Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government’s Higher Education Support Amendment (Removal of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements and National Governance Protocols Requirements and Other Matters) Bill 2008 proposes a number of changes in the operation of the parent act, the Higher Education Support Act. They include allowing a higher education provider to list a body as a quality auditing body, allowing for requirements to be set out on the conduct of audits and providing authority to the minister to revoke a higher education provider’s approval if they cease operation as a business and for other reasons. The bill also contains a principal major amendment, which is the removal of conditionality for increased funding of universities and higher education providers that they meet the requirements of the national governance protocols and the higher education workplace relations requirements. The opposition have said publicly and to the government that we have significant concerns about this particular amendment with respect to the removal of funding conditionality contained within the government’s bill, wholly and only with respect to the operation of the national governance protocols. Both the protocols and the HEWRRs, as they were known, were incorporated into the Higher Education Support Act in 2003, for operation in 2004 and 2005 respectively, following the increased investment made into higher education in the Our Universities: Backing Australia’s Future package that saw funding to the sector rise to levels of more than $8 billion.

It is the case that the workplace relations requirements and the protocols were introduced to assist universities to become competitive, both internationally and domestically, and to offer career opportunities and managerial integrity to staff of universities and universities themselves. Both the HEWRRS and the national governance protocols were a condition of universities and higher education providers receiving increased levels of funding of 2.5 per cent in 2005, five per cent in 2006 and 7.5 per cent in 2007. The higher education workplace relations requirements provided for a wider degree of choice in agreement making and covered direct relationships with employers as well as flexibility and a focus on workplace productivity. Of course, under the government’s new workplace relations system that the opposition has not opposed, the previous government’s measures under the HEWRRS will become inconsistent with the wider workplace relations law and therefore will become obsolete. For this reason the opposition is not seeking to stand in the way of the removal of conditionality of funding as it relates to the meeting of the HEWRRS contained within the bill.

We note that in her second reading speech the minister did not address the issue of assisting universities in overcoming the immense difficulty in attracting the best and brightest minds to teach and work in our universities. Maybe she is not aware of the problem. Nowhere is it more evident than in our universities that, in order to attract and keep the best staff, staff need to be rewarded in accordance with their skills. The problem of how to attract and retain world-class staff will remain an unanswered question on the part of the government. However, as I have indicated, the opposition’s concern is with the heart of this bill, which removes conditionality of funding for universities and higher education providers to meet the national governance protocols. In doing so it removes the accountability the minister currently has in place to ensure best practice. The protocols are working today as a mechanism to promote accountability and integrity in the process of university governance. In fact, as representatives from the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations were able to confirm to senators in estimates committees earlier this year, the guidelines had been met by every university and higher education provider in the previous year—meaning every higher education provider is compliant.

In opposition, the Labor Party never felt the need to support the implementation of the protocols to cover all our Commonwealth funded universities. Now the minister seems to be saying that she accepts the protocols but intends to have a non-legislative focus on university governance arrangements, as she referred to in her second reading speech. To move away from legislative guidelines and requirements is in our view a recipe for failure in the future. The reason for Australia-wide compliance last year is that the protocols on good governance mechanisms are intended to work within the discipline of legislative conditionality. The removal of the requirement of meeting the national governance protocols as a condition of increased funding will, in our view, mean a slow return to the sort of issues that were troubling universities with respect to governance in the past prior to the introduction of those protocols.

Under the government’s amendment, if there were an issue in the future with a university not meeting best practice then it appears the government could do little or nothing. That is the simple fact of the government’s amendment. I would not like to see, in a worst-case scenario, the minister having to come back into this House and move amendments to her own amendments so that she could tackle a governance problem that had arisen at a higher education provider or university. The Commonwealth will, of course, provide significant fund-ing to higher education over the next four years. With this allocated money, it is expected that universities’ governing bodies will provide the necessary oversight to ensure that it is being spent properly. Australians expect and deserve to know that universities have the best governance that they possibly can.

The history behind establishing consistent, well-defined and responsible national protocols for good governance is relatively recent. The national governance protocols, as included in chapter 7 of the Commonwealth grants scheme guidelines No. 1, go back to 2002 when emerging concerns were raised through the Higher education at the crossroads review conducted by the then education minister and now Leader of the Opposition. However, reviews conducted into university governance, such as the Hoare review in 1995 and the Victorian government’s review of 2002, also raised similar sorts of issues—which, apparently, the minister is at best unaware of or trying to deny the existence of.

Twelve years ago the Hoare report identified a number of problems associated with the performance of governing bodies. It argued that they lacked focus on strategic issues, that members of governing bodies had inadequately articulated roles and responsibilities, and that there was a lack of commitment and interest shown by some members. What is clear from the reviews of the past is that changing the face of university governance required an end to the old detached, amateurish, academic leadership models and required an end to reliance on politically-selected lay boards for university governance.

The Victorian Review of university governance noted the need to strengthen not only the process but also the perception of university governance in the wider community. For example, the review found that because of the increasing responsibilities of and demands placed on university councils:

The review believes that university councils’ discharge of these increased responsibilities should be transparent and open to public scrutiny as well as being accountable to the Minister.

Not surprisingly, the review proposed:

... a system of corporate governance and accountability to Government that sheets home responsibility to universities to advance their public purposes, with transparent governance of and effective accountability for all their activities, including their commercial ventures. The intent of the recommended changes is to enhance public confidence that effective decisions are being made by those who are charged with responsibility for advancing the universities’ public purposes.

That is exactly the intent of the national governance protocols that the government here intends to remove funding conditionality on. The current chair of the Future Fund, and then Commonwealth Bank Chief Executive Officer, David Murray, recognised this in 2002 when he urged state and federal ministers—and, I might point out to the government, they represented both political parties—to get behind the national governance protocols. He said:

If the taxpayers’ funds are coming from the federal government, then the federal government is the one that has to answer for the outcome of the funding.

He went on to add that the business community would be willing to invest more in our universities if they could be assured of the outcomes. It would be interesting if the minister could comment on exactly what has changed in the need to support university councils in aiming for the highest standards in governance. Indeed, in the issues paper Meeting the challenges: the governance and management of universities commissioned by the department, it was found—and the Labor Party are not yet able to accept this point:

Like other major institutions in our society, we must demand new levels of accountability of the university for the integrity of its financial operations, the quality of its services, and the stewardship of its resources.

The opposition is of the firm view that the national governance protocols, as derived from chapter 7 of the Commonwealth Grants Scheme Guidelines No. 1, are essential to the continued good governance of universities. Without these protocols anchored on continued funding conditionality, university governance standards would in our view slip over time. It would be a return to the past. It might not happen overnight, but it would happen over time.

It is the opposition that continues to support the protocols for good governance. The protocols specifically deal with internationally recognised best practice methods. For example, protocol 5 deals with the size of the membership of governing bodies. There are some horror stories from the past of dysfunctional and inefficient university councils with too many members, all representing competing sectional interests. It is interesting to note that the average size of university councils in 1990 was 27 members. In one university some years ago, the council size was said to be as high as 35. Successive reviews have argued for governing bodies of between 10 and 15 members. The protocols make provision for no more than 22. As to the intent of the protocols, what happened to the membership of university councils after 2002? Their average size dropped to around 21 members.

The third protocol, for example, demands that members be required to be trustees of the institution and act solely in the interests of the university, rather than as a delegate or representative of a particular constituency. It states that ‘all members of the governing body must be responsible and accountable to the governing body’ and that a member ‘must always act in the best interests of the higher education provider as a whole, with this obligation to be observed in priority to any duty a member may owe to those electing or appointing him or her’.

These protocols also deal with perfectly reasonable tenets of corporate governance that encourage universities to endorse best practice in their governing bodies. These include requirements for an induction process for new council members and ongoing professional development, as well as for transparent nomination procedures for new members going on to council who are not subject to an election. They also require that there is proper experience and diversity on boards. Removing the funding condition of having these protocols would remove the incentive for universities to strive for and excel in best practice—not for all universities, of course, but it would provide the opportunity for some to slip back to the very problems that the protocols were introduced to try and overcome.

Moving to a non-legislative focus will not ensure continued high standards in university governance. It is a way backwards. Like the recommendations from the reviews of the past pointed out, so many difficulties needed leadership to overcome, leadership provided by both state and territory government ministers and the council. The minister needs to demonstrate some leadership in taking up the challenge of ensuring that best practice is maintained into the future in all of our universities and higher education providers.

I have outlined to the House why the government should accept—and I say this respectfully—that it has got it wrong with respect to its treatment of the governance protocols. We understand that the minister in the first week of parliament was keen to make her point on workplace relations, but the government’s bill here fails to realise that the governance protocols are necessary policy when you are talking about the huge amounts of investment governments, students and the community place in our universities. In the interests of the convenience of the House today, I will not be seeking for the opposition to oppose the second reading. However, I give notice that I will move an amendment on behalf of the opposition in the consideration in detail stage of the debate.

The amendment that will be circulated will have the effect of continuing to require universities and higher education providers to meet the national governance protocols as a condition of increased funding. It will put back what we think should not have been taken away. The amendment will require universities and higher education providers to keep meeting the governance protocols as a condition of the funding. It will retain the provision that the minister must be satisfied that the provider meets the protocols. In the event that the minister is not satisfied, it will provide the minister with the same penalty mechanism that existed previously.

Importantly—as I outlined at the start and a number of times since—the coalition’s amendment in no way affects the government’s aim of removing the higher education workplace relations requirements from force should it be accepted. Our amendment does not provide for conditions of funding with respect to the HEWRRs; it only provides for funding conditionality with respect to the governance protocols. That is our aim. That is our objective. That is what we are seeking to achieve.

If the coalition’s amendment is successful, it will ensure that those protocols are substituted back into the bill. If the amendments are not successful, we intend to oppose the government’s bill currently under debate in the House because we will not support legislation that removes that funding conditionality with respect to governance protocols. In that event, we would oppose the third reading of the bill and vote against the passage of the bill in the final vote. Of course, in the Senate, a similar amendment will be moved. We hope that the minister is prepared to consider this issue. Our concern is just the issue of the national governance protocols. It is up to the government to indicate their intentions towards our amendments, which we have provided to them.

