Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am so disappointed that that earlier contribution was cut so short!

When I was so rudely interrupted by an event earlier today, I was talking about regional universities and the impact of the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill 2014, particularly about regional universities, students, their families and communities in the Northern Territory.

We do know that universities which will be most disadvantaged by these cuts are those most reliant on public funding—the smaller regional universities in particular.

Minister Pyne says :

Regional students and their communities will be among the big winners from the Abbott Government’s higher education reforms …

Well, blah, blah, blah—we all know that is wrong. Let me just give the contrary view, as expressed by the former vice-chancellor of Melbourne University, Prof Kwong Lee Dow, who said:

Whatever finally emerges from the political machinations with the Senate, students will be paying significantly more, and rural and regional students will be disproportionately affected.

Which is precisely what I have been saying.

The minister argues that regional universities will benefit in attracting students by keeping fees low. He has the Bunnings model of higher education for regional students, based on keeping costs and prices low and keeping volume of throughput high. I have news for him: this is based on what I think is a very poor and mistaken assumption that regional universities will be in a position to reduce their fees and absorb the funding cuts. Regional students and universities will be reduced in this process—the process being imposed upon them by this government—to second-rate institutions!

Regional universities enrol well above the sector average when it comes to the proportion of domestic students who are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, who come from low-SES backgrounds and who are from regional and rural areas. For example, Charles Darwin University has the highest Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander enrolment in the country at 7.3 per cent. Monash University has 0.4 per cent. Charles Darwin University has a low-SES student cohort of 19.6 per cent. The University of Sydney—that great sandstone university which really wants these processes—has only 7.8 per cent. And Charles Darwin University has students from a regional and remote background at 63 per cent and Macquarie University has 5.9 per cent. Those are just three examples of the way in which Charles Darwin University, in this case, is looking after the interests of those people who we want to target to make sure they get a better educational outcome.

The minister says that new scholarships will produce record levels of scholarships for disadvantaged students and will be of particular benefit to regional students and regional universities. However, as we know, this scheme is basically funded by an internal 20 per cent tax on increased course fees. An increase in fees for any university where more than 20 per cent of its student cohort comes from a disadvantaged low-SES background will be more than the average value of the Commonwealth scholarship. Therefore, if the university wanted to award every low-SES student a scholarship this would be less than the increase in fees used to fund them and the university would be losing.

By contrast, universities with the lowest levels of disadvantaged student enrolments will be in position to offer more generous scholarships—that is, Sydney, Melbourne and the like—and to attract the best students from the bush. I know this to be the case: this is what regional universities fear. That is, regional unis might be unable to compete to keep the best students from their own communities. This poses a significant threat to viability and long-term educational opportunities for those communities, and particularly puts the social and economic health of regional communities at risk.

Professor Andrew Van, the vice-chancellor of Charles Sturt University said:

The second concern I have is with the impacts on workforce supply. In the existing system we have been able to boost the supply of skilled professionals in regional areas. I worry that this may be undermined by these changes as regional students are put off studying.

Universities like CDU are a key social, cultural and economic part of their local and regional communities. Considerable public investment has been put into establishing these universities where people live and work in regional Australia. It would be highly regressive to the prosperity of our nation—and it is clear that this will be the case—if our regional universities are closed down or reduced to cut-price, or find that they cannot offer the breadth of courses that they currently offer to compete with other universities—the sandstone universities and private companies—which have no long-term investment in the community.

A 20 per cent cut to Commonwealth grants funding—as I said earlier today, in CDU's case—will mean a cut of $50.4 million over the four-year period 2016-2019. Immediately, for a regional university like Charles Darwin there are some programs they would not be able to fund and courses that they would not be able to provide.

We know what the government is on about here. What they are doing is unfair, unreasonable and unwanted. They need to go back to the drawing board and do something which is reasonable, fair and wanted by the Australian community, and not discriminate against those people who aspire to have further education.

