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

I speak in support of the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009. A previous bill, in similar form, was defeated in the Senate in August. I say that with sadness and regret because this bill is necessary to assist in the proper running of universities, to give students access to the kinds of services they need. Regrettably, the defeat of the previous bill showed that the coalition has not moved on since the battles so many of them fought in the sixties, seventies and eighties at universities across the country. Their opposition to this legislation is ideologically driven and not evidence-based. You can see that from the words that dripped from the mouth of the member for Indi, from the sarcasm and satire that came from her when she was talking about this issue.

This opposition is really not about student needs; it is about the coalition being ideologically driven by an opposition to one word. That word is ‘union’. The coalition’s attitude to the university sector was clearly evident with its absolute desire to impose Work Choices on the sector, linking university funding entirely to the imposition of AWAs on lecturers, tutors and administrative staff. That is the coalition’s response to the challenges and difficulties in funding and maintaining a viable tertiary sector in this country.

So the legislation here is not being opposed because it is bad legislation. It is being opposed because of the extreme conservative position that has been held for decades by so many opposite. The legislation is about restoring equity, accessibility and accountability to the university sector and is about helping students, particularly those in regional and rural areas. It is an absolute shame that at various conferences the National Party passed resolutions to support the compulsory nature of assistance to university students and opposed this type of legislation earlier this year. They know full well that the services provided by student unions in universities located at Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton, Ipswich, Toowoomba and elsewhere are vital in the areas of physiotherapy, child care, sport, recreation, culture and legal services. They are critical.

The coalition was driven by conservative ideology in its imposition of voluntary student unionism in the university sector. That came to a head in 2005 when we saw the coalition’s Higher Education Support Amendment (Abolition of Compulsory Up-front Student Union Fees) Bill 2005. It effectively resulted in a university association, union or guild being prevented from charging a compulsory fee for facilities, amenities and services that were not of an academic nature. Students go to universities to do tutorials, attend lectures and engage in research but there are other aspects of university life. Many of them are at colleges and come from rural areas like Cunnamulla, Charleville, Birdsville, Mount Isa and Weipa in rural Queensland. They also attend universities at places like Rockhampton, Cairns, Townsville, Ipswich and Toowoomba.

Many of those students live on campus or live with other students in rented accommodation close by and they use the university for all aspects of their recreational, sporting and cultural lives and in pursuit of the arts. They need assistance because often they are away from mum, dad, family and friends who would normally provide that kind of assistance. They might have played football, basketball, netball or hockey, or might have sung in the local choral society or the local rock band. It is university which gives them the opportunity to be involved in these types of activities.

The Howard government knew when it passed its legislation back in 2005 that there would be problems. To assuage the National Party and Senator Fielding, transitional assistance of about $100 million was given to universities through three competitive funding programs. If the Howard government believed its voluntary student unionism obsession was not going to have an adverse impact upon university services and student services at regional and rural universities, why did it provide transitional assistance? Why did it listen at that stage to the National Party and provide that kind of assistance? They knew. The former Prime Minister John Howard and those people who sat at the cabinet table knew. They knew that student services in rural and remote areas, particularly in places like WA and Queensland, which are the most decentralised states, would suffer. That is why they provided that assistance. So do not come into this House and say, ‘It would make no impact,’ because the truth is it made an impact.

We took to the last election a policy that we were going to restore campus amenities, restore services and make the system much better than it was. We are going to ensure that Work Choices is eradicated from the tertiary sector. But we are also going to ensure that student services are restored to what they were. That is what it is about: restoring the kinds of necessary services, such as medical and health assistance, physiotherapy and occupational therapy, sporting and cultural facilities, that universities once enjoyed and student unions provided free of charge to many of the people there. I think university unions do a great job. If we are going to say that we live in an independent, democratic and free society, they should be allowed to function in that way, free from interference and the dictates of obsessed, conservative governments who have an ideological opposition to them. Those sitting on the opposition benches must have very sad experiences at university because so much of their vitriol is aimed at, and so much of their time is spent attacking, student unions. Students in higher education need to get access to those amenities and services. They are crucial. They also need to get access to the kind of democratic student representation which is critical.

The legislation we are discussing here, despite what the member for Indi had to say, is not about a return to compulsory student unionism. The legislation makes it clear. I wonder whether she actually bothered to read it. We are not changing, for example, section 19.37(1) of the Higher Education Support Act, which prohibits a university from requiring a student to be a member of a student organisation. That is not happening. We also have detailed guidelines, and it is very clear what they are about. We talk about such politically motivated activities as child care, legal services, clubs and societies, sport and recreation facilities, food and beverage provision. How can these things be considered to be politically motivated? How can they be considered to be the kinds of things that student unions should not provide? What is so wrong with those organisations providing them? The guidelines make it crystal clear that this fee cannot be used to support a political party or support a candidate for political office. They say it very clearly. The guidelines state that they ‘impose a similar prohibition on any person, including an organisation, who receives any such funds from the provider’ for doing so. It is there in black and white. The member for Indi must not have been looking at those guidelines clearly because she has not made reference to what the guidelines actually say in writing. The guidelines make the case clear.

I think the university sector needs greater support. The government, unlike the previous Howard government, are engaging in greater support. We are delivering tremendous support through our Better Universities Renewal Fund. We provided universities with $500 million in 2008 to support infrastructure in key, priority areas. We are doing that with better libraries, laboratories, information technology, student places and student amenities. We have also increased childcare assistance to parents who are studying at university or TAFE—$23.9 million. The jobs, education and training childcare fee assistance has been extended from one year to two years and provides parents who are undertaking study, training and job search activities with flexible and low-cost childcare support.

What did the coalition do in relation to those sorts of things? Did they invest to that extent? Did they give support in that way? They did not. A study has been undertaken, people have been consulted and an assessment has been made of the impact of the coalition’s obsession with voluntary student unionism. On November 2007, after one year of voluntary student unionism, we had a report prepared. It was done by the Australasian Campus Union Managers Association and Peter McDonald, a very important demographer. The report, entitled The impact of voluntary student unionism on services, amenities and representation for Australian university students: summary report, was based on evidence, not ideological obsession.

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

Obsession with freedom.

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

This is what that summary report said, and it is worth noting for those opposite. A bit of evidence, a bit of empirical data, is what they need—not ideological obsession but evidence.

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

Mr Ciobo interjecting

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

It might help the member for Moncrieff, who keeps injecting. It might give him some assistance. I suggest he sit back and just listen. We released this summary report. We undertook consultations from February 2008 and we invited submissions from stakeholders. The summary report says:

Most submissions concluded that the abolition of upfront compulsory student union fees had impacted negatively on the provision of amenities and services to university students, with the greatest impact at smaller and regional universities and campuses.

Many noted that the introduction of VSU had forced rationalisations, and that current levels of services were more limited than had previously been the case.

In many instances, assistance was provided by the university but these funds were redirected from other uses such as teaching, learning or research.

That was the case with the University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology and other organisations. The University of Queensland, for example, had to redirect funds to help the student union with funding for sport because the costs had gone up enormously. That is the case across the country.

The opposition should have a look at the study. I doubt whether they actually consulted it. It also found that there was a reduction of $166 million in funding from amenity and service fees, expected to rise to $200 million in 2009. It found that there was a loss of 1,000 jobs, a 30 per cent reduction in employment. How can those opposite say that they are committed to the sector, they are committed to jobs and training and they are committed to providing services for students at university when they presided over that? Those are the consequences of their obsession.

This legislation really is good. It is about bringing back assistance to the sector. I have spoken to Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Alan Rix, from the University of Queensland Ipswich campus. I had a long conversation with him about this particular issue. In an email he sent to me, he had this to say:

My personal view is that the guidelines in the area identified for support, including infrastructure, seem appropriate and would enable an institution to provide services accordingly.

That is from someone in the sector, from the University of Queensland, who is held in high esteem—a pro-vice-chancellor, a well-known academic in Queensland and a well-respected person in the community. That is what he has to say about this. Do we hear those opposite quoting anyone from the sector? No, they spend their time deriding student unions and the people who stand up for the students who are struggling to get through university. They spend all their time casting aspersions upon them.

We have got to provide solutions for more funding to go back into the sector. We recognised the negative impact of voluntary student unionism, and that is why this legislation came before the House and then the Senate earlier this year. Regrettably, because of their ideological opposition, those opposite opposed it in the House and voted it down in the Senate, and we can see from the shadow minister that they are going to do that again. That is really a shame. It shows that those opposite clearly do not support the sector—and we see that again in the legislation relating to income support for students that is currently before the Senate. The Deputy Prime Minister has talked about this as another example of the coalition not supporting the university sector and students who are struggling, particularly those from rural and regional areas. The Deputy Prime Minister has made it very clear that about 150,000 students who receive youth allowance will not get the proposed $2,254 start-up scholarships to help them meet the costs of their study if the legislation that is before the Senate is blocked, and students who would otherwise be eligible for a $4,000 relocation payment will not be able to receive this. These would be the consequences of the coalition’s behaviour and belief with respect to the university sector and students.

The coalition say it is because they want to support choice, but we know what their view on choice and freedom is. Work Choices is the greatest example of the coalition’s belief in choice and freedom. It is freedom for the rich, but those who struggle, those from the working class and others who do it tough to get to university are on their own. That is the coalition’s attitude to university funding.

As I have said, many universities—Griffith University, the University of Queensland and the Queensland University of Technology—have said they have had to redirect funds from other avenues to their consolidated revenue, and other universities have had to use funds from research and teaching budgets to make up the shortfall in funding for campus services. Without the passage of this legislation, we will see services decline further, and some, sadly, are likely to fold. I urge the National Party, who claim they are the party of the bush, the party that represents the regions, to do the right thing by regional students who attend the universities I mentioned earlier—

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

Who do not use any amenities—

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

They should do the right thing. And members from the Liberal Party should do the right thing as well, because they know how important it is to provide services on their campuses and they know that this legislation is balanced, sensible and practical. That is what it is. It is important legislation, and they should support it. If they want students in places like Townsville, Cairns, Rockhampton, Toowoomba and Ipswich to have access to information, health advice and legal advice, physiotherapy, and sporting and recreational facilities—if they are concerned about making sure students are fit and healthy in completing their university courses—and have access to cultural, drama and theatre and other groups that are important to university life, then they should support this bill. Students also need access to independent, democratic student representation. They need access to the kind of assistance that will help them.

This legislation will allow universities to choose to implement a compulsory student services and amenities fee capped at $250 per student per annum, indexed annually. That is not a large amount but it is an amount that will make a big difference. It will help to fund student services and amenities, including those in regional areas of Queensland.

I look forward to hearing the contributions of members on the opposition benches who represent those regional and rural areas, particularly in Queensland, just what they have to say about such services in their areas, and seeing whether they have the fortitude and the faith, and the commitment to their communities, to support this legislation. I look forward to the National Party having the integrity and the guts to stand up for students in rural and regional areas, particularly in Queensland, Western Australia and New South Wales, and do the right thing by helping those students get through university.

Let us make sure that on a bipartisan basis we can provide a sustainable, robust solution to addressing the ongoing cost difficulties with student services, amenities and representation. That will come if this legislation passes the House and the Senate. It will not come if those opposite continue to pursue the battles of the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties.

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

I consider the member for Blair, who has just addressed the parliament, to be a good friend and colleague, and I hold him in high regard. But, Member for Blair, I have never heard so much rubbish in my life as what you have just said to the parliament, and you have gone down slightly in my estimation. But, of course, as a person who represents the Royal Australian Air Force and me being a person who represents the Australian Army, there is no comparison, is there, between my garrison city and your small city!

Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Controversial!

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

The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs is helping here! Thank you, Minister, and thank you for your support for Townsville and our garrison city. The member for Corangamite, who is in the chamber, is very envious, because he has only Fort Queenscliff in his electorate!

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

A fabulous place!

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

There you go. The member for Blair condemned himself when he tried to make the point, which was an Exocet point, that the National Party should be standing up in the parliament for the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009 because of the many rural students that they represent. A student in rural Australia who does not actually front up to the campus gets nothing for the $250 student services fee that this bill is trying to impose on them. For heaven’s sake, how could that be good for the National Party or for the students who come from regional Australia who do not actually go to the campus for their university education? How could the member for Blair stand up and claim that the National Party should be supporting this fee when it works against the very students they represent? The logic escapes me.

This bill is nothing more than a compulsory tax on university students. Let’s call it what it is: a compulsory tax, $250 every year and you pay it whether or not you get something for it. It is going to be levied on every one of the one million Australian university students, who will be made to pay it irrespective of how they study, whether full-time, part-time or by distance. They will have to pay it no matter how few services they want or how few services they need. It is just illogical to make students pay for services that they are not going to use, so I firmly oppose this legislation. I have opposed it all the way through and I certainly strongly supported the VSU legislation when it went through this parliament back in 2005.

It also represents yet another broken promise by the Rudd government. It is a surprise, that! Why are there so many promises that we have on the record, that were made at the time of the 2007 election, that have now been broken? Remember that Labor promised Australian students that they would not reintroduce a compulsory fee. In May 2007 Stephen Smith, the then shadow minister for education, stated explicitly that Labor was not contemplating a compulsory amenities fee for students, including any on a HECS arrangement.

Today in the parliament in question time there was yet another broken promise. This one was in relation to RAAF Richmond where, prior to the last election, the then Labor opposition promised that RAAF Richmond would continue to be the important RAAF base in the Sydney basin. What have we seen today? We saw the government now considering making RAAF Richmond the entirely inappropriate second airport for Sydney. There are a multitude of reasons for that, but that is not part of this bill, so I do not propose to discuss that. I have quite some knowledge about this and I can say quite definitively that RAAF Richmond is not an appropriate location for the second airport for Sydney.

This bill that we are debating today represents the second time this year that the Rudd government has broken their promise to Australian university students. I spoke on this legislation in March, which was the first time the government tried to introduce this tax. I thank Keegan Sard, who is a student at Bond University. I asked him about this, and he was quite definitive. He said:

To bring back the days of compulsory unionism in Australia will spell the end of a student’s right and freedom to spend the limited cash flow that we receive on the areas that matter the most to us. We have student bodies that regularly spend copious amounts of money on frivolous escapades without a benefit to students or as a collective group. We should not have to compulsorily fund these exploits unless we choose to.

The Labor Party is against choice, of course. Mr Sard went on to say:

In the current economic crisis where students are losing youth allowance benefits and struggling to live in campuses all around Australia, this is certainly not the time to impose a monetary penalty or tax that could further jeopardise students’ lives and wellbeing.

Mr Sard, thank you. You sum up exactly on behalf of all of Australia’s one million university students how they feel about this iniquitous tax.

