Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Indexation) Bill 2010. The bill amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003, revising the indexation formula for some programs as recommended by the Bradley review into higher education, which was handed to the government in late 2008. Specifically, this bill seeks to replace the Safety Net Adjustment wage price index with the Professional, Scientific and Technical Services wage price index published by the Australian Statistician for all amounts subject to indexation under parts 5 to 6 of the act from 2012. The Safety Net Adjustment wage price index and its replacement makes up 75 per cent of the total index, with the remaining 25 per cent continuing to be the Consumer Price Index.

The bill itself has no financial impact but its practical effect will be a more generous indexation rate applying to all grants under the act from 2012, resulting in an additional expenditure of more than $2.6 billion over five years. From next year, universities will receive additional funding corresponding to the increase in indexation on teaching and learning if they sign onto the Rudd government’s new performance indicators. The coalition is also committed to the principle of the continuation of indexation of university funding and, by implication, the current arrangements regarding indexation as they stand prior to this bill. After undertaking consultation with the higher education sector, we do understand that an indexation formula for student payments and research and teaching grants has been an area of concern. However, I do want to take the opportunity to note that we are not committed to any particular method of calculating indexation.

While Professor Denise Bradley and her panel made 46 recommendations to the government on higher education, recommendation 27 is directly relevant to the bill:

That the Australian Government maintain the future value of increased base funding for higher education by an indexation formula that is based on 90 per cent of the Labour Price Index (Professional) plus the Consumer Price Index with weightings of 75 per cent and 25 per cent respectively.

This was to replace the present Safety Net Adjustment, the SNA, introduced in 1997, which comprises 75 percent of the current index. However, as the Labour Price Index (Professional) that was suggested in the Bradley review has ceased, I note that the government have elected to use the Professional, Scientific And Technical Services Labour Price Index, reduced by 10 per cent, and that the remaining 25 per cent of the index will continue to be the Consumer Price Index. A number of programs under the act gain from the changes to indexation, such as the Commonwealth Grant Scheme, the Capital Development Pool Program and the Australian Postgraduate Awards program. I would also like to mention that in her second reading speech the Minister for Education pointed to these programs, which are subject to the passage of future legislation. They would have these arrangements apply—namely, the student amenities HELP loan limit, which is subject to the passage of the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009.

While on this subject I want to take the opportunity to reiterate that the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2009 has not yet been subject to passage, due to the coalition’s concerns with this legislation. It seeks to introduce compulsory fees, which would be charged to students for amenities at universities. The coalition was very proud in 2006 to remove the burden of compulsory student union fees from Australian students. The bottom line is that this was a tax on students for services that many students never used. Labor’s attempts to bring it back represent the breaking of a clear and unequivocal promise by the Labor Party before the 2007 election that they would not introduce a compulsory fee, and they ruled out a HECS style system to fund it. Former Labor education spokesperson Stephen Smith said:

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.

This is just another broken promise to add to Labor’s list of 47 broken promises, which the coalition continues to point out on a daily basis.

This is not the only area of concern with regard to the government’s so-called higher education reform. While the adopted method of indexation in this bill has been welcomed by the sector, I note that higher education providers are disappointed by the Rudd government’s decision to reject the other recommendation that was made alongside recommendation No. 27—that is, to increase the base funding rate of student places by 10 per cent. Following the handing down of the budget last year, Professor Simon Marginson of the University of Melbourne, said: ‘The budget dumped Bradley’s moderate 10 per cent increase in the funding rate of local student places. Funding for these places remains below cost. Institutions will have to maintain very large international enrolments to cross-subsidise domestic teaching.’

