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

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:

(1) slash billions from university funding;

(2) are bad for our economy and labour market; and

(3) impose massive debts on people seeking a higher education".

We don't oppose these bills. In fact, in November last year I wrote to the minister asking him to consider making exactly these changes, to ensure that all students were subject to the same rights and protections, regardless of fee status. It's been almost a year since I wrote to the minister but, despite that, I welcome the legislation which will end the exclusion of domestic up-front, fee-paying students from the tuition protection scheme. This will have a real and practical impact, creating simpler arrangements for students and making it easier for them to make decisions about their future study. It will also simplify student placement and loan recrediting.

The simplification of the rules and equalisation of status for students brings into stark relief just how complicated and unfair the government's other university policies are. Australian universities have suffered an absolute horror year at the hands of this government. Under siege, suffering relentless pressure, Australia's fourth largest export industry has scrambled for survival. This government has deliberately stood by as one of the sectors most critical to our economy has seen thousands of workers lose their jobs, regional campuses closed, whole university departments shut down and funding dwindle. Every week there is another one of these grim announcements: another campus closure, another course ended, another round of job cuts. That's 12,000 jobs lost at last count. And I'm talking about the permanent jobs here; that doesn't take into account the sessional staff that haven't been rehired or the casuals who have fewer shifts or no shifts. It's 12,000 jobs lost so far, and it's estimated that another 10,000 will go in coming months. After a while, it seems like there is some sort of momentum to these job losses, as though they're somehow inevitable. They're coming like waves crashing onto a beach.

The sad, infuriating truth is that this is not inevitable. This is a choice that the government has made to allow these jobs to go and to allow the university sector to be smashed by the funding that it's lost. Throwing our universities into the crisis they're facing now is a policy decision of the Morrison government. No other industry of this size has been treated with contempt in the way that the university sector has. No industry that employs 260,000 Australians has been thrown under a bus as gleefully as this sector has been. Universities are our fourth largest export earner. What are the first three? Coal, gas and iron ore. Imagine if we'd seen 12,000 job losses in one of these industries already. Quite rightly, the government would be there saying, 'What can we do to help?' Imagine if any of these other industries were facing this sort of devastation. But, as the government has been stepping in to help other industries, it has deliberately excluded higher education. You know it's deliberate, because they changed JobKeeper legislation three times to make sure universities were not eligible. Public universities—that educate our workforce, that conduct life-saving research, that protect our history, that nourish our culture, that attract billions of dollars of export earnings—were carved out of JobKeeper deliberately.

The impact of this on regional universities will be devastating. Universities support 14,000 jobs in regional Australia. Take a couple hundred jobs out of the Sydney CBD, and we feel it. I can tell you we can already feel it in my seat. You see the apartments that used to be rented by international students empty. You see the restaurants where the students used to eat; they're empty. We're feeling it in Sydney. But take a couple hundred jobs out of a regional community and, oh my goodness, you feel it. We're talking about academics, tutors, admin staff, librarians, gardeners, cooks, maintenance crews—all of them with families to support. They've had their government turn its back on them.

You know, the government was so careful to make sure that Australian universities were excluded from JobKeeper, but they weren't so careful when it came to the private universities—the tiny local campus of New York University in Sydney, a private American college not even registered as a university here in Australia, was eligible for JobKeeper. Australian universities are not eligible, but universities from overseas with, I might say, large endowments—and good luck to them—were eligible. How is it right?

I tell you who was excluded from JobKeeper: workers at the University of New England in Armidale; 200 have already lost their jobs. Workers at Central Queensland University were excluded; 281 jobs have gone there and three campuses have closed: Yeppoon, Biloela and Sunshine Coast are all due to close their campuses. That is hundreds of jobs lost and campuses closing. How are these regional communities affected by the jobs that are gone and the students that won't get an education, because those opposite have turned their backs on Australian universities? What about workers at the University of Newcastle, where 150 lost jobs were announced just recently? What about workers and their families at Deakin University, where the member for Chisholm has stood by as 2,902 people have lost their jobs? That includes 386 continuing positions.

Across the country, in every state, in every region, the story is the same. Those 12,000 job losses, with thousands more still to come, have been because this government has chosen to exclude universities from JobKeeper.