The minister has also changed regulations with respect to the Commonwealth Grant Scheme guidelines. These had the effect of removing chapter 7 from the guidelines and replacing it with the term ‘Not used’, therefore removing altogether from the guidelines both the HEWRRs conditions and the protocol conditions for governance. The minister tabled these changes to the guidelines in the House and in the Senate on 11 March. They are currently on the Senate disallowable instruments list as they are disallowable instruments under the act.

Whilst chapter 7 of the guidelines ceased to exist on 28 February, the day after they were registered on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments, our amendment to the government bill will refer to guidelines as they were on 27 February, when they were in force.

My colleague Senator Brett Mason, the shadow parliamentary secretary for education, apprenticeships and training, has given notice in the Senate that he will move today that the guidelines be disallowed. The opposition has moved to disallow this instrument so as to maintain those national governance protocols that work in conjunction with the current legislation. We are aware the chapter also contains conditions with respect to the HEWRRs, although, as members would be aware, it is simply not possible to selectively disallow part of a chapter that deals with the governance protocols without also disallowing everything else within the guidelines. I reiterate that, if the government accepts our amendment, the legislative framework for the operation of the HEWRRs, as prescribed in the guidelines, will be removed. In any event, the act will refer only to the national governance protocols.

In any event the important point is that the workplace relations laws have changed since the last election—so the substance of the law has changed—rendering obsolete a lot of the HEWRRs guidelines, particularly relating to AWAs. If the minister’s wish was to introduce a new instrument—a new set of guidelines that dealt with just the HEWRRs—I say here and now that the opposition would not seek to disallow that if it is a housekeeping measure to just clean up the guidelines. As I have said, our amendment specifically ensures that it relates only to the national governance protocols.

Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Removal of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements and National Governance Protocols Requirements and Other Matters) Bill 2008. The bill will remove the Howard government’s extreme workplace relations agenda from our universities. It will provide the universities with greater flexibility in their governance by removing unnecessary government interference in their management.

Today I will go into some detail about the system that this bill seeks to abolish, because it is very important that we understand exactly what the previous government was doing and offer some reflections on why the Howard government introduced this system. Having listened to the member for Casey it is interesting that the previous support by members of the former Howard government for the higher education workplace relations requirements appears to have collapsed.

On Friday, 29 April 2005, the then Howard government announced a set of higher education workplace relations requirements for Australian higher education institutions. They are referred to as the HEWRRs. In short, the HEWRRs were strict workplace relations criteria that universities had to comply with in order to be eligible for $280 million of assistance funding under the Commonwealth Grant Scheme.

The first and key element of the HEWRRs was the criterion that universities were required to offer Australian workplace agreements. As is now notorious, Australian workplace agreements, or AWAs, are individual employment contracts that were able to undercut important protections and safety net conditions contained in the awards and collective agreements that operated within the higher education system, in this instance, but of course they operated throughout the economy and all other industries.

The HEWRRs within this sector required universities to offer AWAs to all new staff employed after 29 April 2005 and to all existing staff by 31 August 2006. The HEWRRs also required universities to include a clause in collective agreements that expressly allowed AWAs to operate to the exclusion of any collective agreement. It is important to consider exactly what was being asked here by the former government. What we now know about AWAs from official data—data that the Howard government was not keen to see become public—is that 89 per cent of the AWAs, in quite broad surveys, removed at least one protected award condition. In fact 52 per cent excluded more than six protected award conditions. Employment was casualised under many AWAs and, as we have also heard from the Deputy Prime Minister on occasion in this House, the AWAs in effect were used to significantly reduce people’s take-home pay, often by very considerable amounts.

We know that the way in which that was commonly achieved was through the removal of award conditions such as shiftwork penalties, annual leave loading and other forms of penalty rates such as overtime pay. This was the regime, and it was the intent of the Howard government to force it upon the higher education sector by making funding conditional upon the offering of AWAs.

Another key element of the HEWRRs was the removal of restrictions on fixed term and casual employment. The HEWRRs stipulated that university agreements, policies and practices must not place limitations on the forms and mix of employment arrangements. In practice this had two consequences. Firstly, existing agreement restrictions on the use of fixed term and casual employment had to be removed. The effect was, unsurprisingly, a marked increase in fixed term employment in universities and a continuation of quite a rapid increase in casual employment across the higher education sector. In summary, employment security was undermined to a significant degree by the HEWRRs through this measure alone.

One individual example of the effect of these provisions involved a woman named Rosalie Bunn, who held a long-term casual teaching position in the Open Foundation and Newstep program at the University of Newcastle in the region that I now represent. She has now been a casual for more than 10 years, during which time she has had no access to sick leave, annual leave, long service leave or any other kind of leave, no job security and no incremental advancement. There was an effort at the time, several years ago, to limit casual employment at Newcastle in the light of experiences such as Rosalie Bunn’s. But these efforts to improve the employment security of someone such as Rosalie Bunn—effectively a casual for 10 years in what was a permanent position—and afford her community accepted standards such as annual leave were made completely illegal, unlawful and impossible by the imposition of the HEWRRs. As a result, Rosalie and people like her are still casuals—and it is not 10 years; it is now well beyond 10 years that she has been in that position.

The second consequence arising from this specific change was that job security and the management of change provisions in many agreements were weakened. That was an intentional element of the HEWRRs. Previous commitments in collective agreements—for example, to maintaining particular staffing levels or to providing job security through no compulsory redundancies—had to be removed because of the HEWRRs. Another element of HEWRRs was the removal of detail from agreements. Under the rubric of requiring collective agreements to be simple, flexible and principle based, avoiding excessive detail and prescription, as was required, some conditions which were previously included in agreements had to be removed. These included things such as position classification standards, award provisions relating to casual employment and aspects of leave, management of change and unsatisfactory performance, and misconduct procedures and processes. In the wake of the removal of detail such as that, it became harder for employees under the agreements to access things such as dispute-settling procedures to protect their rights, oftentimes in circumstances where unfairness may have been exacted upon them. It was also much more difficult to access union representation in those circumstances.

Another element of the HEWRRs required universities to implement performance management systems to reward high-performing staff and efficiently manage poor-performing staff. As a principle that is not controversial; however, in the circumstances of the HEWRRs the outcome was a push on the part of some of the management in the higher education sector to implement performance pay systems which were disruptive to the cohesiveness of staff and which encouraged an overconcentration on short-term results.

Finally, the HEWRRs required that university agreements, policies and practices must be consistent with the freedom of association principles contained in the Workplace Relations Act. This in practice meant that agreements had to be stripped of provisions which the Howard government interpreted as encouraging union membership. In essence it meant that there was no leave to attend things such as workplace meetings or to invite a union representative to come into the workplace to represent you in an industrial situation. The HEWRRs system gave the ministers for education under the former government unprecedented power, in fact, to involve themselves in the management of workplace relations in the sector. All decisions on the HEWRRs were made directly by the minister and there was no scope for review or repeal of those decisions. Furthermore, the minister was able to unilaterally change the requirements at any time. If you are to consider this, this is an extraordinary level of ministerial or government interference in staff management, as it would be in any sector but particularly in higher education.

At the time of the original legislation establishing the HEWRRs, there was understandably widespread criticism of the system, criticism that was completely ignored by the government. At the Senate hearing into the legislation establishing the HEWRRs, there was fierce opposition. Some of the criticisms raised at those hearings, particularly by the National Tertiary Education Union, were that the HEWRRs failed to address the real workplace issues being faced within the universities, that the HEWRRs lacked appropriate accountability and parliamentary scrutiny, that they created uncertainty and confusion and provoked industrial disharmony within the universities, that they gave the federal government unprecedented and unwarranted capacity to interfere in the operation of the higher education institutions, and that they did not assist Australia’s higher education institutions with respect to the quality of learning, research or outcomes for employees. They were specifically focused industrial relations initiatives designed on the basis of conditionality to the access of funding to allow the government to force on the sector its industrial relations agenda, which I think is now widely held throughout the community to have been one of extreme unfairness, lacking justification.

The Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee, now known as Universities Australia, essentially representing the management and administrators of the universities, also opposed the introduction of the HEWRRs. In their submission to the Senate committee, they said that the HEWRRs would be:

… very intrusive in terms of universities’ capacity to manage their internal affairs. The HEWRRs proposal constitutes a ‘one size fits all’ approach, whereas the AVCC takes the view that the focus should be on desired outcomes, rather than specific industrial processes and particular industrial instruments.

That was an extremely important criticism made by the vice-chancellors charged with the responsibility of the management, administration and governance of Australia’s universities. They did not want the HEWRRs imposed—and for good reason.

It is important to note for the record that the Howard government completely ignored all of the well-founded criticism of the system that it proposed to introduce, instead preferring to implement its ideological industrial relations agenda. To understand that agenda is to understand the wider intention of its form of industrial relations, embodied in the Work Choices legislation. That was what the HEWRRs were really all about: to impose the Work Choices type of philosophy on the university system. It was never about improving the higher education system. It was never about promoting flexibility, innovation or skills development within universities and it certainly did nothing to relieve the burden on university staff or students.

The HEWRRs system was about the fulfilment of the government’s ideological obsessions in industrial relations. It was a plan conceived at least substantially by the then Minister for Education, Science and Training—now, of course, the Leader of the Opposition—and several of his colleagues. It should give cause to consider exactly where the opposition may be going in relation to industrial relations. I note from the member for Casey’s contribution that, if the amendment that is proposed to be moved is defeated, the opposition intend to vote against this bill, which means that they will be voting in this circumstance to continue the imposition of HEWRRs within the higher education system, in effect.

The fact is that, when Dr Nelson was in charge of the nation’s higher education system, instead of concentrating on how he could improve the services of the universities or how we could make an investment for the future, there was a preoccupation with the imposition of this workplace relations agenda. Education is vital to the ability of individuals to fulfil their potential and to maximising the productive capacity of the country. Over the last 150 years the measure of a nation’s economic development was the number of tonnes of iron and steel it produced. In this century it will be the number of graduates that a nation produces, especially in science and engineering, that will be important.

Investment in education is the linchpin of our future economic potential and yet the last government failed in this area, particularly in tertiary education—the level of education that the Commonwealth has the most responsibility for. Australia ranks a mediocre 15th out of 28 OECD nations in terms of total spending on education as a percentage of GDP. In the decade since 1995, Australia was the only OECD country to cut public investment in tertiary education, by an amount of seven per cent. In dire contrast, the average increase in public investment by other OECD countries was 48 per cent. We are entirely against the trend of all other OECD countries, instead concentrating on imposing things like HEWRRs and completely losing focus on the importance of investment in quality tertiary education.