Today I am going to speak on the same issues I raised in the House earlier this year. Labor presented the same bill and they have not taken into account any of the concerns about this fee which have been raised by uni students across Australia. I speak on behalf of all of those students but particularly those at James Cook University, which is incidentally the most significant tropical university in the world today—well done to Professor Harding, her team and her students at James Cook University. Students at JCU have saved a minimum of $235 per year under voluntary student unionism. They saved that every year since VSU came into being. The Rudd government now want to hit my students in Townsville and in Cairns at JCU with a $250 fee for services they may never use and with no guarantee it will not be used to play politics. This bill will make every one of Australia’s one million Australian university students pay that $250 a year regardless of their ability to pay or their desire to use the services the fee would be funding. I am opposed to this attempt to slug students with a compulsory tax they do not want.

Let’s have a look at a bit of the history of this. Since the introduction of voluntary student unionism by the Howard government in 2005, university students have saved on average $246 per year. This is a large sum of money for many students. In 2005 the then Labor opposition strongly opposed the issue with organisations such as the National Union of Students, spending one-quarter of a million dollars of student funds campaigning against the Howard government at the 2004 election. It is not hard to see why Labor want this back. Student compulsory fees were being paid in large sums to groups such as the NUS, who in turn were delivering political and financial benefits to the Labor Party.

Labor opposed a policy that hurt their self-interest. They did not consider what students wanted. The Labor Party profited from compulsory student unionism on campus and want to go back to the days of getting such support. That is what we have with this legislation before the House today. Despite claiming that this bill will not allow the money to be collected and used to support the political parties—I have seen the provisions in the bill—this provision would apply only to direct payment to a political party. But there is no protection from the countless ways that students’ money could be used for political purposes or campaigns. The Rudd government were not happy enough just to break their promise to university students not to introduce a compulsory fee. They are now doing it again.

What do students actually want? Students do not want to pay this compulsory tax. The Rudd government are trying to return to a system where students have no choice. But the real world is all about choice. I know the Labor Party rails against choice, but that is what the real world is about. This bill would have an unfair impact on students, who would be made to pay it no matter how or where they study.

A full-time student on the university campus may be using a variety of services but, in contrast, a part-time student who works during the day may only attend classes some evenings and use far fewer facilities. This does not even consider a distance education student who may only physically attend the university campus once a semester and never use any of the services. To charge all three students the same fee, irrespective of what they use, is clearly inequitable.

This bill is trying to take away the freedom of choice given by the Howard government’s introduction of VSU. This gave the students the freedom of choice to decide what they wanted to spend their money on. Students have been able to choose what areas and services of university are most appropriate to them and to use their financial resources accordingly. This user-pays system provides the best option for students and ensures that the inequality of the situation between the three types of students I just described does not apply.

The most important factor in this debate is what students think. They are the ones that matter. They are the customers. I can tell you I have spoken to students from many different parts of Australia and they do not want this fee. They do not want to lose their freedom of choice. So what do students think? I went and asked them. I asked one of my people to get a broad range of comments from students across rural, regional and city based universities, studying mainly at Australian National University, James Cook University, Bond University, University of Queensland, Monash, Charles Sturt University and the University of Sydney—a pretty widespread group to get advice from. I thank Johnno Patado for his help in assembling these comments.

The first question was: the government wants to bring in a compulsory annual fee of up to $250 for all university students, this money is then designed to assist university costs—what do you think about this? The first comment was:

It’s crazy considering the price of tuition fees already. An extra levy would deter people from tertiary studies particularly those who have to support themselves.

Good point. The next point was:

As a university student I’m appalled. Most of us cannot afford to study at the moment, but I also see university education more of a right than a privilege and I think, if anything, the costs of university should be diminished as we will eventually graduate and then start substantially contributing to the economy afterwards. The think the goals should be on encouraging students to graduate so they can start contributing sooner.

Dead right! And the next point:

And what about full-fee-paying non-HECS students? Would it affect them any differently to those on HECS? I’m not sure if bringing in another fee would be a help or a hindrance. To be honest, I would rather keep my $250 and spend it on my textbooks and you know exactly what it is going towards.

That is a good point too. The next student commented:

I’m against it. I don’t really see which costs yet another fee would assist with. That amount of money isn’t enough to significantly reduce university fees nor would it really subsidise texts, which are sold privately anyway. The main cost associated with university for many students is accommodation and $250 doesn’t really make a dent in that either, nor would assistance in that regard be easily monitored.

Finally to that question there was this response:

I think we pay enough already given that university used to be free.

Good on you. The student continued:

Students are struggling and an extra $250 is money most students probably don’t have especially with the extra cuts in youth allowance too.

Good on you, Labor! You are really doing the students in the eye on both fronts.

The next question that we asked was: what if this compulsory fee was used for political purposes? Whew, anger! The first comment:

I would like my money to stay mine, thanks, and I want to control what it is spent on.

Good point. The second comment was:

Absolutely not! If university students want to financially contribute to parties, that’s fine. If they want to join the Young LNP on their campus and do fundraising, that’s fine too. But no way should there be a compulsory fee to assist with that.

The third comment:

No way. People who are able to financially contribute and wholeheartedly want to contribute should be able to do so, and of course you can’t. But you can’t force someone to pay for the advertising they receive and absolutely not to forward any political agenda.

The next question we asked was: would the fee be acceptable if it was put onto your HECS debt?

A resounding no. For most people the fee will tally up to around $1,000 over a four-year course and that is around the cost of an entire unit of study and a big amount to pay off.

The next comment was:

Not really. It’s still not giving people the choice to support such a group if they want it or not.

And now to this question: do you use university services like sports, clubs, societies and university health? The answer was:

Sometimes the sports club and the uni club and the health service at university are really good but no-one knows where they are.

And then it continued:

We already pay for the classes and equipment needed for them. It’s the university’s job to use the money that we put into it to run itself.

We then asked: if, yes, would you rather pay for these yourself as a user-pays system or have a standard fee for all students that covers the cost.

User-pays for sure—

got the vote—

There are a lot of people who do not participate in anything. A standard fee is not fair for off-campus students who do their degree through correspondence.

Another one said:

We at Bond University have a standard fee that has to be paid before the start of the next semester for things like sport and certain clubs and societies. I opt not to pay it because I can’t afford to. I definitely believe that counselling and the doctor should stay free as they have given me unwavering support with my physical and mental health including references to hospitals and psychologists.

And finally, the comment:

I think I would prefer to have a user-pays system.

Since 2004 there has been no compulsory student services fee. What has changed? Have we seen students demonstrating in the streets, blocking the doors of Parliament House, as we had today with students demonstrating on another matter? Have we seen that? Not a single thing. Nothing. People are happy. Students are happy. Services are being provided. At every university in Australia they are there. So why this hell-bent push by the government to now impose a compulsory $250 student services fee on everybody no matter what kind of study they do, where they might be studying and how much they use the services? No, it is totally illogical to put forward this particular fee.

Many university students are under a financial strain during their studies. We all know that. Both sides of the House are well aware of that. Hitting students with another $250 a year fee may prove to be too much. Even with a HECS style arrangement this will be for many students an extra $1,000 on their HECS. We are still in a financial crisis and the future is uncertain. Saddling students with extra debt, with extra liabilities, at such a time is irresponsible. I say to the Labor Party: listen to the students. They do not want to pay this fee. They do not want an extra debt. For these reasons I will again vote against this legislation.

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

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009. Firstly, I would like to acknowledge the part being played today by the National Union of Students and the Deakin University Student Association in their campaign to improve access to education and, importantly, campus services. This bill seeks to redress the devastation that the former government’s misguided policy direction has wrought on our higher education institutions. This bill is about putting the heart and soul back into universities and returning them to being bright and vibrant centres of social and intellectual interaction. It has about returning these institutions to being the creative thinking centres of new ideas and producing Australia’s next leaders in science, industry, government and, of course, culture.

I believe that an environment on campus that is conducive to fostering a social atmosphere that assists in developing initiative and engagement is integral to underwriting every degree our students study for at our universities. This bill is an important part of re-establishing basic campus facilities such as child care, food services, sporting options, campus culture and entertainment—services and amenities that have been culled since the introduction of the voluntary student unionism legislation some years ago.

The previous government’s policy was based on outdated dogma. The student fees legislation passed by the former government was based partly on ideology and partly on fear. They feared political debate, they feared student involvement, they feared they were losing the battle of ideas on campuses. They suggested that the views of student organisations were those of a dedicated group of activists, not the broad views of a majority of students. Instead of recognising that student representative organisations have a range of views and responsibilities—from running sports and social and cultural organisations through to providing advocacy—they failed to accept that student associations have a legitimate role to play in their communities. So the coalition ran a totally false smear campaign against student organisations.

The coalition ran some bankrupt intellectual arguments about what student organisations do on their campuses. They suggested that student unions were badly run and gave poor service to the majority of students. Some coalition members claimed that student unions could not possibly accurately represent an entire student body—a good argument for a dictator. The coalition could not fathom how the National Union of Students joined the protestors at the Baxter detention centre against the previous government’s position. The coalition could not understand how students could legitimately have a social conscience. They cried foul when students ran campaigns against the ‘war on refugees’. The truth is that the Liberals cooked up legislation because they were losing the battle of ideas, the battle for involvement on Australian campuses. Rather than participating in the battle of ideas, they decided on the coward’s way out. They decided to scuttle legitimate student forums. They decided to scuttle their institutions. They decided to carve the heart out of universities and student campus life. That is what they did.

The previous government’s misguided belief in their own dogma caused them to legislate against student associations. They gutted the system and almost killed student life. They were and are killjoys on legitimate campus culture. Back then it was ‘Little Johnny Killjoy’ and his unhappy band of sad sacks. Today, of course, we have the mutterings of Malcolm—and they are an even sadder bunch. When the previous ‘mean and tricky’ government were thrown out by the Australian people one of their clear legacies was the ghost campuses we often see today.

This bill has already been voted down by those on the other side, which clearly denotes that they have learnt nothing from that sad episode in this parliament—sad considering that a number of those in the opposition who participate in the parliament today developed their skills in university organisations. The debate and the forums they participated in were funded by services and amenities fees and ultimately led them to this chamber. That is absolute hypocrisy. They seek to kill off the very institution that led them to this place. The ideological farce that the opposition maintain in suppressing student organisations is an anathema, and it should not continue in this place.

Those on the other side who sought to ban student unions might have conveniently forgotten their role in Australian history. The Liberals’ move to ban student unions and get rid of student services was crass. Let us be honest, in many cases universities are why people are here in the chamber today. The ideas that we have were in many cases spawned or developed at university through the courses we undertook as university students, the debates we had with our friends and the debates we had in our student organisations. In many cases, the people we met at university are the contacts who have helped us on our path to the parliament to develop and represent one another and to pursue the common interests of our campuses and this parliament.

Many members on the other side went to university. Nearly all are lawyers or have similar occupations and many of them participated in student unions or student associations. Almost all of the opposition members who went to university would have enjoyed the services and lifestyle, met their political contacts there and participated in debates in clubs and societies. Then we had the consequence of their coming here, where they attempted to legislate against and close down those services. That was based on pure ideology and madness.

A quick look through the biographies of many opposition members shows some very interesting things. Within the opposition ranks there are two former members of the University of Western Australia Liberal Club, two former presidents of the Melbourne University Liberal Club, one former Curtin University Liberal Club executive member, one former president of the Adelaide University Liberal Club and two former presidents of the University of Sydney Student Representative Council. These parliamentarians no doubt enjoyed the well supported student amenities and campus communities that their clubs or societies were affiliated with.

Back in March, when we last debated this legislation, I tabled an article on campus communities which talked about some of the social democrats who, in broad terms, in the 1970s supported the idea of Australian workers working together. That was within the culture that existed naturally on university campuses. I noted with great interest and enthusiasm that the recently retired member for Higgins, the Hon. Peter Costello, was photographed accompanying that particular article. Given his history within student unions through that period, it is disappointing that Peter Costello took the view that he took in this place, championing legislation that ripped $170 million from university funding. That led to a very dramatic decline in student services—in the health, counselling, employment, child-care, sporting and fitness services that university student associations and unions delivered to their campuses and their communities. That led to a very dramatic cut in the capacity of universities to deliver important funding for research and teaching; because in good conscience universities had to make up for the decline in services that had historically been offered by student unions and associations.

My research went on further, revealing that the founder of the Liberal Party, Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, was in fact a former president of the University of Melbourne Student Representative Council. I am sure that he would be rolling in his grave if he knew what the Liberal Party has done to student life through their attack on student associations and student unions over the course of the last 15-odd years. When I look at my university, Deakin University within my electorate, I can recall a much more vibrant student culture than the one we currently see. There were many more services and a much stronger university student cultural life than we currently have as a consequence of that funding being ripped out of student associations. It is fair to say that student activism plays only a small part in the development of a vibrant culture on university campuses, but it is an integral part. There are also the services which stem from that and which support the efforts of students in their studies.

This bill is about rebuilding student representation in Australia. This bill will overturn a very nasty piece of legislation that was introduced by the Howard government. We know why the Howard government abolished student fees—they did it because they feared, they loathed, the idea that students might come together and state strongly what they believed in and offer services to support students in their studies. The Liberals believed universities had become a hotbed of political recruitment for Labor and that Labor was using campuses to recruit support for the Labor Party. The Liberals were wrapped up in this view and decided for their own ideological reasons to ram through parliament a most foolish piece of legislation—a nasty piece of legislation.

Australia’s university campuses used to be thriving places full of fun and life. The previous government went too far with their approach to university services and amenities, putting in place legislation to curtail them. As a consequence, university campuses were gutted of services, sporting clubs were decimated, debating societies fell apart, cultural organisations could no longer be funded, music events dried up and drama groups had no funding. Political clubs were seen by the Liberals as evil. This was all because the Liberal Party feared they were losing the battle of ideas on campuses. The motives were shocking and the legacy today is a tragedy.

This bill will amend the previous government’s voluntary student unionism legislation and deliver a balanced, measured and practical solution to rebuilding student services and those amenities to re-engage students in an independent, democratic organisation that is able to deliver strong services and amenities to those students. The Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009 is about putting life back into student life. Students have often inspired the world; they have done so in the past and they will continue to do so into the future. It is a very important and basic premise that student representative organisations in universities should be fostered, and this bill does that. I commend this bill to the House.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009 is encompassed in the explanatory memorandum, which states in its opening paragraph:

This Bill will amend the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to provide for a fee to be imposed by higher education providers—

from 1 July 2009, so it is virtually retrospective—

for a compulsory student services and amenities fee. The fee will be capped at $250 per student per annum and indexed annually. The Bill provides for the establishment of a new component of the Higher Education Loan Program (HELP): Services and Amenities-HELP (SA-HELP), which will provide eligible students with an option to access a loan for the fee through SAHELP if they wish. In addition, the Bill will require higher education providers that receive funding for student places under the Commonwealth Grant Scheme, to comply with new benchmarks from 2010 onwards, for the provision of information on and access to basic student support services of a non-academic nature; and requirements to ensure the provision of student representation and advocacy.

