Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The introduction and timing of this legislation really reeks of the arrogance that the parliament has come to expect from this government. This bill was introduced only last Wednesday. Members have had just one week to consider its nine separate schedules of amendments to the Higher Education Support Act, the Higher Education Funding Act and the Australian Research Council Act. The time frame has been so short that the Parliamentary Library staff, who have been working extremely hard in the past week dealing with this legislation as well as the two ESOS bills, have not have the chance to prepare a Bills Digest for members.

Rushing this legislation into the chamber and out again means, of course, that members have been rushed in their consideration of its contents and its implications. You could say that we expect nothing more from this government. We have seen it so many times. They seem to treat the parliament with the most extraordinary contempt. That being said, we have certainly considered the bill and the many and varied measures contained within it. We will be supporting this legislation; however, in doing so, we reiterate our criticism of this government’s approach to higher education—of course, characterised by budget cuts, fee increases and a continuing lack of policy direction. I formally move:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House condemns the Government for:

(1)

jeopardising Australia’s future prosperity by reducing public investment in tertiary education, as the rest of the world increases their investment;

(2)

failing to invest in education, training, distribution and retention measures to ensure that all of Australia has enough doctors, nurses and other health care professionals to meet current and future health care needs;

(3)

massively increasing the cost of HECS, forcing students to pay up to $30,000 more for their degree;

(4)

creating an American style higher education system, where students pay more and more, with some full fee degrees costing more than $200,000, and nearly 100 full fee degrees costing more than $100,000;

(5)

massively increasing the debt burden on students with total HELP debt now over $13 billion and projected to rise to $18.8 billion in 2009;

(6)

failing to address serious concerns about standards and quality in the higher education system, putting at risk Australia’s high educational reputation and fourth largest export industry; and

(7)

an inadequate and incoherent policy response to the needs of the university system to diversify, innovate and meet Australia’s higher education needs”.

Today we have seen the release of yet another report condemning the Howard government’s performance on higher education. The OECD’s Education at a glance 2006 is a 454-page in-depth analysis of education systems across the developed world. It certainly shows that this Prime Minister and this government deserve an F for education and training. While the rest of the OECD countries have increased their public investment in tertiary education by an average of 48 per cent—so the rest of the developed world is significantly increasing public investment in its tertiary education—at the same time Australia is the only country in the developed world to see a decline, of seven per cent. That is an increase of 48 per cent for the rest of the developed world and a decline in public investment in tertiary education by the Howard government of seven per cent.

What that means is that Australia is going backwards while everyone else is going ahead. Worse still, the report shows that the Howard government’s HECS hikes mean Australian university students are now paying the second highest fees in the world. The report comments on trends in higher education around the globe and says: ‘Increasing private spending on tertiary education tends to complement, rather than replace, public investment. The main exception to this is Australia.’ Under this government Australian students are footing the bill for massive funding cuts, and we are one of the worst countries in the world.

Before expanding on the points highlighted in the second reading amendment, I briefly want to give the opposition’s perspective on the multiple and disconnected series of amendments in this omnibus bill. Schedule 1 funds government commitments arising from the Council of Australian Governments’ Health Workforce and Mental Health packages, including new medical, general nursing, mental health nursing and clinical psychology places and increased funding for nurses’ clinical training. Labor welcomes the additional places to deal with health workforce shortages, but the government of course has neglected this area for far too long. The government has failed to invest in education, training, distribution and retention measures to make sure that all of Australia has enough doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals to meet current and future healthcare needs.

The bill also increases funding in the Capital Development Pool program for universities from 2007 and funding to the Commercialisation Training Scheme for new postgraduate research places in science and innovation. There is also funding for the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies and the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Labor certainly supports these new measures.

Included in the funding this bill proposes is the application of indexation to university grants across the forward estimates years. This is a very serious matter indeed because our universities continue to suffer from inadequate indexation. The rate of indexation being applied to university operating grants this year means that they will increase by just two per cent. By comparison, average weekly earnings rose by an average of 4½ per cent annually between 1998 and 2004. As salary costs are the largest component of university operating expenses, ranging between 45 per cent and 70 per cent, this gap between indexation and wage costs continues to rise. Since 1995, the gap between rising average salary costs and the rate of indexation provided by the Commonwealth has accumulated to more than $500 million. So adequate indexation is essential to sustain and strengthen the quality of university education in this country. Labor does support the indexation in schedule 9 of the funding cap for research spending in the Australian Research Council Act 2001.

