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

The Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017 is bad public policy. I am very disappointed. I am sure I speak for a great many people in the electorate of Denison and throughout Tasmania when I say this is bad policy and it should not be pursued. It is very disappointing that the government is so determined to try and ram these sort of reforms through the parliament.

Why on earth would we be asking university students to pay more and asking university graduates to start paying back their debt sooner? Why on earth would we be cutting university funding even more when they are already chronically underfunded, even though we live in one of the richest, most clever and most fortunate countries in the world? This country, more than any other country, can afford to properly resource our universities, yet here we are again in this place, debating more cuts to university funding.

This is going to hurt the University of Tasmania greatly, and I associate myself with the comments from the member for Braddon, who has covered some of this ground quite effectively. By one estimate, the University of Tasmania will see its funding cut by over $11 million annually by 2021 if these so-called reforms come to pass. Tasmania is a small state with a relatively small university that is cross-subsidising two campuses outside of Hobart and, in fact, is cross-subsidising the campus at Burnie to a very great extent. This is one university that simply cannot afford to lose $11.2 million annually. It is not just the university that will be worse off; the students will be worse off. In fact, students will be paying something like $11.3 million extra in fees in Tasmania by 2021 if these so-called reforms go through. This will hurt the University of Tasmania. This will hurt students at the University of Tasmania. This will especially hurt the campus at Burnie and the students of that smaller campus. I associate myself in full with the very wise comments from the member for Braddon about the Burnie campus.

It is also a direct attack on disadvantaged people and women throughout Tasmania and throughout this country. When the government is demanding that ex-students on incomes as low as $42,000 a year—barely above the minimum wage—start paying back their debts, that is unacceptable. It will disproportionately hurt disadvantaged people, people on low incomes and people who are, for good reason, in and out of the workforce and have a lower average income. For example, women might be in and out of the workforce as they start a family and raise a family. Also, I would hope, there are men who are in and out of the workforce to care for their young children and to allow their partner to be in the workforce full time.

This is very ill-considered policy. This is policy that is coming on top of all of the other cuts to the tertiary sector over recent years. For example, between 2010 and 2013, the Gillard Labor government cut $2.3 billion from universities. Cuts have been so severe that universities throughout the country are now effectively underfunded by about $1 billion a year. I make the point again that this is one of the richest countries in the world—a country with a federal budget which forecasts expenditure of some $456,000 million this financial year. With all of that money sloshing around, and with all that we know about the value of education and the richness it brings both to our community and to the members of our community, the government would go ahead with a reform that is going to cost the University of Tasmania alone over $11 million a year by 2021 and hurt campuses like the Burnie campus. The reform is going to cost the students at our university over $11 million a year by 2021. This is not good enough.

Don't just take my word for it. If you don't believe me then believe the OECD, because they have just released a report, Education at a glance 2017. They have put Australian public investment in tertiary education institutions now at 0.7 per cent of our GDP, some 40 per cent below the OECD average of 1.1 per cent of GDP. Do you know where that puts us? Thirtieth out of 34 countries when it comes to public funding for our universities. How naive and short-sighted are we when this is all that we know about the value of education? How are we going to compete with the 29 countries ahead of us in the OECD when we're dumbing down our education and we're restricting education to the rich or the kids of the rich or the kids in the big cities? How are we going to compete with the other 29 countries? Well, we won't. It's as simple as that.

One of the problems here is this obsession over many years—and I'll probably trace it back to the Howard government, but it has continued to this day—with commercialisation, privatisation and user pays. We now have a two-class society in this country, and it's going to get a whole lot worse if this bill goes through: the haves and the have-nots, the rich and the disadvantaged, and the people who can afford user pays and the people who can't afford user pays. We have a two-class society, with the rich and the poor. The rich are doing okay. They'll go to the best private schools, they'll go to the best universities and they'll go to the best hospitals. They'll do well and they'll keep doing well. It will snowball, and they'll do better and better and better, and their families will do better and better and better. What about the rest of the community, the people who can't afford user pays, who are going to have to put up with underfunded universities, low-price courses, underfunded hospitals, underfunded high schools and underfunded primary schools? 'Safety nets' is how John Howard referred to the public education system—a safety net. It is a bizarre comment but a comment which is being echoed by the current conservative government, who have an obsession with privatisation and commercialisation: 'Don't worry about the members of the community; just make them pay more for their course and make them start paying it back sooner.' There is a reliance on foreign students and a reliance on commercial sponsorship of research. It is all about user pays and someone else paying for it other than the government.

