Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Hansard source

The changes that we debate to the Higher Education Support Act in the Higher Education Support Amendment (Student Contribution Amounts and Other Measures) Bill exemplify a Labor government that is confused and interfering in higher-education policy. The previous speaker, the member for Fraser, made a florid attempt to disguise this bill as evidence-based policy when in fact it represents little more than a backflip and a sell-out of the many maths, science and statistics students who undertook their courses trusting the government of the day.

We have agreed that there are areas of national workforce priority—nursing and education among them—and that for a time, certainly since 2008, this current Labor government extended a discount HELP fee of not $7½ thousand per unit but closer to $4,000 for those in the physical sciences, essentially. This was an important and universally welcomed policy from the then Labor government and the previous Prime Minister. Today I am not making an attack on what is being brought before this House or making any effort to suggest that we will vote against the bill, but I think that Labor's constant policy interference needs to be pointed out in this chamber. This interference by a government that simply cannot make up its mind has been a constant annoyance for the tertiary education sector.

Bruce Chapman, an expert in income contingent loans, has done some great work out of ANU. It is all very well to say that the demand inelasticity for study simply does not support the evidence that reducing the price to study gets more people doing it, but the evidence in fact says otherwise. We know that from as early as 2009, after the changes made in the previous year, there was an increase in both applications and enrolments. We know that in the first year applications alone increased by 17 per cent and that in the second year—2010—they increased by 13.1 per cent. When we look at enrolments there is a similar story: up 13.6 and 9.6 per cent against nine and six per cent for the rest of the tertiary education sector. That is a significant influx of new people which we can only put down, when comparing it to the rest of the student cohort, to the intervention that reduced the cost of study in the areas in question.

It is up to this government to note this, faced as it is with information that extends right through 2012 when the largest increase in enrolments was by 10 per cent in the physical sciences. This shows clearly that we were on the path to fixing the problem. The government suddenly wants to change tack, to not grandfather any students whatsoever and to say that as of next year once again all the rules are changing—and doesn't that sound familiar from other areas of this government's conduct. Those changes mean that, whether you are halfway through a degree, close to completion or just finishing your first year, up go these fees per unit to $8½ thousand. That is right—if you are studying maths, science or statistics in some way you are now less needy than those doing nursing or education. The fact that there was no grandfathering indicates the level of fiscal panic, with which we have become familiar in this government. Is there an inability to roll out parallel, concurrent and more effective measures? No, the government is simply chopping away what it promised to do in 2008 and then promising that there is a whole host—as the member for Fraser said, a whole swathe—of new measures which are likely to be more evidence-based and even more effective. That is nothing more than an idle promise. The government is leaving entire cohorts stranded and paying double. These cohorts are stranded and will not have the promise fulfilled that the government made.

Andrew Norton from the Grattan Institute referred to this constant introduction and withdrawal of incentive measures. There is almost a form of tertiary education sovereign risk, which is that students today simply cannot trust their government to make one decision and stick to it through the period of their study. That is what is so completely clear today. The saving is around $315 million over the forward estimates, which is not insignificant. But let us remember who is paying for this saving. They are students of maths, science and statistics—the very people who responded to the government's call in 2008. The previous Prime Minister was elevated by many for his great words about rescuing science and allowing for the growth of CSIRO by recentralising the role of that group in the nation's psyche and providing for its needs, but that has all been thrown out in the rush for a surplus and a petty political promise, which comes directly from the pockets of students.

That is right—there are plenty of areas where one could have saved and there are plenty of memories of the waste which we are rolling through while listening to this debate. But the government have hit up the students of science and maths, who will in turn become our future maths and science teachers in secondary schools. Around the country we see campuses holding up their hands looking for new graduates to take up the challenge. We talk about $150,000 being a large price to pay. But what is the price high schools pay when they cannot get a great maths teacher to inspire the next generation?

