Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

We are a clever country and we are a rich country. Surely we are a clever enough country to understand the value of having the world's best education system. Surely we are a rich enough country to have the world's best funded education system. But instead we now have had a succession of governments that have not and are not addressing education, particularly tertiary education, funding as well as we possibly can. The problem actually starts with the previous government, where they ripped $4 billion out of the tertiary sector—so much money in fact that our universities are now underfunded by some $1 billion a year. And now we have these reforms being pushed by the current government which are just going to compound problems for students, particularly disadvantaged students and female students, and compound the problems for smaller universities, particularly regional universities.

These reforms will be unfair to students and will result in dearer courses across the board. They will result in university students having to pay more for their course when they do their course and a hell of a lot more by the time they finish paying off their course—if only because of the changes to the interest rate that will apply to the debt. Adding to that, they will have to start paying off their debt much, much sooner. So students will have to pay more for their course, they will have to start paying off their course sooner and they will ultimately have to pay a lot more for their course. That will fundamentally hurt disadvantaged students.

It will also hurt women, in particular. When you look at their professional profile, you see that some will go to uni, start work, drop out of the workforce to perhaps start a family and then re-enter the workforce later on in their life. But while they are out of the workforce the interest is still accumulating. So they will end up having this debt the whole of their working life—and, conceivably, even beyond it. It is not like a scholarship is going to help any of these people out. Under these reforms, there will be fewer scholarships available.

These reforms will also hurt smaller universities. It is fine for the big eight to say that these reforms are fine and they support them. But what about the vast majority of our universities that are in regional areas and have campuses in regional areas? Take my own university as a case in point. We have three campuses. We have a campus in Hobart, a smaller campus in Launceston and an even smaller campus in Burnie. The University of Tasmania will be hit very hard by these reforms. If these reforms become the law of the land, the University of Tasmania will have to axe a number of courses—certainly the courses that do not pay for themselves and are not profitable. The University of Tasmania is at very real risk of having to shut down the Burnie campus and even the Launceston campus because both of them run at a loss and are subsidised by cross-payments from the Hobart campus. In a small community like Tasmania, not only are the students being hammered by dear courses that will be more difficult to pay off over their term, but we are likely to have access to fewer courses and fewer campuses.

These are some of the reasons why these reforms are fundamentally unfair and cruel. They will disproportionately impact upon disadvantaged students and universities in regional and rural areas such as Hobart and Tasmania. This is another sign of a government that is cruel. We saw it in the budget—a miserable piece of work which disproportionately impact on low-income and disadvantaged people. And we will now see it in these tertiary reforms, if they become the law of the land. We can only hope that the Senate and, in particular, the crossbenchers in the Senate have the good sense to understand that our universities are already chronically underfunded to the tune of $1 billion a year and that, if these reforms go through the Senate, it will compound the funding shortfall and compound the problem is terribly. It will have a disproportionate effect on students from low-income and disadvantaged backgrounds and a disproportionate effect on universities in regional and country areas. They should not listen to the big eight. The big eight will do very, very nicely out of this, thank you very much. But the vast majority of universities and university students will be hammered. I will vote against these reforms and I call on senators also to vote against these reforms. (Time expired)

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