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

On Tuesday, 21 June, the honourable member for Sturt proposed to move a second reading amendment to this bill. The Speaker required time to consider the terms of the amendment with regard to its relevance to the bill. He now has app­roved the revised terms of the amendment, and the terms have been circulated to members. The Speaker has said that, in the unusual circumstances that applied, he is willing to regard the amendment as having been moved by the member for Sturt. Accordingly, I will proceed on that basis. The following amendment was moved:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes:

(a) the Government response to the Bradley reforms may impose increasing regulation on the Higher Eduction Sector;

(b) the growing burden of red tape and regulation imposed on small businesses, not-for-profit organisations, higher education providers and industry by the Gillard Government;

(c) that the increasing regulatory burden represents a broken election promise whereby the Labor Government said that it would only introduce a new regulation after repealing an earlier regulation: a "one in, one out" rule; and

(2) calls on the Gillard Government to immediately adopt the Coalition's red-tape reduction policy which will seek to reduce the cost of the Commonwealth's regulatory burden by at least $1 billion per year."

Is the amendment seconded?

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion.

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

The question now is that the amendment be agreed to.

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011 has come about largely in response to the final report of the expansive Bradley review of Australian higher education, which mapped out a broad vision for the restructure of the higher education sector. The review identified, amongst other things, the need to have a future skilled workforce where 40 per cent of Australians between the ages of 25 and 34 will hold at least a bachelor's degree by 2025. In principle, I support this target, as I believe a highly skilled workforce will contribute positively to our nation's economy.

To meet this target, it is important that higher education move away from a restricted intake to a student demand driven system and, in so doing, also allow choice of public or private institution enrolment for students. At present, Commonwealth supp­orted places are capped by the Higher Education Support Act 2003, which prevents the approximately 220,000 additional students required annually to fulfil the Bradley review's recommended target from gaining a Commonwealth funded place.

The move towards demand driven funding for undergraduate student places and removal of the restriction on the number of undergraduate Commonwealth supported places that Australian universities are able to offer is a positive move, even though I note that the number of enrolments for medical student places remains capped. With this cap and restriction removed, public universities will be given the freedom to decide the number of undergraduate student places they will offer and for which degrees they will offer them. Decisions about undergraduate student places will be based on student demand and the needs of employers in a given discipline, rather than on rigid government stipulations.

On the Gold Coast we have four univ­ersity campuses: Southern Cross, Griffith, Central Queensland and Bond. Southern Cross University and Bond University are in my electorate of McPherson. Much has been said previously in this debate in relation to public universities, so I would like to focus on private universities and in particular Bond University. When Bond University opened 21 years ago, it was Australia's first private university and it was modelled on the traditions of the world's most elite educ­ational institutions. Bond has produced about 16,000 graduates since its establishment, and this has been achieved with minimal public funding, as more than 90 per cent of the university's total income is from student fees.

The Bradley review target of 40 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds to be degree qualified by 2025 is particularly important for Bond University, as it is centrally located in the Gold Coast region and the Gold Coast is a region with low higher education partic­ipation rates, as illustrated by data from the 2006 census, where only 18 per cent of the Gold Coast population aged 25 to 34 were degree qualified, compared to the national average of 29 per cent. There is an 11 per cent difference in those figures. Our universities on the southern Gold Coast are already taking action to address this issue within the region. Bond University takes part in the state low-SES initiative and it does this by providing academics to tutor in science based subjects and by providing advice on tertiary education. Bond has also signed a memorandum of agreement with the Gold Coast City Council under which the university and the council are working together to address low higher education participation rates and low aspirations of children in the Gold Coast region. This is a very positive initiative for us on the Gold Coast.

Bond University also has in place an annual scholarship program that compares favourably to the G8 universities. Ten per cent of Bond's fee revenue goes towards scholarships and, currently, a range of corporate and other funded scholarships are being developed. Importantly, these schol­arships are merit based and therefore support access and equity to students who might otherwise not be able to afford a place at the university.

As the member for McPherson, I would like to see the Gold Coast economy mature to become a centre for excellence in education and research, to complement the existing industries of tourism and const­ruction. I called for this recently in my speech on the appropriation bill to this parliament. On current projections, the Gold Coast is expected to become Australia's fourth largest city by 2050 and, accordingly, substantial investments in education, and research and development infrastructure will be needed in the region.

Even with the growth in non-government higher education in Australia over the last few years, Australia's higher education system remains overwhelmingly public. This is inconsistent with demand for private education more broadly in Australia and specifically on the Gold Coast. The demand for private education in Australia is evidenced by enrolments in private sec­ondary schools in Australia, which account for 34 per cent of total enrolments, and is growing. On the Gold Coast, many of our independent schools have extensive waiting lists.

With private higher education providers comprising only six per cent of the higher education sector, private institutions such as Bond can and should play a much more significant role in Australia's changing higher education scene. It is also increasingly clear that the government and the taxpayer do not have the resources to fund this expansion and that the obvious way its targets can be met is through encouragement of private providers. Nevertheless, gov­ernment policy remains firmly on providing the public product.

The Bradley review recommended that, to support the expansion of the system, Commonwealth supported places should be uncapped and made available to private providers. Bond University itself says that the difference between the tuition cost and the CSP funding should be the student contribution, which could be funded through FEE-HELP.

Parents who have struggled to put their children through a private school no doubt appreciate the Commonwealth funding which flows in support of private school places. However, support for private places stops at the university level if a student chooses a private university such as Bond. This is an obvious anomaly which should be addressed. The government has thus far refused to consider the provision of CSP places to private providers on the basis that students could pay the gap, or use FEE-HELP, to meet the gap between the CSP amount and the institution's fees. The Commonwealth's position is concerning, as the Bradley review clearly supported a demand driven system. The government, by not allowing students to use their CSP funding at a private higher education provider in this way, denies choice and a true demand driven system.

I know how important a demand funded higher education system is to Australia. I have worked closely on this and other private higher education issues with Adrian McComb, Executive Officer of the Council of Private Higher Education, and with Chris Hogan, Associate Director, Information and Planning, at Bond University. In fact, I found Mr McComb's views on private higher education providers insightful:

Under a student-driven system, how can you discriminate on the basis of where a student chooses to enrol? The nature of the ownership of their institution shouldn't be a factor.

Whilst Bond University is, undoubtedly, very grateful for the Commonwealth's investments to date, including contributions in support of the establishment of its School of Medicine and School of Sustainable Development, a fairer reflection of the public benefits of private education would be appropriate when considering allocating public funding. It would not cost the taxpayer any extra for students to be able to choose to utilise their CSP funding to assist them to enrol at Bond University. In fact, it would save the taxpayer, as Bond has established a wonderful campus with world-class facilities and academics, with very modest financial support from the government over the many years of its existence.

As I noted earlier, since the establishment of Bond University there have been domestic award course completions, at substantially no cost to the taxpayer. Completions in the public sector cost, on average, $100,000 when capital costs are included. On this basis Bond has already made a significant contribution to the public good, the majority of which would otherwise have been funded from the public purse. Private institutions are very grateful for public support and acknowledge how FEE-HELP has also been particularly helpful in facilitating a large number of domestic students, including low SES students, to undertake their degrees at Bond University.

The solution is to now go ahead and implement the public-private vision proposed by Bradley, which would allow students to take their CSP to the university of their choice, whether it be private or public. This would be a truly demand driven and high-quality system that would prepare Australia for the challenges ahead. In a genuine demand driven system, Com­monwealth support should follow the student, irrespective of whether the student is enrolling in a public university or other approved higher education institution. The best outcome for the student and for the taxpayer will come from supporting the choice of the student in what and where they choose to study.

From 2012 we will have in a single national regulator, national accreditation standards and national course standards, providing confidence in the quality of the system. This clears the way for support for the student to follow their choice. I call on the government to allow CSP funding to flow to students, irrespective of whether they choose a public or a private university, and also to allow students at Bond University to top up their CSP funding to the Bond fee by using their own funds or FEE-HELP. There are a further three issues that I would like to comment on briefly today. Firstly, the bill requires universities to enter into a mission based compact with the Commonwealth government. These agreements require universities to show how their research direction contributes to the government's goals for higher education and link their goals to a university's Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding agreement. There are currently in place interim compacts between individual universities and the Com­monwealth government. This bill therefore seeks to formalise the existing arrangements. Compacts have broad support, as they will help diversify the higher education sector and focus universities on their central research direction and goals. However, we do not want to see compacts used to micromanage universities when they should be given relative educational freedom. The government should not be seeking to use compacts to align universities' objectives and goals with those of the Commonwealth.

Secondly, this bill seeks to abolish the Student Learning Entitlement, which was introduced by the Howard government and implemented by the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to limit students' ability to qualify for a Commonwealth supported place to a defined number of years of full-time study. The defined number of years is typically seven years, with some exceptions, and also accrues over the lifetime of the student. The implementation of the Student Learning Entitlement was an extremely sensible move by the Howard government to prevent students from undertaking cont­inuous studies at taxpayers' expense. While we can debate whether there are many or a few 'lifelong students', it is still important that we are prudent with taxpayers' money and ensure these students are not being funded for an education which will not lead to skilled employment and for which they have no intention of paying the money back.

Finally, the bill seeks to promote and protect free intellectual inquiry in learning, teaching and research and consequently requires universities to have institutional policies in place to achieve this. There is no prescription in this bill, however, on what is to be included in these policies, and there is no explicit mention of the requirement for students to be covered by this freedom. Academic freedom is a key principle in our society. It is often invoked as a shield in defence of unpopular but important scholarly activity. Sometimes it can be unsheathed as a sword to swing. It is a cherished foundation of the nation's universities, but is not necessarily a settled concept. It is the right of scholars and students to search for truth and to learn. Both scholars and students should be free to engage in critical inquiry and public discourse without fear or favour. It is their right to hold and express diverse opinions. Scholarly debate should be robust. Scholars and students are entitled to express their ideas and opinions even when doing so may cause offence. The ability to speak freely applies to the making of statements on political matters, including policies affecting higher education, and even to criticism of a university and its actions. Like scholars, students should not be disadvantaged or subject to less favourable treatment because they exercise their academic freedom.

We should not forget, though, that while academic freedom is a right, it also carries the burden of responsibilities. As scholars and students hold their own views and speak freely, they have the responsibility to exercise this right reasonably and in good faith. Discourse should accord with the principles of academic and research ethics, where these apply. For example, justif­ications should be given for an argument or statement in order for those who wish to respond to have a basis to do so, with potential conflicts of interest stated. I support the principle of academic freedom for both scholars and students. (Time expired)

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

I rise today to support the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011 and to oppose the opposition's amendments. This bill is an important development in the government's deter­mination to ensure our economic future is sound. It is also a reflection of Labor's deep understanding—yes, Mr Deputy Speaker, our very deep understanding—of how critical a high-quality education really is. At all levels the Gillard government is governing to ensure that we are able to reach our national potential. The way that we will achieve this in the tertiary sector is through the kind of key structural reform that this bill will deliver.

That brings me to the main purpose of this bill, which is to implement a demand driven system for funding undergraduate places in a wide range of higher education institutions. That means removing the current controls on undergraduate places in all disciplines, except for medicine, and abolishing the Student Learning Entitlement. This was one of the measures announced as part of our comprehensive reform package transforming Australia's higher education system, cont­ained in the 2009-10 budget. The way that the system worked up until Labor's landmark reforms was that the government would provide funding to eligible higher education providers for an agreed number of Comm­onwealth support places in a given year. In other words, each university was capped in regard to the number of places it could provide. So, even if there were students knocking on the door, ready, willing and able to start a course, that university could not meet the desire for education. As an educator, there is nothing worse than turning away someone who is ready to learn. It is the worst possible response to the expression of a thirst for engagement—a thirst for the risk-taking that is part of learning, a thirst for the challenge that taking up education at a tertiary level presents. This turning away of students is of great concern not only for the individuals, whose vision for improvement and skill development is thwarted, as others have noted in this debate; it is a great loss of the capacity of Australia to advance in the interests of our nation.

As others have noted in this debate, the context for this legislation is the review of Australian higher education chaired by Professor Denise Bradley. Professor Bradley could not have been any clearer. Australia is falling behind other countries in performance and investment in higher education—'Australia is losing ground', she said. We are at a great competitive disadvantage unless immediate action is taken. But further, Professor Bradley outlines what I believe is our moral imperative. The report's words again:

… we must [also] look to members of groups currently under­represented in the system, that is, those disadvantaged by the circumstances of their birth: Indigenous people, people with low socioeconomic status and those from regional and remote areas.

To me, there is a social justice imperative for this reform as well as a productivity imperative because, make no mistake, failure to have the flexibility and the capacity to respond to changing community demands in this sector has a negative impact on our overall productive capacity. Higher skill and education levels are highly associated with better life and financial outcomes for individuals and for the society that benefits from those individuals' efforts.

When you represent, as I do, a regional community, the current limitations on flexibility are absolutely amplified. Many potential students from regional Australia have been more disadvantaged than their counterparts in metropolitan areas simply because of their geographical location. Often there is a physical or financial incapacity to shop around for a place at another university that might allow them in if the one that is near to home does not provide the place that they seek.

This bill offers universities in cities and regions a critical capacity to be more flexible and responsive to the fluctuations in demand for particular courses and fluctuations in the needs in their particular regions. Sadly, I had one poor student who was a couple of marks short of getting into a teaching place out in the western suburbs of Sydney. She was lucky enough to get a teaching place at the University of Newcastle, where I was teaching, and I was delighted to have her in my class as a student. She made a fine contribution, and I am sure that at this stage she is out making a fine contribution in the teaching profession. However, she did have to leave her family to undertake her first year of study. She had to finance that. There were many, many impediments put in her way. There was a social impact and a financial impact. She did successfully complete year 1, and on the basis of that she was then able to secure a place at her home university. There are students, however, who might not have had the personal drive, the agency, to be able to navigate that path to education. This bill will achieve a much cleaner and much more responsive capacity for univ­ersities to avoid that sort of stupid situation, which was very damaging in its impact on that young woman.

We want innovation in Australia; we do not want a system in education that challenges students' innovative capacity just to get round the system. This legislation offers the system the opportunity to serve the people. I believe it is a much better arrangement. On the Central Coast we are blessed in many ways—we have great people and a beautiful environment—but we are not blessed with abundant resources. There is no mining boom in our region. The people of my region want to lift themselves up, but there is no opportunity to access education that prepares us for this 21st century if we do not provide it within the context of where we live.

Once upon a time, a sixth grade, then a fourth form and then a year 12 graduation certification was satisfactory. But for this 21st century we really need to massively increase the number of tertiary graduates. We all know that higher education is a great enabler, and it is a powerful way to help people overcome disadvantage. This govern­ment is determined to give all Australians the opportunity for a great education, no matter where they live. In higher education we have set ourselves a target that will see at least 40 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds gain a qualification at bachelor level by 2025. That reality check demands that we must attend to the realities that press on us.

