Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's always a privilege to speak about the things that we are doing to improve the quality of university education that Australian students access and to expand that access to other students, which is what this bill is focused on.

The Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill 2023 comes in response to the interim report of the team looking at how we improve our university system. This is not the end of the story; this is the start of the story. That team is comprised of a really skilled group of people. I think it's important to know that it has academics, like Professor Mary O'Kane, the chair of the panel, who is the former vice-chancellor of the University of Adelaide, and the Western Sydney University vice-chancellor, Professor Barney Glover, who is bringing lived experience of what happens in the part of the continent that my community in greater Western Sydney are familiar with. Also on that panel who are considering, at the request of the minister, some recommendations is the CEO of Macquarie Bank. I have known Shemara for a long time and I have a huge regard for her. I also think it's really important that we have business leaders involved in these discussions—that the review does involve a wider group of people reflecting on what makes a difference in our universities producing graduates and supporting students for the 21st century. We've also got the Hon. Jenny Macklin, who is of course well known to this place, along with Professor Larissa Behrendt and the Hon. Fiona Nash. So there is huge diversity.

I want to stress that because it's important for people to know how wide the net is, in terms of drawing on expertise. It's also important to know that this group is asking for everybody's feedback, on the ideas it's come up with, and between now and the end of the year there is opportunity to look at what's being floated as ideas. There are something like 70 different ideas that have been put forward. If anyone needs those links, I'll make sure I make them available, when I post this speech on my Facebook page, so that people know how to access the appropriate page, so they can give feedback. That's because this is not something that we want to come up with in a vacuum. We want to draw on all that expertise. We're really committed to opening the door of opportunity for more Australians to go to university.

Part of that means that we act on the priorities put in the interim report. There were five priorities that were things we could do almost immediately. One is that we create more university study hubs, not just in the regions but in outer suburbs. I'll talk a bit more about that one shortly. Another is that we scrap the 50 per cent pass rule; that is within this legislation. The third is that we extend the demand-driven funding, that is currently provided to Indigenous students from regional and remote areas, and make it cover all Indigenous students. That includes those in the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury in the electorate of Macquarie that I represent. Again, that is included in this bill. Another is that we provide funding certainty during the accord process by extending the Higher Education Continuity Guarantee into 2024 and 2025 with funding arrangements that prioritise support for equity students. The final priority is that we work with states and territories to improve university governance. They're the initial steps we're taking as part of the response to the interim report.

I want to talk specifically about the ones that are in this piece of legislation. Let's talk about the 50 per cent pass rule. I have had comments such as, 'Of course students should pass; they should at least pass their first year of university subjects.' The way it works now, students are required to pass at least 50 per cent of the units of study they undertake to even be eligible for Commonwealth assistance. The pass rate is assessed after they have completed eight units in a bachelor degree or higher or four units in a shorter course.

Students who fail more than half currently lose all eligibility for Commonwealth access and assistance. The pass rate requirements were originally introduced, in January 2022, by the former coalition government as part of its job-ready graduates program. Essentially, it was to dissuade students from continuing in courses that they're not academically suited for. But the practical effect of those measures has been extremely punitive for some students. The impact of the pass rate requirements has disproportionately affected students from certain groups: First Nations, those with low-socioeconomic status, those who are first in family to university and those other under-represented or educationally disadvantaged cohorts.

I would hope that wasn't the intended consequence of the rules that were brought in, but that's what we're seeing and we can't let that remain. More than 13,000 students at 27 universities have been hit by this rule. The removal of the rule has been called for by universities right across the country, everywhere from Adelaide to Sydney to the Sunshine Coast, including my own neck of the woods, Western Sydney University. We should be helping students succeed at university, not penalising them and forcing them to quit.

I know, from firsthand experience, that the first year of university can be a real challenge for some students. I have spoken in this place previously of a student I supported through her university. I remember saying to Ellie, who has now completed her PhD and is waiting for that to be assessed—many, many years later—'First year is meant to be hard! It's teaching your brain to think about things in a different way than you did in high school.' And it is meant to be hard. But it is not ideal to know that there is this pass or fail rule where you're out if you don't manage to get your head around it in that first year and in those first subjects. I'm really pleased to see that we are taking an attitude that we support students to help them succeed, not force them to quit.

