Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I go on to give my speech, I just want to commend and congratulate the member for McMillan for a very, very powerful speech. The figures are breathtaking, and they are shameful. It is a national disgrace. I am not sure whether the member saw the piece in The Australian magazine on the weekend. It was an incredibly graphic piece on domestic violence. The editor of the magazine wrote in her editorial that, unfortunately, in reading that story, there was no happy ending. She said that often in pieces that they put in that magazine she likes to have a happy ending or some sort of resolution or clear sight to see how we can get out of a dreadful situation but that was not prevalent in that article. It is a national disgrace, as you say. Again, as you say, strong men do not bash women. I commend and congratulate you for the work that you are doing in your community to address and hopefully stop this issue, because as you say the figures are devastating; they are breathtaking. It is a national disgrace. Thank you so much for bringing the House's attention to it tonight. All power to you in the work that you are doing in your community to address this issue and eliminate this issue once and for all, because it is a national disgrace. So thank you so much.

There is very much that I and my constituents are aggrieved about following the Abbott government's budget of broken promises. Since the budget, I have been inundated with emails, letters, phone calls and messages from Canberrans who are outraged by this budget, which they see as grossly unfair and based on lies. Everywhere I have been in Canberra since the budget, Canberrans have spoken to me about their outrage. They have told me about how this budget is going to change their lives for the worst. They have told me about their fears for their jobs, their house prices, their children's education, their futures. They have told me that they fear getting sick because they cannot afford the Medicare or pharmaceutical benefits co-payments.

Over the last two weeks it has become clear to me that one of the issues Canberrans are most angry about are the cuts to higher education. Canberra is lucky enough to be home to several excellent universities, including the ANU, the University of Canberra and the Australian Catholic University. Currently, there are over 30,000 Canberrans enrolled in one of these three universities. So it is not surprising that Canberrans are passionate about this issue. There are several changes to higher education outlined in the budget, each more devastating than the next.

The change that will perhaps have the greatest impact is the uncapping of university fees and the subsequent uncapping of income contingent loans, the increasing interest paid on these loans and the bringing forward of the threshold at which point payment begins—'fee deregulation', as the government calls it. What will these changes mean? Will they mean that students will be paying higher fees for their degree, paying more of those fees and paying them sooner? Fees could skyrocket, up to $120,000 to $200,000, as some have predicted. So students will graduate with even heavier debt burdens, with compound interest looming.

I have said again and again in this place that education is the great transformer. Education allowed my sisters and I to escape the cycle of disadvantage. As a result of my mother's tenacity, we were allowed to finish high school, even though times were really tough. Dad had left us when I was 11 and we did not have much money. Our mother could have just sent us off to work but she was absolutely determined, dogged, to ensure that we got a tertiary education. She knew that, without education, your life was limited, your choices were limited, and that quite often you led a timid life as a result of not having an education. She was not going to have that for her girls.

My mother had to leave school at 15—a daughter of a single mother who had seven kids to bring up—and go off to work. Her mother left school at 13—again, another daughter of a single mother, with 13 kids in the family and again a life of limited choice or no choice, no options, and a timid life as a result. My mother's grandmother left school at the age of about 11 or 12, and so she had very limited choices. All of three of these women ended up being domestics or cleaners as a result of the fact that they had limited skills and so their choices and options in life were limited. Fortunately, it was not the path that was available to my sisters and I—thank you to my mother for her tenacity and doggedness in ensuring that we got an education, that we got through high school and that we then went on to tertiary education. As a result, I stand in this place proudly representing my wonderful community of Canberra. My middle sister is a scientist. She has her own business and is a master of wine making—one of only two or three females doing that in Australia. My little sister is a neurologist. She does stroke research in Melbourne. I am very proud of my sisters. I am very proud of their achievements. None of us would be living the lives that we have now if it were not for education.

As I said, these changes are devastating for higher education. I do wonder what would happen if my sisters and I were currently approaching university age, with a single mum who was already working incredibly hard just to ensure that we finished high school. Would we still go to university knowing that we would be saddled with debts that could be up to hundreds of thousands of dollars? I cannot help but think that we would not. That is the real problem with this policy. Increased fees will put off those Australians from disadvantaged backgrounds from going to university. University will become an option only for the rich, only for the elite.

These changes will also affect students who have already graduated from university. Changes to interest rates will impact their loans from 2016. So these Australians thought they were going to university under one system, but, having finished their degrees and paying off their loans, find out now that, thanks to the Abbott government, from 2016 they will be paying higher compound interest. This is deceitful and it is unfair.