While the coalition, of course, supports the vital source of revenue that the international student market brings for universities, the comment by Professor Marginson is concerning because we believe there is one source of revenue which has been denied to universities by Labor—that is, the abolition of full-fee-paying places for Australian students. It is well known that the coalition is committed to bringing back full-fee-paying domestic places. We do not believe that the opportunities available to overseas students should be denied to those Australians who are willing to pay for their own education. Full-fee-paying places for domestic students were a strong and solid source of revenue for our universities. Their abolition has undoubtedly hurt a great many of our institutions at the worst time possible, particularly since transitional funding was not deemed adequate by some providers. The foolishness of the Minister for Education in abolishing domestic places became even more apparent after spikes in demand, and we have heard that at least some universities have been unable to accommodate that demand with the Commonwealth supported places only.

While the coalition welcomed the Bradley review and many of the recommendations in it—including the recommendation that has translated into the reform in this bill—I want to take the opportunity to reflect on where we go from here. Unlike the government, we believe that the Bradley review is not merely a checklist. The reforms stemming from the Bradley review are not the end of ongoing debate and reform in the higher education sector but the beginning. In particular, we welcome the move towards the student demand driven system proposed by Bradley and endorsed by the government. It is a good start, but I believe there is much more scope for even greater flexibility and freedom for both students and the universities themselves. Of course, reform does not happen instantaneously. Education providers always need time to adjust to changes and they need support with transitional arrangements. Nevertheless, the coalition is pleased that Labor has undertaken reform to the indexation formula to improve the current arrangements and for this reason we support the legislation as drafted.

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

The Higher Education Support Amendment (Indexation) Bill 2010 will amend section 198-20 of the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to provide greater clarity on indexation arrangements under part 5-6 of the act. The amendment will detail the formula and components of the formula. As a result of a recommendation by the review of Australian higher education, the indexation arrangements will replace the Safety Net Adjustment wage price index with the Professional, Scientific and Technical Services labour price index published by the Australian Statistician. This index is considered to better reflect wage price increases in the higher education sector.

I would like to take the opportunity provided by this bill to talk about the need to invest and the benefits of investing in higher education. I particularly want to take that opportunity, having heard the member for Sturt, the shadow minister for education, reiterate the opposition’s position in support of full fees for domestic students. The argument for this advanced by the coalition both when it was in government and now when it is in opposition is truly remarkable. In the first place it says, ‘Let’s bring overseas students here and we will charge them full fees for bringing them here,’ and, having done that, it asserts that domestic students should have the same rights. This is like saying that everybody should have the right to eat prison food.

It is not an advantage to be charged full fees. It means that tertiary education—post-secondary education—becomes the preserve of those who are wealthy or fortunate enough to come from wealthy families and it sets up a two-tier education system. I think that is completely unsatisfactory and I absolutely support the action taken by this government to abolish full fees for domestic students. It also fails to recognise that education is an investment. It is not simply a private benefit to the person who receives the education; it is a public benefit because it helps to secure a skilled workforce which is better able to contribute to national productivity. My own view is that there is hardly anything more important than determining both our collective prospects as a nation and our personal prospects as individuals, our children’s prospects as individuals, than getting a good education. So it is a question of investment; it is not a question of saying, ‘We want to treat education as a fee for service and have everyone paying full fees, full tote odds,’ and essentially restricting tertiary education and the benefits of that to those who are well off.

Regrettably, a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, titled Education at a glance , back in the year 2005 singled out Australia as the one country which had been cutting back its public investment in higher education and training. The report found that from 1995 to 2002 public investment in education increased in most countries regardless of changes in private spending. The report said:

In fact, many OECD countries with the highest growth in private spending have also shown the highest increase in public funding of education.

And back in October 2005, Sophie Morris, from the Australian Financial Review, reported:

The main exception to this is Australia, where the shift towards private expenditure at tertiary level has been accompanied by a fall in the level of public expenditure in real terms.

I remember speaking with the chief executive officer at the Moreland Community Health Service, who was lamenting the need for more GPs and dentists. Of course, it is not just doctors and dentists; everywhere you look, we have been experiencing skills shortages.

