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 (2010 Budget Measures) Bill 2010. The bill amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to allow revised funding amounts for the Commonwealth Grant Scheme, for Commonwealth scholarships and for other Commonwealth grants. It also provides for future funding to move toward a student demand driven system of Commonwealth supported university places. This marks the transition from a system where student places at universities are capped to a system where the government will fund a place for every eligible undergraduate student accepted into an eligible course. This measure was announced in the 2010-11 budget and reflects the recommendation by the Bradley review into higher education, which was delivered to the government in late 2008.

Specifically, this bill, by taking the first step toward a student demand driven system, will assist in meeting the government’s objective for 40 per cent of Australians between the ages of 25 and 34 to have at least a bachelor level degree by 2025. This begins with lifting the cap on enrolments from 2010 and 2011 from five to 10 per cent, with the transition to a student centred funding system from 2012.

This bill itself has no financial impact for the implementation of the transition toward a student demand driven system. Rather, from 2012 there will no longer be a maximum amount in table A, but its practical effect will result in future higher expenditure. Maximum funding amounts at section 30-5, section 41-45 and section 46-40 of the act will also be amended to account for indexation. I note that this is to be based on the present safety net adjustment, introduced in 1997 by the Howard government, which comprises 75 per cent of the current index.

The coalition is committed to the principle of the continuation of indexation for higher education and, by implication, the current arrangements regarding indexation as they stand in this bill. Indexation arrangements will change, of course, following the new arrangements to be introduced from 2012. The government have elected to use the professional, scientific and technical services labour price index reduced by 10 per cent to replace the safety net adjustment, after a period of significant consultation with the sector. The bill also reduces funding to the Graduate Skills Assessment program by $2.4 million across the years 2010-11 to 2013-14 in line with a diminishing public interest in the program.

But there is also another amendment to the Higher Education Support Amendment (2010 Budget Measures) Bill 2010 upon which I would like to comment. The bill seeks to reduce funding to the Australian Technical and Learning Council by $18.4 million, reflecting the establishment of the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency and the fact that part of the agency’s budget will be allocated indirectly towards the council. While the opposition does not consider this redirection of funds to be controversial, the role and structure of the future Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency may certainly have the potential to be. Already we see that even before TEQSA is created there is growing debate about just exactly how the government should go about bringing change to monitor and assure standards. I have previously stated that, while the coalition supports in principle the development of a national regulatory agency, we hope to consult carefully about the details of the governance and powers of TEQSA in the months ahead. We need to give the most careful consideration to the new standards that will be used to judge our institutions and other important aspects of regulatory regimes. The coalition will continue to monitor future activity and advocate for a higher education system that is flexible and responsive. We recognise that not all higher education providers are alike and we will not let the sector be burdened unnecessarily without justification.

While the coalition welcomed the Bradley review when it was released and many of the recommendations in it, including the recommendation that has translated to this bill, I take the opportunity to reflect on where we go from here. Unlike the government, we believe that the Bradley review is not merely a list of boxes to tick off over time. It is much more. The reforms stemming from the Bradley review should be considered the beginning of ongoing debate and reform in the higher education sector. We appreciate the move towards a student demand driven system proposed by Professor Bradley and endorsed by the government. The measure in this bill is a start, but I also believe there is much more scope to meet the ambitious target set by the government of 40 per cent of Australians between the ages of 25 and 34 years having at least a bachelor level degree by 2025. For example, when we look overseas for potential solutions we find that there are some countries like Norway that have already met this target. Universities cannot be held to account to meet this target alone, though having the freedom to offer a sufficient number of places to students to meet demand is certain to assist in reaching these ambitious targets.

We also need to think about new and innovative ways to modify existing educational structures to facilitate progress from one stage of education to the next. We do need fewer ports of entry into education to make choices and pathways easier and clearer for potential students. The coalition is also deeply concerned about the direction and future of the new national curriculum, for a quality curriculum needs to be carefully designed to meet the future challenges in Australia and the labour market. Though this government has taken some steps to improve coordination between schools, private enterprise and post-secondary education, I believe that we could still do much more. We are concerned in the coalition that, if a national curriculum is introduced that is rushed, poorly implemented, not well thought out, badly funded and teachers are not given the training they need to ensure the national curriculum is what students need and what schools want, the pathway to higher education will be made that much harder as universities look to their own enrolment tests rather than relying on the year 12 marks that schools currently undertake.