The significant measure in schedule 2 of the bill is to increase the FEE-HELP limit to $80,000 for most students and to $100,000 for medical, dental and veterinary science students. This was announced in the budget and is the second proposed FEE-HELP increase this year. These changes to FEE-HELP are significant, increasing the total debt available to students. There are now almost 100 full-fee degrees in Australia costing more than $100,000, so it is clear that these increases in FEE-HELP are not sufficient to meet the real cost of these degrees. We now know that under this government you can pay as much for a university degree as you do for your home. The average new mortgage today is about $222,000 and, according to the Good Universities Guide 2007, a full fee paying place in medicine-arts will set students back a staggering $237,000 at the University of New South Wales and $219,100 at the University of Melbourne. Medicine at Bond University costs $233,100 while medicine-law at Monash University would rack up a debt of $214,600. These are the fees being imposed on students by the Howard government and are nothing more than a disgrace.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They are full-fee degrees.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Paterson says they are full-fee degrees. They certainly are full-fee degrees—full-fee degrees introduced by the Howard government, of which the member for Paterson is obviously a very proud member. The member for Paterson obviously agrees that paying $200,000 for a university degree is just fine. I am sure that not very many people in his electorate think so.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, on a point of order: I take umbrage that the member has totally misrepresented what I just said.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order. If the member for Paterson wants to use the standing orders he should clarify the position later when the member for Jagajaga has finished her speech.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under the Howard government, Australians are paying more and more for a degree and more and more in mortgage repayments. These massive increases in university fees are forcing up the total debts faced by students and graduates by $2 billion a year, taking Australia further down the track of an American style university system. The new Senate estimates figures from the Department of Education, Science and Training show that university graduates and students will owe $18.8 billion by 2008-09.

The Minister for Education, Science and Training tried to spin herself out of trouble by saying that the massive rise in debt was due to rising student numbers. This performance of hers was repeated by the Prime Minister in question time today. But as the Sydney Morning Herald was quick to point out this morning:

However, figures from her own department—

that is, the minister’s department—

showed that domestic student numbers rose by just 0.2 per cent from 2004 to 2005 while the accumulated HECS debt rose by nearly $2 billion.

The minister’s attempt at fancy footwork and spin—the sort of spin we have come to expect from the Howard government—to hide these skyrocketing debts certainly fell very flat for one very simple reason: the facts do not lie.

Labor also welcomes the clause in the bill to clarify that a person who has had FEE-HELP recredited does not have their future entitlement to FEE-HELP reduced by that amount of recredited FEE-HELP. However, we will be seeking further details regarding the application of this change in the upcoming Senate inquiry into this bill.

Schedule 3 allows the universities to charge different students in the same unit different amounts of HECS and tuition fees. This does change the existing rule that the same types of students enrolled in the same course of study pay the same fees. Under the proposed changes there will now be wide discretion for the provider to set varying fee levels based on any factor they deem appropriate with only limited scope by the government to determine matters that are not appropriate. It is certainly the case that more detail on these prohibited factors needs to be made clear to both the parliament and the public. There may be cases where differential fee structures are used to assist students from disadvantaged backgrounds through targeted fee relief based on location or mode of delivery. However, Labor would not support fee deregulation resulting in higher general fee levels and we will certainly be monitoring this during the implementation of these new provisions.

Labor does support the minor technical amendments in schedules 4, 5 and 7 and the creation of the new concept of winter schools in schedule 6. These winter schools are analogous to summer schools and allow students to study units intensively where academically appropriate and complete their degree programs more quickly. Labor supports universities undertaking new and innovative activities to provide a wide range of educational options for our students. Unlike the government, this forms part of an overall and cohesive policy agenda for Labor. Our higher education white paper, which I will mention a little more about later, contains a new funding model for universities, and one element of that is to provide specific funding for what we call ‘innovative activities’. The white paper targets accelerated degree options for students as one sort of innovative activity that we will pursue in government.

The changes to the procedures for accreditation and approval of higher education in external territories in schedule 8 is another matter that needs more information and more detailed consideration, which we will pursue in the Senate inquiry. The bill proposes to give the minister greater powers to determine matters in accordance with new ministerial guidelines for approval of higher education in the external territories. Labor is concerned to make sure that any approval and accreditation is consistent with the national protocols for approval of higher education providers developed jointly with the states and territories and endorsed by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs. We believe that the new guidelines proposed by this bill should also be endorsed by MCEETYA.

