Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australian tertiary education is consistently ranked as amongst the world's best, attracting more international students than does any other country, as a percentage of the population. In fact, education is Australia's third largest export, second only to coal and iron ore. Recently, however, there have been worrying reports of international concern that the standard of Australian universities is not as high as that of our competitors. This concern was discussed as recently as 16 June in the Australian's higher education supplement.

This is why the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Bill 2011 is of great importance. It aims to ensure the quality of all higher education providers by reducing the number of federal, state and territory regulatory bodies from nine down to just one national agency, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, known as TEQSA. Using a standards based approach to regulation, higher education providers will be required to meet or exceed a threshold standard if they are to be registered in Australia. This issue is of particular importance to me, given that my electorate of Ryan is home to the University of Queensland.

I take this opportunity to congratulate Brisbane City Council and Brisbane Marketing on their initiative Study Brisbane, which is an initiative led by Gordon Scott at Brisbane Marketing that promotes the quality tertiary institutions we have in the city of Brisbane as well as holding an annual Brisbane Welcomes International Students day. It has also recently initiated a student ambassador program where students from other countries regularly twitter their experiences in the city of Brisbane back home to their friends overseas.

Quality assurance is hugely important to the sector, particularly in this time of great change. Over the past few years we have experienced a very turbulent time with regard to international students. The negative effects of this government's mismanagement of the international students sector are stark and have been detrimental to the sector as a whole. As reported in the Australian in May last year, the sector saw a 40 per cent decrease in overseas student applications in one month alone. At the time, Stephen Connelly of the International Education Association of Australia cautioned that, should this decline continue, the sector could lose up to 35,000 jobs by the end of 2011. One year on, these statistics have not improved, with the Sydney Morning Herald reporting in February this year that the number of international students choosing Australia for their degree has continued to fall. Student visa applications from outside Australia decreased 32 per cent over the last six months of 2010 compared with 2009, which had already fallen 22 per cent compared to the same period in 2008. Given that it is estimated that international students generate approximately $12.3 billion value added to the economy annually and given declining rates of international student enrolment, it becomes more and more clear that the bill before us today is a positive and necessary step towards quality assurance for the sector. It is also a very timely measure given the changes currently occurring in the system.

Earlier this week the House debated a substantial change with the move to a student-demand-driven system for universities. I spoke on the bill at the time, highlighting the importance of tertiary education and supporting the Bradley review recommendation that Australia aspire to having 40 per cent of people aged 20 to 34 holding a bachelor's degree by 2025. This is an ambitious but noble target. Tertiary education enriches lives, enables higher earning potential, increases opportunities, teaches the ability to analyse and encourages and enthuses people about learning. The student-demand-driven system supports this aim and will help to achieve it; however, a target of 40 per cent participation would necessarily mean a huge influx of students into our university campuses. The question must be asked as to how this will be funded and how our universities will be supported to provide the extra infrastructure and resources necessary to cater for this influx of students.

This raises alarm bells with me as we have often seen a grand idea, usually one with merit, fall foul of this government's problematic track record of bungled implementation. This unfortunately has been quite apparent in education. The BER, promising new school halls and libraries around the country, in many cases delivered failed projects such the hall at Mount Crosby State School, in my electorate of Ryan, that requires a huge budget blowout simply to build a fourth wall. The last time I looked at a building, most of them do need four walls! Furthermore, every schoolchild was promised a laptop computer under—

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