An important aspect of this is our failure to train engineers, and this is especially crucial in the defence industry, which is a portfolio area for which I now have some responsibility. Australia ranks 20th out of the 21 OECD nations surveyed in terms of the share of engineering graduates to total graduates. Only 10 per cent of Australian graduates are engineers, compared to an OECD average of 14 per cent. Imagine the impact on productivity in the country and the relief on inflationary pressure if we were able to improve that outcome. I am not just speaking as an engineer. I think it is actually critical to the future economic prosperity of the country that we improve the numbers of graduates coming out of engineering and science disciplines.

Coupled with the Howard government’s obsession with AWAs was a deep-seated and divisive attitude to those who work in higher education. I think this partly informed the former government’s approach to the imposition of the HEWRRs. Universities, under the previous government, were not necessarily seen as institutions that promoted creativity and built the productive capacity of our society. They were in part a battle ground to play out what has been described as some of the ‘culture wars’. In a well-publicised recent speech to an American conservative group, the former Prime Minister, John Howard, had the following to say:

Those who hold to conservative values continue to face a major ideological battle. The left liberal grip on educational institutions and large, though not all, sections of the media remains intense.

That is something of an insight into some of the previous government’s motives. It was this view of universities as bastions of supposed Left liberalism that made the Howard government, at least in part, eager to impose these kinds of constraints and conditionality on the availability of funding. If that were not bad enough, what better way to further punish the supposed Left liberals than by pushing universities to implement some of these changes? That is what the laws were about.

The substance of the bill is also concerned with what are called ‘the national governance protocols’ that the member for Casey referred to. These required or imposed, again on the basis of conditionality of access to funding, what could be described as a standardised governance approach to the management and administration of the universities. Under the current system, Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding was also contingent on adherence to these national governance protocols. The practical result of this has been an increase—in the Rudd government’s belief—in red tape and bureaucracy for universities as part of ongoing compliance checks. These checks are conducted despite the fact that all universities have already taken the necessary steps to implement these protocols—an important point in considering the changes contained in this bill. The Rudd government, in contrast, believes in greater flexibility and the encouragement of good governance practices within universities—we believe in encouraging that—and does not feel the need to impose standardised and excessive red tape and bureaucracy on the leaders and administrators of the universities. That is why the bill proposes to remove the conditionality related to the national governance protocols.

The bill amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003, the parent act, by repealing section 33-17. This section of that act currently requires that the HEWRRs and the national governance protocols are adhered to as a condition of Commonwealth Grant Scheme student places. The removal of this section will help remove the burdens, in the government’s belief, on our higher education sector while also granting them greater financial certainty.

I am pleased to be able to speak on this bill, given that I campaigned against the HEWRRs consistently in my former role as the leader of the ACTU. I am very proud to be able to support these changes. I campaigned strongly with the National Tertiary Education Union and other higher education unions in recent years before coming to this place, and I would like to congratulate them for the way in which they conducted what I think was a sensible campaign against completely unreasonable requirements imposed by the previous, Howard government. I am optimistic that the Rudd Labor government will be able to rebuild the relationship between the government and the universities that was disturbed by this unnecessary interference imposed on the universities by the former Howard government. I would simply like to conclude by saying that in today’s world, given the economic challenges this country confronts, the value of higher education cannot be understated. This bill seeks to help that sector of education by allowing for greater flexibility in their workplace relations and in their governance arrangements. I commend the bill to the House.

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

I know one or two things about these issues that we are debating in the parliament this afternoon, and I do hope that there are a number of fair-minded people who will listen to this debate and make a decision on the basis of what is put to the parliament. I do believe that those fair-minded listeners and viewers this afternoon will come down on the side of not supporting the Higher Education Support Amendment (Removal of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements and National Governance Protocols Requirements and Other Matters) Bill 2008. What is wrong with allowing choice to any Australian in the decisions that they make in their lives? What is wrong with that? The Labor Party seems to believe that everyday Australians should not be allowed a choice. We have choice when we go shopping and we have choice when we go looking for a partner. Why should we not have choice when it comes to how we work? Any fair-minded person would say, ‘That seems a reasonable position.’

The former government found that universities were not allowing their workforce to have choice and that precluded their employees from making a better arrangement with their employer. I want to tell the parliament this afternoon about Norm Canton. Norm works for Buildings and Grounds at James Cook University—the premier university in the tropics in the world. James Cook University is in Townsville, the area that I represent in the Australian parliament, and I am very proud of James Cook University. But James Cook University had a closed mind in relation to how it would employ Norm Canton. Norm wanted to make an Australian workplace agreement with the university authorities because he thought that he could find a better way of working for the university and that he could earn more money because the arrangement that he would make would suit both him and the university. That seems like a fairly common-sense thing to do, doesn’t it? But the university would not allow that.

Fortunately, the Howard government put in place the higher education workplace relations requirements. All that those requirements said was that universities should offer Australian workplace agreements. Staff were not required to take them up—they were not even required to ask for them—but if they did want to consider an AWA then the university had to make that available. Norm Canton went to the authorities at James Cook University and said, ‘I’d like to negotiate an AWA for myself’—a single employee workplace agreement. Norm did, thanks to the Howard government. Do you know what happened? He got higher pay, he got better working conditions, the university had a better arrangement for when Norm worked and everybody was happy.

And now the Labor Party wants to take it all away. The Labor Party that claims to represent the workers of this country does not want the workers to have choice. That is a disgraceful position. But more than that—this was revealed by the budget last night, and it undermines what this particular bill is about—the Labor government’s backward-looking approach to workplace flexibility, meaning choice, has already cast a shadow over the Australian economy. This was revealed in the budget last night. Unemployment is predicted to rise to 4.75 per cent. We heard the absolutely incredible statement that Labor’s budget in the coming year will put 134,000 everyday Australians out of a job—and this is the party of the worker. How could that be? Under the former government, unemployment went to record lows. Now that the Labor Party is in, it is making conscious decisions to drive up unemployment. Gosh! When is the Australian public going to wake up? How can my Labor colleagues on the other side of the chamber support a budget that puts 134,000 everyday Australians out of work at a time when they are facing increased grocery prices, increased petrol prices and are wondering if they can own their own home anymore and how they are going to pay for their insurance? It is extraordinary.

In the history of Australia, last night’s budget was the highest-spending, highest-taxing budget that we have ever seen. And then to add, ‘And by the way we are going to put 134,000 people out of work as well,’ is extraordinary. When you link that in to what this particular bill is about you see the connection. This is the Labor Party, for ideological reasons, taking choice away from the Australian worker. I certainly feel very disheartened about that.

The other main part of the bill in relation to the national governance protocols requires that, as the Australian government provides virtually all of the money to run our universities, universities should conduct themselves properly in a governance sense. The Labor Party seems to think we should not have any control over a fundamental issue like that. I think the Australian people will understand that they need to think about this.

Back to my university, James Cook—and this, again, is where governance issues come in. Currently Central Queensland University, based in Rockhampton, is having significant financial problems. It may well be that it is having significant governance problems. I have certainly suggested that James Cook should be allowed by the Queensland government to take over CQU’s patch in Mackay. There is a synergy which happens with JCU Townsville and JCU Cairns—and it should be with JCU Mackay. Because of the difficulties CQU has got itself into, it may well have to be taken over by one of the universities in Brisbane.

I urge the Queensland government, in looking at these governance issues related to higher education, to look at the opportunity now presented for James Cook University to move its courses and its support to Mackay, a very significant city in North Queensland. I want the parliament to know in no uncertain terms—from me and from Norm Canton in Townsville—that the availability of AWAs in higher education has done a power of good and that we are disappointed that the current government wants to take away that power of good.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the Higher Education Support Amendment (Removal of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements and National Governance Protocols Requirements and Other Matters) Bill 2008. This bill is an important step in overturning the regressive and mean-spirited agenda of the previous government. The introduction of the higher education workplace relations requirements and the national governance protocols themselves represented very directly one of the worst elements of the former government’s policies. They represented the ideological commitment to what was, in reality, an unfair workplace relations system. They represented unwarranted interference in the running of important national institutions and they represented very directly the willingness of the former government to use every Commonwealth power to further the government’s ideological attacks on perceived or imagined opponents, which, in this case, were universities and trade unions.

Work Choices was part of a broader attack by the former government on the rights of workers. The higher education workplace relations requirements were a harsh, related measure, which this government is bringing to an end. Regardless of how the opposition is going to vote on this bill, there should be no mistaking the fact that the Liberal Party remains committed to undermining the rights of employees in the workplace. We have heard echoes of this just now from the member for Herbert, who spoke of choice but really demonstrated that the Liberal Party remains committed to the illusion of choice, which—Australian workers learned in no uncertain terms under the Work Choices legislation—is no choice at all.

In government, the Liberal Party used every mechanism at its disposal to further its extreme industrial relations agenda. The government used legislation which directly undermined workers’ rights. It used Commonwealth funding to undermine workers’ rights and used government procurement and purchasing policies to undermine workers’ rights. The casualties of these mechanisms and devices were ordinary working Australians and their families, who had to bear the brunt of this Liberal Party agenda through the loss of collective bargaining, diminished working conditions and the reduction—not the expansion—of choice within the workplace.

The new system which Labor is introducing restores balance in the workplace, including within higher education institutions—which is what the present bill is concerned with. The Rudd government does not believe that employees in the higher education system should be treated differently from employees in other sectors of the economy.

Australia has had 100 years of a largely fair and balanced industrial relations system. By the early 1990s, it needed reform to keep pace with the changing nature of what is an increasingly globalised economy. Those changes were made by the Keating government in introducing enterprise bargaining and moving away from previous centralisation, providing a basis for linking wage increases with productivity improvements. This bill and the Forward with Fairness plan that the government has committed to will build on the progress made with the industrial relations system by the Keating government in a way which is fair to workers and promotes economic growth. As promised at the last election, Labor has abolished Australian workplace agreements. We know that, even after the introduction of the previous government’s so-called fairness test, employment conditions continued to be removed from employees. These were the primary tools used to shift the balance of power in the workplace dramatically away from employees.

