Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The bill before the House is in fact a second-rate deal for students. Labor will not support the coalition's cynical move to go ahead with the $2.3 billion in savings from higher education when they have abandoned the plan that they were designed specifically to fund. The original purpose of this funding was to contribute to the $11.5 billion in funding that would make a once-in-a-lifetime change to schools and students through the Better Schools Plan. It was a difficult decision but it was clearly in the context of the funding of the Better Schools package.

Indeed, I would refer the House to the official statement put out by the then Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research on 13 April 2013. The very first paragraph of the statement says:

Today the Government announced savings in the higher education portfolio that will contribute to the funding of school education reforms designed to ensure that all Australian school children get a flying start in life.

These are cuts that the coalition disparaged while in opposition but have embraced in government. Their hypocrisy on this is truly breathtaking. Indeed, in introducing this bill, the Minister for Education repeatedly stated it was a bad bill for universities. I can take members to the exact words of the minister's speech. He said:

These are Labor's cuts. These cuts of April came on top of repeated attacks by Labor on support for universities, for students, and for research. These cuts show just how damaging to the university sector the previous government was. They show clearly that Labor is no friend to universities. They show that Labor is no friend of students or higher education.

On the basis of that, the minister then proposed to implement those very same cuts. He repeatedly said that they were bad for universities, and in the only explanation he provided for introducing the bill he blamed the previous, Labor government—indeed, he made the extraordinary claim that he had no choice but to introduce it. He is the minister, they are the government; this is their call and their bill, and these are their cuts.

The proposal that Labor put forward at the time was to put together a funding package for our Better Schools commitment. This was a six-year, $11.5 billion plan, and it was the result of the most comprehensive review of school education ever conducted. The Prime Minister at the time, previously the Minister for Education, had identified a serious issue in this nation—inequity in access to education. We had a long tale of disadvantage that we were not addressing in our school system and, as a result, we had Mr Gonski and his panel undertake extensive consultation and a review to produce the report that is now known as the Gonski proposal.

It was designed to see, for the first time, a student-centred model of funding, additional funding for students with additional needs—what we described as needs based funding—and better teacher training, a national curriculum, and individual school improvement plans in a locally led, national model. Perhaps most importantly, there was a guarantee that states would increase their funding for schools so that all schools would be better off. To me as a former teacher and to many of us in this place, it was a truly historic point, where we had moved beyond the old divides between systems and between students, and said that we wanted a system of funding that ensured that all our young people had access to highpquality education, regardless of their circumstances in life—where they lived, whether they were in a small country school, where they were born, whether their family was from a low SES background, whether they had a disadvantage, such as a disability or a particular learning difficulty. It did not matter what their circumstances were, we as a nation, federal and state governments together, were committed to addressing that disadvantage by all putting additional funding into the system and implementing a range of reforms. That was the heart of the Gonski proposal.

The government, on the other hand, have been entirely cynical on this issue—entirely cynical. They have walked away from the Better Schools Plan and what they have actually done is gut it. Yesterday's political stunt changed nothing. Who would seriously trust this government to maintain and deliver any commitment they make on schools? The absolute debacle we have witnessed this week shows that, above all else, the Abbott government cannot be trusted on these matters. They cannot, they would not, guarantee that no school would be worse off. The Minister for Education has refused to repeat his pre-election pledge that no school would be worse off because of the changes. The minister and the Prime Minister spoke directly to schools and their families before the election. Their clear intention was to assure those families and those schools that nothing, not a single aspect, would be any different for their school if an Abbott government were elected. They had gone from saying that they did not support the Gonski proposal to saying that they were absolutely in lockstep with the then Labor government on the Gonski proposal. They did that with purpose and they did it with words such as 'unity ticket' which were designed to present a clear political message that we now know could not be trusted—and they still cannot be trusted. The Prime Minister tried to get around the issue with weasel words. He said:

As you would know the states in the end apply the model, but what the Commonwealth is doing means that no school, state or territory, can be worse off because of the Commonwealth's actions.

That was on 2 December 2013. However, Senator Abetz—helpfully, no doubt, to those opposite!—revealed the truth yesterday, the same day, in the Senate, when he said:

… you might actually find that some schools are worse off, courtesy of various state government decisions.

The Abbott government have no guarantee that the states will not continue to do as they have in the past and cut funding from schools. In fact, they are subsidising state budgets with this money that they are proposing, with no guarantee of benefits to students in return. Unlike under Labor's plan, the coalition's hasty, last-minute, rushed deal puts no obligations on the Queensland, Western Australian or Northern Territory governments to maintain, let alone increase, school funding.

The Abbott government has in fact rewarded the WA, Queensland and Northern Territory governments for not putting additional money into their schools. What's to say they won't just take the money and then cut funding to schools as they have done before? It is very clear that the reason that Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory governments did not sign up to Gonski originally was that they are planning more cuts to education in their own jurisdictions.

In July last year, the Queensland government cut $23 million from its education budget. Queensland's commission of audit or, more accurately, 'commission of cuts', proposed closing 55 schools. The Queensland education minister announced that six schools would close on 17 September 2013. In this year's budget, the Western Australia government cut 500 teaching jobs and capped teacher numbers for 2014 at present levels. They cut the student support program resource allocation, which tackles behavioural issues, and literacy and numeracy, by 30 per cent. Extra time allowances were cut. An additional levy on schools was introduced and a 1.5 per cent efficiency dividend was imposed. At the end of October, it was revealed that the Northern Territory government is cutting 71 jobs in schools. They have not committed to the six-year plan; they have adopted, and this government has signed off on, a no-strings-attached model. They talk about it as if it is some great benefit. In fact, it just provides no details as to where money would go.

It is important to acknowledge that, while we made a tough decision in government, along the lines of the efficiency cuts which are the subject of this bill, we did it in a context of utilising that money in order to fund a full reform of the school funding system. We also did it in the context of having significantly invested in the higher education system over the period we were in government.

We have a proven track record of growth in support for higher education. Labor increased spending on universities from just $8.1 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013. We introduced the demand-driven system of higher education funding, getting rid of the archaic system—if you want to talk about the archaic centralised system of allocating places—that the coalition had had in place prior to us coming to government. I know that those opposite have reflected in question time their great abhorrence of central control of anything, but they were still centrally controlling what universities had to offer.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is right.

Mr Ian Macfarlane interjecting—

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sure the minister at the table, the Minister for Industry, would absolutely be opposed to that sort of centralisation of decision making. So Labor removed those prohibitions on universities and put in place a demand-driven system. That actually means that a lot more students are attending university now—190,000 more than when we came to power.

It is also important to identify that Commonwealth funded places increased by 35 per cent under Labor. With this there was an increase in the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, as the shadow minister indicated, attending universities, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. When I was the Minister for Higher Education and Schools, one of my great joys was to go to many of our universities and meet first-in-family people who were attending university. These students were the first in their families to be able to do attend universities, and increasing numbers of them had an Indigenous background. So it was a really important task to undertake. Perhaps most importantly for the sector we introduced fair indexation for the first time, helping prevent university funding from falling behind year on year, as it had under the decade of coalition neglect of this matter. For students themselves, we made sure that support payments went to those who needed them most by improving access to student support. This meant that 220,000 young people received the maximum rate, a higher rate or a payment for the first time.

We introduced the relocation scholarship, a payment to remove financial barriers for low SES students who must relocate to study, particularly those from regional and remote areas and Indigenous students. And we introduced the student start-up scholarship, which helped students with up-front costs of studying such as textbooks and specialised equipment. We have a proud record in higher education.