We discussed the way in which, following the privatisation of utilities in Victoria, workforce training levels have been inadequate. A lot of training in Victoria was carried out by the old government authorities—Melbourne Water, the old Board of Works, V/Line, the railways and various public instrumentalities, gas and fuel, the SEC, the Forests Commission and the like. They did a lot of work by way of workforce training and building skills. But, following privatisation of those utilities, neither governments nor private employers did enough to meet the need for a trained workforce, leading to competition for workers and skill shortages across a whole range of areas in the workforce.

That kind of anecdotal concern that you hear from people in places like community health services who are familiar with these things was backed up by more detailed research carried out by Monash University’s Centre for Urban and Population Research. There is an article by Bob Birrell, Daniel Edwards, Ian Dobson and Fred Smith titled ‘The myth of too many university students’ published in People and Place. It outlines that after the coalition came to power in 1996 the number of domestic students in Australian universities at the undergraduate level hardly increased at all. All of the increase in professional training at the undergraduate level in Australian universities came via overseas students.

In the years after the Howard government came to power in 1996, domestic undergraduate commencements increased from 132,000 to 135,000—that is a bare two per cent increase. Essentially, those domestic undergraduate enrolments flatlined. During that same period undergraduate commencements by overseas students in Australian universities increased by 20,000 from 16,000 full-time equivalent students in 1996 to 36,000 by 2003. That is a 125 per cent increase. To underscore the difference in the pattern of domestic commencements, the proportion of the total student population reflected by overseas students doubled during this period. Back in 1996 it was 10.8 per cent of the student population; by 2008 it was 20.7 per cent—essentially a doubling, a massive increase during that period of time.

All the growth in higher education in this country was in overseas student places. There was nothing for domestic students. Yet there is a massive demand for university trained people in the Australian workforce. The modern economy has an insatiable appetite for professionally trained people. The unemployment rate in 2009 in Australia for people with higher education qualifications was significantly lower than for those without such qualifications. In particular, the difference in unemployment rates between those with and those without higher education qualifications was greatest amongst those recently graduated from university—that is to say the 25- to 34-year-old age group. Only three per cent of people with qualifications are unemployed compared to seven per cent of those without qualifications. Furthermore, people whose highest level of educational attainment was a bachelor degree had mean weekly earnings—if you go back to 2005—of $1,049. This rose to $1,434 for people with a postgraduate degree. By contrast, people whose highest level of educational attainment was year 12 had mean weekly earnings of $631—that is around 40 per cent less than those with a degree.

Clearly, having the tertiary qualification is a real advantage. It is an advantage both in finding work and in finding better paid work. Given this, it is perfectly understandable that parents wish their children to have access to university training with the likelihood of a well-paid job to follow. Naturally, the capping of the number of university places in the face of high demand for entry has led to increasing competition for these places. During the period I am talking about it coincided with a six per cent increase in the number of secondary-school-age children going to independent fee-paying schools. Between 1997 and 2004, enrolments in Australian independent secondary schools rose by nearly 50,000 students, or 27 per cent, and enrolments in Catholic schools rose by 28,000 students, or 10 per cent. In comparison, government secondary schools gained slightly more than 8,000 students, an increase of less than one per cent.

As the concern about skill shortages mounted, employers expressed alarm at what this meant for their enterprises. Their concerns prompted the Howard government to increase the skilled migration program and in particular to encourage overseas students to stay on in Australia as migrants after the completion of their courses. Immigration may be a short-term way of dealing with this, but it comes at the expense of the opportunity for many young Australians to improve their economic situation through the acquisition of a university degree. There are plenty of young Australians who wish to achieve this; unfortunately the places are simply not available to them. The truth is that there has been too little domestic training at university level, not too much, and the number of government subsidised HELP places should have been rising in line with demand in the professional employment pattern. This is sensible both from the point of view of employers and from the point of view of increasing opportunity for Australia’s young people.