I saw in the paper this morning a report that the accumulated student debt in this country has now reached approximately $50 billion, but the tone of the article in the paper was that this is a problem, it's too much money and the government has to claw it back. But you know what? The government's missing the point, because that's $50 billion that the government should have paid for. It shouldn't be $50 billion of student debt that we're now going after, because governments over many years have shifted $50 billion of the government's financial responsibility to students themselves. Much of that outstanding debt is being carried by lower income people, lower income families and disadvantaged people. They're carrying that debt, but the government's still going after them. That's not good enough. That's cost-shifting. So how dare the government tell the media today, seemingly as though it's an explanation for this bill, that all of these people owe all of this money, and that's bad, and they want it back. Well, the government should never have had them rack up the bill in the first place.

In fact, I'll go so far as to say that the last good university policy we had in this country was between 1972 and 1975, when there was fee-free undergraduate study for Australian students. That's where we should be going. That's where we should be trending, not to more and more user pays and complaining because students are racking up debt and not paying it back quickly enough.

We are rich enough to return to the days of the early seventies. We are rich enough to do what Gough Whitlam did and say we do not tolerate but celebrate education. We understand the inherent value of education. We understand that, the more learned our community is, the happier they are, the more prosperous they are, the healthier they are and the better this country can compete with the 29 countries in the OECD who fund their universities better than we do. How on earth do we compete with countries like Singapore, Thailand, China, Korea and Taiwan—countries that celebrate learning and invest so much more money into the community? No wonder they're doing so well. No wonder we're struggling against these countries when it comes to trade and other matters. We are just missing the point here. We are completely and utterly missing the point.

There is a $456,000 million forecast expenditure in Australia in this financial year, but you know what? We've still got to go after uni students. We've still got to cut funding for universities. We've still got to complain that university students owe too much. We are missing the point. I would make that point again. In fact, I'm going to labour this point because I don't think it's ventilated enough in this place. We can actually afford and, I think, should aspire—and maybe a future government will come along with the foresight and the fortitude to return us—to the early seventies, when we saw the value in free or fee-free undergraduate university places. That is exactly what we need to do. That's where we should be heading, and there's no reason why we shouldn't be doing that or at least trending towards it, because we can definitely afford it.

It's all about priorities. Everything in this place comes back to priorities. I know money can't solve all problems, but I tell you what: it can go a long way to solving many problems. With the amount of money that's sloshing around in this place, you've really got to wonder why we have so many problems—why we have underfunded universities to the tune of $1 billion a year, underfunded hospitals with ridiculous waiting lists, underfunded high schools, underfunded primary schools, homeless living on the street and people who can't afford their power bills—in a country as rich as ours. It's because too few people in this place have the vision or priorities in the right order to fix them.

The government thinks it is okay—in fact, the government is boasting—to trend towards two per cent spending on defence. They're going to double the submarine fleet even though we can't find the crews for the existing six, but don't worry about that. Don't worry that we can't find the crews for our six subs. Let's buy 12! How ridiculous all of this chest-beating is. Why don't we get our priorities in order? Yes, we need a Defence Force. Yes, we need to replace the submarines. But let's get our priorities in order.

We are spending an outrageous amount of money on the Joint Strike Fighter when there were always other cheaper alternatives. Why aren't we raising more revenue? Why don't we have a superprofits tax on any sector of the economy that achieves a disproportionate return on its investment? Why don't we get a bit more tax back from the banks that made $30 billion of profit last year? They can afford to pay a bit more. High wage earners like us—parliamentarians—can afford to pay a bit more. There are so many ways that we can save money in the budget sensibly, so many ways that we can raise extra revenue in this country sensibly, so many things we could be doing and talking about in this place, but what are we talking about tonight? We're talking about attacking the tertiary sector, which is already underfunded by $1 billion a year, and we're debating whether or not we should go after it for more.

I bring my little talk back to Tasmania. Tasmania: a small state, a small uni, a lot of disadvantaged people. This government thinks it is okay to cut the University of Tasmania's funding by more than $11 million a year. This government thinks it is okay to charge Tasmanian students at the University of Tasmania more than $11 million extra in fees each year, and, in doing so, to jeopardise some of the most disadvantaged people in the state and in this country, and very important campuses like Burnie.

I don't support this bill. I am pleased the opposition won't support this bill. It's bad public policy. (Time expired)

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