What will be the flow-on effects of these policies? For one thing, how is a young person ever supposed to enter the housing market if they are graduating from university with an $80,000 debt? And let us not forget that the government also scrapped the First Home Saver Account and the National Rental Affordability Scheme in this budget. So I fear that housing affordability for young people will become even more of an issue than it is today.

It is not just students being faced with substantially higher debt that is a problem with these policies. These policies will also mean that the government itself is carrying a significantly higher level of debt, and the chance of students defaulting on their loans will increase.

To highlight just how complicated and how unnecessary these changes are, not even the government know exactly what is going on. It has been abundantly clear from their statements over the last two weeks that neither the Prime Minister nor the education minister is fully across the detail of their policy and they have failed to grasp its complexities and its repercussions. Last week we heard the Prime Minister clearly contradicting his education minister on radio. Then he had the nerve to suggest that it is the university vice-chancellors who are confused. The Prime Minister said in a radio interview that only students who start in 2016 onwards would be affected by fee changes. However, the government's own Study Assist website says otherwise.

The fact is: students enrolling in their degrees at the moment have absolutely no idea just how much they will be paying in fees. This is absolutely absurd and it is unfair. Since the budget, we have heard university vice-chancellors and others in the sector, including some in favour of deregulation, expressing their concerns. For example, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney Professor Michael Spence warned that fee deregulation risked pricing middle-class families out of a tertiary education. The vice-chancellor of the University of Adelaide said aspects of the changes were unworkable and unduly harsh. Universities Australia Chair Professor Sandra Harding warned that changes were being rushed. There have been endless vice-chancellors commenting on this.

Last week, with my ACT colleagues, I heard firsthand from ANU students about the impact of these changes, and the message was clear: students and their families are concerned and angry. They believe these changes will discourage disadvantaged students from seeking a university education.

The higher education policies contained in this budget are radical and retrograde, and the sooner the Abbott government realises this the better.

Eric Hutchinson (Lyons, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in grievance for the Australian people. They are living with an opposition that is in denial—an opposition that has no solutions and that offered in the budget reply speech absolutely nothing. The opposition is living in denial. After six years, Australians indeed had much to grieve about: six years of Labor; six years of waste; six years of reckless spending; $50 billion left in cash, after starting with a $20 billion surplus in 2007; spending at the fastest rate of any OECD country over the six years of the previous government; debt growing the third fastest of any of the IMF countries, to peak, as Treasury have announced, at $667 billion; deficits left over the forward estimates of $123 billion. It simply could not go on. We simply could not keep paying the mortgage on the nation's credit card with borrowed money.

So we are tackling the debt and deficit legacy that has been left by the previous government. These are difficult decisions, but we are up for it. These are difficult but necessary decisions that are going to be made, not in the political interests of the Liberal Party but in the best interests and the important interests of all Australians.

The budget last Tuesday was not an end in itself. It was a start in the process of putting in place the building blocks, in the form of infrastructure—the single biggest investment in infrastructure that this nation has seen: $50 billion, to be leveraged up to $125 billion with support from the states and the private sector.

In response to the member for Canberra, I point to the fundamental structural reforms in higher education. These reforms open up the Australian universities—absolutely necessary to enable them to compete with our neighbours in Asia, who are increasingly focused on education. What is wrong? A year ago the up-front cost of going to a higher education institution for any student in Australia was zero. Next year it will still be zero. We all know that those with a tertiary education will, over their lifetime, earn nearly a million dollars more. Members of the Labor Party confirmed this today. For a small contribution paid back after they hit that $50,000 point, they will earn 75 per cent more. Interest is calculated at the bank bill rate. If interest rates do change, they are capped for students at six per cent. What a great deal for students!

Not only that, 80,000 more students around Australia will have the opportunity to get a tertiary education. For my home state of Tasmania, this is very welcome. Those diploma courses, those sub-bachelor degrees—these are the things that many of the regional universities are offering. That may not be the case in Melbourne and Sydney, but in the regions that is so vital. Not only have we extended support to the non-degree courses, we have effectively extended it into the trades. For the first time those people who want to go forward and study a trade will be given the opportunity with a $20,000 loan—staggered and paid back only once they start earning at an appropriate level.

Another big reform is the deregulation of university fees. You will start to see universities specialising. Yes, there will be some fees that go up. There is no doubt about that. But there will also be other universities that are able to offer courses more cheaply. That in itself will give more students the opportunity to get into higher education, to better themselves and to earn more money over the course of their lives. It is also important to remember that $1 in every $5 of increased fees that any universities charge will be going into scholarships and bursaries for people from low-SES communities. That will be legislated. It is a welcome reform.

