Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

Oh, he is here! I do want to acknowledge the member for Chifley. I should say that the vice-chancellor you referred to, Barney Glover, was with CDU in the Northern Territory prior to going to you, and it is CDU that I want to talk about very shortly.

As others from our side have mentioned in this debate, including the shadow minister, we support this legislation and can see some merit in many of the proposals within it. However, I do draw your attention to the amendment which was put by the shadow minister. It gives us the opportunity to talk about the billions cut from universities, the slashing of research funding, the locking of students out of tertiary education, the cutting of billions from TAFE and training, the presiding over a dramatic decline in students undertaking vocational education, and the failure to develop a long-term policy for the Australian post-secondary education system.

It's not my intention to speak at any length, but I do want to, particularly, talk about the impact of the cuts that have been made by this government—the billions of dollars of cuts to universities—through the re-capping of undergraduate places and the slashing of research funding. I say that as someone who lives in the Northern Territory, where we have one university, the Charles Darwin University. We have the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, which is an organisation dedicated to opportunity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across Australia and, most particularly, in the Northern Territory. What we know is that since the election of this government in 2013 students in universities have been under constant attack with cuts, attempts at fee regulation, policy chaos and uncertainty: 200,000 students will miss out on the opportunity of a university place over this decade because of the government's cuts and capping of places. This will have a devastating impact on our economy.

As we know, regional universities are really important in a number of ways for local communities—most importantly for the local economy, but also in providing educational options and opportunities and research opportunities for people who live in those regions. If you think about the north of Australia, you isolate James Cook University in the east and you look at what's happening in the west. There's not much happening north of Geraldton, I have to say, in terms of the provision of tertiary education. We've got Charles Darwin University operating out of Darwin and operating a campus in Alice Springs. It's very important for the people who live in those communities to be able to have access to tertiary education and to TAFE—the provision of services out of Charles Darwin also includes TAFE services.

Historically, when young people from regional communities, isolated farming communities and pastoral properties were aspirants for higher education, they had to leave town, leave their communities and leave the Northern Territory to get access to that higher education. That's still the case for many. When we talk about the impact of government expenditure cuts, it makes it really difficult for universities like Charles Darwin to provide the range of courses that they should be able to provide for the student population they seek to attract. As the Vice-Chancellor of Charles Darwin University, Professor Maddocks, said:

At the end of 2017 the Australian Federal Government, the Minister for Education, capped all funding for Australian universities for domestic undergraduate places. That means, ultimately, that fewer students can be enrolled year-on-year, and that's the current environment we've faced.

We know that the CDU has a growing net deficit. In 2018, it was $21 million; it's higher now. But we know that the funding cap on the Commonwealth grants scheme, which froze university funding at 2017 levels from 2018 to 2020, has been crippling for the university. There's no need for this. If the government had its eye on the ball and was concerned, as it says it is, for opportunities for all Australians, particularly those who live in regional communities across this country, the very last thing it would do is inhibit opportunities for people to attend university by cutting university places. Yet, sadly, that is what it's done. As Professor Maddocks has said in the past, 'When you constrain our income, the costs of delivering education and training continue to rise.' We know that, when your budget is constrained and costs are increasing, the relative impact on your educational outcomes has got to be heavy. That's what has happened in this instance.

What we need to impress upon this government is that the best way to improve the life opportunities for young Australians is to make sure that they've got access to a high-standard university opportunity, whether they live in Western Sydney, in Darwin in the member for Solomon's electorate, across the Northern Territory or, indeed, across northern Australia. We can only do this by making sure the funding is properly put in place. We know that Charles Darwin say they've lost over $30 million in federal money over the four years that I referred to earlier. That's an eight per cent decline in their funding. We do have to change the way in which we deal with these universities, but we've got to make sure that we're doing it for the purposes of improving the opportunities for young people, particularly, to attend universities and get the qualifications they require to be able to get a decent job. That's what this is about.

When we're looking at places like the north of this country not only are university places and university courses extremely important but TAFE is also. What we've seen this government do is emasculate skills training across this country by attacking apprenticeships. We've now got 140,000 fewer apprenticeships and trainees and a shortage of workers in critical services, including plumbing, carpentry, hairdressing and motor mechanics. In communities like mine, these basic skills are really very important. If you're a young person who is living outside of Darwin, in particular—but not only Darwin—you've got no other opportunity but to travel somewhere else to get your training. What we've got to do is make sure that the TAFE services are available and accessible for all Australians, and they should not be burdened with the costs that have been applied as a result of the decisions made by this government. The Liberals have cut $3 billion from TAFE and training. The government clearly don't care enough. But I say to you: if you want to improve the opportunities for Aboriginal people living in remote parts of this country, particularly in Lingiari, then what you will do is make sure they've got decent access to TAFE-type services. Currently, they do not. And you'd make sure that the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education was properly funded so we could provide a better range of courses and a fuller range of services.

These are decisions that this government could make today, and I ask it most sincerely to do so. And we're not only talking about opportunities in traditional areas of education. In the health space, for example, we're talking about providing opportunities and access to training for Aboriginal health practitioners, who are vital in delivering primary health care across the north of Australia, particularly in my own electorate of Lingiari and in the minister's own electorate. I know Durack reasonably well, having travelled around it quite a few times. But you would appreciate the importance of making sure that, for people who don't have access to higher education or TAFE-type services, their life opportunities are severely limited. We've got to make sure that that doesn't happen, and we've got to make sure that this government sees what its responsibility truly is and to remedy the cuts they've made by ensuring that we get a number of opportunities available in the TAFE sector for apprentices and in higher education to the level they need to be at in order to meet the demands of the community.

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