Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker Mitchell, I commend you on your facial hair as well! I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes that Australia's higher education system is failing our kids, workers and businesses, due to Coalition Government policies that have:

(1) slashed funding from higher education and vocational education and training;

(2) restricted access to university, with 200,000 Australians locked out of university; and

(3) abandoned our regions".

I rise to speak on the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019. Labor will support this bill and the introduction of deterrents to academic cheating services in higher education. The bill implements recommendations made by the Higher Education Standards Panel. The panel concluded:

… inadequately constrained cheating activity has the potential to cause great damage to the domestic and international reputation of Australian higher education.

We know that these fears are both serious and widely held. A survey of academics found that, in their experience, more than two-thirds of university staff suspected that pieces of submitted work were not written by the relevant student. There is currently no Australian jurisdiction with offences aimed specifically at deterring or punishing organised cheating services. Labor understands the importance of higher education to this country, and we will support legislation that defends its integrity. We know there is strong support in the sector for legislation to safeguard academic standards in Australian universities.

The bill creates an offence of providing, offering to provide or arranging for a third person to provide an academic cheating service to a student undertaking a higher education course in Australia. This contains different offences for services that operate commercially and those that do not. Commercial services will face both criminal and civil penalties, while services not operating commercially will face civil penalties.

The bill also creates an offence of the publication or broadcasting of an advertisement for one of these cheating services at proposed section 114B. Labor has had some concerns about the design of this offence. A breach of section 114B(1) gives rise to a criminal offence and is subject to a maximum penalty of two years in prison or 500 penalty units, or both, in circumstances where the advertised cheating service is operating for a commercial purpose or if the person broadcasting the advertisement does so for a commercial purpose. So a person could publish an advertisement for an academic cheating service that is operating for a commercial purpose, and that person might receive no personal benefit from the conduct but still be subject to prosecution for breaching this provision and face a potential jail term. Labor was concerned that this bill could unintentionally capture vulnerable students who are simply forwarding or sharing electronically an advertisement for commercial services, even if it's disguised as something more innocent and even if the student is unaware of exactly what they're sharing. As the explanatory memorandum acknowledges, these can be sophisticated and persuasive operations that are actually aimed at vulnerable people and often promoted as an altruistic service.

We've discussed these concerns with Minister Tehan, who has committed to amending the explanatory memorandum. I particularly thank Minister Tehan, and his advisers especially, for being very cooperative with my office. I've been assured that the addendum to the explanatory memorandum will now note that the intent of this bill is not to prosecute those who inadvertently promote a cheating service—for example, on social media where there's no proof of intention, knowledge or recklessness. Again, I thank the minister for acknowledging Labor's concerns and making these changes. As I said at the start, Labor supports measures that deter academic cheating services.

But we want to make sure that the legislation doesn't implicate vulnerable students who have received no personal benefit from their actions or are ignorant of what these services actually involved. Labor is very concerned about vulnerable students in the higher education system being targeted by cheating services. On top of the deterrence included in the bill, we would encourage universities to offer and publicise support services for any students who are struggling so that instead of being tempted by these predatory operations they actually have somewhere trusted to go to for help, support, advice and guidance.

This is particularly important for those international students who are so far from their homes and families, particularly in a time of pandemic, and separated from their usual personal support systems and perhaps have come to Australia with high family expectations as well. Over the past decade—in fact, right up until the pandemic hit this year—the number of international students in Australian universities had increased dramatically. We have a duty to support people in what can be a very challenging experience for some. We've had issues with universities enrolling students who may struggle to meet course requirements, particularly with the English language, or who might struggle with the language standards generally, which make these students particularly vulnerable to the kinds of services that this bill is designed to deter—the rogues who will profit from people's fear of failure at university. These situations are often made worse by the circumstances international students face at their work, where sadly many have experienced wage theft or experienced exploitation of other sorts.

A recent survey by the United Workers Union of more than 200 international students found that 25 per cent of the people who responded were paid less than $10 an hour, 60 per cent earned less than the national minimum wage and 76 per cent did not receive penalty rates for weekend or night work. This only compounds the pressure placed on international students—stress at work on top of the stress of university. In fact, at the moment, some of them are in such stress that they don't even have enough food to survive. This only compounds the pressure placed on international students. We need to address these symptoms, but we also need to address the deeper causes.

