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

As I was saying earlier today in this debate, these laws are terrible. They resulted in the Prime Minister losing his seat, along with a dozen of his cronies. They are bad for universities, they are bad for TAFE colleges, they are bad for schools and they are bad for every Australian workplace. They are especially bad for universities. And the overwhelming majority of Australians recognised this at the 2007 election. The Higher Education Support Amendment (Removal of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements and National Governance Protocols Requirements and Other Matters) Bill 2008 will rid us of Work Choices in another important area of Australian life. Our universities will work better for seeing the back of Work Choices laws, and this is one more step towards achieving this. University staff will not feel so constrained to speak their mind. The families of university staff will feel better knowing that they are more secure.

There is another important context to this debate, and that is the financial context of the former government’s financial threats to universities. As we all know, John Howard’s record and the record of the remnants of his former government, on the opposite side, are close to the worst in the Western world on university funding—and their tortuous use of statistics will never hide it. The record of the previous government in funding higher education was truly shameful. The former government’s reign saw a massive drop in funding for higher education, close to the biggest cut, in real funding terms, of any advanced Western country during the same period, at a time when the knowledge industry was the most important in our nation’s future. It was absolutely shameful.

I will repeat a key statistic here that has already been raised in this debate, because it certainly bears repeating. From 1994 to 2004 other OECD countries increased public investment in tertiary education by an average of 49 per cent. In the same period of the Howard-Costello government, public investment in Australia was cut by four per cent. What a shocker. That statistic is perhaps the most damning statistic of any of the records of the previous federal government, and there are many records of shame held by the last government. If we overlay the previous Howard-Nelson government’s threat to further starve universities of funding against this backdrop of ongoing funding starvation, you can see the big stick they were wielding.

Removing the requirement that universities meet the higher education workplace relations requirements as a condition of funding will remove any requirement that universities must offer AWAs to employees. It will remove the enormous mistrust that had grown between the former federal government and tertiary institutions. One of the worst manifestations of this distrust was the requirement that universities abide by the higher education workplace relations requirements, which required them to pursue the Howard government approach to workplace relations or suffer a financial penalty. The end of higher education workplace relations requirements will clear the way for the Rudd government to develop a healthy new relationship with our universities based on trust and mutual respect. Full Commonwealth grant funding will now flow to our universities. In the future, relations will be based around negotiated funding compacts reflecting the distinct missions of each university, not around ideological industrial relations agenda.

In her second reading speech, my Deputy Prime Minister spoke of ‘getting the heavy foot of the Liberal Party off the throat of our universities’. I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. That is exactly what they were doing: they were choking the institutions financially. But I would go one step further than the Minister for Education: this is not just about getting the heavy foot of the Liberal Party off the throats of our universities; it is about getting the heavy foot of the so-called Liberal Party—the now very much misnamed Liberal Party—off the throat of university tutors, professors, associate professors, deans and vice-chancellors.

In conclusion, I would remind the Liberal Party that the Australian people overwhelmingly rejected Work Choices at the last election. The Liberal-National coalition of course needs to do a lot of soul-searching about this. But I would suggest to the Liberals that they also need to look even deeper, to think deeply about their own traditions as Liberals. If they do not wish to recover their lost Liberal traditions, perhaps a merger with the Nationals could be made easier. They could just drop the name ‘Liberal’ altogether and become the Australian National Party. The former government’s Work Choices legislation, and other supporting legislation, was absolutely shocking for working families. It very much hurt the core trust that had been built up in universities between staff and those institutions. I applaud this legislation.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Corangamite on his excellent contribution to this important amending legislation. It gives me great pleasure 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. Put simply, this is part of our promise to get rid of the remnants of the Howard government’s insidious industrial relations scheme. It is part and parcel of our promise and commitment to do a number of things as a government which, I was very pleased to see last night, were fulfilled—very much so—in the budget presented by the Treasurer on behalf of the new Labor government of Australia. Importantly in terms of industrial relations, this amending legislation will remove the results of what really could only be called an arrogant government bullying of workplaces and workers, and in this case unwarranted intervention in our universities and other higher education providers.

The amendment of the Higher Education Support Act 2003 effectively repeals section 33-17. This currently requires higher education providers to meet the higher education workplace relations requirements and the national governance protocols as a condition of their Commonwealth Grants Scheme funding for student places. What are or, indeed, were the consequences of section 33-17? Failure to meet these requirements outlined in section 33-17 fundamentally results in a reduction of a provider’s Commonwealth Grants Scheme funding for student places. That is what the consequences of this section are if you fail to carry out the requirements. Labor’s bill clearly will remove this condition.

In essence, firstly the higher education workplace relations requirements require universities such as my own, the University of Tasmania to implement the Howard government’s ideologically driven workplace relations agenda. Secondly, in practice the governance protocols require adherence to what is effectively a one-size-fits-all model of how to run a university—a straightjacketing, a uniformity. Section 33-17 is demonstrative of what choice meant under the Howard government—effectively, little or no choice.

Under section 33-17 a provider would have its basic Commonwealth Grants Scheme amount reduced by approximately 7.5 per cent if it failed to satisfy the minister that it had complied with both the higher education workplace relations requirements and the national governance protocols as at 31 August each year. The higher education workplace relations requirements—I would use the acronym if I could pronounce it; I think it is HEWRRs—consist of the following five elements: so-called choice in agreement, including the requirement to offer Australian workplace agreements to all employees; direct relationships with staff which prohibit automatic third-party representation—this stuff is all very familiar; workplace flexibility—fair enough; productivity and performance—fair enough; and freedom of association. The national governance protocols, or NGPs, are a set of standards primarily covering the size and composition of governing bodies and the duties of governing body members.

The abolition of the higher education workplace relations requirements and the NGPs accords with this government’s public commitment. The government indicated in a white paper on higher education in July 2006 that ‘workplace relations and governance conditions attaching to funding will be removed’. Unlike the Howard government’s unmandated Work Choices legislation, this government made it clear, as I mentioned earlier, that we would indeed remove these conditions related to that section. No equivocation, no doubt, no ambiguity about what we have done here.

