might take $10,000 of the scholarship money as a lump sum to assist her with petrol and car expenses, as she would need to travel from Collie to Bunbury and back several times each week, a distance of 120 kilometres return. But doing this would reduce her current Centrelink payment from $329 per fortnight to just $63 per fortnight. Mrs Kous is now thinking twice about accepting the scholarship because, with the resultant reduction in her Centrelink allowance of $266 per fortnight, it would not leave her with enough funds to meet normal living expenses, plus travel to university. It does seem strange logic to treat this scholarship as ‘income’, thereby denying Mrs Kous the opportunity to become financially independent in the foreseeable future and, as such, no longer a cost to the public purse.

I welcome the input of Universities Australia to this further review. I sincerely hope the government responds to all recommendations submitted so that practical recommendations such as the ones I have previously mentioned are implemented by government, not just those of an ideological nature.

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