The government reveal in this legislation our commitment to Australians, our invest­ment decisions and our determined reform efforts in the education of Australians as a critical investment in people and in our shared future. This legislation reveals our practical and real action to ensure that, on our watch, investment in Australia's talent, our young people who will carry us into the future, will make sure that they receive the opportunities they deserve. This legislation reveals the educational leadership that we are offering—the educational leadership neces­sary to ensure that those who are in high schools today can enter tertiary education settings across this nation and acquire the skills, knowledge, values and attitudes that will ensure their employability in a world economy.

But that is not all they will achieve through participation in learning in a tertiary setting. The experience of learning in a tertiary setting not only assures that we develop a highly qualified and competent workforce; indeed, in an age of technology, when knowledge is so easily accessed through the internet and other virtual sources, it is more important than ever that the acquisition of knowledge in a tertiary setting gives our students a social context in which they come to understand how that knowledge might be useful.

In my view, a tertiary learning experience provides our democracy with a populace that is critically aware—people who are able to critique themselves and other sources of authority. Well-educated communities such as those are innovative and adaptive. Inn­ovation and adaptability are core capacities necessary in our fast-moving global econ­omy. We need students who complete their studies and who are able to weigh up new information and ideas, new knowledges and new perspectives. We need students who complete their studies and who are able to draw on a body of sufficient knowledge to add to our productive capacity. But first of all we have to allow them access to the universities.

A quality tertiary education creates that most essential of assets for our rapidly changing time: a citizenry of lifelong learn­ers who will become leaders of our professions, our businesses, our services, our community and our nation and leaders in our increasingly connected world. To achieve a degree of security for our future, to ensure that we have this skilled citizenry necessary to take our place amongst the leaders of the 21st century, we must deliberately move towards a much larger engagement in, and more completions of, tertiary education.

Our goal is clear: to ensure that the proportion of 25- to 34-year-old Australians with bachelor level qualifications reaches 40 per cent by 2025. By international standards this is a conservative goal. There are a number of nations out there which have set their target at 50 per cent. But 40 per cent is, I believe, achievable, and it is essential that we move towards it. To achieve the goal of 40 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds with a bachelor level qualification, something needs to change. Critically, this bill will provide vital change drivers to allow our tertiary institutions to respond to student driven desires to select the courses of learning that most appeal to them. The capacity of students' interests to drive change in the tertiary sector is an important part of the reform that this bill offers. That is the educational case.

There are also compelling economic and productivity reasons why we need to boost the number of 25- to 34-year-old Australians with bachelor level qualifications to 40 per cent by 2025. Nearly 6½ million Australians in the 15-to-64 age group have no postschool qualifications. Back in the Howard years, when the previous Leader of the Opposition held the education portfolio, our university completion rate was 72 per cent, just a touch above the OECD. These are the figures that were cited in the Bradley report. We need to do better than that average so as not to be left behind in a competitive region. It is difficult to talk about the future without reflecting on the past. There is a very telling table in Professor Bradley's final report that I draw to the attention of those opposite. It is table 2 on page 18, titled 'International comparisons of education attainment: percentage of bachelor degree or above'. The table compares the levels of education attainment between 1996 and 2006 and the rankings of various countries relative to others. In 1996, we were seventh in the world when it came to people holding bachelor degrees or above. By 2006, we had slipped to ninth. It is no coincidence that the relative reversal coin­cides with the years of the Howard government. Labor recognises that 28 per cent of students not completing their studies is not good enough. Look across the Tasman to New Zealand whose Prime Minister we were so honoured to hear in the joint sitting earlier this week. New Zealand went past us, so did Sweden and Finland. Congratulations to those countries for lifting their games in the bachelor degree stakes. But no-one should forget —least of all those opposite—that our ranking went backwards under their watch.

As an educator I understand the power of expectation and setting high standards in classrooms. This bill exemplifies the same expectation of high standards. Importantly, Labor is leading on this critical issue, along with so many others in this House, ensuring through this bill that we give Australians who want to be ready for the new global economic realities of our time access to the education that they need to be a participant. More importantly, we are willing to act. I add that we have also set the target of halving the number of Australians aged between 20 and 64 years without qualif­ications at the certificate III level or above. I am delighted and proud to be part of a government that is making this shift to a demand driven higher education system. The effect of the transition to a demand driven system over the last two years, where Labor has lifted the cap on enrolments from five per cent to 10 per cent, has begun to already have a significant impact.

I heard anecdotes the other day from a university about the changes in the nature of what is happening in their first-year courses. We have many more students from low socioeconomic levels engaging. It is delight­ful to hear in that context that they are not only engaging but succeeding, and they are staying. The problem seems to not have been the marks that students needed to get into the university; it was simply the fact that they needed to get the door open to allow them through.

Another thing that will change is the seven-year full-time access limit. This particularly impacts on students who might have a life episode where they have a child or experience mental illness and they might not be able to complete studies within seven years. I know just such a student who is very close to the completion of her degree. She will make a fine social worker. If the seven-year rule applies to her, she might be six years and three months from completing and all of a sudden we have lost somebody with all those skills. She will not be any less well trained. She will not be any less well prepared for the role if it takes her eight years instead of seven. So this is an important change that we have made as well.

This bill continues to build on Labor's great investment. Our record in governing since 2007 has shown that we are absolutely committed to higher education, early childhood education and general education through our schools. This is a transformative investment, an investment that will alter the quality of learning and teaching of this generation and those who follow them. We are investing in the people of our nation who add to our wealth through their engagement and learning, not just in the very important BER projects that are opening across the nation to the delight of local communities. Through this bill, we are going to invest in our people to lead in the economy of the future. I commend the bill to the House.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with pleasure that I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011. It is a bill that deals with some of the recommendations from the review done by Professor Denise Bradley in 2008 into the higher education system. The main purpose is to remove the restrictions on the number of undergraduate Commonwealth supported places that Australian universities are able to offer. From 2012, universities will be able to determine the number of students that they choose to admit to undergraduate courses with the exception of medical courses.

In addition, the bill seeks to abolish the student learning entitlement. That is a measure that the coalition will oppose. We will move an amendment to change that system from seven to eight years. We have had a consistent view on this matter for some time now that we should not be encouraging people to spend their life at university on the taxpayer. Those restrictions were put in place by the former government and we do not see a compelling case to remove those rest­rictions.

This bill also requires universities to enter into a mission based compact with the Commonwealth government and requires universities to institute policies which prom­ote and protect free intellectual inquiry in learning, teaching and research. We will be moving an amendment relating to extending this provision to students as well as acad­emics because, from time to time, we have had some concerns about the way in which students are treated if they have a differing view about the way they go about their work. Unfortunately, in some of our universities, no matter how much a student has addressed the criteria, if the thesis of their argument—particularly when it comes to more theoretical discussions—is different from that of the lecturer or tutor, sometimes the marks are substantially different.

My wife had that experience, surprisingly, at university. She was at Flinders University studying an international relations degree with an American politics bent. She wrote a paper, which of course was more from the conservative style of politics, and it did not pass, although when it was reconsidered it somehow got a distinction. So there was obviously a clear difference of view by the original marker. In fact, he commented at the time, 'I could not possibly pass this assignment because the view in it I find repugnant.' That did not really get to addressing the issue of whether the essay actually touched on the criteria for marking. It was simply that the political bent in the response did not meet the person marking the criteria. We will attempt to extend that academic freedom to students as well. That is important at our universities because an important element of what students should learn and be encouraged to do at university is to argue their case with strongly based evidence from their perspective. People should be respected for their ability to do so. That is something that we are attempting to change through this bill.

This is an important area where we should have a genuine discussion in this place about the future of our university sector. It is—and I agree with those on the other side who have made this comment as well—vital for Australia's productivity capacity for our fut­ure economic performance that we get the university sector right and, in fact, that we get all three levels of the structure of the education system right. In the first stage of that, early learning, which we are going through at the moment, we need to ensure children are getting the best access at that early level to get the solid base right before secondary education, where they are taught the fundamentals, and then in tertiary education we need to make sure we are meeting the needs of our market to ensure that we are training people in the areas that we should be and that we are training them so that they are achieving and are encour­aged to achieve as much as they possibly can.

One of the things that strikes me is that one of our challenges in Australia is to continue to encourage our entrepreneurial culture and to encourage that desire to want to do very well—not just to go to university to achieve a degree for the purposes of having a degree mounted on your wall but to go to university to have the next step in your career so that you are contributing in a way that increases our productivity, increases our economic participation and increases the size of our 'economic pie'—to quote a former Treasurer and Prime Minister—for the future. We have increased competition in our region and worldwide. We are in a society that is flatter than it has ever been before. People can compete more than ever before and have access to information more than they have ever had before.

One of the policy areas that we need to look at in this place moving forward is creating provisions which encourage people to do their best. One thing that strikes me about the system in the United States is that it encourages people to achieve very high levels. It is not just a matter of ticking a box about how many people are achieving a degree. Professor Bradley's work has a goal of 40 per cent of people achieving a bachelor's degree, and that is a worthy goal, but in the US supertalented people not only go to university to achieve an academic qualification but are encouraged to look at their ideas, take them to market and create their own opportunities. The more we can encourage people to create their own opport­unities and create their own future and not just rely on the old idea of 'achieve your degree and move into the workforce' but rather start their own businesses and look for their own spot in the market to employ people to continue to encourage our great entrepreneurial culture the better our country will be, the better out economic welfare will be and the more we will be able to achieve.

This bill makes some changes that the opposition support. It was undoubtedly a comprehensive review by Professor Bradley, someone who is certainly worthy of consideration in this respect. We take seriously the recommendations that she has moved and that the government are now trying to enact. But we say that we should continue to look for ways to improve our higher education system into the future so people are able to gain opportunities with what they have and are encouraged to achieve to the highest of their ability in the future. That is an important element of having an accessible education system but also an education system that, with achieve­ment in mind, is based on encouraging the best out of our young people and not just ticking boxes. Something that we need to consistently look at in this place is how we make our education system more dynamic, encouraging people to engage with tertiary education not just when leaving school but, as they go through their career, to use the old phrase, to continue to engage in lifelong learning so that they are always looking at new ways to do things, always looking to engage in a different way and always looking at arguments from different perspectives so that they are achieving as much as they possibly can.

There is no doubt that we have to compete. We have to have a more dynamic and flexible tertiary education sector. We should be looking at the ways that young people are able to engage with it using the accessibility of the internet, particularly when it comes to regional areas. When I was growing up in Mildura, which is a long way from a capital city, it always had that tyranny-of-distance problem that many people in regional areas such as in the electorate of my friend in front of me, the member for Grey, consistently face. Now more than ever younger people in those regions are able to continue to live in those regions and still engage in tertiary education because of the accessibility of the internet.

Mr Craig Thomson interjecting—

And you do not need the member for Dobell to spend $35 billion to do it either. You can do it a lot cheaper than some on the other side would like to do it and give people access to higher education for the future and also to ensure that our regional areas are strong.

One of the great challenges of regional areas has always been the loss of talent when young people go off to university and inevitably stay in the city. Not many return. One of the opportunities as we move into the future is that young people leaving school can stay and work in the regions and also achieve higher education qualifications at the same time, increasing the capacity of our regional areas to achieve what we want them to achieve and to grow how we want them to grow. This is an important bill that is worthy of support. As I said, we think there are some improvements that should be made. I support in principle Professor Bradley's recom­mendation, which is contained in this bill, that we have a goal of 40 per cent of young people having bachelor's degrees. I put a caveat on that: it should not just be about ticking that box; rather, we should be aiming to get the most out of our young people by having the best system we can have to encourage people to study in whichever field and however they are able to do it so that they can go on and create their own opportunities, which of course creates economic opportunities and increases social wellbeing in our country into the future.

With those remarks, I indicate that I support the bill's intent. I hope the government sees the wisdom in encouraging freedom of speech—I know there are members on the other side who wish that they could be more open and more able to speak freely on a range of issues. This bill would be a good way for them to start to encourage that greater freedom of speech approach. I understand that some of the newer members opposite who entered this place after the last couple of elections have a desire for that freedom of speech, that freedom of expression. I hope they are able to use this bill to make that indication known.

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

The member for Mayo's contribution does remind me that the contribution of the previous government to higher education was to tie funding to the compulsory introduction of Work Choices in universities. I will be saying something about that later. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the member for Mayo not only quoting but endorsing the words of former Prime Minister Paul Keating. I actually did not think I would ever hear the day that the member for Mayo would come in here and quote Paul Keating in glowing terms and say that what he said about higher education was actually right. So it is a red-letter day today: the member for Mayo is out there supporting Paul Keating and the Labor legacy in higher education and education generally. I will come back to that legacy later on as well, because I think the member for Mayo has made a very good, telling point, which I will emphasise a bit more later in my contribution. I do thank him for bringing to the attention of the House the very wise words of former Prime Minister Paul Keating and the contribution that he made to both productivity and higher education. Congratulations to the member for Mayo: that was a fine contribution.

The Australian government is fully committed to transforming Australia's higher education system through implementing a demand driven system for funding higher education providers for undergraduate places. This results from the 2008 Bradley review that this government instituted to look at what we needed to do to fix up higher education, to make sure that Australia is leading the way in higher education rather than falling back as we saw happen in the previous 11 years.

I was listening earlier to the contribution of my colleague the member for Robertson from the Central Coast, who was talking about how Australia had fallen back over the 11 years between 1996 and 2007. She referred to some of the countries that had overtaken us, one of which was Finland. The member for Mayo was saying that making sure we have the right number of people with degrees is not just about ticking boxes. He is absolutely correct in that analysis. It is interesting to note that Finland has the highest growth in productivity in the world, and has for some years. Their investment in education, from childhood education right through to tertiary education, is clearly linked to those productivity outcomes. What we saw in the decade of neglect under the previous government was Australia going backward and countries that invested in higher education, like Finland, moving forward, being highly productive and changing their economies. Again, the member for Mayo was right to bring that point to the attention of the House as being a very important point. Really, the member for Mayo should have come across to this side of the House to deliver his speech because so much of what he was saying is what we on this side of the House have been saying for so long. Unfortunately, very few of those on the other side have been making that point, but he did a great job of that.

The Higher Education Support Amend­ment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill gives effect to the implementation of a demand driven funding system for undergraduate student places at public universities from 2012. It will do so by removing the current cap on funding for undergraduate Commonwealth supported places. This is an exceptionally important reform because it means that demand is going to determine issues of access to higher education and the number of places and the types of courses offered. This will have a particularly strong effect on regional univ­ersities. As the member for Robertson pointed out earlier, we on the Central Coast are lucky enough to have the Central Coast campus of the University of Newcastle. If there were any university campus in Australia that epitomised the model Prof­essor Bradley was looking at it would be this campus in my electorate. The university also integrates a community college and a TAFE, and they are doing a terrific job in providing services and making sure that the people of the Central Coast have access to a university. The reforms in this piece of legislation will enable the university to better target the courses that are run and the places that are available, providing greater opportunities for the people in my electorate.

