Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Schools) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to participate in this debate on university funding. It is a very important debate that illuminates a fundamental contrast between the government's narrow vision for Australia and our future and that of the opposition, the Labor Party. Education is a key fault line in Australian politics at the moment at every level. This motion moved by the member for Griffith highlights the failings of the government when it comes to higher education, in particular the university sector. The government has made cuts that are not only short-sighted but cruel, and that will have an extraordinary impact not only at the individual level, on many young Australians, particularly those who have not had every advantage in life, but also on our collective wellbeing and our path to secure prosperity as a nation.

This motion highlights as well some of the failures of the government's political management. We remember the member for Sturt, the predecessor of the current Minister for Education, who liked to describe himself as a fixer on matters of policy and politics. When it comes to his record in the education portfolio there is a bitter irony attached to his boast. The current minister, Senator Birmingham, also carries on that attitude of being a fixer, but when we examine his record we see it looks very thin. Nothing has been fixed. When it comes to early years we are now seeing the impact of his so-called fix, with many families being pushed out of early learning, many kids denied the opportunity of access to high-quality early learning and the foundation for their school education and their journey through life. This is in defiance of the evidence and any principles of equity.

We all remember their triumph of just over a year ago and the false bravado of Minister Birmingham and of the government as a whole. They boasted that they had ended the schools funding wars. How does their boast look now? The government spoke of having ended Labor's 'special deals'. They are now flailing around whilst being internally divided, trying to stitch together deals to salvage their position. It is an extraordinary thing that Minister Birmingham has done in schools policy: he has offended every sector in the education system.

So we move on to universities. There is no fix here, because there is really no policy from the government. There is no meaningful policy after five years. That is in contrast to Labor's record of increasing investment in our universities and of recognising their critical role as an enabler of individual attainment of potential, of individual fulfilment in life, and as a driver of the sort of country we want to be, a country where we harness our greatest natural advantage—the talents of young and older Australians—to its fullest potential.

The government is in denial about that role of universities and about their critical role when it comes to research, supporting Australian businesses and investment more generally. We have seen more than $2 billion in cuts to universities. This is denying thousands of young Australians a place at university. It is impacting on the experiences of those currently at university. Over the break, I had the opportunity to speak with university students at the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University. The uncertainty that they face and feel for themselves and, indeed, for their younger brothers and sisters is palpable. It is a constraint on their opportunities and, again, on all of us.

We have this government here which once boasted, when the now Prime Minister took office, of agility and innovation. Yet its every action is to reverse of that. It is denying us the capacity to fulfil our potential by denying too many young Australians of their capacity to reach their potential. The government needs to understand the challenges of the workforce of the future.

We have just been involved in the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training on a significant bit of work around the transition from school. To make real the recommendations of that report, bipartisan recommendations, we need to do two things. We need to invest properly in our schools, but we also need to properly fund our universities and wrap that funding in a vision of a sustainable policy framework that looks to the first principles of our universities—their necessary role in enabling the higher education of talented young Australians, whatever their background, and their role as a driver of the research that is so critical to the future of the Australian economy. The government stands condemned for its neglect of Australia's universities and the cruel impact this has had and will continue to have. (Time expired)

See this speech in context