For those interested, let us be clear what Labor’s amendment bill does. First and foremost, will removing the higher education workplace reform requirements stop universities offering AWAs? Indeed it will. Removing the requirements that universities meet the higher education workplace requirements as a condition of funding will remove any requirement that universities must offer AWAs to employees. As soon as chapter 7 of the Commonwealth Grants Scheme guidelines, which contain the prescriptive elements of the higher education workplace relations requirements, as well as the national government’s protocols or NGPs, including the mandatory offering of AWAs, is removed the day after registration, universities will no longer be required to meet the requirements as a condition of funding under the CGS. So repealing section 33-17 of the Higher Education Support Act 2003 will make the government’s intention to remove the requirements as a condition of funding absolutely clear. Universities will be subject to the government’s transitional workplace relations legislation.

It may be asked whether, if the proposed amendment does not pass the Senate prior to July 2008, universities will be forced to comply with the higher education workplace relations requirements as at 31 August 2008. The answer is no. As soon as chapter 7 of the Commonwealth Grants Scheme guidelines, which contain the prescriptive elements of the higher education workplace relations requirements, as well as the NGPs, including the mandatory offering of AWAs, is removed, universities will no longer be required to meet the requirements as a condition of funding under the CGS. Removing the relevant guidelines and repealing 33-17 of the act will remove the HEWRRs and NGPs as a condition of university funding.

Do these changes go far enough? The answer is yes. Removing the relevant guidelines and repealing 33-17 of the act will indeed remove the higher education workplace relations requirements and the NGPs as a condition of university funding, as mentioned.

What about these national government protocols, the NGPs? There is the question of whether these will signal that the government is not interested in university governance. That is far from the truth, far from the facts. All universities have already taken the steps necessary to comply with NGPs and all the amendments to state and territory legislation that were necessary to underpin them have been enacted. There is no need for ongoing compliance checking. The government will continue to encourage universities to adopt good governance practices. This will include pursuing options for a non-legislative focus on the governance standards in response to the forthcoming report of the review of the NGPs by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs.

I note with interest that Universities Australia put out a press release in relation to this legislative amendment on Tuesday, 13 May 2008. I would like to share that with members of the House because it reinforces Labor’s intention and indeed action in moving those amendments. The statement reads:

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.

Further, Universities Australia chair Richard Larkins says:

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.

The statement goes on to say:

‘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,’ Professor Larkins said.

Finally, it says:

In relation to the national governance protocols which could also be removed by this change to the Higher Education Support Act, it is the view of Universities Australia’s vice-chancellors and chancellors that members of governing bodies of universities should not be subject to more prescriptive requirements than apply to directors of bodies governed by corporation law.

The statement by Universities Australia, the rationale provided by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education and the detail of this amendment clearly indicate that this government wants to work in cooperation with the universities, but is by no means not showing interest in proper governance protocols and indeed productivity and flexibility in their workplaces. But they want to do this in negotiation and in cooperation. The former government’s quite pronounced intervention in universities, laying on the stick with very little carrot, was demonstrated in its other interventions in other areas of Australian governance, no more so than in health, particularly in my electorate. The Australian people prefer to work in a cooperative manner rather than be bullied by interventions and other big-stick approaches.

In conclusion, I would also like to place on the record—apart from my support of this amendment, of course—my support for and recognition of the work of the University of Tasmania in my state. Although it is the one university in Tassie, it provides three campuses. I am pleased to say that it gives considerable support to our campus at Burnie, very much a regional campus, which was formed in 1995. I recognise the work of Simon Crean in setting up the university campus at Burnie and also providing much-needed places for that university. I would invite anyone who is visiting my beautiful part of Tasmania to go up to the university and have a look at the campus and the services they provide. One of the great advantages is that it has smaller class sizes and more one-on-one contact with teaching staff. It is no different when people are in teaching and learning situations in schools: the smaller the class size and the more one-on-one contact people have, the better. The campus’s students have an opportunity to study closer to home. I know, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, that you are well aware of the pressure on people to leave rural and regional Australia to study elsewhere. This campus provides the opportunity to be much closer to home, to retain their contact with and keep their skills in their local communities.

The other great thing about this university campus is that it works very closely with the communities that it represents and serves. It provides a raft of undergraduate bachelor and associate degree programs and postgraduate degree programs. They are not full courses, of course, because they have to leave after one or two years, but the University of Tasmania is working towards having full degrees provided at the campus. I do recognise the work of the University of Tasmania and I particularly recognise the work of the Burnie campus.

I am very pleased to support this bill to allow greater flexibility, fairness and cooperation with our university sector and to get this mantle of Australian workplace agreements and penalties off the back of universities so they can get on with what they do best and provide a bit of diversity rather than uniformity, which the former government tended to impose on these universities. It is with pleasure that I support the bill.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am proud 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, which will mark a positive new beginning for the relationship between the federal government and Australian universities. This bill will amend the Higher Education Support Act 2003 by repealing section 33, subsection 17. It will remove the higher education workplace relations requirements and the National Governance Protocols requirements that dogged university administration for five years and made their jobs so much harder—all because of the Howard government’s ideological power trip to impose AWAs on university staff and get greater control of university decision-making processes.

Under section 33-17, a university would have its basic Commonwealth Grant Scheme funds reduced by 7.5 per cent if it failed to satisfy the minister that it had complied with both the HEWRRs and the protocols. This bill is also important to me because I have two fine universities in my electorate: Monash University at Clayton, one of Australia’s largest universities; and the city campus of Deakin University at Burwood. The contribution that these two universities make to the Australian economy and to the life of our nation is significant. Both have excellent reputations in teaching and research. It was an honour to have the Vice-Chancellor of Monash University, Richard Larkins, up last night listening to the budget.

