Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007. Labor does not oppose this bill, and Labor will not seek to prevent its passage through the parliament. Labor, however, is very critical of aspects of it and questioning or sceptical about others. The bill before us this evening does a number of things. These include: revising the maximum funding amounts provided under the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to provide funding to support the implantation of the government’s so-called research quality framework, or RQF; and amending the Higher Education Support Act to reflect changes to the National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes. The national protocols regulate the recognition of new universities, the operation of overseas universities in Australia and the accreditation of courses offered by higher education institutions.

The protocols were first approved by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs in 2000, introducing a number of measures relating to the administration of the Higher Education Loan Program, or HELP, and arrangements for Commonwealth support of students; amending the Higher Education Support Act 2003, the Higher Education Funding Act 1988 and the Higher Education Support (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Act 2003 to limit the time students can claim an entitlement to Commonwealth support; and making a number of minor amendments intended to improve the operation of the Higher Education Support Act. Most contentiously, the legislation amends the Higher Education Support Act to ensure universities can gain access to funding for the government’s so-called research quality framework, the RQF.

Labor has previously expressed very grave reservations about the RQF. Let me detail some of those reservations, which have been placed on the record. In Labor’s higher education white paper published last year, at page 38 it says:

The Government is considering a ‘research quality framework’ in an effort to obtain qualitative information about Australian university research and its ‘impact’. The Expert Advisory Group for the Government’s Research Quality Framework has used the British Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), an approach to research quality assessment about to be abandoned in the UK, as the basis for an Australian model.

The current proposal for an Australian version of the RAE has itself been assessed as ‘fundamentally flawed, both in design and operation’.

It is seen to suffer four major deficiencies:

i. research output is not the direct object of quality assessment;

ii. the assessment panels are too thin to do the job credibly;

iii. the assessments lack output volume measures;

iv. the approach to the assessment of ‘impact’ is too underdeveloped to be included.

The lack of independent, external evaluation of the quality and impact of Australian research is problematic. Investment cannot be well directed when it is not well informed. The community cannot be confident that its investment is worthwhile without evidence that it is.

My colleague the shadow minister for science, Senator Carr, on 7 February in an address said he had:

... concerns about the Howard government’s RQF that it wants to impose on universities.

A major issue is the proposed ‘impact’ measure. This is untried internationally: there are no accepted international standards, no comparable international data; no internationally accepted, rigorous processes in place.

In particular, while it might be argued that it is clear how ‘research impact’ might be measured in the Sciences, it’s far from clear that this can be done at all in the Humanities and the Arts.

I want to see a system based on peer review, that is internationally credible.

I will look at the British Research Assessment Exercise, the RAE, and the changes to be proposed by Gordon Brown. I will investigate ways in which we can adopt a quantitative set of research quality measures, based on verifiable indices.

Another big concern is the cost and other resources that will need to be tied up in the assessment and reporting processes. As some have pointed out ... the process will be hugely resource-intensive, considering how much funding will be moved around and allocated by means of it.

…            …            …

Labor is reviewing the current RQF exercise. We want a research quality assurance system that is of international standing and that will be recognised around the world. We want it to be transparent, fair, equitable and efficient.

On 16 February at the symposium on the research quality framework at the University of Western Australia, I said in a written statement:

As you know, my predecessor, Ms Jenny Macklin, expressed grave reservations about the RQF. These reservations included that the RQF is flawed, that it will mean that university ratings will be based on where the academic is now working, not where they did groundbreaking research, and that it involved too much paperwork for too little return.

As well, the Productivity Commission recently reported adversely on the proposed Framework.

Very many of these concerns have been put to me by your colleagues in the Higher Education Sector. As well, at the Australian Technology Network conference last week, it was also put to me that the RQF would reduce the research links with industry and lessen collegiate efforts among researchers and academics from different universities.

My colleague Senator Kim Carr, Shadow Minister for Science, recently said that he also had concerns about the RQF, including the proposed impact measure which is untried internationally and the cost and other resources involved in the assessment and reporting processes.

As I publicly indicated at the ATN conference, Labor has the RQF under review.

Labor supports high quality research in our universities. I regard that as essential. It is only through high quality research undertaken in our universities that we will make the advances we need to ensure the future of scientific discovery, critical thinking and learning.

Any research framework must be robust, rigorous and support an open and transparent process of peer review. It is only through a process of rigorous testing that we can be sure of genuine strength of research undertaken. Labor want a research quality assurance system that is of international standing.

I expect that our review will enable Labor to make its decision about the RQF in the course of the first half of this year.

Having expressed those concerns over the recent period and having had any number of conversations with those in the higher education sector, Labor has come to the conclusion that the RQF is fundamentally flawed. Our concluded view is that in government we will not proceed with the RQF. Labor believes that the RQF will be expensive to administer, that it sets the bar too low on quality measures, that it emphasises a poorly defined impact measure and that the adoption of the RQF will mean that university ratings would be based on where the academic is now working, not necessarily where the academic has done groundbreaking research.

It is not just Labor that has expressed reservations about the RQF. The Productivity Commission, in its research project Public support for science and innovation, released just this morning, again reported adversely on the proposed framework, noting:

The costs of implementing the Research Quality Framework may well exceed the benefits ...

And:

... while the RQF may bring some benefits, the UK and NZ experiences suggest that these would have to be substantial to offset the significant administrative and compliance costs.

As we know, the United Kingdom’s experience is that, at precisely that point when the Howard government seems so obsessive about introducing the research quality framework, it is moving away from the RAE on which the research quality framework is based.

Concerns have been expressed by the higher education sector itself, particularly that the RQF would reduce the research links with industry and lessen collegiate efforts among researchers and academics from different universities and that the assessment of quality and impact is of itself problematic.

In submissions to the Productivity Commission last year for the purposes of the Productivity Commission’s draft research report, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering expressed ‘doubts about the value of such an approach’. Deakin University has said that the RQF criteria of quality and impact are not the only criteria for assessing research and, in some cases, are not the most important. That university has also said that the RQF will focus on research excellence, which will not catch all the important research outcomes. The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy has commented:

... the allocation of a single ranking based on aggregate scores for ‘Quality’ and ‘Impact’ ... is confusing, as these different measures protect interests which are of varying relative importance for different kinds of research.

The Australian Academy of the Humanities has said of the RQF approach:

... very little macro and micro-economic benefit analysis has been performed of the contributions of the humanities and creative arts to national innovation. This is ... due to the difficulty of measuring the impact of humanities research in such terms.

The Group of Eight universities stated in its follow-up submission to the Productivity Commission’s draft report:

There is a prospect that an RQF could become a burden to researchers, be expensive to administer and deliver very little reward to support and stimulate the best quality research.

The bill provides around $41 million for two programs to assist universities with the implementation of the research quality framework. While Labor believe that the research quality framework is fundamentally and fatally flawed, we support a policy of research quality assurance. Labor support high-quality research in our universities. As I have said before, I regard that as essential. It is only through high-quality research undertaken in our universities that we will make the advances we need to ensure the future of scientific discovery, critical thinking and learning. Any research framework must be robust and rigorous and must support an open and transparent process of peer review. It is only through a process of rigorous testing that we can be sure of the genuine strength of research undertaken.

Labor want a research quality assurance system of international standing. We believe there is a much better way of achieving that than through the government’s RQF. Labor believe that a research quality assurance system should be rigorous, transparent, fair, equitable and efficient. It should be recognised and accepted internationally as world’s best practice and should distribute funds in a way that transparently reflects research quality and achievement in our universities. It should encourage universities to concentrate on their respective research strengths, reward genuinely high achievement and weight research costs accurately by field and discipline. Further, it should promote university autonomy in decision making on research funding and policy and recognise and reward groundbreaking, long-term fundamental research whose full impact may not be apparent within a limited or arbitrary time frame. It should also provide separate, objective measures that reflect research quality in each broad discipline area—the arts and humanities, the social sciences and science and technology. The government’s research quality framework does not do these things.

To reflect all this, at the conclusion of my remarks I will formally move a second reading amendment in the following terms:

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 notes that while assessing the quality and effectiveness of university research is a necessary and desirable public policy objective;

(1)

any initiative in this area must be robust, rigorous and support an open and transparent process of peer review;

(2)

as proposed by the Government, the RQF is likely to constitute a disincentive to undertake long-term, basic research;

(3)

the university sector has assessed that the RQF would reduce research links with industry and lessen collegiate efforts among researchers and academics from different universities;

(4)

essential aspects and details of the scheme are yet to be worked out, so that implementation for 2008 is in serious doubt;

(5)

the cost and other resources involved in the assessment and reporting processes mean that the Government’s proposed Research Quality Framework risks preventing breakthrough research from occurring by being overly bureaucratic for too little year on year return; and

(6)

the Research Quality Framework measures and processes as set out in the Bill should not be proceeded with, and should be replaced by a model that is fair, equitable, tailored to different disciplines and international best practice”.

As I said at the outset, Labor will not oppose the bill or the appropriation of this money. Labor does not support the government’s RQF approach but does support efforts and measures to increase the overall level of research undertaken in our universities. Labor believes that the money appropriated by this bill can be more effectively used either for research or in the development or implementation of an alternative research quality assessment system. Labor is currently consulting with the higher education sector and developing a policy which will be published in due course as a formal election commitment.

Those remarks cover that part of the bill which deals with the research quality framework. The bill also covers a number of other areas. One of the most significant is that it will amend the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to reflect changes made to the National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes. The national protocols regulate the recognition of new universities, the operation of overseas universities in Australia and the accreditation of courses offered by higher education institutions. The protocols were first approved by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs in 2000 and were subsequently amended, by agreement, by all state and territory education ministers in July 2006.

The protocols agreed in 2006 were:

Protocol A Nationally agreed criteria and approval processes for all higher education institutions

Protocol B Criteria and processes for the registration of non self-accrediting higher education institutions and the accreditation of their higher education course/s

Protocol C Criteria and processes for awarding self-accrediting authority to higher education institutions other than universities

Protocol D Criteria and processes for establishing Australian universities

Protocol E Criteria and processes for overseas higher education institutions seeking to operate in Australia

The national protocols are widely recognised as an important component in the quality assurance of higher education in this country. As the ministerial council website states, the protocols:

… protect the standing of Australian higher education nationally and internationally by assuring students and the community that higher education institutions in Australia have met identified criteria and are subject to appropriate government regulation.

The national protocols apply to:

• all higher education institutions operating in Australia
• all higher education institutions seeking to operate in Australia
• all higher education institutions purporting to operate in Australia
• the offshore activities of all Australian higher education institutions
• arrangements in which some aspects of a higher education institution’s operations are carried out by other entities, such as through partnerships with other institutions, providers or business entities, the formation of companies, sub-contracting of services, or franchising. Whenever students are enrolled in a higher education institution or awards are conferred in the name of a higher education institution, the higher education institution is responsible for oversight of the arrangement and for ensuring the arrangement complies with the National Protocols.

Key changes to the national protocols agreed to in 2006 by state and territory ministers involve: the provision for a wider range of universities, including specialist institutions conducting teaching and research in one or two fields of study only and university colleges in the form of new universities undertaking teaching and research in a limited number of fields during an establishment phase; an identified process for institutions other than universities to become authorised to accredit their own courses—self-accrediting—where they demonstrate a strong track record in quality assurance and reaccreditation; and application of the protocols to both new and existing higher education institutions, with compliance to be assessed through the standard quality assurance processes.

The amendments made by this bill seek to give effect to the revised National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes. The Commonwealth, along with the states and territories, agreed to introduce and pass enabling legislation so that the national protocols take effect from the end of 2007. The intended effect of these revised protocols is threefold: to facilitate the establishment of centres of research and teaching excellence in the form of universities focused on narrow areas of expertise; to provide a clear mechanism for those institutions with strong track records in higher education delivery and quality assurance to become self-accrediting, and, under the stewardship of an established university, for provisional university colleges to develop into fully fledged institutions; and to extend their application to all new and existing higher education institutions.

These protocols are, in and of themselves, sensible measures agreed to jointly by the various ministers. By allowing international higher education providers and specialised higher education providers to establish themselves as universities or university colleges, the changes can be expected to lead to further competition in the university sector. Further liberalisation and greater competition among higher education providers can deliver results in terms of the specialisation provided by the various institutions. Greater specialisation in the higher education sector can provide a means to better tailor educational needs to the community and provide greater flexibility to respond to the needs of a modern workforce into the future.

But it must be done with care and caution. That means that any opening up to greater competition must be done with the appropriate checks and balances in place to ensure the protection and enhancement of academic standards. It cannot be allowed to lead to a diminution of academic standards or rigour in the approach taken by our higher education providers. This is particularly important in relation to our international reputation. Australia’s higher education exports are worth around $10 billion a year and rising. We have achieved this because we have built a good international reputation. We cannot have an accreditation regime that allows for the standards of our higher education providers to be eroded through a protocol regime that would or could lead to a free-for-all in the sector and a downward—not upward—movement of academic standards.

The protocol changes that are the subject of this bill cannot lead to a situation that allows or tolerates a diminution of our good reputation internationally. And we cannot allow it to encourage or foster the sorts of situations we have seen in recent weeks with some education providers that actively rip students off by subjecting them to substandard teaching and poor facilities. A further reason for this concern relates to the fact that, although the protocols have been agreed to, the guidelines that underpin and give effect to these protocols have not yet been formally agreed to. That is not scheduled to occur at the earliest until the upcoming meeting of the ministerial council on 12 and 13 April. It is somewhat like putting the cart before the horse. It is one thing to agree on the broad direction and another altogether to agree on the detail of how to achieve it. That is why Labor believes it is important to refer this point to the Senate Standing Committee on Employment, Workplace Relations and Education for brief inquiry.

