Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I always enjoy following my friend the member for Moreton in debate. He is the parliament's foremost author of creative fiction, and it was wonderful to hear over the last roughly quarter hour of debate his latest work of fiction! So thank you to the member for Moreton.

When someone pays for a higher education experience, they need to be sure they'll get what they paid for. Over the last couple of decades there's been a rapid expansion of the private higher education and vocational education providers in the sector. Many of these providers are of outstanding quality, but, sadly, some of them have proved dodgy, and about a decade ago a number of them went bust, leaving students in the lurch. As a result of this, the Gillard government created the Tuition Protection Service. The Tuition Protection Service has assisted international students affected by the closure of an education provider on course determination. It's an industry funded through an annual provider levy. It is internationally recognised as a mark of the quality and surety of studying in Australia. From 2012 to 2019 the TPS assisted approximately 12½ thousand international students with over 4½ thousand calls on funds from 47 providers that didn't meet their obligations to their students.

The TPS was a good idea but it never covered the whole sector. Earlier this year we saw the domestic expansion of the TPS. From 1 January the Morrison government expanded the TPS to cover domestic students receiving income contingent loans through the VET Student Loans Program or the Higher Education Loans Program for students studying with independent education providers. This means there are now around 60,000 domestic students with similar protections to international students in case a provider closes unexpectedly. The TPS helps students by placing them into a similar course with an alternative institution, by providing a refund of tuition fees paid in advance for parts of the course that were not provided to the student, or by requesting a student's HELP balance.

When the scheme was expanded to take into account domestic students, there was a Senate inquiry at which a number of the higher education providers, or HEPs, called for the scheme to be further expanded to include all domestic students, not just those on a HELP loan. When you look at the submissions to that Senate committee, it is interesting that many of the providers who provide submissions were actually small theological colleges. One of those providers is Broken Bay Institute-The Australian Institute of Theological Education, located in Pennant Hills in my electorate. In fact, it is located just across the plaza from my electorate office. The BBI is an accredited higher education provider. Most of its courses are online. Most of them are postgraduate theological courses with students from all over Australia, including regional areas. Most of the students are primary and secondary teachers who are primarily subsidised by the employer, and many of them are teachers in the Catholic education system who want to ensure that they have appropriate theological qualifications and understanding in order to teach in that sector. They are a small HEP, and, at the time of the Senate inquiry, they had 465 active students and up to 350 unit enrolments each trimester. I thought it worth sharing with the House some of the words of the CEO, Gerard Moore, from his submission to the Senate committee, on this particular point and on why the bill before the House is so important to an institution like the Broken Bay Institute. He said:

BBI-TAITE supports expansion of the TPS to include domestic students with student loans. However, we believe this expansion should go further to also include domestic self-funded (fee for service) students.

Having to plan for and administer TPS levies and separate protection arrangements (and costs) for domestic self-funded students is not only a red-tape and reporting burden, but also a cause for confusion where there are different protection arrangements for different students. It is important for BBI-TAITE, as an independent HEP, to have equity in protections, and it is important for our students to realise this equity.

Furthermore, as a small HEP, the rising costs of TAS insurance has certainly been realised, with a 25% increase in premiums from 2018 to 2019. These rising market costs puts pressure on student fees as we strive to remain competitive in the market while also managing increasing operating costs.

Equal coverage of all students under a government managed TPS will not only provide the best protections for students, it will remove the high costs of private insurance and ensure TEQSA protection requirements are met without the need for us and other institutions to report their individual protection arrangements. If this does not occur, private insurance for self-funded students will be expensive, premiums will no doubt continue to increase, and these costs will end up being passed on to our students through increased student fees.

BBI-TAITE strongly advocate for universal student protections provided by the proposed domestic TPS.

The Minister for Education, Dan Tehan, has listened and delivered for the sector and, more importantly, for those students in the sector. Last year, Minister Tehan committed to explore options to expand the TPS to include students from the higher education sector who pay their tuition fees up-front and do not, or are not able to, access a HELP loan. The bills that are before us today give effect to this commitment, enabling the highly regarded and effective Tuition Protection Scheme to be extended to domestic up-front fee-paying students and to have an annual levy payable by providers that contributes to the Higher Education Tuition Protection Fund. These new arrangements will ensure that all higher education students—regardless of whether they're domestic or international, regardless of whether they pay their fees upfront or through a loan scheme—receive the same protections and assistance against providers defaulting on their course of study. Under the expanded TPS, if a provider goes bust, all students will either be placed into a similar course or with an alternative institution, or receive a refund of tuition fees paid in advance for parts of the course that were not provided to the student, or have their HELP balance recredited.

As before, the new arrangements will be funded by the sector and not by the students. They'll be funded by a framework developed by the Australian Government Actuary which will cover the long-term costs of tuition assurance by requiring all private higher education providers to contribute annual levies commensurate with their size and risk.

This bill is about completing the TPS and bolstering the higher education sector as a whole. Registered higher education providers are required to have adequately resourced financial and tuition safeguards to mitigate disadvantage to students who are unable to progress their course of study due to unexpected changes in the provider's operations. At the end of last year, the last commercial tuition protection insurance provider closed its doors, and it's been a challenging time for providers like the BBI and others to meet their tuition protection obligations for domestic upfront students.

These bills place a requirement on all private higher education providers to be a party to the TPS as a condition of registration with TEQSA, and that's a very sensible condition. This expansion of the TPS provides certainty to those students and ensures that private higher education providers will no longer have to source and secure their own tuition protection policies, which, as we've heard from the submission from the BBI, can become onerous to maintain.

This bill is good for students. This bill is good for providers. This bill is good for the higher education sector. I commend the bill to the House.

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