A significant number of the universities’ students, staff and graduates live in my electorate. So universities are not only important to the country but they are vitally important to my local community. It is therefore of personal interest to me to see a better relationship between universities and our government. It is also greatly in the interests of Australia. Unlike the Howard government, the Rudd government does not see universities as places for the elite—quite the opposite. For us, universities are places where every Australian can aspire to excellence in whatever field they choose. We acknowledge universities as the engine rooms of innovation and social and economic progress.

I was recently quite startled to read that former Prime Minister John Howard’s brother said that his family had a hatred of academics and public servants. I was quite stunned that family or you as an individual would have an active hatred of academics and public servants—people who give to our communities, people who offer their services for the betterment of our society. So I suppose what we saw in the previous government rang true to that philosophical belief.

The Rudd Labor government sees universities at the centre of our efforts to lift prosperity, enhance opportunity and wellbeing for Australians, and to increase productivity in our economy. Universities are a key part of the education revolution. This was set out yesterday in the budget through our investment in higher education. In yesterday’s budget the Treasurer announced a funding injection of more than $2 billion for higher education—and I can tell you that it is incredibly welcome within my electorate. Indeed, I am delighted to say that Monash University has received $29.6 million in extra funding for urgent capital works to renew and upgrade information and communications technology systems, laboratories, libraries and student study spaces, teaching spaces and student amenities. Deakin University received $13.8 billion for the same purposes. This will help significantly.

These funds will go a significant way towards repairing the damage done to the universities through the years of neglect of the Howard government. This funding has been welcomed by university staff and students alike. The Rudd government is investing in higher education to build stronger universities for the future benefit of us all. Not only are we investing but we are building a new and better relationship with our universities and the people who teach, research and learn within them. The new relationship is built on trust and respect and on the building of diverse, different universities, each pursuing a distinct vision and mission.

Now let me return to the matter of the bill, which will go a long way towards restoring trust and respect between the government and our universities. It will take the foot of the government off the throat of universities and let universities get on with what they do best—that is, teaching and research. Under the Howard government relationships with universities were marked by distrust. One of the worst manifestations of this trust was the requirement that universities abide by the higher education workplace relations requirements and the National Governance Protocols, which forced them to pursue the Howard government’s approach to workplace relations or suffer a penalty. Under the Higher Education Support Act 2003, enacted by the Howard government, higher education providers had to meet the higher education workplace relations requirements and the National Governance Protocols as a condition of the Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding for student places. If the universities did not meet the HEWRRs and the protocols, their Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding would be reduced.

The HEWRRs required universities to implement the Howard government’s ideologically driven workplace relations agenda. One aspect was that universities had to offer Australian workplace agreements to employees, otherwise they would lose funding. This was so-called choice in agreement making, but it was not popular with staff or students and provided no choice. Indeed, in 2005 the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee, or AVCC—now known as Universities Australia—opposed the higher education workplace relations requirements, claiming that they would be inflexible and increase administrative workloads. Tellingly, the AVCC said they 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.

So the AVCC had effectively outed the government’s legislation as the ideological power trip that it was. After all, who should know better how to run the universities than the universities themselves? But, rather than follow the AVCC’s advice, the Howard government arrogantly went ahead and put the proposal into law. But staff did not exactly flock to take up the offer of AWAs either. By July last year, out of 150 AWAs offered only 2,000 university staff left the security of collective agreements to go onto individual contracts. Clearly AWAs were on the nose. The proof of the pudding was in the eating and the staff were not exactly lining up for a serve.

But the Howard government went even further than merely offering staff the so-called genuine choice between collective agreements and AWAs. In July last year the University of New England was threatened by the Howard government that, unless it offered jobs on an AWA-only basis, it would lose its funding altogether. How completely outrageous! We knew that the Howard government was desperate to stamp out collective bargaining in a free and fair environment and disallow staff the opportunity to be represented by a union, but this was just beyond the pale. The standover tactics and unwanted interference in the university’s industrial affairs were just breathtaking, and they did absolutely nothing to engender confidence in the university sector or to build sound relationships between the government and the universities. In fact, it did the opposite. The Howard government did not trust universities. It regarded them with suspicion. It believed that universities needed to be controlled and told what to do and how to do it—the Howard government way. Universities were told how to run workplace relations and how to manage their own governance and affairs according to the Howard government’s own mad ideological agenda.

The HEWRRs and the NGPs were the tools of control and the symbols of mistrust. Severe financial penalties imposed by the Howard government on universities for not running things the Howard-Costello way meant core funding for teaching and research—the very roles that universities are meant to perform—was reduced. The higher education workplace relations requirements and the National Governance Protocols showed that the Howard government thought it knew better than university leaders and staff how to run their institutions. It marked a trend of increasing centralisation of power over universities by the Canberra bureaucracy that would lead to more, not less, control and intervention in university operations. The governance protocols required universities to adhere to a one-size-fits-all model of how to run a university. There was a set of standards covering the size, composition and duties of university governing bodies. Again, the universities were not in favour of the protocols. The previous government said they were not interested in interfering in the affairs of business. Universities are large businesses and they certainly interfered extensively in them. While they had to accept and implement them, they opposed any further prescriptive requirements that added costs and compliance requirements that were inconsistent with potential benefits. These protocols added a costly administrative red tape burden on universities. In their submission to the review of the protocols, university chancellors and vice-chancellors stressed:

... it was not wise to apply a “one size fits all” governance model (that extends into areas of management), particularly when the stated object of the Government is to promote diversity ...

This was again the Howard government meddling in university affairs to fit its own ideological agenda.

This bill removes those tools of control. They are not needed in this new era of trust and respect between the Rudd government and our universities. The Rudd government will take the foot of government off the throats of universities. The Rudd government trusts universities to manage their own workplace relations. The end of HEWRRs will clear the way for the Rudd Labor government to develop healthy new relationships with universities, staff and the unions who are active in them. Universities will no longer be required to offer AWAs to employees to get funding. Higher education providers will be subject to the same laws as all other employers. Full government grant funding will now flow to our universities. In the future, relations will be based around negotiated funding compacts reflecting the distinct mission of each university. The Rudd Labor government’s tools will be tools of accountability and focused on results or outcomes, not on process and inputs. University funding compacts—to be first negotiated between the government and each university in 2009—will hold universities accountable for their use of public funds and for the delivery of agreed outcomes linked to each university’s distinct mission. Funding compacts will be agreed between respected and respectful parties; they will not be a standover set of requirements set on pain of financial penalty. The Group of Eight universities envisage that under a compact model of university funding:

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

This will free our universities from restrictive, directive requirements that have diverted time and effort away from where it is needed most: the delivery of quality teaching and research. While the protocols will be removed as a condition of funding, the Rudd government will continue to encourage universities to adopt good governance practices and increase productivity and efficiency.