The opportunity for many more young people to have a higher education—be it in the trades, in sub-bachelor degrees or in bachelor degrees and beyond—is welcome in my state of Tasmania. It is a true reformist agenda. We are tackling a challenge here that previous governments have failed to deal with. I feel that this is something that this government will, in time, become very proud of.

I will touch very briefly on the $7 co-payment. The $7 co-payment applies only to those practices that bulk-bill. Goodness knows I would love to find a bulk-billing practice close to my own home. Those people that hold a concession card will pay a maximum of $70 per year. Of the $7, $5 will be going—in addition to the federal government's contribution—to the establishment of the world's biggest medical research endowment fund. This is an area where Australia has been successful in the past and it is an area where Australia can again be successful in the future. The $2 remains with the GP. If, in his judgement, there is a genuine case that Mrs Smith or Bill Jones is unable to find the $7 for the co-contribution, it can be waived. That is at the discretion of the GPs—who know their patients better than anybody.

In the time I have left I will touch briefly on a policy that is perhaps one of our more controversial but is a policy that I have been a supporter of for a very long time—the Paid Parental Leave scheme. The biggest winners will be small-business employers.

For the first time they will be able to compete for high-quality female labour with their counterparts in big business and the public service, which already offer such facilities. Small business employers will be the big winners.

It will be low- to middle-income mums who benefit. We all know the superannuation at retirement that females have is substantially lower than that of their male counterparts. This is one measure to give them every opportunity, if they so choose, to get back into the workforce. We know that in years to come the population will age. I would remind those opposite that this was never a welfare reform; this was a productivity initiative. It was a productivity initiative designed to give mothers the very best opportunity to get back into the workforce, because we are going to need them Those opposite can stick their heads in the sand, but we are going to need them in years to come to pay for people as our population ages.

As more people depend on the services the government provides, we are going to need people who can actually earn money and pay taxes because, the last time I looked, the government had no money. The government has only the money that has been earned by others in paying taxes, including businesses that pay taxes. These are genuinely important reforms that are based around delivering productivity and encouraging high-quality female labour by giving women the best opportunity of getting back into the workforce to pay taxes and support those services we depend on government to provide.

Finally, I joined the Liberal Party because I fundamentally believe in supporting the people in our community who are the most vulnerable. This is a budget that does exactly that. A safety net a exists within these reforms that are necessary. Are they hard and difficult? Yes, they are. They are not politically savvy but they are in the best interest of the people of Australia. I strongly applaud the Treasurer, the Minister for Finance and the Prime Minister for upholding the value that as Liberals we hold dear—and that is to support those people in our community who are least able to support themselves.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would remind members opposite that on both occasions that members opposite spoke not one interjection was made during two speeches which invited interjection.

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

I am aggrieved on behalf of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples locally and nationally and non-Indigenous people of goodwill committed to closing the gap. On 15 March 2013 the now Prime Minister and then opposition leader declared in a speech to the Sydney Institute:

Should the Coalition win the election, Aboriginal people will be at the heart of a new government, in word and in deed.

The now Prime Minister's claim to be a Prime Minister for Indigenous affairs has been exposed as a pointless platitude in this budget—a mendacious mantra and a hollow homily. His budget of broken promises has gutted $534.4 million from programs run by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples which support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and those people who are assisting them across the country, from the Torres Strait to Tasmania and from the Gold Coast over to Perth. No true Prime Minister for Indigenous affairs would be so heartless about one of the most important challenges facing this nation. The Prime Minister has broken a fundamental commitment he made to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples before the election. This broken promise goes to the character of the government. He made solemn commitments to Indigenous Australians and he has not kept them.

This is a Prime Minister who has form in saying one thing before an election and doing an entirely different thing afterwards. On many occasions before the 2013 election, when he was opposition leader, he promised no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no changes to the pension and no changes to the GST. In fact, on the Sunrise program the day before the election, he said:

No cuts to health, in fact health goes up. No cuts to schools, in fact schools go up.

When Labor tried to warn the Australian people what the Prime Minister would do, he had the gall to say we were scaremongering. But on 13 May this year the coalition government handed down its budget, and the extent of the betrayal shocked everyone in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. They had no idea these cuts were coming. Under the sneaky cover of streamlining, the coalition's first budget does not explain where most of the $534.4 million in cuts will fall. In fact, when I looked at the press release of the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, the Hon. Nigel Scullion, it seemed there was a massive increase in funding for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs. In fact, there is no mention at all of the cuts I have outlined. You have to go to the budget papers—Budget Paper No. 2—to discover that $534.4 million is being cut over five years from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet's allocation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs.