This bill contains a series of unconnected and piecemeal amendments to higher education legislation in Australia. We do understand that there is a need for governments to make amendments like this from time to time but it does seem to be the case that it is all this government is doing in higher education. At a time when our university system needs serious attention all we are getting from the government is inadequate and, I would have to say, incoherent policy responses to the needs of our university system to diversify, innovate and meet Australia’s higher education needs. The government continues to fail to address serious concerns about standards and quality in our higher education system, putting at risk Australia’s high educational reputation and our fourth largest export industry.

While the government may have no future direction, Labor does. We have been doing some very serious policy work, setting directions for where our universities should be heading to make sure that they are ready for the challenges of tomorrow. To put it very simply indeed: our universities are much too important to ignore. In July this year I launched Labor’s higher education white paper entitled Australia’s universities: building our future in the world. That white paper sets out our new policy framework for higher education, research and innovation that is necessary to address Australia’s future needs. This nation-building reform will result in real choice and higher quality education and training for Australians and international students coming to this country. Lifting our universities up is central to a Beazley Labor government’s economic agenda to build a prosperous future for all Australians. Our white paper details how our education system must change.

There is no question that our universities are already different. We on this side of the House understand that simple reality, and it is time that the government recognised that this difference exists through more than mere platitudes. When the minister for education was new to her portfolio she was quick to claim the ownership of the diversity mantra. Interestingly, Minister Nelson did the same when he first took on the education job back in 2001. But saying it does not make it so. In fact when Dr Nelson was the minister for education he imposed a red-tape nightmare and funding straitjacket on our universities. So much for diversity! If this government really wants diversity in our higher education system it has to take action to make it happen. You do not go about dealing with these problems by just talking about them.

The first thing that needs to be done is to release our universities from the straitjacket imposed by Dr Nelson’s changes. Particularly as a result of the government’s 2003 changes, universities have been given less discretion to spend the diminished proportion of government funding they receive. In the 2003 Higher Education Support Act, the Howard government designed a straitjacket for universities. Every university is paid the same amount for each student, irrespective of differences in their missions and purpose, student mix and cost structures. The government’s insistence on funding every university at the same rate per student is the basic constraint on diversity in the system. So it is government’s own legislation that is creating the constraint. Universities are penalised if they enrol above or below their undergraduate enrolment quotas. They have no flexibility of operation. Without approval from Canberra, universities cannot move places from one campus to another, from one semester to another or across the funding clusters. They cannot change their range of courses. They cannot even change how they intend to use a piece of research equipment purchased through government grants without the written approval of the education minister. Talk about red tape!

True diversity can only be achieved through fundamental change, freeing our universities from this red tape and bureaucratic control. In Labor’s white paper we have proposed the changes necessary to allow our university system to innovate, to grow and to prosper. Labor will end government interference in the internal management of universities and reduce compliance and reporting burdens. Labor’s stronger focus on the quality of educational outcomes will loosen the Howard government’s excessive controls on inputs and processes.

Labor will fund public universities through a compact, negotiated to value universities’ individual missions and their different roles and circumstances. There will be a compact with four components of funding that universities will be funded for: education, research, community engagement and innovative activities. The education component is for undergraduate and postgraduate coursework programs. Teaching cost relativities will be updated, reflecting clinical, laboratory/field and classroom teaching. Funds will include regional loadings and loadings for students with special needs. Within its funding envelope a university may shift places from low- to high-cost fields and from undergraduate to postgraduate level, or vice versa. The Commonwealth will of course safeguard courses of national priority.

The research and research education component will continue to operate as a dual funding system through national competitive grants and institutional block funds. Funding of places for research students will be provided only in those areas where the quality of research performed within the university meets high standards. Labor will support community outreach by universities, as we recognise that our universities are more than providers of education; they are very important members of their local communities, and that is particularly so in regional Australia.

As mentioned earlier, universities that undertake innovative activities will also be supported. This component is to fund structured activities additional to normal operations, to drive innovation and diversity within the university system. These would include knowledge transfer services to business and other groups, collaboration with other universities and institutions, accelerated study programs, and education or research aligned with the Northern Hemisphere academic year.

