Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Higher Education and Research Reform Bill 2014 differentiates the government and the opposition. It really is a 'line in the sand' piece of legislation. It shows the difference between this side of the House and the government in relation to higher education. It is defining legislation. Labor believes in equity and in empowering Australians through education. On this side of the House we realise that it is imperative that all Australians have access to quality education and that a person's ability to attend university, to access university, should be determined by his or her academic ability and not by their ability to pay for education.

We know that education and in particular higher education leads to greater prosperity, more choices in life, and a higher standard of living. Australia needs an educated population, and for that matter an educated well-trained workforce. This is obtained by allowing maximum access to university education. When you have an educated workforce and population then you have an Australia that is ready and prepared for the challenges of the 21st century—an Australia that can engage in the global economy.

I think those on the other side of the House think of a university as just an institution that trains students. But universities are very diverse and have a very diverse role in our community. They are a hub for research. They are a hub for innovation. They provide teaching and create an environment where students are keen to research and learn and think outside the box, all of which are really important attributes for people when they enter the workforce. They are really important attributes that we as a society want to encourage.

One of the most important roles that universities have is to create a partnership with the communities in which they operate. Higher education is the cornerstone of an advanced Australian society. Medical students go to university and then save countless lives in the future. Engineering students go to university and then build a better and more prosperous Australia. They learn and then go out into the community prepared to undertake and oversee innovation. We need quality teachers in universities. We need to encourage students to become quality teachers.

Higher education is an investment. We tend to think about higher education particularly at this time of the year, when students around Australia are preparing to start or re-enter university. For the record, I would like to say that students, their parents and grandparents have been telling me that they do not like the Abbott government's assault on universities and students. They are able to see the implications for the future and they are able to see the implications for themselves. Next week I will be at Newcastle University for O-week and I will be talking to students, listening to them and hearing what they are saying about the Abbott government's changes to higher education. And I will make a commitment to them that Labor will not support an assault on higher education.

Labor will not support this legislation, just as we did not support it when it first came to the House. We will continue to oppose it. It is wrong for the nation, it is wrong for students and it is wrong for families. The government has given up $3.5 billion of its $3.9 billion in savings but it has not fixed the inequity that lies at the heart of this bill. It is still unfair, and that is because this government is unable to make a commitment to fairness. It is a government with a very jaundiced outlook on how it should govern Australia—and, for that matter, how it should govern itself.

The bill contains $1.9 billion in cuts to Australian universities and $100,000 degrees for undergraduate students. I will be talking a little bit more about that later in my contribution to this debate. It contains $171 million in cuts to equity programs—which shows where equity stands as far as this government is concerned. It has $200 million in cuts to indexation of grant programs and $170 million in cuts to research training. That is a $170 million cut to research that could lead to cures for cancer, that could lead to innovation and that could have put Australia at the forefront in the future. But this government does not look at things in that way. This government only looks at now. The bill contains fees for PhD students for the first time ever. So rather than encouraging PhD students, this government wants to put a fee on them. It also contains $80 million in cuts to the Australian Research Council.

The massive cuts to universities remain. The new fee imposts for students remain. Nothing—I repeat, nothing—of substance has changed. And similarly, Labor's position remains unchanged. We will not support unfair legislation which is going to lead to inequity. We want more students at university, not fewer. We want more innovation, not less. We want access to universities to be fair and equitable for all Australians, which is why we opposed the higher education bill the first time it was introduced. Our position remains exactly the same. Labor will continue to oppose this government's unfair attack on higher education. We oppose the government's cut to public funding to undergraduate courses by 37 per cent, we oppose $100,000 degrees and we oppose the Americanisation of our universities. Research conducted by the Group of Eight universities points to an increase in fees of 30 per cent under deregulation.

I live in one of the great regions of Australia, the Hunter region. Under this legislation, regional universities will suffer. The issue for regional universities is that we have a much thinner market than metropolitan universities have, so we do not have the same density of students for the market to operate. That has been said by the Executive Director of the Regional Universities Network, Caroline Perkins. Prime Minister Abbott's cuts will further widen this gap, and regional universities such as the University of Newcastle will be adversely impacted.

Newcastle University is a fantastic university. It is linked into the Hunter Medical Research Institute and it has a strong connection with the community. It has worked really hard to build those connections. Thirty per cent of its students come from lower socioeconomic regions, but it is a university that reflects the community in which it operates. It is a university that provides a first-class education. It was one of the first universities to introduce a medical degree that was not based just on academic marks but incorporated going out and talking to students, understanding and evaluating whether a student had the skills that would make them a good doctor. It is a university that approaches things in a very different way. It has a fantastic engineering department that has worked very closely with organisations such as Hunter Water; with other countries, such as China; and with overseas consortiums. It is a university that has been at the cutting edge and it is a university that will be particularly disadvantaged by these unfair cuts proposed by the government. In actual fact, it will lost $153 million over three years.

Newcastle University has two campuses. It has the Hunter campus and it also has a campus on the Central Coast. The Central Coast is the region in New South Wales that has the lowest retention rate and the fewest people going on to higher education. A number of programs have been put in place to try to increase the number of people attending university and higher education and, once again, this is going to be jeopardised.

To be quite frank, people living in our region cannot afford $100,000 degrees. Some degrees will go close to increasing by 60 per cent. Under deregulation, university students are looking at a minimum average fee hike of 30 per cent. To be very honest with everyone in this House, that will act as a disincentive for the young people of the Hunter and the young people of the Central Coast to be able to go to university. Nowhere in the world has deregulation led to price competition and lower prices. Deregulation will lead to substantial price hikes. In the UK fees were deregulated in 2012 with a cap of 9,000 pounds. For the 2015-16 academic year there will only be two universities out of 123 that will not charge the 9,000 pounds.

So the maximum becomes the minimum and what it does is ensure that fees are going up. What it does then is ensure that students, like the students in the Hunter and on the Central Coast, cannot afford to go to university. Even without having a 20 per cent cut to contend with, every single university has put its students contribution up to the amount that it was at the time that the Howard government introduced the increases under then minister Brendan Nelson. I talked a little bit about partnerships with the community. Cuts to universities will have much wider impacts than just limiting the number of students and making it much more unaffordable for students to attend university. It will lead to a lack of innovation in communities and it will also lead to a situation where students are disadvantaged.

I could talk on this subject for hours; there is so much to say. It is unfair legislation. It is legislation that is going to disadvantage the people that I represent in this parliament. It is legislation that is turning the clock back. It is legislation that is going back to the pre-1972 days, before Gough Whitlam came to power. It is legislation that is driven by ideology. It is not legislation that is driven by what is best for Australia. What is best for Australia is for the maximum number of students that can possibly attend university to attend. We do not want a system that is going to be Americanised. We want a system that is going to ensure that all students, all young Australians, have the opportunity to go to university if they are good enough—not if they can afford it. Labor is opposed to limiting numbers of students attending university. Labor does not believe that universities are money-generating machines. Instead, we believe higher education is an investment in Australia's future—an investment to build a more innovative Australia and an investment for a more equitable Australia.

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