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

I like the member for Lingiari and it is an honour to follow a man who has been around as long as he has. I will take issue with one thing he said in his speech though. He said that people raised the issue of lawyers making a lot of money and paying a lot of tax, so why should they be paying for this? This was a question that Andrew Tillett from The West Australian asked Minister Christopher Pyne at a Press Club address. If I could quote the minister's answer because he may very well have been answering the question posed by the member for Lingiari. Christopher Pyne said:

Well, I think it's a bit of a specious argument, actually, since you asked me what I think about that. I think it's a specious argument because it's really an argument for not charging anyone anything because we all pay taxes and it's the same argument you could say that when I turn up to get my motor registration I shouldn't have to pay for it because I pay taxes anyway.

We believe that competition between higher education providers will force universities to be reasonable in setting fees. If they charge too much, they will have empty lecture theatres. Higher education providers will have to compete for students and when they compete for students, the students win. The government believe in the transformational power of higher education and that is why we will provide around $37 billion in funding for teaching at higher education institutions over the next four financial years.

It is with much pleasure that I speak on the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill 2014 because this is something which I believe the country needs. I back my minister, Christopher Pyne, and my university, James Cook University, or JCU, in making sure that our higher education sector performs to its utmost ability and remains a supplier of quality, world-class education and is a sought after destination for education throughout the world.

I was asked to attend a forum at James Cook University called by the National Tertiary Education Union. At that forum, the NTEU executive asked all those there the following questions. Who voted for the 20 per cent rise in the cost of university education? Where in the Liberal Party pre-election campaign did they clearly state that the cost of university education was to rise? Labor Senator Jan McLucas gleefully added, 'It's ridiculous to think that a government would go to an election and not be up-front about it.' Then I rose but did not make the obvious retort 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead' but asked the people there: 'Who voted to float the dollar in 1993 and was that taken to an election as a commitment? Did the Labor Party take the decision to push thousands of single mums off their pensions to the election? Did the Labor Party take the scrapping of the chronic disease dental scheme to an election to get a mandate?' The answer to all those is 'no'. I could go on and name 1,000 things which were not taken to an election yet have become law and are part of our lives. On each occasion, the elected government made decisions based on the data before it and acted on what it believed were in the best interests of the country.

The new member for Rankin says it was a brilliant decision to float the dollar. They had an election in February 1983 and there was not a word about floating the dollar. Yet, 10 months later they made a decision to alter our currency policy and we have been the better country for it. Did Dr Chalmers in his extensive interview on the subject castigate Hawke and Keating on their decision to act and not put it to an election? No, he did not. His confected outrage and that of his party and his mates in the Greens only extend as far as they need for a cheap political headline, and that is what really bugs me about this.

Bob Hawke went to the 1983 election with a huge range of popular promises, only to be confronted with a larger than expected deficit and simply junked most of his agenda. To a large extent, this is what our government has had to face. We have come into office knowing there was a real issue of debt and deficit and we promised we would address the debt and deficit issue, but not to the extent needed when we discovered the mess Labor left.

I have used the floating dollar analogy for a specific purpose. It was a decision which had many benefits for the majority of Australians. It has transformed our economy. Not everyone was happy with the decision and not everyone was a winner, but we as a nation have prospered because of it. Some people still want to wind-back the clock and change it back. That is what we see Labor standing for today. Their rhetoric today is more about free education than student participation in the cost of their education. Labor seem to have forgotten conveniently that they brought about the co-contribution to university education. Their political opportunism and relentless negativity on this knows no bounds.

This bill will spread opportunity to many students, including disadvantaged students and rural and regional students. These reforms will equip our universities to face the challenges of the 21st century in a global education market. We need to unleash the capacity of our universities to be as good as they can be, to specialise if necessary, or possible, to ensure that they have the best possible outcome for their students.

Universities Australia came out last week and called for the parliament to support the deregulation of Australian universities. Universities Australia Chief Executive, Belinda Robinson, said that the parliament had a once in a generation opportunity to shape an Australian higher education system that is sustainable, affordable and equitable in serving the best interests of students and the nation. She said:

With budgets under pressure, governments faced with a myriad of competing priorities for public funding, and successive governments being disinclined to invest at the level that repeated independent reports have shown to be needed, full deregulation of higher education is needed.

