Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We all know about the increasing cost of living pressures. I would like to address this particular issue in relation to university students. More and more, university students are finding it difficult to attend to their studies but also to fund the costs of their accommodation, food, textbooks and so on. In fact, some attention was drawn to this last night on The 7.30 Report. On that program the Minister for Youth and Minister for Sport, Kate Ellis, said, among other statements, that the cost of playing sport or eating at university cafes had trebled at some institutions and that a number of activities which used to take place on campuses were now not operational at all. Of course, that was in relation to a segment of the debate in higher education about student association fees. The Labor Party wants to wind back the former government’s insistence that university students have a right to choice. The current government wants to re-institute fees on university students at a time when they cannot afford to feed themselves because they have to pay the rent. I know that the current government have suggested a fee of $100 or so. But a hundred dollars is a hundred dollars, and I think any return to some kind of compulsory system that forces students to pay fees is a backward step.

At my own university, James Cook University in North Queensland, the student association is working very well under the new laws and the students are very happy. Some 98 per cent of students at my university do not want to pay compulsory student association fees. However I am not particularly interested in getting involved in this political debate about whether students should be forced to pay fees or not; I am interested in the students. This is about them. When I see reports, time after time, of students saying, ‘We’ve got to go without breakfast because we cannot afford it,’ we have to do something about that as a parliament and as a country.

Today’s students are tomorrow’s professionals. They are the very people who will be entrusted with the welfare of this country. So we must realise an urgent need to give them support and to help them get through university. Years ago, in my time at university, your parents paid. These days that does not happen. There is a vast variety of reasons why that does not happen in the main. It still happens in some families, but in the main it does not happen. Students rely on Austudy, but it is not enough; it will not get them through the costs of their accommodation, their rent, their food, their textbooks and so on.

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

Why didn’t you do something about it when you were in government?

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am about to suggest something, member for Shortland, and I hope that you might take up the suggestion. What I want to suggest to the parliament is that perhaps we have a further HECS style scheme whereby students who need a loan to pay for their fees can access that and repay it after they finish university. That would help students with their cost of living. It would take away the worry about and pressure on how they live day to day when they are attending university. I have spoken to a number of students who certainly think that would be a good idea. I would urge the current government to think about some system like that where, instead of increasing Austudy, you in fact help the students by making some dollars available with low-interest loans that they can repay after they get their university degree in the same way as they repay their course fees.

Some people might suggest that this is a burden on young people when they are beginning their professional lives—and, yes, you can make that argument. However, I would argue that these extra funds are so desperately needed to assist our brightest minds whilst they study and that this could be paid off, and I would certainly ask the government to formally consider this suggestion.