Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

'Education is the silver bullet.' It's a great line from The West Wing, and they are very true words. If we can provide a child with an education, their chances of success in life, of higher living standards and, ultimately, of fulfilling their dreams and ambitions are much greater if they've had a basic high school education but even better if they undertake some form of tertiary education.

The government, when we were elected, set about trying to review our tertiary education system to find out who was missing out on the opportunity of an education and what we could do to make the education system more inclusive for all Australians. The Australian Universities Accord Panel took their time to review Australia's university and further education sector, and their findings were quite interesting. They found that students from low socioeconomic backgrounds tended to not be able to afford an education and that a person's parents' wealth, position and living standards tended to dictate whether or not someone got access to, in particular, a university education in Australia. Students from Indigenous backgrounds were missing out on opportunities, as were those with multicultural backgrounds, to a greater degree than the rest of the population. That is not fair or equitable and, importantly, it's bad for our economy. We know that someone who receives a post-school education will be more productive, learn more during their working years and contribute more to national GDP. There are individual, societal and economic benefits from education. That's why this bill is so important.

This bill is a blueprint to build a better and fairer higher education system in Australia. The report contains recommendations and targets to reform higher education and to set it up for the next decade and beyond. It focuses on measures with an immediate impact on support for students in higher education. This includes HELP indexation that will wipe out $3 billion worth of HELP debts for more than three million Australians. It does this by capping the indexation rate below the consumer price and wage price indices. We're going one step further and backdating this change to 1 June 2023. The indexation change will apply across all HELP loans, VET student loans, Australian Apprenticeship Support Loans and other student loan accounts. It means outstanding loans will never grow faster than average wages. It's an important change that provides significant cost-of-living relief for students. Last year, when there was a big spike in inflation, there was a big spike in HECS and HELP indexation. A lot of Australian students and Australians with a student debt were hit quite hard by that. We heard their pleas for help, and that's why the government announced in our budget that we would wipe more than $3 billion of student debt for those three million Australians. This bill helps do that job.

The bill also introduces a Commonwealth prac payment, which will give eligible students who've signed up to do some of the most important jobs in the country a bit of extra help to get the qualifications that they need. That includes support for around 68,000 teaching, nursing and social work students a year to complete their university placements. All those courses require a mandatory practical placement. To date, those students would generally have had to undertake that training nine to five, Monday to Friday, and lose any income they were receiving from their work, putting them in a difficult financial position. It's the first time ever that a Commonwealth government will provide financial support for those students while they're doing that practical placement. It's clear that approach will help students by providing cost-of-living support. We know that, for a lot of students doing their prac, it can be hard to pay the bills and find time for a part-time job. And these are pretty important occupations. We know we have a massive shortage of nurses in Australia and a huge shortage of teachers. Many of the schools in my electorate are telling me that they can't get teachers at all levels. We want to make sure that we're providing as much support as possible to encourage people to study in those vocations and eventually go on to be the next generation of nurses, teachers and social workers that will be vitally important to our country.

The bill also helps massively expand fee-free uni-ready courses, which act as a bridge between school and uni, to help more Australians access university education and succeed when they get there. This goes to the point I was making earlier about people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds or that didn't get the results they wanted from their HSC missing out on that opportunity for a university education because they didn't have the requisite marks or qualifications. These bridging courses provide that pathway into university and tertiary education for a cohort who have otherwise been locked out. It expands the opportunity for education. It provides the opportunity for that silver bullet that education provides. It's an important change that has the potential to double the number of students doing these fee-free courses over the course of the next 15 years.

The Albanese government is now delivering on our commitment to build a better and fairer education system. It's important to note that these changes are part of a broader reform that includes strengthening integrity and sustainability in the international education sector, including those placements and courses provided by Australian universities.

We've already announced that there'll be caps on the number of international students that can be enrolled by education providers, and that is a measure that's going to ensure the integrity and the quality of educational outcomes for international students. The measure is also aimed at encouraging more international students to study in regional areas. Too many of them are attracted to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, to the sandstone universities. But the education system in Australia is diverse and it has just as good courses and quality outcomes in regional Australia as it does in the cities. We want to encourage, through that new approach to international students, more of those visiting international students to study in rural and regional areas, to work in those areas and, hopefully, eventually, once they graduate, to be employed in those local communities and to settle in those local communities and be on a pathway to permanency here in Australia. That's the subject of separate legislation. But it's all about improving the integrity and the quality of outcomes in education.

So those changes, along with the changes in this bill, reflect the fact that, while we have a good education system, it can be a lot better. We know that our universities aren't just some of the most powerful engines in our economy, or places where the world is changed; they are places where lives are changed, and that's that we want to make possible for more Australians.

Our changes to HECS help deliver relief for students, whilst continuing to protect the integrity and the value of the HECS system, by which we've massively expanded tertiary access for more Australians. This bill represents that significant step in implementing the recommendations of the Universities Accord and ensuring that we get good quality educational outcomes for more Australians and greater equity and access to a university education for more Australians.

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