Each university will be funded for the first component but need not be funded for all four. Universities will determine their own priorities and shape their activities to suit their different missions. The excluded option is that of the ‘teaching only’ university. Labor believe that all academic staff must have the opportunity to conduct research, so our approach will promote improved responsiveness of universities to student demand and community needs. It will enable universities to focus on what they do best. We will restore rolling triennial funding to make sure that universities have certainty in their planning.

Our mission based compacts will facilitate diversification of the higher education system, wider student choice and the continuation of university functions of wider community benefit that would otherwise be lost in a purely market driven system. Labor will provide additional public money to our universities through this new funding model. We will make sure that there is adequate indexation of university grants. As mentioned earlier, the current indexation arrangements are costing our universities and must be changed. It is only Labor who are prepared to make the necessary changes and link these additional funds to quality improvements.

The consequence of 10 long years of Howard government cuts to our universities is that the quality of Australian higher education is now under pressure, with risks to the reputation of Australian degrees. There are no systems in place in Australia for assuring the standards of degree quality. Funding cuts have pressured universities to increase student numbers, chase revenue wherever they can find it, raise student-to-staff ratios and class sizes, cut back tutorials and cut corners on student assessment. Is it any wonder that quality is under pressure?

On the Labor side of politics we want to see higher education standards raised to give our students the best opportunity to develop their abilities and build a competitive economy. Students need to know that they will get a high-quality education. Employers also want the same information and reassurance. It is not to the advantage of anyone—students, parents or employers—and certainly not to the advantage of any higher education institution to be part of a system that does not assure at least minimum standards of quality of its educational qualifications. That is why Labor will establish a tough new standards watchdog, the Australian Higher Education Quality Agency, and give it real teeth to enhance degree standards and to protect quality teaching and research. Our commitment to increase public investment in higher education is predicated on a reciprocal commitment by universities and other providers to demonstrate higher educational quality standards.

As I mentioned earlier, student debt in Australia is skyrocketing for one reason and one reason alone. The average HECS fee paid by Australian students has doubled under the Howard government, discouraging prospective students from taking university places that they have worked so hard for. The Howard government’s HECS hikes mean that medical students are now paying more than $30,000 over and above what they would have paid when Labor left office. Law students are paying more than $20,000 extra; engineering students, more than $16,000 extra. These are massive increases in fees. Students and their parents only have one place to lay the blame, and that is the Howard government.

There is no question that these significant HECS increases have adversely affected student participation and are now denying Australia the human capital investment needed to underpin future productivity growth. In our white paper we make it plain that we intend to relieve the HECS burden on our students, and we have put forward a number of options for public discussion and debate. When we put out our detailed policy we will set out the details of this relief for students.

We have also made it very clear that we will phase out full-fee places for Australian undergraduates at public universities. Under Labor students will get access to higher education according to merit, not their financial means. That means there will not be any more $100,000 or $200,000 degrees at our universities. There is one government that believes in university degrees costing $100,000 or $200,000, and that is the Howard government. Labor will put an end to that. Unlike the government, who seems to be so bereft of fresh ideas and unable to articulate coherent policy, Labor do believe that the only way to promote diversity and innovation is to restore faith, confidence and, most importantly, public investment in our universities. We do have a vision for higher education in Australia. We intend to back it up with substantive, contemporary policies that tackle the problems created by this government.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Early in the life of the Whitlam government a commitment was made that Australians would all have free access to university education. The Fraser government struggled with the ever-increasing cost and discovered that, in fact, the subsidy was not going to the poorer sections of our community; it was just a subsidy to many people who previously had been able to pay for their children’s education anyway. But the Hawke government was eventually obliged to confront the situation. It had a committee, I think it was run by Neville Wran, and they invented HECS. But if you heard the member for Jagajaga today you would think it had all been invented by the Howard government.

It is pretty interesting when you hear Labor members of parliament not recognising that history, nor recognising that the free education was not taken up to a substantial degree by those who could least afford to otherwise pay. Knowing all of that, and knowing that many of their voting constituency would prefer more help through the TAFE system, we hear this standard promise that the Australian taxpayer will find heaps more money or the government finances will revert to deficit so that a group of people, most of whom anticipate through their education to have very highly paid jobs, get it for free and do not even contract loans as a 25 per cent contribution to it.