Why was this voted down when it was previously labelled ‘compulsory student unionism’? It was for a simple reason. As I heard the member for Herbert say: firstly, those who do extension courses—and there are universities now within Australia that have something like 90 per cent of their undergraduates doing extension courses—cannot access the amenities. They cannot get discounted beer at the bar. They are unlikely to exercise a vote in the student union elections; they are not there, they are not canvassed, they are frequently working mothers and others who are attempting to extend their credentials in anticipation of future employment and they will not bother themselves with all the activities practised by the young and the enthusiastic in that particular situation.

But this is just another tax. It becomes even more illogical, more hypocritical, when today, as we have for the last 10 days, we heard the Deputy Prime Minister, as Minister for Education, bemoaning the loss of certain funding that she proposed to selectively provide to tertiary students, such as a $1,000 scholarship—give them $1,000 with one hand and take back $250 with the other. Why? So that universities with huge revenues are able to strip a bit of money out of a student who—if the Minister for Education’s own ambitions were secured—would still be working 30 hours a week to qualify for Youth Allowance rent assistance. In other words, if they did a whole gap year, as the Deputy Prime Minister proposes, earning money for 30 hours a week, they would still have another six months to do, which would mean either that they have a two-year gap between secondary and tertiary education or that they attempt to do 30 hours work a week whilst attending university. As we know, the face-to-face times vary greatly in that regard. Some students do not have many hours a week of actual face-to-face time—they have another word for it that I cannot recollect at the moment. Others, such as those in veterinary science, medicine and those sorts of things often have to attend the university for 30 or 40 hours a week anyway. They have to try to make a living and, more particularly, if they are forced to pay rent because they have come from regions outside of the normal travel time of the tertiary institution they attend, they have got to find the money for it.

This legislation says that if you want to go to university you will be taxed $250. We heard the member for Corangamite and previous speakers telling them how much value they are going to get for this money. Well, if you do not want any of the services, what is the value? If you are there every day drinking subsidised beer in the bar, eating subsidised meals in the restaurants, having a massage, going off to counselling—and if you spend too much time in the bar you will probably need the counselling—you get it for nothing, or it is heavily subsidised. But if you are someone who rushes in and does their lectures and their tute and rushes off to the restaurant where they are working at night for the purpose of funding their education, what benefits do you get? And do you get $250 worth? And if you get up in the morning and, because you are battling financially to get yourself through university, you cut a small lunch and put it in a brown paper bag and take it to the university to eat out on the lawns, or something like that, why should you be paying to subsidise the other person who has enough cash in their pocket to go to the subsidised restaurant or cafe? There is a simple factor applying here. Students are fully capable of deciding the services and representations they desire. If they have the financial capacity to do so, they can pay for them.

If I am a young person who takes a job with a builder, or a council or something outside of the tertiary sector and I want to play tennis, or cricket or football in the various codes, I go along and join the relevant club and I pay the annual fee for that purpose, which funds the club. What is more, those basic services, frequently the tennis courts or the other amenities such as the oval or anything else, are provided by the local government authority that is levying rates against my boss or against my parents if we happen to reside in the same area. Those rates are not going to go down when this government taxes me $250 to go to university, when I am not going to use their sporting grounds or when I am not going to use the other amenities that are applicable. If it is my desire to be in the university rowing club and the rowing clubs needs funds for the purpose of operating, they say to me, ‘Mr Tuckey, it is $50, or $100 or $200 a year to be a member.’ That is what happens elsewhere in society and those services are all there. If I think that the university club is a bit elite at $200, I can join the Woop Woop rowing club for half that; surely that is my choice.

Why has there got to be a legislated amount of money that I pay for the purpose of utilising a service provided by a university whose basic function is not to provide those services? They are the attractions to try and get the students in. Their basic function is to deliver education. If I am of the view that I do not want some feisty young individuals to represent me—on what I am not sure because they do not need to represent me as to the prices in the cafe as I can make that judgment—I can go across to the deli on the other side of the road if I think that the restaurant or cafe is too expensive. I can go down to the nearest pub, where there will be a lot of other young people anyway, and buy alcohol. I do not need to have it available to me on the campus. I might be better off without it. If all of those services are going to be provided by the university administrators, then let them fund them from within their revenues. This fee, of course, will not apply necessarily to an overseas student because, when the overseas student turns up, the university will tell them that they will pay full fees for the services and that will include a fee because you get a subsidised meal down at the restaurant. That is fair enough.

The fundamental issue before us here is that all of those fees should be voluntary. As I said, if you want to have some union representative—you might even approve of them attacking a political party from time to time—you pay them the money and you assess their services accordingly. This is the whole issue of trade union membership these days. If a young person can go to the internet to find out what the award wage is that they can expect to be paid as a minimum for working as a brickies’ assistant or something else, they can do that. They do not need to pay a couple of hundred dollars a year to be a member of a trade union for that service. Of course kids, as far as I recollect over a long period as an employer, had a very good idea of what they were worth. And if they were in some doubt today they would send an SMS on the telephone to one of their mates, ‘What are you getting paid down the road to serve behind the counter or to do any other sort of service?’ It is the same in a university.

We have this charade, this farrago, that there is a situation where a university cannot teach you unless you can get subsidised alcohol, subsidised food and child care. There are a very small percentage of students who required child care. It was a service that was recognised as being mostly available to the staff of the university. But again, if someone wants to set up a private childcare centre on the university, it will become eligible for the 50 per cent government subsidy. Why do I have to pay more for it? Why do thousands and thousands of students have to pay for something like that when they have no need for the service? It is as simple as that. There is no need for it.

More particularly, as I have just read out, we have this heartbreaking suggestion that their debts to the government should be further increased by allowing them to borrow this money. They do not get it for nothing. They must pay that back at a later date. There will be interest accumulated and, if they are an extension student, they are paying for nothing. We know very well why the government wants this money. It is the same as it would like to force every individual worker in this country into a trade union because those funds become available to this government by one means or another. I made the point the other day when talking about donations to political parties that political parties would be better off if they had no sponsors, no donors, because, obviously, people who make large contributions to political parties expect something in return. Nobody expects more than the trade union movement. I have seen the situation in Western Australia when the CFMEU were not getting their way on some particular issue and they cut off the state Labor MPs’ funding. Boy, they came to heel then. That is apparently okay, but if anybody else in the private sector tries to do the same thing it is not okay.

People might say, ‘Okay, we will no longer allow trade unions to donate to the Labor Party. We will no longer allow the Chamber of Commerce or some other industry group’—who in this day and age tend to share out the money anyway—‘to donate to the Liberal Party.’ That is fine. But if they all go out, as I saw in the West Australian newspaper the other day, and take out full-page ads tipping the bucket—as they did on one occasions—on the state premier for his decision to protect all the taxpayers of Western Australia from a certain claim for more money by state government employees, how do you prevent that? How does the government or the opposition of the day, when contesting an election, respond to various interest groups? There were two or three advertisements in one newspaper—one of the others was about something of an environmental nature. The political establishment is being bombarded by the supporters of both sides but they do not make donations any more.

This bill is a process of taxing the tertiary community when in fact they can voluntarily pay for whatever they like. In the provision of fundamental services, they pay the going rate. If they think it is too expensive, they go elsewhere—not one of these university services is unique to a university. They are all out there in the private sector anyway, in a competitive environment. Why is it that, having paid for these things, someone else will decide where they are allocated; whether there is more money for the bar, more money for the restaurant, more money to print a paper that nobody is going to read? Surely if someone believes there is sufficient demand in the university for a local paper during prosh, or any time, you have a news stand and people will pull money out of their pocket and pay for it. But why should they be forced to? They might be totally disinterested in campus politics. They might be of a religion that does not even vote. Why should they be taxed for that particular service ?

I made some mention of the youth allowance and I note that the other day the ABC news in my electorate quoted the Labor member for Albany, Peter Watson. He said regional students should be the only ones eligible for the Commonwealth’s Youth Allowance scheme. I can tell the regional members of the Labor Party that Peter Watson survived the last election by 86 votes. Peter has worked it out. He has worked out where the politics are. The minister representing Senator Wong in this place told us the other day that the Labor Party had a clear list of those in the Senate who had the temerity to talk against the emissions trading scheme. Well, I can tell the government benches that I have got a list. I will make sure that those who are more foolish than Peter Watson, the state Labor member for Albany in my electorate, who has got on the bandwagon and is in the pretty happy position of saying what he likes because he does not have a vote on the issue, go on that list. All these members opposite have voted down the concept of the old youth allowance and now they are waiting to take another 250 bucks off the same people if they can comply with Minister Gillard’s new deal. Why would you do any of that? It is wrong; it is unnecessary. I am fed up with having the minister tell us what the universities want. I am not here to address the interests of a few fat cat academics. I am here to represent the young people in my electorate who want a tertiary education and will have to finance their own affairs to get one. We get this silly argument that each and every one is on $300,000 a year. What a joke! (Time expired)

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009 will amend the previous government’s voluntary student unionism legislation and deliver a balanced, measured and practical solution to rebuilding student services and amenities of a non-academic nature and restoring independent democratic representation and advocacy in the higher education sector. The bill contains the same provisions for student services and amenities as the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities, and Other Measures) Bill 2009 that was defeated in the Senate on 18 August 2009.

Students are paying the price for the Liberal Party’s outdated view on, and ideological obsession with, voluntary student unionism. Voluntary student unionism is the raison d’etre of young Liberals and student Liberal groups. This is the glue that, for many years, has bound these diverse young conservatives together. Voluntary student unionism was something that the small ‘l’ Liberals, the libertarians and the big ‘C’ conservative groups within the conservative youth group movement could agree on. They could not agree on much but one thing they could agree on was voluntary student unionism. It was a policy obsession for many a member of those opposite in their early twenties, and unfortunately and rather sadly for them it remains a policy obsession today.

Those opposite do not care about the practicalities of their obsession. They do not care about the young mother who is unable to go to uni due to a lack of affordable university child care. They do not care about landing a blow on regional and rural students. They do not care that they have carried this policy obsession for decades. They care more about their world view being maintained than about the practical and real outcomes of this view on the lives of students. They mask their view in an argument about choice. They fail to grasp the very simple proposition that we live in communities and that universities are also communities.

Quite clearly, when we take a community approach to things and how they are there for the common good, we understand that there is cross-subsidisation. It happens every day of our lives. It happens with the rates that we pay to the local council. It happens in terms of the services provided by the state government. It happens in relation to the taxes that we pay to the federal government. We do not all use up these services to exactly the same measure but we are happy to accept that we live in a community and that part of living in a community is the cross-subsidisation that results so that those who are worse off, who find it a bit tougher than others and who cannot afford some of the services receive subsidised services. That concept is no different when we look at university communities and how they should operate. We are being asked by the opposition to ignore the fact that universities are communities.

The opposition’s view is that we are all individuals and so we should purchase all of our services on an individual basis. This is the type of rationale that leads to the argument that we should not have a police force. There should be private security guards for those who can afford them and for those who cannot afford them—tough. That is the individual choice that someone makes. This is the approach that the opposition have taken. The opposition have taken an ideological view rather than a practical one on needs of students in universities across the country. In the past, the opposition have tried to mask their ideological arguments in a sort of overarching argument about choice. We saw a stark example of this in the debate on industrial relations and Work Choices.

Those opposite were asking us to swallow the notion that individuals should be able to make choices about their own working arrangements and that they should be able to have so-called ‘flexibility’ of individual contracts. The Australian population, quite frankly, did not believe them. At the last election, there was an overwhelming rejection of what those opposite were saying about choice in the workplace. Voluntary student unionism is very similar to that issue. This is not about individuals having choice; it is about providing services for kids who are going to university who would otherwise not be able to afford those services. So for the member for O’Connor to say that kids will have the choice of going to the cafeteria or bringing a packed lunch is insulting to university students, particularly those students who come from my area, which has a lower socioeconomic make-up than many other areas. The kids in my area struggle to get to university. The subsidised services they are provided at universities are often the only way that these kids are able to take advantage of those services.

The government is not saying that this legislation is the return of compulsory student unionism. There were problems with compulsory student unionism, and I think any fair-minded person would concede that. This legislation is not about compulsory student unionism. We are not changing the legislation that prohibits a university from requiring a student to be a member of a student organisation. The new provisions state that a higher education provider who spends the fee on support for a political party or a candidate for an election to Commonwealth, state or territory parliaments or to local government is prohibited. A higher education provider must also impose this prohibition on any person or organisation to which it pays any of the fee revenue. The fear about this money finding its way back, as the member for O’Connor said, to the ALP’s coffers is clearly a position that the member for O’Connor has taken without reading the legislation, because it specifically says that that is not possible.

Most fair-minded people would concede that there were problems with accountability in some student union organisations in the past. Many fair-minded people would concede that the previous government threw the baby out with the bathwater and that it went too far in its approach to university services and amenities. Students are being forced to deal with these consequences. Under the previous government, close to $170 million was ripped out of university funding. This resulted in the decline and, in some instances, the complete closure of vital health, counselling, employment, child-care, sporting and fitness services at universities. The member for O’Connor, again, I think, insulted university student when he tried to say that that funding was being spent on cheap beer and massages. Clearly, the member is not in touch with what the legislation is about, and he is certainly not in touch with what happens at universities. This legislation is about ensuring that some vital services are provided. The member for O’Connor insults university students and fair-minded people with his statements.

Of the areas in this country’s economy that were neglected over the 11½ years of the previous government, higher education suffered more than most. In fact, the neglect of higher education by the former government was so bad that, while other OECD countries were on average increasing their funding by up to 48 per cent in the 10 years leading up to 2004, Australia saw a decline of four per cent. This shows a massive difference between what was happening in higher education in this country and that of comparable OECD countries, and we are paying for it now with bottlenecks in skills shortages. The previous government was warned about this over 20 times by the Reserve Bank and still it did nothing about it. When you see how the previous government decreased funding in this sector, it is little wonder that we have problems in skills shortages in key industries. The previous government created that situation. They knew that there were skills shortages in the country and that the situation was getting worse because of their inaction in education generally but particularly in higher education.

The National Party have recognised publicly that the current approach to funding student services and amenities is not sustainable and that it has had a terrible impact, particularly on our rural and regional campuses. The National Party voted at their recent party conference to support a compulsory fee being levied on university students to support services and amenities on campus. Despite this, they did not support the passage of this critical bill in the Senate, preferring to side with their coalition partners over the needs of regional students. The National Party need to put their money where their mouth is. They cannot pretend to support funding for student services and amenities when they are out in the bush speaking to their constituents but vote against this important legislation when they are in Canberra.

Increases in student costs on campuses were also identified through the consultations, showing that, as a consequence of VSU, students had been hit by price hikes in areas such as child care, parking, food and fitness services. Students have also experienced the indirect costs of VSU on the quality of their education with many universities being forced to redirect funding out of research and teaching budgets to make up the shortfall in funding for campus services.