This is particularly important in elect­orates like mine, when we are talking about having a target of 40 per cent of young people having bachelor degrees. In my electorate that figure is just under 10 per cent. There have been historic problems in my region concerning access to higher education and this government is about trying to address those problems. The reference that the member for Mayo had to the previous Labor government is again a good one, because the university campus in my electorate would not be there but for the Hawke-Keating government and the tremendous work and advocacy of my predecessor, Michael Lee, the former member for Dobell, who was able to successfully get that campus instituted on the Central Coast. That is the sort of thing that Labor does. We know how important education is because of the opportunities it creates. It gives people the chance, no matter what background they have, to maximise their potential. The former member for Dobell, Michael Lee, is owed a great debt of gratitude from the people of the Central Coast for fighting very hard to get that campus up and running. It is a pity that not long after that campus was built we had to endure the 11 barren years of the Howard government in the area of higher education.

My area particularly needs these reforms because it will continue to open up these opportunities for young people. What we have found in the past is that, with limited places at the university on the Central Coast, many students have had to go to Sydney. That is a four-hour round trip commuting, which many young people find difficult, and often they drop out of university. There is then the flow-on effect of their lack of qualifications and their suitability for jobs. That is an issue that goes on to affect the economy.

As a country, we need to make sure that we are creating the workforce to match the jobs of the 21st century. For Australia to remain and continue to be competitive, we must upskill our workforce to make sure it has the opportunities in education not just for its own self-betterment but for that of the economy. With unemployment at less than five per cent and tipped to go down, issues of workforce and the availability of work very much mean that we need a smarter and better educated workforce.

One of the things that employers often speak to me about on the Central Coast, where we have unemployment a couple of percentage points higher than the national and state averages, is that we have jobs here but often have to fill them with people from Sydney because we do not have people locally who have the qualifications. It is universities like the Central Coast campus of the University of Newcastle that will be able, if this bill goes through, to offer more places locally to get our local workforce to the stage where it is able to fill the jobs that are there.

It is important that we look at what the previous government did not do for higher education. What they did not do was make investments in higher education. What they did do—their single biggest reform of higher education—was to tie funding for every higher education worker in the country to the offering of AWAs under Work Choices. This was pushing their ideological bent to new levels not seen in the wider employment area. In universities and higher education generally across Australia, a university's funding would be held back and it would not get its funding unless it could demonstrate that every employee had been offered an AWA. This philosophical bent, this particular issue that they have with the labour market, is one that we know will not go away. We have seen Barry O'Farrell leap back into this space. We know that the member for Mayo and many of those on the other side still strongly hold the view that that was the right thing to do. That was their single biggest contribution to higher education. Meanwhile, Australia has slipped further and further behind other countries in terms of its investments and the number of people with degrees. We also continue to have issues around capacity constraints that the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia continually warned the previous government about. But their contribution was: 'Let's impose Work Choices on every higher education worker. That is our answer. That is our contribution to higher education.'

It really typifies the approach that the other side took to education generally. They were not about rebuilding schools; they were not about getting higher quality teachers in schools. They were about putting flagpoles in schools. It does not matter at what level you look, the contribution of the previous government to education was about cheap gimmicks and pushing an ideology on workforces that did not accept it. It is something they really should be condemned for.

This is an important bill because it frees up and responds to the demand for places in universities. It is particularly important for regional universities, like the one in my electorate. The bill is very important if we are to ensure that Australia's workforce is better placed to respond to the changes in the economy and the changes in the world that are taking place and to continue to make Australia very competitive. This is part of a Labor agenda that, as the member for Mayo was able to plot for us, goes back over previous Labor governments. We had an 11-year hiatus in contributions to education at all levels. Thankfully, this government is getting this country and our higher education system back on track with real investment and real reforms to the way in which universities are run. I commend this bill to the House.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011. It is uncontentious, I think, that the health and vigour of the higher education sector is of critical importance to Australia in so many ways. It is critical to the enrichment of the lives, the opportunities and the earning prospects of those who study at universities. It is critical to the importance of the higher education system as a place where extremely important research in a whole range of areas occurs, and it is absolutely critical to our national competitiveness and our national economic performance. Therefore, all Australians and certainly all members of this parliament have a critical interest in the performance of the higher education system, and particularly the university system.

This bill, to a degree, increases the amount of flexibility available to universities and, to a degree, makes it easier for universities to respond to student demand. To that extent, we on this side of the House support that broad direction. But we also make the point that there is so much more that could be done to bring flexibility to this sector and that there would be very considerable public policy benefits from doing so. In the brief time available to me, I want to first of all illustrate the general principle as to the importance of the univ­ersity sector; second, note that this bill does go some distance towards improving the position of universities, and to that extent it is to be welcomed; and, third, make the point that there is so much more that can and must be done if we are to maximise the capacity of universities to contribute to our national life, our national economic performance and our national competitiveness.

Let me start closely with the proposition that the university sector is of critical importance to our nation. If you look, for example, at the submission made by Universities Australia to the Bradley inquiry, it is now some three years old but the broad dimensions still remain valid and are worth highlighting. In that submission it is pointed out that the university sector is worth in excess of $15 billion. There are around a million students and around 100,000 employees. The point is made, amongst other things, that the education sector is a very substantial generator of export earnings. Of course, it is important to our society in so many ways beyond simply the generation of export earnings.

The critical importance of the university sector to national innovation and in turn, therefore, to national economic performance cannot be overstated. Over the years we have seen some fine examples of the comm­ercialisation of Australian innovations based upon their initial development in the research sector. I think all Australians look with pride at the performance of companies like Cochlear, which is a world leader in the hearing implant devices sector. In a related area, the communications sector, many mob­ile phones around the world embody technology which was developed, as it happens, not by universities but by the CSIRO, but I think the same general point remains—that the research activities carried out in Australian institutions are of enormous economic importance. It is evident that scientific and technical research is critical to the performance of so many industries that are central to the Australian economy, including agriculture, mining and manu­facturing.

It is also evident that as our economy transforms it is increasingly important that we are world competitive in the quality of our thinking, in the quality of our innovation and in the quality of our research. We must be a knowledge economy if we are to survive and prosper. We will not compete success­fully on the basis of low-paid jobs, and if we seek to do that we will be competing against many countries which have the capacity to offer employment at much lower levels than is consistent with Australian expectations. Therefore, we need to survive and prosper in the world based upon our capacity for innovation and clever thinking, and the university sector is critical and central to that.

The importance of the university sector passes through all stages of the career of individuals within the university system—the importance of education at the bachelors degree level for those starting out on their careers, the importance of research work being done by postgraduate scholars, and the importance of research work and teaching work being done by full-time academics. So the role of the university sector is absolutely critical in building a highly skilled pop­ulation and in underpinning an economy which prospers based upon innovation.

The second point I wish to make is to acknowledge that this bill does go some distance towards improving the position of universities, which has become increasingly difficult. Universities have faced, partic­ularly since the arrival of the Rudd-Gillard government, very significant constraints on their ability to manage their own resources and to raise their own revenue. Indeed, one of the early actions of the Rudd-Gillard government was to create even greater diffi­culties for universities by abolishing their right to offer undergraduate full-fee-paying places. But presently, prior to this bill passing into law, it remains the case that universities are under very severe constraints in relation to the number of places that they may offer and receive funding for. In essence, the number of places that they may offer is centrally controlled. This is poor policy: it is outdated policy and it greatly limits the managerial freedom of univ­ersities; it greatly limits the incentive for them to bring to bear innovative and clever thinking in the way they conduct their own affairs; and it makes it very difficult for the fundamental principle of competition to apply between different universities, because right now there are very few rewards for coming up with, for example, a degree program which better suits the needs of students than do the degree programs of other institutions. Under the bill that is before the House, from 2012 universities will be able to determine the number of students they choose to admit to undergraduate courses, with the exception of medical courses. This is consistent with the recom­mendation in the Bradley Inquiry that we move to a 'student demand driven system'.

It might be thought rather curious that a full-scale review was required to arrive at the recommendation that we ought to move to a system that was driven more by student demand than it presently is. The mere fact that a major change in thinking was required reminds us how institutionalised the instinct towards detailed centralised control has become in the university sector, as in so many other sectors. But, nevertheless, it is plainly a sensible principle. Of course, there are significant limits to the extent to which the Gillard government has been prepared to implement the principle of a student demand driven system—for example, by excluding both undergraduate medical students and, at this stage, all postgraduate students.

The third point I make is that, while the changes in this bill, to the extent that they increase the degrees if freedom of universities, are to be welcomed, there is much more that could be done in this direction. We must remind ourselves that Australia is in a fierce, international comp­etition for people of talent and ability. Similarly, there is fierce competition between nations and their effectiveness in making the best use of the talents and capacities of their existing population. In competing in that process, the university system is a national asset of critical strategic importance. To maximise the capacity of universities to perform well, it is so important that they are given the greatest possible managerial flexibility. I commend the work of my predecessor as member for Bradfield, Dr Brendan Nelson, during his time as Minister for Education, Science and Training in the Howard government.

I think it is worth considering the model of the United States higher education system. The US is widely recognised as having the best research universities in the world. Jonathan Cole, formerly Provost of Colum­bia University, recently wrote a very interesting book entitled The Great American University: Its Rise To Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected. I cite this book not just because I hold a degree from Columbia University, as well I might add as two from Sydney University, but because it is relevant to the broader policy issue of how we best unleash the potential of the Australian university sector. In his book, Dr Cole notes that 40 of the top 50 universities in the world are in the United States, according to the research based assessment from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Since the 1930s, roughly 60 per cent of all Nobel prizes have gone to Americans, and a very high proportion of leading new industries in the United States, perhaps as many as 80 per cent, are derived from discoveries at US universities. Dr Cole says:

These universities have evolved into creative machines unlike any other that we have known in our history—cranking out information and discoveries in a society increasingly dependent on knowledge as the source for its growth.

If we are honest when we compare our university system in Australia with the US system, we will see there is much we can learn. The US system is highly decentralised and competitive, whereas our system is heav­ily centrally controlled—notwithstanding some of the welcome changes in this bill. The United States system has multiple tiers and recognises that only a minority of universities in any system can be world class. In Australia, following the dreadful reforms instituted by John Dawkins when he was Minister for Employment, Education and Training, we persist in pretending that all 39 universities are equal and that all can be world class. Our system is too heavily dependent on government funding, and universities are not given sufficient freedom to go out and earn additional revenue

Returning to the Universities Australia submission to the Bradley review, it is interesting to look at a chart that compares funding to universities in Australia and the United States as a share of gross domestic product. While that chart notes that public funding in the US is greater than ours, what really stood out to me is that private funding in the US for the university system is greater by a factor of 119 per cent than private funding in Australia for the university system. That is a very significant difference. I would suggest to the House that the success of the system of great research universities in the United States is at least in part a consequence of the much greater managerial flexibility afforded to those charged with the management of these institutions and their greater capacity to earn private income in addition to public funding.

The reforms in the bill before the House, to the extent that they allow universities a greater degree of freedom, autonomy and capacity to plot their own course, are welcome. I do note, though, that that extent is modest and there is a great deal more that can be done if we are to pursue a policy framework which allows our universities to maximise their capacity to contribute to our national wellbeing, our national economic performance and the personal fortunes of those who are lucky enough to attend them. If we are truly to unleash the capacity of the university sector we need to go considerably further than this bill takes the matter.

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011. I do so with some degree of pleasure—it is a big change in the way that students will be able to access higher education and to the way that the system works. I do so for a number of reasons, some of which I will outline in my contribution. This bill does a number of things. It has one primary purpose, but a number of objectives that it will be able to achieve, and it is about also the policy idea that people of all backgrounds can get a fair go, which means an opportunity to have access to university and to have a university education. The bill itself cannot do all of that but it can provide part of the framework for an enabling environment for that oppor­tunity. As the Prime Minister and the minister are wont to say, it is transformative, and it is a number of other things as well. If a person has a desire to go to university and they get that opportunity, that is thrilling. I can remember the thrill of being accepted into university and I am sure there are people in this place who have been to university and remember that feeling of arriving on campus on the first day. For some, it is a natural progression in life because they have grown up knowing that that is what they will do, that they will go to university and it is part of a normal progression of the things that they will do. For others, it is something that they dream of and think will never happen. And some end up there having never dreamt of it or saw it as part of their experience. The government are not only focused on ensuring that people from all backgrounds get that opportunity if they desire it—and not every­body wants it—but also on creating an environment whereby people can see that if they want to. Some people growing up in different backgrounds think it is not something they will ever do, that it is for other people. The law alone cannot change all things, but it can and does provide the opportunity and it can and does over time change and shape thinking. This bill charts the way forward for these things to happen.

As the legislation states:

The main purpose of this Bill is to implement a demand driven system for funding undergraduate places at higher education providers ...

And they are mainly public universities. The legislation refers to table A and table B. I was not too sure what that meant, but I did read it because I thought, 'What is this about?' Table A contains mainly public universities. From 2012, the universities will be able to determine the number of students that they choose to admit to undergraduate courses with the exception of medical courses—and I will say a little more about that later. Except in specific circumstances, the government will no longer regulate this aspect of a university's operations, and the Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding for these places will not be limited.

Within the bill there are three schedules and they amend the Commonwealth Grant Scheme provisions and the Higher Education Support Act to abolish the student learning entitlement, SLE. The SLE currently limits a student to the equivalent of approximately seven years full-time study as a Common­wealth supported student. With the removal of the SLE, the amendments to the Higher Education Support Act are required to ensure that people are able to request a refund of their student contribution and reduction in the HELP debts under special circumstances.

It is nice to come into this place and talk about a bill that has widespread support. Across the parliament everyone will have their own view, but generally there is support and it shows that this bill is on the right track in its policy settings and policy direction. I also note that Universities Australia strongly support the bill and that it was one of the key recommendations of the Bradley review, a review that set out policy directions for higher education. In my thinking, I broadly endorsed everything in the Bradley review, though there was not enough in it about regional areas and it could have done more in that area. But the government have done more policy work in that area. Coming from a regional area, I look at any report in this regard to see what is in there. I think we need to do a bit more thinking around that. The student learning entitlement has been around for a long time, but it is something that is unnecessary.

