Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Support for democracy is commonly invoked but less rarely honoured and practiced. Democracy should be at the heart of our consideration of this Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010 because democracy is about much more than what goes on in this place and it is about more than what goes on at elections. I believe democracy is also about participation and decision making of people about how to construct and manage their everyday community—whether that is in their workplace, their school or university or their local area.

One of the important reasons why universities have been so central to the economy and society for many, many years is the democratic culture of their campuses. It is the academic collegiality and participatory environment of universities that have been the well springs of creativity in the sciences and the arts from which have developed the key ideas of the last few centuries. However, several decades of neoliberal or economic rationalist restructuring, including an attack on student organisations, has eroded this democratic culture and is slowly killing the quality of higher education. As a result, the idea that students should be able to control and direct their activities is becoming a distant memory, and student union buildings increasingly resemble shopping malls.

The shift to so-called voluntary student unionism began with the corporatism of the Hawke government and continued under the Howard government. I believe it is time we reclaimed the right of students to determine their own affairs, something this bill could be a step towards but does not achieve. This is more than a claim of ‘no taxation without representation’, although that is appropriate to this debate, and it is not just a call for a return to some idea of the good old days when I was student. Rather it is time, I believe, to allow students to develop their own 21st century version of the student agora built on their idea of democracy. But to do this, students must be provided the right to determine how their student service fees are levied and spent.

So-called voluntary student unionism had a disastrous impact on my constituents in Melbourne. My electorate of Melbourne has more university students than any other in the country; over 17 per cent are attending a tertiary education institution. Student populations dominate entire suburbs within my electorate, and my electorate contains some of the most vibrant, exciting and creative student communities that you will find. I am determined to ensure that parliament never makes the mistake of attacking these vibrant student communities again, as it did with the introduction of VSU five years ago.

At Victoria University, health advisory and drug education services have been discontinued. Student advocacy and representation sections have been discontinued and replaced with the student advisory service. Sport programs and club subsidies have been reduced or removed. Facility maintenance has been scaled back and the postgraduate association and international students association have both ceased functioning. The student association struggles to communicate with students due to lack of resources. In fact, it no longer has any staff.

At RMIT University, the RMIT Union—that is, the services, arts and sports body—saw a 90 per cent reduction in staff and a reduction in student fee income from approximately $5.5 million in 2005 to nil in 2007. The RMIT University Student Union, where I once advocated for students who were having trouble with the university, saw a reduction in staff from 40 to 12 and a reduction in income of approximately $2 million. The university has taken over the leased spaces, bookshops, and the childcare, tax and legal services. About 60 per cent of all union services and activities have been cut, including the dental service, and those services that remain are focused on the main city campus. Services in smaller outer urban campuses have been all but wiped out.

At the University of Melbourne, reduction in means-tested rebates for accessing child care has led to a 20 per cent reduction in the service, making it more difficult for students with young children to study. There has been an enormous loss of support staff, and outreach programs and project work has suffered. There has been negligible investment in refurbishment and maintenance of facilities, the sports clubs are suffering and there have been cuts across the board to funding for campaigns and programs run in the students’ interests. Other universities in my electorate have also had student support services slashed. VSU has harmed student support across higher education providers in my electorate, just as it has across the country. A complete university experience includes a vibrant student body and a culture of community.

It gives me no pleasure to note that the Gillard government’s bill in response to the Howard government attacks is not going to repair the damage. In fact, it does not even try. It does restore much of what was lost by ensuring funding for core amenities and services, and the Greens support this entirely. But this bill is akin to taxation without representation and student communities will still be left after the passage of this bill, if it does indeed proceed, without true independent student representation.

As the member for an electorate with so many students as constituents, can I just say how disappointing it is to see Labor champion this course of action.

I would like to announce to members that the Greens will be moving a series of amendments to this bill in the Senate, if it does indeed proceed to that place. But, given the urgency of restoration of funding for student support services, I will be supporting the bill in this place. The Greens will move in the Senate to put in place a reporting mechanism that examines how the student levy will be spent and the level of engagement between higher education providers and student representative bodies. Even more importantly again, we will move to require that funds that are made available by the passage of this bill are spent on student services at the discretion of independent student representative bodies rather than by higher education providers directly. This is what the government should have proposed in the first instance, and I certainly hope that the government will come around to supporting this fundamental shift in principle.

I was a very proud president of my student organisation. My vice-president was elected from the Liberal Party ticket. The committee was comprised of members from across the political spectrum. Truly representative of the students at our campus, we were able to manage students’ fees in a way that reflected a broad range of needs and interests. Parliament should, again, be facilitating such student representation in all tertiary education institutions—that particularly goes for the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition, both presidents of their student organisations in their university days.

Life is not all about markets, supply and demand and business cases—as the coalition suggest; there is a space for culture, community, politics and engagement. I have heard the coalition this morning champion the right to choose. On that score, on the question of freedom of choice, the coalition have no credibility. If they were serious, they would allow workers and employers to bargain about matters of their own choosing and contract about matters of their own choosing, and to bargain at the workplace level or at the industry level if they so choose. They are the first ones prepared to step in and tell people what they are and are not allowed to bargain and contract for. Only this morning, following a debate that has been held over the last couple of days, we heard representatives of the coalition stand up and deny to individuals the fundamental freedom to marry the person who they want to.

The member for Kooyong in his first speech stood up and said that the principles of John Stuart Mill should still be alive within the coalition and that the state should only ever intervene and restrict freedom of choice when there is potential harm from one person to another. If that was right, they would support people’s right to marry the person of their own choosing, or at least allow their members a conscience vote on the question. They come in and champion the cause of freedom of choice but they have no basis for doing so. Their hypocrisy is absolutely palpable.

While this bill will go some way towards making universities better places to be and is thus worthy of support, it also sadly represents yet another Labor Party retreat from the democratic principles it once believed in. As a result of this bill students will be required to pay fees that will go towards essential services, but they will be denied the right to control and spend them in the manner that they see fit. University life is and should be about more than turning up on time for lectures and then having to go home, and then perhaps having to be forced to work up to 20 or 30 hours a week simply to make ends meet because of the low level of student assistance endorsed by both of the old parties here in this House. Time at university should be a space and a time for reflection and community engagement. This bill might go some way towards providing for that but it would be much better if the government accepted the amendments that will be proposed by the Greens and allow students to have control of their own affairs.

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