The bill also seeks to do a number of other things. This includes: introducing a number of measures regarding the administration of the Higher Education Loan Program, the HELP scheme, and arrangements for Commonwealth supported students; amending the Higher Education Support Act 2003, the Higher Education Funding Act 1988 and the Higher Education Support (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Act 2003 to limit the time for students to claim an entitlement to Commonwealth support; revising the maximum funding amounts provided under the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to provide funding to support the implementation of the research quality framework; and making a number of minor amendments intended to improve the operation of the Higher Education Support Act.

The bill includes a number of measures regarding the administration of the Higher Education Loan Program and arrangements for Commonwealth supported students. Firstly, the bill includes amendments to clarify the overseas study requirements in relation to eligibility for OS-HELP assistance. The effect of this is that Australian students already studying overseas can apply for OS-HELP assistance. OS-HELP is only available to those undergraduate students studying part of their course overseas.

Secondly, the amendments in this bill clarify that nothing requires a higher education provider to advise students that they are Commonwealth supported at a particular campus of the provider. The effect of this is that higher education providers will be able to determine which campus will offer particular courses of study to Commonwealth supported students. In other words, the amendment allows higher education providers to specify that a student may be a Commonwealth supported student for units of study on the condition that the student undertakes those units at a particular campus of the provider.

Thirdly, the amendments in this bill clarify the residency requirements in relation to Commonwealth support and HECS-HELP and FEE-HELP assistance for study undertaken overseas. The effect of this is that permanent residents and holders of certain visas, including those granted on humanitarian grounds, will not be entitled to Commonwealth support or to HECS-HELP or FEE-HELP assistance if they are undertaking part or all of their higher education course overseas.

In addition, in the minister’s second reading speech introducing this legislation she said:

The bill requires that Commonwealth supported students must reside in Australia while undertaking their studies (although provision is made to ensure entitlement to Commonwealth support and assistance where a student is required to be overseas for part of their course of study).

The notion that all Commonwealth supported students must reside in Australia while undertaking their studies has raised some concern amongst both the public and some higher education providers about the restrictions potentially being introduced by the government on the studies undertaken by students. The prima facie impact of this would be to exclude students studying overseas via distance education or on exchange from accessing HECS-HELP or FEE-HELP. My office has been assured by the minister’s office that this is not the intention, and I would ask that the minister confirm this in her reply in the debate.

Fourthly, these amendments will allow providers to advise students that they will be Commonwealth supported for cross-institutional study where one or both of the higher education providers are not table A providers. This is a change from the previous requirement for Commonwealth supported students to only undertake study in Commonwealth supported places in a cross-institutional arrangement where both providers were table A providers.

Before I conclude, I will touch on another demonstration that the government is rushing this legislation through. The government is moving amendments to its own legislation, and those amendments have been circulated. The amendments are in two areas. The first is to section 3-5(2), inserting a new information provision to refer to the range of different higher education entities and types of approval that they will receive under chapter 6 once the bill is enacted. The second amendment is at section 19-20, to correct the paragraph so that it refers to requirements imposed on higher education providers being done by ‘a government accreditation authority’ instead of ‘an authorised accreditation authority’.

These amendments appear sensible enough, but I make this point: the fact that the government has to make them at all when it is the government’s own legislation indicates that they have rushed this legislation through the parliament. Rushing legislation through the parliament without due process and time for examination is always a concern. When it contains errors and oversights, it is doubly so.

As I indicated at the outset, Labor does not oppose this legislation. But there are issues to which I have referred that in our view require further examination and some questions answered. That is why we propose to refer it to committee in the other place and we reserve our right to move or support amendments that may come out of such a limited Senate inquiry. I commend the bill to the House and I move the second reading amendment circulated in my name:

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 notes that while assessing the quality and effectiveness of university research is a necessary and desirable public policy objective;

(1)

any initiative in this area must be robust, rigorous and support an open and transparent process of peer review;

(2)

as proposed by the Government, the RQF is likely to constitute a disincentive to undertake long-term, basic research;

(3)

the university sector has assessed that the RQF would reduce research links with industry and lessen collegiate efforts among researchers and academics from different universities;

(4)

essential aspects and details of the scheme are yet to be worked out, so that implementation for 2008 is in serious doubt;

(5)

the cost and other resources involved in the assessment and reporting processes mean that the Government’s proposed Research Quality Framework risks preventing breakthrough research from occurring by being overly bureaucratic for too little year on year return; and

(6)

the Research Quality Framework measures and processes as set out in the Bill should not be proceeded with, and should be replaced by a model that is fair, equitable, tailored to different disciplines and international best practice”.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be able to rise in the House tonight to support the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007, but in doing so I oppose the second reading amendment moved by the honourable member for Perth. I think most people around the chamber and indeed around the nation would accept that the Sunshine Coast region that I am privileged to represent in the Australian parliament has a wonderful tertiary institution that is providing an important service to one of the fastest-growing areas of Australia. In fact, it is tipped that the Sunshine Coast could well double its population over the next 15 years. Of course, that presents particular problems for the provision of infrastructure, including educational infrastructure.

The University of the Sunshine Coast provides significant educational services in a number of faculties, from business through to arts and social sciences and to science, health and education. The inaugural Vice-Chancellor, Professor Paul Thomas, must be congratulated for his ongoing dedication and hard work in developing what is still a relatively new university. The university gained full university status following approaches by me and the honourable member for Fairfax, along with the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Thomas, to Dr David Kemp. At that stage it was intended that the University of the Sunshine Coast would serve an apprenticeship period of some 10 years as a university college of the Queensland University of Technology. While the Queensland University of Technology has my unabashed admiration as a quality institution, the University of the Sunshine Coast simply would not have been able to grow and develop if the minister for education at the time, Dr David Kemp, had not been prepared to overrule the recommendation from his public servants in the department of education that the university not be given independence. I am proud that through my representations and those of my colleague we were able to give this university appropriate status. Now the university has close to 5,000 enrolments.

The Australian government has always been a very strong supporter of the University of the Sunshine Coast. Only last month the university was allocated $5 million out of a total of $58 million allocated nationally from the voluntary student unionism transition fund. These funds, you will be interested to know, Mr Deputy Speaker, will support the construction of a multipurpose indoor stadium at the Sippy Downs campus under the first round of funding from the fund. Five million dollars out of $58 million is a pretty high proportion of a national allocation. I am proud that the University of the Sunshine Coast has been adjudged worthy of receiving such a high proportion of what the Australian government has allocated under the voluntary student unionism transition fund.

I know the University of the Sunshine Coast very well; in fact I drive past it almost every day because it is only a kilometre down the road from where I live. But it would be useful for us to look at some of the other things the Australian government has done to benefit the University of the Sunshine Coast and of course, most importantly, the students and the families who choose to send their children to that important institution.

In December 2005 the government allocated $2 million, for 2008, towards the completion of stage VI of the University of the Sunshine Coast science building. The funds were allocated through the higher education Capital Development Pool program. The science building will provide laboratories for teaching, sports science and biomedical, microbiology, environmental, geoinformatics and health sciences. Stage VI will also involve the completion of the general teaching buildings and is part of the master-planned development of the university.

Last year the Australian government allocated 235 extra university places for 2007 valued at $2.3 million, increasing to 643 new places by 2010, altogether valued at $6.7 million. Importantly, these places are for the teaching and nursing courses as well as for the allied health areas of nutrition, dietetics and social work. For the University of the Sunshine Coast to grow it must have the courses available to meet the needs of the local community. I have to say that in the allocation of new places in Queensland the University of the Sunshine Coast has done extraordinarily well, and I am particularly pleased to have been able to have supported the university in this very successful outcome.

The Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007 provides for a number of amendments to several pieces of legislation that relate to tertiary education in Australia. They include changes to the Higher Education Support Act 2003 that will assist with the implementation of the research quality framework, a system designed to more easily and accurately assess the results and the public benefit of publicly funded research. The RQF will be a valuable tool in assisting future allocation of research resources and funding, which in turn will foster a better research environment in Australia. It is important that a nation such as Australia continues to build its position in the world with high-quality research that leads to innovation and invention and a greater ability to be internationally competitive. The Australian government has allocated $40.8 million over four years, beginning in July this year, to implement the RQF system. This will include, among other things, the establishment of a national digital storage system in our universities that will assist with the storage and dissemination of valuable research and related information.

The bill also provides for the introduction of revised National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes that were approved last year by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs. These protocols guide the recognition of newly established tertiary institutions, as well as the Australian based operations of overseas universities and the accreditation of higher education courses. Mr Deputy Speaker, you will be interested to become aware that in the past these protocols applied only to newly established tertiary institutions, but a significant change provided for in this bill is that the protocols will apply also to existing institutions.

The new protocols will further help to shore up the quality of our educational institutions. They will promote this by making possible the establishment of specialist universities that teach relatively few fields of study, which will encourage new types of institutions, and they will allow some universities that have a record for quality delivery of educational services to be self-accrediting. I think one of the problems we have had in Australia, particularly with the actions of the former Labor government through then Minister Dawkins, is that essentially any higher education organisation at the time was overnight proclaimed to be a university. These so-called Dawkins universities have been somewhat challenging as far as the university sector is concerned. Some of them have done very well; some have not done well. But I think it is important to recognise that every institution in the country ought not to necessarily offer every course. If we can have universities that specialise in certain areas then students will vote with their feet, and they will go to those universities which provide expertise in certain areas. I think that diversity does in fact help to work towards a very healthy system, which is to the overall long-term benefit of Australia.

The bill also introduces a range of relatively minor amendments. Students will be given six weeks to correct their information as it relates to Commonwealth assistance programs. Minor amendments will clarify the intent of policy as it relates to the Higher Education Loan Program, as well as other Commonwealth supported student arrangements. The bill will give education providers the ability to determine the parameters by which some students will be eligible for Commonwealth assistance—for example, whether they will be required to attend a certain institution to be eligible for the support. Students must reside in Australia to be eligible for Commonwealth assistance, and students who are permanent residents who complete their course overseas will not be eligible for Commonwealth support.

It is interesting that the opposition, while it is moving this amendment and playing politics in doing so, does not actually seek to deny passage of the bill through the House. Obviously, with an election just a number of months down the track, the opposition is trying to play politics with the education of students at Australia’s higher education institutions. I do not believe that this is a very appropriate way for the opposition to act. Having said that, the opposition is supporting the bill, because it must know that its pious second reading amendment has absolutely zero chance of passing this House.

The bill currently before the chamber, the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007, provides some important changes that will assist in supporting and promoting a stronger higher education sector in Australia. Any bill that supports and promotes a stronger higher education sector in Australia is worthy of the backing of the Australian parliament because, let us face it, those people who are studying in our educational institutions—primary, secondary and tertiary—are Australia’s future. This bill will benefit those studying in tertiary institutions and will improve national outcomes in the Australian community for years to come. I am very pleased, therefore, to ask everyone to support the passage, as soon as possible, of the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak to the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007 and to support the very well thought out, measured, logical amendment moved by the opposition which highlights some of the concerns which the shadow minister expressed in his contribution. Later in my contribution I will comment on the more general observations made about the university sector by the member for Fisher.

While I welcome the further investment in Australia’s higher education system that this bill will deliver, I do want to take this opportunity to raise a number of important concerns regarding some of the potential impacts of this bill. It is worth while reminding ourselves of the purpose of this bill. It seeks to provide funding to implement the government’s contentious research quality framework—RQF—which we believe is not well thought out and which we oppose. This will involve an appropriation of $40.8 million over a three-year period. The bill will also regulate the recognition of new universities and courses offered by higher education institutions and limit the time for students to claim entitlement to Commonwealth support.

Labor have a number of concerns about this bill. The first of these relates to the research quality framework and its impact on Australian academics and on our higher education system. We believe that the research quality framework is flawed. It is overhauling the method by which public funds are allocated, with trials to take place at several universities. Under the framework, Australia will become the first country in the world to measure the impact of research rather than just its quality. A panel of academic experts and end users of the research will review the quality and the impact of the research, and funding will then be allocated on the strength of these assessments.

It is worth noting that in Britain the government has decided to review a similar research assessment model in favour of a simpler, mainly metrics based system such as the one Australia currently has in place. The current system includes measures such as research income, research publications, research student loans and completions. The possible impact on researchers and academic positions is quite worrying. An article in the Australian Financial Review on 19 February this year, titled ‘Academics lose jobs as research becomes king’, analysed the research quality framework and said:

Under the federal government’s Research Quality Framework (RQF) scheme being introduced this year, academics regarded by their bosses as “less active in research” may be made redundant or forced to accept teaching-only positions.

The National Tertiary Education Union warned that there is widespread anxiety on campus about the impact of the RQF and that stress levels among the academics were high and rising. I also note the research report of the Productivity Commission, which was referred to by the shadow minister, Public support for science and innovation, where the commission observed, ‘The costs of implementing the research quality framework may well exceed the benefits’ and, ‘While the RQF may bring some benefits, the UK and New Zealand experiences suggest that these would have to be substantial to offset the significant administrative and compliance costs.’