Despite overwhelming evidence that a knowledge based economy requires an increase in professional level training, Australia is one of the few Western countries where participation rates in higher education for domestic students have fallen in recent years. Bob Birrell, John Sheridan and Virginia Rapson have done work on the particular failure to expand domestic training levels of professional engineers, despite severe shortages having been evident in Australia for some time. They note that domestic undergraduate commencements fell between 2001 and 2004, from over 177,000 to 165,000, and that domestic undergraduate commencements in 2004 were similar to the levels in 1995. Engineering domestic undergraduate commencements peaked in 1997 at 11½ thousand. By 2004 they had fallen to 10,700. So the only growth in engineering training at Australian universities has been due to growth in the number of overseas student enrolments.

We should not be outsourcing our skills needs, we should not be selling out our young people; we should be investing in the training of our young people. I note that HELP is a very large financial burden on young people and acts as a deterrent to them obtaining tertiary qualifications and skills. When HECS, now known as HELP, was originally introduced by the federal Labor government in the 1980s, it was said that it would generate money for more tertiary places and that it was reasonable for people who had profited from their higher education to put something back. I think that had merit in theory. But whatever the merits of the theory, in practice it has not worked out quite that way. The Howard government substantially reduced the income threshold at which HECS cut in so that, instead of it being about affluent professionals giving something back, it has become a burden for quite modest income earners and a yoke around the necks of young students.

The contribution made by government assisted students to their university education increased between 1996 and 2005 from 20 per cent to 37 per cent. Nor was this a question of the government switching resources from tertiary education to trades training. Between 1997 and 2006, the Commonwealth contribution to vocational education and training costs declined by 20.5 per cent and, between 1997 and 2008, government spending per hour on public vocational education and training declined by 22 per cent.

The shadow minister referred to the Bradley review of Australian higher education. The Labor government’s Bradley review of Australian higher education was an important step forward in identifying issues in this sector. It acknowledged that most job growth would be in occupations requiring university degrees and it set a target to increase the share of Australians with university degrees, and that is very welcome. In the 2009-10 federal budget the government announced major reforms to higher education. The government accepted the Bradley review’s recommendation to introduce an uncapped student demand driven system—sometimes called a voucher system—for the funding of university undergraduate places from 2012. This is a major policy change to the allocation and funding of student places, which to date have been funded through agreements with universities on a set of capped number of places.

The Bradley review said we could achieve a ‘demand driven entitlement system for domestic higher education students’ where public funding will be provided for each undergraduate student eligible for a university place at a cost of $1,130 million over four years. The budget papers have allowed $491 million from 2009-10 to 2012-13 towards this objective, and I believe that this will be money well spent. From 2010 universities will be allowed to over-enrol student places by 10 per cent in anticipation of the introduction of the new student demand driven funding in 2012.

I note that the Executive Director of the Australian Technology Network of Universities, Vicki Thomson—no relation, as far as I am aware—said in a recent article in the Australian:

We have a recent study which irrefutably lays out the impact of this sector on the economy in terms of lower health costs, increased productivity and increased living standards … We are an intrinsic part of the economic and social fabric of the Australian landscape.

The KPMG Econtech report Economic modelling of improved funding and reform arrangements for Australian universities of April 2010 estimates that increase in GDP from higher education reform, a combination of funding increase and structural change, would commence with an increase of $13 billion in 2014, rising to $36 billion by 2020 and $163 billion by 2040. That is a very substantial GDP increase. Other significant findings from the report include that the increase in public funding and structural reform will ensure that the government’s target of 40 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds having degrees by 2025 can be met, and there are 44,000 more graduates annually projected by 2025. If the funding of vocational education and training is also expanded by the same proportion as for universities, the education revolution at tertiary level, covering both higher education and vocational education, can deliver as much as an eight per cent increase in GDP, spread across Australia, at a public funding cost of just 0.7 per cent of GDP in 2040.

The spread of Australia’s universities means that higher education funding directly assists inner and outer metropolitan areas and regional Australia. Graduates go on to work across Australia, bringing their knowledge and skills to all communities, as teachers, engineers, nurses, agricultural scientists and other professionals and managers. The innovative research of universities also adds substantially to the widespread national gain, delivering a 25 per cent plus rate of return on public funding. Universities demonstrably deliver on each of skills, productivity, exports, innovation, workforce participation and tax revenue growth across Australia.

