Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Energy and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to join with my coalition colleagues in speaking, not surprisingly, against the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities, and Other Measures) Bill 2009. This bill seeks to introduce a compulsory levy on university students capped at $250 a year from 1 July 2009. Frankly, the purpose of this bill is to introduce compulsory student unionism by stealth by denying students their fundamental right to freedom of choice on campus. It will mean that students, irrespective of their wishes, will be forced to fund a student union they may fundamentally disagree with and pay for services that they may never use. This bill seeks to introduce a style of voluntary student representation, VSR, with the ability for payments to be deferred in a HECS type arrangement. However, as we can see from the experience in Victoria and more recently under the Gallop-Carpenter government in Western Australia, the VSR system has a number of fundamental flaws.

On the history of VSU, coming from Western Australia I have seen firsthand the benefits of voluntary student unionism as it was introduced by the Court government in 1994. Their legislation provided true choice to students by allowing them the right to decide whether or not to join or fund their student union, with no academic benefit being denied because a student was not a member of the student association. We believe in choice in most areas, unlike the other side. I was proud to be a part of the Howard government that introduced legislation to implement VSU across Australian campuses in 2005. That legislation was extremely similar to that introduced by the Court government and has ensured that students’ rights to freedom of association and choice are upheld on campus.

There is a fundamental right of choice. VSR as introduced in both WA and Victoria required the payment of a compulsory student service fee but allowed membership of the student union to be voluntary. This is not a real choice. Any form of compulsory fee on campus forces students to financially support political activities that they may not be comfortable with and fund activities that they may never use. It is my firm belief that students—and neither student unions nor the government—are in the best position to decide which services they wish to use on campus and determine their financial priorities. They are in the best position to determine whether they should fund their student unions, and by implementing this compulsory fee the government is denying them that fundamental right to choose.

Proponents of compulsory student unionism or voluntary student representation commonly argue that the declining membership numbers in our student guilds are evidence of the negative impact of VSU, arguing that the guild is an important element of the social and cultural experience of attending university. We have just heard this ad nauseam from the member for Newcastle, giving many little anecdotes along the way about which, if we were able to stand there and debate each point, I am sure we would have an interesting dialogue.

However, I believe this reflects the importance of keeping VSU. While it is obvious that student guilds have a role to play at universities, they are not for everyone, and in a VSU environment students are able to exercise their right not to fund student unionism. I suspect the member for Braddon, who has just arrived, will essentially disagree with everything I am saying in a passionate way and speak with all the fervour that we have heard him speak with in recent times.

Students are themselves weighing up the pros and cons of membership and deciding that membership does not give them value for money. In an article written by Hal Colebatch, a regular writer for the Australian, on 11 March headed ‘Daylight robbery’ the by-line says:

Compulsory student charges are a left-wing racket to create cadres …

In the article Mr Colebatch quite rightly points out that the fee is economically constraining. He says:

Some are supported by spouses or parents, some scrabble desperately for study time while juggling employment commitments.

I will refer to more of that article a bit later, but it is just not the nirvana that the other side would have you believe—that you just pay your $250 and you get this magnificent service that everyone is going to enjoy. A lot of people, particularly mature-age students, only attend the university briefly because they have another life to lead. They do not sit around in the guild bar or use the guild facilities and the sporting and other clubs that are provided. They are there for an education and they seldom get use from the union fees they pay.

See this speech in context