Either the status quo of ongoing inadequate investment, or further cuts without deregulation will condemn Australia's great university system to inevitable decline, threaten our international reputation and make it increasingly difficult for universities to meet the quality expectations of our students …

In transforming lives, Australian universities transform the nation. They make for a civil society, are the lifeblood of our regions and provide the means for securing Australia's place in the highly competitive knowledge-based global market of the future. Education is Australia's third largest export.

The introduction into Parliament of the Federal Government's higher education legislation is a chance for all parliamentarians to seize the opportunity for making real, lasting changes that are needed in positioning our universities for the challenges of the future.

Are they happy with absolutely everything we have proposed? The answer is obviously 'no'. But do they see the greater good here and a critically important sector of our society and economy that is under great pressure? The answer is a resounding 'yes'. I will come to the objections later.

Australian National University Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ian Young, in his address to the National Press Club gave an impassioned and wide-ranging speech across a number of issues. His first words were:

Higher education and research in Australia is at a cross-road. It is time for us to make choices about what we want for our country and what we want for future generations. Time to make choices about the future of our universities.

Some of the other things he raised in that address were:

Australia is a nation that has yet to realise its full potential.

We all like to believe that the Australian education system is envied around the world.

And further:

Hard analysis shows that our rhetoric is better than our performance. Australian higher education is not bad but it is not yet brilliant.

To build an education system that is brilliant, we have to stop funding universities the same way regardless of how they teach. We have to stop the endless per-student funding cuts to higher education.

We have created a perverse incentive that rewards universities for enrolling as many students as possible and teaching them as cheaply as possible. That’s what our current system does.

Those are not my words; those are the words of Professor Ian Young, Vice-Chancellor of the ANU. That is the damning indictment in this whole matter.

When the budget came down we were able to speak about these reforms. I started by asking my daughter the following questions: 'What is the cost of your degree? What will be your HECS debt level at the end of that degree? And what is your current debt to the HECS system?' She was unable to answer any of these questions. My daughter is no dill and she clearly understands the nature of the system. Her response was that to get the job she wants she needs the degree and to get the degree she has to go to university and complete the course.

The day after the budget was handed down my staff conducted a basic poll. I acknowledge all the way through that my survey is hardly scientific, but it did produce a result which mirrored my own family experience. While we all knew there was a HECS style co-contribution, of the 140 people we asked those questions of at James Cook University that morning, 70 per cent had no idea, 20 per cent had some idea and 10 per cent knew the answers.

Labor seem to be preaching free education. All their rhetoric, all their speeches seem to preach free education. That is what they are saying. The speeches I have heard seem to be saying that they want it free again. Incidentally, Labor did not take the original HECS scheme to an election, either. So, please, can we just drop this thing about what bad governments do in between. You have to get on and govern with the decisions you have been able to face. Talk of degrees and debts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars is just that—it is talk. For every person who says that they will owe $200,000 for a degree, there is a university which says that is just not the case.

I note that Labor does not like this kind of talk, but it is called a market. If someone is charging too much or not providing value for money, the market will move elsewhere. While some courses will cost more, it will be the market which sets the price for them. A degree in science at James Cook University will be a brilliant degree. And, again, this is where I disagree with the member for Lingiari because, with its access to facilities on Orpheus Island, the Great Barrier Reef, the beautiful campuses in Townsville and Cairns, and out to a working cattle station, the demand for this course and JCU's work in the tropical world will mean that this will be a valuable commodity. But will JCU be able to saddle students with debts of $200,000 just because they want to? No, because Griffith, UQ, QUT or Sydney uni will all be in that market as well.

Our reforms mean that the biggest winner will be the students, especially low-SES students. As Minister Pyne said yesterday, in answer to a question:

… the biggest winners from the government's higher education reforms will be the university students, especially first-generation university goers … to the tune of 80,000 more students a year by 2018. They will also benefit by the introduction of the largest Commonwealth scholarship fund in Australia's history and they will benefit by more revenue for universities, leading to more research and better quality teaching. In return, the government is asking, on behalf of the taxpayers, that students contribute 50 per cent of the cost of their education—when they are currently contributing 40 per cent. So we are asking for a 50-50 split—that is, 50 per cent from the taxpayer and 50 per cent from students, when currently it is 60-40 in favour of the student.