The research quality framework as proposed by the government is clearly not the best system. It has been tried, and it has not succeeded. To pursue this will in our view create undue stress and anxiety for academics. Labor support a policy of research quality assurance and high-quality research in our universities. I will refer again to some of the comments made by the shadow minister. He referred to some of the submissions to the Productivity Commission. One was from the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, which expressed doubts about the value of such an approach. Deakin University said that the RQF will focus on research excellence and will not catch all the important research outcomes. The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy commented:

... the allocation of a single ranking based on aggregate scores for ‘Quality’ and ‘Impact’ ... is confusing—

and:

... these different measures protect interests which are of varying relative importance for different kinds of research.

The Australian Academy of the Humanities said of the RQF approach:

... very little macro and micro-economic benefit analysis has been performed of the contributions of the humanities and creative arts to national innovation.

And:

This is ... due to the difficulty of measuring the impact of humanities research in such terms.

The Group of Eight universities said:

There is a prospect that an RQF could become a burden to researchers, be expensive to administer and deliver very little reward to support and stimulate the best quality research.

These contributions to the debate are damning in what the government is trying to achieve. We on this side of the chamber believe that a research quality assurance system should be rigorous, transparent, fair, equitable and efficient. It should be recognised and accepted internationally as world’s best practice. It should distribute funds in a way that transparently reflects research quality and achievements in our universities. It should encourage universities to concentrate on their respective research strengths. It should reward generally high achievement. It should weight research costs accurately by field and discipline. It should promote university autonomy in decision making on research funding and policy. It should recognise and reward groundbreaking long-term fundamental research, the full impact of which may not be apparent within a limited or arbitrary time frame, and it should provide separate objective measures that reflect research quality in each broad discipline area, such as the arts and humanities, the social sciences, sciences and technologies. Unfortunately, the government’s research quality framework does not do any of these things.

Another concern I have with this piece of legislation arises from the proposed amendment to allow students to correct information six weeks from the census date to establish an entitlement to Commonwealth assistance. The Higher Education Amendment Act will then be amended to clarify that students can no longer establish an entitlement to assistance provided under the act. The bill seeks to amend the Higher Education Support Act 2003, the Higher Education Funding Act 1988 and the Higher Education Support (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Act 2003 to limit the time for students to claim an entitlement to Commonwealth support. Students in Australia are already struggling, and they do not need further obstacles such as the amendments proposed in this bill.

It is worth noting that in 2007 the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee’s survey into student finances, an independent study commissioned by the peak Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee and conducted by the University of Melbourne’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education, found that financial pressure has increased since the previous survey six years ago. In response, as cited in an article in the Australian on Wednesday, 14 March titled ‘The AVCC moves on student poverty’, the federal Minister for Education, Science and Training claimed:

Students should live more frugally ... income support was not intended to underwrite a lifestyle.

Alan Robson, the chairman of the survey’s steering group and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Australia, responded to the minister’s comment with concern. He said:

... she didn’t appear to be taking it really seriously.

Robson continued:

Full-time students are working nearly 15 hours a week, that is considerable work, and we are expecting students during semester probably to be spending 40 hours a week [on their studies]. How does that make for a good university experience?

Students are suffering under the requirements to study full time, to attain good grades, to work and attempt to balance a social life, all at the same time as providing the money that is required by the government under HECS. In the same article, Macquarie University’s Vice-Chancellor, Steven Schwartz, said:

Financial hardship is a way of life for many students ...

The offhand comment by the minister should be seen for what it is: a very disparaging insult to the Australian student population and a disparaging insult to many Australian families who struggle to ensure that their children get access to a university education. They struggle because of the costs involved.

Whilst they might be participants in a happy form of life in one sense, the hardships which they and their families endure to ensure they get a university education and make a contribution to the Australian community in the way we want them all to do should not be disparaged or insulted in the way the minister has done.

The Vice-Chancellors Committee survey found that around 70 per cent of full-time undergraduates worked an average of 14.8 hours a week during the second semester of 2006. Forty-two per cent of part-time students worked at least 38 hours a week, which is equivalent to full-time employment. Up to 54 per cent of students surveyed found that work was having a detrimental effect on their studies. Between 2000 and 2006 the proportion of undergraduates taking out payable loans rose from 10.7 per cent to 24.4 per cent. Average private debt on graduation is $25,000. Indigenous students have bigger loans and work longer hours in order to finance their studies.

In respect of Indigenous students, about whom I have a particular concern, the research commissioned by the AVCC’s committee on student finances states:

A quarter of Indigenous students go without food and other necessities because they cannot afford them.

What does the minister say about that? Do they choose this lifestyle because it is so terrific that they have to go without food as they are too poor? How much more frugally would they need to live? This is an observation made by a minister with no knowledge, who clearly has no heart and no understanding of the experiences of many Australian students at our tertiary institutions.

Indigenous students were more likely to report that money was a worry—72.5 per cent compared with 52.5 per cent for the general university population. Indigenous students worked more hours and missed more classes than non-Indigenous students. Their expenses were higher. They were more likely to have used up savings to fund their education—52 per cent compared with 44 per cent of non-Indigenous students. More Indigenous students had taken out a loan than non-Indigenous students and the loans were bigger—$8,250 for Indigenous postgraduates compared with $6,250 for non-Indigenous postgraduates. Despite all of the obstacles, Indigenous students’ income support applications were rejected more often—13.8 per cent for undergraduates and 8.8 per cent for postgraduates—than those of non-Indigenous students, at 11.8 and 5.5 per cent. This report is an absolute condemnation of this government’s administration of higher education. The observations made by the minister are such a grave insult that they should be rejected out of hand by this parliament.

The 2005 higher education report released by the Department of Education, Science and Training revealed that the debt burden for Australian students has tripled under the Howard government, from $4.5 billion in 1996-97 to nearly $13 billion in 2005-06. By 2008-09, this figure will have increased to $18.8 billion. The average outstanding debt is about $10,560, a seven per cent increase from the previous year. In an article from the Sydney Morning Herald on 13 September 2006 it was stated that average yearly fees are rising. Medicine is up from $17,658 in 1997 to $49,020 in 2006, law is up from $11,772 in 1997 to $32,680 and engineering is up from $11,772 to $27,917. This government has overseen this debacle.

We know that the impact of the government’s policies on higher education have nowhere been felt greater than in the regional universities across this country. This is a matter which I have spoken on a number of times in this place. It is clear that the situation is getting worse. Charles Darwin University has suffered massively at the hands of the Howard government. According to 2005 statistics, CDU caters to a total of 17,665 students. That is a little less than 10 per cent of the total population of the Northern Territory. Of this number, 5,380 people are engaged in higher education and 12,285 are in VET programs.

The CDU has a very difficult task, because it seeks to deliver higher education services to a relatively small and dispersed population. The demographics of the Northern Territory are far removed from the national average and obviously very different from those which prevail in the major metropolitan areas. The Territory has a large population base in and around Darwin of 100,000-plus people and a smaller population base at the centre of Australia in Alice Springs of close to 30,000. The remainder of the population lives in widely dispersed communities, from small to large, including towns like Katherine, Tennant Creek and Nhulunbuy, as well as smaller places such as Wadeye, Maningrida, Galiwinku, Groote Eylandt, and even smaller places such as Papunya, Kintore and Yuendumu—very small communities indeed.

This university requires resourcing to be able to carry out its work in the Northern Territory. It is worth noting—and I have used these figures before in this place—that, since 1996, the Howard government has removed $6 million a year, or around $40 million to date, in recurrent funding from Charles Darwin University alone. We know that with the abolition of compulsory student unionism students are facing a less vibrant life on campus. Under VSU, universities are expected to lose about $160 million annually. The wealthy Group of Eight universities can tolerate this far better. They are largely protected from the legislation through special funding set aside by each institution. This is not the case at smaller institutions such as Charles Darwin University, where students tend to rely more on in-house services and have faced the most savage cutbacks. Let us not beat about the bush: CDU has been hit hardest by these changes.

This much is acknowledged in a national report card put out by the National Union of Students in November of last year. This report card sets out how universities have handled the fallout from the legislation. Students are warned in the union document that they ‘should be very wary about attending’ universities including Charles Darwin, Griffith and James Cook, ‘as they are unlikely to receive the same level of quality service provision and effective support as at other universities’.

According to Rose Jackson, the 2006 president of the National Union of Students, Charles Darwin University has been the worst affected by VSU, with the campus student union left with little support or staff. She said:

It means if you’re a student at Charles Darwin University who wants to appeal a grade, you have nowhere to go but the administration itself, you literally have nowhere to go. They didn’t even produce a student diary this year because they didn’t have the money.

That is another condemnation of this government’s approach. I say to the minister who made those insulting remarks about the Australian student body that she should rethink her attitude and do something a lot better to improve the outcomes in tertiary education in this country.

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker Bishop, it is a pleasure to see you in charge of this chamber this evening. I thank you on behalf of the member for Lingiari for your profound generosity, because his contribution strayed as far and as wide from the subject matter before the House as I guess was humanly possible. I also want to congratulate the Minister for Defence for not taking offence at the member for Lingiari’s comments, because the Minister for Defence’s previous portfolio role created enormous stewardship. It seemed to be the member for Lingiari’s ambition to try and bait him. I say to you, Dr Nelson: tolerance is a great attribute that you have—through you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Nevertheless, I am going to try and stick to the subject matter at hand, and that is the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007. I want to deal in particular with the research quality framework. I will make a number of comments, though, in quiet reflection on what the member for Lingiari said—without, I hope, incurring the wrath of you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I am a past student of Griffith University. I am in fact the first member of this House to have come from Griffith University. I guess I am also the first student of Runcorn primary school and MacGregor State High School to have entered this place, to the best of my knowledge. Griffith University, in my electorate, is working very hard at gathering a lot of research dollars off their own bat, not simply waiting for the dollars that might come through the government system, which is underpinned by the matters before us tonight, but also by gaining private research dollars to sponsor a number of very good things that it is doing in pharmaceutical research and the creation of new possibilities. That is the sort of thing that we have always expected from Griffith, which as a university is not even 35 years old. I was there on opening day. I remember shaking the hand of then Prime Minister Whitlam. I was a young teenager but I went along and met him on open day.

So I was the first ever student from Griffith University to stand in this place, but there have been others since. In fact, it is interesting because with the member for Bonner and Senator Mason being former students of Griffith University, and Senator Trood being a former professor at Griffith University, that makes it a complete set on this side of the chamber—from what is supposedly a very left wing campus. It has a very aggressive student union operating there, albeit not as well supported by the average student.

The other point I want to make on this is that, in the pursuit of research grants, Griffith have had to think outside the square. They have expanded their campus operations through Logan and to the Gold Coast. And they have done so quite deliberately, because they want to sponsor new ideas and the creation of new possibilities for Australia. I studied there part time. I suppose, in order to meet the member for Lingiari’s commentary head on, this whole question of students affording their time of study can be too overplayed. It is really important to note that there are many people just like me who have studied part time. I started there 20 years ago. I was in the workforce for 10 years before I started my bachelor of commerce degree. I am simply putting this on the record because I found the struggle of balancing full-time work and the obligations I had to the ABC and Channel 7—which is where I was working when I started my studies, being a media reporter with those stations—as well as the obligations to work at my university progress something that I gladly took on. I think there are a lot more students with a lot more ambition than perhaps those opposite realise.

There is not this great cohort of people attending university today who have a victim mentality that suddenly the cost of study is out of their reach. We have record numbers of people attending university today. Remember, as the Minister for Defence used to say when he was the minister for education: why is it that, if only 10 per cent of Australians get a university degree, the other 90 per cent has to subsidise their existence? Can’t we challenge that 10 per cent to actually make a contribution? I think I was one of the first people to ever pay the HECS requirements, which were of course introduced by the Labor Party. I simply make the point that I do not want to hear any more concepts of victimhood from those opposite.

Equally, we have more people studying from overseas in our fine universities, participating in the research and adding to the sum of knowledge that Australia is generating for the use of the world. We have 136,500 undergraduates from overseas studying in Australia today. There are another 90,000 who are studying as postgraduates. Based on 2005 figures we have almost 900,000 people studying in universities today. So there is no doubt in my mind about the viability of the university sector to create an environment of learning and an environment of strong research.

This bill tonight is adding further to the funding of the research quality framework, providing almost $41 million in current year prices over four years to help fund universities and other higher education providers to assist with the implementation of the research quality frameworks from July this year to December 2010. It gives certainty to this sector so that they can make the plans that they need to make, not to simply generate good research but to ensure the whole operation of their universities—it is absolutely vital. So in that regard, on the commentary about overseas students: full-fee paying students are very much at the heart of the way in which the university sector operates. It cannot be seen purely in isolation of research alone. It cannot be seen purely in isolation of those students who may be afforded a government no-interest loan through higher education subsidies. The demand of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme to make a contribution to the overall costs of higher education is quite reasonable. It cannot be seen as just that alone. It is all part of the overall mix of the economy that a university is—this multi billion dollar enterprise that we see right around the country today.

I note that it is quite timely that the Group of Eight is chaired by my former tutor Professor Glyn Davis AC, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Service Economy, Small Business and Independent Contractors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A very good man, too!

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hear the member for Rankin saying he is a very good man. He is actually anticipating my next comment. Glyn Davis was my tutor. When he was appointed to the vice-chancellorship of Griffith University, I think Wayne Goss and I were two of the three people who moved a vote of confidence in Glyn Davis.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Service Economy, Small Business and Independent Contractors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One out of two’s okay!