It is amazing that three of the amendment clauses proposed by the Labor Party to the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2006 Budget Measures) Bill 2006 deal with this matter of ‘jeopardising Australia’s future prosperity by reducing public investment in tertiary education’. That, of course, is completely rejected by the financial impact statement to be found in the explanatory memorandum, and an obligation to include in legislation a financial impact statement was introduced by the Hawke Labor government. It is just a litany of increased expenditure: there will be increases in the overall appropriation of $6.23 billion for the period 1 July 2006 to 31 December 2010; the estimated financial impact of increasing the FEE-HELP scheme will be $78 million—in fact there are three figures there; there is the estimated financial impact of introducing winter schools; and it goes on. In the financial impact statement are clause after clause that tell us very clearly that the Howard government is substantially increasing its financial commitment, which makes a farce of clause 1 of the amendment.

Then the amendment mentions ‘failing to invest in education, training, distribution and retention measures’, and it goes on about doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals. It was as a result of Medicare that the Hawke government—because they got terrified by bulk-billing costs and came to the conclusion that too many graduates from the medical profession were just moving into cities where on a free service they could get as many customers as they wished—cut back the intake of medical undergraduates by 4,000. When one thinks back 10 or 15 years one realises the impact of that decision has only been felt in the last three or four years. They are crying crocodile tears in this place that that is the situation when in fact, as the Minister for Education, Science and Training told us in the second reading speech:

The government will fund 605 new commencing medical places and 1,036 new commencing nursing places, as well as funding a significant increase in the contribution to support clinical training for nursing students ...

It goes on:

This bill also includes $25.5 million in capital funding to support new medical places at James Cook University, the University of New England and the University of Queensland.

In addition, this bill provides funding for 431 new mental health nursing places and 210 new clinical psychology places ...

In their typical fashion, the opposition tell us that the government has failed in these areas, when the first thing we had to do when we came to government was replace the 4,000 places they removed from the system during the Hawke government.

They complain in this amendment about ‘massively increasing the cost of HECS, forcing students to pay up to $30,000 more for a degree’. I have made the point already: students graduating from the higher cost courses in particular almost immediately receive very high incomes—I think the figure cited was three or four times that which might be earned by a working-class person. But I have never heard the opposition suggest that some of those working-class people should be loaned $100,000 to buy into a taxi or a couple of hundred thousand dollars to buy into a delicatessen. They have to go and make their own commercial arrangements if they want to be involved in those sorts of business activities. So why is it unreasonable to ask somebody who gets their business created for them through education—and I certainly welcome the fact that they take that option—to pay for it? Why should it be that the Labor Party stand up and differentiate between them and all those other people, who are more than likely to vote Labor, who want to move into private business or increase their income and typically and frequently work extremely hard thereafter?

If you are going to earn the sort of income that a medical practitioner can earn, is it unreasonable to pay $100,000 for your education over the period involved and be grateful to a government that lends it to you, either through FEE-HELP or through HECS? People might want to go and work in the mines for a few years in the Pilbara or somewhere else and save good money up there, and then come back to a metropolitan area and buy a small business. We do not hear the member for Jagajaga putting a case for those people to get a government loan and only pay it back if they are making a profit—and the income threshold is already close to $30,000 a year before you start repaying HECS.

I am unable to understand the mentality of that. This is an education legislation amendment bill and we heard not one word during the member for Jagajaga’s speech about other areas of tertiary education and how it is funded. Of course, tertiary education is typically a service provided by state governments, all of whom are of the Labor Party persuasion—and we are not allowed to criticise them.

These Labor amendments have no foundation. They are refuted by the financial impact statement to be found in the explanatory memorandum. They are refuted by the minister’s second reading speech, which clearly designates all the new places that will be created and funded under these arrangements.

To its great credit the bill highlights new regional universities opening up schools of medicine where it has been well proven that students are more likely to stay having achieved graduation, be they nurses or otherwise. To me, that is one of the better aspects of the bill. The minister advises us there will be some bonded places whereby the bonding is associated with a scholarship payment—I think it will be about $20,000 a year. Of course there is a bond because if you take that option as compared to paying as you go or working at night or something like that for your pocket money then you have made a commitment to go and work in remote and regional areas, where there is still a shortage of medical practitioners.