They do not have to pay one single cent up-front and they do not have to pay anything until they earn over $53,000. This talk about a US-style education system is just not true. Why change? Why not do what Australian governments did for decades in industries such as the motor vehicle industry—just keep putting funds in, with no plan, where you will end up with no industry? That is what happens.

I would just like to also quote from Minister Pyne's second reading speech. He said:

Currently our universities are at risk of being left behind and overtaken by the growing university systems in our region and across the globe as these systems increase their capacity and new forms of online and blended delivery take hold.

We must aspire to not only keep up with our competitors, but keep ahead of them.

The government's changes will give Australian universities the freedom and autonomy to work to their strengths, be internationally competitive and manage economic and social changes to the best of their abilities.

This bill provides a level playing field for students, no matter what their study choices are. It removes the punitive loan fee of 20 per cent for VET FEE-HELP—helping tens of thousands of Australians undertaking VET courses—and gets rid of the 25 per cent loan fee for FEE-HELP for those who study with private institutions. It removes the lifetime limits on all Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) schemes and discontinues the ineffective HECS-HELP benefit.

He went on:

Regional students and regional higher education institutions will benefit significantly as we expand the demand driven system to enable study in more places in more ways.

Universities, TAFEs and private providers will have new incentives and opportunities to develop innovative partnerships, particularly in outer-metropolitan and regional areas, where they can work together to offer the skills and knowledge that local employers want in their employees.

In conclusion, I raise the example of Central Queensland University. They see nothing but opportunity here to the point where they have bought a TAFE. They want that. Sandra Harding is vice-chancellor of James Cook University. She is not happy with absolutely everything in the package. But from a regional university perspective, she says, 'Bring on the competition.' She is hungry for the opportunity to compete, because James Cook University will stand on its own. CQU will stand on its own; it knows where it is. These people want to get up and make more from their opportunity and deliver more for their students. That is what this legislation is about. It is not about what used to be; it is about what can be. It is not about what you used to do; it is about what you will do. It is not about the education system we have; it is about where we are in the world. We have to value our education system. All this talk of free education must stop. These reckless promises must stop.

I commend the bill to the House and I stand right beside the value of my university.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to outline my strong opposition to the government's Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill 2014. I declare straight out that I had a free university education. I would correct the member for Herbert: I have not heard one Labor member suggest in a speech given today that university education should be completely free—not one—and those assertions do not do this place justice. This government continues to be full of surprises, despite their assertions before the election. The higher education bill confirms that this government has introduced cuts to every level of education, from child care all the way through to postgraduate study. Combined, these decisions act to entrench inequity at all levels of education. This is done while those opposite scream at our young people: 'You must earn or learn.' Today's legislation closes the loop on access and equity in education and makes the ability of young people in this country to meet that demand so much harder.

These changes will again hit low- and middle-income families and will risk locking people from my community out of university. In Lalor, people of all ages want to talk about this unfair change. Families are seriously looking at their options to assess if university is possible for their children, and, meanwhile, the minister cruelly quips that he is not asking for their left kidney. No, just their future. Here we see the final nail in the coffin. With this bill they have basically told people in Lalor to just give up. They have closed the door on opportunity. Andrea Toohey, a resident of Lalor, wrote to me this morning and said:

Joanne my son has been working long hrs at Coles during his gap year to help support himself at Uni in Ballarat next yr. He may need to keep working for a long while yet? It's a shame to think his career choice may be totally out of reach.

This bill threatens to lock people out of future prosperity.

The member for Herbert has left, but I would point out a discriminatory difference regarding some of the assertions that he made. Governments may have to bring in legislation beyond an election. That is not what we are talking about. We are talking about a government that made promises—plural—before an election and is now breaking them. Despite the promises, it acted to the contrary. On education, the Prime Minister said:

… I want to give people this absolute assurance, no cuts to education …

I cannot count the number of times I have heard it repeated. That was on 1 September 2013—that is, before the election. On universities, he said:

If we have to change it, we will consult beforehand rather than impose it unilaterally and argue about it afterwards.