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Rankin says, ‘Some of them are okay.’ Let me tell you, through you Madam Deputy Speaker, that Professor Davis privately probably concedes that I was one that got away from him. He is a good supporter of the other side of the House. I think his efforts in the Goss administration were at the behest of the current Leader of the Opposition, actually. Professor Davis was brought in to give the advice on how to destroy the public service in Queensland sufficiently to turn it away from being an independent public service into a Labor Party public service. I must say that it was a masterstroke of the Leader of the Opposition to bring Professor Davis in, because he managed to do that. But Professor Glyn Davis, almost right on cue—as much as I respect my former teacher—put out a press release today that stated:

The Productivity Commission’s final report on the value of Australia’s public investment in science and innovation—

this is the research quality framework he is talking about—

... provides much food for thought ...

…            …            …

The Commission has found that Australia’s significant annual investment in its science and innovation systems results in widespread economic, social and environmental benefits—with the benefits likely to exceed the costs.

…            …            …

The Commission remains committed to the overall finding that the current level of public funding for Australia’s science and innovation systems is about right.

As I say, right on cue, Professor Davis says:

The Go8—

and this is a bit like Mao Zedong in a lot of ways—

looks forward to hearing the Government and Opposition’s responses to it, ...

I am sure this is what the member for Rankin will be contributing in the debate tonight—asking for more money without actually offering some sense of trust or indeed some sense of challenge to individual institutions to do a bit more of what Griffith itself has done; that is, to go and generate some more money based on its merits from the private sector.

This bill tonight obviously will support activities and systems required for participating institutions to engage effectively and efficiently with the research quality framework. It will help with the establishment of digital storage systems which become repositories for institutions throughout Australia through the Australian Scheme for Higher Education Repositories program. There is another acronym here, a five letter one this time—it is ASHER. That will allow the various types of research outputs to in fact be stored in an accessible digital store. There will be some $25 million in current year prices for that. Assistance will also be offered, some $16 million in current year prices, for new administrative and reporting systems and other compliance costs through an implementation assistance program.

So the government again is backing institutes and providing some of the additional grease for their various wheels—some of the wherewithal that they need. The Productivity Commission, of course, has said that the funding is right. The reason it would say that is very plain; that is, if you fund it without challenging the receivers of that funding to also play a role in being innovative and looking for ways to gather support from other quarters then they will simply become quite fat and lazy and will fail to be as innovative as they should be.

One of the key reasons is that the entire education system in Australia is essentially funded on a mistaken premise of supply rather than demand. We have this circumstance where we should never question the institutes of learning—where the institutes of learning should be the ones that control the way the business community engages with them. In my book the partnership between enough of these institutes and the business community is not sufficiently strong—because they are not responding to the demands of the real world; they are simply supplying what it is they believe the world actually needs. This kind of institutional arrogance, I hope, will not be further furnished.

Indeed, if a Labor government were elected later in the year, I think it would be. We would see a return to huge levels of taxpayer dollars going to fund friends in academia—to go and fund student union activities to go and then get a return, if you like, for the Labor Party on that kind of misuse of taxpayer funds during the political processes that might actually take place. If you like, the beaker of left-wing politics being the university sector would have to be resourced with larger sums of money if a Labor government were elected.

We on this side actually trust people with ambition to succeed, to grow and to learn things. We trust that these people will bring an energy to the task and that they will create the demand that should drive the response from the education sector. So I welcome the Productivity Commission’s observation in their final report on the value of public investment in science and technology, which was commented on today by the Group of Eight universities, that the balance is about right. I think in a lot of ways that completely defeats what the member for Lingiari was saying.

I will speak now about a number of the other matters contained within the bill’s measures. There are revised national protocols for higher education approval processes. They were agreed to by all states and territories at the MCEETYA meeting, the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, in July 2006. All ministers, state and territory as well as federal, after extensive consultations with the higher education sector, agreed that the revised national protocols would take place from 31 December 2007 and that legislative changes in all jurisdictions would be needed to bring that into effect. That is what we are doing here tonight. Stakeholders had the opportunity to comment on the new national protocols at two separate national workshops, face-to-face consultations and during two written submission processes. You could not get a more open approach to legislative reform than this particular approach that has been taken by Minister Bishop.

There are also technical amendments to clarify the Higher Education Loan Program, HELP, and Commonwealth supported student arrangements. We simply want to see, through these technical amendments, some clarification of the existing arrangements. The member for Lingiari was, somehow or other, saying that there was going to be a new group of victims created because students were being put under pressure that if they change their arrangements then they must tell people within six weeks. I do not understand what the member was in fact on about. What we are seeking is to clarify the overseas study requirements in relation to eligibility for the OS-HELP assistance. We want to make sure that this is in fact reflecting the original policy thrust and intent. We want to clarify the requirements for eligibility for Commonwealth supported places, particularly in relation to providers’ ability to actually offer a student a Commonwealth supported place—and of course that it is restricted to a particular campus of a provider. We do have universities in this country based in one part of Australia opening up shopfronts in other parts of Australia and saying, ‘Study in Sydney through Central Queensland University,’ for instance.

I am not picking on CQU, but I suppose in one sense I have used them to highlight the point. The University of Canberra has a Brisbane campus and so forth. There is nothing wrong with it, providing that students understand that they are not exactly a part of a major campus when they study at any of these locations. When you drive down some of the main streets of Sydney, you can see the shopfronts of some of the great universities and some of the smaller universities. Nevertheless, they are shopfronts; indeed, you can see them all around Australia. If the Commonwealth is going to support any of those places, we want to make sure that we clarify their requirements. We also want to clarify the residency requirements in relation to Commonwealth support for study undertaken offshore. At the end of it, tightening up matters such as the census date by limiting the time after the census date that a student can correct information is a reasonable and responsible measure that is within the government’s control to deal with.

We are also allowing for any provider with a Commonwealth supported place to offer a place to a student who is undertaking study across various institutions. This particular legislation is changing the circumstance where only providers known as ‘table A providers’ can offer cross-institutional students a Commonwealth supported place while they are undertaking units of study with another table A provider that counts towards their course. There is a deal of flexibility and clarity being brought into this. Whilst it seems like a simple thing, a minor technical amendment, to deal with, what was known as the Victorian University of Technology—which was trading very strongly in providing support across a wide range of subjects, both academic and practical—will now be known as Victoria University.

On every front, this legislation is timely, worth while, sensible and well thought out. Minister Bishop is doing a very good job in following on the tradition of good jobs done by ministers in this government when it comes to higher education. In determining our approach to public policy on universities, we are not blinded by the demands of student unions, who represent an ever-receding group of people and we are not blinded by the left-wing activists who are demanding that everybody must pay a student fee or they cannot study. What we are determined about is backing with resources those who want to back themselves. We are also about giving strong advocacy to those who choose not to go to university. The 70 per cent of kids who left school at the end of last year and who will not start a university course are given an enhanced status under this government, because only 30 per cent of kids leaving school in any given year actually start a university course and only about 30 per cent of them complete it.

If you listen to those opposite, the sky is going to fall in, the world is going to come to an end, unless you give the universities and, in particular, the student unions everything they want. This legislation is sensible; it is balanced. The Productivity Commission backs it. I commend it to the House.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In calling the member for Rankin, I would point out that I have permitted a wide-ranging debate, but I would ask that remarks reference the bill at hand.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Service Economy, Small Business and Independent Contractors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I will certainly do that intermittently. The Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007 contains a number of amendments. The one to which I wish to direct my remarks is the amendment to the Higher Education Support Act to reflect changes to the National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes. In my view, that is a very important set of changes.

The national protocols regulate the recognition of new universities, the operation of overseas universities in Australia and the accreditation of courses offered by providers of higher education. Under this legislation, key changes in the national protocols will include provision for a wider range of universities, including specialist institutions conducting teaching and research in one or two fields of study only and university colleges in the form of new universities undertaking teaching and research in a limited number of fields during an establishment phase.

The key changes also include an identified process for institutions other than universities to become authorised to accredit their own courses—that is, self-accrediting—where they demonstrate a strong track record in quality assurance and reaccreditation.

As a parliamentarian I do not feel that I am in a position to evaluate and speak with great authority on some of these changes, particularly those in relation to self-accreditation, but I do accept that they constitute a move in the right direction. I support the principles that guide these changes in the national protocols because it has long been my belief that we would benefit from greater flexibility in our higher education institutions in this country.

On a number of occasions, I have argued that the approach of the present coalition government has been highly prescriptive. Indeed, borrowing a phrase from Professor Max Gordon, I have suggested that it more resembles Moscow on the Molonglo—a command and control system which you would not believe that a coalition government would want to implement. But when you look at the number of regulations that have been imposed on our public universities over the last 11 years, you see that it is a very large number. This has greatly retarded the flexibility of our universities to adapt to changing circumstances.

The Minister For Defence is at the table. He is a former education minister and, while I respect his intellect, I think he implemented too many productivity stifling regulations in the name of ideology—for example, the requirement for universities to offer Australian workplace agreements in order to get extra funding. There is also the minister’s long-running campaign to enforce or implement voluntary student unionism. This, it seemed to me, was more a case of revenge of the nerds, as the minister and his companions on the front bench had been involved in student politics in years gone by and they wanted to get those student unionists back. Ultimately, they did to some extent, but it is hard to put good student unionists down and they will bounce back, no doubt.

I saw that very much as a diversion. In economic terms, we speak of the concept of opportunity costs, and I think that that period was a lost era for us. While the minister and his cabinet colleagues were obsessed with voluntary student unionism, other reforms to the higher education system that were crying out for implementation never did get implemented. I worry whether that reflects an attitude of the coalition government and, in order to justify that remark, I draw the attention of members of this House to statements that the Prime Minister has made in relation to higher education in this country. It seems that, from those statements, the Prime Minister sees the challenge for our education system to be mainly one of skills development in the traditional trades. Why do I assert that? The answer is, in part, provided by a statement the Prime Minister made on the Sunday program on 6 March 2005. It is quite a lengthy statement, but I think members of parliament and those who are listening would be interested in it. He said:

Quite a lot of the problem is that it’s a deep-seated cultural problem. We went through a generation in this country where parents discouraged their children from going into trades, and they said to them, “the only way you will get ahead in life is to stay at school until year 12, go to university.” Year 12 retention rates became the goal, high year 12 retention rates became the goal. Instead of us as a nation recognising there are some people who shouldn’t go to university, and what they should do is at year 10, decide they are going to become a tradesman.

…            …            …

Everybody doesn’t have to go to university, and a lot of people will be a lot better off if they don’t go to university and they recognise that at age 15 or 16, and go down the technical stream.

Here is the Prime Minister questioning not only the value of a university education but also the very appropriateness of having the goal of as many young Australians as possible completing high school. I am perplexed about that, because the Prime Minister has basically levelled a criticism at the Labor Party—that the Labor Party in government were too obsessed with higher education and that we should have concentrated much more on the trades. Yet just a couple of weeks ago here in this chamber, on 26 February, the Minister for Workforce Participation, in response to some comments I had made, said:

That is why your focus on and obsession with training we think is not in the best interests of all Australians.

So the Prime Minister has said repeatedly that Labor is not interested in training and is obsessed with university education, and the Minister for Workforce Participation has said that Labor is obsessed with training. They are going to have to get their act together in deciding what the critique of Labor in government and Labor in opposition truly is. We are either overly obsessed with university education or we are overly obsessed with training, but we cannot be overly obsessed with both.

I ask this question: if the Prime Minister truly believes that we should not have placed so much attention on lifting the high school completion rates, why is it that so many studies confirm that people with a university education, on average, earn at least 20 per cent more than those with a proper trade qualification, who in turn earn up to 20 per cent more than those who finish high school and do not go on to tertiary education, who in turn earn around 20 per cent more than those who leave school at year 10? Obviously there is a strong argument for young people to go into the trades or to go into higher education, and it therefore makes sense that young people complete either year 12 or its equivalent in a trade, which is the argument I have been making for a long time.

Last year the OECD released its annual report, called Education at a glance, and it had a special section dealing with this very issue. It concluded that now, in the modern world, completing high school is the minimum qualification for young people to successfully enter the labour market and to enjoy good prospects of ongoing employment. I say that the Prime Minister is wrong in his criticism of Labor, about our preoccupation with getting the high school completion rates up. We were very successful in doing that in 1982; the year 12 retention rate was 36 per cent. By 1995 it was more than 72 per cent. So, in round figures, there was an increase from about one in three young people finishing high school to more than two in three young people finishing high school during the period of the previous Labor government.

I accept that, once it is up to around 75 per cent, it is not easy to get it a lot higher a lot more quickly, but the problem is not that the high school completion rates are failing to rise at their previous rate but that they are actually falling. The government says that this is all because of the mining boom. Whatever the reason, when the mining boom finishes, if we do not have young people with year 12 qualifications or its equivalent then those young people will be consigned to long periods of low-paid and intermittent employment, and we should not leave our young people in that position.

If the Prime Minister was right in that we should not be concentrating on young people finishing year 12, why is it that Australian studies have estimated that a one-year increase in average levels of schooling would not only eventually lift gross domestic product by eight per cent, which is a large number, but also permanently boost economic growth by about half a per cent per annum? That is well and truly worth having.