Following consultations, the Australian government has developed a balanced, practical and sustainable solution to help ensure that non-academic student services and democratic student representation are secured for the long term. Under this plan, for the first time universities will be required, as a condition of funding, to meet new national access to service benchmarks to ensure students have information and access to basic but important student support services like counselling and welfare services. In another first, universities will also be required to fulfil new representation and advocacy protocols to ensure that students have a say on campus.

The government is consulting with the higher education sector and other key stakeholders on the development of these benchmarks and protocols and we will ensure that feedback from within the campuses is considered as part of this process. On top of these requirements universities have also been provided with the option of setting a compulsory fee, capped at a maximum of $250 per full-time student and indexed each year, to help rebuild student amenities and student support services. Universities will be responsible for whether or not they set a fee of up to $250 a year and will have flexibility to determine which students are required to pay that fee. To help students manage the fee, the Australian government will provide access to a HECS-style loan under the Higher Education Loan Program, HELP. This is called Services and Amenities-HELP. This means that students will be able to defer payment of the fee in a HECS-like arrangement and not have to start paying back the fee until they start earning a set salary in line with their HELP repayments. Universities who choose to set a fee will be required to consult with students on what services and amenities the fee will be used for.

The government has also released draft guidelines that set out the range of services and amenities that may be funded through the collection of any services and amenities fee. They include things like child care, health services, sport and fitness amenities. Let us make it clear, Madam Deputy Speaker—the new arrangements are not a return to compulsory student unionism and we are not changing the legislation that prohibits a university from requiring a student to be a member of a student organisation. Further, the fee will not be able to be used to support broader political activities. The government believes that this is a balanced, practical solution that enables universities, students and the government to work in partnership to rebuild important student support services and ensure democratic student representation and advocacy at Australian universities.

The University of Newcastle’s Ourimbah campus on the New South Wales Central Coast—in my electorate of Dobell—is a fast-growing and increasingly popular choice for higher education. The campus grounds are nestled in an area of plush subtropical rainforest and bushland in a central location of the region. The Ourimbah campus offers university, TAFE and community college programs and courses all on one site so that students can take advantage of pathways between levels and sectors of education and training. Affiliates are the Central Coast Community College and the Central Coast Conservatorium of Music.

There are a range of degree programs offered at this campus, including the Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Social Science, Bachelor of Information Technology, Bachelor of Business, Bachelor of Early Childhood Teaching, Bachelor of Education, Bachelor of Exercise and Sport Science, Bachelor of Food Science and Human Nutrition and Bachelor of Psychology. These are a few of the undergraduate courses available. The Ourimbah campus also has a number of postgraduate courses, including a Graduate Certificate in Science, Graduate Diploma in Education (Primary), Graduate Diploma in Science and Master of Food Technology.

So you can see, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the University of Newcastle’s Ourimbah campus has grown to become a very good and very desirable higher education venue. The campus is currently engaging in such research programs which ask, ‘Can green tea lower cholesterol?’ under which Central Coast people with higher blood cholesterol are being targeted to determine whether regular consumption of green tea can help lower blood cholesterol levels. The Ourimbah campus is also behind the establishment of a new marine research centre on the Central Coast. This national centre of excellence in marine research and education will be a reality for the region by Christmas with the keys to its new home handed over at that time.

This year marks 20 years since the first classes commenced at the Central Coast campus. This milestone gives the community the opportunity to reflect on the growth of higher education in the region over that time and the importance of having access to high-quality educational services. I have talked before in this parliament about how great our university campus is on the Central Coast. Recently I made calls for the campus to change its name. One would think that one of the things we could do rather quickly is at least change its name to the Central Coast campus of the University of Newcastle, rather than the Ourimbah campus, and then look over time to develop a university in our own right on the Central Coast. This issue is not just symbolic. It has a great effect on people being able to identify that this is a place of higher education—TAFE, community college and university—and that this is the Central Coast’s. It is something that the university needs to look at.

In addition to the government’s commitment to improving university services and student representation, the Bradley Review of Australian Higher Education will report to the government later this year on broader issues relating to universities. Ourimbah university student Kris Gesling wrote in response to my previous speech:

I’m glad the Federal Government boosted uni funding after Howard’s decade of decay but it was just a drop in the ocean to make up for what he did to our education system. We need more funding for education across the sector to ensure that Australia stays at the forefront of innovation. We’ve been lucky with the resources boom but that won’t last and has a devastating impact on our natural environment.

Let us go back and have another look at what this bill is actually saying and when these changes come into effect. Universities that choose to implement the fee and make essay help available will be able to charge the fee once legislation has been passed and guidelines are in place. Universities will be able to charge up to $250. This amount will be indexed for 2010 onwards, in line with other loan programs under the Higher Education Support Act 2003. International full fee paying students are not eligible to access the higher education loan program. These students need to have the means to pay their tuition fees. It is therefore reasonable for these students to pay the services and amenities fees if a higher education provider decides to impose them.

Part-time students are also affected by these changes. The guidelines to be made under the new provisions will specify how the maximum fee will be worked out for a student who is studying on a less than full-time basis. Higher education providers will be able to charge less than the maximum or not require some students to pay a fee at all.

To wrap up, let us be reminded why we are going ahead with the changes under this legislation. The previous government went too far with its approach to the university sector, and amenities and students are being forced to deal with the consequences. Under the previous government’s approach close to $170 million was ripped out of university funding, resulting in the decline and in some instances complete closure of vital health, counselling, employment, child-care, sporting and fitness services. Universities have also reported having to redirect funding out of research and teaching budgets to make up for the shortfall of funding for campus services.

Without urgent intervention services will continue to decline and even fold completely. The decline in student support services has also impacted on the capacity of Australian universities to attract international students. Sporting organisations have identified a decline in participation and an inability to invest in infrastructure and undertake long-term development planning. The government has consistently committed to ensuring that university students have access to vital campus services. We are honouring this commitment. This is a practical, balanced and sustainable solution for securing the future of support services on campus and also for ensuring that students have access to independent representation. This is not compulsory student unionism. We are not changing the legislation that prohibits a university from requiring a student to be a member of a student organisation.

You wonder whether the ideological problem that the opposition have with this legislation is because they are so historically opposed to any reference to unions. We saw what they did with Work Choices. We heard the member for O’Connor spend a good part of his contribution not talking about this legislation but talking about unions, industrial organisations, and their capacity to raise money and use it in political campaigns. Those things are clearly prohibited in relation to this particular piece of legislation. This legislation is about providing student services. It is about providing health services. It is about providing a counselling service. It is about providing sporting services. This is legislation that makes sure students attending higher education facilities around Australia get fair access to these services. It is about making sure the community that exists on university campuses has a fair go, collectively, rather than it being left to those who can afford to pay for these particular services being the only ones who can gain access to them. This is a piece of legislation that is important. It should be supported and I commend the bill to the House.

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

The Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009 has the primary purpose of imposing a new tax on the one million students attending universities across Australia. This $250 student fee was first introduced on 11 February 2009 with a section on VET-FEE-HELP as part of the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities, and Other Measures) Bill 2009. The first bill passed the House on 19 March 2009 and the coalition voted against it in the House of Representatives. It was then introduced into the Senate on 20 March this year and negatived at the third reading on 18 August 2009. As a result, the second time around the VET-FEE-HELP section has been removed and is now in a bill separate from this legislation.

I am rising to talk for those who have contacted me wanting choice. Students in my electorate are saying they want choice and opportunity. This bill can be considered as another broken promise by the Labor government, with the Minister for Education stating in 2007 that at no point did Labor promise to introduce such a compulsory tax. In 2005 the Howard government introduced voluntary student unionism, a historic move for those who believe that freedom of association for students is a fundamental right, as is choice a fundamental right. The coalition believed then, and still does, that students should be free to choose how, when and on what they spend their hard-earned money. It is very hard-earned money that in so many cases is scarce for university students, particularly for those who will fail to qualify for youth allowance but who get to university in spite of that and for those who have no choice but to work while at university to support their education. Every dollar is important to each one of those people and we are very well aware of the significant costs of going to university for regional and rural students. We are aware that this cost can be anything from $15,000 to $30,000 a year for each student who has to move to the city to study, so every dollar is very important to both the student and their family.

It is on behalf of these young people that I have risen to speak tonight. One of the university students from my electorate of Forrest who emailed me regarding this legislation said:

While entering my final year at university I am all too familiar with the ‘high costs’ associated in being a student, especially considering the fact I have had to become financially independent from my parents in Harvey in order to study here in Perth. I would like to point out that there are many other students from a country background such as myself who are in the same ‘boat’ in terms of being forced to live away from home in order to have the opportunity to study.

With this in consideration I can only view the proposed levy for higher education as an unnecessary cost placed on students, who already have numerous costs associated with their studies …

The student went on to say in this email:

In my experience the Student Guild at my University provides a large range of services to students, regardless of whether the students are full-fee members or not.

Therefore I can see no extra benefit (in terms of services) that the Guild could provide if the levy was imposed.

In terms of funding, I am certain that the Guild at my university has sufficient funds for its services (perhaps along with university funding) as every semester they launch a large campaign to recruit students in becoming members.

As a Commerce student, I view this situation similar to that of Private Health Insurance, as it has many similarities.

(1) The Guild service is available to all students

(2) Those who can afford it or see extra value in becoming a member, will chose to subscribe.

(3) And those cannot afford it won’t subscribe, but are still entitled to some essential Guild Services.

He also said:

I believe that the Government of this country needs to provide our students with every means possible to encourage and support their studies, as it is the Tertiary students who will one day become the leaders of this country in solving its problems; from the environmental issues to economic problems.

If the Rudd Government is genuinely serious in supporting the learning and developments of our nation’s students it will reconsider its proposal.

Another current university student raised another two key points that I want to mention in the course of this speech. The first was that a majority of students are currently dissatisfied with the activities and funding distribution of their student guild. The second was that the implications of this legislation are not widely understood by a majority of students at the university she attends. The university student also stated that at present approximately 60 per cent of students at her university pay the student fee, which is currently $90. Furthermore, a majority of the guild members are those students who study full time and even live on campus.

I remember the member for Wills, Kelvin Thomson, saying during the debate on the Higher Education Support Bill on 14 October 2003:

… Labor will not support any measures to increase fees for Australian students or their families …

Well, this particular university student from my electorate stressed her concern that under this proposed legislation the current fee of $90 could rise to as high as $250. Every dollar is important to this young lady, and $250 is a major additional expense for a university student, particularly when many students are unable to identify exactly what their student guild does for them. We also know that there are a number of students from regional and rural areas for whom ever single dollar is important. It is critical to whether or not they can study. I also understand that funding from student guilds in Western Australia can be largely determined by membership numbers in the groups, with groups with more members receiving more funding than the smaller groups.

The coalition strongly believes that students from regional and rural areas certainly have a right to an affordable higher education. We have already seen the government ignoring regional and rural students through the proposed changes to the youth allowance and by now imposing a further annual tax. I am very concerned about the youth allowance issue, which might see fewer students actually being able to get to university only to be forced to pay this additional $250 in tax. We know that the current legislation disadvantages 25,000 students. Only 5,000 students of those who are currently in their gap year will be able to take advantage of the amendments sought by the coalition and agreed to by the government. However, we have legislation that will severely disadvantage rural and regional students, particularly those from farming and small business families who will not be able to access dependant youth allowance because of the assets test. That can often be so even though those particular small businesses or farming businesses, while they might have assets, can be extremely cash poor and have the significant and high costs of relocation and keeping their young people at university. Then we have the other particular part of the government’s youth allowance legislation, which is the requirement for 30 hours of work a week consistently every week for 18 months out of any two-year period. While members like me who represent regional and rural electorates would know of many small towns and small communities in which there just might be seasonal work available to these young people, there certainly would not be and will not be 30 hours of work a week, every single week for 18 months out of a two-year period. This further compromises their capacity to attend university and then they will be hit, if they are able to attend university, with actually having to find an additional $250.

We have seen the government and the Minister for Education clearly oblivious to these issues, which are very specific to regional and rural areas. I have parents from towns like Donnybrook, Harvey and Dunsborough contacting me on a regular basis asking where their child would find 30 hours of work a week, every week for 18 months. It is a great concern. If it is not youth allowance that will have a significant detrimental effect it could well be the waste and mismanagement from Building the Education Revolution, or BER. We have seen $1.7 billion wasted in this program, with $7.3 million just for plaques and display signs.

In conclusion, the coalition believes that students should be free to choose—students like the young people who have contacted me and said they want the choice of what to spend their hard earned money on. I oppose this bill on its primary purpose of imposing a new tax on the one million students attending universities across Australia.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in support of the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009. It is somewhat ironic that the member for Forrest’s contribution in this debate centred around her concerns that the bill that Labor is introducing here will impose a financial cost or burden on students, not recognising the important services that will be offered to students, at the same time as the opposition, and clearly herself, are opposing the very scholarships that the government is proposing, particularly for regional and rural students, and also its measures to ensure that more low- and middle-income students, the majority of whom in fact live in regional areas, will be able to access income support. It is somewhat ironic that she is concerned about student unionism and what that will potentially do in relation to her perceived concerns about the costs that it might impose on students, yet she is not that concerned about the fact that the opposition’s proposals to block the income support measures for students will in fact see many, many students far worse off.

With the introduction of this bill Labor are seeking to, again, revitalise those near terminal student services right across Australia. I use the word ‘terminal’ because, without the support of members opposite, the future cultural and social life of our universities will die. It is nine months since I spoke in support of these measures and I do so with as much conviction now as I did then. I speak on these bills because I know the grim situation that is facing our peak education bodies across the country—not only our universities, our student bodies and our student services and amenities bodies but also, most of all, the students who are facing the challenge of a loss of services on campus. That challenge is the real possibility that, by members opposite letting down students with their opposition to this bill, they will have to begin closing doors on student services and amenities. Unfortunately, in many universities, this process has already begun.

Let us reflect a little bit on how we got here today. The former government, in a somewhat older style of thinking, believed that the sole objective of student bodies around this nation was to lobby against the Howard government—playing, again, old student politics and reliving the glory days of battles fought and lost when they themselves were at university, deciding that the way in which you crush student opposition to not only the Howard government but also conservative governments was to get rid of student unions. The same objectors to the bill today fail to realise the impact that their decision to introduce voluntary student unionism has had on university campuses, particularly in regional and rural Australia.

When this government came to office we made a commitment to current and future students that we would restore services at universities, and I made a commitment to universities within my own electorate to show support for those student services. We on this side of the House know that the importance of these services not only for students but also for parents who are supporting them in going to university cannot be underestimated.

In our first year, since being elected, the government held discussions around Australia to talk about the real needs of university students. The minister for youth travelled from region to region to seek feedback on the impact of the Howard government’s devastating changes and on what the Rudd government should now do to combat these effects. One of these consultation sessions was conducted in my own electorate in February 2008. There was a strong attendance by the major stakeholders across my electorate. They attended because they knew all too well the importance of getting the right system in place. We had strong involvement from the University of Ballarat, the University of Ballarat Student Association, the Australian Catholic University and the Aquinas Student Association. The Committee for Ballarat also attended, an industry peak body in the city, the City of Ballarat and also representatives from Deakin University Student Association, which many of my constituents in my electorate attend. They are all local stakeholders who put hard work and effort into working with the government to fix the problem created by the previous government.

