Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

At Federation University in my electorate, three-quarters of the students are the first in their families to attend university and almost a third of the student population are from low socio-economic backgrounds. These students cannot afford to even contemplate incurring $100,000 debts in their teens. The Abbott government is nothing short of ignorant if it thinks this will be anything other than a massive disincentive for families in regional and rural Australia. Many of the regional universities have said that they would not be able to charge those sorts of fees. That puts regional universities behind the eight ball from the start. They have had massive funding cuts and have no capacity to make up the shortfall. Over time that will compound and compound.

Regional universities are at the heart of not only our regional economies but at the heart of the capacity of regional students to gain teaching degrees, nursing qualifications, IT qualifications, engineering and health sciences, to provide the workforce in regional Australia. Over time, the capacity of universities to deliver that breadth of courses will decline. Also the quality of courses will decline. We will see the sandstone universities, potentially the Go8, those great institutions, able to charge those fees, and regional universities will decline further and further. That is the reality of this bill.

The government claims its new Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme is designed to support disadvantaged students, but again they fail to recognise the inequity inherent in this bill. No Commonwealth funding is allocated to those scholarships, with funding provided on the basis of additional fees from students. So the more universities charge, the more they will be able to provide scholarships. That is fine but it is not okay for regional universities, which are not going to be in a position to do that. This structure will further widen the gap by entrenching market position and power with our sandstone universities. Former Melbourne University Vice-Chancellor Professor Kwong Lee Dow confirmed this very point in a recent speech during a visit to Ballarat:

If high fees are commanded by preferred institutions and preferred courses, to show their status some others will move towards these higher charges to position themselves in the market.

That is exactly what this bill is designed to do:

In poorer communities, including regional and rural communities, families will not be able to meet these higher fees, so the institutions will have less funding and so become less competitive over time.

Professor Lee Dow then went on to say:

… whatever finally emerges from the political machinations with the Senate, students will be paying significantly more, and rural and regional students will be disproportionately affected.

Professor Lee Dow's observations are far from unique. Since the Minister introduced this bill, several professors from regional campuses throughout the country have joined the chorus to highlight the terrible impact of this bill on their universities. In my own electorate, the Vice-Chancellor of Federation University, Professor David Battersby, highlighted the sham of the government's so-called Scholarship Scheme in a piece published in the Ballarat Courier:

The shallow rhetoric about having more scholarships for regional students, including assistance to help them to attend metropolitan universities, and the availability of more sub-degree courses, ignores the real differences we have in this nation between metropolitan and regional higher education.

The differences are structural and not simply related to student choice and cannot be easily ameliorated by the application of market forces.

I make special mention of Federation University not only because of its status as a leading regional education institution but because of its fantastic record of providing our region with highly skilled nurses, teachers, accountants, scientists, engineers and research graduates. They are people who stay in our communities and fill important jobs, develop businesses and provide important services for our communities.

Flying in the face of this record is the Abbott government's determination to cut $42.5 million from teaching and research funding at Federation University. Federation University prides itself on its key focus on research and innovation and has formed a partnership with Monash University, University of Melbourne and Deakin University under the Collaborative Research Network to establish the Self-sustaining Regions Research and Innovation Initiative. The project comprises three major elements: regional science and technology innovation, regional landscape change and regional social and educational connectedness and health innovation. The focus of this initiative is to deliver world-class research with an integrated focus on drivers of change, impacts and solutions for people and communities in regional Australia.

Collaboration in research is critical, but with the government saying to universities, 'If you don't support these bills we'll find the money elsewhere, if you don't go out hard and campaign for these bills and if they don't get through, we'll cut your research funding,' what sort of blackmail is that? What sort of message is that sending to universities? Frankly, I think universities have been shocked by the minister's behaviour in making that statement. That will have a significant impact on my university, Federation University.

One of the components of this bill and one which I think the other place will seek to have discussed separately is the establishment which we signed off on in government—that is, the name change from the University of Ballarat to Federation University. I want to put on record my very strong support for the name change to Federation University, Ballarat, or Federation University, Churchill campus—I am sure we are going to see more Federation University campuses across the state of Victoria in the years ahead. I also want to put on record the damage that this bill does to regional universities. I know that many members of the National Party have concerns about it. I know that, deep in their hearts, they care very much about what happens in this place to regional communities. I hope very much that they are able to convince the Minister for Education to take into his heart the needs of regional Australians.

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