James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the amendment from the member for Bradfield, the Manager of Opposition Business, to the Education Legislation Amendment (Startup Year and Other Measures) Bill 2023. I commend the terms of that amendment, which I think very adequately encapsulate concerns we have for this bill that is currently being debated. Particularly, I think, the amendment underlines that this is the government implementing a press release from a campaign. It was about getting some media attention and looking like they were interested in entrepreneurship and facilitating startup culture and all those great buzzwords that are helpful content for journalists, probably as part of the Labor Party realising they had to have something to say on that topic during the campaign. So this was concocted and, regrettably, like so many other things from that campaign, we have now seen the gory detail of implementation. I think the feedback from stakeholders says it all. If I can simplify the complexity of that, it is that this is an extremely confusing, hard to understand, very opaque policy measure that could have all sorts of unintended consequences. The government are dutifully not listening to any of that feedback from very relevant stakeholders and are just preceding to implement this.

I'm a very passionate supporter of the startup culture we have in my home state and in my electorate of Sturt. I've been a very longstanding associate, in both my current role and previous roles, with the startup precinct at Lot Fourteen, which is the old Royal Adelaide Hospital. That was the subject of a City Deal between the Turnbull and Morrison governments, the Marshall government and the City of Adelaide—the three levels of government being the City Deal model. That was an opportunity to transform that precinct, the former Royal Adelaide Hospital on North Terrace in the Adelaide CBD into a real startup hub and incubator site, underpinned by the decision to headquarter the newly committed to Australian Space Agency there. I was there just last week, actually, at another milestone event, the launch of an industry road map for the space industry at the mission control centre in the building of the Space Agency headquarters. It is also a real hub for the defence sector and defence industries. That, of course, is creating an unbelievable culture there of startup.

We have a track record that we are very proud of, in the coalition, of tangible examples we can point to of policy decisions and policy investments that are leading to a great outcome, which is what the government purports that this policy measure is about. It's to foster job creation. As much as it's good to have a job, we particularly like people that create jobs—who start a business for themselves, grow a business and employ more people than they did in the previous year. That's how we grow our economy. In the coalition we are very proud, consistent supporters of small businesses, startup businesses and businesses that want a policy framework and policy settings in place that help them grow. They are the heroes of our economy. They are the ones that get us to the situation we're in right now, where we're effectively at completely full employment at 3½ per cent nationally. That is not because of government doing the hard work. Government needs to have policy settings in place that help the private sector do that work, and we are still seeing the legacy of the previous coalition government play out in the circumstances of employment in this nation. We'll see where that goes in the years ahead as policies like the one that we are now debating are rolled out by the new government.

There is some confusion around what this is going to do to existing programs and incubator models. The universities in South Australia have programs that facilitate graduates being supported by that institution to perhaps commercialise an idea that they've developed through their course of study with the university. We encourage universities to be more involved in commercialisation, frankly. That's one of the missing opportunities. An opportunity that has been lost in Australia for far too long is not having a good-quality structure for commercialising good ideas. Regrettably, there is a litany of excellent ideas that are developed through research and development institutions in this country and then commercialised somewhere else in the world because we haven't had the best framework for commercialisation. We would certainly like to see enhanced support and a change of culture, particularly from the financial institutions around how they provide support and engagement to commercialisation of great ideas that will start businesses, grow businesses and grow our economy.

We certainly have concerns, outlined in the amendment to the second reading question that I'm speaking to now, around the feedback that's come from Universities Australia and the Group of Eight and others about whether or not this is potentially going to have a lot of unforeseen consequences to some of the programs that already exist. Instead of achieving the 2,000-place outcome of new entrants, maybe a lot of existing programs could be adjusted to give an opportunity to access this funding. So something that was already happening, perhaps at the expense of the institutions, could in fact be now an opportunity for them to say, 'Because you can access this loan facility, we're going to start charging for things that we haven't in the past because you can just borrow that money and load it up onto your HECS-HELP debt and pay it off on top of the costs you've already incurred in your study.' So we hold those concerns. Also, there's a lot of ambiguity around how the program is going to operate because, as I've mentioned, the consultation seems to have just been the process of ticking a box. It feels like the response to that consultation has not been listened to and the concerns raised in that consultation process have not been addressed.