There is no mention at all in the minister's press release of the $165 million in cuts to Indigenous health; there is no mention at all of the $9.5 million in cuts to Indigenous language support programs; there is no mention at all of the $3.5 million being cut from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in North Queensland through the Torres Strait Island Regional Council; and there is no mention at all about the COAG Reform Council being cut to the tune of $8.3 million over four years. The reform council reports on the Closing the Gap initiative. The lack of transparency, openness and accountability in the minister's press release shows just how sneaky and tricky the minister and the Prime Minister have been in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs.

Service providers across the country have been left out in the cold as a result of this, and Indigenous people and communities face an uncertain future. If the federal government does what coalition governments have done at a state level, some second-order bureaucrat will ring up in the next few weeks or months and tell a service provider in, say, Newcastle or Ipswich or Townsville, 'By the way, your funding was cut in the budget—we just forgot to mention it on 13 May in the budget speech by the Treasurer, or indeed the press release or indeed in the budget papers.' That is what happened in New South Wales, and it has happened elsewhere—in Queensland and other places. This is a budget of broken promises and bald-faced betrayals when it comes to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Prior to the election the coalition's Indigenous policy document made strong promises that there would be no cuts to Indigenous health. In fact, it said:

The coalition has provided in-principle support for Closing the Gap initiatives and will maintain the funding in the budget allocated to Closing the Gap in Health.

In COAG last year, in December, they stopped the funding for the national partnership arrangements in relation to Indigenous health. That expired in June last year, and we continued the funding—$777 million of federal government funding. But as a result of the decision of this government the bureaucracy has no focus on Indigenous health at all. There is no national partnership in relation to Indigenous health, so the states and territories do not have to put any dollars towards it whatsoever. In the budget we see cuts and cuts. Preventative health programs will be on the chopping block. How do we know that? Because the coalition, in its budget brought down on 13 May, cut preventative health programs by close to $400 million and the National Preventive Health Agency was abolished. Ripping $165 million out of Indigenous health programs over the next four years will have a deleterious impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people—most of whom, by the way, live in cities and in regional communities up and down the Queensland and New South Wales coast.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will also be slugged with the GP tax and with the increase in the Medicare and pharmaceutical co-payments. What we will see—because it is price sensitive—is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people not necessarily consulting community controlled health services like Kambu, like those run by the Institute of Urban Indigenous Health in South-East Queensland, which, according to The Australian today, is providing 'great success outcomes' with respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health. As a result of the mainstream programs being cut and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health services being cut, we will go backwards, in all likelihood, in relation to infant mortality and the longevity of life. The lack of commitment by this government to the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan developed in partnership with Indigenous people across the community, after extensive consultation, will mean a lack of emphasis on targets, objectives and outcomes. It will also mean fewer dollars in this space and less community control.

The states with the largest number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are New South Wales and Queensland where there is the least amount of community control. What we need is greater emphasis on community control services like Kambu Medical Service, which runs in the Lockyer Valley, and other areas like that. This government is doing exactly the opposite in relation to the commitment to closing the gap. The funding should be redirected in relation to Indigenous health programs and put back into those programs.

I believe Adrian Carson is a terrific CEO of the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health. If The Australian is correct today, those outcomes should be looked at and the minister should have a good chat with Adrian to see what they are doing right in South-East Queensland because that emphasis on community control, good governance, probity and integrity in governance are really what is driving those outcomes. We can see it all across South-East Queensland. The facts and the figures are in.

There is no funding in this budget for the 38 children and family centres funded under the National Partnership Agreement on Indigenous Early Childhood Development, which expires on 30 June this year. It means that we will go backwards. This is a significant, detrimental impact on closing the gap. I fear that, as a result of this budget, we will see closing the gap to be a fiction in the future. The government has shown through this budget that it lacks the will, the determination and the commitment to closing the gap.

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

It surprises me that seemingly rational and sensible people have fallen for the claim that the universality of our higher education system is dead as a result of the deregulation of our higher education sector. Their well-meaning concern stems from the fact that they think the poor will somehow miss out. They are right to be concerned about the poor, but they are wrong to think that the changes made in the budget make it harder for the poor to receive access to a high-quality education and the chance at a better life. The reverse is true. For starters, Australian taxpayers—and, by the way, this is not the poor—contribute 60 per cent of the cost of the tuition fees for students. Students currently cover only 40 per cent of the cost of their education through the Higher Education Loan Program, known as HELP. Despite paying only 40 per cent of the cost of their education, students who graduate with a bachelors degree boost their earnings by more than a million dollars, compared with someone who finished year 12 but has no post-school qualifications. These are not my figures, these are not the government's figures; these are the figures set out by the shadow assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh in his book Battlers and Billionaires.