And we most definitely need a much easier recruitment and pathway process to higher education for vocational education and training, which leads me to comment on the dramatic change between the previous government and this government in relation to the responsibilities for education. Education in the previous government was found in the same portfolio as universities, training, apprenticeships and so on with respect to the pathway through education in most people’s lives. Since the election of this government the portfolio has been divided between the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations, Senator Evans, the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government, Simon Crean, and of course the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, Peter Garrett. The purpose for this division of responsibilities can only be to make the scrutiny of education less able for the opposition and is probably a response to the very effective breaking down of the government’s facade in education in the last three years when the current Prime Minister, as Minister for Education, presided over what can only be described as another Labor mess—whether it was the national curriculum, the My School website or, most importantly, the school hall stimulus debacle.

Many of the aspects of education under Minister Gillard proved to be failures, and when she was asked before the election for her list of achievements as Minister for Education the only one she could name in an entire portfolio covering everything from universities, apprenticeships and training to schools, education and child care was the setting up of the My School website. So a website was the No. 1 achievement of the Prime Minister when she was the Minister for Education and one can only assume that the responsibilities for education have been so disbursed in order to make it harder for the public to be aware of the ongoing failures of the government in relation to education. But I can ensure the House that we, from the opposition side, will continue to monitor the ongoing failures of the government in education. The one that is looming largest is the national curriculum, which was designed to be in place by January 2011 and most clearly will not meet that deadline. Only last Friday, the New South Wales Board of Deputies, which is responsible for schools education in New South Wales, wrote to the New South Wales Minister for Education and Training, Verity Firth, indicating that they would not be implementing the national curriculum in January 2011.

Other state jurisdictions will follow and we are seeing the unravelling of the national curriculum for a number of reasons. We have a minister, in the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, who is quite incapable of delivering a program. He was the same minister who presided over the solar panels debacle, the Green Loans scheme and the tragic home insulation scheme. He has now been given the hospital pass of the Prime Minister’s national curriculum to introduce, and of course he cannot recognise that this is going the same way as the other programs that he has presided over as minister. The courageous thing to do, which the government will not do, is to announce that the national curriculum will not be introduced from January 2011 and accept the opposition’s proposal, which is given generously and without any hooks or barbs, that we will allow them to delay the curriculum until January 2012 without us trying to score any political points, because we would prefer students got a better curriculum that was ready to be introduced in 2012 rather than a rushed curriculum, poorly implemented, cumbersome and facing criticism from all sides.

We also need continued efforts in youth programs, to encourage those youth who are neither undergoing education nor employed, who are at risk or from disadvantaged backgrounds, to access appropriate support services. All of these are policy areas that can and should be considered by the government as it works towards its set target of 40 per cent of youth having at least a bachelor level degree by 2025. Moving to a student demand driven system is one measure, but we must not forget the other elements that I have touched on as we work toward this goal. Nevertheless, in spite of some of the criticisms that we have made, the coalition is pleased that Labor has at least undertaken the uncapping of student places in the bill, and for this reason we support the legislation as drafted.

Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to speak today on this bill, the Higher Education Support Amendment (2010 Budget Measures) Bill 2010. What is the purpose of this bill? It is very clearly an indication of this government’s commitment to education, particularly to higher education, which is in such need of renewal. There are three key points that this bill seeks to address: to increase funding to eligible providers for the Commonwealth Grant Scheme in 2010 and 2011, to increase funding to eligible providers for other grants for the years 2010 to 2013 and appropriate funding for these grants for 2014, and to increase the maximum payments for Commonwealth scholarships for the years 2010 to 2013 and appropriate funding for these scholarships for 2014.

Not that long ago—in fact, just before the federal election—I had a life as a university lecturer. The purpose of this legislation certainly meets with the demands in our local economy and our wider community and certainly with the needs of universities to be able to fund more places for students and to do it in a well-organised manner. Now I get to give a lecture to the Manager of Opposition Business, who has actually just left the chamber—he must have got wind of the comment that I am about to make—about his selective talk in this debate about the government’s higher education agenda. I must admit it is quite a challenge for any teacher to give a good lecture, but I am certainly up for the challenge here this afternoon.