Why has the fact that Australia did achieve these big increases in high school completion rates been shown to have lifted Australian productivity growth? That is the big debate of the early period of the 21st century—a debate about which political party is going to be successful in lifting productivity growth. In the 21st century, education is the dominant source of productivity growth—not only completing year 12 but, increasingly, completing a university education. This bill is important because it sets out a research quality framework, about which we have some concerns, but also offers some progress towards the very flexibility that I have been advocating for some time.

On our side of the chamber we make no apologies for the high value that we place on a university education. The Treasurer indicated today in the parliament that the second intergenerational report, an update of the original 2002 Intergenerational report, will be released by him at the National Press Club on 2 April. That is good because the first Intergenerational report, going through the numbers, reveals that the combination of the ageing population and the government’s assumption that productivity growth will slip back from 2005 onwards to its mediocre long-term average of 1.75 per cent is going to produce for this country from the end of this decade the slowest rate of growth in income per person since the decade of the Great Depression. That should be very worrying. I know, Madam Deputy Speaker Bishop, you follow the hearings of the Reserve Bank; the Reserve Bank has indicated that we will have to get used to economic growth figures with a two or a three in front of them unless we can lift productivity growth.

How do we lift productivity growth from that long-term mediocre average of 1.75 per cent? Through education; through the education revolution that the Labor leader and the shadow minister for education unveiled earlier this year and delivered further instalments on subsequently. It is crucial that we do not run up the white flag and accept productivity growth of 1.75 per cent, because that will consign future generations to a much slower rate of growth in prosperity unless there are resources to assist young people in getting a decent opportunity in life by helping fund their education.

What is significant about 1.75 per cent? It is the long-term average and it must be contrasted with the 2.6 per cent average productivity growth during the 1990s built on the reform program and very substantially on the lift in those year 12 completion rates to which I referred earlier.

Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Dr Nelson interjecting

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Service Economy, Small Business and Independent Contractors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister asked if it was 2.05 per cent. That figure is reflected in the Intergenerational report, but, if you have a look at the latest productivity growth figures, the series that is now available, it is 2.6 per cent per annum—that is, labour productivity growth over the period. So there is a big comedown from 2.6 per cent to 1.75 per cent. The problem is it is falling further; it is at about one per cent per annum. So Work Choices has not produced the sort of productivity growth that the government predicted it would.

Why is higher education, university education, so important? It is worth reading two books by Richard Florida; the first is The Rise of the Creative Class and the second is The Flight of the Creative Class. Richard Florida estimates that the creative class around the world consists of about 150 million people in areas such as science and engineering, and in professions such as artists, musicians, architects, managers and professionals—these are overwhelmingly university educated people. It is his contention—and I find it very persuasive—that it will be the ability to generate, attract and retain the creative people which will determine the prosperity and tolerance of different parts of world, not necessarily of countries but of regions or parts of countries. Those areas or parts of countries that are able to attract and retain such creative people will be affluent and tolerant; those that are unsuccessful will fall behind. I think that is a very sensible set of observations and predictions about the future.

In terms of Australia’s capacity and performance in nurturing creative people and retaining creative people in this country, there are some very chilling statistics. The OECD, in the report Education at a glance, reveals that since 1995 Australian government investment in tertiary education has gone backwards in real terms by seven per cent, whereas for the rest of the OECD it has gone forward by 48 per cent.

I note in parliament that the present education minister complained about the OECD statistics. I do not think you can have it both ways: we have the Treasurer, the education minister and the Prime Minister coming into parliament citing the OECD all the time, but when the OECD develops a set of statistics that the minister does not like she complains about it.

This government has greatly underinvested in higher education. One of the problems is the increases in HECS that have been implemented by this government. There was a first-round increase in HECS in 1997 and a very substantial increase in HECS of 25 per cent authorised from the beginning of 2005. Many universities immediately increased their HECS fees in 2005; others hoped that they would not have to do it, but all universities, I am advised, have now increased their HECS fees by the full 25 per cent.

In the education revolution, the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow minister for education have already foreshadowed areas where we believe that some HECS relief will be required. One of the effects of HECS has been that there has been virtually no growth since the change of government back in 1996 in the number of commencing undergraduate Australian students. When the minister talks about undergraduate students she brings foreign full fee paying students into the calculation. But when it comes to Australian HECS subsidised students there has been virtually no growth. The problem that that results in is that we are not doing well in generating the sort of creative talent that we need.

The minister says, ‘Because it’s a HECS system, the HECS fee increases will not have deterred anyone.’ That is not true. That is like saying, ‘If I double, treble or quadruple HECS, as many young people will still go to university.’ That is not the case. The minister has boasted that she has just about squashed out all of the unmet demand. It is like the price of bananas: you put up the price of bananas by enough and you will squash out the unmet demand. But the objective is to get young people through a university education in this country. This government is failing to do it. At least today, in that part of the bill, there are some positive indications. I think the principles of greater flexibility for our public universities are very encouraging and ought to be at least properly debated in the Senate. (Time expired)

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the member for Bass, I indicate that I have allowed a wide-ranging debate.

Michael Ferguson (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to support the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007. While the member for Rankin is still in the chamber I ought to point out to him that I listened carefully to his contribution. I feel for the member for Rankin. I sense in him a highly intellectual gentleman and a well-read fellow unfortunately trapped and unexploited in the Labor Party. I inform the member for Rankin, notwithstanding my high regard for him, that there are in fact 61,000 more Commonwealth funded—or, in the member’s words, Commonwealth subsidised—undergraduate places in Australia this year than in 1995. That is a 17 per cent increase. In contrast to the statement that there has been no growth, I want to point that out. In addition to that, the University of Tasmania prides itself on being one of those universities in Australia that has not taken up the opportunity to increase the HECS payments it requires from students.

This bill is designed to amend the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to provide funding to support the implementation of the research quality framework. Some features of this bill include giving effect to a revised set of National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes. The revised protocols will allow, for the first time, new types of institutions to operate here in Australia. The revised protocols will provide pathways for more institutions to become self-accrediting where they have a strong track record in higher education delivery and quality assurance—a rider which I think reassures all of us in this place. A significant change in the arrangements is the extension of the protocols to apply to all new and existing higher education institutions.

In other, separate measures, the bill allows for the first-time cross-institutional arrangements also to be extended to Commonwealth supported students at non table A higher education providers. Previously, Commonwealth supported students were only able to undertake study in Commonwealth supported places in a cross-institutional arrangement between table A providers. I welcome those changes, as the increasing flexibility being brought into the Commonwealth legislation will reap dividends at the local level and will give students more opportunities to learn and to take hold of their future and their potential. The amendment in this bill will provide greater flexibility not only for students but also for providers and will extend the range of study options available to Commonwealth supported students.

The bill also sets a six-week time limit for the provision of corrected information by a student that affects their eligibility for Commonwealth assistance. It ensures also that higher education providers may determine the campuses at which units of study will be offered to Commonwealth supported students. The bill will allow providers to stipulate that a student may be Commonwealth supported for the units of study only if the student undertakes those units at a particular campus of the provider.

The last thing I want to say about the revised national protocols is that they will encourage new types of institutions to operate in Australia. This is an important deviation from the existing arrangements, where it is required that teaching and research be provided in at least three fields of study. The new protocols, in line with the agreed commitment to increase flexibility, will allow new types of institutions to operate, including those concentrating on teaching and research in perhaps only one or two broad fields of study. These national protocols for higher education approval were agreed to by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs in July last year. So I suppose that, to a large degree, the arrangements which I have already canvassed basically have the endorsement of the House and both sides of the chamber. It seems, though, that that is where the agreement concludes.

This brings me to the research quality framework, which I see as a very important aspect of policy in this area and an important initiative of the government which is clearly needed in the research and higher education sector. The aim of the research quality framework, or RQF, is to develop the basis for an improved assessment of the quality and impact of publicly funded research and an effective process to achieve this. The RQF was announced by the Prime Minister in May 2004 as part of the Backing Australia’s Ability package. Since that time, two expert advisory groups—the Expert Advisory Group and the Development Advisory Group—have considered the RQF and have provided advice to the minister. That advice has been considered by the government, leading to the announcement late last year that the government would in fact proceed to implement an RQF.

The framework is imperative and has three roles. The first is to:

• be transparent to government and taxpayers—

who are investing in research—

so that they are better informed about the results of the public investment in research …

I do not think any of us ought to be satisfied with the notion of taxpayer funding—and we are talking about significant sums of taxpayers’ funds—going to research which is, in some cases, a bottomless pit or a black hole. There ought to be transparency and accountability. The second role of the framework is to:

• ensure that all publicly funded research agencies and research providers are encouraged to focus on the quality and relevance of their research …

This reflects a concern in the community that, at times, both in the higher education sector and in industry, research is not relevant to the wider community and does not demonstrate any real point. The research quality framework will overcome those concerns. The third role is to:

• avoid a high cost of implementation and imposing a high administration burden on research providers.

I would have thought that the benefits of the RQF were fairly obvious, but apparently they are not. It is very concerning to me that even tonight the Labor Party remain opposed to it—or at least I think they are. In talking it down and in showing some ambivalence on the issue, they have provided no suggestion of what better model ought to be supported. They provide no alternative policy, and the much talked about education revolution document—which in itself is an insubstantial document and contains motherhood statements—offers no opinion on it. I heard the member for Perth say earlier tonight that he hopes the Labor Party will be in a position to announce their position in the first half of this year, yet we continue to debate this bill tonight.

Trials of the RQF will continue this year and implementation will occur next year. There will be no funding implications before 2009. Of further concern to me are comments by Senator Kim Carr, who said that, in his view, the Labor Party would abolish the research quality framework despite the considerable funds that are being appropriated through this bill to support its implementation. He has not made it clear what he would replace it with after it was abolished. I put those statements on the record. I think it is very disappointing on the part of the opposition, having had nearly three years to consider its position on the research quality framework. To people who are outside the sector, I appreciate that it might seem a difficult area to understand, but this is very important for Australia’s future because research is important for Australia’s future.

I am disappointed because I do not believe that Labor has a position on this issue. It simply wants to allow the government to take all the hard decisions, to do the difficult work, to make the difficult policy decisions and to once again instigate reforms which are necessary for the Australian economy. The Labor Party will come lagging behind after all of the hard work has been done. Perhaps if, in the coming few months, the government’s initiative is widely accepted by the higher education fraternity, Labor will come rushing in before the election to say that it supports this. Just before commencing my contribution, I read the member for Perth’s amendment. I must say that I find it extremely wimpish and, disappointingly, insubstantial.

The Productivity Commission’s report Public support for science and innovation was released today. It highlights some interesting points. At over 800 pages, it will take some time for all concerned to digest. It does highlight that there are widespread and important economic, social and environmental benefits which are generated by Australia’s $6 billion of public funding support for science and innovation in this country. It also points out—and this is an important point coming from the Productivity Commission—that the benefits of public spending are likely to exceed the costs. It states in its report that it is very difficult to quantify and very difficult to find a model where the inputs and outputs can be measured with any great certainty, but that, on balance, it is fairly clear that the benefits of this $6 billion of annual public spending by the Howard government are worth while. These are investments that we need to make. They are important for securing our future and important for securing our economy.

The Productivity Commission makes the point, though, that major improvements are needed in some key institutional and program areas. This brings me back once more to the research quality framework. The whole point of this initiative, backed by something like $80 million of investment from the government to support its implementation, is to boost the quality and the impact of research. It stands to support university and higher education providers as research organisations; it stands to support industry itself, which can then turn those new ideas into commercial returns; and it stands to benefit the community generally. Of course, the bounds of that are as limitless as the bounds of research itself.

Since its introduction in 1986, the UK version of the RQF, the Research Assessment Exercise, has seen good improvements in research quality. This has been widely acknowledged. Between 1994 and 2002, the proportion of UK entries in the top one per cent of the world’s most cited research papers increased from around eight per cent to around 14 per cent. This was a very significant change and reform which resulted in definable benefits in the research community in Britain. The prestige of its research has clearly been acknowledged, and the relevance to its community, and indeed to the world research community, has been recognised. Clearly it has been a worth while exercise. It is time for Australia to do the same, and we ought to do it better. As I said, the Australian government is providing $87 million for our exercise, the RQF, including $41 million which is directly available to universities to assist them with implementation in this transition period.

The Productivity Commission also notes:

The benefits from the 2008 RQF round could be improved if its funding scales provide more significant penalties for the poorest research performers than apparently currently envisaged. In the long run, a transition to less costly approaches, such as those that target poor performing areas, should be considered.

While I do not presume to be able to critique that statement, I think it ought to form an important part of the government’s consideration of that report and the government’s response. I would invite the minister to closely look at that suggestion from the Productivity Commission. In discussions with the minister to that end, I was very pleased to hear from her that there will be a close and ongoing consultation with the higher education sector and universities and that the government will take the findings of the commission’s report into account in this process.

In the moments still allowed to me I wish to put some statements on the record with regard to my local higher education providers, two of the institutions that we as Tasmanians can be very proud of because they lead the nation. They are very good at what they do and they deserve some attention. The city of Launceston in my electorate of Bass is the proud home of the Australian Maritime College. It has distinguished standing not only throughout Australia but indeed throughout the world. The campus in Launceston offers programs in engineering, maritime operations, maritime logistics and maritime management. The Beauty Point campus offers courses in fisheries, marine resource management and small vessel operations. It is a stunning organisation. It has gone through in its few years, relatively speaking, immense change. In 2007 we have seen 434 Commonwealth funded places. The federal government is also supporting the AMC in other ways. In 2006 the college was awarded $108,000 for a workplace productivity project for the Beauty Point campus. It is also receiving $3.5 million each year in national institute funding under the federal government’s Backing Australia’s Future reforms.

