Libby Coker (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I rise to speak on the Education Services for Overseas Students (Registration Charges) Amendment Bill 2021, because of the importance overseas students play not only in my electorate of Corangamite but also across our nation. Overseas students are so important to Deakin University and to my region as a whole. This bill does a number of things around cost-recovery, charges and the associated regulations for overseas students. Amongst other things, the bill updates the registration charges to recover costs for certain regulatory activities under the ESOS Act. The bill also establishes new registration charges consistent with the Australian Government Charging Framework. But there is a sad irony associated with this bill and its timing, because, on the one hand, the Morrison government wants to streamline the charging framework for overseas students attending Australian universities but, on the other hand, it makes it almost impossible for these overseas students to attend our universities. I will return to this point, but first I want to detail some context around overseas students in our region and the importance of Deakin University.

Deakin University had over 13,000 overseas students. I said 'had' because, of course, this number of overseas students has been slashed. It's been decimated to virtually zero by COVID and the actions—or should I say inactions—of the Morrison government. In large part this has been due to the hopeless failure of the Morrison government to establish a robust quarantine system that would facilitate an early re-entry of overseas students. Overseas students are vital to my region's economy and to many regional economies, to our diverse cultural life and to getting the world's best and brightest people to stay in our region into the future. The education of overseas students is a major job creation engine in our region. This bill adds a whole lot of detail around the regulation and charging of overseas students, but what is the point of it if there are no overseas students? I ask all members to think about that question. The real tragedy is that all the job losses didn't have to happen. All these university job losses resulted from a deliberate decision by the Morrison government not to take responsibility for quarantine and not to support Australia's university sector overall.

The Morrison government, astoundingly, decided that the university sector would be excluded from JobKeeper but that the likes of Gerry Harvey, or Harvey Norman, would be included. How could any responsible government do that? How could they? I note recent figures from the independent Parliamentary Budget Office which show that 157,650 Australian employers who received JobKeeper support had turnover rise during that period compared to the same in 2019. In just three months these employers accrued $4.6 billion in taxpayer funded wage subsidies. If just half of that $4.6 billion had been supplied to the university sector, there would not have been job losses. This massive brain drain and the huge economic blow to Australia and our region would have been avoided.

I would like to acknowledge Dr Alison Barnes from the NTEU, who said recently:

For a small portion of the JobKeeper money that was wasted on corporate handouts to profitable companies, we could have saved the 21,000 jobs lost from higher education.

Yes indeed. I want that figure on the parliamentary record: 21,000 jobs lost in the Australian university sector because of some weird agenda by the Morrison government to punish universities—21,000 Australian jobs lost. And that is not the end of it; it continues. Universities Australia chief executive, Catriona Jackson, has said that the sector is estimated to lose a further 5.5 per cent, or $2 billion, in 2021 alone.

And this is not where punishment of the Australia university sector by the Morrison government ends. There's even more—a lot more. Everyone in this chamber would remember the tortuous path of the higher education support amendment bill. The bill cut another billion dollars in Australian government expenditure to Australian universities. And of course it hugely punished Australian students interested in pursuing careers in the arts and humanities, doubling already-high fees and saddling our youth with even higher levels of debt. Overall, that piece of legislation increased already-high costs to students by seven per cent. Forty per cent of students had to cop increased fees, some by as much as 113 per cent. Arts and business students will now leave university with debts averaging between $40,000 and $50,000 for a normal degree. What a disgraceful attack on students because they wish to pursue a career in humanities. The respected academic and university policy analyst Andrew Norton put it very simply:

A future education minister is going to have to fix these problems.

Too true.

The Australian university sector is bleeding profusely, and Deakin University is no exception. This is largely due to the Liberal government's funding cutbacks, the absence of overseas students and the refusal of the Morrison government to provide support to the sector when they desperately need it. JobKeeper was the sad example of this. The Morrison government has been consistently rigid in its refusal to allow universities to access JobKeeper, and it makes no sense. We are proud of the quality education our universities provide; they are the engine room of regional employment and an important economic driver. Instead, under the Morrison government we see universities hurting and shedding jobs. For Deakin University, this has resulted in more than 300 jobs lost. At the time, I spoke out about these job losses in the local media. These job losses have devastated morale for many at Deakin University and have left many local families facing difficult times during this pandemic. Casualisation of the university workforce makes it even harder to keep your job, because those who aren't tenured are the first to lose their jobs.

It is sad that casualisation of the workforce under the Morrison government has escalated to alarming proportions—it is really staggering. I do want to give a shout-out to all the employees at Deakin University. You are doing an amazing job in these very challenging times. What you need is a federal government that cares about you and cares about our education system, our university sector. While this bill deals with a lot of the detail about the regulation of overseas students, there are virtually no overseas students to apply this bill to. To me, it feels exactly like fiddling while Rome is burning. I will leave you with that thought. We on the Labor side will support this bill, but we do not support the attack on the university sector. We are alarmed by it. We will fight it. When we come into government, we will fix it.

Finally, the struggling university sector is just another pointer to the Morrison government's fundamental failures. A pointer to one of their fundamental failures is the two tasks they had during this COVID crisis. The first is the failure to effectively roll out vaccines. The second is the Morrison government's failure to establish a high-quality quarantine system. That's what we need to get the university sector back on its feet, that's what we need to get overseas students back into our universities, and that's what we need to help our regional economies to get moving again. This is what the Prime Minister should be focused on. Instead, the Morrison government is totally failing Deakin University and the whole Australian university sector. This is not vision. It's not leadership. Universities need a government that believes in their vitality and the significant role they and our TAFE sector play in equipping us all for the future. Only a change of government will deliver such an outcome. It is certainly time for that change.

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