Kerry Rea (Bonner, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do not know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that I follow the previous speaker, the member for Mayo, because I could spend the whole of my time allotted refuting some of the almost hysterical and ridiculous arguments that he was putting forward on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009. It would also mean that I would not be able to focus on what are some of the very important reforms that are contained in this legislation. For the record, particularly for the member for Mayo, this is not a bill that will reintroduce compulsory student unionism. In fact, the legislation specifically prohibits any university or higher education provider making it mandatory or requiring that students join a student organisation. But more of what the previous member had to say later.

By way of beginning, I have just come from the Main Committee where I moved a private member’s motion concerning the Millennium Development Goals, particularly goals 4 and 5, which deal with the very significant issues of attempting to improve the global community’s ability to reduce both child mortality and maternal mortality. The reality is that, as we are speaking in this place today, 24,000 children under five will have died of preventable diseases like malaria, diarrhoea and other very common diseases. It is a reality that every minute we are speaking in this debate a woman is dying in childbirth. The reality is that those statistics are so shocking because they are born of poverty and they are born of a lack of resources in many communities across this globe to deal with some of those most fundamental issues like caring for our children and for the women that bear and rear those children.

If there is one thing that any community will acknowledge that can reduce poverty, it is access to education. The opportunity for any person on this earth to be able to provide a living for themselves and to improve their existing circumstances is through their ability to gain an education. That is what this bill is about. It is about allowing students—in fact, enabling and supporting students—regardless of their background, regardless of their circumstances, to have the right to not just a university education but a university education that will give them all of the support that they need to obtain their degree.

This week I am a little bit focused elsewhere. My daughter finished year 12 last Friday. Her father and I delivered her to the Sunshine Coast to enjoy what we all know as ‘schoolies week’. You can appreciate that my mind and my heart are a little bit elsewhere this week. While I hope that she is enjoying herself and enjoying the freedoms and privileges that go with a week without parents, I also hope she is not a victim of what we know are some of the excessive behaviours. But that is just this week. When she comes back from ‘schoolies’ she has the rest of her life ahead of her and her goal is to go to university. Her goal is to study journalism at university—a fact which maybe her mother, as a politician, is not necessarily completely comfortable with. Nevertheless, I will do anything to support her in her pursuit of opportunities and her goals as she moves into her adult life.

The reason I support this bill is that I want my daughter not just to go to university—to attend tutorials and lectures and to struggle through the pains and trials of assessment—but also to enjoy her time at university. I want it to be the making of her not just professionally but personally—the making of her as a young woman who will develop a whole range of skills, be they social skills, friends or all those relationships that she will form that, hopefully, will be with her throughout her life. I want her to remember university as a time when she did not just learn what she had to learn for the next exam but when she learnt about life.

That is the experience I had at university, and the experience I had through many activities at university, whether going to the theatre to see movies, whether playing sport or being able to eat in a cafeteria, because on the student income I received I was still able to buy myself some food, I want her to have. I want her to have those resources and those services as well. I want to know that if she gets into trouble and is finding it difficult, whether it is on a personal or educational level, there is a counselling service that she will be able to go to and seek the advice and guidance that she needs to keep her on her way. I want her to know that there are clubs and different societies where she can pursue all of the interests that she has as a young person and be able to do that with neither the fear of the cost of participating in that activity nor that the service will not be there at all because the university she is attending simply cannot afford it.

That is the reality of this bill. It is not the sort of politically paranoid rant we heard from the member for Mayo. It is not about, as Senator Abetz said in his speech, turning vice-chancellors into shop stewards. It is not about forcing people to join an organisation that they see no value for. It is actually about supporting students to not just achieve their educational goals but also to enjoy a full round of services on the way.

It is not also a broken election commitment, as the member for Mayo indicated. In fact, as Minister Ellis has said on many occasions publicly and in the House, this is about delivering on our election commitment to rebuild essential student services and amenities on university campuses. This is actually about getting back into universities those fundamental supports, resources, services and amenities that students deserve while they study, and indeed, many of them need. When you look at the results of what occurred on campuses right across this country as a result of the draconian legislation that was introduced by the previous Howard government, you can appreciate just how important this particular bill is.

If you live in a capital city and you have the opportunity to attend one of the Group of Eight universities, as you know, they were well-resourced and in some ways were able to provide some support to students. They were able to prop up their student organisations with funding agreements. For example, in my own city of Brisbane there is the well-respected University of Queensland, which I attended, and I admit I was involved in the student union and was very active in it. The University of Queensland was able to support student organisations to provide some of the basic services that had been lost as a result of this legislation. But their bucket of money was finite as well. It meant that the university had to take money away from teaching and learning resources to provide those essential services to their students.

But if you represent a rural or a regional electorate, you know that many universities did not even have that luxury. Many universities simply had to cut services or dramatically increase fees for students to be able to use those services, in effect putting those services out of reach for probably most of the students who actually needed them. Those who often cannot afford something are the ones who need that service the most. So, in effect, you had a whole group of students going through university not realising their full potential when it came to their educational goals because they simply could not afford some of those very essential services that they needed to back them up.