Let’s start with the basics of this bill, which amends the Higher Education Support Act to implement these 2010-11 budget measures. The bill provides for an increase in funding for the over-enrolment of Commonwealth supported places that occurred in 2009 and 2010 under the Commonwealth Grant Scheme and for the increases that will flow on into 2011 under that scheme. This is a parameter update to reflect new estimates of student demand for the government’s student centred funding system. Members may recall that we in the government introduced the student centred funding system in response to the review of higher education by Professor Denise Bradley. And what a relief it is to have students at the centre of the decision making in higher education. All too often processes and organisations dominate the discourse. We need to have students at the centre, and that is one of the critical dimensions of this bill that I am so positive about. The over-enrolment of Commonwealth supported places is allowed for under the cap on funding for places above agreed targets. The cap on over-enrolment was raised from five to 10 per cent in funding terms for 2010 and 2011, as part of the introduction of student centred funding from 2012.

I hope the opposition cannot put up the usual roadblocks to this non-controversial piece of legislation, which enables more learning for more people and correct funding for our universities. Already today in the House, from the member for Wentworth, we have seen the kind of obstructionist spoiling behaviour that is now the hallmark of the coalition under the current Leader of the Opposition. I am afraid to say that behaviour will probably be on display again later this week, when the coalition will try to block funding for Australian university students and the vital student support services they need. These blatant political delaying tactics are being employed by the coalition for no purpose other than to delay the implementation of good things for young Australian people in the context of the tertiary education sector. They plan to gum things up, to block and delay. This is not in the national interest. Labor, in contrast, is working to restore critical services including child care, counselling, health, and sport and fitness services to university campuses across Australia. The Liberal Party is determined to block and delay this vital reform.

The government introduced the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010 in the first sitting week in a bid to provide a balanced, practical approach to funding campus services and amenities. It was introduced by the government as a priority in a bid to see it passed by Christmas so that the benefits would flow to students studying in 2011. Universities and students are united in their support for this measure, but the Liberal Party is determined to play a negative, blocking role. As a result of the previous coalition government’s decision to abolish student services and amenities fees, close to $170 million was ripped out of university funding. This had a dramatic impact, particularly on regional universities and regional and rural students. I can confirm from my own personal experience as a lecturer in education at the University of Newcastle’s Central Coast campus that this was certainly the case.

Our student body would grow and thrive if it had strong campus support services. It is critically important in regions such as my own to acknowledge the fact that many of our students are the first in their family to attempt tertiary study. When you are in such a position there are a number of practical challenges that you have to meet. Firstly, which university are you going to go to? That can be the first question. How am I going to find access? Am I eligible for access? Am I a person who can undertake this challenge? Am I a person who can lift outside of my own experience and undertake tertiary study? These are challenges that students face, and when they arrive they need support. They need to connect into a new community.

We have students on the Central Coast—and it is a similar situation in many regional areas—who come from all over the coast, and they meet with new people of a range of ages. Sport, for example, is a great way in which people can meet others in a teamwork situation, bringing the skills they already have in order to develop social networks. Such things underpin the success of all learners. We do not perform well in circumstances where we feel very vulnerable, and certainly when we are disconnected. Learning is a risk event—every day going to the edge of what you know and taking up the challenges of knowing more, understanding more and thinking more deeply. And at the end of the day that is the journey of a student—to be able to do new things. Students need to be supported in their university environment so that the money that is invested for our country’s future by the government is really invested well. Students are more likely to be successful if they have that sort of social support in their new learning environment.

There are other issues that are critical for new students in these areas and for which the funding has disappeared—such as students who need particular study skills. They should not be provided with a ‘sheep-dip opportunity’ where they get one token lecture on how to undertake their studies. There are students who hit the sixth week of a 13-week semester who have sincere practical difficulties in this area. They may have no skill base to balance their university work with their employment commitments and, perhaps, their family commitments. Trying to balance those things can be a very important management issue, and intervention with a student counsellor who has experience in these matters is vital for students to be able to manage that transition and to continue successfully in their journey to the end of the semester. Given the loss of $170 million over the last several years, we dare not count the cost of the numbers of students who have fallen out of universities through losing faith in themselves. They have lost hope of participation in tertiary education because they have not been able to feel like they belong to a university—and belonging is a vital part of learning.

The stories that I have just shared with you from my own experience are certainly borne out in last week’s survey by the National Union of Students on students’ perceptions of higher education quality. This poll, engaging more than 6,855 students from every public university in the country, was conducted earlier this year. It found—unsurprisingly to me, at least—that regional students and those at satellite sites attached to major university campuses faced difficulties and costs in accessing books from the main campus. And that is not the only cost that they incur; there is a whole dislocation that can happen in those sorts of contexts.

