Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

Like the first higher education reform bill this bill, the Higher Education and Research Reform Bill, represents a broken promise by the government. Before the election the government stood up and said there would be no cuts to education but this bill, just like the first higher education bill, contains cuts to higher education in this country. There are cuts to higher education to the tune of over $2 billion in this higher education reform bill.

This bill shows that the government has not changed. We heard from the Prime Minister this week that things were going to change. 'Good government starts today,' we heard on Monday. Clearly not much has changed because this bill still has those terrible things in it. It still has the $100,000 degrees that will result from fee deregulation. It still has cuts to university funding in it. It will still discourage people on low incomes and people from regional areas of Australia from going on to higher education. Not a lot has changed and you can tell that the government is still not listening and has still not learnt. If they had learnt anything they would have gone out over the break and spoken to their constituents. They would have spoken to students, and to parents who have children in high school, and they would have heard that people are frightened about these higher education reforms. They are frightened because these reforms will hurt them. They will actually cause the cost of degrees to go up.

We have heard some rhetoric from those opposite that they do not think the cost of degrees will go up. What do they base that on? Nothing. There has been no modelling released. There has been no information released about what a degree will actually cost—not from them, anyway. Of course, we have seen some modelling released. We have seen it from Universities Australia; we have seen it from the NTEU; and we have seen it from a whole range of other organisations. What that shows is that the cost of a university degree will go up. That is what it shows: it shows that it will grow up. We know from Bond University in Western Australia that degrees will go up to over $100,000. They will go up to over $100,000 because that is what the modelling that has been released to date shows. If the government has other modelling that shows differently, why have they not released it to the Australian public? Why have they not had an honest conversation with Australia? If they have modelling, where is it and what does it show? Silence. Of course, they do have some modelling; they will have done some, and the department will have some information about what degrees are going to cost. The reason they will not release it is that it shows $100,000 degrees. It will show $100,000 degrees. It will show that higher education costs will go up in this country if this reform gets through.

Labor has said very clearly that we will vote against these cuts to university funding. We have said that we will not support a system of higher fees, which will mean larger student debt, which will reduce access and which will cause greater inequality. Last time I came into this place, I spoke about my own experience and why I joined the ALP. I joined the ALP because I could not afford to stay at school. I could not afford to stay at school, because my parents were too poor. Just this year my daughter went to university. She is the first in my family to go. She and all her friends are terrified about this reform bill. As her friends have discussions, they are worried about the implications of this bill going through.

Mr Palmer interjecting—

They are worried about it, and their parents are worried about it. They are worrying about how they are going to pay off increased loans from this bill. The member for Fairfax is quite right: they should be worried. Sadly, they are. It is causing people to make really tough decisions about whether they should invest in their future education. That is not a decision that people should have to make in a country like Australia. They should not have to make a decision about whether they can go to university depending on whether or not their parents can help them pay off any debt. They should not have to make that decision. People in Australia should be able to go to university if they are capable of going to university. They should be able to if they want to and they are capable. So many people still are having the first in their family go to university—like my daughter. So many families may not get that opportunity if this bill goes through. We may not see people from low-income families get that opportunity if this bill goes through. That is why I am pleased to say that we are voting against it.

Interestingly, in this bill we also have a regional transition fund, which is one of the differences from the previous bill. Of course, the inclusion of that transition fund proves that this bill will impact adversely on regional Australians. That is why those opposite have had to do this. During the debate on the first bill, those on the opposite side came in here and spoke about the advantages for regional students and how great it was going to be. We said: 'No, no, it's not. It's going to be bad for regional students.' They did make one change by having the regional transition fund. The minister said on the day that the original bill was defeated in the Senate that this would be a $300 million fund, but, of course, it is only $100 million, which will not do what it needs to do to encourage enough regional students and enough regional universities, and to have those opportunities for regional students. It is an admission by the government that this reform is unfair and that this bill is unfair. By having the regional transition fund in this bill, they are admitting that it is unfair. They know that their first bill was going to impact on regional students and regional universities, and they still know that this current bill is going to have that same effect. Yet yesterday we heard more members from regional Australia come into this place and argue how great this bill is for regional students—just like they did the first time—when they know that it will adversely impact on regional students and regional universities. They know this. They do know that this bill will have an adverse impact, and that is why they have a regional fund in it. But it is not going to be enough. The bill will still impact adversely on regional students.

