Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to start by congratulating the Minister for Education on the excellent job that he is doing. He informed me just a little while ago that, in my electorate of Solomon, in Darwin and Palmerston, the capital of the north, 29 per cent of people 15 years and over have completed higher education, which is a bit higher than the national average of 26.3 per cent. But, at the same time, I think it is important to point out that that figure that is than the national average hides a truism, which is that for many people, young people in particular, in my electorate higher education is but a pipe dream. The Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill 2023 is going to make it easier. It's going to provide more support for young Territorians in my electorate to get higher education.

What will also help is the referendum that we have coming up. The establishment of an advisory body to give advice on things like higher education will undoubtedly continue the good work in this bill because it will give feedback directly from those elected representatives in that advisory body to the parliament and to the government. So I welcome it and encourage all honourable members to support a 'yes' vote at the referendum.

I rise to speak on this higher education support amendment bill and, in doing so and having pointed out the situation in my electorate with regard to higher education, I want to acknowledge the hard work of vice-chancellor Professor Scott Bowman and all the good folk at Charles Darwin University, including those at the new CDU TAFE, and congratulate them on a great open day at the Palmerston campus on the weekend.

This bill implements priority recommendations of the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report, which was released by the minister on 19 July. The accord team, as honourable members would know, comprised pre-eminent Australians with enormous experience across our universities, in industry and in public policy, and it was bipartisan in its composition. Hopefully, honourable members have had a chance to speak with some of the member of the panel. They include Professor Mary O'Kane AC, former vice chancellor of the University of Adelaide; Professor Barney Glover AO, Vice-Chancellor of Western Sydney University and a former vice-chancellor of Charles Darwin University in Darwin; Ms Shemara Wikramanayake, the first female managing director and chief executive officer of Macquarie Group; the Hon. Jenny Macklin AC, former minister for families, community services and Indigenous affairs, a former member of this place and a friend. I spoke with Jenny just recently about a range of issues, including the disease MJD, which she is a passionate advocate for.

Another member of the panel is Professor Larissa Behrend AO, the first Indigenous Australian to graduate from Harvard Law School, a professor of law and the Director of Research and Academic Programs at the Jumbunna Institute of Indigenous Education and Research at the University of Technology, Sydney. That has prompted me to acknowledge the good folk at Bachelor in the Northern Territory who do excellent work in training our First Nations students, not just from the Territory but from other places in Australia. The last but certainly not least member of the panel is a former member of this place, the Hon. Fiona Nash, who was a senator for New South Wales, a former minister for regional development, regional communications, local government and territories and is now Australia's first Regional Education Commissioner. I met with Fiona in Darwin just recently, and we had a great conversation about how we need to include regional universities like Charles Darwin University in the national picture and in the national ecosystem of universities in this nation if we are to develop our greatest resource, which is our people, in regional areas of Australia. I thank Fiona for her time and for her work.

Our government is committed to opening the door of opportunity for more Australians to go to university, including Australians in regional areas of Australia like the one that I represent. Part of this means acting on the priority actions of the interim report. These actions are: creating more university study hubs; scrapping the 50 per cent pass rule; requiring better reporting on how students are progressing; extending the demand-driven funding currently provided to First Nations students from regional and remote areas to cover all First Nations students around the country; providing funding certainty during the accord process by extending the Higher Education Continuity Guarantee into 2024-25 with funding arrangements that prioritise support for equity students; and, lastly, working with state and territory governments to improve university governance.

The government has confirmed it will implement each of the interim recommendations. Recommendations 2 and 3 need legislative amendment, which this bill provides by amending the HESA. These amendments extend the current demand-driven funding for regional and remote First Nations students to all First Nations Australian undergraduate students studying bachelor or honours levels courses, other than medicine, from 2024. They also remove the pass-rate requirements for students to remain eligible for Commonwealth assistance, which we know is so vital. The amendments also introduce new requirements on universities and other providers to support students to successfully complete their studies. The removal of the 50 per cent pass rule is a major reform. Students are currently required to pass at least 50 per cent of the units of study they undertake to continue eligibility for Commonwealth assistance. The pass rate is assessed after they have completed eight units in a bachelor's degree or higher or four units in a shorter course. Students who fail more than half currently lose eligibility for Commonwealth assistance. The pass rate requirements were originally introduced in January 2022 by the former coalition government as part of its Job-ready Graduates program to dissuade students from continuing in courses they are not academically suited for.