We have had this debate and agreed that our maths and science students and our enrolees who become graduates and then teachers of the next generation are incredibly important for Australia's future. Little has changed between 2008 and now. In fact, all that has changed is that the government's intervention delivered more graduates—more people willing to take on this really important area of intellectual pursuit only to have it ripped away from them in a MYEFO last year. This was done for no reason other than to meet this government's grubby attempt to fulfil its political promise of a surplus.

While we are not going to oppose this bill and while we recognise that in a time of fiscal pressures we have to support certain elements of savings, let no-one forget when listening to this debate or reading it in the years ahead that this Labor government—the self-professed friend of the student—reached into the pockets of science, statistics and maths students and made them pay twice as much per unit because it had to find some way to deliver the surplus it promised two or three years before. Let us remember that when the options appraisal time came we had an education minister who chose to hit the most vulnerable but also potentially the most valuable graduates we can ask for after nursing and education. Let us and all the future scientists never forget that it was this government that embarked on a two- or three-year sensible policy of attracting more students into the field only to rip the carpet out from under them in 2012.

There are a certain number of changes which people can expect to be inevitable, but there is no need to be enforcing this on thousands of students around the country who believed and trusted the government. There were plenty of options to grandfather this, which this government has chosen not to do. There were plenty of options to roll out concurrent measures which might potentially have been more effective or more targeted, but no—the government elected not to do that either. This was a late-night drawing of lines through programs to desperately find a way to achieve a surplus because, after three years of ill discipline and of spending money where it did not need to be spent, this government now finds itself with the cupboard bare. It finds itself in the pickle that it cannot meet a political promise, and it is because of this that we see the victims we are seeing today.

People responded to this initiative. I accept that the Bradley review found that the money could have been targeted in better ways to achieve similar outcomes, but that is cold comfort once you have started studying. The shock to a student of having enrolled for a science or a maths course and being halfway through it having budgeted to get through the degree and found a way to work part-time to get through only to be hit by the doubling of fees which is effectively achieved by this government's return to band 2 charging—which means over $8,500 per course—should not be underestimated. Many students do not have the luxury of switching from one course to another. Many of them are too far through their degrees to be able to do that in an efficient way.

This government made a commitment to this nation to assist and to recharge the forces that we need in schools, TAFEs and universities around the country and to re-energise the teaching of maths and sciences. We identified this as a priority a decade ago. It is not inappropriate to use the HELP system to achieve those outcomes. The evidence that the government does not fully support what it is proposing today is that the discounts will remain for other fields of study. The question we should all be asking is: what is so different about studying maths and sciences? What is the government proposing to do if its new changes are not as effective? The figures that we have presented today are not insignificant; they are significant increases to have the physical sciences at 10 per cent this year. As this is the fastest growing area of enrolments, clearly something was working well.

In closing I say that we have a government that is inconsistent. We have a government that is penny-pinching and nickel-and-diming some of the most vulnerable who are studying as undergraduates at present. Exemplified in this bill is a form of sovereign risk where people cannot trust that the government is not going to twiddle the knobs again next year in some way. It is a government that does not respect that when it makes a promise to a student there is some chance that the promise will be stuck to, at least through the period of that student's undergraduate study. We have a government that is using the evidence available to it through the Bradley review which suits its fiscal benefit but not necessarily the long-term needs of Australia.

Those out there who are concerned that maths and science will not be adequately staffed by inspired and educated Australians of the future should be looking at this legislation. It will be remembered in history as an opportunity this government had, despite a bit of political pain, to support this cohort. That support has been removed and the government has saved a few hundred million dollars in the process. We hope that the measures it has put in place in return will be just as effective in making sure we continue to see spirited growth for those in the physical sciences, because we are nowhere near fixing the problem. These 10 per cent increases over the last three years are simply not enough. We will need much more than that, and this opposition will be watching closely to see that the government's measures are effective and that those measures are not a form of penny-pinching for the government to meet its commitment to a political surplus in the year 2012-13.

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