If we compare this to the opposition, we see a fairly appalling record on higher education from those opposite. I remind the House that, when the coalition was elected to government in 1996, one of the very first things they did was to cut a massive five per cent from the higher education budget. That massive cut was also not announced before the election. There was no warning for universities; there was no warning for students. Student fees skyrocketed. Commonwealth supported places slumped and billions of dollars were stripped out of the system in the decade of neglect that followed. All of this took place, I would point out, while the now Prime Minister was a senior voice in the cabinet. Much of it was orchestrated under the stewardship of his deputy leader, Julie Bishop.

Let us not forget the $103 million those opposite plan to rip out of the Australian Research Council. And in the past week, while announcing his three different policies on school funding, the Minister for Education announced that he had found another $1.43 billion of cuts, with the Prime Minister confirming that this is over and above the savings that they identified before the election. There were $235 million on Tuesday and another $1.2 billion yesterday. Those opposite have form when it comes to massive cuts to higher education. They are at best indifferent to the knowledge economy, which Labor believes is vital to this country's future. Their neglect of the knowledge economy is again demonstrated by their failure to appoint a minister for science—

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is simply not true.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And, again, by their cuts to jobs at CSIRO.

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

CSIRO are very happy.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hope the minister is going to protest against the cuts to CSIRO, as well. The Abbott government's cynical and desperate bid to proceed with these savings, despite opposing them just weeks earlier, will amount to $2.73 billion worth of cuts from education. The announcement of the additional savings the coalition is making shows beyond doubt that the policy intent of this bill has disappeared. They will not use the money to fund better schools; they will not use it to fund education. What will Tony Abbott do with these savings? Where is the money going? When in opposition, they cried foul of these measures and now they want to take the money from education altogether. Not only are they ripping off our school-aged children; now they are ripping off our university students. Labor is not going to support these cuts because this is a second-rate deal for students at all levels of the education system.

The purpose behind Labor's focus on education was to increase opportunities for all young people. This can be seen right through from our interventions in child care, aimed at making sure there were quality childcare services providing good educational experiences for our very youngest children, to our reforms in the schooling system. Our reforms under the Better Schools program were aimed at helping those who experience the most disadvantage and at ensuring that young people come out of our school system best positioned to take up the opportunities on offer—not only in our university sector but, more broadly, in our vocational education sector and in the world of work. That means giving them the 21st century skills they will need to succeed. That was the package we put together.

It is true that, in that context, we asked the university sector to make a contribution—to have a slower rate of increased investment than they had been expecting. But we did that specifically because it was part of a broader education task—to produce an outcome for young people that made better opportunities available to them.

That is not what this bill does. This bill cynically attempts to pocket the money after the government has had so many positions on the Better Schools program that no-one would have any confidence at all that their last position, as announced yesterday, will even last until next week. Indeed, if it lasted until next week, it would be one of the longest lasting commitments they have made on Gonski.

There was some suggestion in question time today that there were more conversations to be had. Heaven knows what will come out of those! If you valued the investment in education that was originally proposed, you would not, after this absolutely shambolic process, have any confidence that the outcome of those conversations will be any better for schools, students and their parents. The number of positions the coalition have held since before the election, through the election and up until now has been extraordinary. Having recognised before the election that the community wanted to see the Gonski reforms put in place, the now government presented to the public that they were no different to Labor on these issues. They did so in order to quell a problem for them with the electorate during an election campaign period. Almost immediately after winning government, they completely walked away from that. They said: 'We are going to have a whole new review. We did not like Gonski at all.' It was a shambles, a terrible proposal, they told us. 'No government with any sense would support Gonski,' they said. They said they were going to get rid of it, only grudgingly giving one year of funding because there had to be some indication of the money schools were going to get next year. Otherwise, they said, the Gonski model was such an appalling proposal that they were going to have nothing to do with it.

Clearly the Minister for Education has no authority, because yesterday, despite how adamant he was about the Gonski proposal being unacceptable on educational grounds, a political solution was put in place to try and avoid some pain in this place over the next two weeks. It would not surprise anybody that, in that context, I am pretty cynical about how long even this half-baked agreement will last. Beyond that, the bill before the House now reflects an attack on the university sector—one that is not being pursued for the greater good of the education system. There is absolutely no way we will be supporting it.

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Make no mistake—the measures in the Higher Education Support Amendment (Savings and Other Measures) Bill 2013 are Labor's cuts, the culmination of a period of chaotic thought-bubble decision making and thoughtless chopping and changing. For the last five years, Labor has had the university sector on a rollercoaster ride, uncertain what would come next. This occurred in the context of Labor's complete mismanagement of the federal budget—their irresponsible spendathon, as the minister called it. This shambolic time came to a head in April this year when, on top of earlier cuts, Labor announced several measures to hit students and hit universities.

I note the press release by the shadow higher education minister issued earlier today. Surprise, surprise! Now cowering behind the safety of the opposition benches, Labor is performing a spectacular backflip and opposing their own measures. They are doing so even though the cuts to higher education were included in Labor's own Pre-election Fiscal Outlook just a few months ago.

The worst of Labor's cuts was their decision to put a cap on the tax deductibility of self-education expenses. It should have been obvious that this would adversely impact our ability to maintain the skills of front-line staff in areas such as health and education. Indeed, contrary to Labor's propaganda, the vast bulk of claims come from those earning less than $80,000 per annum. Thousands of nurses, teachers and doctors were affected—our front-line staff and those struggling to maintain and improve their skills. Although they deferred it for one year, Labor were not prepared to say they were wrong and abandon this policy. Heaven forbid—that could have actually enabled universities and students to plan for the future! Instead, Labor announced a review and allowed the uncertainty to continue, leaving the sector on tenterhooks and adding further to the fiscal mess they were leaving for the next government. Under a coalition government, with the reversal of this measure, we will restore the stability the higher education sector needs and create an environment that will enable universities and students to drive the research outcomes, innovation and productivity needed for Australia to enjoy a prosperous future.

However, the measures I am speaking about today are among the last of Labor's higher education cuts—the last remnants of those years of Labor's on again, off again funding chaos. Although it is not our preferred policy, given the fiscal disaster we have inherited from Labor, the coalition is unfortunately left with no choice but to proceed with the efficiency dividend. Many of my constituents are students at the University of Queensland and have expressed their apprehension about Labor's cuts and their refusal to provide certainty to Australian universities and their students. We want a strong, high-quality university sector that is sustainable into the long term, which is why we must fix the budget. Similarly, it is not our preference to proceed with Labor's changes to remove HECS-HELP upfront discounts and voluntary repayment bonuses. This will not affect funding for universities but it does remove the incentives for students to pay upfront or to repay their HECS-HELP debt early. Again, given the utter budget disaster the coalition has inherited, we have no option other than to implement Labor's cuts.

There was a much larger group of students who stood to benefit from continued access to tax deductions for self-education, which had been put in direct jeopardy by the Labor measure to cap these tax deductions at unrealistically low levels. The coalition government abolished the cap, along with a raft of other inefficient and productivity-reducing taxes, and this was great news both for workers wanting to upgrade their qualifications and for universities. The coalition is delivering more funding for schools after Labor cut $1.2 billion from schools funding.