However, the practical effect of these measures has been overly punitive for students. We need to be helping our students more, supporting our students more, to get them across the line. The impact of the pass rate requirement disproportionately affected students from First Nations, low socioeconomic status and other underrepresented or educationally disadvantaged cohorts. More than 13,000 students at 27 universities have already been hit by the rule. Removal of the rule has been called for by universities right across the country, and we have listened to those calls. They are universities like Adelaide, Monash, University of Technology Sydney, Sunshine Coast, New England, Queensland University of Technology and Western Sydney University. They made the calls to overturn that ruling, and we have listened because we should be helping students succeed, not forcing them to quit.

The bill introduces requirements on universities and other providers to have policies in place to help students successfully complete their studies. Under these policies, universities and other providers would be required to demonstrate how they will identify students who are struggling, connect to those students and provide support services to help those students. The Department of Education will issue a discussion paper to consult with universities and providers on the content of these policies. It is expected to contain measures such as processes for identifying students who need help, as well as assessing a student's academic and non-academic suitability for continuing study, particularly where they have triggered an alert. It is also important to connect students to support, identifying students who are not engaging with support before their census date wherever possible, to keep them in the game, to keep them on a pathway to education or to quickly identify whether another pathway may be. We need to consider whether there is sufficient non-academic support for students, such as financial assistance, housing information and mental health supports. That's so important because many students can struggle because of non-academic issues, so we need to have an academic approach and a non-academic approach, helping the student in a holistic way.

We also need to have appropriate crisis and critical harm response arrangements. That's also really important. We need to provide access to trained academic development advisers who can help a student identify what's holding them back and come up with the right response for that student. The theory here that we will put in practice is that no-one gets left behind. We give the supports that wrap around those students to keep them in the game of education. The idea of proactively offering special circumstances arrangements where a provider is aware of a significant life event for a student is so important. When I reflect back on my job and the situations you come across, we had a situation where several international students were killed in a tragic car accident just outside of Darwin. That had a massive impact on their fellow students. Special considerations were assessed locally by the university team, but making that more of a part of the arrangements for everyone in the sector going forward is a very good thing.

We also need to provide access to targeted individual literacy, numeracy and other academic supports. Provider-driven and evidence based additional support, such as peer support, is also important, as is targeted in-course support from academic staff, such as check-ins and flexibility on assessment arrangements. Universities and other providers will be required under this legislation to comply with their student support policies, and civil penalties will apply for compliance breaches. That is an example of how seriously we take this issue. There have to be consequences for those that show such disregard for keeping students in the game. They need to have a policy to support students and they need to stick with it.

The existing demand driven measure was implemented in 2021 in response to the National Regional, Rural and Remote Tertiary Education Strategy, which was also known as the Napthine review. The proposal aims to increase First Nations enrolment numbers by expanding the eligibility of demand driven funding to include metropolitan First Nations students studying bachelor and bachelor honours courses—as I mentioned earlier, except for medicine—at Table A universities. This measure directly supports efforts towards achieving Closing the Gap outcome 6, which is to increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25 to 34 years who have completed a tertiary qualification—that is, certificate III and above—to 70 per cent by 2031. We believe we can do that. This means there will be no cap on the number of First Nations students that can enrol in Commonwealth supported places, and Table A providers will receive Commonwealth funding for all First Nations students under part 2 of the HESA. The Department of Education estimates this may double the number of First Nations students at unis within a decade, and the measure has strong support across the university sector. The measure builds on the government's election commitment to deliver up to 20,000 Commonwealth supported places and fee-free TAFE places.

In the time remaining, I want to give a personal reflection on the power of education to improve lives and improve livelihoods. In the Northern Territory, around 30 per cent of people identify as First Nations Australians. Aboriginal Australians who have a multigenerational—going back up to 2,000 generations. I'm the first in my line, on both my mum's and my dad's side, to go to university, and it has given me incredible opportunities. You could argue that if I hadn't been to university I wouldn't be here. What we want to do is provide, for First Nations Australians, the opportunities that so many other Australians have had. This bill goes towards that. That's why I recommend to all honourable members to support this and the referendum.

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