So the bill is to be recommended for greatly increasing the funds that the government is going to provide, whilst retaining a surplus, I might add. The one thing that was not mentioned by the member for Jagajaga—and the next speaker, the member for Rankin, might like to bring it to our attention—was the cost of some of the proposals she put forward. Tell us where the money is coming from. What is to be cancelled? I do not know, but it seemed to me that she made a straight-out promise of extremely increased financial expenditure on behalf of a group of people who, in many regards, through the benefits that their education will provide, presently have the financial capacity to repay the government.

I have never been able to understand the paranoia of the opposition when it comes to full fee paying domestic students. There are all sorts of reasons that a person may not be able to commence an education or achieve the appropriate tertiary entry level, which in the state of Western Australia was so corrupted that it was no indication of people’s merit, as the member for Jagajaga said. It was all airy-fairy stuff—OBE, as it was known—and even the teachers union revolted against it. A granddaughter of mine was told in an expensive private school, ‘You may as well take the weakest form of mathematics because you will get better marks and your merit will appear to be greater.’

I corresponded with the University of Western Australia on that, and they had a slightly different message—that they were prepared to weight these more difficult maths subjects, which my granddaughter could have easily managed. What is more, to get entry to engineering and other fields, they insist on them. But here we have a secondary education system decreed by the state government in WA that is trying to dumb everything down.

The Labor Party never stop talking about wages sliding to the bottom, while of course they continue to escalate in real terms, but they do not seem to have any concern about the dumbing down of our educational processes. They are still fighting bitterly to prevent giving grades to students, because the teachers know that is an examination of their personal effort. The legislation is all about money. It is all about paying for the additional needs of the tertiary education system and it is therefore to be commended.

The member for Jagajaga also had something to say about giving more freedom and flexibility to the university sector. I think that is a good idea, provided you transfer the buying power to students and their families. A simple solution for that is vouchers. I think the member for Rankin might have some support for that particular idea. He is probably as isolated on his side in promoting things of that nature as I was when my press release was brought out which said I would sell Medicare—and so I would, but do not think anybody else on my side agrees with me.

I am a great believer in funding people, not institutions—in the case of health, through subsidising people to buy private health insurance and, in the case of education, through giving parents, from first bubs up, a piece of paper that can be targeted for both socioeconomic and geographic reasons and says, ‘This is worth X at one of the enclosed group of approved schools,’ which might be state or private. There would be no arguments about which school got the most money because the money would go to parents and they would make a choice. I think, if students wanting a university education had that sort of buying power and the government left it at that, universities would respond to the marketplace and they would have all the flexibility they wanted. It is a very important aspect.

Let me record my concern, relevant to my earlier remarks, that I think it is a tragedy that not enough students are going into the engineering and science disciplines. It is so important to our economic growth that we have those sorts of people in society. I know it is a tough ask and they are sometimes not as glamorous as other disciplines, although persons known to me, having commenced a career, for instance, with an engineering degree, are now highly respected, high-flying stock market analysts because their foundations are such that they are truly analysts. They are not just statisticians; they are people who understand the workings of the mining sector or whatever. They have been there and done that and they have had the opportunity later to take up what might be considered more high-flying disciplines.

I sometimes wonder about tertiary education. I note with approval we are funding another 1,036 nursing places. From personal experience, I spent five months in hospital on one occasion—it was self-inflicted—and I was looked after by nurses that lived at the hospital and were trained in the hospital, right up to the matron and the other more experienced nursing personnel. I still think that is the best way to teach someone to be a nurse. I think the problem with a university education is that it does not properly expose young people to the difficulties of being a nurse. It is a tough job. I do not think university gives them that hands-on experience, and they come out with an expectation that they are just a small step below a doctor. That is not what a nurse is, although I applaud the fact that in some remote areas we are going to have practice nurses and they will have an opportunity to get those additional qualifications, as used to be the case.

I think one of the problems with university education for teachers is that there is insufficient accent on teaching. Teaching is a skill. Knowledge that you need to teach is easily acquired. The most impressive teacher I ever knew was my English teacher at Perth Modern School, who on his first day in our classroom said: ‘You might think I know everything; I do not. But I know where to go and look for it.’ In those days you did not google it. He said, ‘What I don’t know today, I’ll tell you tomorrow.’ The way he, as a quite laid-back person, enthused us to study and succeed in English was quite amazing. He was a great teacher. I think there is a lack of that because the culture of university teaching is not what is needed back at the primary school and the secondary school. I think there is probably insufficient capacity, as compared to the old teaching colleges, for that sort of training. I guess, as with other things I have said today, I am not going to change that.