Following this review we found that student services and amenities were eroding across campuses around Australia. We also found that the former government’s changes were having a serious impact on, in particular, regional and rural Australia. And I know this to be true in my own electorate. I would like to quote some of the stakeholders. In 2008 the University of Ballarat, in their submission, stated:

While the current services appear to be at least marginally sustainable, the ongoing maintenance of these services is subject to a significant overhead subsidy from the University. If this position is continued—

which it has been—

the University community will suffer from an inability to provide new or enhanced services.

I am sure that if the university were to put in a new submission today it would not only say that it is suffering an inability to provide new or enhanced services but it would also tell you that, in reality, it is even struggling to maintain those services that continue to exist. The Australian Catholic University, whose regional Aquinas campus is in my electorate—in fact, across the road from my home—stated:

Student Association reserves and University funding have been used to maintain essential services in the short term.

It went on to say:

This model is not sustainable past 2008.

If only it had known then what we now know: that this battle would drag on much beyond 2008! And to those opposite who find this news compelling, I assure them that this information is not new. These quotes were part of the Aquinas university’s submission to the original review and were also part of my speech on the second reading in support of the previous bill.

I know that members opposite are stuck in their archaic views and are pretty quick to begrudge the position of universities and their student bodies, but you would think that, of all the stakeholders across my electorate, they would listen to the Committee for Ballarat—a group of business people across the Ballarat region. Yet their voices were not heard. The Committee for Ballarat, like others, know how important student services and amenities are. In their submission, they stated:

We are concerned that the introduction of Voluntary Student Unionism … has had a marked effect already on the provision of services, representation and amenities at the University of Ballarat’s regional campuses and the local regional campuses of ACU—

the Australian Catholic University—

and UM—

the University of Melbourne. And, as I noted in my speech on the second reading on the previous bill, the Committee for Ballarat stated:

We are convinced that unless the present, early, damaging trends are arrested and reversed very soon, then longer lasting and deeper damage will be done. We urge that remedial action be taken as a priority, in consultation with these universities.

Amazingly, in 2005 I spoke against the Howard government’s changes when introducing voluntary student unionism. Earlier this year I spoke in support of our reforms and today, in November 2009, at the tail end of the parliamentary session, here we are again still arguing a point that the opposition fails to understand: the importance of providing student services and supporting regional university students.

In this bill the government has recognised the importance of student services at universities. The bill is not some radical plan to invest in political activities on campus. Despite the conspiracy theorists on the other side, it is not some radical plan to make student associations suddenly become a political wing of the Labor Party. In these amendments we have provided for higher education providers to support student services that are of a non-academic nature. The history of the University of Ballarat provides a great example. Whilst there have been some members of its student association who have gone on to political life—former Premier Steve Bracks is one, and there have been a number from the conservative side as well—the student association has never been known to engage in political activity. It has been a very traditional regional campus student association that has focused on the provision of services such as food, child care and sporting services and it has also added to the cultural and social life of the university. I have been the member for Ballarat for almost 10 years, and the only time that the student association became political was with the introduction of voluntary student unionism. As I said both in my contribution to the second reading debate and when I opposed the bill in 2005, whilst I opposed the bill, to some extent I want to thank the opposition, who were then in government, for introducing voluntary student unionism, because it in fact activated the then president of the student association so much that he actually joined the Labor Party, having had no interest in doing so before, and he is now a long-term staff member in my office. I am very grateful for the fact that his political activism started because of this. But the student association at the University of Ballarat was not a political organisation by any means prior to that and would have had no interest in political debate unless it had a direct impact on them.

In this bill we also have measures in place to ensure that higher education providers give students access to representation and advocacy. This bill also allows for higher education providers to introduce a compulsory student services and amenities fee, capped at $250 per student a year, if they choose to. Let me make two things about that fee very clear. Firstly, students who find it difficult to pay the fee will now, under our provisions, have the option of a loan, similar to what currently exists under the Higher Education Loan Program. Therefore, we will not place students, especially those in regional and rural Australia, in a position of further financial hardship. Secondly, this fee will be used to provide student services and amenities within the guidelines—food and beverages, sport and recreation, clubs and societies, child care, legal services, health care and housing. We want this fee to be spent on vital student services. Under our provisions we have prohibited the fee from being spent on supporting local political parties or supporting candidates for political office. Let me reiterate: our plan is that no money will be invested in political activities at universities.

Let me talk a little bit about some of the services as they relate to universities in my electorate and what has actually happened. The University of Ballarat Student Association previously had a campus shop that assisted students by subsidising the cost of food, drinks, toiletries, stationery and much more. What has happened to that campus shop since voluntary student unionism has been introduced and the opposition opposed our amendments? That campus shop has now gone. Not only have students lost two great facilities, the campus shop and also the student cafe, but also the staff at the cafe and the shop have lost their jobs. There is no such thing as competitive pricing at the University of Ballarat, because students have only one choice when buying food and drink. Students struggling to make ends meet, already on tight budgets, are now paying an increased proportion of their week-to-week budgets on much needed supplies. Students are telling me that they have experienced considerable price hikes and there is nothing that they can do about it.

Clubs and societies have also taken a big hit at the University of Ballarat. The number of students involved in clubs and societies has diminished dramatically, with fewer than half the numbers of volunteers today compared to three years ago. Clubs and societies are disappearing because the support they need to run is also disappearing. The importance of the universities’ clubs and societies should not be underestimated. Without this element, university campuses lose their sense of individuality. The communities that exist within the university stop. Many students rely on this social experience to develop friendships and to combat isolation, particularly regional students who have had to move a long way to go to the University of Ballarat. We also know that the rate of student retention at university is strongly supported by positive learning environments and that universities are not about just the quality of lectures and the quality of the campuses on which people are teaching. They are also about the social and cultural experiences that young people have at university.

On-campus childcare facilities are no longer subsidised since voluntary student unionism came in. If it were not already hard enough for parents to study at uni as it is, the former government has made it even tougher. In terms of other services, certainly there has been a lot of concern about student advocacy. Much as I would love to think that universities and university boards always get it right, they often do not. Disputes often arise because students find themselves in difficult circumstances—they feel that they do not have their marks assessed properly or administrative errors occur. Student associations have provided a very important role in advocating with university boards, university councils and heads of units to negotiate their way through sometimes very difficult issues for students.

We do not have to look too far to see that there are actually some supporters other than the government for this bill in the parliament. But there are many outside as well: Australian University Sport, Universities Australia, the Australasian Campus Union Managers Association and, more recently, the Australian Olympic Committee. These groups all know that the former government’s policy decisions have been a huge blow to higher education students. These groups all support the bill because they, like us, have the best interests of students at heart. Yet there is one group who opposes the bill: the Young Liberals students’ groups. It seems to me that a somewhat old-fashioned, ‘battles past’ argument is appearing again with this bill. Frankly, I think it is time. The world has moved on a bit from student politics and they really need to get over losing those battles. They do not need to continue to fight them within this parliament.

But there may be a ray of hope in this debate. Whispers around National Party circles indicate that they are a bit divided from the Liberals on this bill. It is not often that I see the National Party as a ray of hope, particularly in relation to regional university students, but on this bill maybe they might be. Maybe National Party members have started getting out on the ground and seeing firsthand the devastating impact that the Liberal Party’s obsession has had on students. Maybe the National Party members have seen that it is students who in fact have been paying the price for the former government’s ideological obsession with this bill.

I welcome the news that National Party members support a compulsory fee for university students for student services and amenities. Even more relevant to the university campuses across my electorate, the National Party have recognised that rural and regional campuses are being hardest hit. While the National Party may be saying one thing at conferences and to constituents in local electorates, we have seen in the past that in Canberra they will do the complete opposite. The last time these measures were introduced into the House the National Party voted against our amendments. But this time they have an opportunity to change their vote. We are now almost a year down the track from when our amendments were first introduced, and a lot has happened on university campuses. A lot of services closed and a lot of universities came under substantial pressure to cross-subsidise services that were previously funded out of student association coffers. So just maybe the National Party has seen the light and will actually follow their national conference position and support these bills. They should certainly follow this position as laid out in their own National Party conference and vote in support of the bill.

Members opposite have refused to accept our position on this matter. We, along with a long list of stakeholders, have delivered them warning after warning about the impacts their changes have made to student life and university campuses. They know they got it wrong, yet their obsession and their stubbornness have meant that they have refused to change their view on this issue. They have successfully ripped away basic services from students in higher education.

When voting on this bill, members opposite have to take into account the realities at hand. Firstly, students across Australia are doing it tough, and the changes those opposite have made mean that students are doing it even tougher. Secondly, the position we find ourselves in with this bill is a result of consultation across a broad range of stakeholders, and that is why there is strong support for the Rudd government’s amendments. Thirdly, the education and wellbeing of our nation’s current and future university students is a top priority. Without immediate certainty, services in my electorate will rapidly fold—if they have not done so already. The student association has limped along through this year in the hope that these amendments will be passed. The university has attempted to negotiate with the student association to continue, but that position is clearly not tenable in the long term. I am concerned that there will now be further job losses at the University of Ballarat Student Association. That is something I hope can be avoided. But if the amendments in this bill are not passed, then certainly the cultural and social life and the services provided to students at the University of Ballarat, the Australian Catholic University and the University of Melbourne campus in Creswick, and the services for those students who commute the long distance from Ballarat to Geelong, to Deakin University campuses, will cease to exist or cease to exist in the form that we know them. I commend this bill to the House.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This must be deja vu—I remember the last time we spoke on this the member for Ballarat was the preceding speaker. On that occasion we had had some meetings with regional university people in one of the rooms here in Parliament House. A number of the issues that she raised just now were raised on that occasion. Let us hope we do not return to the scene of the crime; let us hope that this legislation is passed this time.

The Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009 is really designed to recognise student services and amenities. I think there is still some confusion in people’s minds—or some people’s minds—that this legislation is about voluntary student unionism. It is not about student unionism at all; it is about the provision of amenities and services to university students and is particularly important in a regional context, as the member for Ballarat mentioned.

I am very supportive of this legislation, and I would like to reiterate that support by way of a reference to a conference held last Saturday week in my electorate—the Vision New England Summit. It is an event that I hold once a term. I invite all interest groups from across the electorate to send one or two people and determine an agenda that they agree with right across the electorate. So, rather than what normally drives the political process, particularly in this place—the politics of division—people come along and determine what they have in common, irrespective of whether they are, as they were on this occasion, from the Transport Workers Union or the farmers association or the various tourist and regional development groups or whether they are the mayor and general manager of the local council or are involved in a whole range of other organisations across the electorate. Even in this place, many of us would recognise that even though there are arguments at the margin almost daily—and the art of politics is finding where the division is rather than the unity—there is a lot of unity of purpose in relation to a lot of the issues that we debate in this place.

Resolution 12 from the most recent Vision New England Summit states:

That this Summit calls on Coalition and crossbench Senators to pass the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities, and Other Measures) Bill 2009.And encourages all organisations and individuals to write to the Senators as a matter of urgency in support of the Bill.

That is an interesting resolution because it comes from a very broad cross-section of political focus within the electorate, not only from the University of New England and others involved with education but, as I said, from all the council groups within my electorate and a whole range of other organisations. It is one of 21 resolutions that the Vision New England Summit agreed to support unanimously. There was no division in my electorate on this particular issue, and it was interesting to see how it played out on the day and gained the unanimous support of all of the interest groups that were there.

One of the issues that plagued this particular issue when it was first introduced by the Howard government was that some young Liberals in particular, people who were actively involved in student politics and who have evolved to this place—you and I, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams, are not of that ilk, but some are—were living in the past, and they still are in relation to this particular issue. They are trying to settle old scores through the politics of this place. Some of those people are in their 40s now, and older, and they should recognise that this bill is not about reinstatement of little cliques of political dominions within various universities. It is about, as I said, the provision of services and amenities to young people at our universities.

I would like to recognise a few people in the gallery behind me. I note that there are quite a lot in the gallery tonight! The first is a member of my staff and it is the first time she has been in this building. Melissa Penrose has been working for me for 14 years, and I welcome her to the building and obviously to such a packed parliament. It is something to behold! Graham Nuttall has always been in this building—members would recognise him, so I will not welcome him because this is his sandpit anyway—but there are two other people in the gallery whom I would like to refer to: Professor John Pegg and Dr Lorraine Graham. Some of you may remember that last week I moved an MPI that related to educational facilities for country people in particular. John and Lorraine are the architects of the QuickSmart program that was the basis of my matter of public importance. The bill that we are debating today, the service fee bill, was also part of that broad debate in the matter of public importance.

I congratulate John and Lorraine for their leadership in relation to that particular program. As I mentioned last week, the QuickSmart program is a unique program in that it is based on assisting those young people with literacy and numeracy problems. We know of them in our various schools, and we have grown up knowing kids who have fallen behind at school. In some cases they never catch up and in other cases they become antisocial and react to the feeling that they are deemed to be failures with their schoolwork.

One of the significant issues that John and Lorraine and their team at the University of New England have been able to achieve is to empirically assess the QuickSmart program over time. It has been going for eight or nine years and is currently in about 200 schools. They are here in Canberra at this particular time to talk to 10 of the schools in the Canberra area that are using the QuickSmart program. That particular program is showing that, over 30 weeks, kids who are falling two, three or four years behind in their numeracy and literacy skills can be brought forward and placed on a positive pathway. More importantly, and this is why I talked about the program last week, that upward pathway does not stop at the end of the program. They have been able to go back and assess young people five or six years after they have finished the 30-week program and have found that that upward path has been maintained. A lot of what is happening here is related to young people’s brains et cetera, but it is also related to confidence and a whole range of factors that are impacting on young people. So I am delighted that they are here today and that they have put this work into this program.

I urge all members, as I did last week, to really look at this program because of lot of money is spent on education in this place. In my view, some of it is wasted; a lot of it is good money. But here is a program that brings kids forward and maintains that pathway, and the success rate is enormous. I used an example last week, and I will use it again, of the Orara school. It is not in my electorate. This program is in my electorate, but this particular school is at Coffs Harbour, in the member for Cowper’s electorate. They were so taken by this particular program that they put 44 young people into it. From memory, 42 progressed at the rate of more than 20 per cent. Two did not, but they had some special issues to be dealt with—and did improve anyway. But the farcical thing in terms of the education system is that the improvement was so great on the external testing that was done that that school lost its disadvantaged school funding the next year because they had been so successful. So what you will see at that particular school are peaks and troughs if we do not come to grips with these sorts of programs where we assist these young people.