What's so sad about this is that the Prime Minister hasn't tried to stop the job losses; he's actually been cheering them on. He's been cheering them on. The treatment of universities by this government only makes sense if you see it as part of their broader project to discredit and undermine higher education in this country. It's a project that came before COVID-19, but it's using COVID-19 as its cover now. Why else would the Prime Minister watch on as tens of thousands of Australians lose their jobs without making any effort to help them? Why else would the Prime Minister make no effort as he stands by and watches hundreds of jobs lost in regional towns like Armidale and Rockhampton? He would know how devastating these hundreds of job losses are in those regional communities. If he doesn't know, he should know. Why would he allow the reputation of these world-class institutions to crumble in front of prospective new students?

Now, to add insult to injury, the government has this so-called 'job-ready graduates' legislation. Again, that cuts about $1 billion a year from our universities. Legislation just passed through this parliament makes it more expensive for people to get an education at a time when one in three young people is looking for a job or more hours of work. I cannot understand why this government would rather see young Australians on the dole queue than getting an education. This government is trying to price people out of the degrees that they don't like. It's this bizarre effort to engineer what students are interested in, what they're competent at, what they decide to study. It's so ironic, isn't it, coming from those opposite, who bang on about academic freedom? You don't have the academic freedom to study what you're interested in, the career that you want to pursue.

This government has called our university researchers heroes during the COVID-19 crisis but is standing by watching as those researchers walk out of the lab door for the last time because they don't have the funding to continue their life-saving research. The government's talking about support for high-tech manufacturing and yet it's watching the institutions that drive that high-tech manufacturing—the discovery, the innovation—bleed to death. The government talk about boosting advanced manufacturing by a billion and a half dollars while they're cutting a billion dollars a year from universities. And, of course, until very recently, they were doing their very best to cut $1.8 billion from research and development tax concessions as well. Those opposite have also taken this slapdash process to try and interfere with the sort of international collaboration that helped Australia discover the Gardasil vaccine, the sort of international collaboration that has helped Australia sequence the COVID-19 genome. At the same time as we are facing unprecedented challenges, those opposite are more than doubling the cost of a university degree for thousands of students.

Just for a minute, I want to speak directly to year 11 and 12 students, particularly the year 12 students—they have had the year from hell this year. They've had their education disrupted, they've had remote learning and they've been uncertain about their exams. I say to them: You have done so well. We are so proud of you. And, on this side, we are doing our very best to make sure you have choices next year and for the rest of your life—the choice to go to TAFE, the choice to go to university, the choice to study something that will help you get the job of your dreams. That's what we're fighting for. And we'll keep fighting for you, and for your parents, too, because all your parents and your teachers and your carers and supporters want for you is that you have opportunities and choices in life. That's why we want you to have an affordable education—so that you can have a real choice in your life. The last thing the government should be doing is making it harder and more expensive for you to go to university.

On average, Australian students will end up paying seven per cent more for their university education. But, as I have said, some will pay more than double. Their fees will increase by up to 113 per cent, going up to $14½ thousand a year. I did a four-year degree. That would be $58,000. They will be taking on a $58,000 debt at a time when unemployment will be high for years—the government's own figures show that it will be years until we're back at pre-COVID level unemployment rates. They will be leaving university to go into, at best, an unpredictable labour market. They will be coming into adulthood at the same time that they're trying to save a deposit for a home of their own, maybe start a family, get married. I know what my parents would have said to me if I'd been a high school student and said: 'Mum and Dad, I want to study communications and do an honours year. The good news is it's only going to cost $58,000.' They would have had palpitations. I would have been helping them off the floor if I'd gone home and said that. Working class kids don't take on $58,000 worth of debt, with the uncertain job prospects, to be repaid at a time when their families are saying to them, 'We want you to get a place of your own and start a family of your own,' and all the rest of it.

We are in the deepest recession since the Great Depression, and we're telling these kids to take on a debt that will take decades to repay. We on this side will always oppose American-sized university debts that take a lifetime to repay. When you look at the sorts of jobs created today—nine out of every ten require either a university or a TAFE qualification. We say that young Australians should be able to choose what they study not based on what their parents can afford but on what drives them—the work they want to do, the passion they have, what they're good at.

There's a false dichotomy being set up by those opposite. They say, 'Labor is all for universities, but we're on the side of TAFE.' This is not a competition. We want strong and excellent universities and a strong and excellent TAFE system. Those opposite have cut both. They're trying to say, 'Don't look at the cuts to universities, because we're all about TAFE,' but they've cut both. We have 140,000 fewer apprentices and trainees today than when the Liberals came to office. We have skills shortages. Before COVID-19, we had three-quarters of employers saying they couldn't find the skilled staff they needed; we were relying more heavily on temporary skilled migrants from overseas than at any other time in Australia's history. Right now, one in three young people are unemployed or wanting more hours. We've got shocking unemployment figures. More than a million people are unemployed, and, according to the government's own calculations, another 160,000 are due to be unemployed by Christmas. Why on God's earth are we making it harder and more expensive to get an education? It is honestly like those opposite would rather see people on the dole queue than getting an education. It's like those opposite think it's somehow wrong to aspire to go to university, that it's somehow elitist. It's like they think it's all about vague academics wandering around campus having Marxist culture wars, selling the International Socialist newspaper and engaging in student politics, like the member for Mitchell did for so many years.