Australian workers were told that AWAs would not affect the conditions under which they worked, that they would be better off under Australian workplace agreements, but the evidence was to the contrary. Eighty-nine per cent of AWAs cut at least one protected award condition, 83 per cent of AWAs removed two protected award conditions and 52 per cent of AWAs removed more than half of the protected award conditions. There was a reason that so many Australians opposed the former government’s workplace agenda. It was because they understood that, when you shift the balance of power in the workplace, conditions will be cut, rights will be removed and choice will be diminished and not enhanced.

Through the introduction of individual transitional employment agreements, we have provided transitional arrangements for employees on AWAs. Importantly, the Forward with Fairness plan allows for the creation of new modern awards to ensure a minimum safety net for all employees, which of course comprises the 10 National Employment Standards covering maximum weekly hours of work, requests by parents for flexible working arrangements, annual leave, personal and carers leave and compassionate leave, community service leave, long service leave, public holidays, parental leave and other entitlements, notice of termination and redundancy, and fair work information statements. Enterprise bargaining will remain the central foundation of Australia’s modern workplace relations system. This provides for collective bargaining with the greatest possible flexibility.

Work Choices was perhaps the best example of how out of touch with the Australian people the Liberal Party had become—or perhaps I should say ‘has’ become. We had a spectacular demonstration of this with the comments made by the member for North Sydney on the Four Corners program back in March. He said:

Quite frankly, when I took over the job—

he meant as Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations—

I don’t think many ministers in cabinet were aware that you could be worse off under Work Choices and that you could actually have certain conditions taken away without compensation …

Once I started to raise those issues with colleagues and they became more informed of the impact of Work Choices, we introduced the fairness test.

That is an extraordinary statement for the member for North Sydney to have made. It is an admission that the former government introduced legislation, as we know, almost without consultation and, as we definitely know, without proper debate. And it would appear that it was introduced without even a proper understanding of what the implications of the legislation were.

The people of my electorate of Isaacs were in no doubt, unlike the member for North Sydney, that you could be worse off under Work Choices. People in Carrum Downs, Dandenong South, Springvale, Keysborough, Chelsea, Carrum and right throughout my electorate made it clear to me as I campaigned through last year that they understood that the Howard government’s Work Choices laws had made them or were going to make them worse off. These were people who I met in my electorate at thousands of doors of thousands of homes, outside shopping centres, at community events and at train stations. People told me over and over again how directly and clearly they understood that the Howard government’s Work Choices had made them worse off. What I heard from people all through last year was that they did not want the kind of workplace that the Howard government’s laws were creating. They did not want the kind of society that the Howard government’s laws were creating.

Many people told me they had been directly affected by the Work Choices legislation. These included older people trying to re-enter the workforce, 16- and 17-year-old kids trying to negotiate their first employment agreements with large corporations and mothers in part-time work trying to earn an additional income for their families. Apart from all those people who were directly affected, many people told me of others—their children, grandchildren, friends and associates—who had been directly affected even when they themselves had not been.

The people of my electorate understood very well that these so-called industrial relations reforms were not designed as genuine economic reforms. They were not designed to improve government purchasing outcomes and, in the case of the matters which this bill is intending to deal with, they certainly were not designed to improve our higher education system. People in my electorate and indeed across Australia knew that the Work Choices laws, including within them these devices designed to further the objectives of the Work Choices laws in the higher education system, were the outcome of an ideological fixation of the Liberal Party on changing the balance of power in the Australian workplace. It was a shameful act of the previous government to use the Higher Education Support Act to impose their industrial relations agenda on higher education institutions. Choice and diversity were not expanded in universities; they were in fact diminished by this device.

Australian universities understood this very well and I note that the peak body, Universities Australia, has welcomed and supported the removal of the higher education workplace relations requirements as a legislative condition for funding universities. Indeed the predecessor organisation of Universities Australia, the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee, made it very clear in 2005 that they were directly opposed to the imposition of these higher education workplace requirements. I note that the member for Charlton has already read this quote in his speech to the House, but it is worth repeating. The Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee back in 2005 said that the introduction of these requirements was:

… very intrusive in terms of universities’ capacity to manage their internal affairs. The HEWRRs proposal constitutes a ‘one size fits all’ approach, whereas the AVCC takes the view that the focus should be on desired outcomes, rather than specific industrial processes and particular industrial instruments.

The Howard government, of course, was not listening to what the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee had to say any more than the Howard government was listening to anything that the trade union movement had to say or indeed what anyone else had to say in opposition to the Work Choices legislation. They ploughed on. They continued not to listen.

It is a cruel irony that, having presided over a massive decline in public investment in tertiary education, the Howard government sought to impose its harsh industrial relations agenda on our universities. As we have just heard from the member for Charlton, other OECD countries in the 10 years from 1995 increased public investment in tertiary education by an average of 48 per cent. The Howard government in the same period cut public investment by seven per cent. Australia was the only OECD country to cut public investment in tertiary education in that period. We aim to reverse that situation.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That does not include HECS!

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am talking about public tertiary education funding.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Pyne interjecting

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Sturt will cease interjecting.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are going to increase public investment in tertiary education. We are going to stop ordering universities around. We are going to welcome diversity in our higher education institutions. We aim to build a collaborative relationship with universities. This bill is a very good step in that direction. I commend the bill to the House.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to participate in the debate on the bill before the House, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Removal of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements and National Governance Protocols Requirements and Other Matters) Bill 2008. This bill will amend the Higher Education Support Act 2003 by repealing section 33-17. The main purpose of this bill is to remove the requirement of universities and other higher education providers to offer Australian workplace agreements to employees as a condition of additional funding provided through the Commonwealth Grant Scheme. It will also remove the requirement that universities and higher education providers meet the national governance protocols as a condition of additional funding provided through the Commonwealth Grant Scheme. The national governance protocols have ensured that universities and higher education providers’ governing bodies are effectively overseeing the operations of management and include specific provisions relating to the size, structure, membership and experience of university boards and governing bodies.

Under the prior act, the Higher Education Support Act 2003, universities were required to comply with higher education workplace relations requirements and national governance protocols in order to receive additional increased assistance funding of five per cent in 2006 and 7.5 per cent in 2007 under the Commonwealth Grant Scheme. These requirements were introduced into the Higher Education Support Act 2003 through the higher education legislation amendment act 2005. Higher education workplace relations requirements required that an employee of a university or higher education provider should be free to choose collectively negotiated salary and conditions or to negotiate a common-law contract or an Australian workplace agreement. The requirements encouraged more direct relationships with employees, greater workplace productivity and rewards for higher performers by requiring universities to provide employees with genuine choice and flexibility in agreement making. The national governance protocols required that universities and other higher education providers meet best practice in governance by ensuring that university councils were formed by a diverse range of councillors with appropriate commercial and business expertise and that professional development be provided.

The amendments are being introduced despite the fact that a report is due in the coming months on the review of the protocols by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs and is yet to be handed down. Labor did not announce these amendments as a part of their 2007 election policies, instead announcing their intention to legislate the changes through a speech delivered by the minister to Innovative Research Universities Australia on 5 February 2008.

Consultation with several vice-chancellors, some of whom represent the peak university bodies, has taken place recently. I am informed that most vice-chancellors support the government’s amendments on both removing the conditionality clause of higher education workplace relations requirements and national governance protocols, stating that they were an administrative burden. However, the removal of national governance protocols requirements as a condition of higher education sector funding is a purely ideological amendment.

The coalition believes that removing these legislative conditions with a view to encouraging universities to pursue good governance with a ‘non-legislative’ focus is a backward step in best practice. The protocols include specific provisions to ensure that university boards represent and meet the expectations of the university and wider community. They stipulate methods to achieve best practice in university governance. The coalition believes that removing these conditions from the legislation acts as a disincentive for universities to pursue good governance techniques and allows for a return to governing boards being filled with narrow interest groups.

The protocols also draw on evidence to achieve best practice through those protocols. For example, the Business, Industry and Higher Education Collaboration Council considered that nine to 11 members would be appropriate for higher education governing councils. The existing protocols provide for a maximum size of a governing body to be 22 members, with best practice evidence in mind. The protocols also cap a maximum term of appointment for board members at 12 years to ensure that these bodies reflect the changing constituency of university communities. A non-legislative focus to governance protocols would remove the responsibility of universities to meet community expectations of the administration of universities and would deny the taxpayer the right to expect proper and accountable governance for Commonwealth support to be provided to universities.

In line with the coalition’s approach to wider workplace legislation, we do not oppose the retraction of higher education workplace relations requirements. The repealing of these requirements will allow universities to be subject to the same workplace relations laws as all other employers. Nevertheless, it was implemented in the best interests of the universities and higher education providers to provide them with assistance and recognise the difficulties they faced in attracting and retaining the best quality staff. The staff retention and attraction problem that was being addressed will now only continue to worsen for the higher education sector when this legislation passes this parliament.

I do, however, oppose the provisions of the bill relating to the removal of conditionality with respect to the national governance protocols. I fully support the efforts of the coalition in opposition to seek to amend the bill to remove the section allowing the minister to reduce a higher education provider’s basic grant amount if the national governance protocols are not met.

We have had a review as well, and the minister should include Labor’s plans to abolish the domestic full-fee-paying places as part of the review and then seriously consider the impact it will have on the funding stream of higher education sectors. I remind the government that it was only after the coalition government paid off Labor’s $96 billion of government debt that it was able to make important investments in the higher education sector. This included the groundbreaking $6 billion for the Higher Education Endowment Fund and increases in funding, including $1.7 billion in last year’s budget alone.

I note with interest that Universities Australia was very quick to respond to the minister’s announcement of a review into higher education. It stated that it welcomed the review and that the examination of funding arrangements must look at both private and public contributions and their balance compared to other OECD countries. It was also interesting to read Universities Australia’s recommendations to the review in terms of social inclusion measures and improving student equity and access. It recommended a staged reduction in the age of independence for youth allowance from the current 25 years to 18, so that university students are not assessed on the basis of their parents’ income and assets, and the removal of the assessable income component for all scholarships and bursaries regardless of their funding source.

