Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the government's Universities Accord (Student Support and Other Measures) Bill 2024 that is before the House this evening. The Albanese Labor government is committed to making life easier for all Australians, and that's why I am so pleased to support this bill being put forward this evening by the Minister for Education. It implements key measures, recommended in the final report from the Australian Universities Accord, led by Professor Mary O'Kane and supported by a host of other very esteemed Australians.

The accord panel was established by this government, and we invested $2.7 million over two years to develop the 12-month review of Australia's higher education system. Its objective was to devise recommendations and performance targets to improve the quality, accessibility, affordability and sustainability of higher education to achieve long-term security and prosperity of the sector and the nation. These are important ambitions for any national government. The accord's final report has been informed by 787 public submissions and 150 meetings with stakeholders. The final report contained a number of recommendations, including reforming HECS-HELP repayment arrangements, funding nursing, care and teaching professions to undertake mandatory placements, and expanding the number of fee-free preparatory courses at university. This is exactly what this bill is doing tonight. I appreciate members opposite might be giving further consideration, but there are a lot of people who have been part of this process, and this bill has now been informed by a thorough process of consultation and an expert review of our higher education system.

We all note that the big hike in the HECS-HELP debt last year hit a lot of Australians hard, particularly young people. I want to say to those young people: we have heard your feedback and we have taken it on board. The first big measure undertaken in this bill will see amendments to the HELP and VET student loans, the Australian apprenticeship support loans, and other student support loan accounts. We are amending the higher education loan program methodology to be based on the consumer price index or the wage price index, whichever is the lower, preventing growth in debt from outpacing wages into the future. In other words, it more than halve the unfair CPI indexation rate of 7.1 per cent from last year and replace it with the lower WPI rate of 3.2 per cent. This will see somebody with an average debt of $26,500 having around $1,200 wiped off their outstanding loan this year. Someone with a $45,000 debt will benefit by around $2,000, and someone with a $60,000 debt will have a benefit of $2,700. Around $3 billion is being wiped off the accounts of more than three million Australian students, and those who have finished their degrees with the debt in place. This will significantly ease pressure on workers, apprentices, trainees and students. Let's not forget, this is not just about university students. Those young apprentices, those people doing traineeships are all looking for this relief as well. Around 25,398 people in my electorate of Newcastle have a HELP debt and this bill will ensure relief is delivered to them while continuing to protect the integrity and the value of the HELP system, which has massively expanded higher education access for millions of Australians.

The Albanese Labor government is also investing in students who have signed up to do some of the most important jobs in this country. While we recognise the importance of placements as part of qualifications in a whole range of professions, up until now students have been forced to undertake unpaid mandatory placements as part of their studies. But for the first time ever, the government will introduce a Commonwealth prac payment to support teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students to do their placements.

The Albanese government understands the financial burden placements have on students and appreciates the challenges many face when having to juggle the cost of living while studying and completing their placements. With this bill, many students who have turned down work to do their prac placements will now have help in paying their bills. While the government also recognises other qualifications require mandatory placements, the University Accord recommended that the government focus now on the nursing, care and teaching professions. This is an important place to start due to the significant workforce shortages that need to be addressed in these areas. Almost every Australian will interact with a nurse, midwife, teacher and social worker sometime throughout their life. This measure will help up to 5,200 students who are enrolled in teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work at the University of Newcastle, and I look forward to ensuring that relief is directed to those students undertaking that very important work.

Since entering parliament, I have been a very staunch supporter of equity to access into higher education. That is why I am so pleased that this bill will also massively expand fee-free uni-ready courses, which act as a bridge between school and uni and help more Australians to succeed when they get there. The University of Newcastle knows a thing or two about achieving equity of education. We have long demanded both excellence and equity as part of the core values of the University of Newcastle. More than half a century ago now the university launched its enabling programs, which I argue are indeed the best of this country has ever seen. The University of Newcastle has the oldest and the largest network of enabling programs in Australia.