We can see that issues raised in the consultation process are simply not addressed in the legislation, and that is my interpretation of the feedback from the stakeholders that participated in that consultation as well. The government is certainly not saying, 'We really appreciated that consultation process and the sensible issues that were raised and this is how we've subsequently changed things, to make sure that those issues that have been raised have been addressed.' We've not got that situation, which is why we in the coalition are calling for this to be referred to a Senate inquiry, because whatever consultation occurred wasn't good enough for the government to listen to. We would like a committee in the Senate to look closely at this bill, to offer those who have been participating, and anyone who wants to participate, in the inquiry—particularly those who have already made submissions—the opportunity to raise these issues through that Senate process. In the Senate, senators can look at this bill in light of that feedback and perhaps look for some sensible opportunities to address some of those issues. We are very concerned about this.

In the coalition, we strongly support the principle of HECS. I'll do something that government members won't be doing in this place and commend Paul Keating for the approach he always took to HECS. It's important that people who are going to have a high future income-earning capacity from their education pay for it. I won't say I'm shocked—it's not a surprise—but I note the position of the Greens party in this parliament around the forgiveness of student debt.

The Greens are suggesting that hardworking taxpayers who haven't gone to university, who haven't therefore had the benefit of that education that pays future dividends to their income-earning capacity, should bear the cost of removing the student debt that lawyers, accountants and whoever else have accumulated. They're going to go on to earn quite a lot of money, and good luck to them, but they should pay for the education that unlocked their ability to earn that future income. We have the Greens saying the taxpayer—the plumbers, electricians and other hard workers who chose a different vocational path that didn't involve going to university and incurring a significant debt through HECS—should pay more tax to remove the debt of high-earning lawyers and accountants.

Let's be honest and blunt here: the Greens are a socialist party. You would think they could understand their own ideology, but they don't even understand what they say they stand for. They're saying workers should pay a higher amount of tax to subsidise wealthier income earners in our society. That's what they're about. That's what the Greens are about. I make these points because they are relevant to the bill, because we are talking about the higher education loan schemes that we have.

I commend the era in the Labor Party when Keating and others said that free higher education is not appropriate. It is appropriate to have a structure that involves debt financing of a proportion of that education, and when people can afford to repay the government for it—which is exactly how the HECS system works—they should do that, because that education is empowering them to earn a higher income. Now we have the Greens party saying they're not about that. They think the really high income earning people in our economy who incurred a large debt on their education to earn that high income shouldn't have to repay it. They'd like all the workers to pay more tax instead so that those high-income earners can have that education for free and then go and make more money from it. I really condemn that approach that some take when it comes to the appropriate financing of people's higher education.

We hope this amendment to this bill is agreed to, for the reasons that I've outlined. We really do want to look at a lot of these concerning unintended consequences that are simply not being addressed by the government. We want to back entrepreneurship and innovation in our economy. In principle, I like the concept of all forms of facilitating people at the start of their careers to start a business, make a living for themselves and even grow that business and employ people in our economy. That's what the Liberal Party and the coalition are about: free enterprise and backing people to take their ideas and commercialise them, create a business, make money for themselves, make money for our economy and increase the wealth of our nation. That's absolutely what we're about, and that's why the issues that we raise in this debate need to be addressed.

This bill purports to be in that policy space, and yet the feedback from the consultation raises a lot of concerns about a variety of elements. We don't know whether what it is claimed will be achieved through this is going to be achieved. So I urge the government to consider that strongly. I urge the Senate, were this bill to pass through our chamber, as I expect it will, to avail themselves of the opportunity to undertake that inquiry process, get to the bottom of some of these concerns and potentially amend this bill to adequately address them. On the basis of that, I commend the amendment to the House.

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