This bill brings in requirements on universities and other providers to have policies in place to help students successfully complete their studies. The universities and other providers will be required to show us how they'll identify students who are struggling and how they'll connect those students with support services. The Department of Education will issue a discussion paper to consult with the universities on the content of these policies.

The policies are expected to contain things like: a process for identifying students who need help; how to assess a student's academic and non-academic suitability for continuing study, particularly when an alert has been triggered; the connecting of students to support before the census date whenever possible; and providing sufficient non-academic support for students, such as financial assistance, housing information and mental health supports. That's important as many students struggle because of non-academic reasons. If we can address those issues, they will have a greater chance of success.

We also want universities to have appropriate crisis and critical harm response arrangements as well as providing access to trained academic development advisers who can really help a student identify what is holding them back and come up with a really tailored response for that student, because it's not going to be a one size fits all. We want to ensure that the academic and non-academic supports are age appropriate and culturally appropriate, including specific arrangements for Indigenous students.

We also expect universities to offer special circumstances arrangements proactively, where the provider is aware of a significant life event for a student, as well as targeted individual literacy and numeracy supports, peer support and in core support from academic staff. That is a really key part of this. We're not just saying, 'Let's drop that rule,' we're saying, 'Let's put in more supports so that it shouldn't even be necessary.'

The other part that we're legislating, in this piece of work, is to extend the demand-driven places to metropolitan Indigenous students that currently are not given to metropolitan Indigenous students but are given to rural and regional Indigenous students. I want to be clear. In the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury we don't qualify for rural or regional, even though it can take a huge commute of several hours on public transport—that's if you can access public transport—to get to a university. So there are many barriers already, and the barrier we can remove is around the competition for places.

The existing demand-driven measure was implemented in 2021. This proposal aims to increase First Nations enrolment numbers by expanding the eligibility of demand-driven funding to include all metropolitan First Nations students studying bachelor and bachelor honours courses except courses of study in medicine. This measure directly supports efforts to achieve Closing the Gap outcome 6. That measure is aimed at increasing the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, between the age of 25 and 34 years, who've completed a tertiary qualification of certificate III or above to 70 per cent by 2031. This means no cap on the number of First Nations students who can enrol in Commonwealth supported places. That is going to be a really important step. Western Sydney University is one of those universities where there is strong support for this measure.

While I am speaking about Western Sydney University, I want to go to one of the other interim recommendations, which is to have more university study hubs. I note that Western Sydney University has already opened a study hub in Western Sydney in the Fairfield region. Speaking at that, Professor Barney Glover, who is the vice-chancellor, described what it was going to be. He said:

It will be as high tech and as advanced as the facilities that we've put in very recently to Bankstown, where we have an enormous new campus in the heart of Bankstown.

I think that's really key. These study hubs have the capacity to operate as a mini campus. It's really important for people to be able to access university close to where they live. It does take away one of those barriers. We are very lucky to have the Hawkesbury campus, but it doesn't mean that everything is offered there. I really look forward to working with universities to expand the access we give to people.

It's also really opportune to mention the investment that we are making in the Western Sydney University Hawkesbury campus around our agritech hub. Labor is providing nearly $17 million to the university to really boost the jobs, skills and agriculture research that happens there. These are the sorts of things our universities do, particularly somewhere like Hawkesbury. We are doing real, practical stuff. The funding will expand the glasshouses where experiments are going on to see what can be grown with very little water and nutrients in the most efficient way possible. I'm really proud that we're going to be investing significantly in that campus to expand the work that's happening, which will support the agricultural sector not only in and around the Hawkesbury but right across the country.

There is no doubt there are opportunities for reforming universities. In my last few moments, I would like to reference the work that's been done to increase safety on campuses. Being safe on campus is something students have raised as their No. 1 issue. We're really committed to doing that. The working group that has been put together will be looking closely at what can be done. This is not something that universities have been able to address. They have made a lot of commitments to addressing it, but it does need us as the federal government to take a leadership role and support them to ensure they create very safe places for every student on campus. That's one of the fundamentals of a strong university sector. I commend this bill to the House.

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