Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very proud to stand in this chamber, along with my Labor colleagues, in strong opposition to this bill before the House, and I am also very pleased to support the amendment moved by the member for Sydney earlier today. I thank her for standing up for young Australians and for tertiary education in this country.

Both young Australians and the tertiary education sector have a lot at stake with this legislation before the House. I note that there have not been an overwhelming number of government speakers on this bill, which is a little surprising, given the purported significance of this bill according to the ministers. The Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020 is a very obvious and shameful attack by the Morrison government on universities and young Australians alike. It rips $1 billion out of universities, right at a time when the sector is already on its knees. It makes getting to university harder and more expensive for young Australians. It forces students to pay higher fees, on average, and thousands will miss out on a university education altogether because the Morrison Liberal government is failing to produce enough places.

The government likes to pretend that this legislation is designed to encourage students to take up courses like STEM, yet it is slashing the amount that universities will receive for these very same courses. How on earth does that make sense? At the same time, it is waging a fevered ideological attack on the very foundations of critical thinking—the humanities—by hiking the cost of these courses by 113 per cent. Let's not forget that every single one of the Prime Minister's cabinet ministers went to uni. Indeed, they've got 51 degrees between them. It was good enough for them, but now they want to pull the ladder up behind them so that future generations can't benefit.

This will hit thousands of young Australians hard and at the very worst possible time in our nation's history. Almost one in five Australians under the age of 20 and more than one in 10 of those aged between 20 and 29 have lost their jobs since this pandemic hit. Now, with youth unemployment sitting at more than 16 per cent, the only alternative to university for many Australians is going to be a dole queue. This is an outrageous proposition. We know that our universities should be a critical part of our economic recovery plan. Instead, the Morrison government is starving them of funds.

I'm particularly concerned about the impact this plan will have on my university, the University of Newcastle, and on our world-class enabling programs in particular, which have had all loadings removed from Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding. This legislation also instates annual growth funding of 3.5 for regional campuses, but, shamefully, the University of Newcastle won't be able to access this, because it's been classified as metropolitan despite an excessive regional presence. Make no mistake, this legislation is damaging, it is reckless and it is going to hurt our young people and hold back our economic recovery.

Universities make a massive contribution to our country and our economy. They support a staggering 260,000 jobs, including 14,000 in regional communities like mine. But the sector is now in dire straits as COVID-19 restrictions shut the door on international students and slash billions of dollars from universities' income. It is estimated that, without support, 21,000 university jobs will go in just the next six months. In fact, it's already started, with thousands of job cuts already announced by universities across Australia.

With such devastating consequences you'd think the government would do anything to provide a lifeline to this critical sector, wouldn't you? Astoundingly, they haven't. Indeed, at every turn, at every opportunity, the Morrison government have refused point blank to help. They've even gone out of their way to exclude public universities from JobKeeper, changing the rules three times to ensure they did not qualify. Now they're levelling a further billion dollars worth of cuts at possibly the worst time in history. Australian universities hold the key to our recovery and indeed our future prosperity, but this government seems hell-bent on kicking them when they're down.

I'd like to just go to a couple of parts of this legislation in detail—matters I flagged in my opening remarks. As I mentioned, this plan more than doubles the fees for people studying humanities now. They will go up from $27,216 to $58,000 for a four-year degree. The government tries to justify this with a shameless ruse about prioritising job-ready courses. Of course, we know this to be a nonsense. Indeed, it has now been thoroughly demolished by data that came out this week showing humanities graduates have exactly the same post-study employment rate as those who studied science or maths. This is clearly a brazen attempt by the Liberal government to socially engineer outcomes by hiking the costs of degrees that they don't want people to study. But why? If it's not just about jobs, what on earth is going on? Some say it's the outcome of conservative ideology and a longstanding disdain for the humanities. Others think this gives the Liberals too much credit for acting in line with any sort of values. They would argue that this is about partisan politics pure and simple. So great is the Liberals' fear of a critically thinking and, it must be said, disproportionately progressively voting citizenry that they'll use any means they can to cut this off at the source. Whatever the motivation, it is not rooted in evidence, and our entire nation will be the poorer if it proceeds.