In addition to these timely changes, a number of technical adjustments have been made in this bill. In relation to the approval of higher education providers, this bill amends the act so that the approval of a provider that no longer meets certain criteria may be revoked. For example, if the provider no longer has its central management and control in Australia, this bill enables its approval to be withdrawn. The bill also amends the arrangements for quality auditing of higher education providers. Currently, the only quality auditing body in this country is the Australian Universities Quality Agency. This bill amends the act to allow the Commonwealth to designate additional bodies, such as state and territory government accreditation authorities, to perform this role. This bill will set limits on the providers that can be audited. This is also an efficiency measure. By state and territory government accreditation authorities conducting audits at the same time as they conduct their normal registration and approval processes, the administrative burden on private providers will be reduced. The approach has been subject to consultation with private providers and a trial process with two state accreditation agencies, Queensland and Victoria. The approach has been well received. Importantly, the bill also includes the addition of a transitional mechanism so that existing funding commitments made to providers under the Collaboration and Structural Reform Fund can be honoured now that the new Diversity and Structural Adjustment Fund has been established.

The Rudd Labor government is committed to a strong, diverse higher education sector that makes an essential contribution to our national prosperity. We look forward to rebuilding the relationship between government and higher education providers. We want to turn around the decline in our universities that so marked the Howard government years. It presided over a massive decline in public investment in our universities. From 1995 to 2004, while other OECD countries increased public investment in tertiary education by an average of 49 per cent, on the Howard-Costello watch public investment in Australia was cut by four per cent. Their legacy has been to leave our higher education system lagging behind the rest of the world.

Over the course of the last decade the issue of human capital has risen dramatically in public policy importance globally. Policy makers now accept that investing wisely in knowledge, skills and innovation is one of the best means available to ensuring long-term prosperity, leading to both overall economic growth and to better education and work opportunities. Around the world governments have responded by increasing their policy focus in all areas of education, particularly higher education—everywhere, it seems, except here in Australia.

In Australia since the mid-1990s, higher education has been subjected to a seemingly random blend of neglect with occasional bursts of ideologically driven interference. Public funding has been cut. Too many faculties at our universities are in decline, with a huge backlog in deferred maintenance. Financing has become chaotic, compromised and unsustainable, based on ever-higher fee burdens and a dangerous over-reliance on cross-subsidisation from overseas student revenue. A bewildering array of student financing arrangements has been put in place, each change adding another layer on top of past mistakes, but none advancing the important goal of educational equity. The academic workforce has been allowed to age and the quality of campus life has been undermined. We have even seen the sad spectacle of higher education policy being driven by a sometimes highly unsustainable anti-intellectualism, with the central idea of higher education—the pursuit of knowledge as a crucial public good—dismissed as the wasteful activity of a selfish elite.

Despite the mishmash approach of the Howard government, which ranged from neglect at one moment to ideologically driven interference at the next, most of our universities struggled through remarkably well. It is a great testament to the quality and commitment of our university leaders and the academic community. Thanks to their commitment the number of those in higher education remains high, graduate employment outcomes are strong, graduate and employer satisfaction levels are generally good, provision of higher education to international students has grown to be one of our leading export sectors, and we have notable areas of world-class research.

Labor’s achievement in the eighties and nineties was to shift our higher education system to a mass system, building on record levels of secondary school attainment. Other nations adopted our approach. But, under John Howard, government slept at the wheel for more than a decade. The Rudd Labor government is now taking up the next reform challenge—to inject diversity, choice and the highest quality into our mass higher education system. Unless we resource and respect higher education institutions, we simply will not maintain our standard of living. It is clear that Australia needs a new direction in national higher education policy, one that aims to exploit fully our human capital potential in order to spread opportunity, raise economic productivity and transfer the economic gains of the resources boom into sustainable prosperity for all in the future. Our goal must be the creation of a globally competitive higher education system for a modern Australia.

The education revolution policies Labor took to the federal election and which we are now implementing have begun to address the neglect of the last 11 years—by targeting resources to areas of skill shortage, by restoring equity and by enabling university leaders to get on with the business of running their institutions without interference from politicians and public servants. But the reform process will need to go further. Taking it further will require no less than a system-wide rethink. To facilitate that, we have announced a major review of Australian higher education, which will help us shape the next steps in the education revolution for our universities. And we have announced a new long-term goal for our post-secondary education system: guaranteed access to higher education or skills training for every young Australian with the talent and willingness to give it a go.

I am a proud member of a government that understands the importance of education to our economy and to our society. The Rudd government’s rationale for improving the performance of our higher education system is that higher education leads to higher productivity, which leads to higher economic growth. This case is now well accepted by the world’s leading economists and economic bodies. Human capital economists like the University of Chicago’s James Heckman, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2000, have been telling us for some two decades that public spending on education and skills leads to higher rates of return on investment for countries. OECD analysis of human capital suggests significant positive correlations between rising levels of educational attainment on the one hand and both economic growth and improved physical and mental wellbeing on the other. The organisation has estimated that one year of average additional educational attainment for a population adds between three to six percent to long-term GDP growth.

