Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to join in this very lively debate in the Federation Chamber this evening and note that, after the contribution that the member for Bowman has just made, we are glad that clowns is off the VET list, because clearly we do not need training in it; it comes readily to some. It is interesting to listen to those opposite talk about higher education and defend the indefensible, because this government has failed—absolutely failed—in higher education policy and its implementation since coming to office in 2013.

This motion focuses on higher education. On this side of the chamber we would like to highlight the government's disastrous attempts at reform that see students leaving universities and the people who work in that sector living in a state of anxiety. They have now been living in a state of anxiety for three years. The government began with their cruel and unfair 2014 budget with the notion of $100,000 degrees, which would almost double the standard HECS bill for most students. In fact, for some courses it would triple the HECS debt for students over the longer term. Our objections to this model are about fairness and also about how it actively disincentivises higher education for the broader community. I can see what is behind the government's Americanised model. Clearly the plan is to entrench privilege. We all know it. The research is in and has been in for some time: children of parents with higher degrees, with a masters or a PhD, are more likely to succeed at school. This has been known for some time. It is also true that they are more likely to access higher education and that there are lots of things that block other children from engaging in that pursuit.

Talent, IQ and capacity are not determined by postcode—we know that—yet, over 40 years, this seems to be the reality. I go back to conversations in my electorate. The member for Bowman mentioned that we would never meet a doctor complaining about $100,000 degrees, yet a student doctor in my electorate spent some time—in fact, more than one meeting with me—explaining how, although he was not concerned for himself, he was very concerned about other students and their capacity to repay a $100,000 degree. I go back to a young single mother in my electorate, in the small community of Little River—a hamlet, if you like—who found herself alone in parenting a couple of kids and wanting to re-educate herself, wanting to go back into the education system. She was shattered by the thought of $100,000 degrees, because she saw them as a serious block for her to go and get the education she needed to allow her to earn the income she needed to break the poverty cycle and to ensure that her children had a different future to what she had herself.

In electorates like mine, decisions are made about education based on parent's experience. I think what those opposite cannot grasp is that when a family is determining whether a child will go on to higher education, they are also, partially, determining their income. This afternoon in the chamber we listened to the member for Longman's first speech. She referenced a person in her family—I think it was her father—winning a scholarship but not taking it up. That happens all the time in the real world. A person who wins a scholarship to pursue higher education might not act upon it, because their family may lose income if they do not go out and earn a wage early in life.

This government's uncertainty is reigniting those conversations in electorates around this country. At the moment, year 12 students are making those decisions in the space of uncertainty. They do not know, after three years of this government, what it is they are going to land on eventually. The government failed disastrously to convince the community that these proposals were a good idea and they failed to blackmail universities with a 20 per cent cut, tied to deregulation, that would have seen entrenched disadvantage.

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