Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Education changes lives. Like many in this place I am the first person in my family to have gone to university. Unlike some I was not lucky enough to have a free university education—I missed out by a matter of a year or so, I think—but I continue to be grateful that here in Australia we have subsidised universities and that we have what used to be the Higher Education Contribution Scheme and is now called the HELP system. I think if I'd had to pay full fees for university, as they do in some countries overseas, I would not have been able to go to university and I certainly wouldn't have been able to go on and do higher degrees, or like those in overseas countries I would still be crippled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. I was lucky enough to have completed my tertiary education here in Australia and to have a good career and I'm lucky enough to have paid off my HECS debt over time. I often say I should get frequent flyer points at South Australian universities, but I digress!

In my electorate of Boothby I have the main campus of Flinders University and a smaller campus of Adelaide university called the Waite institute, and I have a particularly high number of tertiary students living in the electorate. I hear from them and from their families about the higher HELP debts that they are accruing, the cost of undertaking long, compulsory placements on a full-time basis, how students are having to give up paying jobs to undertake these placements in order to complete their degrees, and how so many of them simply don't complete the degrees because they can't afford to not have paid work. I want something better for those that come after me—for my children's generation and the generations that follow.

As a country we want—we need—the next generation to be able to take their place in the workplaces we need: the hospitals, the schools, the advanced manufacturing businesses, human services. We need them to bring their skills and ideas to agriculture, mining and construction, and we want for them to be able to follow the careers that interest them in well-paid, secure jobs. For many of those jobs, tertiary education is the entry point, so we want tertiary education to be an attractive and an affordable option for anyone who so chooses to undertake it, no matter what their background.

The Albanese Labor government is putting in place significant reforms in response to the Australian Universities Accord to provide cost-of-living relief and to make higher education better and fairer for students, including those from low-SES or disadvantaged backgrounds and those from the outer suburbs and regional Australia. The Universities Accord (Student Support and Other Measures) Bill 2024 enacts many of the important changes announced in the 2024-25 budget.

We're making the HECS-HELP system fairer for all Australians and wiping around $3 billion in student debt from three million Australians. Currently the HELP indexation is based on CPI, and last year saw a spike of 7.1 per cent. This meant that the indexing of HECS-HELP debt was higher than wage growth. We don't want to see students and former students going backwards, so we are changing the way the indexation is calculated so that it will be capped at the lower of the consumer price index or wage price index. Not only that, we're backdating this to 1 June 2023, so, for those with a current HECS or HELP debt who saw indexation jump over the past year, this will cut some of that existing indexation. For those who paid off their debt last year, including that higher indexation, the credit will be applied to them as well. For someone with an average HECS debt of around 26½ thousand dollars, this means that their HECS debt will be cut by about $1,200. These changes cover HELP, VET student loans, the Australian apprenticeship support loans and other student loan accounts that existed on 1 June last year. This will benefit around 24,000 people in my electorate of Boothby.

The other area of this bill that is generating the most excitement in my electorate is that, for the first time ever, the Commonwealth will introduce a prac payment to support teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students to do their mandatory placements. I can't tell you how positive the feedback on this has been. At a street corner meeting last weekend, a current social work student told me she had had to give up her paid work to undertake her prac placement. She was lucky: her husband was working and supported her through this, and her mother was available to look after their two-year-old child. However, I'm sure it wasn't easy for them as a family. Even though she herself would not benefit from paid prac placements, she was so pleased that her fellow students, those following along after her, would not have to do what she had done and give up paid work, because many of them were not in the same situation with family available or able to support them. A lot of students have said that when they do the prac component of their degree, they've got difficult financial decisions to make. Some have to give up their part-time job; others have to move away from home. For a lot of people that can mean delaying finishing their degree or not finishing their degree at all.

We need more teachers, more nurses, more midwives and more social workers. These are some of the important jobs in this country. These are people who are going to teach our kids, who are going to look after us when we're sick or old, who will help women during pregnancy and childbirth and who will support women in domestic violence refuges. Supervised practical placements are an important part of these qualifications to ensure that, when graduates enter the workforce, they are experienced in practice as well as in theory. These jobs have a direct impact on the health, welfare and education outcomes of the people they work on and with. We want these to be attractive courses to study and attractive career options. Reducing these financial barriers of unpaid prac placements will help, and that's why this is important. It's a bit of practical support for people while they do their practical training.

We've talked about changes to HECS-HELP calculation and reduction of HECS-HELP debt, and we've talked about the payments for compulsory prac placements for social work students, teaching students, nursing students and midwifery students. But this bill also uncaps fee-free, uni-ready courses right across the country so more people get the skills they need to start a degree. What is a uni-ready course? Many people starting university aren't coming straight from school. They may have left school many years previously; they may not have finished year 12. They may lack confidence about studying. Schooling may not have been a great, successful experience for them. These courses are effectively a bridge between school and university to help people get the skills they need and succeed when they get there.

As a former university lecturer I can tell you that mature-age students are often the most committed and motivated. They know why they're there, they know the value of tertiary education and they've often given up a lot to get back into university. But even students who haven't been out of school for a long time may lack confidence in their ability to study and, particularly, study at a university level where there's an expectation that students will be more self-directed. Uni-ready courses, often called bridging courses, are a great way for potential students to learn about how to study at university and what the expectations are, to practice their skills in a safe environment and to gain the confidence to enrol in a university course. These changes are expected to increase the number of people doing free uni-ready courses by about 40 per cent by the end of the decade and double the number in the decade after that. The flow-on will be more students at university and more well-prepared students at university.

This bill also mandates that higher education providers allocate at least 40 per cent of student services and amenities fees to student led organisations. This will strengthen student led organisations and their ability to act for the best interests of students. The bill also includes a definition of 'student led organisations' and allows for transition arrangements to support higher education providers and the student led organisations to put in place appropriate arrangements. Of course, relevant to my home state of South Australia, this bill also adds Adelaide University to the list of table A providers, reflecting the merger of the University of South Australia and the University of Adelaide, which is currently being undertaken.

I'm going to end where I began: education changes lives. It changes careers. It changes families. It changes communities. This groundbreaking bill is only one part of the Universities Accord, but it is a really important part because this bill is about making education more affordable for all. The reduction in financial barriers for students will particularly encourage people from lower SES communities and regional areas, women, mature-age students and those who disproportionately experience barriers to tertiary education to consider a tertiary course and a tertiary qualified career. I commend the bill to the House.

See this speech in context