Our competitor nations are aware of this thinking and have been acting on it. Australia, by contrast, has not. Consider this analysis. Between 1995 and 2004 public funding of tertiary education increased by an average of 49 percent across the OECD but declined by four percent in Australia. This makes Australia the only OECD country where the total level of public funding of tertiary education decreased during that time. While private investment in Australia went up by 98 percent, this actually compares poorly with the average OECD increase of 176 percent. Most nations managed to increase both public and private investment substantially. Rather than leverage more private investment through a partnership for growth, Australia shifted responsibility from the public sector to the private. Mostly this has meant a shift to individual students and their families, who have paid more through higher tuition fees. Between 1995 and 2004 total funding per tertiary student increased by an average of nine percent across the OECD but increased here by only one percent.

Australia is now starting to fall behind our competitors in graduations in crucial areas. We are now below the OECD average for the proportion of graduates in science and agriculture, and way below them in engineering, manufacturing and construction—7.2 percent compared with 12.2 percent. In Korea the figure is 27.1 percent—four times Australia’s density. Research is also being badly affected. In the last 10 years, research output has grown rapidly in countries like Singapore, Korea, Taiwan and China—which is now the second biggest investor in research and development in the world. But it has only limped along here in Australia. If you want to know why investing in research is important, ask the University of Queensland’s Professor Ian Frazer, who discovered the vaccine for a cancer that kills 250,000 women every year.

Over the last decade, Australian higher education has practically stood still in terms of numbers, quality and output, while our competitors have surged ahead. The picture is clear: we are under-investing in our human capital, and in the long run this will stall our global competitiveness. This policy failure has grave potential consequences for every single Australian. We have been led to believe in recent years that what happens to our universities does not matter to ordinary Australians. This is a dangerous fallacy. Every Australian is now feeling the consequences of the Howard government neglect of higher education in things like a shortage of Australian-trained doctors and nurses; a shortage of early childhood educators and school teachers, especially in crucial areas like maths and science; and a shortage of qualified engineers and logistics workers for our booming resources and construction sectors.

Skill shortages are driving up the cost of doing business as we all end up paying through higher inflation and higher interest rates. If you want to know why investing in higher education is important, simply look at the waiting list at your hospital or GP surgery, the lack of subject choice in your child’s school, the rising costs of items in the shop and your monthly bank balance. By boosting national productivity, increasing Australia’s investment in higher education will ultimately allow us to sustain higher economic growth with lower inflation and interest rates. The new President of the Business Council of Australia, Greg Gailey, got it right recently when he said:

More than ever, governments need to focus on fiscal policies and broader reform agendas in areas such as infrastructure, education, skills and workforce participation that collectively enhance the nation’s capacity to grow.

Australia simply cannot afford a short-sighted, ideologically driven and backward-looking approach to higher education policy any longer. The moment is now for us to start seriously investing in human capital at all levels, including higher education. For that reason, I commend the bill before the House this evening.

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I rise today to make some comments on this bill, it occurs to me that it will not be the last bill before the parliament which seeks to undo the ideologically driven agenda of the previous government. The Higher Education Support Amendment (Removal of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements and National Governance Protocols Requirements and Other Matters) Bill 2008 removes some of the more odious measures introduced by the coalition in relation to workplace relations. For the Labor Party, this was a threshold issue. No government should be in the position of imposing industrial relations conditions on educational funding. Yet the previous government took this step in 2003. Instead of using the available funding for the improvement of the quality of education in schools, the Howard government effectively blackmailed the universities into implementing its grossly unjust industrial relations policies. In effect, the previous government pushed to reduce conditions and allow AWAs to override existing agreements. Not one of those changes had a scrap of relevance to the universities’ core functions of teaching and research.

I recall an open letter from the National Tertiary Education Industry Union published in the Australian on 7 November 2005 which opposed the legislation. One of the comments in that letter was:

Academic freedom is part of the collegial and collaborative culture of the best Universities in the world, and is at the core of their international reputation.

The international reputation of our universities has suffered greatly in the past decade and this government is now taking steps to revise that state of affairs. This government can say, in truth, that it was elected with a mandate to dismantle the workplace relations agenda of the previous government. That government had no such mandate yet chose to impose its political and social agenda on the electorate.

In its first months, the Rudd Labor government has sought to introduce the changes it promised at the election. The budget last night showed that in a way that I have not seen in the 18 years that I have been in this place and in the 18 budgets that I have witnessed. The first budget of a new government can tell you a lot about a government. The first budget of the Howard government, with its drastic cuts, particularly those to ATSIC of $470 million, showed its mean spirit. The budget last night shows that this government is fair dinkum when it makes a promise and that it will deliver on it in full. The feedback in the electorate is of people feeling pretty happy, pleased and refreshed at a new approach after more than a decade of a different approach. This bill is another step in the government’s intended direction on promises.

When taken with the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008, this bill will take the initial steps towards dismantling the unfair workplace changes introduced by the Howard government. To tie tertiary funding to industrial relations requirements is un-Australian. Fortunately, we are now seeing the dismantling of that strategy and the replacing of it with a fair and balanced system.

To some, the introduction of workplace relations requirements on university funding was seen as the single greatest attack on the autonomy of universities. Under Section 33-17 of the act, a provider could have its basic funding under the Commonwealth Grant Scheme reduced by up to 7.5 per cent if it failed to satisfy the minister that it had complied with both the higher education workplace relations requirements and national governance protocols. It is worth taking some time to consider these requirements. There were five of them.

First there was choice in agreement making. Higher education providers were required to provide choice to employees by ‘offering AWAs to all new employees employed after 29 April 2005 and to all other employees by 31 August 2006’. I fail to see the choice offered under this condition. The requirement to do with direct relationships with employees states that there must be direct consultation between employees and the higher education provider. Involvement of third parties was only able to occur at the request of an affected employee. It is all very well to assume that the people primarily dealing with the employer are articulate academics who are regarded as able to speak up for themselves. But we should not forget the thousands of non-academic staff employed by universities, for whom dealing directly with senior management at the university could be a terrifying ordeal.

Workplace flexibility was, as we have seen, the classic contradiction in terms. The guidelines specified that working arrangements and conditions of employment should be tailored to the circumstances of the higher education provider and also to its employees. What I find incredible is the following specification:

The HEP’s [Higher Education Provider] workplace agreements should expressly displace previous workplace agreements and relevant awards.

