Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Standing Committee on Education and Employment, I present the committee’s report entitled Advisory Report on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010 together with the minutes of proceedings.

Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.

by leave—On behalf of the Standing Committee on Education and Employment, I rise today to present an advisory report on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010 together with a dissenting report.

This is the first bills inquiry to report back to the House under the new arrangements of the new parliament. The bill was one of the first to be referred by the Standing Committee on Selection under the new arrangements giving force to agreements between the government and non-aligned members. The committee was given until the end of the 2011 autumn sittings to report but we compressed the inquiry time frame because this proposal has already been the subject of extensive community and stakeholder consultation, including two inquiries by committees of the Senate. However, the current inquiry provided an additional opportunity for input and the inquiry received 35 submissions.

The bill empowers higher education institutions to charge a fee for the provision of student services and amenities, to be capped at $250 and indexed annually. Further, it puts in place a facility whereby students can access a loan to pay the fee and can access improved student representation and advocacy.

The importance of reporting back to the House in a timely fashion lies in providing adequate time for each chamber to consider and, if it so determines, pass the bill so that higher education institutions might implement these measures in the new academic year.

The urgency of providing higher education institutions with the opportunity to raise much needed additional funds was spelt out by the Minister School Education, Early Childhood and Youth in his second reading speech when he noted a $170 million shortfall in funding as a result of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Abolition of Compulsory Up-front Student Union Fees) Act 2005. Transition funding has been in place to support essential student services and amenities on regional campuses in the wake of the abolition of compulsory fees. This has now expired. This bill is vital to restoring some of the lost services and amenities to students, particularly those on regional campuses.

Every submission received from universities, and the majority of submissions from higher education stakeholders, referred to a decline in student services and amenities on their campuses since the introduction of voluntary student unionism in 2005. Those universities that had managed to maintain student services and amenities did so through redirecting funding away from research and teaching. This model is not sustainable even for larger metropolitan universities which have diverted money away from teaching and research into essential student services.

For universities in regional locations, the situation is even more grim. Griffith University, alone, estimated losses of $31.3 million in revenue since 2005. The university projects that without student fees it will need to redirect $10 million a year away from teaching and research to student support services and amenities,.

Southern Cross University welcomed the proposed bill to help restore and provide amenities on regional campuses. This proposal will revive student services and amenities on all campuses, but particularly regional campuses. The revenue raised from the fee will help restore amenities as well as jobs and services lost since 2005.

The revenue from the proposed fee will be used to help provide students with a more rounded education experience and a better quality of university life. Universities believe that good student services are vital for the effective participation, retention, and success of a larger and more diverse higher education student cohort. In the long term, these funds will contribute to the ability of the sector to produce graduates who are fit for life with a greater sense of community and active citizenship.

This bill has improved since a similar proposal was introduced and passed through the House in 2009. On that occasion the bill was denied a third reading as a result of a tied vote in the Senate. The government reintroduced the bill but it failed to pass the Senate before the end of the 42nd Parliament. The purposes to which revenue raised can be used have been tightened and spelled out in the proposed legislation itself, rather than included as a legislative instrument. The revenue raised will help fund student welfare and support services, helping students to develop academic and study skills and careers, provide child care, provide financial and legal advice, accommodation assistance, personal accident insurance for students, orientation support, library and reading rooms, support for student artistic activities, debating, and student media. These are all very important parts of university life. It will also be used to provide student representation and advocacy services, support clubs and sporting and recreational activities of students, and support international students.

A higher education provider may not spend revenue from this measure on any other purpose. They are expressly forbidden from financing any person or organisation that uses the funds to support a political party or a local, state or federal election. And the expenditure of funds raised by the fee is restricted to supporting organisations that either service students or are constituted by students.

Universities will also need to consult their students on how best to serve them in the administration and implementation of this fee. The Student Services, Amenities, Representation and Advocacy Guidelines will benchmark the minimum services required, but they will also allow flexibility in how to best meet the needs of students on each campus. The committee has recommended that the minister release the updated guidelines as soon as possible.

Each higher education provider will, through student consultation, decide what amenities and services will best meet the needs of those students. For example, Southern Cross University plans to consult students in tailoring student amenities and services for those students that come to their regional campuses but also for those students who need to access the university remotely. Some of their remote campuses under the current funding arrangements have had little in the way of student services or amenities and they are certainly looking at addressing that. They have asked for a period of grace in meeting the compliance section of the proposed legislation under the guidelines. They have also requested that a portion of the revenue raised from the fee be able to be accessed to cover the cost of setting up these services. The committee has recommended that the minister consider granting a period of grace to higher education providers in meeting the new compliance rules and that consideration be given to allowing providers to use a portion of the revenue raised to fund the set-up of the administrative requirements that will occur under this legislation.

A further issue of concern to the committee is the possibility for international students to be charged twice for the same service. In responding to this concern, the committee has reiterated the finding of the Senate inquiry in 2009 that looked at the bill and recommended that the minister encourage the itemisation of international student fees.