It would certainly be better if all young Australians who are presently missing out on a place at a university or TAFE were given a place. In 2009, 18½ thousand eligible applicants missed out on a university place. Professor Bob Birrell has said that the real number of students missing out may be much larger. He says that eligible applications amount to 227,000, compared with actual acceptances of 161,000—a difference of 66,000. The proportion of resident young people enrolled in higher education in Australia is relatively low by European standards. This reflects the period since 1996 when there has been very little increase in the number of domestic subsidised places.

In conclusion, I welcome the government’s initiatives to address the lack of investment in the tertiary sector and to address what has been, I believe, a short-sighted reliance on overseas students and what is referred to as ‘skilled migration’. We should train our own young people.

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

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Indexation) Bill 2010. This bill seeks to replace the safety net adjustment wage price index with the professional, scientific and technical services wage index published by the Australian Statistician for all amounts subject to indexation under part 5-6 of the act, from 2012. The safety net adjustment wage price index and its replacement make up 75 per cent of the total index, with the remaining 25 per cent continuing to be the CPI.

Revising the indexation arrangements under part 5-6 of the Higher Education Support Act forms part of the Labor government’s acceptance of the recommendations arising from the Bradley review of higher education. The Bradley review recommended that the government maintain the future value of increased base funding for higher education by an indexation formula that is based on 90 per cent of the labour price index, professional, plus the CPI with weightings of 75 per cent and 25 per cent respectively. The new index is considered to reflect the impact of inflation on the higher education sector. The practical effect of this legislation will be a more generous indexation rate applying to all grants under the act from 2012, which will result in an additional expenditure of more than $2.6 billion over five years, according to the minister’s media release dated 12 May 2010.

The coalition, as you would know, Mr Deputy Speaker Schultz, is committed to the principle of the continuation of indexation of university funding and, by implication, the current arrangements regarding indexation as they stand prior to this bill. But I rise tonight to speak on this higher education bill, as I believe it is vital that people of all ages have access to lifetime learning opportunities, education and training programs—and particularly so in my electorate of Forrest. I am committed to supporting improved opportunities, equity of access to tertiary education and student retention in the south-west of WA.

It is ironic that this bill is about higher education when, since the May 2009 budget, students, parents and families have been and still are in continuous contact with me regarding the Labor government’s changes to youth allowance, which have affected and are affecting great young people from my electorate and their educational opportunities. While the coalition was able to achieve some concessions for gap-year students, the Labor government’s ‘inner regional’ classification for the majority of south-west students means that many young people who have no choice but to move to access tertiary education outside the south-west have additional significant financial barriers—anything from $15,000 to $20,000 to $30,000 a year—to doing so, and some will not be able to afford to do so.

These Labor government changes to youth allowance have hit south-west students particularly hard. Some families in my electorate have stated that they have no choice but to relocate their whole family closer to tertiary education facilities—a major loss to the whole south-west region. Others have said they are now forced to choose which one of their children will be able to gain a tertiary education, because they cannot afford for more than one child in the family to be able to do so. That simply is not right. Students from the south-west who need to relocate for tertiary education deserve better. This is, unfortunately, just another example of the Labor government neglecting regional and rural communities. My most recent email is from a young student in Busselton, Sarah-Jane, who is desperately seeking some form of financial support for her higher education. Her email read:

I am a year 12 student at Busselton Senior High School. Next year my goal is to attend Notre Dame University and study a Bachelor of Arts, double major in Journalism and Mass Communications.

However the costs of the course and moving to Perth are well beyond what I can currently afford and this course is not offered at ECU in Bunbury or Curtin in Margaret River, I believe.