Open Foundation, a free open access enabling program at the University of Newcastle, has engaged more than 70,000 people. There are 70,000 people in my community, in my region, across this nation who have a quality university education now who would not have even got their foot in the door had it not been for the enabling programs provided at the University of Newcastle. That is what I mean about achieving equity in access to higher education. That is one in five students at the University of Newcastle. I acknowledge the member for Dobell, the assistant minister who spoke before me. She is from the Central Coast, where the University of Newcastle also has a campus. One in four students there came through an enabling program to be at university. So these are very, very powerful programs that open incredible doors for people who would have otherwise been excluded from a higher education.

The critical part of these programs is that they are free access. I have stood in this parliament over the 11 years that I have been the member of Newcastle and have had to save these enabling programs on three separate occasions, so I speak with some authority when I say that if you were to provide a fee-for-entry point into these services, you would not reach the equity outcomes that you would desire or seek to see.

We have surveyed students in recent years to see whether or not they would have entered into an enabling program had there been a fee in place, and almost universally they would have said no. More than 60 per cent of people doing these enabling programs are women, and they all said that they didn't have that level of confidence to invest that kind of money in themselves. They had other priorities of having to raise a family or look after a whole lot of household bills. I am firmly of the belief that universities are not just for the elite in our communities. I know the value of higher education as a first-in-family kid coming through. I want everyone to have access to that—everyone who wants to have access to it—whether it's a university or a TAFE education. We absolutely have to smash down the barriers that prevent kids who are otherwise marginalised from having access.

There are people like Liam from Newcastle who was in his early 20s, struggling with addiction, when he tried to take his own life. He was saved by paramedics and nurses at the John Hunter Hospital. It was there that Liam decided he not only wanted to live but wanted to repay the debt and become a paramedic himself to help other people and to become a father for his young daughter. Liam enrolled in Open Foundation at the University of Newcastle, and I'm really pleased to tell the House that he is now well on his way to achieving that goal and is doing brilliantly. There are people like Zee, also in from Newcastle, who, in her late 40s, was on the carers pension looking after her husband, who had had a stroke. Zee completed Open Foundation and went on to study biosciences and now lectures in health sciences, coordinates courses in the Open Foundation program herself and is now looking to do a PhD next year.

These are just two of the extraordinary stories I could relay to this House. But we know that of students doing these programs like Liam and Zee, 26 per cent came from low SES backgrounds, 66 per cent were women, 23 per cent of students had a disability, six per cent were First Nations students and 47 per cent were, just like me, the first in their family to enrol in a tertiary institution. These are the changes that are expected to increase the number of people doing these fee-free uni-ready courses. We expect these changes to provide a boost of about 40 per cent to the number of people getting into universities by the end of the decade. I cannot sing the praises of enabling programs highly enough.

There are many other measures this government seeks to undertake in addition to the important work of this bill. We're providing an additional 20,000 Commonwealth supported places so we can train more Australians at university. We know that this is a life-changing moment. We're committed to establishing up to 14 new suburban university study hubs. That's on top of the establishment of the 20 regional university study hubs. We're also getting on with establishing a national student ombudsman. We'll have a lot more to say about that very shortly, but that is an important body of work—an independent body that's part of an action plan to address gender based violence in higher education, somewhere where independent investigations can take place and disputes can be resolved in an adequate manner. These are aspects that higher education students have been calling for for a long time. I'll be very pleased to see that bill before this House very soon.

There is an urgent need to address sexual assault in university campuses. It's one of the five priority actions that came from the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report. The action plan and the ombudsman have been informed by consultation with staff, with students—most importantly—with victims-survivors advocates, with the higher education sector and with subject matter experts. So there is a lot of work to do in this sector.

We are an ambitious government. We seek to see more and more Australians have a higher education. As I said—and I reiterate—that can be through TAFE and through university, but we need Australians to be ensured of access to a quality education. We are very much on the side of Australian students and education providers, and that's why I'm supporting this important legislation before the House. There is a lot at stake with these important reforms. These are not policy decisions that we take willy-nilly. We are informed by experts in the field and by all of the thorough consultation processes that have taken place. We have a good education system, but it can be better.

This is an important first step in achieving that, and that's why I'm supporting this bill. I urge those opposite to do so without delay.

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