It also has a great track record in excellence. Eighteen months ago I was very pleased to announce on behalf of the Australian government that the college would receive $1.1 million from the Australian government’s new initiative—I am not sure if it was supported by Labor—the Learning and Teaching Performance Fund, in recognition of its achievements in undergraduate teaching and learning. That was met with some chagrin from some of its competitors. It was one of only 14 tertiary education providers around Australia to be recognised in this way. I think this is something that the AMC Council and staff, and indeed students, can be very proud of and that they should be congratulated on. After all, the fund is purely merit based and it rewards teaching excellence.

In 2005 came speculation and later confirmation of an affiliation, or what some people have called a merger, between the AMC and the University of Tasmania. I have been concerned throughout the years that the AMC ought to in any future affiliation retain its unique qualities and certainly some strong aspects of its identity as well. It has an excellent brand across the maritime industry all around the world. At that time I communicated that to the then minister, Minister Nelson. I have seen since then a strong willingness from the AMC and the University of Tasmania to proceed on a basis that gets the best from both institutions. They give strengths to each other. I thank the vice-chancellor of the university as well as the AMC president for their commitment that the integration, which is subject to Australian government approval, will strengthen the overall provision of maritime education and training in Tasmania.

Finally, I would like to make a comment about the University of Tasmania. The University of Tasmania has an excellent staff and an excellent leadership team, headed by Vice-Chancellor Daryl Le Grew. He is one of the most proactive people in the higher education sector that I have ever met. Mr Deputy Speaker Kerr, I am sure you would agree he is a visionary person and he has been able to take the university from strength to strength. He has overseen in partnership with the Australian government the boosting of Commonwealth supported full-time students. The number has come up to nearly 10,000. The University of Tasmania is the university from which I graduated, so I take a good deal of pride in it. It is looking very good for the future, having recently received more than $2 million from the government’s Learning and Teaching Performance Fund, which demonstrates to one and all that, like the AMC, it has an excellent track record in teaching and learning and in preparing its graduates for the world of work. In closing, I support this bill. I do not support Labor’s amendments because they add nothing to the substance of this issue and they do nothing to advance higher education in this country. I support the bill and commend it to the House.

Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Might I simply mention, the member having directed some remarks at the Deputy Speaker, that I endorse his remarks in relation to the University of Tasmania and the vice-chancellor.

Annette Ellis (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to speak on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007. As pointed out by the member for Perth, we on this side of the House do not oppose this bill; however, we do have some serious concerns about certain aspects of it. I am forced to say that I do not believe that the honourable member for Bass, who has just spoken, has actually read the Smith amendment, because there is no way that you could call it wimpy or without direction.

The bill as presented to the House will, firstly, clarify requirements of the Higher Education Loan Program and arrangements for Commonwealth supported students. It will also amend the Higher Education Support Act 2003, or HESA, to implement the revised National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes. As well, it will amend the HESA, the Higher Education Funding Act 1988 and the Higher Education Support (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Act 2003 to limit the time for students to claim entitlement to Commonwealth support. It will also amend the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to provide funding to implement the government’s flawed research quality framework, the RQF, and it will make a range of minor technical amendments to the Higher Education Support Act. Although, as we have said, we on this side of the House will not seek to prevent its passage through this place, I am particularly concerned with the government’s implementation of the research quality framework, the RQF, which I will discuss in more detail in a moment.

Access to further education is definitely the path to prosperity—prosperity not just for our nation but also for our future generations. Each and every person in this country can benefit from lifelong learning, and access to higher education is an integral part of that. Unlike those opposite, we do not believe that our international competitiveness relies on a wages race to the bottom so that we can compete with low-wage economies in the developing world. We strongly believe that our economic future lies in us as a nation being smarter, not cheaper, than our competitors. That is a fundamental difference between those on this side of the House and the members on the other side. We will be making that clear distinction very clear to voters as we head towards the next election. The Leader of the Opposition has already commenced that process with his announcements on education policy and the need for an education revolution, and I am really excited about seeing that develop further this year.

Access to higher education and the ability of our universities to conduct high-quality research are essential to the economic future of our nation. I am of the view that during the last 11 years this government has made it harder and more expensive for Australians, particularly our young people, to get the higher education that many seek. This government has gone backwards on higher education and will be taking the country backwards with it if it is allowed to continue.

Over the 10 or 11 years of the Howard government they have reduced their investment in higher education by seven per cent while other developed countries have increased their investment in higher education by up to 48 per cent. Every other government in the developed world can see the value in investing in education. The government has increased the cost of going to university to the point where it is now in some cases a major disincentive to young people considering their career options. We have seen the cost of a degree increase by up to $30,000. Students are now paying $30,000 for a science degree when we cannot get enough scientists and science teachers, and they are paying $40,000 for a law degree. As a consequence of these increased costs, students around Australia owed nearly $13 billion in HECS in 2005-06. I want to say quite clearly that that $13 billion has accumulated over a number of years, but it is not being helped by these rising costs in more recent years. Students completing their degrees are starting their working lives with very high levels of debt. As has been discussed many times in the community, in the media and here, the crisis in housing affordability means that young people facing HECS debts that are far too high are starting their careers financially stressed. The track record of this government on higher education is shameful, as it is on research and innovation.

Let me return to the research quality framework, the RQF, outlined in this bill. It is another example, I believe, of the government getting it basically wrong. We have serious concerns about the proposed RQF—in fact, we believe that it is fundamentally flawed. I note the concerns of the Group of Eight, which includes the Australian National University, here in Canberra, which provides tertiary education to many people from my electorate and is a world-renowned university. Professor Glyn Davis, Chair of the Group of Eight, has expressed concern about the RQF and the time frame for its implementation. In November last year, Professor Davis said:

... it is very important that any new research assessment model is robust and tested to ensure it is accurate and cost-effective before implementation. It will be difficult to achieve this in the proposed 2008 implementation time-frame.

And Professor Davis and the Group of Eight are not alone. The government’s own Productivity Commission has also expressed serious concern. The commission’s report Public support for science and innovation, released today, also outlines its concern that the costs of the RQF ‘may well’ exceed the benefits. In a media release, the commission says:

The Commission favours a scheme that is more strongly weighted against the poorest research performers than currently envisaged. ... the Commission suggests the use of a lower cost, risk-minimisation approach that only applies to poor performing areas in universities.

In fact, I believe the government’s pursuit of the flawed RQF shows just how behind the times they are. They are not a government for the future. They modelled the RQF on the British Research Assessment Exercise, an approach that I believe is about to be abandoned in the UK.

The irony of all of this is that in formulating its research quality framework this government should have done more research and research of a better quality. Whilst we will not be opposing the appropriation of the $40.8 million to implement the RQF, we believe that the RQF should be taken back to the drawing board. Labor do support measures to increase the standard of research conducted in our universities, but we and many in the university sector believe there could have been a better way. Of course, the approach to the RQF by those opposite is typical of their bungling of science and research as a whole over the last decade.

According to the Productivity Commission, funding for the CSIRO—our peak national research body—has been cut by 13 per cent over the past decade. How can we build a smarter, more prosperous future whilst we are reducing government expenditure on science and research? My colleague the member for Perth has moved an amendment to the provisions in the bill relating to the RQF, and I fully support this common-sense amendment. I want to refer again to some rather light comments made by the previous government speaker, the member for Bass, when he called the amendment ‘wimpish’. I do not know how it could be wimpish when it says:

… any initiative in this area must be robust, rigorous and support an open and transparent process of peer review;

There is nothing wimpish about that—or when it says:

… essential aspects and details of the scheme are yet to be worked out, so that implementation for 2008 is in serious doubt;

Really, you have to assess things a little better, rather than calling this amendment ‘wimpish’. This bill also covers a number of other, less controversial matters. One of these is the changes to the national protocols for higher education approval processes which regulate the recognition of new universities, the operation of overseas universities in Australia and the accreditation of courses offered by providers of higher education. All Australian governments have agreed to amend their legislation so that the national protocols take effect from the end of this year.

Major changes in the protocols include: provision for a wider range of universities, including specialist institutions conducting research in one or two fields of study only, and university colleges in the form of new universities undertaking teaching and research in a limited number of fields during an establishment phase; an identified process for institutions other than universities to become authorised to self-accredit where they have a good track record; and application of the protocols to all higher education facilities, to be assessed through the standard quality assurance processes.

I understand that while the protocols have been agreed to by the Ministerial Council on Eduction, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, the guidelines that underpin them have not. I fail to see why we in this place are being asked to vote on this bill without the full picture being agreed upon. It is my understanding that the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee has raised similar concerns. Once again, we see that the government is rushing through this legislation. This is proved by the fact that the government is moving amendments to its own legislation. These changes have the potential to open up our university sector to greater competition and specialisation, but we must proceed with caution. Higher education is a major export dollar earner for Australia. I understand that it now earns approximately $10 billion for this nation annually. Our education exports are built around the excellent international reputation of our higher education system, and we in this place must be very, very careful that we do not diminish that reputation in any way by changing these protocols.

Over the last few years, there have been allegations of ‘fees for degrees’ at some higher education institutions—that is, full-fee paying students being given a free ride to keep the cash coming in—and allegations of full-fee paying students being failed so that they must complete a subject again and pay more. We must ensure that we make it as difficult as possible for unscrupulous operators to operate in our higher education sector. We do not want them and they have the potential to cost this country and the higher education sector very dearly. Other provisions in the bill relate to the residency requirements for Commonwealth supported students and student access to OS-HELP and FEE-HELP programs. My understanding is that these are fairly straightforward amendments and they will allow students who are required to travel overseas for their studies to continue to receive government assistance.

In concluding, I represent an electorate that is serviced by two excellent higher education facilities, the University of Canberra and the Australian National University—although I have to say that we have four tertiary institutions. I must make sure that I mention that. I would like to take this opportunity to place on the public record my ongoing support for the great work, in both research and in teaching, that is undertaken by the staff at the universities in the ACT, particularly the two I mentioned. They are also major contributors to the economy here in the ACT and provide educational services for students from regional areas surrounding the territory, although their contributions cannot be measured only in an economic sense.

The tertiary institutions in this town provide services of great interest and benefit to the local community—reaching out beyond their student base and into the community as a whole. They bring a vibrancy to our community not just economically or intellectually but also socially. They also provide many people from around Australia—and from other parts of the world—with their first introduction to Canberra. I know that there are many people in the parliament who have studied in Canberra in the past. I am often surprised when yet another colleague from somewhere in this place comes up to me and says, ‘I actually did my first degree at the ANU,’ or, ‘I did my tertiary studies in Canberra.’ I am always proud to hear those comments. I commend all the staff at these institutions for the outstanding contributions they have made over the years, and I look forward to the continuation of those contributions.

I very strongly endorse the advice of our shadow minister in relation to this bill and in particular the amendment moved by him. It would be a great day if the government would not only be interested in their own amendments but also seriously look at the words in the amendment moved by our shadow minister.

Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Canberra and note that she has an abundance of excellent tertiary institutions in her electorate.

Barry Wakelin (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government amendment to the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007 was introduced into the House of Representatives less than a month ago, so it is well on its way to becoming part of the legislative framework. This bill builds on the government’s $8.2 billion investment in higher education this year, which is a 26 per cent real increase on 1995. Australia compares well internationally in education. Around 31 per cent of Australians aged 25 to 64 have a tertiary qualification, compared with the OECD country mean of 25 per cent. Thirty-five per cent of Australia’s 19-year-olds are engaged in tertiary education, which is seven per cent higher than the OECD average. Therefore, to suggest that the Australian government’s investment in tertiary education declined between 1995 and 2003 is simply wrong. In her second reading speech the minister said:

That is only taking half the picture—and leaving out much of our training expenditure and taxpayer subsidies to higher education students. Including such public subsidies, Commonwealth funding for postschool education has increased by 35 per cent in real terms since 1995-96.

It should be quite clear that the Australian government’s strong commitment to higher education is very obvious. This bill builds on that $8.2 billion investment.

There has been some discussion this evening about the research quality framework, the RQF, and whether the UK is abandoning this process. It is my advice that that is not the case. After more than 20 years of successful operation, the United Kingdom has undertaken significant consultation, and there will be a full peer review process of the research metric. The UK is just simplifying its own processes.

I thought it worth while defining the repository because, I must admit, I am on new ground. Apparently a repository is an electronic location where data is stored and maintained. So far so good. A repository is a place where multiple databases or files are located, for distribution over a wider network. Institutions will store their research outputs in a repository with DEST, which will provide an interface for assessors to access the evidence, portfolios and other necessary information from the universities’ repositories.

Research output stored in repositories will range from traditional journal articles to non-traditional research items, including multimedia items and architectural designs. I welcome that investment. I hear the concerns from the other side, but we should never lose sight of the fact that if all of the research that is now available were implemented—if people actually knew about it and were able to access it in a more usable form—the whole system would be significantly enhanced. This is a $40 million investment over four years, and I certainly welcome that initiative.

The bill will also give effect to a national protocol for higher education approval processes. If you think this legislation has not gone through a reasonably protracted process, the national protocols were first agreed to in 2000 by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, and they regulate the recognition of new universities, the operation of overseas universities in Australia and the accreditation of courses offered by higher education institutions. In July 2006, ministers approved a set of revised national protocols, to take effect from 31 December 2007, which will require legislative changes in all jurisdictions.