When it comes to hypocrisy, we can rely on Labor to be a star performer. It is nothing less than blatant, shameful hypocrisy for Labor to now backflip on their own cuts to higher education. It is a despicable act to leave the nation's accounts in such chaos that there is no responsible option other than to implement such cuts, and yet Labor now in a cowardly manner turn their back when their mess needs to be cleaned up. This is nothing new from Labor—indeed it is what we have come to expect of them. Unfortunately we cannot afford to reverse all of these Labor cuts. The fiscal mess—the national credit card debt—that Labor left does not allow a responsible government to do that. The coalition has removed the worst measure—the cap on tax deductibility. The rest, unfortunately, must proceed to help fix the record budget deficit and rebuild a sustainable economy for a stable higher education sector. The University of Queensland students with whom I have spoken, while concerned about Labor's changes, do understand the need to repair the nation's financial position—and they understand that it is necessary to improve the budget now in order to build a better future.

The measures in this bill do not in any way diminish the coalition's commitment to quality. That commitment is evident in steps the minister has already taken. The government is committed to doing all it can to ensure Australia's higher education system focuses more on quality and less on red tape, and is effective in providing the graduates and research outcomes needed to sustain our economy and culture. These measures are necessary to help us unshackle the chains of poor and reckless financial management inflicted on our nation's budget by an irresponsible Labor government and apply ourselves to the task of working with the higher education sector to develop, maintain, and improve quality and sustainable higher education for the decades to come.

The member for Cunningham and many members of the opposition enjoy making mendacious comments about the Queensland government and the Premier of Queensland, Campbell Newman. I assume they are just jealous of the success he has had in Queensland. I would like to correct the record. It was Labor state governments that closed 139 schools across Queensland. They closed, on average, seven schools each year for around 20 years. The LNP government in Queensland has not cut the education budget—it has increased it. It has spent more money on education. It is looking at closing only six schools, but it is looking at building another 28. So, once again, we have hypocrisy and false information from the other side of the chamber. It is the Liberal Party which has, since our foundation under Sir Robert Menzies, been committed to high-quality higher education and to creating opportunities for students, and we remain firmly committed to those goals today.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My grandfather—my dad's dad—spent his life working in the post office, when he was not serving during the war. My grandmother—his wife—spent her life in unpaid labour, as many women of that generation did, keeping the family together. My dad—their son—then went on to do something quite unusual for the family. He went to university. He went to university in part because he could, because it was affordable. He did not have to go into significant debt to do it, because universities at that time were funded well enough to take people like him and give him, and my mum who was there at the same time, scholarships. My mum was a teacher and she met my dad at uni. They understood, between them, the importance of a good education and they understood the importance of Australia being the kind of place where everyone, from whatever background they came from, could go to university and not be turned away at the door because of their income.

They were then able to send me off to university, and that meant that I could live quite a different life than my grandfather did. You would think, with that excellent pedigree and with a good head on your shoulders, that your parents had set you up to make good decisions but when I was at high school I made one that could have set me on a very different trajectory. In the folly of youth I made one of the silliest decisions of my life—I joined the Labor Party. I was less than half the age I am now, and people do silly things when they are young. It only took a couple of years for me to realise the error of my ways. I first started getting involved in politics when I was at university. It became apparent to me that the then federal Labor government was putting people in such debt, keeping the level of student income support so low and slowly winding back university funding so much that it was potentially going to create a situation where people like my dad would never be able to go to university. So my first involvement in campaigns and in politics was in those campaigns to stop the ratcheting up of loans and debt on students, to argue for a living income for students—and, of course, we know that so many of our students at the moment do not have a living income, and I will talk a bit more about that in a moment—and to argue and campaign for better funding for universities.

During the 1990s we saw universities continuing to be run down despite growing enrolments. Then during the Howard years we saw a continuation of those attacks. We saw fees go up, we saw students go into more debt, and we saw universities even less supported. It was no surprise that, after the legacy of the previous Labor years and then, especially, the Howard years, when independent experts were brought in to review the university sector, they said it was a sector that was in trouble and it needed a boost to its base funding. So we had the Bradley review, for example, that said we needed an urgent 10 per cent increase in base funding just to enable universities to continue to do what they had been doing, let alone expand.

This all comes at a time and in a context where Australia has to decide what it wants to do as a society and an economy when the rest of the world tells us to stop digging. Because the thing about booms is that they bust, and the mining boom, at some point, will be no different. We have to make sure that we do not wake up in five or 10 years time to find that we are a hollowed out, uneducated quarry with nothing to sell to the rest of the world. The way that we are going to ensure that we are in a great position in the 21st century is through education, and especially through universities. That is why people right across the sector, whether you talk about students, whether you talk about the staff who work in universities or whether you talk about the people who run them, have been saying it is time for a funding boost.

It is eminently affordable, with the right priorities. At the moment, if anyone goes to a petrol station to fill up their car they will pay 38c a litre in excise on their petrol. If a wealthy miner or resource company in Western Australia or Queensland goes to put diesel into their trucks, they pay the tax and then they get 32c of it back in the form of a rebate. Every year between $1 billion and $2 billion is going out the door from taxpayers so that Gina Rinehart and the like can buy cheap petrol. Meanwhile our universities go underfunded. So it is a question of priorities. As people would have seen going into the last election, the Greens spelt out exactly how we could resource a caring society in this country and fund universities to give them that 10 per cent boost. We could get it done within four years and lift students in their income support. We could do all of that and still balance the budget. It is a question, ultimately, of priorities.

Knowing it is so eminently achievable made it all the worse when, earlier this year, Labor decided to cut $2.3 billion out of the sector and put students further into debt. At the time, Universities Australia said that these multibillion dollar university cuts were the biggest budget hit since the 1990s. That Labor this year was prepared to cut universities to a level that was the biggest hit they had seen since the mid-1990s is something that sent a shiver down the spine of many people in this country and made many people worry what kind of future we are setting ourselves up for. Who is going to be able to go to university in this country in the future? I have to say that this was in an environment where, as we were heading into an election year, university staff, students and the universities themselves actually hoped they might have been able to campaign for an increase to university funding. They prepared a multimillion dollar advertising campaign to try to get Labor and the coalition to boost university funding. Instead, what we found was that the only unity ticket going into the last election, as far as higher education was concerned, was the decision to rip $2.3 billion out of the sector and put students further into debt.

The Greens stood firm at the time. We said we would oppose these cuts and we would oppose putting students further into debt. We were the only party in parliament to do that. The Greens worked with the academics and the general staff from the universities, with the students and with the universities themselves to say there is a better way of balancing the budget than attacking universities and students that are so desperately in need of greater support. There was leafleting, there were postcards, and there were rallies conducted right across the country. There was widespread support from people who had not got involved in anything political for a very long time saying, 'We want a strong and vibrant university sector in this country, and we want to make sure that everyone is able to get into a university, no matter how much they earn.' We campaigned—and we campaigned hard—because we knew that universities were hurting already and could not afford these so-called efficiency dividends, and we knew that students were in debt and that they were hurting.

When I was at university it cost me about half of my student income per week to rent one bedroom in a three-bedroom flat near to where we lived. I only had to work one shift a week in order to make ends meet, and I could devote the rest of my time to study. But students now are not in that situation. Students now are working 15, 20, 30 or 35 hours just to make ends meet. The cost of rent is skyrocketing, and they are going into debt. As Universities Australia have said, they have seen personal debt levels for students go up from $28,861 in 2006 to $37,217 in 2012. That is in addition to the debt that for many is the size of a small mortgage when they leave. So it is no wonder that students are being turned away and that Australian education is becoming more inequitable; it is no wonder that people took to the streets; and it is no wonder that we saw a very big community campaign during the course of this year.