The bill also amends the Higher Education Support Act to promote free intellectual inquiry. Free intellectual inquiry is an important principle and underpins higher education and the development of thinking. And that will become an object of the act. Universities Australia and a range of other groups in the sector, including the union, as I understand it, support this because it is universities and it is higher education. As much as we want universities to provide people with the necessary skills and qualif­ications to participate in the workforce and in the changing workforce around goods, services and skills—and that is necessary—universities should and do maintain intell­ectual endeavour, intellectual inquiry and free-thinking. People come out of univer­sities with degrees that equip them to work broadly or to work specifically as a global citizen. When you come out of university, it is good to have that grounding in free-thinking.

It does not cover medical graduates but there have been developments in that area. This government have provided a lot of additional places for medical graduates. We know that the number of places will rise from around 1,900 to over 3,000, an increase of over 60 per cent. With the previous government there was a cap on those medical places. It was necessary to deal with that and increase the number so that we will have enough doctors, because there is a doctor shortage in Australia. We want to make sure we have that corrected for the future.

I live in Lismore, a university town or city. Having a university in our local area is a good thing. It is a good thing for education and for opportunity, and it is a good thing for the regional economy—it is one of the drivers of the regional economy. If you look at the research and the statistical evidence of what having a university does for regions, it certainly is one of the big employers and it puts a lot of money into the local and regional economy. It also acts as a flagship and as a stimulus for people to think about going to university when they might not otherwise have done so. The traditional experience was that you went off to the city to go to university. Some people still debate that. Some people say it costs more to have universities in regional areas. Yes, it does, but sometimes we have to bear those costs for essential public policy, and that is one of those ongoing issues.

Having Southern Cross University in our area is clearly of great benefit to the whole area. I say it is in Lismore, my home town, but there are also campuses in Coffs Harbour, Tweed Heads and the Gold Coast. It has a very large footprint across the North Coast and Northern Rivers. According to its website, Southern Cross University has a total of 16,322 students, and there is a breakdown of how many are full time and part time and the number of international students onshore and offshore. I am closely connected to our university. I am on the governing council and have the public policy perspective of being in this place, dealing with legislation and all those other issues. I am very interested in that. I have a longstanding association with Southern Cross University, starting with when it was Northern Rivers College of Advanced Education before it became a university, from which I graduated, as well as Macquarie University. So I have a special place for Southern Cross University, and I know that the vice chancellor, Peter Lee, is quite pleased with the changes that this legislation will bring, as are the other vice chancellors as well.

This bill reforms the Commonwealth Grants Scheme, which provides the Australian government's financial contri­bution to a student's place at university. Australian universities will no longer be asked by the government to ration Common­wealth students' supported places among students competing to get a bachelor degree. The government has committed to increase the target for the number of young people receiving a bachelor degree to 40 per cent by 2025. That is important so that we have the necessary skills and qualifications for our economy and for our workforce. I note that people often do not think of education as an export earner, yet it is our third largest export in terms of the money it brings in. When we think about exports we often think about more tangible things, we do not think about the goods and services sector; yet education clearly is one of the big ones and very important to our national economy. This bill locates it within that broader framework.

From 1 January 2012, universities will have greater flexibility to respond to student demand and to employer and industry needs. The Commonwealth Grants Scheme will fund universities not on the basis of the number of places the education minister decides they will be given but the number of places they provide and can provide. The bill will remove the legislative cap on the Commonwealth Grants Scheme. By 2012, the government will have increased higher education expenditure on teaching and learning by 30 per cent in real terms since 2007. I know that is something that the higher education sector welcomes. Expend­iture had been going down. According to the national and OECD figures and the comparisons, we were slipping backwards, so I welcome that percentage—an increase in expenditure by 30 per cent in real terms since 2007. With those comments, I commend this bill to the House.

Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011 and in support of statements made by my coalition colleagues. Our university system plays an important role in fostering the expansion of our younger—and some older—minds. An ancillary benefit to the expansion of human knowledge, research and inquiry that our tertiary sector provides is that our universities and their facilities are equipping our people with the necessary skills to participate and excel in our multibillion dollar economy.

The nature and increasing competitiveness of the globalised economy means that Australia cannot merely compete but must excel at all levels and in all sectors. A mostly glowing report on Australia recently publish­ed in the Economist highlighted our tertiary education sector as one of the areas that was letting us down:

However, the most useful policy to pursue would be education, especially tertiary education. Australia's universities, like its wine, are decent and dependable, but seldom excellent. Yet educated workers are essential for an economy competitive in services as well as minerals.

I totally disagree—our wines are first class! However, it is hard to ignore this objective critique by the Economist of our higher education system, especially when it is backed up by authorities such as Professor Simon Marginson, from the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne. In reference to the critique in the Economist, Professor Marginson states:

It's absolutely spot on …

Australia spends less in public funding on universities than almost every other country in the OECD. Australia spends 0.7% of GDP and the OECD average is 1.1% of GDP …

There's been no increase in Australian Research Council funding for about 10 years. There was a major report in 2001 which led to a doubling of research funding over the next four years but there has been nothing since then.

…   …   …

The University of Toronto is in the top 20 in the world. ANU is number 56 and the University of Melbourne is 62 and they are the best two we have. Sydney is in the top 100.

It really is just about investment. That's what the article is saying—the government has to get serious about those things. Universities are a long term thing.

Australia as a whole should be doing as Dr Glenn Withers AO, Chief Executive of Universities Australia, stated:

A wave of investment can lift all. We can then ensure a new national balance by better combining the luck of natural bounty with the even greater skills and smarts of our people.

The Bradley review of Australian higher education handed down its final report in December 2008 and it is this document which forms the foundation for national debate on higher education as well as framing the policies advanced in this bill. The bill before us aspires to remove the restriction on the number of undergraduate Commonwealth supported places that Australian universities are able to offer, abolish the student learning entitlement, require universities to enter into a mission based compact with the Commonwealth government and require universities to institute policies which promote and protect free intellectual inquiry in learning, teaching and research.

The Bradley review in its final report outlined a broad vision for the restructure of the higher education sector. Amongst the recommendations was the aspirational goal of 40 per cent of Australians between the ages of 25 and 34 holding at least a bachelor's degree by 2025. The coalition supports this aspiration in principle. Investment in our tertiary education sector through research grants, capital funding for new buildings and expanding the number of tertiary institutions is vital if we are to expand the educational horizons of Aust­ralians. If the Australian government is to meet the aspirational goal of having 40 per cent of Australians between the ages of 25 and 34 holding a bachelor's degree by 2025, the Commonwealth government will have to accommodate an additional 220,000 students every year. The bill before us attempts to accomplish this by moving away from restricted supply to a demand driven funding system. This will be achieved by removing the capping system of Commonwealth supported places instituted by the Howard government under the Higher Education Support Act 2003 from 1 January 2012.

As I outlined earlier, the coalition agrees with this aspiration. But the question is: how and where do the government intend to place the extra 220,000 students that they are hoping to encourage into taking up a bachelor's degree? The removal of rest­rictions on placements is great in theory but, as with most policies of this government, it is ill thought out. The expansion of tertiary places will require a corresponding invest­ment from this cash-strapped government to actually build the infrastructure to support these places. When we have a government stripping regional Australia of over 800 Medicare access points, including in the shires of Cootamundra, Weddin and Yass in the electorate of Hume, in order to save a measly $9 million, you just know that they are not able to stump up the money for university infrastructure to back up the expansion of placements.

The move to a demand driven system away from restricted supply must fall within a broader strategy of investment in our university sector. In regional Australia, and in particular in my electorate of Hume, we have seen this government stripping away financial support for university students as well as denying opportunities to invest in university infrastructure. Although providing greater access is an objective we can all agree on in principle, this government has already betrayed this aspiration by scrapping eligibility criteria under the independent youth allowance scheme, which has greatly affected inner regional students and families in the Hume electorate. Regrettably I was absent due to illness earlier this year when hundreds of signatures on the coalition's petition to reinstate the eligibility criteria for inner regional students were tabled in the House on my behalf by the member for Forrest.

Whilst the government is claiming under this bill to expand the number of opport­unities for Australians to obtain a bachelor's degree by moving to a demand driven system, it is at the same time stripping regional students of the financial support they require so that they can survive whilst trying to obtain their degrees. These policies are self-defeating. The new demand driven funding system is estimated to cost $3.97 billion over the 2010 to 2015 period. Reinstating the criteria for inner regional students to obtain independent youth allowance would be only $90 million per annum.

A lack of access to financial support under independent youth allowance is only one of the hurdles this government is shoving in front of regional students; access to physical tertiary institutions in regional Australia is another. The Goulburn-Mulwarree Council, in conjunction with the Goulburn Chamber of Commerce, have been seeking funding under the Regional Development Australia Fund for the construction of a University of Canberra campus in the city of Goulburn. The merits of this proposal are worthy of consideration and I congratulate them on their persistent efforts, as well as the Goulburn Post, which has been following the funding merry-go-round.

Under this grant the government requires a fifty-fifty funding commitment from the local community, which effectively falls to local council authorities, such as those of Goulburn, to find the money for. How does the federal government expect local government authorities to continue to absorb the cost burdens of raising capital for projects such as these, costing up to $25 million? It is another hurdle that some of the local government representatives here in Canberra would agree is often insurm­ountable. Constructing tertiary institutions in regional centres has been a boon for local economies. Bathurst, Armidale and Wagga Wagga are examples of the benefits of that to regional students and the economies of regional centres.

The demand driven system will require a corresponding investment in tertiary fac­ilities. It is simple mathematics: if you expand the number of students, you will then be required to build the universities to host them. Cities such as Goulburn, with its proximity to inner regional Australia, as well as to Canberra and south-western Sydney, should be carefully considered for invest­ment by the Commonwealth to become the home of a university campus.

Despite this bill moving the sector to a demand driven scheme, it fails to remove a cap on numbers in one crucial faculty: medicine. This bill fails to remove the restriction on the number of places for medical students. I am aware that the placements for medical students are depend­ent upon the state government's availability to provide clinical placements for them. In rural centres in the Hume electorate we are facing a critical shortage of doctors. The township of Grenfell, with a population of nearly 3,700 people, has been left in the absolutely unjustifiable position of having neither a doctor nor a visiting medical officer for the hospital for nearly six months. The situation is being exacerbated by the shortage of doctors willing to come to reg­ional Australia and the visa requirements for overseas doctors. However, we should not have to be reliant on overseas doctors. Governments at all levels should be assisting our future regional doctors by investing in tertiary education in regional Australia and, where available, should uncap the number of placements in regional areas where the need for doctors is dire.

One final point I would like to raise with respect to this bill is in relation to the requirements under this legislation to have institutional policies in place to promote and protect free intellectual inquiry in learning, teaching and research. Interestingly, the bill does not prescribe what is to be included in these policies. That is why the coalition has attempted to amend this bill to ensure that the new policy to protect free intellectual inquiry applies to both students and academics.

The university sector has long been the bastion of social engineers on the left of the political spectrum. For decades, students have had well-founded fears that academics are more often inclined to allocate grades not on the basis of quality work and the pursuit of open and free inquiry but rather on a student's capacity to illustrate their adherence to the left-leaning political agendas of their lecturers.

The coalition's amendment to require that both students and teachers are subject to university policies on academic freedom provides protection for students who are fearful of expressing their God-given right to freedom of thought and philosophical inqu­iry. The coalition's attempt to extend the protection of students' rights to freely explore their philosophical underpinnings safe from fear of persecution does more than help students get fairer grades; it strengthens the foundation for why we have tertiary institutions in the first place.

Universities are there for all Australians to deepen their understanding of the world we live in. That is achieved through invest­igation, observation, testing, theo­rising, arguing and debating ideas about who, what, where, when and why. Academic freedom is essential to this process and that is why it must be protected at all costs.

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

I rise to speak in support of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011. I commend the government on its far-reaching insight into extending and opening up our university sector. For too long, places have been withheld because of the cap system. All universities have welcomed this piece of legislation and are looking forward to its merits.

The previous speaker, the member for Hume, made statements about students being fearful of persecution from lecturers. Obv­iously, he has not been in touch very much with universities recently. I do not think there is a student who is fearful of any lect­urer at the moment. The current generation of students are more than willing to demand their marks, their scores and their ideas are respected and adhered to. One issue we need to ensure is that universities are free to embrace all ideas. Nowadays, if you go onto a university campus you will see that one of the frightening things is the conservative nature of the university populace across the board, and I do not mean that in a political sense. They are not radical environments anymore. They are not the hothouses that the opposition keeps referring to. Nowadays, it is mostly about 'Heads down, bums down, get in, get a degree and get out.' Students do not actually have time to engage anymore; they are too busy passing their three- or four-year degree in order to get out and get a job. So they are not racking up too much of a HECS debt. They are not involved in lots of things. They have part-time jobs to pay their mobile phone bills and car bills. So maybe you should visit a university occasionally, speak to some students and understand the reality of what is actually transpiring on these campuses. I am lucky enough in my electorate to have two very large univ­ersities: Monash University in Clayton, one of the largest campuses in Australia; and Deakin University's city campus site. The latter is a rural university, and bizarrely they have a campus in the city, which I think is a great thing because the actual headquarters of the university is in the regions, in Geel­ong, but they have a city campus in Burwood. It of course has more students than downtown Geelong, but it is a thriving place and there is a great integration between the two sectors. I also have one of the largest TAFEs in Australia, Box Hill TAFE, which is a thriving institution.

I have been very pleased that this federal government has taken the importance of education at all levels so seriously, partic­ularly within the higher education sector and within universities. But we have also not forgotten TAFEs. One of the great things we have done, unlike what the member for Hume was talking about, is that we have actually funded infrastructure in universities. I have been thrilled to see my universities and my TAFE receiving grants for funding of actual buildings—which had stalled under the Howard government. I did not get to go to any openings of new premises at my two very big universities or TAFE during my nine years in opposition, because there was no funding given for them.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science, Technology and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, that's tragic: did you cry?

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

But now I have been to lots and lots of openings! The member for Fadden may cry tears but he can just suck it up!

Mr Robert interjecting—

I have been to many, many openings. The $86 million being given to Monash University for the New Horizons Centre is going to provide an enormous—

Mr Robert interjecting—

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Fadden is being extremely disorderly, as he is out of his place.

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

benefit to the higher education sector. The $16 million given to—

Mr Robert interjecting—

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Do you want to debate it with the member?

Mr Robert interjecting—

Order! The member will resume her seat. I am issuing a warning to the member for Fadden.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science, Technology and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, for stuff's sake.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Fadden will leave the chamber for one hour. That was very disrespectful.

The member for Fadden then left the chamber.

The member for Chisholm has the call.

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

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I think that sadly it highlights the complete disregard for this really important bill before the House today that someone can be that outrageous when we are talking about something that is so vitally important to all of us. Everybody has been speaking about the need for change in this area, and we have just seen that disgraceful display.