In separate measures, the bill allows for the first time cross-institutional arrangements to be extended to Commonwealth supported students at non-table A higher education providers. Previously, Commonwealth supported students were only able to undertake study in Commonwealth supported places in a cross-institutional arrangement between tables A providers. I welcome this greater flexibility.

There are a number of other measures. The six-week time limit for the provision of corrected information by a student was touched on earlier. The bill also clarifies the overseas studies requirement in respect of eligibility for OS-HELP assistance by enabling a student to apply for OS-HELP assistance if they are already overseas. It is a practical suggestion.

The bill requires a Commonwealth supported student to reside in Australia while undertaking their studies, although provision is made to ensure entitlement to Commonwealth support and assistance where a student is required to be overseas for part of their course of study. In addition to these measures, the bill contains some minor technical amendments which will improve the overall operation of the Higher Education Support Act 2003. One such measure is to ensure that the suspension of approval as a higher education provider under the act will be a legislative instrument and therefore made publicly available on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments.

In concluding my contribution on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment Bill this evening, we can be well assured that our higher education sector is in excellent shape. There will always be need for reform, and change is constant, but the constant debate I hear in this place that this government has cut resources to this sector and in some ways has devalued this sector through that mechanism is absolutely nonsense. I am pleased to support the bill tonight.

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome this opportunity to speak on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007. Any debate about education policy is important, so it is good to be able to participate in this debate tonight. As Labor identified earlier in the year in our call for an education revolution in Australia, education is the key to future prosperity. We are currently in danger of falling behind our competitors in the rest of the world without a significant investment in all levels of our education system—in early childhood education, primary and secondary schooling, vocational education, universities and research. Sadly, this bill does not signal a move by the government towards these national imperatives. However, Labor will not oppose the bill, despite some reservations, as outlined in the second reading amendment moved by the shadow minister.

This bill does a number of things. It revises the maximum funding amounts provided under the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to provide funding to support the implementation of the research quality framework. The Higher Education Support Act will be amended to reflect the changes to the national protocols for higher education approval processes. The bill introduces a number of measures relating to the administration of the higher education loan program and arrangements for Commonwealth supported students. In addition, there are a number of other minor amendments to improve the operation of the Higher Education Support Act.

I will turn first to the changes that this bill makes to the national protocols. The existing national protocols for higher education approval processes were first approved by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs in 2000. Those protocols regulate recognition of new universities, the operation of foreign universities in Australia and the accreditation of courses offered by higher education institutions. The protocols agreed by the two levels of government are an important safeguard of quality in the higher education sector within Australia. These protocols were reviewed in July 2006 and amended by agreement. The five protocols which were agreed upon in 2006 are:

Protocol A Nationally agreed criteria and approval processes for all higher education institutions

Protocol B Criteria and processes for the registration of non self-accrediting higher education institutions and the accreditation of their higher education course/s

Protocol C Criteria and processes for awarding self-accrediting authority to higher education institutions other than universities

Protocol D Criteria and processes for establishing Australian universities

Protocol E Criteria and processes for overseas higher education institutions seeking to operate in Australia

The new protocols contain some significant changes to the current arrangements. For example, there is provision for a wider range of universities, including specialist institutions conducting teaching and research in one or two fields of study only. And institutions other than universities will be able to seek authority to accredit their own courses where they demonstrate a strong track record in quality assurance.

While the new protocols retain the understanding of universities as research based institutions, there is scope in the changes to allow for greater liberalisation of the sector by facilitating the establishment of specialist universities and university colleges. This liberalisation and increased competition within the sector can bring benefits but it absolutely has to be supported by the protocols’ other function, which is to set high standards for higher education providers and protect Australia’s reputation as a provider of high-quality education. We need to be able to give that guarantee to our own students, and it is also vital that Australia maintains its standards and reputation for quality education in the global marketplace for international students.

This market is essential to public institutions which have been starved of Commonwealth funding over the last decade. The funding shortfall per student has recently been valued by the University of Melbourne’s vice-chancellor, Glyn Davis, as approximately $1,200 per student. Thus, the income from the $10 billion international student market is essential to the ability of higher education institutions to continue to provide world-class courses for all their students, both domestic and international.

These new protocols have been scheduled to take effect from 31 December 2007, following the agreement of the Commonwealth and state governments to legislate to that effect. Accordingly, Labor supports the implementation of these five protocols. However, the guidelines underpinning the protocols have yet to be formally discussed and, in fact, are due for discussion at the April meeting of MCEETYA. It is concerning to see the Howard government attempting to set the guidelines through this legislation without waiting for the consensus of MCEETYA. This demonstrates yet again the arrogance of this government, as they have decided to act unilaterally on the details of how to achieve this policy without the planned MCEETYA consultation in spite of the fact that its implementation is reliant on the cooperation of every state government in the country. The strength of these protocols has been their development and acceptance by all governments and it is a shame to see the Howard government treating that process of consultation through MCEETYA in such an offhand way.

There is similar evidence that this legislation has been rushed and poorly thought through when it comes to the parts relating to the research quality framework. This bill revises the maximum funding amounts allowable under the Higher Education Support Act 2003 in order to provide revenue for the establishment of the Howard government’s research quality framework—the RQF—starting in 2007. Specifically, the bill provides $40.8 million for two programs to assist universities and other higher education institutions with the implementation of the RQF. Given the concerns raised by the education sector it is important to evaluate the framework when debating the appropriation of its funding.

The RQF for publicly funded research will measure the quality and, as the government tells us, the impact of research. The results of that exercise will provide the basis for distributing research funding to universities. The recommended RQF model requires 13 panels of 12 reviewers each to assess research quality and impact scores on the basis of the evidence submitted. Each of the panels must comprise of a minimum of three international assessors and three end users. End users must come from industry, business, the public sector or community organisations and must be persons who can legitimately verify claims of impact.

The first step of this complex process is that institutions nominate eligible research groups and researchers for inclusion. The research groups need to provide evidence portfolios in order to be assessed by the panels. These include four best research outputs per researcher, a full list of research outputs and statements of impact that can be verified by qualified end users of the research. The evaluation of the panels is then reported to the minister on the basis of research groups, not individual researchers, for the allocation of funding.

However, logistical concerns have been raised with regard to the operation of this system. According to data compiled by Deakin University, there are over 36,000 full-time academic staff in the university sector, of whom 44 per cent hold teaching and research or research only appointments. It is likely that about 12,000 of these are RQF eligible—that is, they each produce at least four research outputs in five years. It stands to reason, therefore, that each of these staff will submit four research outputs in an RQF assessment, resulting in 48,000 items requiring assessment. If there are 13 assessment panels with 12 members each, and each item is seen by two panel members, a panel member will have to assess over 600 items. The load on a panel member is thus the equivalent of examining each of eight to 10 higher doctorate theses twice, once for quality and once for impact. This is a big ask. For an expert in a field to examine one such thesis against well-known criteria in no more than a week would be unusually fast.

Thus, it is possible that the assessors will have limited time to make detailed assessments and may end up judging research on easily identifiable aspects such as peer citation papers and the ‘impact factor’ of the journal in which they were published, rather than actually reading the work and forming a judgement. Therefore, it is likely that the RQF assessment process will see judgements based on a much smaller set of criteria than is intended or desirable.

It is also possible that the focus on research outcomes measured in terms of impact and quality may discourage innovative new projects aimed at achieving new knowledge. Instead, researchers and funding providers will prefer more conservative, outcome-assured proposals. It is interesting to note that Britain’s Research Assessment Exercise is very similar to the proposed RQF and is currently under review due to the complexity of that system. This is a sobering evaluation of the likely success of the government’s RQF model.

Other criticisms of the proposed RQF have focused on the rushed nature of the implementation process, which has occurred prior to the adequate testing and finetuning of the assessment methodology. As stated by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, Glyn Davis:

... with the proposed implementation timed for 2008, it will not be simple to guarantee that any new research assessment model is robust and tested in order to ensure its accuracy and cost-effectiveness.

This sentiment was echoed in the Productivity Commission’s review of the public support for science and innovation. The report recommended that the RQF’s implementation be placed on hold until there was substantial testing of the coalition’s preferred model.

Others have questioned the need for change and whether the RQF will deliver on its claims. The Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee noted that there is no significant evidence of poor quality research under the present funding system and any changes need to carefully consider the incentive structure. But, of course, as we have seen many times before, under this government recommendations of the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee have frequently been ignored in other policy areas—and, in this case, it seems the Productivity Commission’s warnings have also been disregarded.

The National Tertiary Education Union has voiced its concern over the potential for universities to manoeuvre in attempts to maximise their institutional funding outcomes from the new system. There are legitimate fears that the RQF model could encourage poaching of researchers from one university to another without any net benefits to Australian research overall. In fact, poaching of researchers is one of the reasons that the British are abandoning their research framework, which the government has relied on to argue the case for its RQF.

The University of Adelaide’s submission in response to the 2005 issues paper summarises the concerns of many when it points out:

In order for the RQF to be worthwhile, it needs to ‘add value’ or significantly improve on the present metric based processes for allocating research block grants—particularly if the intention is to allocate all, or part, of the research block grant funding on the basis of RQF outcomes. As part of this process, it will be important to be clear what ‘research’ is taken to mean in this context, ie what is the scope of the RQF and what activity is, or is not, to be included for review and funding as ‘research’ activity.

The RQF should seek to better inform Commonwealth Government decisions on the overall level and strategic allocation of research, research training and research infrastructure funding. In particular, the RQF must enable the institutions and the Commonwealth Government to benchmark Australian research against the very best in the world. It will be important to develop a funding model that will both maintain the diversity of the sector to meet a wide range of competing needs and reward research excellence that meets, or exceeds, agreed national and international benchmarks. It is not clear how these important objectives are to be achieved, or how closely the RQF might be linked to national strategic research needs (eg national research priorities, national research infrastructure framework).

Further, where the criteria of quality and impact have clearly been met, it is not clear how the critical underlying issue of the full funding of research is to be addressed. If this latter issue is not addressed, it is difficult to understand how the long-term objective of the RQF to enhance the quality of the national research effort relative to our international peers can be achieved.

Those questions remain unanswered.

The key recommendation from many sources, which has been repeatedly ignored by the minister, is that the RQF’s implementation be delayed until such time as there has been sufficient testing and analysis of the impact of the new requirements. In fact, the minister’s own department reinforced that view in Senate estimates just a few weeks ago. I note a report in the Australian on 21 February 2007 on those Senate estimates proceedings. That report said:

In Senate Estimates last week DEST officers revealed there was still much preparation to be completed and a lot of decisions to be made before it began.

DEST’s Evan Arthur said the Government had not made a decision about the specifics of how the RQF will affect the funding of universities.

…            …            …

Dr Arthur said broad criteria had been developed to apply to rankings of quality and impact.

Dr Arthur went on to say:

However, there is a lot of detailed work to be done to make those appropriate for the various discipline clusters that the panel will address.

I move on now to another issue—that is, the issue of adequate funding for the desired research quality outcomes. That issue is not provided for in this legislation and continued funding shortfalls can only be expected to damage the ability of Australian higher education institutes to reach the forefront of international research. This has been pointed out to the minister by no less an authority than Australia’s Chief Scientist. Jim Peacock, who chaired the minister’s advisory working party, the development advisory group, warned the minister in his report that overall research funding needed to be increased. Specifically, Dr Peacock said:

The Advisory Group strongly recommends that ... the overall block grant envelope should be increased ... This would be an effective mechanism to encourage research of high quality and relevance ...

Dr Peacock goes on to say that if funding is to award impact as well as quality then more is needed. These are important questions for the minister and important issues for the government to satisfy both the Labor Party and the research sector about as it proceeds with this legislation and with the RQF.

The Labor Party shares the view that it is important to maintain the highest research quality, and as such supports a quality assurance scheme. However, I have doubts about the approach taken by the government to achieve this end and, indeed, whether or not this complex system will actually make a significant improvement to the quality of Australian research. Labor have signalled our plans to scrap the RQF if we win government and direct the $87 million earmarked for RQF implementation to create a new quality assurance system for universities that will encourage universities to concentrate on their research strengths. Our system will be rigorous, transparent, fair and efficient—something the government cannot guarantee for the RQF.

In the meantime, the Labor Party will not oppose the passage of this bill. It is, however, unfortunate that the Howard government continues to push through flawed legislation in an area of policy that is so vital to the future of Australia. Every time new and onerous administrative requirements are placed on the higher education sector, resources are diverted from the important role of universities in promoting research, development and teaching. The Howard government’s continued approach of underfunding while simultaneously overmanaging our university and research sectors is unsustainable and ultimately damaging for our nation’s future prospects.

Bruce Baird (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007. This bill deals with a variety of the technical aspects of university operations, such as recognition of new universities and accreditation for their courses, as well as making changes to arrangements for Commonwealth supported students. While this legislation is largely technical in nature, it provides an opportunity to consider some trends in higher education in Australia at the moment.

One very successful element of our higher education strategies has been the encouragement and incentives we have offered to overseas students to come and study in Australia at our tertiary institutions. That has been a great success story and is now providing the Australian economy with an extra $10 billion a year. There are now 240,000 international students studying at Australian tertiary institutions. This is an increase of 350 per cent since 1996, when there were less than 55,000 international students studying here.