Yet the current opposition would have us believe that the whole idea of AWAs was about choice. There seems to be absolutely no choice about the express displacement of prior agreements and awards. There was also a bit about productivity and performance. AWAs were to support organisational productivity and performance.

Finally, freedom of association was, we are to believe, at the heart of these arrangements. Contained within this requirement was the directive that the provider must neither encourage nor discourage union membership. Also specified was the fact that the provider was not to use Commonwealth Grant Scheme funds to pay union staff salaries or to fund union facilities or activities. Freedom of choice seems to be the missing element here.

It is no surprise that the universities were generally not happy with this arrangement. At the Senate inquiry into the provisions of the original bill, there were seven submissions. Of those, six opposed it, including the submission from the then Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee. Labor opposition senators in their dissenting report commented on the fact that the universities surmised that they were being singled out for special treatment in particular regulations for their industry. The dissenting report noted that the universities were joining other industries, such as the building and construction industry, to be special industrial relations targets of the then government.

As I stated earlier, times have changed and the new government has a genuine mandate to reform the industrial relations system in this country. Universities will now be subject to the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008. The removal of the previous grossly unfair legislation will ensure that the government will be able to move forward and develop healthy relationships with the tertiary sector—a relationship based on mutual trust and respect. The bill will provide certainty to the higher education sector. It does not reduce a provider’s Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding. Universities should be subject to the same workplace relations laws as other employers. These amendments give effect to that position.

A second part of the bill we are debating today deals with the governance of universities. The National Governance Protocols are standards which primarily cover the size and composition of governing bodies of universities and the duties of the governing bodies’ members. These will now be removed as a condition of funding. At the same time, the Deputy Prime Minister has indicated that the government will encourage universities to adopt and maintain good governance practices. In any case most of the required measures have been enacted through amendments to the various pieces of state and territory legislation that set out the governance arrangements for our universities.

However, it will be down to the university vice-chancellors and more particularly the chancellors to demonstrate their commitment to good governance, especially in managing and accounting for the use of large sums of public funding, while also engaging in very extensive commercial activities. Something of the scale of this issue was recently revealed in the Canberra Times newspaper, which reported that at one point in the stock market slide earlier this year the Australian National University had lost $100 million—approximately eight per cent of its $1.4 billion investment portfolio. There will be a joint meeting of vice-chancellors and chancellors in Sydney next month and I hope that they will use the meeting to give the government some very clear commitments about maintaining and enhancing governance within the university sector. The government has given them the opportunity to take greater responsibility for management of their own affairs. They will need to demonstrate that they are fully prepared to accept that responsibility.

The university chancellors might also take the opportunity to make a clear statement of their commitment to academic freedom—the principle that makes universities unique institutions—about which the vice-chancellors have been very quiet through the years of the Howard government. It is to be hoped that the rampant commercialism that has been encouraged in higher education institutions over the past decade has not extinguished the commitment of the sector’s leaders to this vital principle.

In conclusion I would like to return to and comment more widely on the primary issue underlying this bill—the matter of workplace relations. As I have already noted, the government has introduced the transitional bill to remove the worst excesses of the so-called Work Choices legislation introduced by the previous government. Time and again we asked the Howard government to reconsider, to play fair by all Australians and to ensure that every member of the workforce was employed under a fair, just and transparent system. We were ignored.

The Australian people have now made their judgement and those laws will be overturned. There is no doubt in my mind that the Your Rights at Work campaign, with its real world experiences portrayed on television and in print, contributed to this decision. In its ideological passion, the Howard government overlooked more than 100 years of history. The system of conciliation and arbitration that has operated in this country since Federation provided an effective base for the Australian workplace. All through our industrial history, that body was the lynch pin for workplace pay and conditions, and it worked, even in the most extreme cases. Australians always knew that they had somewhere to go when all else failed. The Australian community has now voted on Work Choices and we are now able to present to the workers of Australia a fair and transparent system of industrial arrangements, and I know that those instalments will continue under the direction of the Deputy Prime Minister.

I want to finish up with some other remarks that I think are also pertinent in relation to the sector. Last week I was invited to Glebe Books to launch a book about women and IT. The University of Western Sydney’s Bankstown campus is in my electorate. There were I think three or four other universities involved in terms of the contributors to this book. There were about 60 or 70 people present. I was invited to a meal afterwards at which there were about 20 academics and staff, who were all women. I have to say that it was fascinating listening to what they had to say about their sector and to see their enthusiasm and their reinvigoration, not only with the election of a new government—because the AWAs I have just talked about were a concern for them—but there was a refreshing view about the relationship between government and the universities. It was a change from what had happened during the previous decade, in particular in relation to the minister, Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard. There was tremendous hope, expectation and enthusiasm due to her being the relevant minister for this portfolio. They accept that the government and the minister are not going to be able to deliver on all of their concerns. But they recognise that with the change of government there has been a change of attitude in the relationship between the sector and the government.

From my point of view, I think the education sector is the most important sector that we as a nation need to nurture, because it creates opportunity, not only for individuals but for industry and for our whole community. We are well placed in the region if governments nurture the sector.

I had no politics as such before I went to university in 1974. It was at the time of the 1974 election. It was the Whitlam government’s policy that allowed me to go to university and get interested in politics. It also allowed me an opportunity that I otherwise would never have had—that is, as one of 10 children, to go to university and to have all of these opportunities beyond that once I had a higher education. I would like to think that if you repeat that throughout the industry and throughout our community we will get the same result—and it does not take much; a lot of it is symbolism.

It was fascinating for me was when I was having the dinner with these women, who were quite educated—better educated than me. Their book was about why women in higher education were not using computers as much as men, and they were coming up with solutions. The minister will receive a copy of the book from me because I know it is part of what this government promised in the lead-up to the last election. These studies had taken place over a number of years, and what fascinated the researchers was that the government was in sync with their studies, which were all about improving the education base and improving opportunities for our citizens. Government is crazy not to embrace that, as against harassing it and trying to push a particular ideology.

