Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about the Education Legislation Amendment (Up-Front Payments Tuition Protection) Bill 2020 and Higher Education (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection Levy) Bill 2020 and amendments. Labor won't oppose these bills, as we heard earlier. The member for Sydney, in her speech to the chamber, was saying that in November last year she wrote to the education minister to ask him to consider exactly these changes. She voiced her concerns and outlined what the changes were and I suppose we are pleased that this particular tinkering with the education policies happened, ensuring that it will streamline some of the things that we've been talking about here tonight. It may have taken about 10 months, but we're pleased that the government has come around to legislating to tie up these loose ends and we welcome the practical effect. These changes will create simpler arrangements for students and processes for decision-making, student placements and loan recrediting.

More broadly, while we welcome these tweaks to the tuition protection scheme, we also have to consider this in light of this government's policies that have been put through—last week we saw a particular bill go through—and the detriment that this will have on Australia's higher education system. For months now we've been urging the federal government to step in and help universities save some of their jobs. I heard one of the members opposite saying that they didn't meet the benchmarks for assistance. Well, since this pandemic started, 12,000 jobs have been lost across the country in this sector, with thousands more predicted to go before Christmas. When you have an industry or an area where 12,000 jobs have gone and there are more to go before Christmas, if it were any other sector, whether it be mining, resources or manufacturing, there would be an outcry and the government would step in. So we cannot see the reasons why the higher education sector is not receiving the support that it deserves from this government. We want to make that point, and I want to urge the government to perhaps think about stepping in and doing something for universities to try to assist them. They are the fourth-largest exporter of this nation. They bring millions into the country. They educate the youth of this country and they're building a better Australia for the next generation.

With the COVID-19 pandemic we've seen universities working brilliantly to try to come up with a vaccine. We're relying on our brilliant universities and their researchers to find a vaccine for COVID-19. Unfortunately, they can't rely on this government for a bit of assistance to save their sector. We know that Australia's going to require an additional approximately 3.8 million university qualifications by 2025, yet, when it comes to higher education and the education system, this government's priority is always to cut.

What we saw in the bill that went through this place last week was that this government wants to make it more expensive for students to get a degree or to achieve their higher education aspirations. The job-ready graduates bill makes students pay more for their degrees, and thousands of students around the country will pay more than double for the same qualifications. It cuts billions from the sector while doing nothing to help young people get into higher-priority courses and jobs. What we're doing is the Americanisation of our education system, where how deep your pocket is determines the degree you get and what sort of education you're going to receive. We're going down that track, and that is wrong.

Education should be for everyone regardless of your background, regardless of which side of the tracks you come from, where your neighbourhood is or what your post code is. Education is one of the magic levers that governments have to encourage people to go to universities and to turn their lives around. If you want to make someone's life better, if you want to get someone out of poverty, the best way to do it is through education, and we have a duty as legislators and members of parliament—and the government has a duty—to try to better the lives of Australians that perhaps aren't as fortunate as the many in this place who went to university. I must add the majority went for free when that was introduced by Gough Whitlam.

We have to give the opportunities to the next generations of Australians, those that perhaps are doing it tough because of their family circumstances or for whatever reason. We have to try to encourage and assist those people, and we know that one of the best levers that exists to change someone's life is education. Governments should be making it easier and encouraging people to attend universities, not making it harder by increasing fees, by not supporting the system or by having continuous cuts to the sector. It is really important that we encourage people to get a university degree or to aspire to higher education. We know that, the higher your education, the more likely you are not to be unemployed.

Debate interrupted.

See this speech in context