Today I am absolutely thrilled—and I commend Labor for this—that Labor has listened to the community campaign and said that there are better places to find money than by putting students further into debt or by breaking the back of our universities. This shows that community campaigning, together with strong representatives in parliament who will not bend, can change the decisions of a government—including a government such as this one, which is intent on implementing a very brutal agenda for this country.

The National Tertiary Education Union, the National Union of Students and the universities should be incredibly proud of what they have managed to achieve by working together with their allies in parliament, because, provided that Labor's commitment extends not just to this bill but also to the start-up scholarships debt mechanism—which will come in, I understand, in other legislation—very soon students and universities across this country will be able breathe a huge sigh of relief. These unions, the universities and their parliamentary allies will then know that everything they did during the course of this year made a massive difference and that it changed the direction of higher education in this country.

Their achievement would give an enormous boost to everyone who watches what goes on in parliament and thinks there is nothing they can do which will make a difference—because they absolutely can make a difference. When you join with your fellow community members and your representatives in parliament to campaign, you can absolutely stop a bad government from doing bad things. That is the message that we will continue to put out over the next three years, because this government will want to do a lot of bad things. Until now we, the Greens, have often been the only ones in parliament speaking up against such things. But we are learning that the position of other parties can be changed when the arguments are put in front of them and when the community campaign is strong enough. I am very pleased that, as we head towards Christmas, universities and students are going to be getting an unexpected Christmas present in the form of the knowledge that they will not be asked to bear the brunt of balancing the books in this country.

It might be time now for us to focus on where the money for education can come from and how we will resource a caring society. Rather than hitting universities, maybe the government should reconsider scrapping the mining tax and instead fix it. If we kept the mining tax and fixed it, we would not be in the position of debating education funding in the first place. We would be able to create the kind of higher education sector in this country that everyone could be proud of, and we could know that everyone sitting in this parliament had made sure that every future Australian citizen would—like my dad—be able to go to university no matter how much they earn.

Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tertiary education matters. But I do not believe that it is clear to the current government that tertiary education matters. It matters for many reasons. It matters, perhaps first and foremost, because of the inherent value of education: the inherent value of learning about things and increasing our wisdom. Education makes for a better world, a better community and a better country. There is an inherent value in the pursuit of learning, and we should fund it properly. It matters also because it is crucial that we keep up with other countries in the world and in our region—in particular with our trading partners. If we want to compete in the current and future economy, we need to be smarter than our competitors. We need to do better research than our competitors. Such things will be the underpinning of a successful Australian economy in the global marketplace in the future.

Education will not just allow us to compete with other countries but also allow us to be an attractive destination for students from other countries. The fact is that education has already become a major industry in Australia. A great many students from other countries choose to come to Australia's very fine universities—including the very fine university, the University of Tasmania, in my own electorate—but, if we do not invest in our universities, we run the real risk of being left behind. In the global education marketplace, students from just about any country can choose to study in just about any country. So, although our universities have made a very fine start and are at the moment global leaders in supplying education to foreign, fee-paying students, we run the real risk of being left behind if we do not continue to fund our universities properly. We need not just to avoid cuts to investment in our universities but also to find the money to spend even more on our universities. As good as our universities are currently, they could be so much better—and they will have to be so much better if they are to be seen by foreign, fee-paying students as institutions of excellence to which they will choose to travel from their country to come and study at.

There is also the fact of the inherent value of education to students and what it brings to them. It is not just a case of learning new skills and becoming qualified to be a doctor, an architect, an engineer, a teacher, a nurse or anything else. Education also has a very important social value. Education is the great leveller, particularly for people who are from disadvantaged backgrounds and who are looking to get a leg up to better themselves and get a decent job. Perhaps they will be the first person in their family for a generation or two to have a good job.

With education, with a job and with new skills comes a better standard of living and better health outcomes. That is something that we do not focus on enough—the importance of education in this country as a leveller—and something that particularly helps disadvantaged students get ahead and have a good future for themselves and their families. Tertiary education is also a very important economic driver. Locally, I think of my home state of Tasmania, where the University of Tasmania—a very fine university—is one of the biggest employers. It is also a barometer: when our university prospers, it seems that our economy does well, when our university is under pressure, our economy also seems not to do so well. The University of Tasmania right now faces the very real prospect of cutting something like 150 staff and that is a lot of people in a state of only 500,000 people.

There are many reasons that universities matter and reasons that we must not cut funding. Rather, we must find extra money to make sure they can be everything that they can be. We live in one of the richest, most clever, most fortunate country in the world. There is no reason we cannot have the very best universities in the world—not just now, but into the future. As the member for Melbourne quite rightly said, 'It is all about priorities'. Despite the fact that we have good universities with bright futures—everything else being equal—regrettably tertiary education is under very serious attack. In the last two years alone, over $4 billion has been cut from the tertiary sector in Australia—over four thousand million dollars. In other words—despite their importance, despite their promise, despite all the reasons we should invest in them—Australian universities are currently underfunded by some $1 billion a year. I make the point again that the knock-on effect at the local level in my home town of Hobart is that the University of Tasmania is looking to shed 150 jobs at a time when the economy is soft and at a time when government should be investing in all the community's institutions, including universities. It would be not only a way of making richer and better communities, but also a way of employing people.

This bill is another attack on the tertiary sector. If it becomes law, this bill will result in a cut of more than $900 million from the tertiary sector over the next four years in the form of so-called efficiency dividends. What sort of political gobbledegook is an efficiency dividend? Why do not we call it for what it is? It is a cut to your budget—suck it up and live with it. Some of the few ways universities can save money include cutting courses, cutting staff or cutting facilities. They can also cut campuses, which is a real issue for some of the small satellite campuses, such as the Burnie and Launceston campuses of the University of Tasmania. So, let's cut all the political gobbledegook about efficiency dividends. If this bill becomes law, $900 million will be gutted from the Australian tertiary sector over the next four years. That will mean a cut of something like $30 million over the next four years from the University of Tasmania. That will hurt the university, and the university will have to consider cutting courses and cutting staff. It will hurt students because, ultimately, as the university has fewer resources there will be fewer resources for students. It will hurt the Tasmanian economy, and the unemployment rate at the moment in my state is way over eight per cent—the highest of any state in the land. We cannot afford this sort of cut to federal investment, particularly when the economy is under so much pressure.

Crucially, the bill would also reduce the discount for the early payment of HECS and HELP, which will save the government something like $300 million over four years. Again, it is political gobbledegook to say that it will save the government $300 million. We should instead be saying that it is going to cost the tertiary sector $300 million over four years in one way or another. Any talk about savings measures for the government is merely a consequence. Sure, there are all sorts of people who can afford to pay their HECS or HELP debt off early. There are students from very advantaged backgrounds where perhaps mum and dad can afford to pay their HECS, but there are also many students from disadvantaged backgrounds who are busting their boilers after hours to scrape together the money to try and pay off their debt, just as there are some very disadvantaged families who are busting their boilers—mum and dad both working two jobs to pay off that debt so that their son or daughter does not carry that debt into their working life. Let's not kid ourselves: getting rid of the discount on the early payment of HECS or HELP will be of little consequence for some students and their families, but it will be a very big consequence for other students and to their families.

We should not look at this bill in isolation, because we have another bill coming down the driveway—the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment Bill. When we are discussing the bill before us today, we should also be cross-referencing it with that other bill, which we may be deciding this week in this place. The Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment Bill will impose another savage cut on the tertiary sector and, most worryingly, on those students who can least afford. That bill will abolish start-up scholarships and impose HECS or HELP-type fees or loans on students.