The organisation’s survey also revealed that nearly half of all respondents thought their university was not doing enough to bridge the cultural divide between domestic and international students. We are global citizens. We live in a globalised economy. The opportunity for conversations and cultural sharing of varieties of knowledge between students from a range of nations is something we should definitely be investing in and enabling. Those students who are unhappy about these things need look no further than to the other side of the chamber to point the finger of blame. I know firsthand how much importance students place on the quality of their educational experience. Issues such as the quality of teaching get much attention, but the real focus here, and that is why this particular piece of legislation is so good, is the focus on the student’s experience—in this case, the learning experience—and students’ capacity to access services on campus is vitally important for them to create an environment that enables them to learn.

Labor has a longstanding commitment to ensuring the quality of all education, but particularly at this time higher education. We have a 10-year reform agenda that places a clear focus on quality and this is supported in real terms by record investment. The new Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency is one element of these critical reforms. From 2012, universities that improve student satisfaction with teaching and learning and that increase the proportion of low socioeconomic status students will be rewarded. In my experience, students who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds have been marginalised for too long from participation, from a sense of high endeavour and from access to all of the professions. The NUS survey reminds us that all students from regional campuses are disadvantaged when it comes to accessing services that students in urban centres take for granted. The Gillard government wants to help redress that balance by restoring important student services.

The bill proposes two budget measures to cease funding for the Graduate Skills Assessment—the GSA program—from 30 June 2010. This will generate savings of $2.4 million over four years. According to information in the 2010-11 budget, these funds will be redirected to support other government priorities, and the My University website will incorporate the program. The GSA was a voluntary test introduced in 2000 and was designed to assess the generic skills of university graduates both at the point of entry to, and exit from, university but, not surprisingly, there has been a diminishing student interest in the GSA—which is something that they see generally as an administration event that does not enhance the quality of their experience.

The other budget measure which the bill proposes to implement is a 20 per cent reduction in funding of $18.4 million over three years from 2011-12 for the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. The ALTC receives approximately $27 million annually to support a range of programs designed to enhance and support the quality of teaching in Australian universities. This measure is a consequence of the establishment of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency. The ALTC will receive funding from the TEQSA.

Another key initiative will be the additional funding under new mission based compacts. Australian universities will have up to $550 million in additional funding under new mission based compacts. The introduction of compacts and new arrangements for performance funding are part of the government’s commitment to investing in the future of higher education and ensuring Australia’s higher education system better meets Australia’s future needs. Universities will be eligible for $94.2 million in annual facilitation funding from 2011 and $136.6 million each year in reward funding from 2012. Over the three calendar years of the compacts, this amounts to $550 million.

Targets will be set in three key areas. I think that these are really important targets that note and guide us to the change in focus. The target areas are: participation and social inclusion, including the enrolment of more students of low socioeconomic status; the quality of student experience; and the quality of learning outcomes. The Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations, Senator Evans, has said that the framework includes some interim indicators and plans to develop improved measures of performance over time. The government will negotiate with the universities in 2011 to develop this further. I commend the bill to the House.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (2010 Budget Measures) Bill 2010, as presented by the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations. This bill amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003. The bill raises the funding cap on Commonwealth funding provided to Australian universities and assists universities during the transition to increased numbers of student centred places.

Under the 2009-10 budget, the government provided approximately $491 million over the forward estimates to fund 80,000 Commonwealth supported places and a transition for universities to incorporate over-enrolment. On an assessment of potential over-enrolments, under the government’s program, it is now estimated that there will be an additional 115,000 Commonwealth supported places over the period 2010 to 2013.

Those on this side of the chamber support this bill so long as it is closely monitored over the forward estimates, particularly in regard to universities self-funding over-enrolments through a reliance on the foreign student market. The increasing reliance by universities on fees from foreign students must be monitored as the economic reality today is that the high Australian dollar, difficult economic conditions abroad and a competitive international student market mean that the large number of foreign students that have been coming to our shores in recent years is not guaranteed to continue. I have seen this firsthand in my electorate of Kooyong at Swinburne University.

The coalition strongly supports an open and flexible higher education system. This bill is consistent with a student demand driven system as proposed by the Bradley review. Let us not forget that it was the Howard government that made the first moves towards a student demand driven system. In the last year of the Howard government a record 185,898 Australians were offered a university place. The $1.9 billion Realising Our Potential package introduced significant new funds into key areas and saw a dramatic increase in the level of Commonwealth scholarships that were designed to ensure that Australia’s best and brightest had every opportunity to reach their potential. In the same way, the Howard government increased the repayment threshold applying to student repayments on Commonwealth supported places, formerly known as HECS-HELP loans, to just short of $40,000, making a world’s best practice student contribution scheme even more accessible.