I have been absolutely thrilled within my electorate to see us putting money into infrastructure, into buildings, because we want more people to go to these facilities—$86 million to Monash University for the New Horizons Centre; $16 million to GippsTAFE, to update it from the antiquated situation is was in. The pleasure of going to Holmesglen TAFE, just outside my electorate, to open up their fantastic new building for their childcare centre, offering both diploma and degrees within that setting. And offering money for buildings—because yes, if you get more students, you actually need new buildings. But we are ahead of the game: we have been funding the new buildings.

As for the continual catcalling about the 'school halls rort', I have not been to a primary school and opened their Building the Education Revolution building and not been warmly welcomed. I have not been part of a community that is not absolutely ecstatic about what they have got and what we are leaving behind as a legacy for their education. To go to Kerrimuir Primary Sch­ool, Glendal Primary School, Mount Scopus, Huntingtower, St Leonards—all the primary schools within my electorate. The one I am looking forward to most that has not finally happened is of course where my children go to school! We are very much looking forward to opening their fantastic new hall very soon. But all of these have been welcomed because, as I say at all the openings of these things, and at all the other events, good teaching outcomes do not come with good buildings; good teaching out­comes come from good teachers. But it makes it a lot nicer and lot better to be teach­ing in good environments, to be teaching in 21st century environments, absolutely recog­nising the pedagogy of the day. So, yes, the demand driven funding will require more space, but we have already put money into that environment so there will be more space available.

The government is committed to increasing the proportion of 25- to 34-year-old Australians with a qualification at bachelor level or above to 40 per cent by 2025. This is a credible benchmark that we should be striving for. Australia is actually slipping behind in the number of graduates we have. We are competing in a global world. In my seat I have a high proportion of people born overseas, the majority now coming in as skilled migrants from China and India. And that is terrific, in one space, but it is also a bit frightening when we are competing with so many terrific graduates from China and India and we are not training up our own. We should be training up our own. Many of these graduates, of course, are actually educated in my electorate, because they got their qualifications from Monash University—and that is a good thing too: overseas students have been a great benefit to my community and we want to ensure that we continue to have that opportunity for the benefits of our whole community of having that mix of ethnicities there.

But we need to be increasing the number of people going to university. Like many in this place I am a first-generation university graduate in my family. My parents did not get to go to university. As I have often said in this place, my mother got to go to university and I got to go to her graduation, but I was about 24 when she finally graduated from university. She put herself through part-time study. It was one of the proudest days of our family's life, my mum getting her degree. I think we need to be encouraging people and understanding that education is lifelong—it doesn't end. We need to recognise that people come in and out and train. And one of the great things about the TAFE sector is encouraging people to also take up those qualifications at an older age.

Education is also fundamental to ensuring that Australia is participating fully and benefiting from the global knowledge economy. The economy of the future will require more Australians to be degree-qualified. Demand for professional managers and community and professional services is high and growing. More professionally qualified people will be needed in the future—for instance, in health care, engin­eering and mining. Education is also vitally nationally important and, as I have described, particularly in my electorate. It is also the heart of the economy in my electorate. More people who live in my electorate are actually employed within the higher education sector than across the board. Not only do I have significant higher education institutions; I have very large government and non-government schools. A large proportion of my electorate is highly educated and they very much value the notion of higher education. As they often say in places, I have more PhDs per square metre in my seat than most people can deal with! But I think this is a terrific thing, and it really highlights the need for more people to be taking up qualifications.

There are also a number of nationally renowned organisations which exist within my seat that need qualified individuals—CSIRO; the Monash Sustainability Institute; the Australian Synchrotron, just outside my electorate—which I am hoping will continue as a fine tradition of education and research endeavour—the GOC, which is Telstra's very large research and development and platform for a lot of its telecommunications; as well as some other big research areas; because they all congregate around CSIRO and Monash University, it makes sense to have them within a precinct. But all those places require qualified individuals, and those individuals do not just stay with that job and that one qualification. They are always retraining. They are always being asked to do more. So this bill will also ensure that people can continue in that higher education space.

The bill further strengthens the govern­ment's commitment to education by creating a demand driven higher education sector. It implements the government's commitment to funding growth in undergraduate student places and further opening the doors of university education. The bill implements a number of reforms proposed by the Bradley review, a broad review of Australian higher education commissioned in 2008.

Again, the member for Hume was talking about one of the implications of the Bradley review—about the changes to student youth allowance. The changes that this government has introduced in student youth allowance have actually increased the number of people attending university, particularly from regional centres, because it has recognised not just distance but people's incomes. We have modified that to ensure that more and more people can have access to universities.

One of the bizarre things about my electorate is that, while the university is sitting there, the people who live in the suburbs right next door to the university are the least likely to go there because of the sociodemographics of that neck of the woods. This bill will hopefully ensure that people in my neck of the woods who live within walking distance of that university will now have the benefit of maybe getting the opportunity to attend.

Firstly, the government will no longer set the number of places a university can offer. It will make its contribution to the cost of education of all students admitted to undergraduate courses of study. The legis­lative cap on the Commonwealth Grant Scheme is being removed by the bill so that universities will be funded based not on the number of places which the education minister decides they will be given but on the number of places they provide, so it will be up to the university to decide. They will be able to drive and look at what is the best mix for them. They will be able to say, 'These are the areas we want to go to; we need these places,' instead of turning people away, which currently happens.

This means that as at January 2012 universities such as Monash and Deakin will have greater flexibility to respond to the needs of students, employers, industries and their local communities. The capacity of the universities to be funded by places they provide is being supported by the govern­ment's increased spending on higher educ­ation. By 2012 the government will have increased higher education expenditure on teaching and learning by 30 per cent in real terms since 2007.

I think one of the things that we as a Labor government have not sold our story on is what we have done in the higher education space. We have done so much in this space since coming into government, because we saw higher education and universities completely denuded under the Howard government. There were so many restrictions on what they could do and how they could do it, and funding was taken away. One of the issues that we are still grappling with, of course, is voluntary student unionism. Whilst you may want to talk about unions and all the rest of it, it has actually deleted a whole lot of terrific services on my university campuses. Monash University is not in town; it is in Clayton. There ain't a lot there, and you cannot leave it because it is in the middle of nowhere. Once you are there, if you have arrived by public transport, you stay there for the day. A lot of the activities, the life on campus, have just gone and you are captive. You actually cannot go down the road—as the former minister for education in the Howard government said—to buy a sausage roll because there is not anywhere down the road near downtown Monash University to get it. So we have done a lot in this space, but more needs to be done.

This year the government will fund more than 480,000 undergraduate places at public universities. Particularly, this will greatly assist my electorate of Chisholm. The bill also eliminates the student learning entitle­ment that limits a Commonwealth supported student to seven years of study. It makes for a simpler, fairer system. Now a student who completes a three-year undergraduate science degree and subsequently goes on to a six-year medical degree will not suffer financial hardship by virtue of their study going beyond seven years. This is partic­ularly important for people who are at the University of Melbourne under the Melbourne model. It was going to be a huge impost on those students who were seeking to study under that regime.

Added to this flexibility, the government will engage each higher education provider in a mission based compact. These compacts will ensure that each university is aligned to a national higher education framework in terms of teaching, research, training and innovation. We want world-class univ­ersities. We have world-class universities. We want to maintain and grow them. The TEQSA Bill, moved earlier this week in respect of standards in universities, is also ensuring that this place will be great. The result is that this government is better informed about future research directions, approaches to innovation and efforts to train Australia's research workforce. It also means that the Australian education system is able to deliver high-quality education that is internationally oriented and recognised. This is something that is very much driven within my electorate at Monash University and Deakin University.

Importantly, this bill will also amend the Higher Education Support Act to promote free intellectual inquiry—and, unlike the member for Hume, I think that is a good thing. I think it is something that the universities have been calling for. Free intellectual inquiry will become an object of the act, and that is something we should be proud of. (Time expired)

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011. I was very interested in listening to the contribution made by the member for Chisholm. We would disagree, of course, most vehemently on voluntary student unionism. As somebody who was forced to pay that upfront fee, I think it does deny access to a lot of students who otherwise cannot afford that fee.

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

Oh, 200 bucks; dream on!

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Chisholm is being extremely disorderly!

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

However, the bill before us today is the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill, and I will refer to it. Australia is fortunate to enjoy one of the finest education systems in our region and one that is recognised throughout the world. Our universities are the envy of many other countries, many of which send their students to Australia to study. It has been to date a critical export and central to the success of our economy.

As we know, education is one of the critical keys to improving our society and underpinning our economy. Our universities are not only schools of knowledge and skills but places of enlightenment. They provide students with the knowledge they need to gain employment. They provide places of research at the coalface of scientific discovery. They encourage innovative think­ing. Importantly, they also give students a global perspective of the world in which we live and teach life skills as well as job skills.

As a country, the improvement of our higher education system should be one of our top five priorities, because if we truly want to become a knowledge nation, if we want to attract the best and brightest to Australia, if we want to keep the best and brightest in Australia, if we want to develop the innovators of tomorrow and lead the world in groundbreaking research, we need to unshackle our higher education sector. We can do this in a number of ways. One is by enhancing teaching and research and finding the locus between these two areas. We can do it also by encouraging a greater sense of openness and tolerance of people's views in the university sector and by ensuring that students are not put at a disadvantage academically when they express their own views on an issue. But, more significantly, we can do it by allowing universities greater autonomy over their destiny, both in funding and in the allocation of their resources, by stripping away the regulation that suffocates the higher education sector and leads to perverse incentives and perverse outcomes. While this bill moves us in the right direction by touching on these first two issues, the third is left unaddressed. What is more, it concerns us that it has taken the government this long to propose these small changes. It is an indictment of this government's ongoing mismanagement of education policy in this country.

In the time available I want to touch on three key elements of the bill. The bill seeks, firstly, to abolish the student learning entitlement which places limits on the number of years a student can study full time while in a Commonwealth supported place. The limit is generally seven years and accrues over a period of the student's study at university. The limit has been put in place to prevent students from undertaking contin­uous study at taxpayer expense. When a student qualifies for Commonwealth assistance, there is an expectation that they will endeavour to complete their studies in a reasonable time and that they will not undertake additional study that is superfluous to their professional requirements when it is taxpayers who are footing the bill.

We need to ensure that we provide stud­ents with the best possible higher education for those who are committed to learning and who have the dedication and drive to complete further study. As a society, it is important for us to ensure that these are the people that we continue to support. The famous American educationalist John Dewey once said: 'Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.' For many people the pursuit of education is indeed a lifelong goal. There are people who are interested in gaining knowledge for the sake of learning. Indeed, we all told by our teachers at school that we learn something every day, even if we are not consciously studying. This is a good principle.

However, the Howard government brought in the student learning entitlement measure because, as much as we support the principle of lifelong learning, we do not support the concept of 'professional students' who undertake continuing study at taxpayer expense with no intention of paying off their FEE-HELP or HECS debt. These are the people who, unless limits are placed on their ability to remain at university indefinitely, use additional study purely as a means to avoid the transition to work. This is only one way that we can create a sustainable educ­ation system where society is happy to assist those who have a desire for further learning but at the same time where the student recognises his or her obligations to return that investment. While their pursuit of education may seem noble to professional students, people in the workforce who are providing them with the benefits of our education system do not necessarily view it in the same light.

While Dewey was right in saying that education is life itself, we are wise to ensure that subsidised university education does not become a way of life. There must be a mechanism in place to ensure that the obligations of those who enjoy education are eventually acted upon. That is what we tried to do previously in government. We on this side of the House are not convinced that the proposal of the government is a prudent step. We propose to retain the student learning entitlement in our amendment and extend it by one year to accommodate those students who are completing longer professional degrees. But we are committed to ensuring that funding is given to those students who intend to use their education.

The second aspect I raise on this bill is the step towards demand driven education. This legislation does take a step in the right direction towards demand driven education, which is what Australia needs if we are to have a flexible system that responds in the short term as well as the long-term trends. As we know, we need an education system that is able to adapt to changes in the demand for student places and for changes in what society deems to be the most valuable skills. A top-down approach cannot facilitate this relationship, which is a complex one and relies upon the interplay between the demand for knowledge and skills in industry, the available educational resources that universities have at their disposal, the interests of individual students, the desire for universities to conduct research as well as teach, and the state of the overall economy. These variables make planning for education very difficult, and so moves towards a demand driven model are a positive development.

However, much like the Bradley report and the government's subsequent response, this is a very conservative step towards demand driven places. The report recommends a move away from restricted supply, with available places capped under the Higher Education Support Act 2003. The Bradley report suggested that some 220,000 additional students could be given a Commonwealth supported place through a removal of these restrictions and an increase in funding. But, in the end, the Bradley report did not recommend a functioning price mechanism, which meant that the idea of a demand driven education system was essentially a false one but a step towards what could potentially be real reform. The report suggested that Australia should achieve a graduate output of 40 per cent of students holding a bachelor degree in the 25- to 34-year-age group by 2020. It also proposed student entitlements, which the review believed should be limitless. The coalition agrees in principle with the target proposed by the review.

This bill proposes to allow universities to determine the number of students that they choose to admit to undergraduate courses, with a few exceptions such as people studying medical courses. Removing government regulation with respect to places is certainly the right way forward. Where a university can expand their student intake on a sustainable basis above the allocation limits imposed by the Commonwealth, they should be given the opportunity to do so. It is important to bear in mind that this is yet another issue that the government has delayed action on. The idea to implement a demand driven education system was proposed 2½ years ago in the Bradley report. Since then the government has not taken any serious action until today.

The third issue I touch is the compacts with the Commonwealth. The concept of the compacts between the Commonwealth and the universities is potentially a valuable idea. These are agreements where universities receive Commonwealth support for integ­rated teaching and research plans. If implem­ented correctly, compacts could improve the learning experience of students while also enhancing the research side of university operations.

Often there is a tension between teaching versus research. In many cases there is a trade-off between the two, with resources dedicated to one area detracting from out­comes in the other. Compacts could help reconcile the two areas and provide greater diversity to the sector. These plans would then be linked to the university's Common­wealth Grants Scheme funding agreement. However, the coalition does have concerns that compacts, if poorly implemented—and the record of the government is certainly not great on that front—have the potential to impose new regulatory burdens on tertiary institutions. Worse, they may be used by an interventionist government to micromanage the teaching and research curricula of universities and to pervert the desired outcome of a fully integrated research and teaching program. This is the basis of the coalition's amendment. We want to ensure that the government is not in a position to add further regulatory impositions on our universities.

