Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Further Streamlining and Other Measures) Bill 2013. The previous speaker talked about the great record of the coalition. She should go north of the Tweed and see the terrible and appalling record of the LNP state government in Queensland. To localise this particular bill, there are two examples from my electorate that I will give the member for Farrer if she wants to have a look at the impact of both sides of politics on education. The University of Southern Queensland is the first, where the Education Gateways Program, the capital infrastructure program, is getting nearly $49 million of federal government funding. More university students than ever are being funded by the federal government, hitting the Bradley target of 40 per cent of people from low socioeconomic backgrounds getting into university. More young people than ever are going to university. The University of Southern Queensland in Springfield has a broader reach and larger footprint than ever before. It is going ahead in leaps and bounds.

Up the road, however—in fact, beside it—are the Springfield campus and the Bundamba campus of Bremer TAFE. That TAFE is funded almost exclusively by the state LNP government. What have we seen there? Cutbacks to services, cutbacks to courses and cutbacks to funding. We have seen more barriers, more obstacles, being put in place to young people—particularly those from low socioeconomic backgrounds in the Ipswich and West Moreton region—getting access to higher education. We have gotten lectures from those opposite about education funding. Go to my electorate and you will see the difference between what a Labor government will do at a federal level in terms of tertiary education and what a coalition government will do in terms of vocational education and training.

I say to the member for Farrer: have a look at what the Howard government did in terms of VET education and what they failed to do. We saw fewer students than ever before going to university under them. More than 190,000 students have gone to university under us—more than ever. Have a look at what the coalition government in Queensland has done. She mentioned—and this is referred to in the explanatory memorandum of this bill—the April 2012 COAG National Partnership Agreement on Skills Reform. These amendments contribute to our commitment given under that agreement. Why do I mention that? It is because the LNP government in Queensland signed up to that national agreement on skills reform.

The legislation before this chamber makes further improvements to HELP, including VET FEE-HELP, that were signed up to by various Australian governments. In my home state, the minister responsible for employment, training and education, John-Paul Langbroek, has said, 'We're not responsible for training; we are not responsible for tertiary.' The LNP state government has got a task force dealing with the students who go to the sorts of institutions in Queensland that this legislation relates to. Students who go to those TAFE institutions are having the number of campuses cut by that task force from about 82 to 44. In my electorate, we are seeing barriers and obstacles put in the way of students all the time. Courses are being cut. Those opposite come in here and lecture us about what they are doing and say that they will keep an eye on us. Keep an eye on our record, because our record when it comes to tertiary funding is very good compared to that of those opposite.

This legislation, as I said, is a result of COAG's national partnership agreement and is pursuant to recommendations made in the final report of the implementation review of the VET FEE-HELP assistance scheme back in September 2011. It also includes other amendments. What this is about is enhancing the quality and accountability of the whole education framework that underpins HELP by making sure that there can be an automatic revocation of providers in circumstances in which there is a risk to public moneys and a high risk to students. We are going to make sure that those educational institutes have integrity and character and can deliver what they say they can. We are going to strengthen the compliance framework underpinning HELP by making sure that a minister can provide a compliance notice to the provider of education services.

Why is this so important? It is important because these income-contingent loans are paid to those institutions to help eligible students with their tuition fees to make sure they can get assistance to get through those courses which will give them an opportunity in life and give them a leg-up to make sure they get financial security and achieve all they want in terms of their dreams, aspirations and goals. For kids from poorer backgrounds that is particularly important. If you are a kid from Basin Pocket and you went to the local state primary school, Ipswich East State Primary School, and your parents had never gone to high school or never gone on to university, the idea that you might be able to go somewhere like Bremer TAFE and get a trade or qualification is really critical. This is what this is about.

I mention that particular national partnership agreement on skills reform because this legislation comes out of that. What happened in Queensland as result of that? Guess what? There was a program in Queensland that was geared to helping students and geared toward helping the training of young people particularly—8½ thousand of them, according to the Deloitte Access Economics report in July last year—that actually provided assistance to those people who never would have got a job but for the Skilling Queenslanders for Work program put in by the previous Labor government. They put $90 million towards it. Fifty-seven thousand people got jobs as a result of that program. The Queensland government, a week before the evaluation report came out—this is the government that signed up for the national partnership agreement here in April last year—decided they would get rid of this. They got rid of a program a week before the report came out.

They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a report and guess what that report says? It says that 57,000 Queenslanders got jobs in vocational education training by the skilling that the previous government had undertaken. It said there was an additional $6.5 billion in state gross product and gross domestic product to 2020; an additional $1.8 billion in consumption in Queensland and Australia to 2020; an additional $1.2 billion in state tax receipts to Queensland by 2020. That is for $90 million of job training, particularly for disadvantaged people.

That is why we provide FEE-HELP and VET FEE-HELP. If we have institutions that are not providing the services, we should clamp down on them. That is what this legislation is about. But why would you close down good institutions that are providing help for young people, particularly disadvantaged young people in my community like BoysTown, who were getting about $154,000; the Salvation Army Canaan School for Training and Development, who are getting $395,000 and $120,000 for two programs; or Worklinks, who got $128,000 for another program; or Riverview Employment and Learning Program through the Riverview Neighbourhood House Association, $147,000; or, indeed, Ipswich City Council, which also got $45,500 for its community literacy program; or Harvest Rain Adult Literacy Project, who got $95,000 for its community literacy program? Why would you close it down? Not a peep from those opposite about those sorts of programs. These are good programs. These people would never, ever get compliance notices by the minister under this legislation before the chamber, but the coalition in Queensland took the opportunity to close down the funding to good providers, taking away billions of dollars from the Queensland economy to save $90 million. The minister has the temerity in Queensland to say that he is not responsible nor is the government of Queensland responsible for training. He has got it in his title! Yet he takes the money away. They are persecuting working-class people in my community, putting barriers and obstacles to training in their way.

Good providers will not be affected by this legislation before the chamber. If they are bad providers, then they have compliance notices. We are improving the system, and what the Queensland government should do is reverse these stupid cuts that impact adversely on the Queensland economy and on people in my community. When it comes to Bremer TAFE, they should re-employ those people, put those programs back in place, and get with the program that we need to undertake to make sure that people get jobs, that the economy in Queensland remains sound, and that the unemployment rate can be reduced. So far, we have seen it go up—up, up and up—under the LNP government, all for its obsession for so-called cuts. There has not been a peep, a word or a whisper from any of those opposite. We had sanctimonious unction from the previous speaker about this sort of thing. Come to my electorate and see what your comrades and colleagues in the LNP are doing.

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