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

Before the honourable member for Brisbane politicised this debate, I have to say I had a lot of sympathy with the need to do more research into type 1 diabetes. I do support the principle that we as a country should be doing a lot more than we currently are in relation to this particular area. I do not, however, want to talk about diabetes in the debate today. I want to talk about what I think is a most retrograde and regressive policy announced by the Australian Labor Party: to abolish full fee paying places for Australian students at Australian universities. I think this is a particularly elitist policy, and it will discriminate against Australian students when overseas students will still be able to access these full fee paying places.

I could understand such a policy if the full fee paying places were detracting from the number of funded places at Australian universities, but one ought to appreciate—and the Australian Labor Party ought to appreciate—that what we are really talking about here are extra places. If it is desirable, as I believe it is, that students come from overseas to study at our institutions and they pay full fees, and if an Australian student has not obtained the marks at secondary school or the entrance requirements to get a funded place, then surely it is not inequitable to give that student a second chance and to give that student the opportunity of studying at his or her own cost at a university.

I would be the last person to suggest that standards should be lowered. Of course, universities through their examination processes and their assessment processes have the capacity to make sure that all emerging students graduating with degrees attain the appropriate level or standard. I am the parent of two children, and for a long time I have believed that the tertiary entrance levels—whether you call them OP levels or TER levels, and I know different states have different means of designating them—are not really an accurate way of determining either whether a student will pass through the university and graduate successfully or, for that matter, whether the student has the ability to do the course. They are probably necessary but arbitrary mechanisms to determine who gets funded university places and who does not get admitted to the university on the basis of a funded place.

But, having said that, why should we throw on the scrapheap students who maybe had too good a time at school? Maybe they played too much rugby; maybe they did not focus on their academic studies as much as they should have and therefore did not obtain the results in their final examinations or in their assessment procedures at the end of secondary school to enable them to obtain a funded place. Why should we, as the ALP seems to want to do, throw these students on the scrapheap?

Often you find that people, once they become a little more mature, are prepared to knuckle down and focus on the future and realise that you only succeed when you work. These students, once they know what they are doing, are often very good students. Once they have sorted themselves out and they know the direction they would like their life to follow, these students are very good students. One of my staff members has authorised me to mention in this speech that when he was at school he did not study. He got a mark but not a good enough mark, and after he became a little more mature he decided that he wanted a future. He realised that if he was going to get ahead he would have to knuckle down and work hard—head down and tail up—and consequently managed to get into university and pass. He has been extraordinarily successful.

I think the idea of saying that because you are an Australian and because you did not get the appropriate marks at the end of your secondary schooling you are not able to go to university, even if you are prepared to scrimp and save or work at weekends to help put yourself through, is a most unfortunate regression in our national education policy. By comparison, the government through our policies and through the recent budget have highlighted that we see tertiary education as being very important. Obviously, when we have people who are graduating who have a real capacity to make an enduring contribution to our nation’s economic health, this is an important step forward.

I see the idea of bringing in overseas students as a good idea. I have no problems with that at all, and I have no problems at all with those overseas students paying full fees. But I just do not think that in 2007 it is in any way, shape or form appropriate that a major political party in opposition and seeking to attain the Treasury benches at the next election should say that we as a nation are going to discriminate against Australian students; that it is all right for students from Singapore and elsewhere in Asia and from Europe, America or anywhere else to come here and take a full fee paying place but it is wrong somehow for an Australian student to take one of those extra, additional places that will give them the opportunity of completing a tertiary education.

I think that what the ALP are suggesting is bizarre. I cannot possibly believe that the Leader of the Opposition could have supported such a policy. It might well have been one of those trade-offs that is necessary for the leader to do in order to keep the support of the various factions in the Labor Party. It is a most regressive policy which has been suggested by the Labor Party and I would hope that, were they to be elected to office—and I certainly hope that they are not—that policy would be reviewed.

I am particularly proud of the coalition’s Higher Education Endowment Fund, announced in the budget earlier this month. It is a revolutionary initiative which will produce a self-generating income stream that will fund the infrastructure required to assist our tertiary institutions in delivering the facilities needed, such as lecture theatres, halls and research facilities, in order to deliver leading, world-class education services. Since the budget I have had the opportunity of talking to a university vice-chancellor who was quite fulsome in his praise of this initiative and of our policies in the area of this higher education fund. The education fund will enable our universities to climb up the ladder of international recognition of tertiary institutions for some time. Our institutions have not been given the recognition that institutions have been overseas, and we do not find very many of our universities in the top 100. But, hopefully, over time this endowment fund will enable our universities to become more world class and to deliver more graduates, which of course will benefit our nation’s economy in future years.

The delivery of undergraduate degrees at Australian universities was given greater freedom with the announcement in the budget of the relaxing of the cap on full fee paying places across all streams of study. This means that a university will be able to increase and decrease student numbers for its various courses so as to best balance its student numbers with the various demands of Australian society and industry. Initiatives in the budget will also help to meet this need by allowing a university to have full funding for student enrolment levels at a five per cent overallocation without penalty—and you would be aware, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, that prior to the budget full Commonwealth support was available for student enrolments up to one per cent over allocation.

I return to the principal theme of this speech. That is to say how appalled I am that the Australian Labor Party is somehow publicly trying to mount a justification for discrimination against Australian students. I have yet to hear a remotely credible argument from any member of the Australian Labor Party to adequately justify a situation in which students from overseas are treated preferentially. They are allowed to come here and buy an extra place at an Australian university, and of course this provides very good income for the universities. But somehow Australian students who do not quite get the marks they would have liked at the end of their secondary schooling will not be allowed to similarly buy a full fee paying place at an Australian university. This is, I believe, one of the policies that would help bring the Australian Labor Party undone at the election later this year, because it is a policy that is simply indefensible. It is a bizarre policy. It is a regressive and retrograde policy. It is inequitable and discriminatory. In fact, it is a policy that has absolutely nothing at all going for it in any way, shape or form. It is not too late for the rational people opposite to make sure this policy is overturned—and I can see the honourable Chief Opposition Whip, who is a rational person. Sadly, of course, after the election, regardless of the result, the opposition will be less rational than it is now because the member opposite is departing. It is just ridiculous and beyond the pale that in 2007 the ALP are saying that Australian students should be discriminated against. They will allow full fee paying overseas students to come in. There is no problem with that; it is great. But they will not allow Australians similar opportunities. (Time expired)