The second area where there was great hope was that there was great affection towards the Deputy Prime Minister—there was not a person in the room who did not have a good thing to say about her. That was not tokenism; that was based on what she had actually been doing in the sector, in the way that they had received feedback and in the way the government was interacting with the sector. The symbolism meant more to them than the actual substance of dollars and cents or whatever—what was important was the fact that they could have somewhere where they could put their ideas and government could look at them, listen to them and react in a way that had not been the case, frankly, for the last decade or so. So I am pleased to speak in support of the bill and say those few extra words.

I know that those on the other side at the moment are not feeling too good about themselves. And the truth is they have good reason for that. All they have got to do is look in the mirror.

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, the Service Economy and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Be humble.

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not about being humble. Of course I believe in being humble. I come from a humble family. I have been humble all my life.

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, the Service Economy and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You’re a humble man.

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Do not tell me about being humble. I will match my record to yours any day of the week, and there is one big difference: I am a giver, not a taker—and the record speaks for itself. What I am trying to say to you is that we all suffer losses. I was on the losing side for the last 11½ years. I was one of the few who was in the former government. It is transient, and at the end of the day we will all be out of here. If you go and have a look at the turnover—

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, the Service Economy and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We’re all dead in the long run.

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are all dead in the long term. Some of us do not necessarily have to have the positions that others occupy to actually make a contribution. I am pleased to be up here speaking on this bill. I do not get up and speak on every single bill in this place because, frankly, I do not think you have to. But, for me, with a university campus in my electorate, I can tell you the people I have mixed with for 18 years and who I know have a genuine commitment can add to our society. I get my inspiration from the academics and from those at university when I meet them in the context of science meets parliament functions and so on. That is why I am here speaking on this bill: to congratulate the minister and the government for acting on our commitment, for taking it forward. This bill will do a lot for the morale of the higher education sector. This will help them take forward the contribution they are prepared to make to our society. That is where governments can take the lead. I am not going to take any garbage from the other side in relation to this matter. I understand they are well intentioned and well motivated, but they should also grow up.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in reply—I thank all members who have spoken on this bill and I thank the member for Banks for his very generous remarks. The Higher Education Support Amendment (Removal of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements and National Governance Protocols Requirements and Other Matters) Bill 2008 is a clear expression of the government’s commitment to abolishing Australian workplace agreements and our clear commitment to removing unnecessary government interference with the workplace relations and administration of our universities and other higher education providers.

Earlier this year I announced the setting up of a major review of Australian higher education to be led by Emeritus Professor Denise Bradley. In announcing that review I said that the Rudd Labor government would be addressing the next reform challenge in higher education, and that is to inject diversity, choice and the highest quality into our mass higher education system.

In last night’s budget, the government began the process of addressing the Howard years and their neglect of funding to higher education. This financial year we are going to invest $500 million in higher education. We are delivering our election commitments for higher education and, of course, we are creating the Education Investment Fund with $11 billion, of which higher education will be a beneficiary.

The previous government, by contrast, not only neglected investment in the higher education sector; by its actions it thwarted the very diversity that we need to develop in higher education. Two of the worst examples of this were the higher education workplace relations requirements, the HEWRRs, and the national governance protocols. This bill amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to bring about an end to the previous government’s HEWRRs, which as speakers on this side of the parliament have forcefully reminded the House were all about requiring higher education providers to offer Australian workplace agreements to their employees. This was industrial relations by threat, by coercion and by reference to penalty—because, of course, no matter what choice they wanted to make about their own industrial relations framework, universities were at risk of losing money unless they joined the Howard government in its industrial relations extremism.

The bill also removes the national governance protocols, which impose governance conditions on higher education providers. This is a layer of interference in university management that the government has publicly committed to removing, and today we are standing by that commitment to release our higher education providers from restrictive and unnecessary bureaucratic requirements. We trust universities to manage their own workplace relations and we trust them to develop the approach to governance that best fits their circumstances. We want to see our universities forge their own distinct missions. Universities under this government will be freed from the micromanagement and red tape which characterised the approach of the previous government and freed from their ideological interventions in workplace relations. Universities will now be able to direct their attention and resources back to where they are needed most: the development and delivery of world-class higher education teaching and research.

While the national governance protocols will be removed as a condition of funding, of course the government wishes to encourage good governance practices in universities. We want to develop those high standards of governance in a collaborative way. Our universities are standing ready to meet this challenge. Today, Universities Australia announced its support for the government’s legislation. Its chair, Professor Richard Larkins, welcomed the government’s intention to:

… loosen existing prescriptive requirements and allow universities to pursue their missions as self governing bodies.

Already the government has begun discussions with Universities Australia with a view to leading the development of an agreed voluntary code or set of best practice university governance principles. These will be developed and implemented by universities; they will not be forced on them by government. I understand that this issue is on the agenda for vice-chancellors and chancellors to discuss at their forthcoming meeting in June.

Our approach is one of collaboration and trust. We trust universities to manage their workplace relations. We trust universities to deal with their governance structures in a proper way. This government will—and all governments should—require rigorous reporting and accountability in relation to the expenditure of government funds. This government will have rigorous accountabilities. But this government’s approach is about accountability being around outcomes, not about the micromanagement of inputs. We do not believe that you get the best performance by telling universities what inputs to use; we believe that you get the best performance if you define what outcomes and outputs you want from government funding and then you allow universities to use their expertise, to diversify, to experiment, to innovate, to deliver the best. We are talking by definition about some of the most highly qualified, highly educated and highly intelligent Australians in the nation.

I am aware from discussions with the shadow minister for education that the opposition will not oppose this bill at the second reading. I am also aware that the opposition intends to pursue an amendment to this legislation to keep the national governance protocols on foot. The government will oppose this amendment for a number of reasons. The first is that the government does not believe the opposition’s stated view that, in amending and possibly delaying indefinitely the passage of this legislation, it does not have a weather eye on the industrial relations consequences of that.