While the bill before the House proposes to increase funding for Commonwealth scholarships, funding for these scholarships has decreased since 2009, when the Higher Education Support Amendment (2009 Budget Measures) Act redirected Commonwealth scholarships funding to support student income reform measures. It is high time that funding for Commonwealth scholarships be returned to previous levels. Between 1995 and 2006 there was a 23 per cent increase in the number of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds attending university. In this period we also saw a 15 per cent increase in students from rural areas, a 137 per cent rise in students with a disability and a 30 per cent growth in Indigenous students at our universities. In addition the Howard government also made a significant investment of more than $6 billion in the Higher Education Endowment Fund—a visionary plan to support the building of new university infrastructure. It is an indictment of those opposite that this initiative has not received the requisite political support.

Our universities are a critical component of Australia’s education system, integral as they are to our civil society and to our future prosperity. The coalition supports this bill, contributing as it does to the health of our tertiary sector.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (2010 Budget Measures) Bill 2010. This bill is about expanding universities and modernising Australia’s university system so that it is really fit for purpose to match the needs of the labour market of the next generation. Students graduating from Australian universities in 2010 are going to be entering a labour market which is fundamentally different from the labour market of their parents. It is important is that our universities provide them with the skills and opportunities necessary for this new and changing labour market.

There is a great Labor legacy of adapting the educational system to meet the needs of the Australian labour market. One of the key features of the first speeches on this side of the parliament has been the issue of education. Many, like myself, have spoken about the power of education to raise living standards throughout Australia. Many others have also spoken about the role that education plays in breaking the intergenerational poverty cycle. You need only to read a few autobiographies of kids from the wrong side of the tracks who have made it to see that consistent theme of a great education being Australia’s best leveller. I am proud today to rise in support of a bill which follows very much the education reforming legacies of the Chifley, Whitlam and Hawke governments, all of which brought about substantial expansions to Australia’s higher education system. The Rudd and Gillard governments have followed very much in that tradition.

I am very proud to have within my own electorate of Fraser a number of Australia’s great tertiary institutions. The Australian National University, the University of Canberra, the Australian Catholic University and UNSW at ADFA are just a few of the terrific institutions in my electorate. But it is important to remember, whenever we are talking about higher education, where we are today and where we could have been. In 1996 Australia ranked seventh out of OECD countries in terms of attainment of undergraduate or higher qualifications amongst 25- to 34-year-olds. By 2006 Australia had dropped to ninth position, according to the Bradley review. That is because other countries surpassed us in their share of young people who have attained a tertiary qualification. Countries such as Finland, Sweden and New Zealand have increasing tertiary participation at a faster rate than Australia and have set targets for tertiary participation of up to 50 per cent. The Bradley review noted that:

These policy decisions elsewhere place us at a great competitive disadvantage unless immediate action is taken.

One of the things that we saw under the former Howard government was an increase in student-staff ratios. Back in 1996 there were 15 students for every tertiary staff member. By 2006, which is the final year the Bradley review uses in its analysis, that number had risen to 20 to one. We saw a substantial increase in class sizes in universities over the period of the Howard government, and that is probably a contributor to low student satisfaction levels. According to the Bradley review, from 1996 to 2007 the levels of university graduates’ satisfaction on the good teaching, appropriate workload, clear goals and standards, and learning community scales remained either about or below 50 per cent for this whole period. In other words, at least half of Australia’s university students were dissatisfied with the quality of teaching they received, with workload, with goals and standards, and with their institutions as learning communities.

The Bradley review noted:

Australia is falling behind other countries in performance and investment in higher education.

So what this legislation does today is bring about critical changes in indexation. I am pleased today to be following on this side of the House the member for Robertson, who, like me, has had substantial experience in seeing how Australian tertiary institutions struggled to cope in the old environment. I have seen firsthand, as a professor at the Australian National University, the tough decisions that have to be made when wages increase substantially faster than Commonwealth indexation. That gap between wage growth and Commonwealth indexation means that universities have to make tough choices. The more wages outstripped funding the more we had to cut positions, forcing young researchers who were doing terrific work at the frontiers of their fields to go and find jobs elsewhere. That was good perhaps for the institutions that snapped them up but bad in the long run for students and for the research being carried out by our Australian tertiary institutions.