The member for Ballarat mentioned briefly the politics of this issue. When the previous government was in power and the voluntary student unionism bill was before this parliament, Senator Barnaby Joyce moved some amendments in the Senate, and those who remember the debate would remember that Senator Fielding became a key number at that time and the legislation went down. But I will always remember—because Senator Joyce had not been in the building for that long at that time—sending him a congratulatory note because of the stance that he took. Senator Joyce is a graduate of the University of New England and would have known, and still knows, the importance of some of the student services and amenities to young people who are away from home and attending university. As I said, I congratulated Senator Joyce on that occasion.

Now that there has been a change of government there seems to have been a change of heart, even though the bill is somewhat different to the previous VSU bill. But I would urge Senator Joyce to look very closely at this bill again because, in my view—as I think he will agree when he reflects on this, as may some of the other Nationals in the Senate—this bill is a significant one in relation to the services that it provides to our young people. It provides that, if the money is not available, it can be part of a loan that the student can pay back after university has been completed.

The National Party senators in particular should pay some heed to what their constituents are saying on this issue. At a recent conference it was voted that they should support this legislation. I think they are in a state of flux at the moment, with some internal divisions with the Liberal Party, so that they are reluctant to break with the Liberals on this particular issue. But I would urge them to look beyond that. Senator Joyce is, I believe, going to be a candidate against me at the next election for the seat of New England, so I should not be praising him up too much. But we will have some degree of common ground during the election campaign in that we both supported this legislation last time, and hopefully he will be supportive of it again on this occasion.

I would urge those senators to reflect on what happened between them and the Liberal Party on the sale of Telstra. I think it is time that they actually did start to stand up on some of these substantive regional issues where our children not only go to university but in most cases live many hundreds of kilometres away from their parents and families whilst at university. Some of the services that this fee goes to providing relate not only to sport and the obvious ones but also to health, counselling and some of the issues where our young people may need help. We would all hope—and I listened to the member for O’Connor earlier on—that none of our kids would need any of those services. But one thing is for certain: if those services are not there, there is no way they will get them. There are occasions when our young people are vulnerable and I think they need the opportunity to seek help. As a parent, I think it is pretty low rent, in a sense, if I can guarantee help to some kids from country backgrounds who need help and assistance from time to time, in that there is a facility at the universities to actually help deliver those services.

I would like to congratulate some of the Australian university sport people from across Australia who have been working hard on this issue, particularly Tom O’Sullivan. Tom has spent a lot of time in Canberra debating this issue and championing the issue with many members of parliament, along with Don Knapp and the University of New England sports director, David Schmude, who was here only last week talking to various people. I would hope that their influence—because they are all very sane, level-headed people—would have some influence on the numbers in the Senate. I would also like to recognise someone who is not with the university movement anymore but who put an enormous amount of work in, in the last parliament: Greg Harris. I think if the legislation is passed, in some shape or other, that Greg will, even though not involved directly now, have been very directly responsible for keeping the issue alive during those early days.

I will conclude by saying that this will be a test for the National Party in the Senate because they actually believe in what the services and amenities fee is about. They fully understand what it means to our kids—particularly country kids but also city kids who are away from home—in terms of service provision. It underpins a lot of the services—services that some of our students may or may not use. But if those services are not there, our students will not be able to use them. As I said earlier, I think that the small contribution that is made, which can be arranged in the form of loan, is a way of making a contribution to university life.

As per my MPI of last week, if members of the House and this packed gallery do not remember anything else they should remember the QuickSmart program, because it is something that really does work and needs our support. There are currently some suggestions before the Minister for Education in relation to that, and the government has been supportive of the program in the past. There are something like 200 schools utilising that program and, when you actually talk to the principals or the teachers of those schools about how it is going, the enthusiasm is quite incredible. If we are serious about the Aboriginal education issue that we talk about in this place quite often, the runs are on the board in the Northern Territory in relation to the empirical evidence—not just rumour and innuendo—of the success of this program in lifting Aboriginal kids who were dragging behind in terms of their numeracy and literacy. So I urge all present to have a look at the QuickSmart program on the website et cetera. If you need to talk to the architects, they will be in the dining room for the next hour and a half.

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

The Liberal and National parties have an obsessive hatred of all things union, and that obsessive hatred drove them to inflict major damage on student services in higher education when they abolished compulsory student union fees in 2005. I support the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009 because it provides a framework for reversing the trail of destruction left by the previous government’s voluntary student unionism legislation—perhaps I should say ‘so-called voluntary student unionism legislation’. In particular, this bill will help reverse what has been noted as the ‘lessening of vibrancy and diversity’ on university campuses and will give essential service delivery back to students. The legislation fulfils the election commitment the Rudd Labor government gave from opposition to rebuild essential services and amenities on university campuses. It is an election commitment which we have already attempted once to honour with legislation that passed through this House in February and was rejected by the Senate in August.

There should be no doubt that the so-called voluntary student unionism legislation was a direct attack on university students. When the regime was introduced by the Howard government in legislation in 2005 it imposed an annual reduction of some $170 million on essential campus services and amenities. That annual reduction of $170 million affected services such as the provision of food outlets; buildings; meeting rooms; toilet facilities; stationery; second-hand bookshops; childcare services; legal services; welfare services; accommodation assistance; funding to student groups on campus, including clubs and societies; support for campus theatres; student representation; educational advocacy; short- and long-term student loans; student newsletters; and student newspapers. It is evident from this long list of services provided under the previous model of university services that had existed for many decades and that were enjoyed by all with a university education in this country—a very large proportion of whom are members in this place—that the services were broad ranging and essential to the maintenance of a rich university experience.

I spoke in February on the previous version of this legislation and I do not want to repeat the comments that I made then about the immense value of a full range of services being available to students. It was very good to hear that the member for New England, the previous contributor to this debate, understands the importance of the broad range of services being provided to students. He supports this legislation because he understands the need to put in place a compulsory fee system to be able to raise the necessary funds. He understands the disastrous impact that there has been from the former government’s legislation on students from regional areas in particular. It is an understanding which, regrettably, those opposite and their colleagues in the Senate appear to have not yet reached. I hope very much that those in the National Party to whom the member for New England directed his comments pay close attention to what he had to say about the disastrous impact of the current regime—the regime this government is determined to replace to honour its election commitment—on students from those areas that the National Party, at least, purports to serve.

It is worth mentioning a few other effects of the regime introduced by the former government with its so-called voluntary student unionism legislation. The Australasian Campus Union Managers Association, which is the peak body representing student unions, reported a loss of over 1,000 jobs on campuses just one year after the introduction of so-called voluntary student unionism. In fact, some 25 out of 30 student associations experienced significant job losses, much of which came in the area of professional academic and pastoral support to students. Student advocacy also experienced a significant blow from the regime introduced by the former government. Advocacy is now mainly conducted by the university or a company representing the university rather than by independent student service providers. This means that students facing academic exclusion or those wishing to appeal against results may not have access to independent ombudsmen or independent representation. As part of the same survey, some 13 out of 18 student organisations reported that they had made substantial, or near total, cuts to departmental or portfolio funding.

The broad range of clubs and societies which exist at higher education institutions across our country should be encouraged for the great services that they provide to students. I certainly look back very fondly at the range of services I was able to access at the University of Melbourne when I attended that great university in the 1970s—from the chocolate appreciation society right through to sporting clubs, bushwalking clubs and all the other essential services that should be taken to be part of university life. These clubs and societies diversify and enhance learning in our universities as well as provide important social avenues for students to unwind and enjoy life at university apart from their studies.

The opposition does seem to have an obsession with destroying all things union and tearing away at all things that they perceive to be connected with the union movement. We saw that in their attack on the industrial relations system in this country with the Work Choices legislation. Regrettably, that same obsession was manifest in this regime that was introduced to Australian higher education institutions by the former government. It is an obsession which seems to stem from an irrational fear of trade unions and perhaps from the perception of the power of trade unions. But, regrettably, it has blinded those opposite to the true role that student unions have played on university campuses around our country. It has blinded them to that role, even though student unions are unique in the way in which they facilitate and enhance university life and provide essential services. So intent was the former government on tearing out and striking down anything they regarded as being associated with the union movement that they were prepared to visit destruction on the range of university services; they were prepared to visit extreme damage on the fabric of university life as it has been known for many decades in our country.

I would remind the House, just to take a single example, that the current Leader of the Opposition, the member for Wentworth, was once the president of the student union at the University of Sydney. It has been interesting to hear contributions not only to the current form of the legislation but also when the previous version of this bill was debated in the House in February, in that those opposite made almost no mention that some of those sitting opposite—indeed, many former people occupying frontbench positions opposite—were directly and very actively involved in the student union movement.

Regrettably, those opposite have persisted in the contributions we have heard thus far with the same kind of obsessive attack on all things union that we heard when the Senate rejected the previous version of this legislation in August. Those speeches in the Senate reflected not the slightest attempt to understand the legislation but were simply filled with statements bordering on abuse and condemning the legislation as what was treated by various Liberal and National senators as compulsory student unionism. We saw from Senator Birmingham the statement that it was a move ‘to a form of compulsion through compulsory student unionism’. We heard from Senator Cash this sort of statement:

… the Liberal Party will continue to stand up for the rights of university students …

There were multiple references in speeches in the other place to freedom of association. We heard from Senator Cash:

Freedom of association, including the freedom not to join an association, remains one of the Liberal Party’s core beliefs.

It is a pity, in fact, that those sentiments about freedom of association were not expanded to trade unions—true trade unions. But I digress.

Perhaps the most intemperate comments heard in the other place were from Senator Bernardi, who, as with so many of those opposite, seems to have not read the former form of this legislation. Again, it seems that those opposite have still not grappled with the way this legislation works. Senator Bernardi had this to say:

… compulsory student amenities fees—which is just compulsory unionism dressed up under another name. I am yet to hear a university student say, ‘I’m not going to attend university because they do not have the social and creative outlets that I want there.’

I would pause there to say that he clearly has not spoken to very many university students, because it is in fact something I have often heard from university students. They directly compare the range of facilities that are available at particular universities. The academic standards, the type of courses that are provided at universities, are only one of the matters that university students take into account in deciding whether or not to attend a particular institution. Particularly these days there is a great range of choice of the universities that one might choose to attend. But to return to Senator Bernardi’s comments, he said:

A university is meant to be a place of higher learning. It is meant to be a place where you broaden your experiences and you learn to become an independent adult operating in the world. It is not necessarily a place just for slush funds to divert money in support of non-conservative governments or to support left-wing student unionists. That is not what it is about. Sure, we accept that there is a hotbed of socialism in some of our universities, which many of us reject, but we should not be paying for them to pursue their left-wing tendencies.

That is as far as I will take it, quoting from Senator Bernardi. It is hard to believe that that is a senator speaking in the Australian parliament in 2009, seemingly misunderstanding the way this legislation is structured and misunderstanding the limitations that are placed on this legislation—not only the form of legislation that is directed merely at permitting universities to compulsorily collect a fee to provide services at universities but also omitting to see that there are very, very direct limitations involving any engagement in political activity.

Far from this legislation being a return to supposed compulsory student unionism, it is a modest measure designed to repair the damage caused by the former government’s legislation. I would hope that, when this legislation returns to the Senate, opposition senators—guided by wise counsel such as from the member for New England about the disastrous effect that former government regime has had on student services—change the position that they adopted when the former form of this legislation was before the Senate. The former government very much seems to have intended to not only pursue its attack on unionism but also directly suppress the political activity and debate which has been and should continue to be a very important aspect of university life in this country.

On this side of the chamber we want to encourage young people to be involved in participatory democracy—

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Briggs interjecting

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

rather than stifle their interests, which I am sure is what the member for Mayo, from his interjection, wishes to occur. He wants to see a stifling of involvement in political activity and a stifling of the richness of university life. We say it is completely appropriate to require all students to contribute to the services that are provided for their assistance. I am happy to be able to say that Universities Australia have argued very directly for the same view. I will quote from the submission that Universities Australia made to the Senate committee inquiry into the former form of this legislation in February 2009. They said:

… not all students may use these services during their study, but [Universities Australia] is firmly of the view that it is better for all students to contribute to the provision of the services, which are then available to all, than to not have the services available to those who need them. Additionally, such services will provide a safety net for those students who had begun their study with no need for the services, but whose situations change for the worse during the course of their study.

It is not different from the approach that successive Australian governments have taken to such matters as the Medicare levy, which is a levy imposed on all, even though everybody here and the entire Australian community would understand that not all members of the Australian community, happily, have need to avail themselves of the services provided and funded by Medicare, by that levy.

Students have experienced indirect costs caused by the so-called voluntary student unionism regime of the former government because universities have had to redirect funds that would have otherwise been spent on other aspects of university activities. Universities have had to redirect funds which otherwise would have been spent on research and teaching to fund services and amenities that, because of the voluntary student unionism regime of the former government and the reduction of funds available, would otherwise have had to be cut. The process will work in reverse. The reintroduction of a student amenities fee will help universities provide those services and allow them not to have to divert essential funds from research and teaching activities.

Again, I will quote from something Universities Australia said on the subject. It is the peak body representing the university sector. It said:

Universities have struggled for years to prop up essential student services through cross-subsidisation from other parts of already stretched university budgets, to redress the damage that resulted from the Coalition Government’s disastrous Voluntary Student Unionism … legislation …

It is also worth quoting from what the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations said in November last year:

… this bill becomes an effective measure to restore and sustain quality student services for postgraduate students that are sustainable into the longer term.

It should be noted that the student services and amenities fee will not present a financial imposition on students because they will have the option to take out a HECS style loan as a new component of the Higher Education Loan Program.

The reintroduction of this vital legislation shows this government’s commitment to all Australians, including students. It shows a commitment by the Australian Labor Party to be the party which provides for and nurtures student learning. It meets an election commitment, which was to restore campus amenities, services and student representation—the effect of the Howard government’s legislation being that all of these were heavily cut. The bill will go a long way to reversing the disastrous change in the administration of our tertiary sector which began in 2006 with the coalition’s obsessive desire to destroy all things union. I predict, seeing that the member for Mayo is about to follow me, that we are likely to hear a yet further attack directed at all things union as the only possible basis for not supporting this legislation. I commend the bill to the House.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the warm welcome that the member for Isaacs just gave me as the warm-up act to my contribution this evening. It is always nice to hear from the member for Isaacs and be reminded of the talent that is sitting over there on the Labor Party back bench—so he tells us.

Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No-one would ever say that about you, mate.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think there was an interjection from someone over the other side.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Mayo will ignore the interjection.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to address a couple of comments that the member for Isaacs made about student unionism and the so-called attack by this side of the House on unions. It is actually not an attack on unions; it is an attack on compulsion, Member for Isaacs. We have no problem with unions at all. In fact, we have always supported their role in both the workplace and at university. Our problem is when you force people to be members of the union so that they can fund Labor Inc., so that they can fund the training ground. We accept that very senior members of our side—the shadow Treasurer, the member for North Sydney; the member for Wentworth, as we were reminded; the member for Sturt; and, I think, the member for Warringah—were all involved in student politics. Of course they would be; they were interested in politics. The member for Isaacs was involved in student politics when he was a young buck. But the issue was that you chose to be involved.

