Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I want to agree with the member for Higgins about the importance of research at our universities. The sad part of this story, of course, is that it is often the revenue from overseas students that funds that very research that we are so proud of here in Australia. She spoke about how government funding has been maintained for Australian students. Of course it has been, because Australian students are still going to university. We've seen very little drop-off in Australian student numbers. The big drop is in revenue from international students. We're talking about many, many billions of dollars cut from our university sector because, quite sensibly of course, our borders are closed to international students at the moment. For months Labor has been urging the government to intervene to help universities, to help Australian jobs in those universities. For months we have watched as universities have shed jobs, closed campuses and cut back on courses and degrees. From the beginning of this crisis the university sector predicted that without serious federal government support 21,000 jobs would be lost over the coming six months. We have seen the beginning of those job losses already.

Despite these warnings, the Prime Minister has done nothing to help our fourth biggest export industry—one of Australia's largest employers. In fact, the government's gone out of its way to exclude universities from receiving support. The government has repeatedly moved the goalposts to block staff at our public universities from wage subsidies, putting thousands of jobs at risk, while allowing staff at private universities to access support. We have started to see the effect of the job losses caused by this approach, especially in regional areas. We have seen hundreds of jobs lost already. Deakin University has lost 400 jobs. If you take 400 jobs out of Geelong, it makes a big difference. In Rockhampton, Central Queensland University has cut 180 jobs and closed three campuses, Sunshine Coast, Yeppoon and Biloela. Across Melbourne and Bendigo we've seen job cuts at La Trobe University.

This is just the very beginning of what will become a rolling crisis. The impact of these job losses on regional communities will be devastating. Universities support 14,000 jobs in regional Australia, and they help underpin the local economy in countless regional cities. Many of these institutions also serve as the local TAFE campus, like, for example, Central Queensland University. It's a double blow for those towns where campuses are closing, because they haven't just lost their university campus; they have lost their TAFE campus too.

Across the board we're looking at tens of thousands of livelihoods being destroyed. We're talking about academics, tutors, admin staff, library staff, catering staff, ground staff, cleaners, security guards and many, many others; all with families, all with bills to pay, all with commitments to meet. I recently spoke to Laura, who was an admin worker from the University of Sydney, a mum of two kids. She tells me she feels 'anxious and worried about her future'. She is wondering, 'Where is the job security for us?'

Why has the government gone out of its way to keep changing the rules to exclude women like Laura from receiving assistance? What is it about university staff that makes them so very undeserving of help? In fact, the rules keep being changed to make sure that these universities don't qualify in the way that any other business in Australia would qualify. The federal government can't explain why a university student who has been working a shift a week at the bakery on $100 a week gets access to the full $750 a week JobKeeper; but their tutor, with a mortgage to pay and two kids to feed, doesn't get the same help.

We are relying on our brilliant researchers right now to help us through this crisis, to discover a vaccine for COVID-19, but we're not prepared to back them with the same support that any other worker in any other Australian business would be entitled to. The Prime Minister's $60 billion stuff-up on JobKeeper means there is no excuse to exclude university workers from the same support that other Australian workers would receive at this difficult time.

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