Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

To clarify, I understand that we will be covering higher education, schools and early childhood in the next hour and a half. We propose that we will commence with higher education for the first 45-odd minutes before moving to schools and child care.

We have a number of questions to put to the minister about these appalling attacks on our university and higher education sector. Of course, the Australian public know all too well that they were promised no cuts to education, but in higher education alone we know that this package is such a shambles that it is cutting some $5.8 billion from higher education. We also know that, whilst the education minister repeatedly refers to expanding opportunities for 80,000 extra students, there is no new funding for 80,000 new students—not at all. What the government is planning to do is extend government subsidies to more students by spreading less money more thinly across a greater number of students. This is a preposterous policy position which the minister has put forward. We certainly welcome the opportunity to reiterate some of the concerns which have been raised in the sector but also to ask some questions on how this will be implemented.

I want to share some of the views not just of students, parents and grandparents but of vice-chancellors within the sector already. We know that they have come out in waves against these higher education changes, arguing particularly that these changes will hurt their students. The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Adelaide, in the great electorate of Adelaide, which I am so lucky to represent, says that aspects of these changes are unworkable, they are unduly harsh and:

The compounding interest here [means] we might deliver debts to students of $70,000, $80,000, $100,000 and no-one here wanted that.

We have also, of course, seen the HECS architect, Dr Bruce Chapman, warning that changes could lead to profiteering and stating:

If universities have price discretion they will all take it … and could actually end up charging more than what it actually costs—

to deliver that education.

The University of Canberra's vice-chancellor, Stephen Parker, said:

I also think it is unethical for a generation of leaders who by and large benefited from free higher education to burden the generations behind them …

The Swinburne University vice-chancellor trashed this package when she said:

Deregulation will inevitably lead to much higher fees for our students. Over time, full fee deregulation will lead to a higher education system characterised by the 'haves' and the 'have nots'.

There are many, many other stakeholders who have given damning appraisals of this ludicrous policy put forward by the education minister, but I will not take up the time of the chamber at this point to share all of these many quotes. What I will instead do is ask some questions of the minister, which I hope that he will be able to address in his next contribution.

How does the government justify higher education deregulation in the face of so much opposition? Has the government done any modelling on the impact of deregulated higher fees on students and on the broader economy here in Australia? Does the government envisage universities will use the international student fee rate as their maximum rate and has this been included in modelling? If some universities charge much higher fees than other so-called less prestigious universities, does the government concede that this will lead to a two-tiered system and price students out of certain universities? Doesn't this challenge Australia's current system of fair and equitable access to education? It is unthinkable that the government can, on the one hand, argue that some universities' fees may go up and, as they like to keep saying, that some universities' fees may go down and, on the other hand, not concede that this leads to our national system becoming a two-tiered system at least. I would like to know whether this is the minister's view? And, if not, what modelling has been conducted on the Australian education sector, in Australia, that he can fall back on to guarantee that that will not be the case?

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