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

I say upfront that Labor will be supporting this bill in the parliament. Nevertheless, 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 that the Government's mismanagement and politicisation of Australian Research Council grants and failure to adequately support Australia’s universities during the pandemic are causing serious harm to our world-class researchers".

I thank the member for Kingsford Smith for seconding that.

The Australian Research Council Amendment Bill 2021 amends the Australian Research Council Act, applying indexation to our research programs while also inserting funding for the 2024-25 financial year. It's routine legislation and it needs to pass at this House to guarantee funding under rolling forward estimates. The Australian Research Council is an independent Commonwealth body and is the centrepiece of higher education research in this country. It funds primary research. It funds applied research. This legislation is essential to supporting its ongoing operations.

The Labor Party supports the council's important work, which is why we support this bill; but, while we're happy to support this particular measure, we're not happy with how the Morrison government has treated the ARC now and in the Abbott-Turnbull escapades before this current manifestation of incompetence and venom. It's a national scandal and it's getting worse and worse. In recent years, we have seen consistent to delays to grant decisions—delays which seem to be getting longer every year. We have seen political interference from ministers, culture war manoeuvres where they are trumping the ARC's independence. We've seen disrespect from the highest levels of government, and it's unfair to all the brilliant, hardworking nation-building professionals in our university system. It's a terrible, short-sighted attack on this country's economic future.

Smart countries know the value of research. They know that it drives economic growth, that it encourages innovation, that it expands our sense of history, human capacity and who we are. But that's clearly not how the Morrison government views research. Last year, the Morrison government delayed the announcement of research grants until Christmas Eve—literally the night before Christmas, like Ebenezer Scrooge in the Dickens novel. You can imagine the uncertainty this because our poor researchers, who didn't know if they still had their jobs in the next year or if their projects would be able to continue. How can you plan your career or commit to long-term research projects when you don't know things until the last minute? You can't. What about rent, food, mortgages and families? All were put in limbo due to coalition incompetence. Our shadow education minister, the member for Sydney, Tanya Plibersek, wrote to the National Audit Office, requesting an audit into the Morrison government's administration of ARC grants. She believed that letter because of her belief that this was a failure of public administration. Unfortunately, the Audit Office denied the request. That was disappointing, but our concerns with the ARC are still there.

On Christmas Eve, the acting minister vetoed six of the recommended projects because they didn't suit the Morrison government agenda or their taste. This was particularly cruel. An enormous amount of work goes into these applications—months and months of planning, editing and writing—and they were denied at the flick of a panda by an acting minister. As Professor Brian Schmidt, Vice-Chancellor of the Australian International University, said at the time:

In a liberal democracy, You make the grant rules, The independent research agency uses peer review to determine funding. It is completely inappropriate for grants to be removed by politicians, unless the grant rules were not followed.

Professor Schmidt is a Nobel Prize winner in astrophysics, so Brian knows a thing or two about research. Professor Schmidt knows just how damaging these arbitrary decisions can be.

And this wasn't a first for this government. In 2018, the Minister for Education and Training, Senator Birmingham, personally vetoed $4.2 million worth of grants from the Australian Research Council. Researchers described the minister 's behaviour as, 'reprehensible,' saying that it undermined the impartiality of the entire grants process.

This kind of political interference does serious harm to Australia's world-class university research sector. It damages our international reputation and makes it harder for universities to retain and recruit topnotch staff, putting thousands of jobs at risk. The role of the minister for education should be to ensure that the ARC's grant processes are rigorous, fair and transparent—and then, hands off! Obviously, they need to make sure that the council is competent and well run, then they should leave the independent agency to function without unnecessary and cumbersome political interference.

We hear a lot about free speech from the Morrison government, particularly from some of the members patrolling out the front of the parliament in fact. But when it really came down to it and they had a chance to woof the woof, hypocritically, they did the complete opposite. They clamped down on speech that they disagreed with. That's not Labor's approach; we support freedom of speech. That's not as a slogan or in a culture war, but as a fundamental principle of a free society. If Labor wins the next election, we're committed to approving grant applications that are recommended by a rigourous ARC peer-reviewed process. And they'll be delivered on time on a pre-established date—not Christmas Eve, I can guarantee that!—and well in advance of the grant's commencement. That's the Labor guarantee.