In a general sense, the university sector is in a strong financial position. Annual revenue in 2005 was $13.9 billion, up $6 billion since 1996, and the sector’s operating surplus in the same year was $838 million. Total net assets of the university sector sit at $25.7 billion and cash and investments at $7 billion. It goes without saying that Australian universities are running financially sound operations.

It is worth mentioning that this strong position the universities find themselves in has been hard fought for, and has come about with no assistance from state governments. When you take into account the amount of payroll tax the states take from universities around the country each year, you realise that they actually take $148 million more from the universities than they provide in funding.

This is indicative of the state governments’ very regressive attitude towards the taxation burden they place on organisations. Despite now receiving more funding than ever under the GST arrangements, they have allowed indirect state taxes to remain. These state taxes are of course acting as a disincentive for businesses to grow and a disincentive for organisations like universities to grow. But they are still growing. The number of university students in Australia has passed one million, a more than 50 per cent increase from 1996, when we were elected to government. There are 180,000 more undergraduate students than 11 years ago and the number of postgraduate students has doubled to 265,000.

Commonwealth funding for research and development funding to Australian universities increased by 66 per cent in real terms from 1995 to 2005. The higher education sector in Australia is progressing well despite the extra burden placed upon it by state governments around the country. The government strongly advocates encouraging the business community to invest in the higher education sector, and this bill will assist in this goal.

The implementation of the research quality framework, RQF, is one aspect of this bill that will give the business community great confidence. There have been two advisory groups that have recommended the implementation of the RQF to better measure research and development outcomes at Australian universities. The late Sir Gareth Roberts chaired the first group and Australia’s Chief Scientist, Dr Jim Peacock, chaired the second. Both groups supported the RQF and saw a clear need for a way to measure the value of research and development in a more complex fashion than simply counting the number of publications produced.

The current system is, after all, a remarkably simplistic one. The status of a university is entirely determined by the number of their publications. How can the research contribution of a university be measured by the number of publications it has produced without considering the quality of these publications or even the usefulness of the research itself? We know how many papers are being published but we do not know if they are any good. That is why the research quality framework is needed and that is why it is strongly supported by the sector, the experts and the business community. It will help the government and the business community fund better quality research not just a higher volume of research.

The research quality framework will affect only $600 million worth of research block grants out of the $8.2 billion that the government gives annually to the university sector. So only a moderate amount of the funding will come under these new arrangements, which will be implemented next year. That the Australian Labor Party still has no clue as to its position on the research quality framework should be of little surprise to any of us in this place.

Labor’s industry and science spokesman, Senator Carr, said that he would abolish the RQF, but what will Labor replace it with? The member for Perth said in an interview with Campus Magazine only last month that he was ‘struggling with the detail’ of the RQF and that ‘Labor has yet to decide whether or not to endorse the RQF’ and ‘more importantly, if I was going to stand up and say, “We are going to knock it over the first question would be what are you going to put in its place and I don’t have that answer yet either”.’ There are a lot of questions there and not a lot of answers.

It is the usual story from the Labor Party. They are completely unable to embrace reform that is in the best interest of the sector. They are deeply afraid of change and, while they oppose change, they propose no viable alternative policies of their own to deal with the very clear need that exists to measure, in a qualitative fashion, the contribution of research and development in Australian universities. This is the usual, tired approach of the Labor Party. They are more than happy to knock our policies but it is very rare that they put forward any alternative views or propose any constructive policies themselves.

The government has decided to make the much-needed changes in this area. It will spend $87.3 million on implementing the research quality framework. Of that amount, $41 million will go directly to the universities to meet the costs associated with their compliance. The remaining $46 million has been used to meet costs associated with the very thorough consultative process the government put in train several years ago.

The end result of this legislation being passed is that Australia’s higher education sector will produce research of measurable value which will have commercial application and higher community impact. That is what is of most value to the Australian people and that is what is in the national interest. Significantly, as well, that is what the business community wants so that it can have greater confidence in where it invests in the higher education sector.

Another area I would like to touch on briefly is the work of the CSIRO and other scientific research bodies in Australia, particularly the tertiary sector. A recent Productivity Commission report reflected very negatively on the public support made available to this area. The government has consistently provided strong support for science and innovation in Australia. It is now spending a record $6 billion annually on research and development, which is a generous amount to provide to the sector. In fact, the Productivity Commission outlined the significant economic, social and environmental benefits that are flowing from this investment in the sector.

The commission, of course, outlined areas of concern. It is particularly worried about the number of available researchers and professionals in the science and engineering fields. Shortages in this area are a testament to the strength of the economy, so the government should not be faulted in that regard. However, we have been aggressively promoting the study of mathematics and science in schools through our Australian School Innovation in Science, Technology and Mathematics Program, which is worth $34 million. A further $5 million is being provided to the Australian Academy of Science to boost science teaching in primary schools around the country to improve learning outcomes in this area. This program is already being rolled out in many schools across the country.

When the economy is in such good shape and when unemployment is at a 32-year low, we are faced with unique problems. There is full employment in Australia and so many industries find themselves short of workers. We are aware of this problem and are actively addressing it with a variety of initiatives. Can I say, though, that I would much rather have a shortage of scientists as a result of the economy being strong and there being so many new jobs created in the field than to have one million Australians out of work and on the breadline, as occurred under the previous government. That is an easy choice. The fact that we are facing shortages in some areas is a testament to the government’s economic performance over the past 11 years.

We acknowledge, however, that it is an issue that places constraints on the economic performance of some sectors, and we are genuinely addressing the issue. For example, under the Skills for the Future Program, we are investing an additional $56 million from 2008 to fund an extra 500 Commonwealth supported engineering places at university. This is on top of the 510 new engineering places which were announced by the minister last year and which began this year.

The CSIRO is an organisation that is, in my view, unfairly maligned. Despite alarmist commentary that suggests the organisation is bereft of job satisfaction, the staff turnover rate has actually declined by four per cent in the past 10 years. So to say that the CSIRO is in some way an employer of last resort for graduates or that its workforce is unhappy is clearly mischievous. We have increased funding over the past 11 years by 11 per cent in real terms, and the upcoming financial year will be the CSIRO’s largest budget in history. We have just committed to baseline funding of $2.5 billion over four years to secure the CSIRO’s leadership of scientific research in Australia. The Productivity Commission endorsed our continuing support of the organisation, and we will continue to consider it as a major priority.

I wholeheartedly support the aim of this legislation. The research quality framework is a necessary and positive step for the sector to operate under a more measurable system for research and development. This will be to the sector’s benefit and it will encourage private investment in their research. The area of science and innovation will continue to grow significantly with strong Commonwealth support and a range of measures to provide extra training to ease skills shortages. I commend the bill to the House.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007 is designed to deal with the implementation of the government’s rather contentious research quality framework for universities, to regulate the recognition of universities and courses offered by higher education institutions and to change the eligibility requirements for higher education loan programs. Whilst I am not opposed to the bill, I have very serious concerns about it. I feel very comfortable in supporting the amendment moved by the shadow minister as it highlights those areas of concern that I and fellow members on this side of the House have with this legislation.

The shadow minister makes the point very clearly in his amendment that any initiative in this area must be robust, rigorous and support an open and transparent process of peer review. Unfortunately, we on this side of the House have come to expect legislation that does not achieve those points. Robust and rigorous this legislation is not. The day I come into this House and speak on a piece of legislation that the Howard government introduces that is actually transparent, I will be very surprised, as will other members on this side of the House. Transparency and accountability are two things that the arrogant Howard government seeks to avoid at all times.

The shadow minister also deals with the RQF and how it is likely to constitute a disincentive to undertake long-term basic research as proposed by the government. We on this side of the House once again support RQF, but we feel that the way the government has formulated this is not the way to go and it will not achieve what we would like to see. We would like to see an RQF that will actually encourage research and ensure that the quality of the research that is undertaken is up to standard.

The government’s record in education is appalling. Australia’s investment in education has decreased by 70 per cent under the Howard government, whilst at the same time investments by other OECD countries have increased by 40 per cent—that is, Australia down 70 per cent; other OECD countries up 40 per cent. These figures are from the OECD publication, Education at a glance. We in this House know the importance of education. We know the importance of higher education, and we all recognise that Australia’s future lies in having an educated and a highly skilled workforce. Australia’s future lies in leading the way in research; it lies in the fact that we must have quality research. This legislation really lets us down in that area and will do nothing whatsoever to improve the situation.

I feel that we have to look very carefully at any legislation that is put before the parliament by this government. Unfortunately, today is the first anniversary of the Howard government’s Work Choices legislation, and I cannot help but reflect on the fact that the Howard government has tied funding for universities to the fact that their staff must sign AWAs. It is a government of zealots and ideologists, and it is the Australian people who suffer.

Now I will concentrate a little more on the legislation I am debating tonight. In relation to the Higher Education Support Act 2003, the bill increases the overall appropriation by $40.8 million, which we on this side will not be opposing but which we feel could be better dealt with. There should be a better research quality framework.

The bill does a number of things, which include: revising the maximum funding amounts provided under the act I have just mentioned to provide funding to support the implementation of the research quality framework; amending the HESA to reflect the changes to the National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes; and regulating the recognition of new universities, the operation of overseas universities in Australia and the accreditation of courses offered by higher education institutions. The protocols were first approved by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs in 2000.

The bill introduces a number of measures relating to the administration of the Higher Education Loan Program, HELP, and arrangements for Commonwealth supported students. The legislation also amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003, HESA, the Higher Education Funding Act 1988, HEFA, and the Higher Education Support (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Act 2003, TCA, to limit the time for students to claim an entitlement to Commonwealth support. It also makes a number of minor amendments.

The government, as always, is seeking to rush this legislation through this parliament. The reason it is rushing this legislation through the parliament is to ensure that RQF funding commences during 2007. On many occasions we have seen that the government sits on its hands and does nothing and then at the last minute it has to force legislation through this parliament. The bill provides around $41 million for two programs to assist universities and other higher education providers with the implementation of the research quality framework.

Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, you would be aware that we on this side of the House find that the government’s research quality framework approach is quite contentious and not one that we are at all comfortable with, but we do support the concept of research quality assurance. I think there is nothing more important than ensuring that research is undertaken in Australia. Ensuring that our universities are adequately funded to undertake research, with the ability for students to follow their speciality and research in their areas of interest, is extremely important for our nation, because it will set Australia up for the future. Unfortunately, the Howard government has let us down a little in that area. It is also very important, along with this research, that we know that the quality of the research is of the highest standard. Therefore, we support the concept of research quality assurance but not in the way the government has set it out here in its rather hastily thrown together and contentious RQF approach.

The Labor Party has quite a different approach and believes in a much more transparent and accountable approach, as opposed to the approach put forward by the government. In addition to research quality assurance, the higher education legislation amendment gives effect to the revised National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Process, which was agreed to by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs in July 2006. However, concern has been expressed by the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee that this should not be done until the guidelines that govern the protocols have been agreed to. It has been anticipated that there will be a meeting in April 2007, and those guidelines will be drawn up. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate if the government were to wait until those guidelines had been developed before pushing this legislation through the parliament? But, no: in typical Howard government style, it is pushing it through.

In relation to the issue of Commonwealth assistance for FEE-HELP and OS-HELP, which is a loan scheme to assist undergraduate students to undertake some of their course of study overseas, some concern has been raised by the Group of Eight universities in particular about the requirement that Commonwealth supported students must reside in Australia while undertaking their studies. This would exclude students from studying overseas via distance education or on an exchange from accessing FEE-HELP. I do not believe that is very satisfactory.

By allowing international higher education providers and specialised higher education providers to establish themselves as universities or colleges, these changes may lead to further liberalisation of the university sector. Reflecting on that, that liberalisation could have the opposite effect: instead of ensuring a standard of research and of universities at a level we would like, it could lead to a diminution of the quality of standards.

I do not oppose this legislation, I think it will pass through the parliament, but I am much more comfortable with the amendment being moved by the shadow minister which gets to the crux of matter. It looks at the research quality framework and puts it in the right context. It looks at the fact that the university sector has assessed that an RQF would reduce research links with industry and lessen collegiate efforts among researchers and academics from different universities in its current form—activities that are beneficial to Australia as a whole. Essential aspects and details of the scheme are included in this amendment. The shadow minister highlights this but the government is yet to work it out, so the implementation of this legislation by 2008 is in doubt. I would argue very strongly that the government will not be able to deliver on it. Many members on the other side of this House probably share my concerns.

As the shadow minister highlighted, the costs and other resources involved in the assessment and reporting process mean that the government’s proposed RQF risks preventing breakthrough research. The final point the shadow minister made was that the RQF and measures process set out in the bill should not be proceeded with; it should be replaced by a model that is fairer and more equitable. In other words, this legislation is flawed and there are many problems with it. Therefore I encourage the House to support the amendment moved by the shadow minister as opposed to the legislation that is before the House tonight.

Kerry Bartlett (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will make a few brief comments. It is disappointing to come into this House and find the speaker listed to precede me repeating the factual inaccuracies that we hear from the other side so often. We heard the member for Shortland saying that this government has cut education spending. Quite the reverse: we have increased spending from 5.5 per cent of GDP to 5.8 per cent of GDP, an increased proportion of a rapidly increasing GDP. We have massively increased spending on education: in the tertiary education sector by 26 per cent in real terms; in higher education by seven per cent in real terms; and in school education by 160 per cent.

Debate interrupted.