It is clear to me that that spoke to an intent. That was in February 2013. It could not be clearer, really. Minister Pyne said:

We want university students to make their contribution, but we're not going to raise fees …

That was in November 2013—emphatic, after the election. When the interviewer asked, 'Why not raise university fees?' Minister Pyne said:

Because we promised we wouldn't before the election …

Doubly emphatic, even after the election. My favourite quote of all would have to be from their own Liberal Party policy document. Even when he puts things in writing, you cannot rely on what the Prime Minister says. In their 'Real Solutions' policy document, in chapter 17, page 40 and 41, they say:

We will ensure the continuation of the current arrangements of university funding.

That is in writing: 'current arrangements will continue'. That is right: the document is called 'Real Solutions'. It seems to have gone from the memories of those opposite. It was the contract they put to the Australian people, but it was not real; it reflects the fantasy they took to the election.

Actions speak louder than words, and this bill proves once again that they were an opposition prepared to promise anything to get into power and now they are a government that cannot be trusted to keep their word. What they fail to understand is the real impact the decisions they are making are having on the Australian people. What they fail to understand is that these measures are unfair.

Let me go through this bill. It strips money away from universities and gives them no choice but to hit students with higher fees. This bill will see $100,000-plus university degrees. It rips $5.8 billion out of Australian universities. This bill adds to the Abbott and Hockey rap sheet of cruel, unfair cuts. There are $3.2 billion in cuts by taking the scalpel to HELP; $1.9 billion in cuts to universities by reducing government course subsidies; $202 million in cuts by indexing university grants to the CPI; $172.4 million in cuts to fund, promote and reward universities for enrolling low-SES students; $173.7 million in cuts to the training of Australia's research students—the scientists and academics of tomorrow; a $75 million cut to the Australian Research Council; a $31 million cut to the national regulator; and it abolishes the $3.5 billion Education Investment Fund. That is quite a resume. But that is only the beginning. What we have now seen in addition is the full deregulation of student fees from 1 January 2016, which will lead to higher fees and spiralling student debt, and there is the increase in the interest rate burden on that student debt. Most alarming, though, is that the fantasy continues opposite. Members opposite deny people will be deterred under this so-called reform. This could not be further from the truth.

I have spent most of my adult life working in secondary schools in my electorate where the majority of people are what we would call traditional working-class families. For most of those years, I taught senior English to year 11 and 12 students, and I was a senior years coordinator for many years. I know from personal experience what it takes to build aspiration in students, to build confidence and to get them to open their eyes to the possibilities their talents and potential can lead to. I have worked with students and their parents to look seriously at tertiary education as an option. Many of the students who left my care were the first in their families to attend university. One of the biggest hurdles in this was income—families had to forgo a working young person's contribution to the family income. They had to overcome the idea of a reasonable debt, with a payback safety net, as a means to an end to a brighter future. I call on all students from low socioeconomic circumstances in my electorate and across the country who made it to university to stand up and defend the next generation's ability to do so.

Just this year I heard the compelling story of a student who was being supported by Western Chances, a not-for-profit organisation that supports senior secondary students to get to university in the western suburbs of Melbourne. This student is now completing medicine at Monash University. She detailed how hard it was to ask for money in her family when her father had been laid off at work—money for books and excursions. She thought uni was out of reach despite her teachers having identified her talent. Here was a student, clearly identified as being among the brightest and the best, who without help from a not-for-profit did not think she would get to university. With support, she got the books she needed and some tutoring in targeted subjects to ensure she met the tertiary requirements—that subject, in her case, was English. She got to university and she is now a second-year medical student.

But where would she have been now with the government's changes? Indeed, how is she responding to the idea that the interest rate on her HELP debt will increase and compound? How will these changes impact on her future life choices? Most importantly, would she make the same decisions today and will next year's brightest students in the same position make the same decisions? The fact is that those who will be the most deterred by this reform package are from working class families in electorates like mine. What we have seen with this bill is yet another significant barrier being put in place for those seeking long-term prosperity through education.