Let us put this into perspective. The only students who were getting those start-up scholarships were the most disadvantaged students in the land, the people who could barely afford to get to university, for many of whom the scholarship was the very difference between getting to uni or not. Yet this government sees fit to get rid of those scholarships. This government sees fit to slap onto some of the most disadvantaged students in Australia a debt that they will have to carry into their working life—a debt that, at the end of the day, could be some $10,000.

Can I come back to one of the first points I made about education as the great leveller. Education is what helps so many young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to get ahead, to catch up, to get a decent job, to get a decent income, to buy a house, to bring up a family and to provide for their children the sorts of things that those children deserve. It is the great leveller. Yet, completely at odds with the idea of education being a great leveller, this government sees fit to get rid of start-up scholarships and to slap a dirty big debt onto some of the most disadvantaged students in the land.

Let me talk a bit more broadly for a moment. It is pretty tough out there. You cannot live on youth allowance. The average Australian university undergraduate works something like 20 hours a week. How on earth can you study and achieve to your very best when you are working half a job? You cannot. The student gets a less than perfect outcome, which means that our community gets a less than perfect outcome. Now we are going to axe the start-up scholarships. And all of this in one of the richest, most clever and most fortunate countries in the world.

I again echo the member for Melbourne and the very good point he made. It is all about priorities. The income for the government this financial year is forecast to be about $380,000 million. Surely that is enough, with the right priorities, to have the world's best universities, the world's best resourced university teachers, the world's best resourced university researchers, and a fair deal, a fair go, for the students who attend those universities. While we are at it, surely $380,000 million a year is enough to have not only the best universities in the world but the best colleges in the world, the best high schools in the world, the best primary schools in the world and the best early childhood education centres in the world, including a fair wage for a fair day's work for the early childhood educators who populate those centres. It is all about priorities.

I do lament the fact that, when it comes to tertiary education, this government has its priorities all out of whack. The previous government did too, but I will acknowledge and applaud the Labor Party for deciding to oppose this bill. That is the right thing to do. I am pleased to stand next to—but not be part of—the Labor Party and the Greens in opposing this bill, just as I will also oppose the associated Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment Bill, if only because of the way it attacks our universities.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Savings and Other Measures) Bill. Along with my Labor colleagues, I will be voting against this legislation. The coalition announced that it would introduce this legislation and it did so on 21 November this year. For the sake of the record, it forms part of a package with other legislation—the Social Services Amendment and Other Legislation Amendment Bill—which contains a proposal to convert student start-up scholarships to income contingent loans. Aspects of the current legislation before the chamber include a two per cent efficiency dividend on the higher education sector in 2014, a 1.25 per cent efficiency dividend on the sector in 2015 and a removal of the 10 per cent discount for paying university fees up-front, as well as a five per cent discount received for voluntary repayment of HELP debts.

Members opposite who went to university must have had a pretty sad experience when they were there. Every time they speak on this type of legislation they reveal their ideological bent. After the Howard coalition government came to power they set about attacking the university sector and gutting funding for it. When they had the opportunity to bring in Work Choices, they linked university funding to protocols in relation to the imposition of agreements—not collective agreements but individual contracts for university staff. There was the most pernicious and punishing impact on universities that we have ever seen in this country.

They came to power saying that they were on a unity ticket with us in relation to the Gonski reforms, with assistance given to people from low socioeconomic backgrounds, to schools with high rates of Indigenous students, to schools with students with disability, and to remote and regional schools. But within a short period of time they backflipped not only on primary and secondary education but also on tertiary education. Within a very short period of time, the Minister for Education, the member for Sturt, Christopher Pyne, was talking about quality and whether they would revert to a capped system rather than a demand driven one for university placements. That was ostensibly on the back of the idea of the need for quality education.

To raise concern even further, they decided to announce a review of the current uncapped system of university places. Then they decided to get that great champion of the university sector, former Liberal education minister David Kemp, to be one of the reviewing officers. It is interesting that coalition governments like to do this. I am from the state of Queensland, where there is great opportunity for employment for former members of the coalition who served in the cabinet and the ministry, because those opposite keep recycling them into positions to examine reviews. Former Treasurer Peter Costello's commission of audit in Queensland resulted in tens of thousands of jobs being lost in my home state.

Here we have another recycled minister from the former coalition government being given the opportunity to look at the current uncapped system of university places which has seen such an increase in people from low-socioeconomic backgrounds at university. We put a massive amount of funding into this region, increasing our funding from about $8.1 billion to $14 billion over the cycle of our government. We saw a massive increase in the number of students attending university.

It is very important to note that Australian university graduates contribute $170 billion a year in wages to the economy. Graduates comprise about one-quarter of the population of Australia and generate about a third of the wages of Australia. So we are talking about a very important sector in the economy. Universities contribute about $22 billion to our GDP every year.

But those opposite think that the first thing you should do when you get to power, like the Howard coalition government did, is attack the university sector. So we saw them raise the idea that they might abolish the assistance we provided through student amenities charges. They raised that until the National Party put their hands up and said, 'We don't want to agree to that,' and then they dropped that like a suck of spuds. On this particular occasion we have a backflip from them in relation to other higher education assistance.

In relation to this particular savings measure, we said we would do this in the context of full implementation of the Better Schools plan—a six-year agreement with the states and territories, contributing about $9.4 billion to make a huge difference to the primary and secondary sector of education in this country, making sure that there is teacher training, and literacy and numeracy training for students, and effectively extending the national partnership type of assistance to schools, which I have seen make such a huge difference in my electorate. Those opposite have said, 'No, we don't support that,' having said they were a unity ticket.

I have to say that I debated not just the candidate who was running against me but another candidate during the last election. It seemed to me quite clear that there was a certain line that they were being fed—that is, that they were going to support Labor's Gonski plan. In the many debates I had with those candidates, whether it was at chambers of commerce or other types of venues, or on family radio in Brisbane the Sunday night before the election, the Liberal candidates said, 'We are going to support Labor's plan in full. There is no difference. You can vote for us; you'll get the same plan whether it is primary education, secondary education or even tertiary education.' But in a very short period of time we have seen changes initiated by those opposite.

We are not going to support this bill, because we want to make sure that we guarantee all students go to schools, universities and TAFEs, which are cathedrals of learning and research and development. Those institutions help contribute to our productivity, give good economic outcomes and give good opportunities for young people to achieve their potential. We are not going to adopt the coalition's policy.

In relation to these types of things, I have to say that the coalition really has baulked at doing the right thing. We have seen many positions from them on education. They have been flip-flopping. In fact, today in question time we saw a lack of commitment from those opposite to the Gonski plan. They are saying that they will only put in just over $2 billion. Then, when the shadow minister, Jenny Macklin, the member for Jagajaga, asked a question of the Prime Minister he said he would give loadings in relation to disability. When I asked him a question in relation to guaranteeing funding for every Indigenous student, he said he would do that. But we have heard the Minister for Education in this place saying that the states are sovereign governments—that is interesting because they were all colonies before Federation—and adult governments and so will make their own decisions. How can they guarantee funding for our high schools and primary schools if they put no conditions on it? This mob opposite remind me of someone who says, 'I want to buy a house and I'll give you some money. Here's the money. I won't sign the contract and I won't take the house, but I will give you the money.' It was a stupid thing for the minister to do. He should have followed through completely on Gonski, as he said he would do.

We made a massive difference to university education. I want to talk about my electorate. We made a massive difference there.

