Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to join with my Labor colleagues on this side of the House in condemning this bill before the House tonight, the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017. This bill purports to be about 'higher education support', but that, in fact, is one of the great misnomers.

Large parts of this legislation are simply wrong. If passed, this legislation would see massive cuts to universities and increased fees and debts for students, whilst also shifting the burden back onto students—who would have, as I said, bigger debts to repay much sooner. More critically, this bill will close the door of opportunity to many, many potential students. And it will disproportionately hurt regional universities like the University of Newcastle in my electorate.

Australia already has the second-lowest level of public investment in universities in the OECD, and our students are already paying the sixth-highest fees. This package will only make that bad record even worse. That's why we see near-universal opposition to this legislation from the higher education sector. The peak body for the universities, Universities Australia, has said:

An overwhelming majority of Vice-Chancellors … could not recommend that the Senate crossbench pass the legislative package.

And the NTEU, the sector's union, has also opposed the bill, because of the impact of the cuts and fee hikes to students. This opposition is because these people in the sector know that this legislation is not reform. Indeed, this legislation fails to make any inroads into the really serious challenges that we face in higher education in Australia.

Instead of carving out a vision for the nation and a pathway to get there, all the government have got on offer are cuts: cuts to funding, cuts to services, cuts to infrastructure and cuts to programs. Make no mistake: if the Prime Minister persists with this plan, our universities will suffer. The quality of university education in Australia will be compromised, and students will be expected to pay more and more and more. At a time when Australia should be investing in our tertiary education sector, this bill enshrines $3.8 billion of cuts, while also increasing the debt for students, and locking tens of thousands of potential students out of higher education altogether.

In New South Wales alone, this would result in $617.8 million of cuts into vital university services. In my electorate of Newcastle, the Turnbull Liberal government's plan for higher education, if it proceeds, means that our local university, the University of Newcastle, will have its funding slashed by a staggering $63.2 million over the next four years alone, and that blows out to more than $100 million over the decade.

There can be no doubt that student learning and outcomes, university programs and university infrastructure will all suffer as a result of these savage cuts. This legislation means that Australian students will end up paying more and getting less.

Whilst cutting university funding, the Prime Minister is hitting students with higher fees and asking them to pay off those larger debts at a much quicker rate. Under this legislation, students will have to start paying back their HECS loans when they start earning just $42,000, a threshold which is only around $6,000 more than the minimum wage, instead of the current $54,869. Graduates caught between these policies will experience considerable financial stress, making opportunities for home ownership and financial security less likely. This locks in financial insecurity for young Australians at a time when they should, in fact, be setting themselves up.

There can be no doubt that this legislation hits universities based in regional and rural settings the hardest. Regional Universities Network summed it up in their submission to the Senate inquiry on this legislation when they warned that:

… serious perverse consequences for RUN universities are likely to be associated with such measures. These include: further lowering the participation rate of regional students in higher education; and detrimental economic and social impact in regional Australia.

At a time when regional students are already under-represented in our universities, these outcomes are utterly unacceptable.

While there are many measures in this legislation that are wrongheaded, I particularly want to focus on just one of those measures in the time that I have left in this debate, and that is the damage being done by these proposals to the delivery of enabling education programs in Australia. The Liberal government's ill-thought-out proposal to introduce fees for enabling programs, to cap student numbers and, indeed, to look at outsourcing or privatising enabling education in Australia is a dangerous slippery slope for enabling education.

These programs are university preparation courses. These enabling programs give people who have sometimes not had opportunities to finish high school, who have had their education and life interrupted by all sorts of issues and complications along the way, an important pathway to participate in tertiary education. Indeed, they ensure that regions like the Newcastle and Hunter region have a local skill base that can capitalise on opportunities in the 21st century economy.

These courses are particularly successful in helping students from overwhelmingly disadvantaged and under-represented backgrounds to get a university education. As I said, they provide the very skills that you would want every young person in our community to have, but this legislation before us tonight puts all of that under threat. This has particular significance for the University of Newcastle, because the University of Newcastle is the oldest and largest provider of enabling education in this country.