But of course we have to do much, much more to support our universities, particularly after the past horrific two years. They have been two of the hardest years in the history of higher education. We know that the Prime Minister abandoned higher education during the pandemic. In its hour of need, he deliberately and systematically deserted it. As thousands of university staff members were losing their jobs, what did the Prime Minister do? He excluded universities from JobKeeper. Businesses with booming profits got JobKeeper—$39 billion in fact—$39 billion went to profitable companies. But universities were coldly left out—a cruel and calculated decision by the Prime Minister.

I don't know what happened to the member for Cook when he was at university, but slaking his revenge has turned out to be a disaster for the sector. Across the pandemic, 40,000 jobs were cut across tertiary education. That's an unbelievable figure: 40,000 jobs. It's a hard number to get your head around. What do 40,000 jobs mean? That's 40,000 homes hit and 40,000 families rattled. Thousands of these jobs were in regional Australia; that's why we've heard so many National Party MPs speaking up about this. I'm just kidding—that did not happen! It was thousands of jobs in those bush areas, in places like Rockhampton, Bathurst, Armidale, Geelong, Warrnambool, Toowoomba and Townsville, and I could go on. Universities are Australia's fourth-biggest export industry and they've been hung out to dry by the Morrison government. Higher education is not a burden, it's an investment that delivers returns.

And so is research. Unfortunately, because of the Morrison government's abandonment during the pandemic, an estimated 7,000 research jobs were lost in the past two years. Departments have been shut down and research institutes, like the National Centre for Flood Research in Lismore, have closed. Under the Liberal Party, Australia has been a difficult place for researchers: a 2016 survey of medical researchers found that 83 per cent of them had contemplated leaving the profession. That is a fair dinkum brain drain flowing from the pen of the education minister and the Prime Minister's office.

The Australian Postdoctoral Reference Survey found that over half of our early-career researchers had thought about moving overseas, and plenty of them have already made this choice. It's an exodus of talent from our shores, where other countries will receive the benefits of that investment. These are the kinds of people who help supercharge our vaccine development, the people who liberated us from the worst of COVID and the pandemic, and we're watching them walk out the door. The truth is that we can't have a strong modern economy without a healthy research system. It's something we desperately need in this country. According to research by Harvard University, Australia has the economic complexity of a developing nation. Australia was between Uganda and Burkina Faso as the 87th most complex economy in the world—87th!

This isn't just an economic risk; it's holding our economy back. As a country, we spend well below the OECD average on research and development. New technology and breakthroughs don't emerge out of thin air; we need researchers to discover them and we need a system that encourages their work. The Liberal Party has never given researchers the support they need. We need a Labor government to do that. We need a Labor government that will invest in our universities again and that will deliver up to 20,000 new university places that will help fill skill shortages and future skill needs by training Australians in jobs, including engineering, nursing, tech and teaching, to name but a few. Those places will prioritise universities offering more opportunities for underrepresented groups, such as people in regional parts. I hope the National Party hears that. People from regional parts of Australia will receive that helping hand so the best and brightest kids from the bush get to go to our universities, as well as kids from remote and outer suburban areas, those who are amongst the first in their families to study at university and, obviously, First Nations Australians. A Labor government will use its $15 billion national reconstruction fund to help translate brilliant discoveries and inventions into new Australian businesses and new Australian jobs. It will put real resources into research and development.

Labor governments have always invested in higher education. Obviously, Gough Whitlam made my university study possible, but we've got a long history of investing in higher education. We've always opened it up to more students from less-privileged backgrounds so that our best and brightest can solve the problems of a modern Australia. We've always supported research. That's our legacy and that's our ambition. Our universities won't be rebuilt under the Liberals, who spent their term in office trashing them. What a legacy! We need a Labor government to rebuild our universities.

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