Mr Frydenberg interjecting—

I will give an illustration for the member opposite me. Since 2007, an additional 364 people from Ipswich and Somerset in my electorate have been given the opportunity to pursue a university education—an increase of over 14 per cent. Between 2007 and 2011, we gave more than 300 students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds in my electorate the opportunity to get a university education—an increase of 15 per cent. That is what we did. This year we have over 1,280 students in my electorate receiving the youth allowance. There was a 73 per cent increase in university funding. What is the first piece of legislation in relation to university funding initiated by this government? They are talking about a $2.3 billion cut to the sector. That is their attitude in relation to the university sector.

I will give a further illustration so the member for Kooyong will know more. A great example is the University of Southern Queensland in Springfield in my electorate. Between 2007 and 2011 the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students grew by 29.1 per cent, with more than 173 Indigenous students commencing in 2011. We also invested $48.9 million into their Education Gateways Building, which supports:

… digitally connected learning environments, including simulated learning and laboratory spaces, enabling new offerings in Allied Health and Nursing, Engineering and Construction and Education.

In contrast, just like their colleagues and comrades in Queensland and Victoria, the government is gutting funding to the tertiary sector. We have seen it in Queensland and Victoria in relation to the TAFE sector. We have seen TAFE teachers lose their jobs, campuses closed and the future of local young people left in doubt. That will happen if this legislation passes.

The tertiary sector is a very important part of closing the gap for the Indigenous community. There is a growing Indigenous population in this country. Much of that population, according to the ANU's most recent demographic report, which was released in the last couple of weeks, lives around the capital cities and around regional towns and cities such as Ipswich, Logan, Rockhampton, the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast in Queensland; up and down the Central Coast, around Newcastle and around the Illawarra in New South Wales; and in the southern part of Western Australia. It is a growing population. Indeed, in South-East Queensland the population of Indigenous people will double in the next 20 years, way more than the increase in the Northern Territory. Indigenous people are attending university in increasing numbers, but there are not enough. Only about one per cent of the university student population identify themselves as Indigenous, but about 3.5 per cent of our population is Indigenous. So we have a problem. We have to close the gap. Universities offer that opportunity. That opportunity is necessary because many Indigenous students are the first people in their family to go to university.

Earlier, I gave the example of the University of Southern Queensland. I have met the CEO of Springfield campus, Doug Fraser, many times. He has talked about what that university campus means. Under this legislation students in my electorate will suffer. We will see a reduction in the number of students of Indigenous background and from poorer areas—suburbs such as Leichhardt, One Mile, Redbank Plains, Riverview, Collingwood Park and, indeed, Springfield in my electorate—attending university. That is the tragedy and shame of those opposite. The first piece of legislation they have introduced is not a piece of legislation that will enhance university development opportunity but—like the legislation of the Howard coalition government—legislation that will implement cuts. Like their colleagues in Queensland, it is cuts, cuts and further cuts.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to make a few points about how the bill before the House, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Savings and Other Measures) Bill 2013, will affect the people of my electorate of Bendigo. I remind the House that I was not a member in the last parliament, but I was a candidate for the 12 months before I was elected. Funding cuts were a hot issue in the electorate and there were several rallies and protests about funding cuts to the university sector. Being a good, diligent candidate, I made sure that I got out there to listen to the people in my electorate and find out what exactly their concerns were about funding.

At the rally I attended, there was a strong sense of confusion among students. Whilst everyone agreed that there should be funding for schools and they supported Gonski, there was some concern about the funding cuts to universities. As we know, the cost of education continues to increase, and students were concerned that if their university had less funding they would have to pay more. There were about 200 students at the rally I attended. Unlike my opponent from the Liberal Party and my opponent from the National Party I did front up and I talked genuinely to the students about their views on higher education. I was there to face the music before I had been elected. Apart from the fact that they were worried about class sizes—were there going to be larger classes—they were worried about the quality of their resources, and they were worried about whether they could continue to have tutorials. Being the good candidate and then representative that I am, I listened and took on board those comments, because delivering higher education to regional areas is a priority for Labor. Labor has a strong track record in delivering higher education in the regions and, in particular, to Bendigo, whereas those in the government have not.

It is no secret and it is no surprise that in Bendigo the TAFE has been gutted by the Liberal-National state government. We have seen the effects of these cuts just this week and last week, with 47 more redundancies being announced by the TAFE and key vocational trades courses being cut—including in the school of mines. There has been a school of mines on this site in Bendigo since mining started in Bendigo over 150 years ago. Losing the school of mines is a disaster not only for the students but for our region. Cabinetmaking also has been cut. In a growth area, where we continue to build houses, it is astounding that the TAFE has been forced to close down its cabinetmaking apprenticeship course and training. But that is what happens when the Liberals get into government—they cut funding from higher education—and that is what this bill we are debating seeks to do. The 47 redundancies that were announced in the last fortnight are on top of 100 redundancies that were announced last year. The pain for BRIT TAFE, the pain for higher education, will continue.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I have a question for the speaker.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Will the member for Bendigo take a question?

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I will not.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why not?

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I took one earlier. I will not take one today. Why do I raise the funding cuts to TAFE? Because it goes to the record of the Liberal-National Party when they get into government and make funding cuts, particularly in relation to regional areas. As I said, it is not just the jobs but also the courses that will be lost with these cuts. Courses and skills will be lost. What it will mean for these students is that they will have to travel long distances to get their vocational training. This is our concern about what will happen with the proposed funding cuts in this bill.

I go back to why Labor is opposing the bill before us. The proposed savings measures were to fund the Better Schools Plan. Whilst I have my own reservations about the plan—I was not in the House at the time the measures were introduced—it was a decision by the government of the day, which was that we needed to spread the education dollars across the sector. However, given that the coalition have walked away from the Better Schools Plan—they have walked away from funding schools to the level that Labor proposed—there is no need to proceed with these cuts. The government are planning to cut an extra $1.3 billion from education. This, again, just speaks to what they do when they get back into government. The coalition are making sure that, whilst they are cutting the funding to higher education, they are not putting it into the primary schools, the secondary schools or even the early years education.

Labor are committed to ensuring that Australians get the best education throughout all stages of our lives. Again, I remind the House that we still do not know where we are with the Early Years Quality Fund. Today, we have seen the flip-flop, back-flop, who-knows-what-to-call-it on Gonski funding. We do not know what the government's commitments are on learning. We do not know if the schools in Bendigo will get their extra funding when it comes to the regions. We do not know if they will get it in terms of a loading for disability. We do not know if they will get it in terms of being low-socioeconomic schools. So there are cuts and cutbacks all over the education board. When we were in government, our position was quite clear: it was to spread the funding across the board, not to cut it from everywhere—which is exactly what we see this government trying to do today.

I also want to highlight what the former Labor government did in terms of university funding. Real funding to universities increased during the six years that Labor were in government. It increased for regional campuses by about 56 per cent, and for my own campus at Bendigo-La Trobe by 47 per cent. This meant that more students were studying at La Trobe University. This funding included the building of the Rural Health School. It included new accommodation spaces and also a number of other facilities which the campus was in desperate need of. I believe that the funding at this campus needs to continue.

We also saw the previous government's commitment to regions, with the number of university places increasing from roughly 62,000 in 2007 to 81,000 in 2013. That is a 30 per cent increase. That is what we experienced at the Bendigo campus, La Trobe University. I mentioned that the funding increased significantly when Labor were in government. We also saw an increase in the number of students in the regions who qualified for youth allowance. It may come as a surprise to some in this House that Bendigo, with its surrounding areas, is actually quite a poor electorate, with over 30 per cent of families on a household income of less than $600 a week. So the move to allow more students to get youth allowance was an important step. Again, it is recognition that Labor actually stood up for the regions and provided a good deal. So there has been an increase in the number students receiving youth allowance. There has been an increase in the number of students attending regional campuses, particularly at La Trobe University. There has been an increase in the number of students from low-socioeconomic areas going to university. And there has been an increase in funding facilities that these campuses need. Again, this speaks to Labor's record on higher education.