As I mentioned earlier, we are moving to a demand based system because it is better placed to deal with the requirements of students, universities and industries. A more flexible system is the objective of the legislation. A poorly administered compact system could undermine this objective by making it harder for universities to create their own learning environments that are adaptive to the needs of both teaching and research. The coalition is aware that these two areas need not be mutually exclusive. There is and should be a great deal of overlap between the two. By incorporating the latest research into their teaching, universities can stay at the forefront of intellectual developments as they occur. But this is not what is likely to happen should this government continue to be in control of our higher education institutions. Rather than align the objectives of universities with those of the government, the government is more likely to manage the practices of the universities in exchange for the funds. This will not create more innovation in research or teaching but will simply make life harder for our universities.

Another area I would like to touch on is academic freedom. As I said at the start, our universities are more than just conduits for skills and knowledge. They are places where students can exchange ideas, intellectual as well as moral, without fear of reproach or discrimination. This bill introduces a legislative requirement for universities to promote and protect free intellectual inquiry in learning, teaching and research. What it fails to do, however, is describe exactly what policies universities might be required to put in place to ensure academic freedom is protected. Just as with their demand driven proposal, the devil is in the detail and particularly in the implementation. While we all support academic freedom at university—as, indeed, we support it everywhere—the lack of detail with regard to how the government intends to promote it means that this aspect of the bill is little more than rhetoric.

To ensure clarity in the legislation, the coalition proposes an amendment that makes explicit that the legislation applies to students as well academics. Students have the right to have their work assessed based on application and not on the political notions of the assessor. There are numerous accounts of academic bias affecting students who have reached a conclusion that does not accord with the opinions of their tutor or lecturer, despite the student having treated the topic in a perfectly adequate way from an academic perspective. Requiring universities to have a policy in place to deal with instances of academic bias will create an environment that is more intellectually rigorous, more interesting and, importantly, fairer for both teachers and students. When students are free to explore their own philosophical underpinnings without fear that their views will offend the sensibilities of their teachers then we will make our universities more vibrant and enlightened places.

The government has put forward this bill and, as I said earlier in my speech, we support some of the principles of it. We have moved a number of amendments, as I have explained. But, in conclusion, it is worth noting that the government's record in higher education is certainly not a particularly strong one. One of the first things they did when they came into government was stop Australian students from accessing full-fee-paying places. These can be accessed by overseas students but Australian students here in this country can no longer have the benefit of accessing those places.

Another thing that the previous Howard government did was put in place the Higher Education Endowment Fund—a $6 billion fund to fund the ongoing infrastructure needs of our university sector. This fund, which has morphed into the Education Investment Fund under this government, has been raided. No longer is this fund being used in perpetuity to fund the infrastructure needs of our higher education sector. It has been raided, just as the government has raided other funds that had been put in place for the long-term good of our country. The university sector will be all the poorer for it. The government does not have a great record in the higher educ­ation sector. We encourage the government to accept our amendments to the bill to improve it and we hope that they take them on board.

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

I am very pleased to rise to speak in support of this legislation, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011. I am very pleased because one of the reasons I decided to join the Labor Party, apart from the Liberal Party's stance on industrial relations, was the way they approached access to higher education. I was at university when the Howard government brought in the fee-paying places so that those who could afford to go to university could go and those who could not afford it did not have access to higher education. It was this education for the wealthy but not for everyone that drove me to join the Labor Party and to decide that I wanted to stand up and ensure that everyone got the opportunity to get a good education. That is why I am very pleased to speak in support of this legislation.

According to the Chair of Universities Australia, Professor Glyn Davis, this new legislation will directly transform the accessibility of higher education in Australia. A study by the Department of Education, Science and Training revealed that, while social stratification directly influenced the relevance and attainability of higher educ­ation among young Australians, the overall attitudes of young Australians towards higher education are similar regardless of their socioeconomic circum­stances.

Specifically, the study stated that 90 per cent of the sample reported that, all things being equal and imagining no constraints, they would prefer to undertake tertiary education of some kind after school. However, when asked whether they believed this preference for higher education would eventuate, the proportion agreeing with this fell away significantly and students from medium- and low- socioeconomic back­grounds reported that, while they hoped to go on to higher education, they believed that they would not be able to do so.

This demonstrates the clear willingness of young Australians to acquire a higher edu­cation. This government has recognised and responded to this through the introduction of this amendment as well as a number of other initiatives. This bill will significantly impr­ove the possibility for all young Australians, regardless of socioeconomic background, to receive and benefit from a university quali­fication. The government has also set ambitious targets to emphasise its comm­itment to higher educational opportunities. It is seeking to increase the proportion of 25- to 34-year-old Australians with a qualification at bachelor level or above to 40 per cent by 2025.

This bill considerably enhances the opportunities presented to young Australians and will have numerous positive effects on communities across Australia. It encourages young Australians to equip themselves with the qualifications and skills they need to secure their futures. I have often said at many functions, whether they be for a TAFE certificate, a bachelors degree or further training, that training and education is a passport to a young person's future. This bill goes significantly towards enabling students to get this passport.

Also included in the bill is the removal of the student learning entitlement, the SLE, from 2012.The SLE currently offers the equivalent of seven years full-time access to a Commonwealth supported position at an Australian university. The bill before the House will remove the SLE as an eligibility requirement for a Commonwealth supported place, such that the seven-year limit will no longer apply. The bill has been well received by Australian universities, who fully support its greater flexibility and increased respons­iveness to the needs of students. The Australian Technology Network of Univ­ersities supports this measure and believes that it would significantly reduce red tape within the sector and as such ensure that resources are better directed towards teach­ing and learning. The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations confirms that only 0.2 per cent of students currently undertaking higher educ­ation are at risk of exceeding their entitle­ment, yet the bureaucracy required to administer this system is immense. The bill before the House abandons this limit, making it easier and simpler for all Australians to access higher education, including those who wish to return to study later in life to learn new skills.

In addition to improving the educational opportunities of young Australians, this bill will also stimulate growth in the higher education sector. If Australia is to remain globally economically competitive it must promote a highly educated workforce. As Australia grows, the need for university educated workers also grows. For this reason, this bill removes the current cap on funding for undergraduate Commonwealth supported positions. Economically, this will prevent distortion of the higher education market by ensuring that student and market demands govern the number of Common­wealth supported positions offered by Australian universities; there will not just be an arbitrary figure decided by government. Australia's economy and higher education sector will greatly benefit from this demand driven system.

The bill before the House is finally moving Australia away from an outdated system of higher education funding. The old capped system was stifling the growth of Australian universities and preventing many Australians from experiencing the benefits of higher education. Australians will no longer have to compete for unnecessarily limited spaces that have been dictated by university negotiations with the government. It is estimated that in 2012 there will be over 500,000 undergraduate student positions, which equates to a 20 percent increase in the number of positions between 2008 and 2012. We are really providing much more oppor­tunity for people to study at university, to choose what they would like to study and to ensure they get opportunities for the future. Australian universities will be able to grow, diversify and innovate in response to student needs, which will greatly enhance Australia's higher education sector.

For students commencing studies in 2012 and beyond, the system will be far more efficient as Australian universities will receive funding for however many places they offer within each discipline. This process has commenced, with transitional arrangements currently underway. During the transitional period in 2010-11, the cap on funding for overenrolments has lifted from five per cent to 10 per cent, allowing universities to overenrol by 10 per cent in funding terms above their funding agreement targets. This is enabling universities to prepare and get ready for the demand driven system. This will be very important so that they can prepare for the future.

The amended legislation will significantly improve higher education as well as the lives of many people across Australia. The higher education community is looking for bipart­isanship on this issue, yet those opposite still insist on rejecting not only this legislation and the concerns of the higher education sector but also the future of young Australians who are seeking to improve themselves and gain a passport for the future.

I strongly concur with the sentiments of the National Tertiary Education Union, who express concern over the coalition's response to this bill, stating that it appears to be crude opposition for opposition's sake itself. That is not surprising considering the performance that we have seen from this coalition, who seem to oppose everything put to this House. I call on the opposition to support this bill. It will significantly enhance and increase the opportunities for young Australians. It will ensure that we have a vibrant, innovative system. I ask the opposition to stop thinking about the past, to stop harking back to the Howard era, where only wealthy children could attend university. There was no encouragement for people. There was no strategy in place for young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to attend university. If the opposition suggest that the Howard government had a strategy, then maybe they should produce it, because there was certainly no strategy that I could see to ensure that every young Australian got that opportunity; in fact, it was quite the opposite. This is sensible amending legislation that is supported by the tertiary education sector and by families who want to give their children the best opportunity. I would strongly encourage the opposition to support it. I commend the amendment bill to the House.

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

My contribution to the debate on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011 will be brief. The previous speaker, the member for Kingston, said she hoped the opposition would support this legislation. I would like to join with her in expressing that same hope, because it is so rare that we come into this parliament and find that the opposition supports good, sound, solid legislation that provides opportunity to all young Aus­tralians.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We're still waiting for some.

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

As the member for Cowan said, 'We're still waiting.' We are still waiting for the opposition to get in there and actually provide support to our legislation. They are an opposition that say no, no, no to everything. They oppose everything and have no constructive approach to being members of this parliament. It really disapp­oints me. For a parliament to work truly well you need to have an opposition that are considered in their opposition and are supportive when they need to support legislation. The bill that we have before us today is the type of legislation that I would expect all members of the opposition to support.

The bill will implement the government's commitment to demand driven funding for undergraduate student places, except places in medicine, at public universities by removing the current control on under­graduate places within the universities. That is great news for all Australian students and all those young people who want to go to university. From 2012, it will abolish the student learning entitlement. It will also require, as a condition for Commonwealth funding, that table A and table B higher education providers have a policy that upholds free intellectual inquiry in learn­ing—and that is something that worries me because those on the other side are not supportive of it—teaching and research and that they enter into a mission based compact with the Commonwealth, which is also very important.

The Australian government is fully committed to transforming Australia's higher education system through implementing a demand driven system for funding undergraduate places at higher education providers. Those providers are listed in table A of HESA. The majority of these providers are public universities. What does the demand driven system mean for those young people who are seeking to enter university? It means that there will be places available for them to attend university. It means that we will have a skilled workforce. It means that young people will have a future and an opportunity to attend university and study in their chosen area.

This bill will give effect to the imple­mentation of a demand driven funding system for undergraduate student places at public universities from 2012. By doing that, it will achieve just what I was saying a moment ago. It will remove the current cap on funding for undergraduate Common­wealth supported places and the current seven-year limit on students' eligibility to receive Commonwealth support for their higher education. Recently, I had a young man visit me in my electorate office. He had studied science and was later accepted into medicine, which meant he was going to be studying over a period longer than seven years. Because of that he was unable to receive Commonwealth support for that education. Anyone who knows anything about medicine would know that by doing science and then doing medicine he was putting himself in a position to be a better doctor. Whilst the uncapping of places does not relate to medical students, the ability to extend one's studies over seven years does.

In the demand driven funding system, universities will have greater flexibility to respond to students and markets. I have already spoken about the students and about market demands. It means that the courses provided by the universities and the places in those courses will meet the needs of the market and of students. This is good legislation that all members in the parliament should support. I am encouraged by the government's approach to this and I implore the opposition to get behind and support this legislation. It is good legislation that will deliver to Australian students and to Australian businesses.

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I apologise to my colleagues for adding to the confusion about whether I would be here in time to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011. I thank the member for Shortland, who just the other day was telling me that she was quite anxious to speak on such an important bill. Now that I am here, I rise to support the bill.

Reform and investment have been the hallmarks of this Labor government's app­roach to higher education. This bill is another piece, and a very important piece, of our reform framework for the sector. We want to help universities get ready to play their role in preparing our country to meet the economic and social challenges of the 21st century.

When we came to government in 2007, we recognised that we had a lot of work to do to undo the damage done to the university sector during the years of the Howard government. Universities were going backwards under the Howard government, struggling financially from funding cuts and pressured by the incessant micromanagement of the sector when it came to things like academic freedom and workplace relations. When it came to higher education, the Howard government's years were charact­erised by neglect and underfunding. That is not just my analysis or rhetoric. It is clearly evident in international comparisons from the time. By the time Labor came to government in 2007, public investment in universities had declined by seven per cent since 1995. Funding for our Australian universities went backwards by seven per cent. Over the same period of time, from 1995 to 2007, funding for universities within the other OECD countries increased by an average of 48 per cent.

It is clear from those figures that when Labor came to government in 2007 there was a real risk of our country being left behind by our competitors because we were not making the necessary investment in human capital to equip our country with the skills, quali­fications and innovation required by the modern global economy. From our first days in office we recognised the link between education and our nation's economic future. We recognised that spending on education is an economic investment, an investment in human capital essential for creating an innovative, productive workforce that can adapt to a rapidly changing world. We also recognised, however, that as much as the university sector required additional funding it was not enough to simply increase funding without a thorough understanding of exactly what we need our universities to achieve, their current capacity and challenges facing the sector and how we can maximise their potential.

Early in our term of government, there­fore, the then Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, asked Denise Bradley, an exper­ienced educator and university leader, to undertake an inquiry into Australia's higher education sector to help us develop policies to grow and strengthen the sector and broaden access to university education. As the Bradley report says:

The review was established to address the question of whether this critical sector of education is structured, organised and financed to position Australia to compete effectively in the new globalised economy.

The Bradley report concluded:

Analysis of our current performance points to an urgent need for both structural reforms and significant additional investment. In 2020 Australia will not be where we aspire to be—in the top group of OECD countries in terms of participation and performance—unless we act, and act now.

The government has acted and continues on its agenda to transform the scale, potential and quality of higher education in Australia, with measures like the one in this bill. The move to demand driven funding that would be achieved through this bill is tied to the participation targets recommended in the Bradley report and adopted by this government. Participation in higher educ­ation is another area where Australia has slipped behind comparable OECD countries in the last decade or so. In the period when the Howard government was cutting funding to universities, Australia fell from seventh place in 1996 to ninth place in 2006 in terms of the number of graduates in the 25 to 34 year age group.

In a study commissioned as part of the Bradley review, Access Economics predicted that in the coming decade the demand for people with higher education qualifications will exceed the supply of those graduates. The government understands completely the link between a highly skilled and qualified workforce and national productivity and prosperity. We do not want the skills shortages identified in the Access report to hold us back. The fact is that the knowledge based economy of the future will require more Australians to be degree qualified. It is clear that major changes are needed in the way our universities are structured and funded so that access to a university qualification is opened to a significantly higher proportion of our population than is currently the case.

The government has set a target of 40 per cent of 25- to 34-year-old Australians attaining a qualification at bachelor level or above by 2025. This is an ambitious target. As of 2006, the figure for degree holders in the 25 to 34 year age group was 29 per cent. We will only meet that 40 per cent target by opening the doors of higher education to a new generation of Australians, and a fair proportion of those will need to be from groups that have traditionally been under­represented in our universities: rural Australians, Indigenous Australians and people from low socioeconomic back­grounds. We have been putting in place policies to drive that demand for higher education and to encourage people to see university qualifications as part of their career path. But universities have to be part of generating that greater demand and also need to be ready to meet it. That is what the demand driven funding model is all about—opportunities for individual universities, add­ing up to growth, flexibility and diversity across the sector as a whole.