We all know that nobody goes to university planning a major event or a dramatic episode that seriously affects their wellbeing. Nobody plans for the death of a family member or a car accident or many of those things that may either affect them mentally, and therefore seriously affect their educational abilities, or indeed may actually mean that they are not able to do the part-time job that they have been doing to get through university. It means that those people were left with no services to support them, with no counselling to support them, without the ability often to go and get a basic meal—those sorts of things.

This legislation is essential to supporting the education of our young people. For example, the student organisation at Charles Darwin University went bankrupt. The SRC at Southern Cross University at Lismore had to be wound down. The University of New England union adjusted by dissolving the student organisation and taking on service provision under the entity of UNE Services. It now receives $300,000 a year from the university. Before the introduction of voluntary student unionism it received $1.85 million a year—a serious reduction in terms of dollars to the sorts of activities that students should enjoy while they are there. It basically means there are no sporting activities and, if you are part of a regional university, often it is the university facilities that are not just enjoyed by students but indeed the whole community. Many schools and other community organisations use university facilities because the community simply does not have the resources to build those facilities otherwise. So we saw communities robbed, not just students.

Unfortunately, there is a litany of examples of universities that suffered as a result of the Howard government’s legislation. Indeed, we do not need to go as far as rural and regional universities. In my own electorate we have Griffith University nearby, the second largest university in Brisbane, a very well established, well respected university. Its main campus at Nathan is just across the border in the electorate of my good friend the member for Moreton. The Mount Gravatt campus is contained within the electorate of Bonner. That student organisation disappeared. As a result, though, of what is contained in this legislation, the $250 fee that the government is now allowing universities to require students to pay, it will in fact restore many of the very important services that were lost as a result of the SRC going under. They were unable to collect voluntary fees. We know that. It is not an argument for compulsory student unionism to acknowledge that voluntary fees, when you are a student, are the last thing on your mind. But if the university asks you to pay a simple fee of $250 and no more for the year, which in fact therefore provides the campus with the resources that it needs to provide child care, counselling and sporting facilities, that is not too onerous a burden on students and it provides them with many of the resources that are so essential.

There is paranoia and what can only be considered an ideologically driven argument from the other side. There is a fear of students organising collectively. There is, as the member for Isaacs said, a fear of freedom of association. But the legislation illustrates some 16 items where the money can be spent—child care, legal services, health care, employment and academic support, just to name a few. I was halfway through my university degree when my first child was born. I know how important it was for me to finish my degree to have access to affordable child care on campus with my child nearby. So this is not an argument about how big a student protest you can fund, this is an argument about how people actually get their qualifications and get through university life without going under. If it were not for the support of some legal services, many students, because of circumstances that they could never predict, would be walking away from universities—a lifetime of opportunity wasted. Many female students and indeed many male students who do not have access to affordable child care would have to give up university and go out to full-time work rather than pursuing their dream and their education goals.

I cannot understand how the opposition can oppose this bill. I cannot understand how requiring a services fee—to provide sporting activities, legal support, counselling services, academic support and subsidies for textbooks and other materials that students need to continue in their degree—suddenly translates into ‘Labor Inc.’ as the member for Mayo called it. They somehow think that providing subsidised textbooks is going to create some sort of ‘student revolutionary guard’ that is going to fundamentally attack the Liberal Party and make them disappear.

That is not what this legislation is about. It is not, in fact, what student unionism is about. Understanding and appreciating that campuses need to make sure the money goes into the services students need is the very reason why the government is not reintroducing compulsory student unionism. It is the very reason why the government is not allowing student unions to develop and to redirect funds into what they see as political campaigns. In some universities there are tens of thousands of students. They are major communities, they are cities in themselves, and they have a right to say what services they want. They have a right to argue for the organisations and activities they want to be able to participate in not just to obtain their degree but to attain a level of maturity, to move into young adulthood and to participate in community life as well as professional life.

It is important that the myths get put to bed and that we acknowledge the important reforms in this legislation that will enable students to do well. It is important that the students at Mount Gravatt, at Griffith University, at the University of Queensland and indeed at Charles Darwin University and James Cook University are able to enjoy a fulfilling and rewarding time at university and look back on university as a memorable time. It is also important that they are able to participate in democratic activities. It is important that young people who are going to university, who are eventually going to become the professionals and political leaders of Australia in the future, are not just sitting in a library beavering away at computer screens for hours a day because they cannot afford the textbooks they need. We do not want them to become insular, single-minded people who have to scrape everything together just to get through their exams. They need to be well-rounded young adults. They need to understand their professional duties but they also need to be able to enjoy and broaden their own personal skills and social activities by participating in all that campus life has to offer.

Senator Abetz made comments about vice-chancellors becoming shop stewards. The member for Mayo made comments about creating factional warlords in the Labor Party. He obviously does not understand the factional leaders; they come from a range of backgrounds—certainly not just from university. The opposition cannot see that this is a balanced and practical approach to providing essential student activities. Unfortunately their education, and their ability to read the legislation, has failed them.

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