To make the system better reflect the benefit that each student receives and to keep it sustainable into the future, the government announced the deregulation of fees. However, this does not alter the fact that each student is still not paying the full value of their education but rather only a proportion despite that student receiving the full benefit. There well may be a fairness issue but I suspect the taxpayer would argument that it is not an issue of fairness for the student.

Is student debt a barrier to access for students in Australia? According to Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon it is. She declares that the Greens will use their position of power in the Senate to stop 'the Americanisation of higher education'. But is the situation with the US analogous? The short answer is no. While the US system offers scholarships for students of merit, just as we do in Australia, the fee structure is entirely different. First, American students are not subsidised by the taxpayer. Second, American students who do not have the finance to fund their degree take out a student loan. These are commercial loans with commercial interest rates, not loans from the government with capped interest, as they are in Australia. Third, the American student starts paying back their loan when they start to earn an income. The Australian student starts paying back the loan only when they earn over $50,000, meaning that some people do not pay for their education at all or pay only a small amount. No matter what the cost of a degree, no Australian student, whether rich or poor, who has met the relevant education standard is barred from receiving an education at a registered Australian institution. In fact more students than ever before will receive a higher education as a result of our budget. While some hold the rather elitist view that higher education is all about a university education, for those who truly believe in the transformative impact of education, it is clear that diplomas, advanced diplomas and associate degree courses at registered non-university higher education institutions can also improve knowledge and skills that lead to better job prospects and a more secure, satisfying life. Under the new budget arrangements the government's HELP loan scheme will apply to students wanting to undertake such study, assisting around 80,000 additional students per year to gain access to higher education. Obviously, the most disadvantaged in our community benefit most from this change, giving them access where there may have been limited or no access. It also offers even more choice to students who may not have considered this option.

The deregulation of the higher education sector will see higher education institutions able to diversify and compete on both product and price. While it is true, as critics have argued, that some fees will go up, it is also true that some fees will go down. We should not aim to have all of our institutions be the same with a prescribed one-size-fits-all approach. It consigns us to educational mediocrity and limits individuals' ability to make their own choice based on their own judgement of value. No wonder, then, that in the latest Times Higher Education reputation rankings Australian institutions have been slipping behind, with one of our top universities, Monash, falling out of the top 100 global rankings altogether. If we want to celebrate excellence, if we want to be amongst the world's best we need investment in OUR higher education institutions. Deregulation of fees will allow this. In addition, more Commonwealth scholarships will be created as a result of these changes, providing additional support for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and regional areas. Institutions with enrolments of 500 or more Commonwealth supported places will need to allocate one dollar out of every five additional revenue they rose from student contributions to this new scholarship scheme.

Deregulation of our university sector will also allow us to preserve outreach in higher education exports. Currently, education is Australia's fourth-largest export earner, with higher education comprising two-thirds of education exports. The middle class in our own region will grow from 500 million today to over three billion by 2030. This is both an opportunity and a challenge. Universities in Asia have burst onto the scene and have been moving up the world rankings whilst Australia has been slipping behind. If we can attract students from overseas to our universities it will be to our advantage both in subsidising the education experience for Australian students but also in bringing the best and brightest in the world to us. That is why the quality of the educational experience and should always be paramount.

Finally, for those who argue that deregulating fees is not the solution to further investment in higher education let me give you a short history lesson. In his final budget, former Treasurer Peter Costello established the higher education endowment scheme. This $6 billion fund was the result of hard years of paying back Labor's $96 billion of debt. It was also the result of very serious economic reform, including tax reform and microeconomic reform. The capital of the fund was designed to be preserved and ultimately grown over time. The interest from the fund was to provide certainty of funding for higher education institutions, allowing them to invest and compete on the world stage. Sadly, Treasurer Swan dismantled this fund and blew half of the proceeds. This was done in concert with the government partners of the time, the Greens. Clearly, Labor and the Greens cannot be trusted with the future educational opportunities of young Australians. Their default response is always, as we have seen only recently, to wreck and not build.

When people talk about reduced access and greater inequality in our higher education sector, they seem to have scant regard for the generations that follow them. For the system to be truly fair and truly universal it needs to be constantly improving, not slipping behind. It also needs to be strong and robust enough to provide future generations with the educational opportunities and with even greater choices than previous generations have enjoyed. This means making it sustainable and accessible for the future—an education revolution, if you will.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for the grievance debate has expired. The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 192B. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 21:01