Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities, and Other Measures) Bill 2009. There are many differences between the two sides of the House in the area of education, but this is a particular area of difference. Our side of the House believes that the education experience is more than just sitting in classrooms and reading textbooks. At university, in particular, it is a much broader experience. In order to maximise the capacity of Australian students to enjoy that broader experience, the adventurism of the former government’s voluntary student unionism needs to be overturned, and this bill does quite that.

The Rudd government has a commitment to education that has not been seen in this parliament for many years. The core focus of the government is to build a stronger and fairer nation. We know that education is the best route to the empowerment of individuals, the broader community and our nation. We also know that we need a more skilled population to meet the competitive challenges that Australia will face in the future. The current climate that we are enduring makes that even more of an urgent priority than before the onset of the global financial crisis.

The education revolution has a very significant number of important facets and it is important, in setting out the context of this bill, to run through them quickly. One of the most pleasing aspects of our education revolution from my point of view is the focus on four-year-olds. We now know that the most important time for a human being’s brain development is the first five years. This government brings a focus to four-year-olds’ education and development that has never existed at the Commonwealth level, and I am very proud of that.

We are doing a range of things in order to improve the curriculum and make it more consistent, particularly for high school students but also for primary school students, and to lift the rate of maths and science education in this country. We have undertaken a range of primary and secondary school initiatives, including computers in our schools and, very pleasingly, the trades training centres. I was pleased to learn that, in addition to the Seaton High School trades training centre that was awarded in the first round of this program, Le Fevre High School, Ocean View College, Paralowie R-12 School and Parafield Gardens High School, all of which are in my electorate, have been awarded trades training centres under the second round of this incredibly important program.

There is massive infrastructure investment going on or starting under the Building the Education Revolution part of the Nation Building and Jobs Plan which will revolutionise the infrastructure in many schools which have not had significant investment for many, many years. Most recently, we have seen the Deputy Prime Minister’s response to the Bradley review, indicating quite clearly that this government believes that significant reform to our tertiary education sector, particularly the universities sector, is needed in order to provide a platform for that level of education well into the future.

As I said at the opening, this bill reflects our view that education is more than just a classroom and textbook experience, particularly at university. The key component of the bill that I want to address cleans up the mess left by the previous government’s adventurism in student services on university campuses. The quality of campus life—and this is a simple matter of fact—has been significantly degraded by the introduction of voluntary student unionism by the previous government.

We have seen—and I happened to turn the television on to watch the member for Higgins’s contribution to this debate—so many on the other side, including the previous speaker, fighting the fights of the past. There have been so many recitations of the bad old days, when the Australian Union of Students used to donate money to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation or some other organisation overseas. That may or may not be the case—I was not around at the time; frankly, even when I was at university I did not participate in student unions, although I was happy to pay the fee—but it is simply an inadequate response to this government’s genuine attempt to deal with the mess left by voluntary student unionism on campuses and to deal with the needs of 21st century students, who have not been able to enjoy the sort of campus life that most members of parliament in this House were able to enjoy prior to VSU.

What are student unions? Student unions have a very proud history in this country. Many of the key student unions at the older universities predate the Commonwealth. The Sydney university union was founded in 1874, Melbourne’s was founded in 1884 and, in my city of Adelaide, the Adelaide University Union, of which I was a member for some years, was founded in 1895. They have a very proud history of providing support services, advocacy, cultural and sporting activities, as well as giving our educated youth a democratically elected voice on political issues, which seems to be the point that so grates the other side of this House. There may or may not have been controversies, particularly back in the seventies and early eighties, but for over 100 years it cannot be argued that this sector of the education community did not provide a very important platform for a well-rounded educational experience in universities.

Student union fees paid by students over that period of time enabled independent representation for academic matters, such as disciplinaries, enrolment issues, university structure, intellectual property and such like, to be provided to students. They enabled students to access services, including child care, academic counselling, financial counselling and international student services, which I will address in a few minutes. They enabled students to access cultural and sporting activities by involving themselves in clubs that very significantly enriched campus life. Perhaps most importantly but less tangibly, they enabled students in one discipline to network and interact with students in other disciplines, enabling them to broaden their minds and their campus experiences and to form friendships and networks with people from other professions and other disciplines. It fostered talent in the arts, without which we would not have had Monty Python. As I said earlier, there is a very significant body of evidence that sporting activities on our campuses play a very important part in making Australia the great sporting nation that it is.

All of that takes money. Without student services fees of the type that this bill contemplates, you need, as the previous speaker said, a user pays system. We reject the idea of a user pays system in this area. In some areas it is appropriate, but in this area of policy we reject that idea because we know that a user pays system, by definition, results in disadvantage for less financially secure students. An alternative to user pays, which we have seen a bit over the last several years, is that the university itself must find the money to provide those services and opportunities to students—which means redirecting funds which would otherwise be used in areas such as teaching or research. Otherwise, services simply cease to exist, and there is much evidence to show that significant ranges of services have ceased to exist since the adventurism of the previous government.

In about April of last year, DEEWR released a summary report on the impact of VSU on campuses around Australia. Over 160 written submissions were received by that review, as well as consultations occurring in all capital cities and a number of regional centres, particularly university regional centres including Ballarat, Armidale, Townsville and many more. Frankly, that report makes for very depressing reading. Those on the other side of the House, who, as I have said, by and large enjoyed a campus life that did have that rich array of services—and many of whom participated in the political activities underwritten by those fees as far back as the seventies and perhaps some of them even earlier—and who now oppose this bill, should hang their heads in shame in reading that report and in looking at the campus life that is presented to students under a VSU regime. The University of South Australia, which has a thriving campus in my own electorate of Port Adelaide, raised about $4½ million in fees from student union membership pre VSU—not just that campus but the university across South Australia, which is the largest university in that state. The funds contributed by the university since VSU amount to about $615,000. The evidence from that review showed that the services and representation that have been lost to students under VSU include student employment services, access to loans and accommodation, a childcare subsidy, accident insurance, legal advice, tax advice and many, many more.

At Adelaide University, which I attended for some years, money raised through student membership pre VSU was about $3½ million, compared with about $50,000 post VSU. Among the many impacts experienced at Adelaide University, we have seen a significant decrease in levels of engagement with the community, a loss of welfare and advocacy staff at the student union, and a report of increasing isolation among international students. This is a point I want to take up very briefly. One of the great success stories of Australia in recent years has been the significant uptake of Australia as the destination of choice of international students. I was very pleased to see a media release by the Deputy Prime Minister in recent weeks that showed that in 2008, for the first time ever, Australia had over 500,000 international students enrolled in its education institutions. That is not just universities, but a very significant number of those students are studying at our universities, contributing significant funds to our university sector and significantly enriching the campus life and campus experience of Australian students as well. Over 100,000 of the students enrolled in Australian education institutions in 2008 came from China. This is a wonderful success story. One of the things that make Australia such an attractive destination of choice for overseas students, and for the families that sponsor them, is the rich campus life that we have had for over 100 years and which has been so shamefully attacked by the previous government.

Flinders University, the third university in South Australia, had to find $1 million to compensate for almost $3 million that was raised prior to VSU. Sixty clubs, and 11 sports and rec clubs, have shut down since VSU at that university. Student representative bodies—they previously numbered six—have been reduced to one. The union has lost education, research and advocacy officers as well as their international student support officer. They have had to close the occasional childcare centre. They have had to close the student newspaper—and I know many of the members of the press gallery started their journalistic careers in student newspapers. They have had to remove various honorariums that applied. Across Australia, Madam Deputy Speaker, the introduction of VSU—

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