This is not just important for the students we're taking in but important for the health of our higher education system itself. Services like this survive by their international reputation, and the reputation of Australian universities has copped a battering among international students over the past few months. Some might suggest that it all started when the bloke responsible for the 'Where the bloody hell are you?' campaign said, 'Why the bloody hell are you here?' When the Prime Minister said, 'Go home,' to our international students, that actually delivered a big blow to our reputation. I hope his words weren't deliberate and divisive and that they weren't part of some cheap political point scoring and that maybe he just misspoke, but it was certainly not what we needed and not with the international university sector needed.

Since then, we've seen international students lined up around the block. I heard on AM this morning about the stressful situation for Brazilian students at the Gold Coast. We've seen international students desperate for a free meal and not getting any support from the federal government. I've seen the Korean community in my electorate lining up to actually give food to some of these students, but not everyone is as well organised as the Korean community. Many of them are cut off from support networks.

So what are these international students going to tell their friends and family about Australia when they get home? They are some of the best diplomats we have, which is especially important at a time when DFAT funding has gone down over the last seven years and when our aid program has gone down over the last seven years. One of our best ambassadors have been the people who've been turning up from our universities, but what are they going to say?

We are talking about an industry that provides Australia with some of its most significant export income—its third-biggest, in fact—that provides huge value to regional communities and that is vital to this country's ongoing economic prosperity. It is a system that this government seems to be deliberately throwing under a bus.

Investing in Australian universities has always been good for this nation. The minister himself acknowledged that productivity improvements in the sector can increase economic growth by $2.7 billion a year, but the Morrison government is now sitting by and watching as universities shed jobs, close campuses, and cut back on courses and degrees. In fact, the Morrison government has gone out of its way to exclude universities from some of the COVID support programs. The Morrison government has repeatedly changed its policy, in order to stop university staff from accessing wage subsidies, and it is putting thousands of jobs at risk. We have already learnt that hundreds of jobs will go in Geelong and Warrnambool, where Deakin University announced they would be losing 400 jobs, and in Rockhampton, where Central Queensland University has announced that three campuses will close—the Sunshine Coast, Yeppoon and Biloela—resulting in up to 180 jobs. I haven't seen the National Party speaking up for these rural and regional universities. We have also seen it in Melbourne and Bendigo, with La Trobe flagging job losses. Where are The Nationals when it comes to speaking up for their universities? Unfortunately, this is just the beginning of a sector-wide crisis, I suggest. From consultations that the member for Sydney and I have had with the universities, we know that so many of them are under stress. It will only get worse next year. If we don't have students arriving, that might actually lock in long-term problems.

The impact of these losses on regional communities will be particularly devastating. Universities support 14,000 jobs in country Australia, the home of The Nationals. They help underpin the local economy in countless towns. Across the board we're looking at tens thousands of livelihoods being destroyed. We're talking about academics, tutors, admin staff, library staff, catering staff, ground staff, cleaners, security, and so many others, all people living in country towns and country cities, all with families and with bills to pay and commitments to meet. Why has the Morrison government gone out of its way to exclude these workers, and are the Nationals now officially the 'silent Australians' in the Coalition agreement? Why is the Prime Minister so determined to abandon universities? At this point this action seems like a deliberate attack on Australian higher education.

This has never been Labor's approach to universities and it never will be. When Labor was last in government we made changes to ensure that university education was accessible to all and that access was never limited by background or location. We wanted and needed our smartest people to go to university. We boosted investment from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013. We opened up the system, uncapping places, giving an additional 190,000 of our brighter people a spot at university. This decision was driven by our commitment to improving Australia's productivity and our commitment to breaking down disadvantage and inequality in the system. It succeeded in bringing in new people to university. Indigenous enrolments went up. More Australians with disability entered the system, as did people from regional and remote areas.

Education helps to create jobs and results in higher wages and a better quality of life for all Australians. This should be the guiding principle of Australian education policy—a vision of equity and productivity, supported by funding and resources. Sadly, it's not a vision shared by the myopic Morrison government, which is watching thousands of jobs go and campuses close, and is doing nothing to stop it.

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