I was wondering if you could give me some advice on who to contact …

That was in relation to, perhaps, scholarships or sponsorships to help university students. As many in this House would know, many regional and rural representatives have repeatedly made representations to the minister directly and here in this House on behalf of students in our electorates. I acknowledge the other coalition members and the shadow minister in this House, who have worked so hard since the 2009 budget to represent these same regional and rural students. I acknowledge the efforts of the member for Kalgoorlie, the member for O’Connor, the member for Hume and the member for Murray. We have had a range of members working tirelessly, as have our constituents. These constituents have also worked tirelessly, writing emails and letters and signing petitions. Without them, we would not have seen any of the concessions at all on what was seriously flawed youth allowance legislation, and thousands of gap-year students would have missed out on youth allowance and possibly the chance to access a tertiary education.

And this attack on the educational opportunities of south-west students comes at the same time that the government has spent $16 billion on school halls and buildings in a program that has typified waste, mismanagement, schools not actually getting the facilities they need and taxpayers not getting value for their money. We have seen $1.7 billion wasted in this program, with $7.3 million just for plaques and display signs. I would like to offer some of that to Sarah-Jane, who needs assistance to achieve her education. I have reports of serious over-engineering in the program—the use of stainless steel roofing instead of Colorbond in inland areas, which I am told adds at least 40 per cent in additional cost to taxpayers, while at the same time students in my area, the south-west, and in other parts of regional Australia are struggling to meet the additional work requirements of the ‘inner regional’ definition for youth allowance.

I had an email from another parent who contacted me, and she said:

My daughter is currently undertaking a gap year. She is hoping to commence university studies in 2011 if she can get some form of financial support as in the form of Youth allowance.

She contacted Centrelink last week and she was told that she had to work an average of 30 hours per week for 18 months before she could qualify as an independent student for youth allowance. She was told that the opportunity to qualify as an outer regional student … does not commence until July 1st this year, which would mean that she cannot begin university until 2012. It is impossible to work 30 hours per week for 18 months as an unskilled seasonal worker.

This is the very issue that I have been taking up with the minister over and over again. As those of us who live and work in regional areas know, it is so difficult and sometimes absolutely impossible for young people from very small communities to find that 30 hours of work a week for 18 months. It is just not possible. The mother went on to say:

Last year the students in regional areas were able to qualify under the existing arrangements, having to earn a minimum amount of money. This year it seems that the gap students literally fall in a gap. Why is the opportunity to qualify for youth allowance for rural students made harder?

Without youth allowance we cannot support her and her 2 brothers who are already at university.

The arrangements for rural students accessing higher education is a disgrace.

This is what is going on in my electorate. This is not an isolated email or an isolated story. I forwarded these stories and the emails on to the minister, asking her to respond directly to these families and these students. They do not have the option of being able to access higher education or a tertiary qualification in their field in the south-west area. There is no choice: they have to move. It is going to cost them more, and they have been defined as ‘inner regional’. To qualify for the independent rate of youth allowance, they have to work 30 hours a week for 18 months. How do I explain to these parents that their children’s education is less important to the Labor government than the tragic and failed Home Insulation Program, which is costing them as Australian taxpayers $1 billion to repair because of the government’s incompetence with the program?

This type of waste and mismanagement has also cost my local occasional childcare centres. We talk about education right through to the tertiary level. We have some occasional childcare centres, as well as the childcare centres in the wheat belt areas of Western Australia, as you would know. The Labor government has cut their funding, and it has come as a huge blow to the many rural and regional centres that simply do not have the numbers to sustain their centres on a full-time basis. This is again a lack of understanding of how rural and regional areas work. Here we have groups of young mums who do not simply sit back and expect a handout from the government; they are actually taking responsibility for their community based centres. They fundraise, they manage their centres and the finances and they take a direct hands-on role in their children’s day care. What a great way to go. But they cannot afford the increased fees caused by the loss of the federal funding, yet the government has withdrawn its 52 per cent funding share in WA. It is a total of $420,000 from the 28 centres in regional and rural areas. These centres have operated for almost 20 years in my electorate. One of these centres has provided sustainable, affordable and necessary day care for years. A number of these mums also have home-based businesses. They need this child care to be able to go about their home-based business. It is just another example, like the changes to youth allowance, that clearly shows that this government simply does not understand, or is not willing to understand, regional and rural communities and their issues, but is equally prepared to waste and mismanage taxpayers’ funds on insulation, on school buildings and, according to Senate estimates, on the approximately $82,000 it costs for every asylum seeker.

