Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Ballarat for her contribution to the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities, and Other Measures) Bill 2009. I think she encapsulated some of the very real issues that are out there. On the point that she made about regional universities at the end of her speech, I was at a conference yesterday where that was discussed, and the vice-chancellor of the Ballarat university was one of the speakers. There are some very unique issues for regional universities and the various cost structures et cetera.

I would like to take this opportunity to recognise a staff member of mine who has been running my Tamworth office, at both a state and federal level, since 1991—Mr Leigh Tschirpig. He is not in this building very often but I thank him for the work that he has put in over all those years and I hope that he is with me for a few more.

As the member for Ballarat commented—and it has been quite extraordinary listening to this debate—a lot of people still seem to be at university even though they are in this parliament, and they are reliving some of the crimes that they committed during their student days. That is all very nice but after university you have to grow up a bit. In a parliament, particularly, we have to look at how services are provided to our young people. I listened to the member for Higgins and I have heard various comments on both sides of the parliament. It seems as though the old debates have never left them—the Rights and the Lefts and the indifferents. I was at university for four years and I was probably one of the indifferents who was not involved in student politics terribly much, but I appreciated the opportunities and some of the services that were there, that others were using and that I occasionally had to use.

One of the points that I would like to make concerns the voluntary student unionism issue that was raised a few years ago when the government abolished the mandatory student unionism arrangements. At that time, I moved an amendment that removed the capacity for political activities to be funded through the general fee. I have heard many members of the coalition, and some members of the government, saying today that they are in support of the general thrust of services being provided to students, but they are not in support of money being used to fund political activities. Neither side supported that amendment of mine in 2005 and, as I read this bill, it precludes the use of the general service fee for political activities, but most of the debate has been about old political activities. The member for Ballarat made a very important point in terms of the member for Higgins’s contribution about where he honed his skills in political debate because there was a capacity at university for people to have different views and to have the time and the capacity to debate those views and argue for their particular causes.

I do not have a problem, even if some of that money did happen to leak into that area, because universities really should be about not only learning how to be an engineer or a doctor, but learning other life skills as well. It should be about having the capacity to access various services if they are required. I have had two children go to university and hopefully another one will attend next year. Hopefully they will not need some of these services at university that may well help them with legal, housing or social problems that they may have difficulties with. But, if they did, I would be more than happy to make a contribution so that those services actually do exist in universities, particularly in our country universities where the students may well be many hundreds of kilometres away from their relatives.

So I do support the legislation today and I find it a bit odd that neither side supported essentially the same legislation by way of amendment back in 2005. I believed then that what the government was doing, because of members of the former government reliving some of their university days, was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They wanted to starve any political activity at university, which I would disagree with anyway—I think that is, as I said, part of what we should be doing at university. We need people to engage in the political process not starve their access to it. But, even given that issue, there was the capacity to ban the use of the general fee for political activities and still provide the other services that this legislation in fact brings back into play.

I would also like to congratulate those people who played a role during the 2005 debate. It was a very close debate and the numbers were very tight in the Senate. I would particularly like to recognise Tom O’Sullivan, Greg Harris, Steve Griffiths and, more recently, Don Knapp for their advocacy on behalf of student activities, particularly some of the student sporting activities, and particularly for their concern for the impact on country universities. I would like to single out Senator Barnaby Joyce as well. Even though he is going to be a candidate against me at the next election, I have to recognise good when good is seen to be done, and I congratulate Senator Joyce for the stance that he took when the voluntary student union debate was on. I know at the next election when we are head-to-head we will have some common ground in some of the issues that we have fought on in the past and I look forward to sharing that time with him and reminiscing about our camaraderie in some of the issues, this being one of them.

I was also interested to hear the member for Cowper, who, in his deliberations about people making their own choices—

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