We do enabling education very well; we're very experienced at it. It is no coincidence, for example, that there are more than 1,000 Indigenous students enrolled at the University of Newcastle. It is no coincidence that we train more than half of this nation's Indigenous doctors. And that's because the University of Newcastle, for more than 30 years now, has invested heavily in enabling programs that specifically target Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. We have the Yapug program, which has opened up so many opportunities for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women of Australia.

I was really very fortunate to be at a scholarship presentation ceremony at the university recently. I met this amazing woman, Michaela, who was in her second year of medicine at The University of Newcastle. She had completed the enabling program. She was a young woman whose experience of secondary education had given her very little hope or confidence that she could attend university. She was introduced to the enabling program, and is now a scholarship recipient in her second year of university. She introduced me to the other 19 Aboriginal men and women undertaking second-year medicine at the University of Newcastle. All but one of these students came through an enabling program—the very programs this legislation seeks to destroy. 'Destroy' might seem a very loaded word to some people opposite, but I warn them that putting a price barrier in front of kids who already face multiple obstacles getting their foot in the door of higher education is all it takes to stop them from making that step.

I was very fortunate last July to have the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and shadow minister for higher education, Tanya Plibersek, visit the University of Newcastle. She spent time with students and the providers of these enabling programs. We met so many terrific students that day. One who particularly comes to mind is a young man who is now doing his master's degree, who was so ill during his high school education that he barely got beyond year 9. Nobody had any hopes for him, yet he managed to find his way to the University of Newcastle. His mother encouraged him to take part in an Open Foundation course—the very course that the government is seeking to price these kids out of, to outsource to the private sector and then cap the number of students allowed to enter. He is now enrolled in a master's program and is flying high. He is now excelling, but he is just one of—you are lucky you are seated, Mr Deputy Speaker Irons—42,000 students that the University of Newcastle have put through enabling programs in order for them to access and complete their higher education.

Any given day you step on the campus at the University of Newcastle, one in five students in the current cohort will be from an enabling program—one in five. My colleague the member for Dobell, who spoke earlier, has campuses of the University of Newcastle at Ourimbah. One in four of the students there come through enabling programs. That is because these are programs that provide access for a lot of kids who are the first in their family to ever go to university; women who have faced multiple obstacles; a lot of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids who otherwise would be locked out; and kids who come from low-socioeconomic backgrounds. These are the very people that you would want to support in every way you could to get a quality higher education, and yet these are the people that this government seeks to block out. It is shameful.

I ask: where are all the members of the National Party right now to speak up for their constituencies? Where is the member for Cowper, who has two campuses—in Port Macquarie and in Coffs Harbour—of the University of Newcastle? Where is the member for Calare, who has a campus and the Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health in Orange, run by the University of Newcastle? Where is the member for New England, the Leader of the Nationals and Deputy Prime Minister? Where is he? He has two campuses: in Tamworth and Armidale. Where is the member for Lyne, who has a campus in Taree? Where is the member for Parkes, who has a campus in Moree? Why are they not here in this chamber, standing up to defend the universities that are going to educate their young men and women to help build and strengthen their regions? I am just astonished that they could not even put their name on a speaking list to justify why it is that they will come in here to vote in support of legislation that does nothing but damage to regional communities across Australia. I want to thank my colleague the member for Dobell, who, in stark contrast, stood up here defending the university and her constituents who attend the University of Newcastle's Ourimbah campus. It's a shame that the member for Robertson is not here doing likewise. She has a lot of her constituents attending the Ourimbah campus. It would be timely for these men and women, the so-called champions of regional Australia, to show their faces right now and actually be here for this debate instead of shunning it. They will be turning up when the bells ring for a division, any time soon, and they'll sit over on those benches supporting these cuts, supporting cuts to these universities that provide important catalysts in each of their regional communities.

There is no way that we can develop a quality 21st century higher education sector if all you have on the table is cuts to funding, cuts to services, cuts to infrastructure and cuts to vital programs like the enabling programs that I've spoken about tonight; programs that prepare young men and women who would otherwise have been locked out of university for the future economy and instead give them every opportunity that they rightly deserve to have quality education in Australia. (Time expired)

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