Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] It's always a hard act to follow the member for Bruce, and I commend him on his strong speech on these education bills. Like so many parts of Australian society, we are feeling the effect of last year's negligence and last year's inaction by the Morrison government. It is nowhere more stark than in our university sector, where, last year, not only did they exacerbate the problems that our university sector is facing by not building purpose-built quarantine facilities, but also they've systematically attacked our educators and made university more expensive for Australians to go to.

We in the Labor Party have always championed our university sector. From the Whitlam reforms, many of my parents' generation went to university for free. Within a generation, the life and the living standards of Australians, including our family, were turned around. Because of the Labor Party's longstanding commitment to access to education, it is through university, it is through higher education, that Australians have had the social mobility to be able to do whatever they want within this country. But that dream is slowly being chopped away at and undermined by the efforts of this government.

Unfortunately, due to this pandemic, we have seen our university sector on its knees. For too long, the university sector has been underfunded by this government and by successive Liberal governments. Instead of being funded properly, the university sector has been forced to rely on international students to make up a lot of the revenue that the government and successive Liberal governments have cut from courses. So the university sector has a financial model where it absolutely relies on international education. Because of this pandemic the sector has had a huge reduction in revenue to subsidise and support Australian students and quality Australian education through having a reduction in the number of international students coming here.

You would think that, for Australia's fourth-largest export industry—it is Victoria's single largest service exporter—the federal government would be doing absolutely everything in its power to help ensure that our universities are supported throughout this pandemic. You would think that it would do everything in its power to ensure the key revenue of international education coming into this country. It not only supports our university sector but supports businesses and accommodation and is a huge benefit for our economy. You would think that the federal government would be doing everything in its power to help ensure that our university sector could survive. But it's not.

The federal government has consistently been attacking our university sector. It has been undermining our university sector. You need to look only as far as the JobKeeper reform to see how much the university sector in Australia was never a priority for the Morrison government. You couldn't have designed JobKeeper in a way that excluded universities more directly than the way in which this government designed JobKeeper. To create a JobKeeper program that specifically excluded the university sector was literally a design of the Morrison government. Despite the urging and the amendments put forward by Labor, it was the federal government that flat out refused to support the university sector through JobKeeper.

What we saw were massive job losses across the sector. Monash University proudly has one of its campuses in my electorate of Macnamara. It also produces some of the finest people in this country. The great Monash University lost over 250 jobs. A total of 277 jobs were lost in 2020, mainly because the federal government flat out refused to support our university sector with JobKeeper. We saw comparable job losses at the major Victorian universities of Deakin and La Trobe. Universities have been left behind by the federal government. It's so frustrating. Universities have gone through the really traumatic experience of this pandemic. Not having the extra revenue from international students has been compounded by the fact that they were left behind in regard to the JobKeeper scheme. Then you add to that the fact of the legacy reforms of the Morrison government, which are to make university more expensive for a lot more Australian students, especially those in humanities courses.

I was a humanities student. I proudly studied politics and history. Yet the consecutive attacks on our humanities courses, on creative thinking, on critical thinking, on independent thought, on history, on our society and on ethics have been pretty disappointing to say the least. It has been a reflection of the values of the Morrison government that they have constantly sought to undermine free and independent thinking if it doesn't comply with the government's thinking. Successively we've seen JobKeeper, the cuts and the lack of purpose-built quarantine put our university sector on its knees. We've then seen the federal government make universities more expensive for more students.

I want to take this moment to reflect on the fact that, throughout this pandemic, our young Australians have missed out on so many milestones. Each and every day away from school and away from your friends is really difficult. Our young Australians have been asked to do so much throughout this pandemic. It's important to note every single time a young Australian misses a formal, every single time a young Australian misses a sporting event, every single time a young Australian misses a chance to go and hang out at their friend's house, every single time a young Australian doesn't get to leave school and hang out on campus and experience all of the joys of campus life after doing a tough year 12. It's important to recognise that young Australians have had to go through their best years, their formative years, the years when they could have grown and experienced independence and all of the joys of the world and of Australian society—travel, exploration and all the things that we all have fond memories of—having missed those milestones because of this pandemic. And what are they confronted with? They're confronted with a government that tells them that university is going to be more expensive for them, they're confronted with a government that tries to prescribe which courses they engage in, they're confronted with a government that clearly hasn't prioritised the university sector or prioritised the next generation.

We should be investing in our young people, because our young people are missing out on so much. Of course they've been left behind in the vaccine rollout. Our young people have been really forced to bear the brunt of this pandemic and have not had an opportunity to get vaccinated until very recently, and all the mixed messaging has been extremely confusing for young people. We should acknowledge it. But I also think that we really should acknowledge the fact that each milestone missed by a young Australian is important. It's something that we should be thankful of and thankful for, that younger Australians, with dignity, have managed to do that, making huge sacrifices for the betterment of Australian society. So the least that we could be doing, the least that the Australian government could be doing is saying to them, 'Thank you,' and investing back in their future.

I think that the way in which the federal government has treated our university sector does the exact opposite. It says that we're going to make your university more expensive, we're going to leave you with more debt, we're not going to support the university sector in the way in which we could and we're not going to try as hard as we can to ensure the future prosperity of, and investment into, our university sector. And it's really disappointing, because that is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing at this time. Now is the time to be investing in young people, now is the time to be saying to young people that there is hope, you will get through this and we're going to invest in the opportunities that you're going to need in the future.

I would take this opportunity to say directly to the younger people of Australia: We appreciate all of the sacrifices you've made. Every milestone that you've missed is important. And whether it was a school formal, a sporting match, just a chance to hang out with your friends, a chance to hang out on campus life, a chance to just be a young Australian and to be yourself, the fact that you've missed out on that and made sacrifices is amazing, and it's important. It's helped keep people safe. The end of this pandemic is going to come, and you will have a return to some form of normal life. It will happen. Have faith, it will happen. In the meantime, in order to reward younger Australians, we should be saying to you that our university sector should be the best funded in the world, that our university sector will not be the source of constant cuts and undermining, that if we work to create a wage subsidy program our university sector shouldn't be missing out on that—they should be at the top of our funding pile—and that we recognise all of your sacrifices and we want to help invest in the future so that you can give back to this wonderful country.

On that note, I say that we have seen a really disappointing few years for our university sector by the Morrison government, but it is true to form. We would hope that with a change of government it will give us the opportunity to right the wrongs, reinvest back in our university sector, reinvest back in our young Australians and reinvest back into the future, as a Labor government has always done and will do long into the future. Thank you.

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