Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to stand here, having seconded the amendment by the shadow minister. Members can rest assured that we are speaking in support of the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Student Assistance and Other Measures) Bill 2021, but we have proposed an amendment, which is a good amendment, and we would encourage those opposite to support it.

Labor supports this bill, which will align the tax file number regime under the Student Assistance Act 1973 with the collection and use of TFNs under social security law. The bill removes the anomaly currently in place which requires all claimants of the two schemes—the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Study Assistance Scheme, known as Abstudy, and the Assistance for Isolated Children Scheme, the AIC Scheme, including primary school children—to provide a TFN to Services Australia. These two schemes were designed to improve access to education by reducing financial barriers to higher education and training, which disproportionately affect First Nations people.

In 2020, Abstudy assisted around 27,000 students to pursue further education in school, university and TAFE. We should just pause and reflect on that for a moment. Twenty-seven thousand young First Nations Australians were assisted in furthering their education thanks to Abstudy, which of course is a proud legacy program of the Whitlam government. Similarly, the AIC assisted around 13,000 students. The AIC enables people living in regional areas, including my own electorate of Lyons, to pursue educational opportunities that they might not ordinarily have felt were an option for them.

For the people currently on these schemes, the reforms we are debating today are inconsequential. What Labor is focused on, and what the Morrison Liberal government should be focusing on, is implementing real reform that ensures that benefits can be fast-tracked to families and educational opportunity can be further opened up for people living across regional Australia. For a government whose mantra is supposedly about reducing red tape, I would have thought that this would be a logical aim.

In speaking to this bill, it is important to reflect upon the history of tertiary education in Australia. Labor has a proud history of supporting students to undertake study and training. In fact, financial support to students began under a Labor government during the Second World War. I've stood in this place before and talked about the fact that Labor builds. Unfortunately, those on the opposite side, the Liberals, cut. Labor builds. Liberals cut. Under the Whitlam government Abstudy was reformed into a means tested payment scheme, and the AIC was established to assist students in remote and regional areas.

Labor is proud to support Australia's youth from regional and remote areas in gaining higher education and training. We fundamentally believe that every person deserves the opportunity for an education in Australia no matter where they're from, and we are committed to ensuring that this opportunity continues. Labor has a very proud legacy in improving education across Australia. We fundamentally believe that every person in Australia deserves the opportunity to pursue higher education and training as well. Skills training is very important, but higher education is equally important for those who wish to pursue it. Labor fundamentally believes that it is a role of government to assist with this aim, and a good government will ensure Australia's higher education sector is truly first class and working for students. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the government. The evidence of that was all too apparent in last night's budget.

In his second reading speech on this bill, the minister said:

This bill strengthens our student support system so that it can focus on the important task of ensuring that Indigenous students and isolated students from across Australia have the opportunity to gain a first-class education.

If only this government was truly committed to investing in education and training for people in our regional and remote communities—and you don't invest in higher education when your budget for 2021, over the forward estimates, cuts 10 per cent from the higher education sector. The maths doesn't add up on that. You can't profess to have a commitment to higher education in this country and then slash 10 per cent from the sector over the next four years. It doesn't add up.

The comments the minister made about this bill are another example of all talk and no delivery from this government when it comes to higher education. The budget last night—this goes to the shadow minister's second reading amendments—locked in the Prime Minister's policy to make it harder and more expensive for Australians to go to uni. That runs counter to the sentiments of the minister in speaking to this bill. The budget papers confirm for the first time that the government is actually saving money by jacking up university fees and increasing student debt. That's going to be this government's legacy: crushing student debt and cuts to universities; crushing, crippling student debt, just like we see in America, that makes it harder for young Australians to get ahead. It makes it harder for them to save for a home. It makes it harder for them to raise a family. It makes it harder for them to save for retirement. The longer it takes you to pay off your student debt out of your wages means there's less money going into your superannuation account, so you're earning less on the compounded interest over your working life. It gets you when you're young and it gets you when you're old. It is absolutely counterproductive to the national productivity of this country.

Wham—higher fees; wham—low wages; wham—crippling mortgages; and, wham—less superannuation! Australians are being hit at every stage of their lives by this government, including with the cuts that it made to higher education last night. It's a lifetime of kicks to the incomes of Australian workers. Instead of helping young regional Australians get ahead, which is what this bill is supposed to be doing, the Liberals are putting roadblocks in the way. They should hang their heads in shame over the budget they delivered last night for what it does to higher education.

Labor does not want Australia to be like America, where our kids have to get a lifetime of debt to get an education. And we are talking about our kids. My daughter is 22. She is graduating this year from university, so she misses out on this, but there are kids just behind her who will be facing very, very high fees. They will have debts of around $60,000 for a basic degree at the same time as they're trying to find work, save a deposit for a house and start a family. What a way to say to young Australians, 'We're on your side.' If you're doing this to young Australians, you are not on their side. The Prime Minister's huge uni fees and huge uni debts will rob Aussie kids of the jobs of their dreams. They are not setting Australian kids up for success; they are loading them up with a lifetime of debt.