I support this latter recommendation as it does indeed seem to be an impediment for some potential students to re-enter higher education. As an example, one of my constituents, Mrs Margaret Kous from Collie in my Forrest electorate, was awarded her diploma of education from Edith Cowan University in 2000. Mrs Kous is also in receipt of a widow’s allowance from Centrelink. Mrs Kous has been offered a $20,000 scholarship to enable her to continue her studies at Edith Cowan University with the aim of re-entering the workforce. However, the scholarship moneys are a component of assessable income and are counted as such by Centrelink. If this scholarship was a gift or untied to the assessable income component, Mrs Kous’s pension payments would not be affected.

Mrs Kous initially thought she might take $10,000 of the scholarship money as a lump sum to assist her with petrol and car expenses, as she would need to travel from Collie to Bunbury and back several times each week, a distance of 120 kilometres return. But doing this would reduce her current Centrelink payment from $329 per fortnight to just $63 per fortnight. Mrs Kous is now thinking twice about accepting the scholarship because, with the resultant reduction in her Centrelink allowance of $266 per fortnight, it would not leave her with enough funds to meet normal living expenses, plus travel to university. It does seem strange logic to treat this scholarship as ‘income’, thereby denying Mrs Kous the opportunity to become financially independent in the foreseeable future and, as such, no longer a cost to the public purse.

I welcome the input of Universities Australia to this further review. I sincerely hope the government responds to all recommendations submitted so that practical recommendations such as the ones I have previously mentioned are implemented by government, not just those of an ideological nature.

Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great privilege to be able to speak on the day following the budget announcements of last night on a subject that was recognised as being of national importance. University sectors have been the subject of an ideological and quite malicious attack, albeit characterised by the former government as designed to increase access to tertiary education. The effect has been to require more and more Australians who wish to undertake tertiary studies to pay quite outrageous fees and to bind the universities into the ideological obsession of the former government with its industrial relations policy prescriptions which were so resoundingly rejected at the last election. Might I commence my remarks by springboarding off the budget last night, simply to acknowledge that one of the measures will directly benefit the University of Tasmania.

While other members might not see that as the acme of the budget, in my mind a most important and significant element of the budget is a special one-off funding measure of $11.5 million as part of a nationwide total of $500 million from the Rudd government for priority areas in information and communications technology, laboratories, libraries, student study spaces, teaching spaces and student amenities. To have the opportunity to be able to speak on a bill to which this matter is directly, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Removal of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements and National Governance Protocols Requirements and Other Matters) Bill 2008, relevant and to be able to express my happiness at this funding initiative directed specifically at the University of Tasmania gives me real pleasure, as I am a graduate of that university and a member of the parliament who has always taken a very direct interest in the wellbeing of that tertiary institution.

I come to the measures which are addressed most specifically in this legislation, and address what I think was a very wrong direction—that was to tie universities’ hands to the Work Choices agenda that the former government pressed, to its own destruction, over the last three years. What the former government did, through measures introduced by the now Leader of the Opposition, Brendan Nelson, was to require universities, as a condition of receipt of substantial levels of government funding, to offer all staff AWAs and to operate in what was called a ‘direct relationship with employees’ to preclude union involvement. This, of course, is a misuse of the power of the state to intervene in the managerial and operational conduct of the tertiary sector and not only undermined what had been a pretty effective and healthy relationship between universities and staff over a long period of time but guaranteed that those institutions had no choice but to accept an agenda that they were reluctant to adopt.

In our own parliamentary environment we learnt, at a very early stage of parliament’s development, to avoid those kinds of measures. In fact, one of the key standing orders in our parliament is to make certain that bills that appropriate money contain no other measures. The reason for that was the practice of early governments, in monarchical times, to tack measures to appropriation bills so that if those measure were passed they would necessarily bring with them other more unpopular measures that would not otherwise command the assent of the parliament. So, in the development of our parliamentary democracy, it was decided very early on—as a rejection of that tying of the hands, in a sense, of the parliament—that a spending bill could not have tacked onto it other kinds of measures. So you could not put forward a bill that would say, ‘The only way this particular spending measure can be approved is if it incorporates some other quite draconian measure that could not otherwise be introduced and gain the support of the parliament.’ That, of course, had been the way previously that governments had got away with very unpopular measures that would not have passed the parliament.

But it was seen fit by the former minister for education, in the time he occupied that portfolio—he now occupies the position of Leader of the Opposition—in a sense to tack measures that the universities would have rejected onto funding allocations so that the only choice they had was either to accept a level of poverty in terms of the courses and arrangements they could offer or to accept the ideological agenda of the government of the time. The universities have suffered under those arrangements for a considerable time, and some reflection of their present view can be had from the statement issued by Universities Australia last night. That media statement says:

Universities Australia supports the Government’s action in this session of Parliament to remove the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements (HEWRRs) as a legislated condition of funding for universities.

“Universities Australia would welcome the removal of the HEWRRs as an indication from the Government that it is happy to loosen existing prescriptive requirements and allow universities to pursue their missions as self governing bodies”, Universities Australia Chair, Professor Richard Larkins said.

The release continues:

Universities Australia looks forward to other restrictions being eased or removed across a range of Commonwealth funding and regulatory activity. Universities have been their most dynamic in areas least directed by government ...

The universities plainly are delighted that this measure that is presently under discussion in the House seems set to pass this House with a convincing majority. Whilst it is the case that the opposition still has the capacity to be malign, and to exercise such limited authority as it still persists in holding until the new senators come into office, I look forward to a clear indication from those opposite that they will not stand in the way of removing restrictions in university funding that have hitherto tied those universities to AWAs. I suppose it would be hard to expect otherwise, given the opposition’s complete acceptance of the abolition of AWAs in recent times and a belated recognition that they took industrial relations too far—that their views had been seen as unfair, had been characterised by the community as unfair and had played a very significant part in the defeat that they suffered.

Another measure that this addresses is the cost of degrees. The Higher Education Support Act 2003, which was the product of the now Leader of the Opposition, created a greater number of user-pays students through the FEE-HELP and OS-HELP schemes. I remember very clearly the contemptuous dismissal of the idea that university fees would reach $100,000, but sadly, in the course of the last three years, over 100 such degrees nationwide came into operation at Australian tertiary institutions despite the 1999 pledge to the contrary. So we now have a situation where we are starting to move towards the abolition of fee-paying arrangements for tertiary study for Australian students to make certain that access is on the basis of merit and not on the basis of who can afford to pay their way into tertiary institutions against the opportunities that would be open to students of greater capacity but lesser means. We are getting rid of a situation where over 100 degrees nationwide are now offered at a price of over $100,000. I have no doubt that that will be very welcome to those who look forward to entry into the tertiary education sector.

This debate is one of the oddest because it is characterised by many people who benefited from the openness of the university sector at a time when the Labor government under Gough Whitlam first reformed the education sector. It made it possible for people of limited means to enter the university sector, removed fees, saw the growth of the tertiary sector as something that was essential for Australia’s long-term prosperity and recommitted Australia, in a way that had not been done hitherto, to an expanded university sector where those who had come from backgrounds of limited means could enter. Those same people, having benefited from that period of innovation and openness in education, came forward and committed themselves to slamming the door shut and offering degrees that were open only to those who were wealthy or who had scores which were sufficiently high to get them into the limited number of places that were open access.

Universities responded, of course, to this new educational economy. They had to in order to support and fund themselves. Increasingly, fee-paying places became more important in overall university economies, and the distortion of the education sector began and continued apace. That distortion was also continued through the determination to link universities to an ideological agenda so that staff working in those universities would have to be employed on arrangements that were consistent with the views of the government of the day—that is, individual contracts—taking away the opportunity of representation through staff associations and unions and deliberately pursuing an agenda which was forced on the universities by reason of the funding clout that the Commonwealth had as their principal funding source. Labor, by contrast, has a commitment to supporting higher education which means making universities accessible to a new generation of Australians by phasing out full-fee degrees. This commitment builds upon federal Labor’s election commitments to provide incentives for young Australians to study and teach maths or science at university, to double the number of undergraduate scholarships, to double the number of postgraduate PhD and masters-by-research scholarships and to create 1,000 mid-career fellowships for Australian researchers. It sits within the government’s broad policy of introducing a compact model of university funding consistent with ALP policy dating back to the 2006 white paper produced by Jenny Macklin whilst in opposition.

These are healthy changes for the university sector. Most importantly, they are healthy changes for our community because they mean we go back to a merit based system of selection for entry rather than the capacity to pay. They mean that universities can offer and operate employment to staff by arrangements that are negotiated effectively with their faculty, and they remove the obligation that was imposed by the previous government of running internal management issues in industrial relations that were ideologically driven in an area where this government had the capacity. We have seen that the Work Choices legislation, whilst removed, still casts a real shadow over those that were forced into circumstances of employment where they had limited choice. There is a transitional process that will phase those things out. AWAs will no longer be offered, but this is a slow transition. We are making it plain that we have no desire to confront employers or employees with arrangements that need to dislocate settled employment contracts that have been entered into, but on the other hand we must make sure that we move forward with fairness.

This legislation complements earlier legislation introduced into this parliament and passed by both the House and the Senate to get rid of the Work Choices legislation. I imagine the spectre that this will be somehow resisted when it reaches the Senate might be merely that—a spectre of a ghost long departed but with little prospect of coming to reality—although there may be some on the other side who still wish to retain fees of above $100,000. I am not certain whether the letting go of the Work Choices demon has exorcised with it the $100,000-degree golem that sat with it. We will discover whether that is so when the matters hit the Senate.

I am very pleased to have been able to come forward in this parliament, in one of the first speeches after the budget, to recognise this important change and also to conclude, as I began, with the recognition that the work is only beginning and that there is a far greater financial contribution foreshadowed in the budget, in a $10 billion education fund, together with a very specific set of commitments, some of which have been earmarked for the tertiary institution where I studied and where I was formerly the President of the Tasmania University Union. I am certain that all those who are staff and students at the University of Tasmania will be very pleased to acknowledge the receipt of that additional $11.5 billion that was earmarked as part of the nationwide fund—$500 million for those priority areas that were identified.

I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker Bevis, and commend this reform legislation to the House. I look forward to discovering whether or not the opposition still wishes to bat on with any resistance to a direction which the community so comprehensively endorsed at the last election.

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

At the outset I would like to congratulate the minister at the table, the Hon. Duncan Kerr, who in my view ought to have been given a much higher position than that of parliamentary secretary in this government. Having said that, I agree with some of what he said. I must say, though, that I disagree with much of what he said in relation to the Higher Education Support Amendment (Removal of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements and National Governance Protocols Requirements and Other Matters) Bill 2008. This bill is really just a piece of Labor ideology. I suppose we are going to see more of this sort of legislation introduced as we proceed into the term of this government.

