Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Not quite—I have another one coming up, Member for Dunkley. I note that the very edified National Tertiary Education Union has welcomed the bill, again. We expect some mumbling on the other side, because as soon as you mention a student union you immediately get right-wing reactionary comments. But the National Tertiary Education Union, which represents many thousands of students, has welcomed the bill as:

… the first step in the vital process of rebuilding student culture on university campuses, devastated by the effects of the former Coalition Government’s Voluntary Student Union (VSU) legislation.

I also note that Carolyn Allport, the NTEU President, said recently:

“The loss of student services in the university sector has been endemic, with essential health, welfare and academic advocacy services being reduced or abandoned in almost every university in the country.”

If we take that at face value, and we do, this is a pretty sad legacy from the former government’s legislation. Dr Allport also said:

It is a fact that the introduction of VSU has seen the demise of a number of elected student organisations, with many others only just surviving. As a result, many universities have been forced to redirect funding from their core duties of teaching and research to help support student services, often at a reduced level.

The protocols and guidelines—which we do not hear much about from the other side—that will accompany this legislation as a legislative instrument, which will be presented to the parliament, are an attempt to be more prescriptive about how student services and amenities fees are to be used and also more prescriptive about delivering national access and service benchmarks on services and information that are going to be presented to students.

To sum up, first and foremost this legislation is about delivering on an election commitment to restore balance to our universities by providing a mechanism to allow universities to provide much needed services and amenities to students. There are prescriptive guidelines on how this capped fee—if it is decided by universities that they want to introduce it—will be used. It is not to be used for overt political purposes, as those on the other side would have us believe. I urge them to support this legislation once again and get it through the other place. (Time expired)

See this speech in context