I am one of youngest—but not the youngest— members of this House and in 1996, when the coalition came to government, I can remember being a young student almost ready to enrol at university and seeing the beginning of those first savage cuts to higher education. In 1996 I can remember what this meant: the tripling of HECS fees overnight. When I finally did go to university in 1999, in my first year at the University of Queensland, students and academics held rallies over the courses that were being cut. The last time the coalition took government, universities had to seek funding from major corporations to keep courses afloat. We have seen what happened to universities over the many years of the Howard government. Key faculties were lost, such as the history department at the University of Melbourne. Universities told departments that they had to turn a profit and break even. This is what happens when governments cut funding to higher education, as we saw under the coalition government when they were last in government from 1996 and beyond.

In the time that I have remaining today, I want to reiterate a couple of points that people raised in my electorate during the campaign. An issue that is very dear to a number of people in Bendigo is that they want Bendigo to be a university city. They seek to have a strong higher education sector, whether it be the university or the TAFE. Bendigo seeks to be an area that is able to service the region—so, it will attract students not just from Bendigo but from around the area. This would give people the opportunity to receive a quality education in their area and not have to go to Melbourne for one. But if the funding cuts continue, if the funding envelope for the whole of education continues to be whittled away, then it will affect the universities, as we have highlighted today, and all students will suffer.

In conclusion, you cannot have it both ways. You cannot cut funding from universities and not put it into the schools; you cannot cut funding from the schools and not restore it to universities. There is funding that is required for education to ensure that every student receives a quality education. Labor, in government, ensured that that funding was spread across the board, but all we have seen since the election of the National-Liberal government is funding cuts across the board in every sector.

This is something that we need to take a stand against and say: 'You have to increase the funding. You have to restore the funding across the board, whether it be early childhood education; primary and second schools, through the Better Schools Plan; our TAFE sector or our university sector.' It is time we saw some real action from the government on higher education to ensure that everybody gets a decent opportunity.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker, I seek to intervene. Is the member for Bendigo willing to take question about Labor's $2.8 billion of—

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the member the Bendigo willing to give way?

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I am not. I believe I have addressed that question already through my speech.

That was going to be my final word, but, given that I was interrupted, I will reiterate Labor's position on education. That position is, purely and simply, that we believe everybody—regardless of where they live, their income or their background—deserves a quality education from the earliest years in early childhood education through to their primary school and secondary school years, and into TAFE or university.

We need a well funded higher education sector, just as we need a well funded schools sector through the Gonski plan and a well funded early childhood education sector through the Early Years Quality Fund. On this side of the House, we will always stand up to make sure that more funding flows into schools, and not less.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought a great hallmark of the Whitlam government—it was also a hallmark of the Gillard government—was the concept that education would provide a way forward for poor people. Once upon a time the poor were called 'working class people'. The working class in Queensland are not poor anymore; it is probably just the opposite. God bless the coalmining boom! There is this concept that if we get an education all will be well and it will be wonderful. Well, it might be for you individually, but in this place we have to look at the overall, bigger picture.

I stagger at the cost of government. When we left government in Queensland in 1990, our outlay was $8,000 million. It is quite unbelievable to me that when Anna Bligh's government in Queensland fell, they were spending $45,000 million. I suppose that it should not surprise me that the Liberals have only been there for 18 months and we are already up to $51,000 million.

I always like the Liberals claiming they are a small-spending government! You want to have a look at your record for the 12 years you were there; you doubled taxation and trebled the national debt. I hardly think that you people inspire us all. You ran an election campaign about the $315,000 million of debt that these useless people on the opposition benches had rolled up. I could not agree with you more about that, but then you asked permission to run up another $150,000 million. And you have only been in government for eight weeks!

I had the responsibility, with Bill Gunn in Queensland, of running the government when Bjelke-Petersen was going to the federal parliament. We were spending $8,000 million. You could take a survey in Queensland and ask, 'Are your dental services, health services and roads better now than in the year 1990 when the government fell?' I think that you would find, almost universally, that the answer to those questions are: no, no and no. Yet the Liberal government in Queensland is spending $51,000 million a year.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We paid back the debt, Bob.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Never mind about paying back the debt. They are not running a surplus. Well, there is a surplus but you need a magnifying glass to see it! The government in Queensland can say to their constituency, 'We are wonderful people because we are running a surplus.'

I do not have the time to do the sort of research that I really love to do, but I would like to know where the massive increases have come in government. There are similar figures for the federal government: Keating was spending $92,000 million and Costello, when he went out, was spending $200,000 million. This mob, the ALP, have bumped that up, getting close to $400,000 million. But now the Liberal Party seems to be wanting to break their record of rolling up massive spending and massive debt.

Here is one of the questions we need to ask ourselves if everyone is getting an education. I will quote from a meeting of the Country Party—100 years ago, when I was in the Young Country Party! A bloke was saying, 'We need cheaper education and education support.' Someone said, 'Whilst everyone is getting this education, who the hell is growing the food?' I think that is basically what we are saying here: if everyone is getting an education, who the hell is growing the food? I am not going to say they will be in the motorcar industry, because our minister has already said that we are not going to have a motor vehicle industry in Australia. He should be called the minister for non-industry—shouldn't he?—not the Minister for Industry!

In my day, I had a choice. I do not say this with great pride, but I was president of my faculty, president of my college and president of the combined colleges council at the sandstone University of Queensland. I served on the students union for a number of years. I suppose I had a fairly prominent role in the university of those days. But I just thought, 'I don't want to be any of these things; what the hell am I doing here?' And I left. So what did young people do in those days? If you had ambition and you really wanted to do something, in those days you went into mining, and that is of course what I did. And this is very relevant to the education system. I was able to go home and take up 20 leases at $40 each. Within three months, I was mining one of those leases, the Flora Dora Mine. I was producing copper. So a kid who was just out of his teens could go out there and become a mining magnate overnight. That was the sort of world that we lived in.

I want to re-peg some of those leases now. I have found out that it takes you two years of exploration and then it takes you seven years to get a permit to mine. What took me three months to do—and to make a living out of producing copper—now takes seven years. And the cost of the environmental studies and the other reports that you have to put in on what you are going to do and how you are going to mine is in the vicinity of $100,000. So it is not open to a young person anymore to go out and make his fortune in mining. That is only for big corporations.

I also went into cattle. There was a 50 per cent return on capital vested in cattle in those days. There is minus two per cent today, so I do not think it is a good idea to go into cattle! I went into selling. There were 16 of us who had AMP agencies in north-west Queensland; now there is one.

Every single opportunity that young people had then to get off their backsides and produce something for the people of Australia has been cut off to them. So they have to go to university. Who is picking up the bill? The taxpayers of Australia are picking up the bill, of course. And, quite frankly, I can say on behalf of the university students of my day that we had great fun. I really appreciate the taxpayers giving me all that money to go through university! In those days you had to have a Commonwealth scholarship. Not everybody could get into university; you had to have a certain pass level to get into university. It was possible to do it the hard way. In fact, although I said thank you to the taxpayers, I did not need the taxpayers because, every single vacation, I would work in the mining industry and make a heap of money which would carry me for the rest of the year. Now the opportunity to do that has been cut out. The Labor government brought in 125,000 section-457 workers. I would not want to be a young bloke trying to get a job in the mines today. And, to my horror, the Liberal Party attacked Labor because they were not bringing in enough! But there are only an extra 180,000 jobs created each year in Australia. When 125,000 workers come in in one year, I do not think it leaves many jobs for the Australians, and that is before you get to the 100,000 illegals—mostly university visa people—and the 200,000 migrants. So don't go looking for a job in mining if you are a young person.

