James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Waste Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to make a few comments on this bill, the Universities Accord (Student Support and Other Measures) Bill 2024. Obviously, the coalition have made it clear that we want to see the Senate committee process progress. I think it's in early October that they're due to finalise their deliberations over this bill. On the face of it, it does some good things, but, equally, we want to properly engage with the sector and stakeholders and understand whether there are any unforeseen aspects to this bill, and we reserve our position on it until that process concludes.

We have got goodwill towards certain measures in this bill. Clearly the measure that provides relief under the HECS-HELP scheme is one that, on the face of it, has merit, because people with student debt are no different to any other Australians at the moment who are suffering under this significant cost-of-living crisis, and, when you've got student debt, if you've also got a mortgage—and mortgage rates have been going up dramatically in the last few years—then of course it's putting a lot of pressure on household budgets. So, assuming anything unforeseen isn't raised through the committee process, that seems to have merit.

But there is a regrettable aspect to this, because—if you unpack why there's a benefit to choosing the lower of inflation versus the wage price index, when you're elevating the balance of debt—it's only going to help people because of the fact that wages have been going backwards. For periods when wage growth is running behind inflation and, therefore, real wages are going down, this policy change provides a benefit. That's great for the balances of student debt but it underscores that those same people and many millions of others, through the period that this will provide a benefit, have been enduring a dramatic reduction in their real wages. This is something very significant that is happening in our economy.

We know that people are making very difficult decisions around the kitchen table, trying to make the household budget balance. They're having to make sacrifices and find ways to trim their normal habits. There are pretty reasonable things—family holidays to a caravan park over a long weekend and other things that are quite reasonable for Australians to enjoy—that have to be sacrificed because mortgages are going up, rents are going up and utility prices are going up. In the case of people with student debt, their payments on the debt are going up. That element of the bill will, hopefully, see some relief. But I hope that this change isn't one that will provide a benefit very often into the future, because I want the wage price index to be running higher than the inflation rate all the time. That means that people's real wages are going up. This change that we make is only going to benefit people because their real wages are going backwards. We know the retrospectivity of this means that it will absolutely provide a benefit to people through its passage, because we know what the last two inflaters of student debt were. In both cases, the wage price index was lower. But, as I say, that underscores the fact that it's lower than inflation and, therefore, people's real rages are going down.

The other element of the bill people might not be surprised to hear me reflect on with some suspicion is this mandate for the student services fee to go to student led organisations. Like a lot of people in my party room, I started out in student politics, and one of our great crusades on campus was always voluntary student unionism and student choice. Indeed, it was the Howard government who pursued voluntary student unionism when I was the Young Liberal president in the state of South Australia. I look very regretfully upon the behaviour of some of the student organisations on campus right now. Some of the most nasty, vile, disgusting things that I've ever seen in my lifetime are happening on Australian university campuses. Student groups are forming to glorify terrorism, to promote disgraceful antisemitic attitudes and to engage in conduct that is obstructing the very reason that people go to our great higher education institutions, which is to avail themselves—you would expect in an unfettered way—of the opportunity to expand their minds, to educate themselves and to leave with a valuable education that can equip them for the future, not only in their career but in their whole life well beyond what they do as a vocation.

We see in this bill an interesting mandate of a minimum discharge of the student services fee to student led organisations. I note that some of the universities, to my understanding, have raised concerns about this. Universities themselves provide a lot of services directly financed through the student services fee, and what we're going to see through this legislation is a re-empowering and re-emboldening of the student organisations that are behaving—and, for their standards, this is saying something—in the most vile and disgraceful way on some campuses as we speak right now. Is this the right time to be sending a message to those groups engaging in that deplorable conduct that they're deserving of some mandated minimum allocation of the student services fee? As someone from a party that believes in the freedom of association—the right to join or not any organisation, whether that be a union or any other group in our society—I think what this effectively says is, 'Well, the union for students is getting a guaranteed, legislated stream of funding regardless of whether or not the students of that campus are happy to see them get their money'—it comes from students—'and have it spent that way,' when I would certainly predict and suspect that the way in which the universities themselves spend that funding will be of a much greater benefit to the student body than what these activists student groups do with it. We watch that with a great deal of interest, and I will be very surprised if the Senate committee process doesn't bring out some interesting evidence on that. That'll be something for our party room to consider on that element of the bill. The others are very open minded to the principles and look forward to exploring the detail through the committee process. With those comments, I say we are not standing in the way of the bill, necessarily, but are reserving our position for the outcome of the Senate inquiry process. I confine my comments to those.

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