Some of the changes proposed in the bill may, as a consequence of its enactment, remove the safeguards that promote accountability, business efficiencies and staff flexibility. These include requirements that tertiary institutions comply with certain workplace relations requirements and also that specific governance protocols be adhered to so as to ensure these institutions are eligible for additional government funding. This is underpinned by the theory that the allocation of these funds is accompanied by a requirement to use the funds wisely and responsibly. The removal of these governance protocols in particular also could have the potential to open the door to a reduction in the transparency of the operations of universities, which are largely taxpayer funded, and counteracts what is a natural expectation that the use of government or taxpayer funds by universities ought to be scrutinised very closely.

The higher education workplace relations requirements included that staff were able to be offered the choice for their work to be managed through an Australian workplace agreement alongside other available choices of a collective agreement or a common-law contract. Mr Deputy Speaker Bevis, you would be aware that an Australian workplace agreement gave a staff member who is highly qualified and a respected academic or operational employee the opportunity to negotiate a salary and conditions in line with what the staff member believes that he or she is worth. He or she would be able to negotiate on his or her own terms and utilise his or her own skills rather than be subject to a collective agreement or other contractual arrangement that the staff member feels may not be in the best interests of the staff member or may not best meet the wishes of the staff member.

The opportunity to choose an Australian workplace agreement as an alternative to others was one of the very sensible inclusions enshrined in the Higher Education Support Act 2003. This was an option that may not have been offered if not for the legislation but it was an option that gave the employee greater flexibility in the workplace. It also gave the employee the opportunity to make arrangements mutually satisfactory and assisted to encourage openness and freedom of choice for employees when it came to these particular matters. Australian workplace agreements also had the benefit of encouraging and fostering better and more direct relationships between employer and employee, encouraging the comfort of staff by delivering to them more flexibility and personal control over their respective work conditions—greater flexibility in workers being able to negotiate conditions to their liking—and the ability to reward outstanding employees. The need to reward outstanding employees is a very important principle because, unless employees are able to be appropriately remunerated and rewarded for levels of competence, capacity and diligence, it could well be that tertiary institutions will not be able to attract the quality of staff member or employee that the institutions need to be able to compete as first-class tertiary institutions in the world tertiary education marketplace. With this requirement being removed—that is, the ability to negotiate—a concern may arise that some valued employees will not be satisfied with their work conditions and may feel that those conditions are not on a par with what they would like, and we could see a situation where those people are lost to the tertiary sector.

The bill also affects governance issues. It does make sense to set requirements for these institutions to ensure that they promote best governance practices. Amendments to the Higher Education Support Act 2003 in 2005 included requirements such as ensuring university councils included membership with a wide range of expertise and considerable commercial and business experience. It is important that people who are administering educational institutions do have business and commercial experience, because, let’s face it, one of the reasons that higher education institutions such as universities exist is to turn people out who are suitably qualified to play their role in the commercial marketplace and the commercial workplace in Australia. If you have suitably qualified people, then that gives our nation the skills it needs to compete around the world. It also gives the people who graduate successfully the capacity to have a long and successful work life.

The requirement to include on university councils people with a wide range of experience, including commercial and business experience, was not a requirement that aimed to control or limit the governing body of an institution. Rather, it was designed to open up the collective mind of the institution to ensure that it did not become bogged down in specific or narrow viewpoints or bogged down in a specific way of doing things. It follows a theory that variety in membership works to encourage a wide range and number of views and to promote wider discussion to enable institutions to have the very best chance of success.

Other governance protocols included suggestions as to the number of people on the council of an institution and a limit for those on councils to a period of 12 years, which helped to foster a regular sense of renewal and turnover, keeping the council fresh and maintaining a direction in line with the requirements of our changing communities and society.

Some of the changes included in this bill are ideologically based—such as the removal of an employee’s choice to be employed under an Australian workplace agreement—while others will remove safeguards to the efficient and open operation of these facilities and institutions.

The opposition is not opposing amendments relating to workplace relations changes, consistent with the position taken by the opposition on other workplace legislation introduced into the parliament and subsequently carried. We are also not opposing amendments that do not relate to the national governance protocols. The legislation also covers a range of subsidiary matters, which is occurring increasingly in this parliament.

I am pleased to participate in this debate and I would sincerely ask the government to take on board the opposition’s concerns with respect to improving this legislation before the chamber.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Removal of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements and National Governance Protocols Requirements and Other Matters) Bill 2008. This bill removes section 33-17 from the Higher Education Support Act 2003. The section required higher education providers to meet higher education workplace relations requirements and national governance protocols imposed by the previous government under the Commonwealth Grant Scheme. If they did not, those providers had imposed on them a reduction in scheme funding for Commonwealth supported places. Under section 33-17, a provider would have its funding reduced by 7.5 per cent if the minister could not be satisfied the provider had complied with both the requirements and the protocols as of 31 August each year.

The previous, coalition government’s requirements consisted of five elements in this section: a requirement to offer Australian workplace agreements to all employees of providers of higher education; the prohibition of automatic third-party representatives; alleged workplace flexibility; productivity and performance; and freedom of association. The requirements formed part of the Howard government’s now discredited Work Choices scheme. Work Choices stripped away hard-won terms and conditions of employment, affecting families and individuals, including my constituency in Blair. Undoubtedly, it was the most important vote-changing issue in my electorate in the 2007 federal election.

How did Work Choices come upon us? It came upon us in this way: no mandate was sought in 2004; no public consultation ever took place before it was imposed upon us; no consensus in the community was formed before Work Choices was thrust upon us; and no amount of taxpayer funded advertising could convince the Australian public that Work Choices was a good thing.

The Rudd Labor government supports a fair, simple and flexible industrial relations system. We believe that the telephone book known as Work Choices should be replaced and we should have National Employment Standards—and I am pleased that they were released in the form of an exposure draft on 14 February which is open to submissions. We believe in award modernisation. Modernisation of awards is important to providing a fair and relevant safety net, and it is a key objective of Forward with Fairness. It is important that people understand that we in the Rudd Labor government are not against flexible work arrangements. The protocols of the previous government talked about the size and composition of governing bodies of providers and the duties of governing body members. The Rudd Labor government will continue to ask providers to provide good governance. The Rudd government wants universities to be efficient administrators and effective educators of our people. The Rudd government does not want employers and employees and universities generally to be uncertain about funding and workplace agreements.

The removal of that conditions of funding under section 33-17 means that universities will not be coerced into offering AWAs to employees. I really wonder: if the Howard government was so convinced of the worth and desirability of AWAs, why did it make offering them a financially coercive measure and why was it necessary to promote AWAs in this way to the higher education sector? Surely AWAs would have stood on their own merits, and people would have flocked to them, signing up to them everywhere! During my election campaign, I found no-one who welcomed this sort of conditional funding and this big-fisted type of intervention in the higher education sector. I really do wonder: if AWAs were so attractive, so beneficial, so advantageous, why the coercion? Why the big-stick approach? Why the bullying? We know what the higher education sector believed about it all. The Vice-Chancellors Committee and its successor, Universities Australia, opposed this aspect of the draconian Work Choices legislation.

The removal of that requirement as a condition of funding means that the higher education sector need no longer offer mandatory statutory contracts to its employees. The higher education sector will now come under the Rudd government’s transitional industrial relations arrangements. Unlike the previous, coalition government, we do not distrust the higher education sector. The Rudd government’s new workplace relations scheme offers employers and employees flexibility to negotiate in the workplace. The Rudd government will streamline the awards and bring in new, simple national standards, which will be fully operational by 1 January 2010. In the interim a genuine, not a fake, no disadvantage test will be there—not a dodgy one like the one the previous, coalition government put in.

We will ensure that employees in my constituency of Blair will not be worse off. We will not sacrifice employees’ terms and conditions on the altar of ideological zealotry. We heard a lot about ideology from those opposite. I have listened intently to the speeches of those opposite. They talk about ideology but fail to recognise the ideology in the Work Choices legislation. The Rudd Labor government has consulted with businesses, unions and community groups to ensure that there is balance in the industrial relations system. Contrast that with 2004 and the Work Choices experience under the Howard government. In opposition, we told the Australian people our policies, unlike Mr Howard in 2004.

The high priests of Work Choices opposite should be ashamed of themselves. They should tell the higher education sector and the Australian public, once and for all, just where they stand on Work Choices. As its architects, they should say what a future coalition government would do in relation to individual statutory agreements. They warn of woe, and we have heard speeches which say that the whole country is going to rack and ruin. They also said that when we released our Forward with Fairness industrial relations policies in 2007. If they had the courage of their convictions, they would stand up for AWAs and Work Choices. They would not have sat there, and we would not have seen the spectacle we saw earlier this year in this parliament.

What are their policies now? I have listened to the speeches, and I just cannot work out where they stand. What will it be at the next election? These are all questions which have been left unanswered by the Liberal Party. They are all over the place on Work Choices. One minute they are devoted to it; the next minute they are denying it. Then they are denigrating it; then they are dealing with it; then they are dodging it. We are never quite sure where the Liberals stand. And yet not a sign of contrition have we seen from those opposite. They could have done it all in March 2008; they could have done a mea culpa and said, ‘We got it wrong.’ But we have not seen that. They had their chance for redemption, forgiveness and a new start, and they have blown it. They have refused to support the government’s motion to rule out individual statutory contracts once and for all.

The apostles of Work Choices are all publicly agnostics now. We really do not know what they believe, and I do not know that they believe themselves. They have secretly never renounced their faith in Work Choices. They are the true believers—the true believers in Work Choices. They campaigned for Work Choices, they are committed to Work Choices and they are converted to it. But they dare not speak its name. You do not hear it mentioned in speeches in this House. It reminds me of Harry Potter and JK Rowling. Remember Lord Voldemort? Lord Voldemort was talked about by everyone. Harry was the only person who was able to say his name. Everyone talked about ‘the Prince of Darkness’ and ‘He Who Must Not Be Named’. Work Choices is the Lord Voldemort of Australian politics now.