If you cannot get a job in mining and we are giving that money to people who are taking it back overseas—section 457 workers—then who has to pick up the bill for these young people who cannot get a job? We do. It is not the dole bill we are picking up; they are going to university. As far as I am concerned, I had a great time at university but I do not think what I learnt there was of any great assistance to society. In fact, I would say what I learnt at university was definitely of no assistance to society; I think a lot of it was counterproductive to the interests of society. I did economics and I did law, neither of which I completed.

There is a lady called Doreen Mortimer. She is a very hard working lady, she does not have a lot of wealth and she is very active in our little political party. Doreen has very passionate feelings about HECS, and when someone feels very, very strongly about something you know there is a serious problem with it. I see, lurking in a lot of young people, stress. Every night I see that ad—and God bless the government responsible—for a debt helpline, 'If you're in debt and you're struggling, please ring this number,' whatever it is called. But there are young people struggling everywhere with the issue of debt, and one of the great burdens on their back, particularly in their head, is their HECS debt. Our young people are setting out on their pathways to life carrying a handicap of $50,000 in debt, not including their credit card debt, which on average rolls up another $10,000 in the first year, which should not be permitted either.

Let us look at when the world was good. When the world was good, you had to study to reach a certain level to get admitted to university, which cut out a hell of a lot of people from going to university. You could do it the hard way—go out and work for two years and save up money, or work during the holidays to take you through university for the rest of the year. But those options have been cut off. And the cost now is crippling. The cost of tertiary education is absolutely crippling the nation. The cost is bringing us all down. And there is the cost of losing all of those bright and brilliant young people who could produce so much for their country. They could be out there doing those things, but they are locked up, pretty uselessly, learning stuff that will be a very limited asset to them for the rest of their days.

When I went home and I was in mining up to my eyeballs, I took all the university books on geology home with me, and everyone assumed that I had done geology—an assumption I was not going to disabuse them of, because there is a lot of bluff in the mining game. I let everybody think that I was a great expert in geology and mining, engineering and all those sorts of fields. But in fact you could very rapidly get the information you needed to be an expert in those fields.

Very proudly today, Fortescue is led by Neville Power from my home town of Cloncurry. He is a fitter who did his trade in Mount Isa. Is he a competent mining engineer? Yes. Is he a competent geologist? Yes. He learnt those things in the university of hard knocks, in the school of reality. I think one of the best mining men in this country was Nathan Tinkler. He came unstuck, there is no doubt about that, but Nathan is as good as anyone I have run into in the mining industry. He has an immense knowledge and capacity to understand ore bodies, how they formed and where the coal reserves should be.

These men show young people that they can be unleashed from what I see are the shackles of university and the idea that you have to have a university degree to be important or to advance in life and to climb the ladder of success. We should return those abilities to the ordinary people and take away the restrictions. When you take up a mining lease now, you have to find $100,000 and kiss goodbye to seven years of your life. Let us go back to a period where within three months you could do that.

Talking about the environment, I live in a town where a quarter of the entire surface area of the City of Charters Towers was cyanide heaps, the most deadly of poisons. That dreadful human demon Adolph Hitler used cyanide to kill many people in Europe. So do not talk to me about environment. I had two mining holes in my backyard. They were good—they were a tourist attraction. There were a lot of interesting things about them. I am saying to you that society has overprotected itself.

I conclude on this note. Malcolm Muggeridge was a great commentator who said that the modern education system is like the giant armadillo: with every successive wave of evolution it clothed itself in more and more armour plate until it was impervious to attack from any other animal on earth. He said that it then could not forage for food and rapidly became extinct. God bless Doreen Mortimer for bringing this problem to the people of Australia. (Time expired)

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

I appreciate the opportunity to thank members who spoke on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Savings and Other Measures) Bill 2013. I was particularly pleased to be in the chamber when the member for Kennedy was speaking. While he ranged widely from the subject, his speech was elucidating for all of us in the House and will read well in the Hansard.

The bill before the House amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to implement savings measures announced by the previous government on 13 April and confirmed in the 2013-14 budget. The bill abolishes the 10 per cent HECS-HELP up-front discount and the five per cent HELP voluntary repayment bonus. Currently students receive a discount of 10 per cent on their student contribution by paying the amount up front. Students also currently receive a bonus of five per cent when they make a voluntary repayment of $500 or more towards their HELP debt.

The bill applies an efficiency dividend of two per cent in 2014 and 1.25 per cent in 2015 to Commonwealth contribution amounts under the Commonwealth Grant Scheme. The efficiency dividend will not affect student contribution amounts, but it will have an effect on university revenue in 2014-15 and in the years following. These changes and their impact on universities and students are Labor's legacy; they are Labor's cuts. They would be unnecessary but for Labor's rampant financial mismanagement and wastefulness throughout their years in office. This mismanagement has severely damaged the health of our economy.

The government has been left to deal with a budget in a state of massive deficit, which means that the government has no responsible choice but to proceed with these cuts, which are Labor's legacy. The measures in the bill do not diminish our commitment to a strong, high-quality university sector. We are committed to doing a better job of developing Australia's higher education than the now opposition did during their six years of government. We looked at what we could do. We have, fortunately, been able to reverse the annual cap of $2,000 on tax deductibility for self-education expenses. This will be of great assistance to universities and to the thousands of people who are considering upgrading their skills and qualifications. It was bad policy developed by the previous government; it was ill thought through. I believe it was offered up to treasurers for many years and, finally, the former Treasurer accepted it. I am happy to say, having led a campaign to scrap the cap, that the Treasurer and the Prime Minister agreed and we have been able to do that in this new government.

This is one of the many measures the government have already taken to assist our universities and our other higher education providers since we took office. We are promoting international education, reducing regulation, funding research, recognising teacher excellence and commissioning a sensible stocktake of the demand-driven system by Andrew Norton and David Kemp—with whom you would be well familiar, Mr Deputy Speaker Broadbent, as they are Victorians—and we have done more than that as well. We are working to fix the budget for the long term, to ensure that Australia's higher education system focuses more on quality and less on red tape and to properly resource universities so that they can provide quality outcomes in the future. This government will make sure that we have fiscal stability so that we can continue to properly resource high-quality teaching and learning, can produce world-class research and can be a leader in international education.

We are in the remarkable position tonight where Labor have announced today that they are going to vote against this bill in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. So not content with opposing the new government's program—whether it is the carbon tax, the minerals resource rent tax or the debt ceiling limit bill—not content with opposing policies this government took to the election and on which we were elected, the opposition are now in the ludicrous position of opposing their own government's policies from when they were in power. They announced these cuts and now in opposition they are opposing them. It is rank hypocrisy. It does not surprise me because the opposition is rudderless and leaderless, unfortunately for the parliament.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They are short on courage.

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

They are very short on courage and they will vote against this bill. In so doing, they will send a message to the Australian public that not only are they trying to oppose the government's measures but also they are the government change deniers of the parliament. They have now put themselves in the position where they are opposing their own program from when they were in government.

I commend the bill to the House.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the bill be now read a second time. There being more than one voice calling for a division, in accordance with standing order 133(b) the division is deferred until after 8 pm.

Debate adjourned.