This, of course, is the Liberal Party that brought this country the industrial relations extremism of Work Choices, which forced it on to the higher education sector through funding threats and which still supports Work Choices today. I am suspicious that the game playing with the other part of this piece of legislation, the national governance protocols, is really a ruse to distract us from the opposition’s attraction to the higher education workplace relations requirements. That is, we know that this is an opposition that is staggering around unsure as to how frank it should be about its continued support for Work Choices. Its inconsistency in this area means that, on one day, the current Leader of the Opposition, Dr Nelson, will say, ‘Work Choices is dead,’ and then on another day he will say, ‘John Howard had it right when it comes to industrial relations,’ meaning, of course, that Work Choices was right.

So we have a Leader of the Opposition who obviously believes in Work Choices. He certainly did as a cabinet minister and he defended it every day in this House. He no longer wants to be frank about his support for it. That is true of the opposition generally but, given we know that the opposition still supports Work Choices and would reintroduce it in a flash if ever re-elected, we are deeply suspicious that game playing with this legislation is all about Work Choices and AWAs and not truly about national governance protocols at all.

Even if the opposition were to be taken at face value and we accepted, for the purposes of debate, the proposition that they are genuinely interested in national governance protocols as opposed to industrial relations extremism then we would say the following to the opposition. We do not believe that a one size fits all approach is appropriate for the higher education sector of the 21st century.

We believe that the next fundamental reform for this sector is to allow diversity and to recognise the diversity that is there in institutions today. Charles Sturt University is a very different creature from the University of Melbourne—we know that. Government, as a matter of policy, has to recognise that and government has to allow those two very different, very distinct but both very valuable institutions to forge their own way and define their own paths. A blunt instrument like national governance protocols will squash that diversity. It will hold back what should be the next fundamental reform to this sector: recognising and celebrating that diversity and recognising and celebrating that this nation can, if we properly resource and value higher education, have universities in the system of very different shapes and sizes which are world class in what they seek to do.

Secondly, we do not accept from the opposition that national governance protocols are about accountability. We of course are going to have accountability mechanisms for government expenditure. But, when one looks at the national governance protocols, they deal with procedural matters and with process matters, not with outcomes. That was the hallmark of the last government’s approach to funding right across education. They loved to fiddle and micromanage, but they lacked a strategic vision. So the national governance protocols, when studied in detail, really do not add to the debate about accountability. Before I move from that point, on the question of accountability we would also say to the opposition that we do not believe that they can stand before the higher education sector and say that they, the Liberal Party, have the reputation to preach in this area, given things like the regional rorts slush fund and the sorts of breaches of public trust and basic standards of accountability, which, if they happened in any university, would get utter condemnation from members of the opposition. The standard of accountability that they have applied to themselves is an unacceptable one. It therefore really is hypocritical to stand on that platform of poor accountability, of cynicism, of political manipulation and of money for projects that never came to fruition and to lecture others that somehow they know all about accountability and others do not.

Thirdly, in interfering in higher education institutions in this way, the opposition continues to demonstrate distrust towards the higher education sector and it continues to demonstrate its arrogance—indeed, its paranoia. We believe that higher education institutions, universities, can be trusted to get on with the business of management without a government minister purporting to sit on their shoulder ready to wield a funding penalty stick. We believe that we should be celebrating and valuing the contribution of our academics and our universities, but not through this structure that basically sends a message to all the world that somehow these people are not to be trusted. This government is prepared to trust our universities; we are prepared to trust our vice-chancellors, our chancellors and the university system. We do not believe it is appropriate for the opposition to come to this parliament and say that somehow these people are to be distrusted. If the opposition was really being honest about this, it would say that its motivation is really a sort of institutional paranoia in the Liberal Party about universities because, in the Liberal Party’s mind, the history of universities somehow stopped in the 1960s and 1970s. I suspect the shadow minister for education may not have even been born in the 1960s, but I believe he—

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

1967.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

1967—he is older than he looks. To look young is a good thing, so he should be pleased with that! He made it into the 1960s by a few years. I am sure that he was a very smart child, but he may not have a highly developed active recollection of those years. But of course—

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

Carlton won the ‘68 grand final!

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He was obviously a very good football watcher at the age of one and has a very good recollection. So we have finally found the shadow minister for education’s strength—football. If the AFL is looking for a future participant in its governance structure, it might look to him. He might well be better at that job than he is at his current one.

Within the institutional past of the Liberal Party, within its corporate knowledge—and this runs deep in its veins—is the belief that universities are associated with radicalism, that universities are somehow associated with the Left, that universities are somehow associated with unacceptable people and, consequently, it is the job of conservative politicians to come in and to manage them. It is a long time since the Berlin Wall came down, it is a long time since the 1960s and 1970s and it is time that the Liberal Party got over it and recognised that the higher education institutions of today are managed by people who understand their job, who understand how hard it is to compete on the world stage, who do not want to play partisan politics but who do want to manage their institutions so they can forge their way in a competitive world where it is tough to be a university, it is tough to maintain your share of research, it is tough to maintain your international education market and it is tough to maintain quality for undergraduates. It requires smart, sophisticated management and governance, and that is what our institutions are doing. They do not require a politician sitting on their shoulder to do that.

If I can conclude with this: it does strike me as passing strange that here we are in the parliament of this nation and the Liberal Party, with its supposed belief system—when it had one—that was supposed to be about liberalism, supposed to be about allowing people to get on with the job and be their best and supposed to be opposed to unnecessary government regulation and big government, is arguing for the maintenance of microregulation and red tape. It does seem to me passing strange, and I think it will be recorded as another chapter, another piece of evidence, about how the Liberal Party of today has lost its way, lost its understanding of its position in Australian politics, lost its value system and lost any intuitive sense of what it ever stood for. This is one small example, but the response to the budget is a much bigger one. This is an example with significance, though, and it is what is being displayed by the opposition today. The government will oppose these amendments and will support the legislation. I suspect that we will hear more of this in the days to come as the matter goes to the Senate, but the government will oppose these amendments. We believe that we should just let universities get on with the job.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.