Our problem with this Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009 is that you are charging a compulsory fee to bump up the bottom line of the student union so that it can go out and campaign on issues which largely are not representative of what most university students think. That has always been our problem and that has always been how we have outlined it. The member for Isaacs said that this is meeting an election commitment. I will read to you what the then shadow minister for education said:

… I am not considering a HECS style arrangement, I’m not considering a compulsory HECS style arrangement and the whole basis of the approach is one of a voluntary approach. So I am not contemplating a compulsory amenities fee.

I am not sure how that set of words is consistent with the election commitment they claim to be meeting. I would have thought that was the complete opposite of the election commitment the Labor Party gave.

Like so many things that we heard from the Labor Party before the last election, it turns out that it is just not true—the approach on this issue, their economic conservatism or the buck stopping with the Prime Minister on health and hospital reforms. As we heard today, not one single hospital has been assisted. These promises made before the election have failed to be delivered. We were going to have a superfast internet network, NBN mark 1. We now have NBN mark 2 on the drawing board. All of these promises were made purely to get through an election campaign. The creme de la creme, we should not forget, was, ‘I’ll turn the boats back.’ That was the best promise that we had from the Prime Minister. It was just days—two days, I think—before the last election that he made that promise, and we have seen that that promise is as fraudulent now as it was when he made it. So this is clearly a commitment the Labor Party have gone back on. This reintroduction of compulsory student unionism is a broken election commitment.

The second issue I wanted to address with the member for Isaacs is that he talked about the Liberal Party being the party that likes to censor debate. But we are not the party that have introduced censorship of what we can send out, including whether copies of Hansard can be sent out. I do not think that was our side of politics, Member for Isaacs; I think that was the side of politics that you are on. Under the biggest control freak of a Prime Minister in the history of our country, we now have to check what we can say about the policies of the Labor government of the day with bureaucrats in its censorship bureau. But the member for Isaacs has the gall to allege that we are the party of censorship. Give me strength. This is Orwellian in its nature. It is 1984. These guys will say and do anything to mislead this place. It is an extraordinary suggestion to say that the Liberal Party is the party that wants to censor or stop debate.

We saw it at the Labor Party’s national conference. The minister for finance and his thought police at the front of the room had to see any motion before it could be put to the floor of the conference. That side of parliament have become a North Korean style communist organisation run by a factional warlord, and they want to control every single word, every single sentence and every single thing that happens—so much so that they are now trying to control this side of the House as well. All we have heard in the last few weeks is how much of a debate we do have on the Liberal Party side of politics. So the member for Isaacs’s arguments are somewhat befuddling, I must say.

The real intent of this bill is to get back to what Labor believe in, which is a compulsion for unionism, a compulsion to ensure they get the money and the numbers. The student unionism plays an integral part in the flow-through of young people who make up the Labor Party brand across the country. There is no better example than the several members of parliament from South Australia. My friend the member for Kingston who is, I grant you, a hard worker, came through the training school. The minister responsible for this bill, Ms Kate Ellis, spent five years at Flinders University, three of them, from memory, as president of the student union, so she has a very long history with this area. She went from there into Labor Party staffer land in South Australia, with now Deputy Premier Mr Kevin Foley. So there is a long history here.

The usual tactic with the Right in South Australia is that Don Farrell, dubbed the ‘godfather of the Right’ by the Adelaide Advertiserand tonight he and the member for Port Adelaide hold the future of the Premier of South Australia in their hands, whether or not they believe the story, but we will not get into that during this debate—gets the numbers through compulsory student unionism, in the first instance, which allows them to build up their numbers base. They move into the right side of the SDA and they are able to control Labor Party branches and conferences in that way. I am sure my friend the member for Wakefield will very soon correct any mistakes I make on this matter.

So this is very much Labor Inc. This is what they do. Student unionism is an important part of the Labor organisation and its structure in terms of how the Labor Party is able to operate, particularly in my state of South Australia, and we have seen that for a very long time.

The $250 student services fee was first part of the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities, and Other Measures) Bill 2009 introduced in February 2009, which included a section on VET FEE-HELP. It passed this House in March, and we voted it down in the Senate in August. It has been reintroduced in this place without the VET FEE-HELP section, which has been hived off into a separate bill. So this is very much the ‘student unionism bill 2009’. Let me make this very clear. Unlike what the member for Isaacs said, this was not promised before the last election. Indeed, it was the very opposite that was promised before the last election. There was a very specific promise by the member for Perth as the shadow minister at the time—now our foreign minister—not to do this. But instead we are seeing the second attempt to get this student services fee through.

I was interested that the member for Isaacs mentioned a couple of senators who had made contributions on this bill—I think they were Senator Birmingham and Senator Cash. In fact, I thought what the member for Isaacs did was make a very good argument, which was that this is about freedom of association; this is about choice. If students want to be part of the clubs and use the services that are offered at universities, they will join. There is no need for the compulsion. The only reason for the compulsion is to get the funds in the door so the student union, run by the Labor Party organisation, can run their campaigns, as they have for very many years. What Labor do not like about voluntary student unionism is that it has been chipping away at the underbelly of Labor Inc. That is what this bill is about: re-establishing those arrangements, which were taken away in 2005 by the former government.

This bill is, very simply, about the reintroduction of student unionism in Australia. It is not about services. It is not about students’ wellbeing on campus. It is about the beginnings of Labor Inc. and important aspects of how the Labor organisation works. That is very much what this bill is about. The minister responsible for this bill is a beneficiary of the Labor Inc. organisation. She has very much benefited from how this set-up works, from student union days all the way through. She is now the minister who has been able to reintroduce this bill in an attempt to re-establish Labor domination at universities. What we are saying is that this bill should be treated as we treated its predecessor earlier in the year—with the contempt it deserves. This is a bad piece of legislation. It is a backwards step. It is purely about the reintroduction of compulsory student unionism in Australia.

As I said earlier in my contribution, the issue is about compulsion. It is not that we do not like student unions. If people want to be involved in politics at university, if they want to get involved in student unionism or if they want to get involved in sports clubs at university, of course that is encouraged and of course that is what people should do if they wish to, but it should not be compulsory that they do so. They should not be forced to do so.

This is a very Labor Party bill. The Labor Party is now trying to censor this side of the House as well as its own MPs and its own members. The Labor Party conference had the thought police at the front there run by the Minister for Finance and Deregulation. Any idea to be presented had to go through the minister for finance. This is the most controlling government in the history of Australia. The most controlling Prime Minister in the history of Australia is now trying to control this side of parliament as well as his own. This bill should be treated with the contempt it deserves. It will obviously get through this place when it is put to a vote, but I am sure in the Senate it will be treated as it should be.

Kerry Rea (Bonner, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that I follow the previous speaker, the member for Mayo, because I could spend the whole of my time allotted refuting some of the almost hysterical and ridiculous arguments that he was putting forward on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009. It would also mean that I would not be able to focus on what are some of the very important reforms that are contained in this legislation. For the record, particularly for the member for Mayo, this is not a bill that will reintroduce compulsory student unionism. In fact, the legislation specifically prohibits any university or higher education provider making it mandatory or requiring that students join a student organisation. But more of what the previous member had to say later.

By way of beginning, I have just come from the Main Committee where I moved a private member’s motion concerning the Millennium Development Goals, particularly goals 4 and 5, which deal with the very significant issues of attempting to improve the global community’s ability to reduce both child mortality and maternal mortality. The reality is that, as we are speaking in this place today, 24,000 children under five will have died of preventable diseases like malaria, diarrhoea and other very common diseases. It is a reality that every minute we are speaking in this debate a woman is dying in childbirth. The reality is that those statistics are so shocking because they are born of poverty and they are born of a lack of resources in many communities across this globe to deal with some of those most fundamental issues like caring for our children and for the women that bear and rear those children.

If there is one thing that any community will acknowledge that can reduce poverty, it is access to education. The opportunity for any person on this earth to be able to provide a living for themselves and to improve their existing circumstances is through their ability to gain an education. That is what this bill is about. It is about allowing students—in fact, enabling and supporting students—regardless of their background, regardless of their circumstances, to have the right to not just a university education but a university education that will give them all of the support that they need to obtain their degree.

This week I am a little bit focused elsewhere. My daughter finished year 12 last Friday. Her father and I delivered her to the Sunshine Coast to enjoy what we all know as ‘schoolies week’. You can appreciate that my mind and my heart are a little bit elsewhere this week. While I hope that she is enjoying herself and enjoying the freedoms and privileges that go with a week without parents, I also hope she is not a victim of what we know are some of the excessive behaviours. But that is just this week. When she comes back from ‘schoolies’ she has the rest of her life ahead of her and her goal is to go to university. Her goal is to study journalism at university—a fact which maybe her mother, as a politician, is not necessarily completely comfortable with. Nevertheless, I will do anything to support her in her pursuit of opportunities and her goals as she moves into her adult life.

The reason I support this bill is that I want my daughter not just to go to university—to attend tutorials and lectures and to struggle through the pains and trials of assessment—but also to enjoy her time at university. I want it to be the making of her not just professionally but personally—the making of her as a young woman who will develop a whole range of skills, be they social skills, friends or all those relationships that she will form that, hopefully, will be with her throughout her life. I want her to remember university as a time when she did not just learn what she had to learn for the next exam but when she learnt about life.

That is the experience I had at university, and the experience I had through many activities at university, whether going to the theatre to see movies, whether playing sport or being able to eat in a cafeteria, because on the student income I received I was still able to buy myself some food, I want her to have. I want her to have those resources and those services as well. I want to know that if she gets into trouble and is finding it difficult, whether it is on a personal or educational level, there is a counselling service that she will be able to go to and seek the advice and guidance that she needs to keep her on her way. I want her to know that there are clubs and different societies where she can pursue all of the interests that she has as a young person and be able to do that with neither the fear of the cost of participating in that activity nor that the service will not be there at all because the university she is attending simply cannot afford it.

That is the reality of this bill. It is not the sort of politically paranoid rant we heard from the member for Mayo. It is not about, as Senator Abetz said in his speech, turning vice-chancellors into shop stewards. It is not about forcing people to join an organisation that they see no value for. It is actually about supporting students to not just achieve their educational goals but also to enjoy a full round of services on the way.

It is not also a broken election commitment, as the member for Mayo indicated. In fact, as Minister Ellis has said on many occasions publicly and in the House, this is about delivering on our election commitment to rebuild essential student services and amenities on university campuses. This is actually about getting back into universities those fundamental supports, resources, services and amenities that students deserve while they study, and indeed, many of them need. When you look at the results of what occurred on campuses right across this country as a result of the draconian legislation that was introduced by the previous Howard government, you can appreciate just how important this particular bill is.

If you live in a capital city and you have the opportunity to attend one of the Group of Eight universities, as you know, they were well-resourced and in some ways were able to provide some support to students. They were able to prop up their student organisations with funding agreements. For example, in my own city of Brisbane there is the well-respected University of Queensland, which I attended, and I admit I was involved in the student union and was very active in it. The University of Queensland was able to support student organisations to provide some of the basic services that had been lost as a result of this legislation. But their bucket of money was finite as well. It meant that the university had to take money away from teaching and learning resources to provide those essential services to their students.

But if you represent a rural or a regional electorate, you know that many universities did not even have that luxury. Many universities simply had to cut services or dramatically increase fees for students to be able to use those services, in effect putting those services out of reach for probably most of the students who actually needed them. Those who often cannot afford something are the ones who need that service the most. So, in effect, you had a whole group of students going through university not realising their full potential when it came to their educational goals because they simply could not afford some of those very essential services that they needed to back them up.

We all know that nobody goes to university planning a major event or a dramatic episode that seriously affects their wellbeing. Nobody plans for the death of a family member or a car accident or many of those things that may either affect them mentally, and therefore seriously affect their educational abilities, or indeed may actually mean that they are not able to do the part-time job that they have been doing to get through university. It means that those people were left with no services to support them, with no counselling to support them, without the ability often to go and get a basic meal—those sorts of things.

This legislation is essential to supporting the education of our young people. For example, the student organisation at Charles Darwin University went bankrupt. The SRC at Southern Cross University at Lismore had to be wound down. The University of New England union adjusted by dissolving the student organisation and taking on service provision under the entity of UNE Services. It now receives $300,000 a year from the university. Before the introduction of voluntary student unionism it received $1.85 million a year—a serious reduction in terms of dollars to the sorts of activities that students should enjoy while they are there. It basically means there are no sporting activities and, if you are part of a regional university, often it is the university facilities that are not just enjoyed by students but indeed the whole community. Many schools and other community organisations use university facilities because the community simply does not have the resources to build those facilities otherwise. So we saw communities robbed, not just students.

Unfortunately, there is a litany of examples of universities that suffered as a result of the Howard government’s legislation. Indeed, we do not need to go as far as rural and regional universities. In my own electorate we have Griffith University nearby, the second largest university in Brisbane, a very well established, well respected university. Its main campus at Nathan is just across the border in the electorate of my good friend the member for Moreton. The Mount Gravatt campus is contained within the electorate of Bonner. That student organisation disappeared. As a result, though, of what is contained in this legislation, the $250 fee that the government is now allowing universities to require students to pay, it will in fact restore many of the very important services that were lost as a result of the SRC going under. They were unable to collect voluntary fees. We know that. It is not an argument for compulsory student unionism to acknowledge that voluntary fees, when you are a student, are the last thing on your mind. But if the university asks you to pay a simple fee of $250 and no more for the year, which in fact therefore provides the campus with the resources that it needs to provide child care, counselling and sporting facilities, that is not too onerous a burden on students and it provides them with many of the resources that are so essential.

There is paranoia and what can only be considered an ideologically driven argument from the other side. There is a fear of students organising collectively. There is, as the member for Isaacs said, a fear of freedom of association. But the legislation illustrates some 16 items where the money can be spent—child care, legal services, health care, employment and academic support, just to name a few. I was halfway through my university degree when my first child was born. I know how important it was for me to finish my degree to have access to affordable child care on campus with my child nearby. So this is not an argument about how big a student protest you can fund, this is an argument about how people actually get their qualifications and get through university life without going under. If it were not for the support of some legal services, many students, because of circumstances that they could never predict, would be walking away from universities—a lifetime of opportunity wasted. Many female students and indeed many male students who do not have access to affordable child care would have to give up university and go out to full-time work rather than pursuing their dream and their education goals.

I cannot understand how the opposition can oppose this bill. I cannot understand how requiring a services fee—to provide sporting activities, legal support, counselling services, academic support and subsidies for textbooks and other materials that students need to continue in their degree—suddenly translates into ‘Labor Inc.’ as the member for Mayo called it. They somehow think that providing subsidised textbooks is going to create some sort of ‘student revolutionary guard’ that is going to fundamentally attack the Liberal Party and make them disappear.