The Bradley review noted that:

… Commonwealth funding per subsidised student in 2008 was about 10 per cent lower in real terms than it was in 1996 … This was the result of a combination of direct cuts, constrained indexation and shifting of the balance towards higher student contributions.

That steady reduction in real Commonwealth funding had dramatic and painful impacts on Australia’s tertiary institutions. I am pleased to note that the bill that we are speaking to today responds to a recommendation of the Bradley review. Specifically it responds to recommendation 27 by implementing a new indexation arrangement to ensure that universities’ revenue does not continually decline. As the Bradley review said, there are ‘increased sources of non-government revenues that universities have developed since 1996’ and ‘those sources of revenue cannot viably be increased at historical rates’. That is a recognition that some of those substantial shifts that we have seen in the tertiary education sector over the last 20 years are one-off shifts. It is not reasonable to assume that they are going to occur again.

So the indexation factor within this bill is going to be determined through a combination of two sources. Three-quarters of the indexation factor will be derived from the Professional, Scientific And Technical Services Labour Price Index, which will be discounted by 10 per cent, as recommended by the Bradley review, to ‘require higher education institutions to pursue ongoing productivity gains’. That is not putting in place an unreasonable funding gap but is recognising that a 10 per cent difference is something that can encourage productivity enhancements within higher education institutions. The other quarter of the indexation factor will derive from the CPI to account for the non-salary component of the higher education index factor. That reflects the fact that not all of tertiary education funding is going to staff; something in the order of a quarter is going to capital funding and so the CPI is an appropriate indexation for that portion. The university sector has welcomed the improved indexation formula. As a result, the indexation is going to increase funding for the Commonwealth Grant Scheme, other grants and the Commonwealth scholarships.

The legislation that we are debating today is part of a long economic and educational legacy of successive reforming Labor administrations. One of the reforms of which I am most proud was the HECS reforms put in place in 1989 and now known as the HELP scheme. I would like to use this opportunity to pay tribute to my former colleague at the Australian National University Professor Bruce Chapman for his integral role in putting in place what I will probably always refer to as HECS.

The key to HECS was to recognise that a university education raises private incomes. My own work as an economist has looked at the quantum of that increase. It is in the order of a 50 per cent increase in take-home pay for a university graduate compared to somebody who has just finished high school with no further qualifications. It is fair, and it is in accordance with basic Australian principles of egalitarianism, that students who graduate from universities should make a contribution. But it is also critical to make sure that as students make that contribution it does not stop them attending university. They only make that contribution under the income contingent loan scheme when their earnings pass a certain threshold, set at around average earnings.

Recognising that a university education has a social benefit, the income contingent loan does not cover the full cost of tuition. We recognise that we as a society are better off from rising tertiary attendance rates and so we, in the form of the government, kick in a portion of the bill to allow students to attend university. There has been some careful research done on the impact of HECS on the socioeconomic mix of students who attend university. In particular, I am thinking here of a paper by Bruce Chapman and Chris Ryan which showed that the introduction of HECS in 1989 had no impact on the socioeconomic mix of university students. The number of low-SES students attending university increased because we saw, thanks to HECS, a substantial rise in the number of university students across Australia. But the share of university students who were from low SES backgrounds stayed unchanged. So I regard HECS in that sense as a pro-poor measure and a measure which increased equality of opportunity across Australia.

This next stage of reforms follows very much in the same tradition. Under the student centred funding system, the government will fund a Commonwealth supported place for every eligible university student accepted into an eligible course at a public university—a substantial shift in our higher education system and one that I am delighted to hear that those opposite support. They were not, alas, able to bring it home during their 11½ years in government, but I am glad to hear that they are supporting it now that a Labor government is putting it into place.

This will be a reform which recognises that the labour market of, say, 2050 is going to be one which increasingly requires high levels of abstract thinking skills and where we will naturally want to increase the number of young Australians who have a tertiary qualification. It is estimated, as the member for Kooyong has noted, that there will be an additional 115,000 Commonwealth supported places over the period 2010-2013. That is 115,000 young Australians who would not otherwise have got a chance to go to university but for this bill. That is a terrific thing and one of which all members of this House should be greatly proud.

Finally, I would like to use this moment to acknowledge Peter Davidson of the National Tertiary Education Union. Peter, a fierce advocate of better universities, alas passed away on 29 October of this year. I extend my condolences to his family and in particular to his widow, Tanya. I also use this opportunity to thank Emily Murray, a volunteer in my office, who has been a tremendous help in preparing my remarks today. I commend the bill to the House.

Debate interrupted.