I would like to take this opportunity to, first of all, thank the minister at the table, the Minister for Employment Participation and Childcare, for her work in the last parliament on this bill and also to thank the secretariat for their work in this inquiry. It was a very short inquiry and they worked very hard. In particular, I would like to thank Glenn Worthington and Becky Walker, who has only been in the job a month and was thrown in the deep end but did an absolutely fantastic job working with us.

There was overwhelming support for this bill from the major stakeholders, which highlights the importance of this proposed legislation. Universities believe that a well-rounded education better equips students to compete in the workforce and helps them to develop the skills, confidence and support networks that they will need throughout their lives. A well-supported campus is also more likely to encourage retention and engagement, and to raise completion rates. Accordingly, the committee has recommended that the bill be passed, and I commend the report to the House.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I rise as deputy chair of the committee that prepared this report to the House. It may come as no great surprise to the House that the coalition members elected to oppose this legislation and have delivered a dissenting report. As the chair pointed out, it was a new experience for the committee under the new standing rules of the parliament for the legislation to be referred from the Selection Committee for us to review before it was placed before the House. The way it was rushed upon us came as a bit of a surprise. The coalition members believe that this inquiry was held with undue haste and that we have not had an opportunity to examine the full intent of the evidence and, in fact, feel as though some of those people who have contributed evidence were not given the opportunity to deliver the evidence face to face.

In particular, I draw your attention, Madam Deputy Speaker, to standing order 143(b), which says that:

… a determination may be made by the Selection Committee as provided by standing order 222 to refer a bill to a committee for an advisory report.

Then standing order 222(a)(iii) says that:

… select bills that the committee regards as controversial or as requiring further consultation or debate for referral to the relevant standing or joint committee in accordance with standing order 143.

The standing orders are not prescriptive, but it would appear to me that the intent is that the committee should undertake some degree of scrutiny of the submissions.

Instead, the government used its majority on the committee to effectively guillotine the inquiry. We had seven days to receive submissions. In the end we received 36, but only 29 of those were lodged by closing time. Then we had less than a week to consider those submissions, with no chance to meet in person and no chance to enter into any one-on-one, face-to-face interviews. We believe that there was considerable interest shown in this inquiry, as evidenced by the number of submissions—and we may well have received more had we had more time—and so we decry the lack of process. It would seem that if we are to have any inquiries at all, they should be more diligent than this.

To come to the point of the submissions: there were 36 in total, placed predominantly into two groups. The first—the universities and union sector—encompassed 26 submissions, all but one of which supported the bill. I must point out that they were mostly dusted off submissions that had been delivered to the Senate inquiry in 2009. There is nothing particularly wrong with this, but they had an opportunity to present those submissions personally. Tellingly, of the group of 26 from the universities and union sector, almost all stand to gain financially from this legislation.

The six submissions in the second group were all opposed to the legislation and they all came from individuals. I point out that these individuals had no opportunity to present in person. Tellingly again, these are the people who will pay the bill. Those who will pay the bill have a completely different attitude to those who will receive the money. That is enough for us in the coalition to at least have great concerns whether the student population is indeed in favour of this compulsory levy at all.

It is not just a little amount of money. It is anticipated that this new tax will raise $143 million a year from struggling students. It is not just tintacks money; it is a substantial amount of money. In fact, one of the students who contacted us, and I think he spoke for many students who study externally, said, ‘It is not my intention to ever attend the UNE campus in Armidale.’ It does make you wonder why on earth this student should be charged a compulsory fee for a service that he will never wish, and is never likely, to access. As he said, he is never even likely to visit the campus. There are many students throughout Australia who are studying under external arrangements and most of them would probably concur with that evidence.

We also make the point that the bill sends a message to students that students are incapable of being able to determine what is in their best interests and that it is retrograde, condescending and fundamentally insulting to students that we think we know far better than them how to spend their money.

I also refer to the dissenting senators report in 2009, which drew particular attention to the clear Labor Party commitment prior to the 2007 election rejecting a compulsory amenities fee. This policy appears to have changed sometime before the 2010 election. Certainly the Labor Party made no issue of it during the election campaign. Most students in Australian universities at the moment are blissfully unaware of what awaits them next year should this legislation be passed.

We also believe that it is highly likely that the funds raised will be used for political campaigns outside the student unions’ direct interests and are, in fact, a return to compulsory student unionism. I understand the legislation does have bars on direct contributions to political campaigns, but we would be stretching credibility to think that some of these funds will not be used in campaigns that have a political intent.

In the end, we reject the majority view of the committee, and my recommendation to the House is that it rejects the legislation. But I would concur with the chair when she thanked the secretariat—Glenn Worthington and Becky Walker in particular. They were placed under a lot of pressure because of the time constraints, obviously to get all of the material together to convene the meeting, which was held by teleconference, and to deliver the report in what I think is an unrealistic time frame.

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

I move:

That the House take note of the report.

In accordance with standing order 39, the debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.