I have two university campuses in my electorate of Blair: one in Ipswich—the University of Queensland Ipswich Campus; and one in Gatton—the University of Queensland Gatton Campus. I have met with the higher education sector, and I have talked to the employees, the unions and the vice-chancellor. I have sat down and talked to them about this issue. I did that before the election, and I have done it since. During the campaign and in my discussions, not one of the staff said to me, ‘You know, we need to cut funding to the higher education sector and we need AWAs to meet the challenges of the higher education sector.’ No-one said that to me. But we know the higher education sector knew the wrath of the coalition, and they have felt it.

I will tell you where the people in my electorate stand. I campaigned from Kalbar to Karalee, from Ropeley to Ripley and from Booval to Boonah, and no-one said that they absolutely had to have Work Choices in the higher education sector. It never happened. On the contrary, I had conservative voters come up to me everywhere telling me they were going to vote Labor, sometimes for the first time. I remember meeting one woman, who was in her 60s, at the markets at Boonah. She came up to me and said, ‘Shayne, I do not know why Mr Howard has done this to me.’ I asked her what it was, and she could not quite get the terminology straight, but it seemed that she was put on an AWA and she lost her terms and conditions which she had taken for granted. She told me she had been a coalition voter all her life and never voted anything other than coalition. I met a woman who had changed jobs, only to have an AWA put in front of her at the end of a week in a training section. Her employer said, ‘If you don’t sign it, you lose your job.’ And do you know what that AWA said? It said that if you were five minutes late then you could be sacked. That is what happened. She had to take the job because she had two kids at home to look after. People hated the deception. They knew about the ideology, and the Australian public voted against ideology on 24 November 2007.

What is the legacy of Work Choices? Higher interest rates, almost zero productivity growth, infrastructure deficiencies, skills shortages, terms and conditions stripped away from working Australians, and higher education the least affordable in memory. The Work Choices legislation was fundamentally flawed because it assumed equality in the bargaining between employers and employees. There simply is not. Employers decided the terms and conditions of employment and the way they were done. Despite the rhetoric we heard about flexibility in the workplace, it was wilfully misleading. Very rarely was there any real negotiation with employees, and very often signing AWAs was the condition of employment, promotion, transfer or wage increase. All too often, women and those in low-paid jobs—for example, in the retail and cleaning sectors—suffered. The evidence is in. It eroded standards of living and left workers worse off, and it really was an offence to the traditional Australian values of decency and fairness. The notion of a fair go was undermined, and the fairness test was a joke. The government’s introduction of a real fairness test is about fixing the fairness problems, not about fixing the next election as happened in May 2007.

During the 2004 election John Howard promised Australian working families that he would keep interest rates at a record low. There was absolutely no mention of his extreme workplace relations system. On the day that Work Choices became law, John Howard breached his contract with the Australian people, forcing his extreme laws through. It was an assault on the people in my constituency and not once did my opponent mention Work Choices when he criticised me for campaigning on issues. Work Choices was egregious, extreme and unfair, and that is why the voters in my electorate ousted the incumbent. How could members opposite not know what Work Choices would do to people? How could you possibly believe the member for North Sydney on the Four Corners program when he said he did not know and the members in the cabinet did not know what Work Choices would do to people?

Section 33-17 says everything about the coalition’s attitude to university education, to academia and to the sector generally. It is emblematic of the previous government’s attitude to the higher education sector. Replacing that section of the act makes it crystal clear to the higher education sector that the days of conditional funding based on workplace agreements are over. Removal of the guidelines contrary to the prescriptive elements of the requirements and protocols is the right thing to do by the sector and by the working families and individuals whose members work as lecturers, as tutors and in administrative capacities.

The other important aspect of this bill is technical. It deals with the Commonwealth being allowed to designate bodies to perform auditing re higher education providers and to set requirements that must be met. It is anticipated that state and territory accreditation authorities and not just the Australian Universities Quality Agency would be involved. Two states—Queensland and Victoria—had a trial of this process. It is expected that audits and the accreditation process can be done contemporaneously to reduce time and bring about efficiencies. This is likely to reduce costs, red tape and the administrative burden for all concerned.

The Rudd Labor government is serious about good governance. Witness the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Bill, which was passed earlier this year. That was about transparency, accountability and good governance in relation to companies and directors and bringing these in line with the Corporations Law. The higher education sector has taken steps to ensure compliance with National Governance Protocols, and all the requisite state and territory legislation amendments necessary in this regard have been enacted. The Rudd government will encourage good governance in the higher education sector also. However, relations between universities and the previous coalition government were distrustful and antagonistic. The Work Choices requirements imposed by the Howard government on universities were about financially punishing universities if they did not become paid-up members of the Work Choices party.

Relations between the higher education sector and any government will not always be easy. Like any sector of the country, the higher education sector will have its barrows to push and its interests to protect, and no doubt it will let the Rudd government know what its position is. But relations must be based on respect, trust and cooperation. Dictating is not the way to go and it is not the Australian way.

The bill before the House is about securing a Work Choices-free higher education sector. It is about protecting working families and individuals involved in our universities. It is about ensuring that employers and employees cooperate in the workplaces of our universities. Our universities must be places of learning, life skilling and vocational preparation, not battlegrounds for the proponents and ideologues of Work Choices. I know that my constituents and those in the higher education sector in Blair will welcome this bill, and I do also. I commend the bill to the House.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Bevis, with your education background, I know how interested and concerned you are with the Higher Education Support Amendment (Removal of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements and National Governance Protocols Requirements and Other Matters) Bill 2008. It is an honour to speak about it in front of you today. Like the previous speaker, the member for Blair, I am very pleased to speak in support of the higher education support amendment bill, a bill that could be paraphrased as ‘sending down the HEWRRs’. This bill will overturn part of the Howard-Costello ideological crusade to infect Australian workplaces with harsh, extreme, unfair and impractical workplace laws. That last word, ‘impractical’, is most important. Unfortunately, the previous government was so hell-bent on this ideology that they even forced Australian workplace agreements on universities and then had the hide—the hide of a rhinoceros—to call it choice. When members opposite talk about choice, obviously the ‘Hobson’s’ is silent.

The bill before the House today revokes section 33-17 of the Higher Education Support Act 2003. This Hobson’s choice piece of legislation tied universities’ funding to their implementation of higher education workplace relations requirements, colloquially known as the HEWRRs, and also the National Governance Protocols, the NGPs. When I was growing up, whenever it rained in St George, which was not very often, my mum would always say, ‘Send it down, Hughie!’ So it is amazing that we have now got some legislation that is about sending down the HEWRRs, although I do not think it is connected to the previous word Hughie, which I think is a corruption of Jupiter or something like that.

Under this strange piece of ideology, in practice, a university would have its basic Commonwealth grants scheme amount reduced by about 7.5 per cent—that is, a higher academic institution would have its funding cut by about 7.5 per cent if it failed to satisfy the previous minister that it had complied with HEWRRs and NGPs. In other words, the Howard-Costello government held universities and higher education providers to ransom. Either they had to pursue the former member for Bennelong’s and the current member for North Sydney’s approach to workplace relations or they would suffer a significant financial penalty. I say that percentage again: 7.5 per cent. It is still hard for me to accept that, in this millennium, a government would be committed to taking money out of higher education or any education establishment rather than pouring money in. Furthermore, universities and higher education providers were not able to compete on an even playing field with the universities down the road unless they chose to undercut the rights and conditions of their workers.

Universities are already under significant financial pressure after nearly 12 long years of neglect when we saw the funding ripped out of the higher education sector. The OECD’s Education at a glance 2007 report—a very respectable journal—found that public investment by the Howard-Costello government in tertiary education between 1995 and 2004 declined by four per cent, while in the other OECD countries it increased by an average of 49 per cent.

I have got a couple of university degrees. I have got a diploma of teaching and a law degree and an arts degree, so it is completely unbelievable to me that a university system could be attacked by a federal government. That is such a shameful legacy that the people opposite need to hang their heads in shame every time this legislation is discussed. In terms of a plan for the future, they were going to base their plan for the future on the horse and cart, basically, rather than the smarter approach to education. When I was at university, I was either too busy for student politics or too busy studying—and I would like to say that I might be misleading the House. But maybe the people opposite had a different experience when they were at university and because they had a bad history of student politics they felt it necessary to wreak some revenge on universities with VSU legislation and the like. That record of ripping money out of our universities over the last 11 or 12 years is a shameful legacy.

Unlike the Howard government, the Rudd Labor government has a long-term enduring commitment to the importance of higher education in our universities, and we saw some of those measures unveiled in Wayne Swan’s budget last night. We believe in the future. We are not trying to make up for gripes or grievances from our university days; we actually have a plan for the future, a plan for the nation. I think it is important for members to be familiar with the history of this Hobson’s choice section 33-17. It is a history that needs to be hung around the necks of those people opposite like a dead albatross. Who was it who introduced this unfair legislation to the parliament? You do not have to go to your history books, because it is the former education minister, the current Leader of the Opposition, Brendan Nelson. It is the same opposition leader who is now trying to scratch away from this policy like a veritable scrub turkey. Now he is trying to leave the dungheap that he created behind. It is just another example of the flip-flop characteristics of his personality.

The main element of the John Howard-Peter Costello higher education workplace relations requirements was for universities to offer Australian workplace agreements to all employees—yes, all employees, not just the academics at the top of their game who might be on a decent wage. It was actually being imposed on all the employees in the universities, and we have heard from the previous speaker, the member for Blair, of the consequences for people who have no bargaining power and no opportunity to negotiate with their employers. The fact that these requirements were included in legislation in the first place is a sign that even back then the former coalition government knew that workplace agreements were toxic. They knew that AWAs were so unpopular with employers and staff that the only way to get universities—and obviously with universities we are talking about many educated people, informed people who have perhaps a little bit of clout in terms of understanding industrial legislation—to consider offering AWAs was to hold a gun to the heads of the universities through legislation and those severe financial penalties that I outlined earlier. This was more about prosecuting an ideological agenda than sound public policy. The John Howard-Peter Costello government thought it knew better than university leaders and staff how to run their institutions. The people who were actually involved with running modern-day academic institutions were not consulted. How wrong John Howard and Peter Costello were. Their ideas added to administrative workloads, but for no gain whatsoever.

