Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak today on the Education Legislation Amendment (2021 Measures No. 1) Bill 2021, and 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:

(1) the Government has damaged Australia's world-class higher education system, abandoning university workers during the pandemic, and threatening Australia's capacity to produce high-quality research; and

(2) the Government's actions will make it harder for Australia to recover from the COVID recession".

This bill is largely administrative. Schedule 1 of the bill amends the Australian Research Council Act 2001. It applies current indexation rates to existing appropriation amounts and inserts a new funding cap for the financial year commencing 1 July 2023. These amendments are part of the standard budget processes, but they do mean an increase in the amount of ARC funding provided in 2020, 2021 and 2022 to reflect anticipated inflation. The ARC administers funding for both primary and applied research through the National Competitive Grants Program's Discovery and Linkage programs. Grants are awarded competitively through a peer assessment process and are awarded primarily to universities. Although this increase in funding is really just keeping up with inflation, any increase in funding is good news for universities at a time like now when they are in crisis. I'll talk more about that a bit later in this speech.

Schedule 2 of this bill recategorises the University of Notre Dame as a Table A higher education provider from 2021. The University of Notre Dame is currently a Table B provider. That means they are self-accrediting and eligible for research funding but not for general Commonwealth supported places. However, Notre Dame are currently allocated some Commonwealth supported places in fields that are deemed national priorities by the Minister for Education. Notre Dame currently receives Commonwealth supported places in a number of fields, including education, nursing and law. Table A higher education providers are those typically thought of as the public universities. As a Table A provider Notre Dame will be eligible for all funding under the higher education support amendment act, including Commonwealth supported places.

The new categorisation will mean more rigorous grant conditions and reporting requirements. This amendment will mean that all non-medical domestic undergraduate students at the University of Notre Dame will have access to a Commonwealth supported place, including future students and eligible current full-fee-paying students. As a Table A provider Notre Dame will be eligible to receive Commonwealth contribution amounts, including from the new Indigenous, Regional and Low SES Attainment Fund and the National Priorities and Industry Linkage Fund. I welcomed the decision to list the University of Notre Dame as a Table A university.

To that extent, this bill is uncontroversial and, as I said, largely administrative. But unfortunately the bill does nothing to address the serious erosion of research funding caused by the Morrison government's abandonment of Australian universities during the COVID-19 crisis. The bill does nothing to address the harm done to students by the government's job-ready graduates legislation, and it does nothing to help Australia recover from the COVID recession.

Since COVID-19 first appeared in Australia early last year, Australia's international borders have essentially been shut. International students who were planning to travel to Australia for the commencement of the academic year were unable to do so. As for the international students who were already here, the Prime Minister told them to 'go home'. Seriously, that's what our Prime Minister said. A Prime Minister who used to have a job in advertising, who had a job trying to recruit tourists to Australia, said to international students, 'Go home.' International students—guests—who were enrolled to attend our universities and who are one of the best advertisements for Australia when they return to their countries, taking back their knowledge of our universities and of our culture et cetera, were told to go home.

So, for the universities, a major income source dried up overnight when the Prime Minister closed the borders. Universities lost $1.8 billion just last year, and it's expected that by the end of this year they will have lost $3 billion, and these losses will continue for years to come. And what did the Morrison government do, faced with this devastating hit to Australia's fourth-largest export sector? The Morrison government abandoned universities. And they not only abandoned universities but also changed the rules of JobKeeper three times to exclude universities so that they'd be cut off from receiving any support. More than 17,300 university workers have lost their jobs. That's 13 per cent of the pre-COVID university workforce, more than one in 10 university jobs—gone.

Many of these 17,300 university workers obviously have families, have mortgages, have bills to pay. These workers are researchers, tutors and lecturers, as well as cleaners, groundspeople, counsellors, gardeners and admin staff. In regional areas these job losses will hit hard. Often the university is the biggest source of jobs and economic activity in regional towns, and regional kids will miss out as well. Often universities use the income from international students' fees at their city campuses to support the kids attending their regional campuses, which aren't as economically viable. We've already seen campuses close in the regions, in Yeppoon, the Sunshine Coast and Biloela—three examples from Queensland that have been hit hard by Morrison government decisions.

It's unbelievable that the Morrison government not only did not step up to help universities but went out of their way to make sure they could not access any government help. If there is one group of people who we have valued in the last year more than ever before, it is our incredibly talented researchers. They've worked tirelessly to find a vaccine, and at the University of Queensland, they came oh so close to beating the rest of the world—but I do thank them for their efforts and their research that will be utilised in other endeavours. Sadly, it's a fact that a major source of research funding in Australian universities is international student fees, and they have all but dried up. We learned from a report late last year that another 7,000 researchers will lose their jobs in the first six months of this year. Many of those will be early-career researchers whose careers in research may never recover. Sadly, Australia will forever lose the benefits of their scientific endeavours, their developments, their innovation, their inventions and the commercialisation that might have flowed from their research. This is a national travesty—an international travesty—and it's short-term, reckless economic management by the Morrison government. University research is an engine of economic growth. For every dollar invested in university research, there is a $5 return to the Australian economy.

There will be more Commonwealth supported places for students at the University of Notre Dame now that they're a table A university, but that will not make up for the harm done by the Morrison government's Job-ready Graduates legislation, which makes it harder and more expensive for Australian students to go to university. Students studying degrees including law, commerce, accountancy, economics and communications—about 40 per cent of students—will have their fees increased to $14,500 per year. Students studying some humanities will see their fees double. Australian students will graduate with American-style debt, and that debt will have lasting consequences for their lives, including whether they can save for a home.

This is a devastating hit to students, particularly the pandemic class of 2020, who surely had one of the worst final years for decades and decades and now, coming out of that, are going into university to embrace a lifetime of debt. The last thing the class of 2020 needed was the Liberals making it harder and more expensive for them to go to university. For some, this Morrison government policy completely smashed their dreams. I took the shadow education minister to meet some graduating year 12 students from my electorate last year, and they told me of how they'd had to change courses. I think the government can sometimes forget that the policy decisions they make then have real-life consequences. I spoke to students and looked them in the eyes as they told me how their dreams were crushed.

And for what? There is no evidence that studying these degrees will make you less job-ready than any other degree. I would suggest there is evidence to say that some of the humanities subjects do make people ready to go, as we can see from the government frontbenchers. For humanities students, their employment prospects are very healthy. Research from Victoria University found that people with humanities degrees have higher employment rates than science or maths graduates. Australia needs skilled workers to get us out of this COVID recession. Making it harder and more expensive for students to go to university is not going to achieve that. In fact, that will achieve the opposite.

Labor believes that education and jobs go hand in hand. When Labor was last in government, we opened up universities and an additional 190,000 people obtained university places. Labor boosted investment from $8 billion in 2007, after 12 years of the Howard government, to $14 billion in 2013, when Tony Abbott came into office. Labor made it possible for students from poorer backgrounds, Indigenous students, students with a disability and—just to step in where the National Party deserted the bush—students from country areas to go to university. That's good education policy. It's education policy that will drive our economy and give Australia a skilled workforce, and it's education policy that's aspirational. Labor will support the administrative changes in this legislation, and we welcome Notre Dame becoming a table A university, but it's time for the Morrison government to stop the harm they're inflicting on people's lives and on our economy by abandoning universities and research at this time of crisis.

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