19:39:35

Another promise that was made by Labor ahead of the election was to end the double drop-off for parents by building an additional 260 childcare centres across the country, to enable working mums and dads to make a single drop-off of their children at the school and childcare centre at the same time. But this has also been axed. Apparently the market has changed radically in two years, so the childcare centres are no longer needed. In a continuation of what was promoted as an education revolution, the computers in schools program has only delivered 26 per cent, or 1,472, of the 5,660 computers promised to the south-west of WA. They should have already been delivered. It is well behind the national distribution average of 33 per cent and is yet another example of the government’s neglect of regional and rural Australia.

As a result of Labor’s addiction to spending over the past three years, Australia will have a $57 billion deficit after July this year. The Labor government is borrowing $700 million a week—a hundred million dollars every day—for the next two years to fund this gross economic mismanagement, yet our students in rural and regional areas are still missing out. The Labor government has a history of poor economic management, and we also know that the coalition government paid off $96 billion of Labor debt over our last period in government.

In conclusion, the coalition is committed to education and to equity of access to tertiary education for rural and regional students, students who have no choice but to relocate to study. We are committed to a fund to assist regional students to stay in school until the end of year 12, focusing on information technology and attracting and retaining quality teachers in regional schools. We also believe very strongly that school principals and school councils should be able to lead and be accountable in managing their funding responsibility. We are committed to capital investment in regional universities and to providing innovative solutions for country students.

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

I will commence my contribution to this debate on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Indexation) Bill 2010 by highlighting and concentrating on some of the issues raised by the previous speaker, as opposed to talking about the legislation. I feel it is only right that I should be given the opportunity to pick up on a few of those little points made by the member for Forrest. The member for Forrest spoke at great length about youth allowance—

Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are such a bore.

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

I am sorry to keep you awake. I have only just started, but your yawning is louder than my contribution to this debate, Member for Kalgoorlie. Your manners do not do you any credit. As I was saying, the changes to the youth allowance have had a very positive impact on people that I represent in this parliament. I also come from a regional area and I come from an area where most of the families are low- to middle-income families. The children of people on very low incomes were being prevented from accessing youth allowance under the previous scheme. Many more students are now able to access the youth allowance.

In one case, I was contacted by a student whose parents earn around $105,000 per year. This particular student had moved to Sydney to undertake her university education. Under the previous scheme, she had been unable to access the youth allowance. With the changes that have been passed through this parliament, because she was one of a few children in that family attending university, she is now able to access youth allowance. That is a real benefit to this family. Even though they are a two-income family, their total income is not a considerable amount when you consider that both parents are on middle incomes. Their income is in that middle-income range.

The previous speaker raised the issue of school buildings. I would have to say that principals and school communities within Shortland electorate have embraced the fact that the government has given them money for much-needed capital expenditure on their schools. There was one school in particular that I visited early in 2008. In that school, the president of the P&C and the principal took me to the rooms and said, ‘Look at this paint peeling off the walls and this mildewed carpet—an absolute disgrace,’ and they told me that children were supposed to learn in those buildings. In fact, the principal undertook some painting and spruced those buildings up a little on his own. The week before last I visited that school. New school classrooms are being built. There is such excitement and vibrancy within the school. The school community and the P&C were there. They were excited, they were delighted and they were thrilled that the government had actually invested money in their school by providing the buildings that they had needed for a very, very long time.

I must add that on that school building site there was also an apprentice who was employed under the Rudd government’s Apprentice Kickstart program. So not only do you have buildings being built in that school, creating employment and giving new classrooms to the students of that area, but you also have apprentices training. To some extent, the legislation we have before us today is about training and the development of skills for the future.