On 1 January 2012 we will see the start of a new era for universities and the way they are funded by the government. Importantly, the government will no longer set the number of undergraduate places that a university can offer. Universities are curr­ently resourced through funding agreements negotiated with the Commonwealth gover­nment which effectively cap the number of places for which public funding will be provided. It was concluded by the Bradley review that 'a demand driven, student entitlement model of funding higher education teaching is essential if Australia is to achieve better attainment of higher education qualifications'. As recommended by the Bradley review, from 2012 univ­ersities will be able to offer as many undergraduate places as they like, giving them greater flexibility to respond to student demand and employer and industry needs. Universities will set their own entry standards and determine which and how many students to enrol. The only exception to this, as we have heard from other speakers, is medicine. The government will continue to allocate Commonwealth funded places for medical degrees.

One of the outcomes we are seeking to achieve through this change to demand driven funding is an increase in the number of people undertaking tertiary study, so it will require a greater investment from the federal government, but we are committed to doing that. Already this year the government will fund more than 480,000 undergraduate places at public universities. With an anticipated four per cent growth next year, this will rise to over half a million places. That is a 20 per cent increase since 2008. To fund this historic expansion of opportunity, the government provided an additional $1.2 billion in this year's budget, bringing the total demand driven funding to $3.97 billion over successive budgets.

As I said at the start, this government is committed to investment and reform in the higher education sector. These reforms represent a massive change for universities, and with that comes opportunities but also challenges as funding shifts between universities in response to student demand. The university in my electorate, CQ University, has taken up that challenge and in the years since the release of the Bradley report has embraced the need for change ahead of the shift to demand driven funding. The university has been rewarded for its dynamic approach, which has seen the introduction of new courses and a much higher level of engagement with local communities and industries. CQ University is currently one of the fastest growing universities in Queensland, with its domestic enrolments up by 10 per cent and its mid-year intake up by 40 per cent. I have been particularly pleased with the university's decision to develop a large number of new courses. Already there have been 20 new courses offered in 2011 including law, medical imaging, sonography, financial planning, engineering management and paramedic training, and planning is under­way for the introduction of further courses in allied health and oral health. This shows that the university is working with the communities where its campuses are located to understand what skills are in demand and then to provide access for local students to the qualifications that will enable them to fill those positions. It is great to know that local people can finally obtain these qualifications without leaving Central Queensland. It makes their education so much more affordable and makes it much more likely that they will remain and pursue their career in the region, which has traditionally struggled to fill many professional positions. It is also worth mentioning that the university is developing facilities and structuring its courses in innovative ways so that students, particularly those in allied health courses, can complete their clinical training on campus by offering treatment to members of the public. This is a great example of the way that the university is engaging with communities and other organisations to identify needs and build our region's capacity to solve our own problems.

The new system will require universities to be strategic and flexible. CQ University has got that message and it is not standing still. That is obvious in its plan to become Queensland's first dual sector university preferably through an amalgamation with the CQ Institute of TAFE. There is enormous support for this initiative and plans are progressing, so I hope the university gets the go ahead from the Queensland government very soon. The dual sector proposal is driven by the same goal that this government has: opening the door to tertiary education to as many people as possible.

CQ University serves a part of regional and rural Australia where there is a low rate of participation in tertiary education. The university has one of the highest rates of any university in Australia of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, Indigenous students and students who are the first in their family to go to university. CQ University sees the TAFE amalgamation as one way of boosting participation by making university qualifications more accessible, more flexible and more relevant to the people in our region. Because of the low rate of participation in tertiary education in Central Queensland and the current skills shortages across the region, our local university has a great opportunity to tailor its course offerings and expand the number of students it enrols. CQ University really stands to benefit from the demand driven funding model in this bill and the evidence so far shows that it is doing all the right things to make that happen.

I have already mentioned the new courses being developed and offered by CQ University. That has required significant investment in new and upgraded facilities across the university's campuses. In total there is $50 million worth of infrastructure works underway, which is a fantastic invest­ment in the future of the university and which gives substance to its claim to be an essential partner in the development that is taking place in the Central Queensland region.

The university also has a renewed focus on research, building on its current world ranked research in the areas of engineering, nursing and health sciences. There is a major recruitment effort underway to attract senior researchers to the university, and in great news just the other day it was announced that CQ University's collaborative research application with the University of Queens­land, QUT and Western Australia's Curtin University was successful. The application for $5.53 million has been granted in full and it will boost the research capacity and output of the university's Institute for Health and Social Science research. The institute is headed by Professor Brenda Happell, and I congratulate Professor Happell and all those involved in the application on that great result.

There are other elements of this bill that I also support. The bill abolishes the student learning entitlement, which is an unnec­essary barrier to people accessing and completing tertiary qualifications. Previously a person's ability to study at university as a Commonwealth supported student was limited to the equivalent of seven-years full-time study. The Bradley review recom­mended the student learning entitlement be abolished, and the government agrees that it is inconsistent with our aim of encouraging greater numbers of people to pursue higher education and to add to their qualifications throughout their lives and careers.

In closing, this bill marks a major transformation in the funding relationship between the Commonwealth government and universities which will drive the expansion of the sector needed to sustain our prosperity in the knowledge based economy of the future. On that basis, I support the bill very strongly.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011. Since coming to office in 2007, the Labor government has made education reform a priority, with record levels of investment in education and a commitment to several major policy reforms. Yesterday in this House, in response to a question from the member for Wakefield, who is in the House right now and who I know to have a very deep concern and care for implementing a good education system throughout this country, the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth outlined a number of measures that the government has implemented since coming to office and that will lead to a better education outcomes for young people throughout this country.

I will not repeat all of the matters that the minister referred to, but I will highlight some of the significant changes that have been made by this government since it came to office in 2007. Labor since then has nearly doubled the education budget to nearly $64.9 billion over the next four years. The government has built or upgraded facilities at every single Australian school, including 500 science labs or language centres, 1,300 covered outdoor learning facilities and 1,900 school libraries. The government has delivered around 413,000 new school computers in more than 2,000 schools, with more to come. To support students with disabilities the government will provide $200 million in new funding to provide more in-classroom support for students, including from health and other professionals, and the government has committed $1.5 billion to support around 398,000 students in disadvantaged schools, $540 million to improve literacy and numeracy outcomes and $550 million to improve teacher quality. I welcome the allocation of $425 million for a national bonus pay scheme for teachers. As a result of the Gillard government's reforms and record investment in higher education, we have already seen an extra 80,000 undergraduate students since 2007 get the opportunity of a university education. Over the same period, we have doubled the number of Commonwealth supported postgraduate places from 16,500 in 2007 to 33,000 this year. Right through from preschool to university education, Labor understand the critical difference good education makes to individual lives and to the nation's prosperity. We also understand that in a competitive global world having a university education is not just a privilege but indeed a necessity. That is why this legislation is important. At the turn of last century, fewer than one per cent of Australians had the opportunity to pursue higher studies at a university. In 2006, around 26 per cent of 25- to 34-year-old Australians had a university degree. The government's goal is to increase that figure to 40 per cent by 2025.

There are many families whose sons or daughters will be going to a university for the first time. This means so much to people. I know what it meant to my own family when my older brother was awarded a university scholarship. For my father to see his son go to university was a dream come true. University education should be accessible to everyone and this government want to ensure that that is the case.

On speaking earlier this year on a private member's motion on youth allowance, I made the following points: 'Since the youth allowance changes were made, more than 100,000 young people have benefited because they are eligible for youth allowance for the first time or they are receiving more money than before. More than one-third of these young people are from rural and regional areas. More than 240,000 university students have received student start-up scholarships towards their education costs. More than 55,000 of the students are from rural and regional areas. More than 36,000 university students, who need to move away from home to study, have received relocation scholarship payments toward their accommodation costs and more than 15,000 are from rural and regional areas.' The government's education reforms to date are making a difference and in particular for disadvantaged families such as those from rural and regional areas.

This legislation makes further important reforms with respect to university education. Under the changes that this bill will bring in, Australian universities will no longer be asked by the government to ration Common­wealth supported student places amongst students competing to get a bachelor degree. The government will no longer set the number of undergraduate places that a university can offer. From 1 January 2012, universities will have greater flexibility to respond to student demand and employer and industry needs. This year the government will fund more than 480,000 undergraduate places at public universities. With an anticipated four per cent growth, next year this will rise to over half a million places—that is a 20 per cent increase since 2008.

To fund this historic expansion of opportunity, the government provided an additional $1.2 billion in this year's budget, bringing the total demand driven funding to $3.97 billion over successive budgets. I note that the government are not uncapping funding for student places in postgraduate and medical courses. It will continue to allocate Commonwealth supported places in these areas for the time being. The bill will ensure that the government have the capacity to respond to any new skills shortages and if necessary to the oversupply of graduates in particular areas.

I particularly welcome the abolition of student learning entitlement from 2012. Under the current arrangements, there is a limit as to how much study a person can undertake as a Commonwealth supported student. Student learning entitlement prov­ides the equivalent of seven years full-time access to a Commonwealth supported place. It was agreed as part of the demand driven funding system that student learning entitlement would be abolished from 2012. The bill will remove student learning entitlement as an eligibility requirement for a Commonwealth supported place.

These changes are particularly relevant to disadvantaged communities such as the northern suburbs of Adelaide, where educ­ation achievement and university attendance has been below the state average, even though the University of South Australia has had a campus in the northern suburbs since the mid-sixties. We used to have the Salisbury college of advanced education, up until the late-nineties. When that was closed, their work was transferred to what was the old institute of technology at Mawson Lakes and is now the University of SA's campus at Mawson Lakes.

On this matter, it was only a couple of weeks ago that at a function organised by the Northern Economic Leaders Group of the northern suburbs of Adelaide, the member for Wakefield, who is in the chamber with me now, addressed the group in respect of the issue of disadvantage in those commun­ities and the need for the community to work together to ensure we encourage and facilitate the ability of more younger people from that region to not only complete year-12 education but go on and become university qualified—and the member for Wakefield certainly made the point very strongly on the day. The purpose of function was to discuss the statistics that clearly show that the northern region of Adelaide is where all the jobs growth has occurred in recent years, but those jobs, however, have been taken up by people from outside the northern suburbs because they were largely created in the defence sector at the DSTO at Edinburgh and in the IT sector and they could not be filled by young people in the region because in most cases they did not have the appropriate qualifications. So on one hand the region is creating jobs and employment opportunities for an area with a higher than average unemployment rate, but on the other hand the very people who need the jobs are unable to take them because they do not have the appropriate qualifications. It is certainly something that the region is working together on. The changes in this bill will be absolutely relevant to making the difference that we all hope to see. For several years, the University of South Australia has been involved in a community engagement strategy for the very purpose of finding ways to ensure that the young people from that region will be able to take up the jobs that are made available. Simultaneously, the industries of that region have also been working very closely with the university, trying to ensure that the courses offered at the university are relevant to the jobs that will be available in their industries in the years to come. So there is a very strong link between the employers in the region and the work of the university. It is critical, if there is a particular profession or qualification that is required in order to fill jobs, that the university not be restrained by having to cap the number of places and therefore the number of qualified students that can come from a particular course. It is important to ensure that the courses available at the university are closely matched to the jobs on offer, and that is exactly the kind of direction that this bill takes us in.

In recent years Australia has made intern­ational student trade a critical economic component of our community. In the year to July 2009, nearly 550,000 students on student visas enrolled for study in Australia. I suspect that most of those 550,000 students went to a university. I certainly know that the University of South Australia's Mawson Lakes campus has a very high ratio of international students. In 2008-09, Aust­ralia's international education sector became Australia's second-largest export earner, earning an estimated $16.6 billion. Intern­ational student numbers grew as a proportion of total tertiary student numbers from 11.4 per cent in 1998 to 21.8 per cent in 2008. As I said a moment ago, the majority of students coming to Australia would have been university students. Again, it is important, if we have an opportunity to educate intern­ational students and those international students want a particular degree, to make sure they have the opportunity to get that degree—and that will be the case if there are no constraints on the types of courses universities can offer. I know that univ­ersities around Australia are working right now with other countries and other overseas universities to ensure they can accommodate the qualifications overseas students are seeking.

I note with interest that Australian univ­ersities support the demand driven funding system provided for in this bill. I am not surprised they support it—it is my view that for years and years universities have been frustrated because they have not been able to provide the number of places required by students pursuing a particular degree. As the member for Capricornia quite rightly alluded to, this legislation arises from the Bradley review. Professor Denise Bradley—whom I knew personally; at one stage she was associated with the University of South Australia—understands the importance of these changes and the difference they will make particularly to disadvantaged communities around Australia. I commend the legislation to be House.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome this opportunity to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011. I am sure I mirror the sentiments of all members of the House when I say that when I visit the schools in my electorate, particularly in those areas of greater socioeconomic challenge, I like to say to the students, and particularly the primary students, that a great future awaits them because they live in this country; that this is a country of opportunity where if you have a big dream and you are prepared to work for it, you can achieve it. God forbid that that should ever change. It is important that we do talk up the dreams of young Australians and remind them that they do have great opportunities. Many of those opportunities will be provided through tertiary education. I say to them that one day—and I seriously mean this—one of them could be Prime Minister of this great country. I believe that, and I hope they believe it as well. One day they could run BHP. As I say in Western Australia, they could be doctors or nurses in Royal Perth Hospital saving lives, or they could be Qantas pilots flying around the world.

These are some of the great dreams that I hope the young people of Australia will have. I hope that they do not just listen to those influences in their lives which are not as ambitious; those influences in their lives which might lead them to believe that their only hope for the future is a life of welfare dependency. It is important that we as community leaders, and this is certainly the way I approach it, talk up the dreams and talk up the ambitions of these young people and remind them of their opportunities. Many of these opportunities will be delivered through university education—there is no doubt about that—but it is not a good idea to try to re-establish the Keating-esque view of the world where if you do not have a degree you are somehow at a lower level.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was never what he said—come on!

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We will get to the accuracy of statements in a second. It is very good to have South Australians in the chamber, because I want to cover things that the member for Kingston said. She said on two occasions that under the Howard government only the wealthy could study. I was really surprised to hear that. You would have thought that entrance exams in each of the states did not matter, that you had to have money before you could study. I thought there was a system called HECS in this country. I thought if you studied and got the marks, you could get into university, get a loan, HECS, and pay at the end—with the exception of the obligatory, compulsory student union fee. We have talked enough about that barrier, which some like to impose upon tertiary students. The member for Kingston specifically made the blatant false claim that under the Howard government only the wealthy could study. That certainly was never the case. While lines like that might run pretty nicely with the National Tertiary Education Union—who may be preselectors or booth workers, or possibly both—that line is inaccurate.