I wanted to talk a little bit about my home state of Tasmania. We had the member for Lyons in here speaking on this bill yesterday, and he spoke on the previous bill, as did some of the other Tasmanian members. The University of Tasmania is the only university in the state of Tasmania. We know that this higher education reform that the government has put out will adversely impact on the University of Tasmania to the point where the vice-chancellor has said that they will be worse off to the tune of $37 million per year under this bill. We are talking about a national $100 million transition fund; we are talking about one university in my home state being $30 million a year worse off.

The vice-chancellor has actually said that they will not be able to raise fees high enough to be able to recover all that money; they may be able to recover some of it. He is obviously admitting (a) they are going to increase fees, (b) they will not be able to get the money back to cover that gap and (c) therefore the university will be worse off to the point where the Tasmanian members and others talked about a special package for Tasmania, for the Tasmanian university. A special package that was only on the table if Tasmanian senators in the Senate agreed to this bill. That is what they said. They said: 'We know this is going to adversely affect the University of Tasmania. We know it so much that there will be a special package for the University of Tasmania, but you won't get it unless you support our bill.' They know that this bill is going to adversely impact on my home state to the tune of $37 million per annum, and yet they will not accept that this bill will affect all regional universities and all regional students and the transition fund is only $100 million over three years.

We know that will not be enough. We know that children from regional families in regional Australia will still have to make what we have heard from those opposite is the difficult decision about whether or not they or their children can afford to go to university. Of course, for regional students it is in some cases a much tougher decision to make because some students do have to relocate because courses may not be offered in regional Australia, and we know that situation could get worse under this bill. So regional students, despite all the rhetoric from those opposite, will not be better off because of this bill, and the fact that there is a regional transition fund shows that those opposite know it will hurt regional universities and regional students. We know that that would happen.

This bill is the second iteration and, as I said before, people on the other side clearly have not been talking to their electorates about what is contained in this bill. Clearly they have not gone out and listened to what the people in their communities are saying because this bill is a broken promise from the government. This bill is unfair. It is unfair for students in regional Australia, is unfair for students from low-income families and it is unfair for students right across the board. It is unfair because it will lead to higher fees, it will lead to $100,000 degrees; it is unfair because it will cut funding to universities, including research funding that we know is so critical to those universities that are excelling at the moment in research, such as the university in my home state of Tasmania. We know that is the case.

We have also heard a little bit from those opposite about this scholarship fund they are going to have. This scholarship fund is going to make all the difference, but we do not have any information from the government about just how this fund is going to work, how big it is going to be, what the modelling on it is, where the students who are going to be able to access it are going to come from. We do not have any of this information because of course the government has not released that either. We do not have any information on the cost of degrees coming from the government, they have not released any modelling. We do not have any information about the scholarships and how they are going to work because the government has not released that information either. We do not have any information about the size of the fund or how many students there are, other than the minister's claim that the biggest scholarship fund in Australia's history is what it will be. He has not yet defined that, so goodness only knows what that means. I am sure that he knows, but perhaps he should share it with the Australian public given the types of reforms we are expected to be debating in this place and in the other place in coming weeks.

I am pleased that Labor has said we will not be supporting this bill a second time because no information has been shared with the public that should be shared about how it is going to impact on students. The government is saying that this reform is necessary, that this reform has to happen or the higher education system is going to be in crisis. Perhaps the government needs to go back, as governments should, and look at what actually needs to be done here: go and consult with the sector a bit more about what the real issues are and how it needs to be resolved. They should also be talking to their communities, to the students, to the parents who use our higher education system and ask what they want because at the moment I do not think the government is actually listening to the students, to the parents or to the community about their expectations of higher education in this country. I am pleased that Labor is opposing this bill.

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