On the other side of the fence, we have the STEMM funding. The government tell us that they want to encourage more students to study science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine. That's great. These are all strong skill sets from the University of Newcastle, I can assure you, and there will certainly be plenty of opportunities for these graduates from STEMM and their skills in the years to come. But the government's argument about STEMM rapidly comes unstuck when you learn that, rather than encouraging universities to enhance their STEMM offerings, they're slashing the funding that universities receive for these courses. You might recall, Deputy Speaker, that I just said what strong suits these subjects are for the University of Newcastle, but they don't get to benefit in any way, shape or form from additional funding. Indeed, this legislation is creating a disincentive for universities to offer STEMM places. Let's be clear. This isn't about fostering the great scientific and mathematical minds of the future; it's about cutting funding to universities, pure and simple. This bill slashes $1 billion at a time when we are going to need an extra 3.8 million Australians to get a tertiary education by 2025. This is unconscionable and absolutely against the national interest.

I'd like to turn now to a matter about the enabling programs which I feel very passionate about, as indeed does my community. The complete lack of certainty about ongoing funding arrangements for enabling programs is deeply worrying. Enabling programs offer people an alternative pathway to university, and they've been doing so for decades. There are now tens of thousands of university graduates who might have never gone to university at all had it not been for an enabling program. Regrettably, the bill before us today removes all enabling course loadings from the Commonwealth Grants Scheme funding, when its replacement program is not yet developed or included in this legislation. It gives zero certainty to the Indigenous, regional and low-SES attainment funding that would support all the enabling students who are currently eligible. On the contrary, if this fund proceeds as it has been foreshadowed, up to 60 per cent of enabling students, including those with disability and those who don't fit neatly into equity categories, may be ineligible for funding. This could potentially slash support for this important program by over $20 million if other provisions are not made.

As the nation's oldest and largest provider of these programs, the University of Newcastle—indeed, our entire region—has the most to lose with any reduction in enabling support. The university supports thousands of disadvantaged students into degrees through three enabling programs, including a very large proportion of first-in-family university students—like my sister, like me, that generation of kids coming through first in the family to ever step foot inside a tertiary institution.

With close to 20 per cent of current University of Newcastle students undertaking an enabling course before commencing their undergraduate degree, any reduction in resources from these programs would impact severely on the university's ability to deliver on its equity mission for disadvantaged students. If the university were forced to charge fees for these life-changing programs to make up the shortfall, we know that up to 80 per cent of students simply would not proceed at all. This would be to their great personal detriment. It would also be a very real loss to the university, our region and our national productivity and capability.

It's gravely disappointing that the university sector has had no support from the federal government through the COVID-19 crisis. This will make a bad situation even more dire in my community. Enabling programs are known as positive, life-changing experiences that thousands across Newcastle and the Hunter region and the Central Coast—I acknowledge the member for Dobell in the chamber—have benefited from. More than 40,000 graduates of the University of Newcastle have come out of an enabling program. That's because they have a university that demands an equity consideration in their education. They strive to be both excellent and equitable. When the Abbott government tried to charge fees for students to participate in enabling programs, which is the last time a Tory government had a crack at this, I was inundated with heart-felt calls and messages from current and former students as well as university staff about the terrible impact this would have on our community and beyond.

I can see no sensible reason to rip support for enabling programs out of the legislation, given their remarkable and undeniable success. Given there has been no consultation on how the IRLSAF, as proposed, will work and given the new arrangements for equity funding aren't scheduled to start until 2023, it seems highly premature to remove course loading from enabling programs now. At a time when we should be giving disadvantaged Australians every opportunity to get a quality education, support for these important programs should be bolstered not diminished. Last week I wrote to the minister about this issue. I called on him to commit to ensuring that no changes are made to enabling programs until there is a clear pathway delineated for equity funding. I also asked for his assurance that current and future enabling students and our university won't be detrimentally affected by these changes.

There's so little time left, this evening, but I do wish to say in closing how distressed I am about the changes to regional classifications that are also part of this university. This legislation means that not counting the University of Newcastle as a regional university—despite the fact it has campuses in Taree, Moree, Orange, Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour, a very big regional footprint—will mean a massive loss of funding for this university. I look forward to seeing the members for Robertson, Lyne and New England stand up and reject this legislation.

See this speech in context