If this government is so invested in advancing students in remote regions of Australia, why is it cutting funds from the university sector? As of January this year, more than 17,000 people have lost their jobs at Australian universities since the beginning of the pandemic. Yet the government wants us to believe it is committed to improving our education system. The job losses amount to 13 per cent of the pre-COVID university workforce. That's a massive chunk of a national workforce that this government completely abandoned because they were not eligible for JobKeeper. This government excised them from JobKeeper. So 17,000 people were let go from universities and told, 'You're on your own.'

In my home state of Tasmania, the University of Tasmania has suffered immense financial hardship throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. With around half of UTAS's international student cohort being comprised of Chinese students last year, the closure of international borders and travel restrictions sent shock waves through UTAS and the broader higher education sector. A lot of it was unavoidable, but the real test is what you do about it. When the shock happened and the borders were closed, which had to happen, how should a government have come in and assisted? This government just locked the gates on the universities and said, 'You're on your own.' UTAS was forced to expedite a planned restructure, which led to a cut in the number of courses from 514 to just 120. Staff were offered redundancies, cleaning and security staff were stood down—again, without the protection of JobKeeper—and the broader university community were severely affected by such large-scale change being implemented so swiftly. UTAS needed to implement these changes as a priority matter of sustainability and survival. Their survival was on the line. It is outrageous that Tasmania's only university was forced to go through such turmoil because the Liberals would rather hand hundreds of millions of dollars in JobKeeper subsidies to profitable corporations than provide support to the nation's universities, which had been crippled by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a show of naked hostility from the Liberals to our traditional learning establishments.

While all this was occurring, while universities were struggling to survive, what exactly was the Morrison government doing in the education and training sphere? It wasn't trying to help the sector. It set a mandate to make higher education more difficult to achieve for working-class families. It made it more difficult for people in rural and remote areas, including in my electorate, to achieve higher education. It set a mandate to raise course fees to frankly ridiculous levels, forcing future arts students—I would hazard a guess that most people in this chamber on all sides are arts graduates—to pay up to $100,000 for their degrees. No-one in this chamber has paid that much for their degree, yet we're foisting that legacy upon the kids of tomorrow. If the kids up in the schools gallery are going to do an arts degree in future years, they're facing bills of $100,000. It's an absolute disgrace. Instead of helping universities and the higher education sector during a global pandemic which was adversely affecting the sector, this government took a wrecking ball to higher education, restricting opportunity for people to pursue higher education.

Under the Liberal government, access to training and apprenticeships keeps getting worse. The government is making a lot about the fact that apprenticeships are back on the way up. What it doesn't say and what it never says is that, over the past eight years, $3 billion has been cut from TAFE and there are 140,000 fewer apprentices and trainees now than there were eight years ago when the Liberals came to office. The government is increasing those numbers marginally now, but that follows the deep cuts it has already made. Things just keep getting worse under this government after eight long years. They have created a training environment where more people drop out of apprenticeships than complete them.

Key industries such as carpentry and plumbing have critical shortages of workers, and this has a flow-on effect to our construction industry and the ability for new developments and new homes to be completed. Australia's skills shortage now is a direct result of this government's incompetent decision to cut $3 billion from TAFE and rely on short-term visa holders from overseas to do the work. Labor is absolutely committed to training young Australians to do this work. The value of TAFE to Australia, to our productivity and to our economy is undeniable. Graduates of TAFE are invaluable to growth in this country, yet this government is failing to resource it properly. We know that it is in the Liberals' DNA to attack TAFE. Even now in Tasmania, the Gutwein Liberal government is seeking to restructure TasTAFE in a way that puts the quality of education and training at risk and leaves wide open the door to privatisation down the track.

As a result of the Morrison government's complete disregard for the higher education sector, tens of thousands of Australians have lost their jobs. As a result, the education of tens of thousands of students has been adversely affected. We are talking about lecturers, tutors, support staff, staff in the broader university community, security staff, cleaners and admin staff. These are the people who keep the ball rolling in universities across Australia, and without them the education of Australian students is much poorer.

Labor will support this bill, but we implore those opposite to support the amendments. The amendments are important. We support this bill and the administrative change that it makes to Abstudy and the AIC Scheme, but we do reject the government's preaching of its commitment to making education more accessible in the regions. The Liberals have a long history of attacking higher education. They have a clear mandate to turn the higher education system in Australia into a mirror image of the United States, a system burdened with debt. And the government has a long history of cuts, cuts and more cuts to the university and TAFE sectors. They don't care for educational opportunity. They don't care about the kids from towns and outer suburbs. They think that uni is for the kids from Kooyong and Point Piper, not Kalgoorlie and Primrose Sands, and their political agenda reveals that.

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