Celia Hammond (Curtin, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the motion put forward by the member for Sydney, and I'd like to take the opportunity to formally acknowledge the member for Sydney's continued and longstanding advocacy for education in Australia.

Our university sector in Australia is large. It employs over 200,000 people, and in 2018 over 1.4 million students were enrolled in courses. In 2018, the combined revenue of universities in Australia was $33.7 billion, their net assets were worth over $59 billion, and the average revenue for a university in that year was $865 million. As a sector and individually, universities are in charge of large amounts of money, assets and resources. They are also a significant export industry. They also have an enormous amount of independence and autonomy, and, because of this, they are rightly subject to a high level of financial responsibility and accountability.

Universities are being hit; there's no denying that. There will be job losses. There should be no downplaying of the impact that these job losses will have on each person individually and on their family. It is, and will be, a devastating time for all those who are directly or indirectly impacted. What I would note is that this pain being felt in the university sector is being felt across the country in a variety of different sectors. It would be far easier and quicker to identify those areas which are not being hit by this virus than it would be to list those that are. The difference between universities and many other sectors is that across the university sector more than 50 per cent of the annual operating revenue for universities comes from the government. This funding is provided so that universities can undertake their core activities of teaching, scholarship and research. This year, through a variety of different programs, this sum comes close to $18 billion.

In normal times, a significant amount of that funding is tied to the number of domestic students who enrol within a particular university. If a university doesn't enrol its estimated numbers, the amount of funding it receives will decrease. In recognition of the impact the coronavirus is having on universities, earlier this year the government guaranteed that funding for 2020. This means the universities will continue to get this money for the year for their estimated enrolments even if they enrol less than that number of domestic students. This is a significant support for the sector. Aside from anything else, it ensures a level of certainty for the year—a certainty that, quite frankly, is not felt in many other sectors across the country. This guarantee in domestic funding support has also been underpinned by the government's extension of a number of arrangements for research funding, once again to ensure that level of financial certainty.

There are other things that the government has done to reduce direct and indirect costs: waiving some of the regulatory requirements, decreasing some of the reporting obligations and creating an entire new funding source of $7 million to support the delivery of new six-month online courses. Yes, universities are taking a sizable financial hit, and that means that individuals are getting hit. Yes, the support being given to universities is different to that which is being given to other sectors. But there is significant support. The government will continue to support universities and, importantly, continue to work with them so that they can work through, both now and in the future, the impact of the COVID pandemic.

It is in this context that we all have an opportunity to refocus on why post-secondary education in all its forms is vital to us as a country and why it is funded by the Australian taxpayers through the government. Universities exist to serve our community, locally, nationally and internationally. They do this by providing higher education opportunities to Australians and those from other countries who want to study what we are offering. They engage in research that expands our knowledge and understanding. We should use this opportunity that is presented by COVID to consider if universities are delivering what we need them to deliver for our country and for our students; to look at the plethora of regulations and reporting requirements which are often duplicated, if not triplicated, for no ultimate benefit to anybody; to look at incentives to see if they are tailored to deliver what we want; to look at the measures we use to assess them; and to see if we can build a better connection between higher ed and vocational ed so that we can provide better opportunities and choice for all Australians.

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