The passing of this bill will ensure that universities no longer be required to offer AWAs as a condition of funding under the CGS. It will ensure full Commonwealth grant funding for universities. In my electorate of Moreton, Griffith University has suffered because of section 33-17 and the John Howard-Peter Costello higher education workplace requirements, the HEWRRs. It has imposed a huge administrative burden and a huge cost on the university in setting up an industrial system that was unmanageable, unwieldy and unfair. It beggars belief why the previous government would force such an expensive system on already cash-strapped universities. As I mentioned earlier, there had been that real decline compared to other OECD countries. This is a time when universities actually needed a helping hand. Instead, all they were offered was a boot on their throat. Griffith University, the university in my electorate, and all other universities, were forced to waste huge amounts of time, money and staffing to implement this unwanted system, this bizarre ideological pursuit.

I am advised that Griffith University did nothing actively to force AWAs on their staff. Rather, they did what was required under the antediluvian legislation when the gun was at their head. In fact, the very day that Griffith University signed off on their latest collective agreement was the very same day that the Howard government’s higher education workplace relations requirements kicked in. It was a collective agreement negotiated fairly, with justice and with dignity, and one that all the participants agreed to. But, instead, the gun was put to the university’s head, and Griffith, like other universities, was hamstrung by the requirements which forced them to offer AWAs to all staff. But how effective was that system? Only a handful of Griffith University staff took on a workplace agreement. And even though they were academics and knowledgeable in their academic areas, those areas were not industrial law and so some of them had no idea what they were signing up for. They were offered AWAs but, although they are literate and academic, they did not understand the documents that were put to them.

In fact I heard a story about one senior academic staff member at Griffith who took on an AWA inadvertently after returning to Queensland from a stint overseas. He came back to the university, thought things were much the same as they had always been, was offered a job contract, effectively, but did not read all the details and so inadvertently signed up to an AWA. He was employed in 2006 under an AWA at a 2005 pay rate. It was not until 18 months later, when he was talking to his colleagues and found out he had not got a pay rise like all the other staff, that he realised what was going on and that he had signed up to an AWA. I am not suggesting there was duress or undue influence or anything like that. But it goes to show that if an academic, who is educated and has resources, does not understand what they are signing up for then what chance does someone like an uneducated cleaner have? Under the Australian workplace agreement that this academic had signed, even though he had 18 months without a pay rise while his colleagues did progress, he had no protection whatsoever. He was just another victim of John Howard and the current member for North Sydney’s unfair workplace laws. This was certainly not the fault of the university, just the result of that unworkable, unfair system. I know the higher education sector will welcome the passing of this bill. I have certainly been approached by many academics over the past couple of months who are very keen for that to take place because the bill ensures university funding is no longer tied to Brendan Nelson’s HEWRRs.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank Griffith University for their part in hosting the Moreton 2020 Summit on 5 April. The Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Academic, Professor John Dewar, and his capable senior staff ensured that more than 400 people from my electorate on Brisbane’s southside had a chance to rock up and have their say and explore real solutions for Australia’s future. That is the way to proselytise an idea: invite the public along and talk about things. That is the way to use academic institutions, rather than holding a gun to their heads and ramming something down their throats—if that is a mixed metaphor, I apologise. Universities should work hand in hand with government and their communities; they should be given a helping hand, not the hammer that was used by John Howard. This is exactly what universities should be all about. It is not a university’s job to implement the union-busting agenda of a coalition government, and those opposite should be ashamed of their role in that. As we have seen in this parliament since November last year, there have been ample opportunities for them to scrape Work Choices off their shoes but, no, while they can still smell it they have not agreed to do so. I look forward to a productive and healthy relationship with my university, Griffith University, and I am proud that such a progressive institution was acutely involved in the Moreton 2020 Summit. It was a fantastic event and I look forward to those ideas being implemented in the lead-up to the end of the year.

Returning to the legislation in front of us, the higher education support amendment bill, I think it sends a strong message that the Rudd government is serious about restoring a fairer workplace relations system in Australia. It will also remove the unnecessary administrative burden for universities—running around doing something that had no productive benefits—at a time when they are strapped for cash. As the Group of Eight universities have said:

There will be a much reduced compliance, bidding and reporting burden placed on universities and greater flexibility over the use of resources.

I will also quote from a media release from Universities Australia, which is the peak body. The release, issued on Tuesday, 13 May, says:

Universities Australia supports the Government’s action in this session of Parliament to remove the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements—

Nelson’s HEWRRs—

as a legislated condition of funding for universities.

“Universities Australia would welcome the removal of the HEWRRs as an indication from the Government that it is happy to loosen existing prescriptive requirements and allow universities to pursue their missions as self-governing bodies,” Universities Australia Chair, Professor Richard Larkins said.

That is basically saying: to do what they do best. Professor Larkins continues:

“Universities Australia looks forward to other restrictions being eased or removed across a range of Commonwealth funding and regulatory activity. Universities have been their most dynamic in areas least directed by government, such as postgraduate coursework and international student initiatives ...

That dry academic language—‘universities have been their most dynamic in areas least directed by government’—does not tell the story of how hamstrung they have been and how that has been such an assault on what universities do best.

The universities will be subject to the government’s fairer and more balanced transitional workplace relations which are also before the House. This government understands how to consult with industry, how to consult with unions, how to consult with the community. We do not try to rush things through quickly. We certainly will not be having the farce of one day’s consultation, like John Howard did in the past. More importantly, we went to the electorate seeking approval for what we stood for in terms of industrial relations and then we received a mandate in November last year to implement that. That is unlike the 2004 experience, when there was no mention of industrial relations in any of the political propaganda, and then all of a sudden, after election night and the Senate result, John Howard was a born-again industrial relations advocate. It was a shameful display in terms of his contribution to the Australian community. So, from now on, the universities will be subject to a much fairer regime. Thankfully, this goes hand in hand with the Rudd government’s approach to the future, which is: we believe in a future beyond election night 2010 or 2011, whenever that might be. We have a plan for all of Australia for all of the future, not just through to election night. I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for addressing this matter so quickly and, in doing so, I commend the bill to the House.

Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to speak on a bill that will remove systematic intimidation from the Australian higher education system. It is also good to speak to a bill that will help return some of the underpinnings of academic freedoms. The Higher Education Support Amendment (Removal of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements and National Governance Protocols Requirements and Other Matters) Bill 2008 is designed to correct gross interference and clear intimidation suffered by universities and their staff.

In having to introduce this bill, the Rudd government shows how far the Howard government went with their ideological obsession before they were unceremoniously turfed out of office. We know this bill is about getting rid of the laws that forced every employee, every employer and every institution down the Work Choices road. It is a very important bill to restore the rights of employees and employers to enter into agreements of their choosing. But it has a wider context in the sweep of our country’s traditions. The need for this bill shows that, when John Howard left office, liberalism was dead and buried in the Liberal Party. These laws put in place by the Liberal Party were, in many ways, the symbolic gravestone of liberalism in the Liberal Party. These Liberal Party laws are total anathema to the higher education system. These Liberal coalition laws represented a clear and present danger to university academics.

Traditionally the role of higher education institutions formed an integral part of liberal philosophy and thought. Universities were places where freedom of thought was paramount. The liberal tradition held that knowledge, the advancement of social theory and scientific development were best fostered free from the interference of the state. Universities under the liberal tradition have clung fast to that view for centuries. Then along came Prime Minister John Howard, who tore up and totally shredded that theory and who did not worry about liberal principles or traditions. The then government decided exactly how universities would be run right down to every agreement entered into between universities and every member of their staff across Australia. John Howard tore up the liberalism and got his way on narrow ideological obsession, which amounted to a petty antisocial vendetta against university staff with more social views of the world. All universities and higher education institutions were compelled to think his way or lose millions of dollars in funding. All universities had to have John Howard’s view of the way people acted and reacted in their working arrangements. All universities and their working arrangements had to treat their tutors, professors, associate professors, deans and vice-chancellors as John Howard decreed or be harshly penalised financially. The clauses rammed through on the Higher Education Support Act 2003 by John Howard should be inscribed on the gravestone of the Liberal Party when they finally have the courage to admit that they are no longer liberals and the Liberal Party is no longer a liberal party.

Under liberal university tradition, tenure was very important. It was something that enabled university staff, academics, tutors, professors, associate professors and researchers to pursue ideas and theories without fear or discrimination. Of course, over the years, views about merits of tenure have changed. The one view that has remained constant in this time, however, is Labor’s view. We have always held fast to our principles. A core principle is that employees, whoever they are—whether academics, teachers, health workers, journalists or tradespeople—are entitled to some job security. We believe job security is important to people’s peace of mind. It is important for people to do basic things like knowing that they can pay the mortgage but it is also important in terms of them being able to express an opinion. Under the Work Choices legislation, how many times had we heard stories about an employee getting targeted, bullied, taken advantage of or sacked because they had expressed a view contrary to their employer? Time and time again we heard it. As we know, most employers are not like this, but some are. Some, when they have a bad day, take it out on others.

The academic world is to a large extent a world of ideas. It is also increasingly a competitive academic world. There is vulnerability for people in the academic world to be targeted and punished for their ideas under Work Choices legislation—which is what John Howard wanted. The changes he put through under the Higher Education Support Act forced universities to go down the Work Choices path. Universities had no choice. Every university had to put on the Work Choices straitjacket and goosestep down the recently unseated Prime Minister’s road. Work Choices, of course, shreds any sense of job security or tenure in any form at all. We need to give universities the chance to choose. Universities should not be forced to offer AWAs to staff. Universities should be able to sit down with their staff and work out the industrial relations arrangements that best suit them. They should be given the opportunity to sit down, talk with staff and work out a compromise to satisfy management’s desire to effectively manage employees’ desires for job security and reasonable salary and conditions.

The Work Choices laws that were foisted on Australian universities meant that, anywhere, anytime, employees could be sacked for no reason. If you were a lecturer at the University of Melbourne or the University of Sydney and someone took a set against you, anyone with a basic grasp of Work Choices could send you off down the highway—John Howard’s ‘my way highway’.

These terrible laws, which resulted in the Prime Minister losing his seat, along with dozens of his cronies, are bad for universities, bad for TAFE colleges, bad for schools and bad for every Australian workplace. They are especially bad for universities. The overwhelming majority of Australians recognise that. This bill will rid us of Work Choices from another important area of Australian life. This bill will rid important institutions of these rotten laws.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 2 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 97. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member for Corangamite will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.