The coalition have a number of amend­ments which we wish to advance on this bill. As has been said by the government, the ambition of this bill is to uncap the number of students who are able to receive a Commonwealth supported place at univ­ersity. It requires universities to have a policy on free intellectual inquiry, to enter into agreements with the government called 'compacts' that set out the objectives and it removes the limit on the student learning entitlement, the length of time a student may occupy a Commonwealth supported place at university. The coalition have proposed that we would amend the bill to talk about retaining the limit on the time a student can occupy a Commonwealth supported place, extending that limit from seven to eight years, and ensuring universities' policies on free intellectual inquiry apply to students as well as to academics. These are positive proposals which will benefit the intent of the bill.

There has been a great deal of talk in the past about professional, lifelong students. When I was at university, admittedly many aeons ago, students were not asked to provide a copayment for their university degrees. There were up-front costs, of course, but the overall cost of the degree was not put to the student. There were people at the university who had been there for a very long time and that was certainly the case before the Howard government brought in this limit. There were still people who chose to use the system to permanently remain in study mode, to start a number of degrees and not finish them, and basically live a reasonable sort of life in an environment in which they were obviously extremely happy.

It is not the place for people in this country who see a looseness in the system to decide: 'That's something I will exploit. I have no regard for taxpayers' contributions, I will just carry on and enjoy the high life.' And that applies to social security payments as well. If you have the capacity to work, to contribute, that is your duty and you must acknowledge that duty. The government, in seeing that the measures they have put in place have reduced the number of lifelong students, may mistakenly believe they can back away from the good changes of the Howard government and release the system, and then for some reason think there will not be any more lifelong professional students. The government has unwound so many of the Howard government policies which worked—boats et cetera—but the gov­ernment says: 'There's no-one in this category; there are hardly any professional, lifelong students. We'll back off from those measures.' So should this bill pass un­amended, as we found with boats we will start having people who think that the government and society owe them, that there is an opportunity for them to just carry on and not contribute to the country.

That relates back to some of the things I have said to students within my electorate of Cowan. Recently I have said to Warwick Senior High School and to Waddington Primary School, whose students have a very great future, 'You have opportunities in this country, but society does not owe you; society gives you the opportunity and has the systems in place of which you can take advantage'—that is, putting teachers in front of them so that they can develop and learn and seek higher qualifications along the way. It is not that anyone is bound by right to have automatic access to these things; it is still a matter that the person has to work, has to commit to their studies and to a workplace later on, and they have to continue to commit to this country. These are very important matters.

Moving on to deal with academic freedom and the compacts, as I said before, it is important that there is free intellectual inquiry within universities. It is important that that is not just enshrined for the academics but that it also applies to the students. These things are very important. There have been suggestions in the past about certain universities around the country that if a student expresses viewpoints that may politically differ from those of the academic in charge of the course there might be some sort of comeback or negativity sheeted home to the student. So I think it is very important that we keep an eye on these sorts of matters and that we have that oversight over the tertiary sector so that there is governance and methods by which there can be genuine academic freedom for students as well. If a student has a differing political view that is put logically and referenced in detail it certainly should not result in a negative outcome just because it might not necessarily reflect the view of academics.

So, from the coalition perspective, there are aspects of this bill that we appreciate. As I have alluded to, the coalition oppose the abolition of the student learning entitlement and we have an amendment to increase the entitlement for a further year of study. The coalition also believe that an amendment is necessary to ensure that free academic inquiry extends to students as well as staff. The coalition will introduce an amendment also indicating that we oppose compacts being used to micromanage universities but we do support compacts that make university performance transparent and measurable. In general terms, the coalition do not oppose the remainder of the bill.

I reiterate that this is a nation of great opportunity and that it is through the courses and opportunities that are provided in our excellent universities that our young Aust­ralians can take up opportunities. If they have ambitions and take up the opportunities to fly Qantas planes around the world, to be doctors in Royal Perth Hospital or to be Prime Minister for the good cause of serving the people, not because it is a great sounding job, often they will find themselves moving through our universities. But that does not mean it is only through higher education, tertiary education, that the great opport­unities of our nation are achieved. Many people who do not have a tertiary education live very good lives in our cities and have done very well. I believe that many people in this House have succeeded and serve the people of their constituencies well without having had a particular degree. Based upon their experience, other jobs that they have done and other qualifications beyond university, they have been well equipped to serve the interests of their people. So, as I have said, there are aspects of this bill which we support and there are things which should be amended but in any case I do appreciate the opportunity to make those comments on this bill today.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I continue with what I planned to say on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011, I will make some comments on the member for Cowan's speech. I do agree with him: many, many people do get ahead in this world, especially in Australia, without an education and we certainly do not want to degrade people who do not have a degree, a certificate or a diploma. But that does not mean that we should not be encouraging people by doing all we can as governments to ensure that people do get a higher education and better skills, because all of us know that all the research—every little bit of research that has been done—and all the statistics show that the best way to get out of poverty is through education and the higher the education the more likelihood of that happening. So it is very important to ensure that we do everything we can as governments to ensure that the facilities and the programs are out there for people to be able to achieve to their highest ability. It is so important to get that message out there and to ensure that we let people know that those facilities and those programs are there—and this is what this bill is all about.

We have had a number of members rise to their feet to speak in support of this bill and the system-wide reforms that this particular government developed, implemented and continue to implement. Members well know of the intent of this bill: freeing up universities, our higher education places, to offer more publicly supported places in courses of high demand and the removal of the seven-year limitation on individuals' access to Australian government sponsored university education. These are, as we know, elements of the suite of reforms that the government has been implementing to transform Australia's higher education sector. This year, over 480,000 undergraduate places are being funded, an increase of 20 per cent on those funded in 2008. This is all about higher education giving people opportunities and ensuring that we skill the workforce that we will so desperately need in the future. The expansion is set to continue through this year's budget. The government will be investing a further $1.2 billion, bringing the total additional investment in additional student places to $3.97 billion. Annual funding to universities in 2011 is around 30 per cent higher than in 2007—I repeat: 30 per cent higher than it was in 2007. That is a significant amount.

We have here, plain for all to see, a government that believes there is value in higher skilling, in ensuring Australians are gaining a higher education with skills that will assist us to become a smarter nation and assist us to be innovative in our industries and at the cutting edge. These are skills that will not only help people get out of the poverty cycle or assist them in gaining employment but also help the nation in cutting-edge innovation.

In the past the former government and the former Prime Minister sought to appeal to complacency. They dressed it up as nostalgia by portraying a university education as something to do with elites, as we heard earlier. Education may have been something to do with the elites back in the era of very staunch conservative governments but cert­ainly not in this government. The opposition dress up those that get university degrees as people other than ourselves and nothing could be further from the truth. As I said, we know that the best way to skill people to exit the poverty cycle is through education. The higher the education, the more likelihood of employment and the more likelihood of improving oneself. Australia is a nation very, very different to what it was in John Howard's day—in his mind of 50 years ago or maybe even 100 years ago of how he saw Australia—when education was for the elite only.

As the Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens reminded us in his address to the Economic Society of Australia just a week or so ago, 'Our manufacturing sector peaked as a proportion of GDP in the 1950s,'—that is when it was at its highest—'and saw its most rapid drop in its share of our economy in the second half of the 1970s.' This was 40-plus years ago when, perhaps, there was plenty of need for many of these manufacturing jobs to be filled. Manufacturing, of course, cont­inues to be very important to our economy and to our nation and many people still work in manufacturing, so it is an important element of our national economy. But it is unfortunate that manufacturing industries have declined and, compared to other sectors, are not the main meal ticket for a lot of people.

In looking at my electorate and the western suburbs of Hindmarsh I look back to when I was a kid growing up. Up until a few years ago we had places like Lightburn that used to produce washing machines, refrig­erators and a whole range of other things; they are gone. We had Griffin Press which was a company that produced novels as well as printing and employed around 200-odd people; they are gone. We had Clarks Shoes in Marleston; they have taken off to Fiji or Vietnam. We had Perry Engineering that used to do massive steel construction and employed around 200 workers; they are gone. We had Onkaparinga Textiles which employed over 200 people. We had Mason and Cox, another big engineering firm, that has also gone. They all went from my electorate in the last 15 to 20 years. I do make the point that those industries went from my electorate of Hindmarsh under the Howard watch. That is when they all disappeared; when Howard was in gov­ernment.

On the other side, for instance, profess­ional business services such as legal and accounting have continued to grow as a proportion of our economy and they are now twice the size of the manufacturing sector. The levels of sophistication required today for people to gain employment and to derive an income in Australia have been increasing for a long time, and continue to increase. The types of jobs that are increasingly available, the types of jobs that are seeing growth over time around most of Australia, are high knowledge jobs. They are jobs that require certificates, diplomas or degrees.

We need heightened sophistication in all workplaces, irrespective of their industry, to fuel the productivity gains that will keep us in work and enable us to pay our way as households and as a nation. This is most likely, I believe, in enterprises that value high education, feeding innovation and smarter ways of working. We know that renewable energies, for example, are right at the cutting edge. We want to ensure that we have all the knowledge available so that we come up with innovative ways for industry to be leaders, not just here in Australia but in the world.

It is increasingly high-knowledge jobs themselves—professional, technical and managerial jobs—that will fund the Australian wage in the future. At the end of the day, nothing will assist any Australian in gaining a better paying job than the right education, the right skilling and the right training. As I said earlier, we know that we need those skills to be able to better our chances of employment. That is why the Gillard government, in its wisdom, is increasing higher education funding, parti­cipation and achievement. The government's goal is to achieve 40 per cent of our 25- to 34-year-olds having a bachelor-level qual­ification by 2025. We need to catch up with the rest of the world as we have lagged behind for many, many years.

I would like to delve a little deeper into an emerging industry that is earning increasing revenue for Australia and for the Australians employed in that particular sector. Intern­ational education has grown from its infancy in the early 1990s to a major force of the Australian economy. It was little more than a sideline to campus activity and something that universities appeared to dabble in 20 years ago. Today it is very different. The income has grown substantially in a very short period of time. The sector grew to approximately $10.7 billion in 2006 and is now worth an estimated $18-plus billion per year. Once a sideline that universities used to dabble in is, today, a major part of our national income stream.

There have been almost half a million international students studying in Australia over the last couple of years. They are studying at all educational levels from primary school right through to tertiary level. To put this into context, in 2009 there were 813,000 domestic students in higher education enrolments. In comparison, tour­ism has generated some $24 billion in export income per year. In 2010-11, all farm exports are expected to be $29.1 billion, energy exports will be in the vicinity of $71 billion, while export earnings for metals and other minerals, as we know, will increase to almost $100 billion. In other words, the provision of education services as a saleable commodity has emerged in the space of 15-20 years to become a new industry worth just as much in today's economy as some of the principal industries that have kept Australia afloat in years gone by.

I fully expect that, with the ongoing development and quite radical raising of living standards of literally billions of people in the two great nations to our north, China and India, and with the great flood of wealth that will enable these peoples to invest in their children's future over the course of this century, we have probably only gone a very small way towards realising the potential of this sector. Just as education is becoming a very substantial export market for this nation, a market fuelled by university graduates, I fully expect there to be other markets which Australia will increasingly access in years to come.

The role of tertiary education in our nation's future prosperity is great and cannot be overestimated. I wholeheartedly support all government initiatives directed at inc­reasing the proportion of our labour force who are given the opportunity to gain university qualifications and, possibly more importantly, the knowledge of how to learn continually throughout their working lives.

Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his contribution and all other members who spoke on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011. I will just make some brief remarks to sum up. The bill before the House amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to implement the government's package of initiatives outlined in Transforming Australia's higher education system. The government understands that the Australian economy today requires, and in the future will require, more Australians to be degree qualified. The bill will ensure our nation's universities are able to meet the increasing demand for higher qualifications from students and employers and our nation's future workforce needs.

The government is committed to ach­ieving the ambitious goal it has set for national attainment. The government wants to increase the proportion of 25- to 34-year-old Australians with a qualification at bachelor level or above to 40 per cent by 2025. This is the major reason for the introduction of demand driven funding for undergraduate student places at public universities. Australian universities will no longer be asked by the government to ration Commonwealth supported student places among students competing to get a bachelor's degree.

The government recognises that it will continue to have a role in the national oversight of our higher education sector. It will retain some powers to assist the achievement of those outcomes and to enable it to respond to national imperatives. There may be circumstances in which the Australian government needs to limit the extent of future growth in expenditure for unallocated undergraduate places. The minister will be able to do this by specifying a maximum grant amount for these places in a university's funding agreement.

There will also be protections in the legislation for universities to ensure the minister cannot reduce an institution's funding or force it to cut back on its previous year's enrolments. These are not protections that apply in the current system of funding universities on the basis of a fixed number of places for each individual university, that fixed number being based solely on the minister's allocation decision. These protections, which are written into the bill, are new and substantial and they provide an additional level of reassurance for univ­ersities as they move to demand driven funding for undergraduate places. The government will monitor demand and supply for graduates in all disciplines in the early years of implementation of the system. The bill ensures the government has the capacity to respond to any new skills shortages and, if necessary, to any oversupply of graduates in particular areas.

The measures in this bill for demand driven funding of undergraduate places provide for much-needed investment in higher education. As a result of these reforms, universities will be able to grow with confidence and diversify in response to student needs. Consistent with the shift to a demand driven funding system, the government agreed, in its response to the Bradley review, that the student learning entitlement provisions of the act would be abolished from 2012. The SLE currently limits a person's eligibility to study at university as a Commonwealth supported student to the equivalent of seven years of full-time study. Abolishing the entitlement will reduce the regulatory burden on universities and allow them to get on with teaching the next generation of students.

The dialogue between universities and the government plays an important role in determining future policies and funding. It assists in understanding the strategic direct­ions of universities in response to govern­ment initiatives. Mission based compacts provide an important process of dialogue and communication between universities and the government. The amendments proposed by this bill will ensure that the investment of time and effort by the universities and by government in these compacts is recognised as part of the overall requirements for funding under this act.

I particularly thank the members who contributed to the debate on the application of free intellectual inquiry. Free intellectual inquiry will become an object of the act. Table A and table B providers will be required to have policies that uphold free intellectual inquiry in relation to learning, teaching and research. We believe that, as autonomous institutions, universities are best placed to determine how they wish to articulate their commitments to free intellectual inquiry. This bill reflects the government's continued commitment to invest in Australian universities and to expanding opportunities for Australians to obtain a higher quality education. I commend the bill to the House.

Question put:

That the amendment (Mr Pyne's) be agreed to.

The House divided. [13:25]

(The Speaker—Mr Harry Jenkins)

Question negatived.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.