The previous speaker also mentioned asylum seekers. I just refer her to the cost of the Pacific solution. I think that when she looks at that she might be very quiet about the cost.

On computers in schools: as I have already mentioned, students in Shortland electorate tend to come from low- to middle-income families. Without those computers in schools and access to computers, they were disadvantaged—but the member for Forrest does not like to acknowledge that. She talks about poor economic management. Just for the record, Australia’s performance in the global financial crisis was second to none. Australia came through that better than any other country.

Talking about equity and access to education, nothing could be more important than trade-training centres. The opposition say that if they are elected they are going to get rid of trade-training centres. In Shortland electorate, those trade-training centres have been placed in a variety of schools so that students, no matter where they live, can access that training.

The actions that have been taken by the Rudd government in relation to education, youth allowance and all matters that relate to students have really been driven by the needs of those students, the needs of the school communities and the needs of the community as a whole when it comes to Building the Education Revolution. And it is delivering for the students within the schools, within the vocational education sector and also within the higher education sector.

I refer to the legislation that we have before us—and I note that the parliamentary secretary has arrived—because, unlike the previous speaker, I actually want to touch on some of the issues in it. It is important to note that the Higher Education Support Amendment (Indexation) Bill 2010 comes from the recommendations of a review of the Australian higher education system, the Bradley review, and the indexation arrangements that will replace the Safety Net Adjustment wage price index with the Professional, Scientific and Technical Services wage price index published by the Australian Statistician. This index better reflects wage price increases in the higher education sector. For many years, the higher education sector were saying that they were being severely disadvantaged by the funding mechanism used by the previous government. There was a review of the pricing mechanism under the Howard government—I think that was in 2005—and the Howard government chose to do nothing and the index remained unchanged.

It is really important that we ask ourselves: why is it important that we properly fund our universities? First and foremost, it means that students can attend a university and get the education and develop the skills that they need to obtain jobs in the 21st century. It also means that students qualifying at Australian universities are competitive with students qualifying at universities throughout the world, and it puts Australia at the cutting edge of education. It is vitally important that we be a nation that is highly skilled, has a high level of knowledge and is at the cutting edge of the latest technology and research. This brings me to the second reason why we need to fund our universities properly—that is, so that we can undertake the research that is needed within universities. Universities are places of research. They are at the cutting edge of technologies and procedures that are needed going into the 21st century, and if our universities are not funded properly then Australia will fall behind other countries in relation to research.

This legislation is the government’s response, and it does support the majority of the Bradley review’s recommendations. I might add that it has been widely welcomed by universities and the sector is pleased to see a commitment by government to improve the rate. The university sector had for so long been used to a government that ignored their needs, one that did not listen to them, that constantly pegged the level of financial assistance they got and did not use the proper indexation mechanism but an outdated one that they had introduced in 1997. It is no surprise that the sector would welcome the mechanism being put in place in the legislation that we have before us tonight. I commend the bill to the House and welcome the changes that it will put in place.

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Employment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the members who have participated in this debate. The Higher Education Support Amendment (Indexation) Bill 2010 gives effect to the government’s commitment to improve indexation arrangements for the higher education sector. These amendments will enable institutions to keep pace with increases in costs and, by including these amendments in legislation, institutions will have a degree of certainty around future funding increases, with the resulting improved planning benefits.

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The existing indexation arrangements have remained unchanged for more than a decade and do not properly reflect the increased costs that are particular to the sector. The current minimum wage based arrangements for the salary component of the overall indexation formula will be replaced with a professional scientific and technical services index that better reflects the professional salary movements.

The minister’s department has estimated that the new index will deliver $2.6 billion in additional funding to the sector in the period 2011 through to 2015. Clearly this is a significant step in the government’s commitment to driving reform back via sustainable funding for the long term. I urge members to support the legislation and I commend it to the House.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.

Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.