My time has run out. I commend this legislation. I reject the criticism found in the Labor Party’s amendments. They are not sustained by the facts and I think they are completely incompatible with the Labor Party’s responsibility to a primarily working-class electorate. I have never been able to understand why they take that view and they do not have plans in TAFE and other areas that they lecture us on on these occasions. (Time expired)

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2006 Budget Measures) Bill 2006 will fund 605 new commencing places and 1,036 new commencing nursing places. In addition, the bill will fund 431 new mental health nursing places and 210 new clinical psychology places. That is part of the Commonwealth government’s contribution to the Council of Australian Governments’ mental health package. The legislation contains a number of other funding commitments. I know the public perception is often that in this parliament the government and the opposition never agree on anything. I can assure the public that on these matters—increased funding for higher education and, in particular, nursing, medical and mental health places—Labor fully supports what the government is doing.

I wanted to say that, and I also want to support the second reading amendment moved by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, which includes the provisions:

“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House condemns the Government for:

(1)

jeopardising Australia’s future prosperity by reducing public investment in tertiary education, as the rest of the world increases their investment;

(2)

failing to invest in education, training, distribution and retention measures to ensure that all of Australia has enough doctors, nurses and other health care professionals to meet current and future health care needs;…            …            …

(7)

an inadequate and incoherent policy response to the needs of the university system to diversify, innovate and meet Australia’s higher education needs”.

The Queensland election has just been decided, and one of the big issues there was health. It had been suggested that the Commonwealth government under the leadership of the Prime Minister had been very generous in providing medical places at university; the trouble is that the number was not adequate and the delays were extraordinary. It points to the benefits of a cooperative federalism rather than a confrontational federalism—a cooperative federalism made possible by the election of a Beazley Labor government which, in a consensus style of political behaviour, would ensure that these problems did not continue to develop to the point of a crisis in the number of medical places being made available in Queensland, which they were allowed to develop to under this federal government.

More generally, in the area of higher education in this country, I can scarcely imagine an area—other than industrial relations—where this government has been so poor and so appallingly bad in the development of public policy. It is clear that the Howard government does not have a commitment to higher education. We have just heard the member for O’Connor saying that the private returns for a higher education are such that essentially it should be funded by those people who enter the university system. Labor fundamentally disagrees with this philosophy. Labor has always held the view that, in addition to the private benefits from higher education, there are very large benefits for the nation as a whole. There are so-called positive spillovers where the wider community is the great winner from young people going to university. That establishes a philosophical divide between the coalition and Labor.

It also explains why there has been such appalling underfunding of our public university system in Australia. That underfunding has become so chronic that all of the enrolment growth since the change of government in 1996 in Australian universities has been in full fee paying students—predominantly in foreign full fee paying students but more recently in Australian full fee paying students. The government is so committed to full fee places that it deprives young Australians of the opportunity of getting into university on a subsidised basis.

Over the period about which I am speaking there has been zero growth in the number of Australian undergraduate places. Indeed, in the last couple of years there has been a decline in the number of Australian undergraduate places that are subsidised by HECS, and that has occurred for the first time in half a century. Just as disturbingly, the government forecast in a statement made by the then education minister—and now the Minister for Defence—that there will be fewer undergraduate students in Australia over the coming decade. So, where Labor has an aspiration to increase access and increase the number of university graduates, the coalition government is forecasting a decline. The outlook for our public universities is a very sombre one. Some of them will succeed because of their reliance on foreign full fee paying students, but the truth of the matter is that we are losing competitiveness as a destination for foreign full fee paying students. As a consequence, as a revenue source that is now beginning to taper off.

I am conscious that I will be continuing my remarks tomorrow on this matter, so I will not go into this particular dimension of the problem in detail now. But it is clear that a number of universities in Australia will be in very severe financial straits if the government does not inject extra funding into our public universities in the coming year. A number of our universities will be looking at insolvency unless the Minister for Education, Science and Training is able to convince her cabinet colleagues that there is a funding crisis and that it will need to be resolved and resolved quickly. I am putting it clearly on notice that a number of our universities will be in great peril because of the tapering off of growth in full fee paying students and in domestic full fee paying students, despite a big increase in the year before last. We do not have the latest figures, but I am told that even domestic full fee paying students are not providing the revenue that was anticipated.

Debate interrupted.