What is actually wrong is not the aspiration to go to university. It was good enough for all those Liberal frontbenchers, and plenty of them have two or three degrees. Incidentally, plenty of them are humanities degrees, which they're trying to price other students out of. The education minister has three—Mr Three Arts Degrees himself! The government is desperate to make people embarrassed about aspiring to go to university. I think that is just so dishonest coming from a group of people who all had the opportunity themselves and who all took up that opportunity themselves, sometimes on multiple occasions, doing multiple degrees. What is wrong isn't aspiring to go to university or parents aspiring for their kids to go to university; that's not wrong. What is wrong—100 per cent wrong—is being prepared to deny that opportunity to others when you've had that opportunity yourself. That's wrong, and that's what those opposite are doing.

The cuts made by those opposite—the refusal to help universities at this phenomenally difficult time—and the changes to the cost of university education are of course unfair. They attack school leavers after they've had the year from hell, when they need support. But they're not only unfair; they're also illogical. The Prime Minister and the Minister for Education have said they want more students to study STEM subjects. That's the whole point of the legislation and the package as they have presented it. I don't know how they could have designed the package this way. They say they want more students studying STEM subjects, but the package actually reduces funding to universities for the teaching of those subjects. So—here I scratch my head—we want more people studying these subjects, so we're going to cut the funding to universities for these places. Every extra student they take is actually going to cost them money. What will happen when universities receive 30 per cent less—32 per cent less, in fact—to teach medical scientists, 17 per cent less to teach maths students, 16 per cent less to teach engineers, 10 per cent less to teach agricultural students, eight per cent less to teach nurses? We know what will happen. The tutes will get bigger; there'll be less face-to-face teaching; there will be fewer pracs and a degraded quality of education. The alternative is that universities will simply offer fewer places in these subject areas because they can't afford to keep teaching them. That's what will happen.

The CEO of the Grattan Institute, Danielle Wood, said:

I honestly think it's one of the worst-designed policies that I have ever seen. Even if you accept its stated rationale, it doesn't go anywhere near achieving it.

So the Prime Minister's being either dishonest about the rationale for the legislation or incompetent in designing the legislation, or he simply doesn't understand that you do not promote science and engineering by starving science and engineering departments at universities. You don't promote growth in manufacturing and infrastructure jobs by slashing the funding to train and teach engineers and others who will work in those sectors. You don't support critical medical research in the midst of a pandemic if your world-class researchers are lying awake at night wondering whether they'll have a job the next week or next month.

When Labor were last in government we saw massive increases in the number of students going to university. An additional 200,000 students got the chance to go to university because we uncapped student places. We decided that, in an increasingly complex economy, one of the best investments we could make was in the education of our people. We saw 200,000 additional people get an education because we uncapped university places. We nearly doubled university funding, from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013. Under Labor we saw huge numbers of Australians who were the first in their families ever to go to university finally get the chance. The number of students from poorer backgrounds went up by 55 per cent. Indigenous student numbers jumped by 89 per cent. Enrolments of students with a disability more than doubled, and enrolments of students from country areas grew by 48 per cent. These are the goals that have always driven Labor's policy. We want more people to get the chance to go to university. Our record over the decade speaks for itself. The suggestion that the government believes that the Job-ready Graduates Package, that has passed this parliament recently, will somehow make our university system more efficient and more effective—none of that stacks up. This is a disguise for a billion dollar cut to universities that comes on top of the billions of dollars lost because international students can't come to Australia at the moment.

My message to the hundreds of thousands of workers, just over a quarter of a million workers, who work in the university sector; to our researchers, to our best and brightest working on the innovations and discoveries that will help us out of this recession; and to the young people and their parents who have had this shocker of a year, have got through year 12 in the toughest of circumstances and now face a government that's determined to make it harder for them to get a TAFE or university education, is: we share your disappointment. Labor shares your outrage. We will work every day in this parliament to stop, to reverse, the damage done by this government, the government that is damaging our once proud education system.

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