That is not what this legislation is about. It is not, in fact, what student unionism is about. Understanding and appreciating that campuses need to make sure the money goes into the services students need is the very reason why the government is not reintroducing compulsory student unionism. It is the very reason why the government is not allowing student unions to develop and to redirect funds into what they see as political campaigns. In some universities there are tens of thousands of students. They are major communities, they are cities in themselves, and they have a right to say what services they want. They have a right to argue for the organisations and activities they want to be able to participate in not just to obtain their degree but to attain a level of maturity, to move into young adulthood and to participate in community life as well as professional life.

It is important that the myths get put to bed and that we acknowledge the important reforms in this legislation that will enable students to do well. It is important that the students at Mount Gravatt, at Griffith University, at the University of Queensland and indeed at Charles Darwin University and James Cook University are able to enjoy a fulfilling and rewarding time at university and look back on university as a memorable time. It is also important that they are able to participate in democratic activities. It is important that young people who are going to university, who are eventually going to become the professionals and political leaders of Australia in the future, are not just sitting in a library beavering away at computer screens for hours a day because they cannot afford the textbooks they need. We do not want them to become insular, single-minded people who have to scrape everything together just to get through their exams. They need to be well-rounded young adults. They need to understand their professional duties but they also need to be able to enjoy and broaden their own personal skills and social activities by participating in all that campus life has to offer.

Senator Abetz made comments about vice-chancellors becoming shop stewards. The member for Mayo made comments about creating factional warlords in the Labor Party. He obviously does not understand the factional leaders; they come from a range of backgrounds—certainly not just from university. The opposition cannot see that this is a balanced and practical approach to providing essential student activities. Unfortunately their education, and their ability to read the legislation, has failed them.

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

I do not say that the statement ‘You can put lipstick on a pig but it remains a pig’ is an original statement, because it certainly is not, but in my view the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009 is ‘a pig’. This is one of the most outrageous pieces of legislation that I have seen introduced into the House of Representatives. The government claims that it is not seeking to re-institute compulsory student unionism. Well, this is in effect compulsory student unionism by stealth. I do not have a problem with students choosing to make an investment in facilities at university, I do not have a problem with students spending money on, perhaps, sporting facilities, but I am opposed to the element of compulsion. This legislation, as you would know, Madam Deputy Speaker, is being introduced by a party which in government has historically supported compulsory student unionism and also compulsory unionism in the community more generally. It is the old ‘no ticket, no start’—if you do not sign up to the union, you do not get a job.

I strongly support the people in the community who want to join a union, if that is their choice, whether it be a labour union or a student union. But I also support the right of those who choose not to join, because I think that in Australia in 2009 we should consider ourselves to be a democracy. I do not believe in conscripting people into membership of organisations—it ought to be voluntary. The government, unfortunately, through the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009 is bringing in a piece of legislation which effectively rips up the promises made by the government when in opposition prior to the 2007 election. It has been quoted undoubtedly in the House before tonight that the then shadow minister for education, the now Minister for Foreign Affairs, said in May 2007:

I am not considering a HECS style arrangement. I am not considering a compulsory HECS style arrangement and the whole basis of the approach is one of a voluntary approach. So I am not contemplating a compulsory amenities fee.

So effectively he told the people of Australia, who voted at the election later that year, that Labor would not be bringing in a compulsory amenities fee.

What exactly does this legislation do? This legislation turns back the clock—turns it way back. In effect it brings in a compulsory and significant tax of $250 for each and every one of the million tertiary students in Australia. I have no doubt that the facilities at universities in many cases are superb. I have no doubt that they obviously need money to survive, they obviously need assistance and they obviously need support, but it is wrong for the government to allow universities to conscript students into making a compulsory payment. It is the antithesis of democracy. In many cases students will never use those facilities, so why should they be compelled to pay for those facilities? I have not yet heard an argument from the government that is in any way, shape or form remotely compelling as to why the government is ripping up a pre-election promise by, essentially, wanting to take control of $250 of each and every one of the one million tertiary students in Australia. It really is a ‘welcome to Labor’s reality’ tax. I am very disappointed in the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the government for defrauding the Australian people as they did at the election later in 2007.

On top of that, students who pay the fees will have very little say on how those fees are going to be spent. I know that there is supposed to be some form of consultation. Under the rules, universities are required to talk with students about where the money is directed. However, this consultation is likely to be with the ‘elected’ representatives of the student union, who historically have been appointed by the very small minority of the student body which takes part in a non-compulsory vote. I am told that figures sometimes show as little as five per cent or 10 per cent of students actually vote to appoint student union office bearers, so a non-representative group will be the people sitting down with the university authorities to talk about how this confiscated $250 from our one million tertiary students in Australia will actually be spent.

I would like to make a prediction that the student fees will, in effect, fund the actions and activities selected by the student union hierarchy, whether or not individual students are supportive. I ask the government to reconsider because how on earth can you ask students to pay $250 to a university to be used for purposes dictated by a body elected by five to 10 per cent of the student membership?

I was a very strong supporter of the voluntary student unionism legislation introduced by the Howard government in 2005 because it gave students a choice as to whether they would be members of the union. Effectively, we gave them a choice as to whether they wanted to pay money to be part of a union which in many cases would espouse political views diametrically opposed to their own. We also gave them a choice on where they would spend their money. This bill before the House, the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009, essentially deprives students of that right. We are treating students as being substandard Australians and this bill takes away choice for what, it could be argued, is the political advantage of Labor.

As they enter university, students are hit with myriad costs. They emerge from the school system, which is fairly regimented and regulated, where in many cases they do not have to think for themselves about choices in the way that they will at university. They are hit with myriad costs that they previously have not had to bear. These costs can include textbooks, a computer and software—all of which are actually quite expensive these days—as well as accommodation, transport, food and so on. For those students who are entering university directly from year 12 it is a daunting new world that they face. Often they are leaving home for the first time and facing the prospect of having to fend for themselves for the first time; away from the comfort, security and love of their parents’ home, to make the journey toward education and career. This is particularly so for students from regional areas who go to the capital cities to study. To be hit within additional Labor charge of up to $250 will be a significant additional burden.

It will be interesting to know what these fees go to in the area of services. But in many cases they will be services the students will not need, want or use. For many students, it is simply wasted money. Wouldn’t it be better to allow students the discretionary opportunity to use that money for purposes more directly associated with the advancement of their educational progress, like buying extra books, rather than having it confiscated and used, in many cases, for political activities.

It should be noted also that the legislation does not preclude student unions from spending student money on extremist political causes. The bill leaves open a huge range of political activities upon which this compulsory fee could be spent. For instance, campaigns for or against political causes, specific legislation, policies or party policies are not precluded. The bill does not actually stop the use of these compulsorily acquired funds by student media for whatever minority cause the student union bosses want to use this money for.

I find this bill is the absolute antithesis of democracy. The bill amounts to a rort created by the Australian Labor government, one that is impacting not only on the wallets of students but also on their freedom to choose who they associate with and their political alliances. Why on earth should students be forced to pay $250, which, after this token form of consultation by universities, could be allocated to student unions and used to promote political causes diametrically opposed to what the students believe in? This is just shocking. It is appalling. This is a situation which is completely and totally unacceptable.

As a member for a regional area, I am very fortunate to represent the University of the Sunshine Coast. This is a wonderful new institution, which obtained its full independent status through the intervention of Dr David Kemp, who overruled the bureaucrats in the department of education after the university made a case to him, supported by local members. This university is doing a wonderful job. Even though it is doing a wonderful job, as Australia’s newest greenfield university it is still not able to provide the range of educational disciplines that many local students want, so many students who want to study medicine, law, dentistry, veterinary science or a range of other academic disciplines are still forced to go away from the Sunshine Coast, which is regrettable because I would like to see at least a medical school and a legal school at the University of the Sunshine Coast. They are forced to go to a capital city—in most cases Brisbane—where they have a huge range of new expenses. This $250 charge, if the universities in Queensland choose to impose it—and I suspect they will—will make it more difficult for those students to thrive and survive and get the educational resources they need to enable them to pass their exams and qualify in a professional area.

To add to the concern of students, the fee is indexed. The government has not indexed the qualification levels for access to the Commonwealth seniors health card. More and more Australian seniors are now being excluded from holding the Commonwealth seniors health card because the income levels have not been indexed, and this is at a stage in their lives when they need access to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme at concessional rates. While the government has not indexed access to the Commonwealth seniors health card, it is in fact indexing this $250 fee to take into account future inflation increases. It is a cost that will rise considerably over time. It will be a handy little earner for the Labor Party and the Labor Party apparatchiks who operate through many student unions. Over three years alone, at three per cent annually, the figure would increase to $273.

I suppose every cloud has a silver lining, even if the silver lining is a fairly dud silver—I was going to say ‘dull’ silver, but it is probably dud silver as well. The government will allow students to take out a loan for this cost, a loan that could be paid back later, along with other education related expenses. But we have a situation here where this bill will make the attaining of tertiary qualifications just that little bit more difficult. As I said earlier, this fee was never discussed by the government during the election campaign. It was never revealed as a Labor plan. People were duped and deceived into voting for the Labor Party on the basis that the Labor Party was not going to introduce an amenities fee or a compulsory fee for students. Despite that and despite the comments made by the now Minister for Foreign Affairs when he was the shadow minister for education, that promise has been torn up. People have been conned and deceived, and the government tries to suggest that this is somehow an acceptable position.

Let us look at a couple of the defects in the bill. There are many defects in the bill, but this bill makes no provision for any government monitoring to make sure that the money is spent sensibly. There is no clear understanding of any obligations that the education providers themselves—the ones who get the money—may have to provide certain services, representations and support to students. Frankly, this bill shows a complete and total lack of understanding of the challenges facing university students. It is heavily biased to the support of the Labor side of politics. It brings in an element of compulsion, an element of conscription, without taking into account the impact on the lives of ordinary, real, decent young Australians, who are of course our nation’s future. It is a broken election promise by a government that will do anything and say anything to achieve its political goal, no matter what the consequences for the people of Australia. Is this bill a precursor of federal legislation making trade unionism compulsory? Where on earth will the government stop in its pursuit of its ideological aims? This bill, as I said at the outset, is a pig. The government might have put lipstick on the pig, but it is still a pig. It is a pig that ought to be slaughtered.

Chris Trevor (Flynn, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to speak tonight on the government’s Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009 and to highlight the unparalleled importance of it for students of tertiary institutions in this country. The amendments proposed in the bill will provide measures that support a balanced, practical and sustainable solution to rebuilding student support services. I am a firm believer that, in order to uphold the quality of the universities our proud country has, we must be committed to ensuring that higher education students have access to adequate amenities and services as well as access to vital, independent, democratic student representation. Without these fundamental and basic requirements the once great conditions of our universities will be lost; a distant memory from a time long since past. It is in my opinion irrefutable that, in order to maintain services and amenities of any kind, funding is required. It is also irrefutable that many people, particularly university students who may be struggling financially already, will not pay a fee for something unless they have to, irrespective of how important they may perceive it to be. Basically, if the students do not have to pay, most will not, and if they do not pay, the services and amenities cannot be maintained.

The amendments proposed in this bill allow higher education providers to choose whether they want to implement a compulsory student service fee capped at $250 per student per annum. Whilst the bill does not make it mandatory for higher education providers to impose this fee, it does provide the opportunity for our higher education facilities that require additional funding to collect it in this manner. This makes the law more flexible as it does not force these facilities to impose the fee, nor does it disallow it entirely. The amendment creates a vital chance for higher education providers to accumulate the funding required to sustain student services and amenities. If we fail to support these changes we will witness the continued deterioration of services and amenities in our universities to the very point of no return, when the amenities become irreparable and the services unsalvageable.

I have already made the point of saying that we recognise the fact that many university students may be struggling financially and that this fee could further their financial troubles. To combat this and provide an opportunity for students to be relieved of this burden whilst they study, the bill has included the innovative decision to provide eligible students with the option of a loan for this fee through the establishment of a new component of the Higher Education Loan Program, known as HELP, which has been named services and amenities, SA-HELP. This not only will allow the universities the privilege of being able to accumulate funds for services and amenities but will also allow students to put off paying the fees. The result of course is a win-win, with more funding for services and amenities at universities and no money out of students’ pockets at a time in their life when they can least afford it.

As I understand it, the National Party have recognised publicly that the current approach to funding student services and amenities is not sustainable and that it has had a terrible impact particularly on our rural and regional campuses. As I further understand it, they voted at a recent party conference to support compulsory fees being levied on university students to support services and amenities on campus. Despite this they did not support the passage of this critical bill in the Senate, preferring to side with coalition partners and ignoring the needs of regional students.

Coming from a regional area, I know the value of our regional campuses and the value of student services to students who relocate to study. Regional campuses allow many students the opportunity to engage in higher learning, but without funding this opportunity may be lost and with it the opportunity for students from my area to study closer to home. Some may be forced to relocate, but without vital funding the universities they elect to go to cannot provide the fundamental support services that these students will need to survive in a place unknown to them. Moving away from home to the city is already a very daunting prospect for many 17- and 18-year-olds from regional and rural areas such as those that my electorate encompasses.

If we fail to grasp this opportunity to reinject funding into the services that support these young adults, then we are failing as their elected representatives and failing as their government. These students need the support to make it possible for them to survive. Without it, higher education for many of them will become impossible. I cannot and will not stand by and let these students be neglected and left to fend for themselves. It is wrong and I ask, today, that the National Party stand up for their own beliefs and prove to everyone, especially themselves, that they are capable of not only making a decision but delivering on it. The National Party need to put their beliefs where their mouth is and follow with their support for our universities and students.

The cost is already too great and every delay pushes our once great institutions further towards the brink. The current legislation is crippling universities around the country by depriving higher education providers of the vital funding they need to maintain adequate student services and amenities. They are the very same services and amenities which students have been without, and will continue to suffer without, purely because of the Liberal Party’s outdated and ideological obsession with this issue. With respect, they went too far with their approach to university services and amenities, and students are being forced to pay the consequences. Under their scheme close to $170 million was ripped out of university funding resulting in the decline and in some instances the complete closure of vital health, counselling, employment, child care, sporting and fitness services. Without the provision of these services and amenities by higher education providers many students have been forced to pay higher prices for things such as child care, parking, books, computer labs, sport and food. This of course has resulted in higher costs for students.

How is it rational that we remove a fee on students that then results in an increase to their costs? Some universities have highlighted incredible price hikes for services and amenities such as parking, food and child care, which, in one case, has seen an increase of approximately 500 per cent annually. Surely commonsense and logic would dictate that we should implement a strategy that will enable universities to provide many of these services without drawing the funding from somewhere else, as numerous universities have been forced to do. Some universities, in attempting to combat the rising costs of amenities and services, have reported having to redirect funding out of research and teaching budgets.

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

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 34. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting. The honourable member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.