Some residents of my electorate wrote to me this morning when I said I was going to be making a speech on higher education today. Heather Taylor said:

Many opportunities for students who are bright and intelligent will be lost if higher fees are brought in. University should be an option for all who are capable of passing the enter scores, not just for those who can afford it.

Yajaira, a former student of mine, said:

These changes are just going to put more pressure on young high school students to decide what they want to do their entire future. These things have the potential to affect someone's entire life!

She wanted that read in the chamber today. She wanted those opposite to hear her voice. And Janine Luttick made a really important point:

Increases in undergraduate and postgrad fees will preclude mature-age students from ever paying off their debt during their working life. That makes tertiary education only for the young and the rich. Threats to funding for research students will mean the contributions of some of the nation's best minds to the development of our quality of life will be lost.

These fine people deserve a government that will provide them with real opportunities. And they had a government that provided them with real opportunities—they had a Labor federal government. The fundamental principles of the Labor Party could not be further removed from the measures put forward in this draconian bill. Labor does not support cuts to university funding and student support. Labor does not support a system of higher fees, bigger student debt, reduced access and greater inequality. And Labor does not believe that you should only have an opportunity to go to university if you are rich. When Labor was in government we removed the caps on public university places. From 2009 to 2013 the number of Commonwealth supported places went from 440,000 to 541,000. In my electorate, that saw an increase of more than 50 per cent in the number of students attending university and a 48 per cent increase in the number of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Under Labor they had opportunity. But under this government they are having the door shut in their face.

The people of Lalor are rightly confused by a government that is ripping away our social compacts, that disregards the community benefit of the best and brightest attending university to ensure that their contribution to our society and to our economy is maximised—not just for their benefit but for all. We are hearing a lot about international competition. We are hearing people say that Australia's universities need to be able to compete. It is as though tertiary education fishes at Australia's border. But one of the unforeseen things that could happen with this reform is that we might find more of our best and brightest studying overseas without any intention of returning to make a contribution here.

I will finish with a question that I have asked in this House a few times, a question that young people have asked me to ask the Prime Minister: why is it that some debt is so bad but student debt is so good? I reject this bill and will firmly stand against it in this House.

Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am thrilled this afternoon to be able to speak as a member of the government in support of the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill 2014. Mr Deputy Speaker, no-one needs to tell you or anyone else in this chamber that higher education is essential to this government's commitment to protecting and improving Australia's economic prosperity. We know that, in order to remain globally competitive, Australia needs a strong and successful knowledge based community. We also know that, while Australian universities have served us well in the past, they are now dropping in world rankings as they face intensifying global competition from institutions that are focused on delivering new and emerging technologies and creating first-class graduates to meet the world's changing demand for skills.

An interesting point about tertiary education in this country—I suspect it is a little-known fact to many of our constituents—is that higher education is our third-largest export. People from around the world, particularly the Asia Pacific region, see this as a happy studying ground for their future. Sadly, over the years of the Labor government in recent times our rankings in this area, our credibility and our integrity of education has dropped to a standard that we have not seen before.

These reforms that we promote today are exactly that. They are reforms. They are changing the structure of higher education in this country, and it needs to be the case. Professor Ian Young is Vice-Chancellor of ANU. He said that it would be a 'great tragedy' for Australia if parliament blocks the federal government's plan to deregulate university fees. He went on to say it is 'a game-changer and a building block to making our universities brilliant.' In my view, any political party that rails against this fact for political expediency is a disgrace. This was highlighted most recently by the former ALP foreign minister and now Chancellor of the Australian National University, Professor the Hon. Gareth Evans, one of the very staunch, long-term Labor members of this parliament. (Quorum formed) He said:

It is time to change our one size fits all funding system and let diversity develop. Changes to the system will be controversial, but real change is required if Australia is to offer its young people a real choice in education and produce graduates to match the best in the world.

There is no question within the higher education system about the need to reform the sector. Despite the Labor Party's rallying of radicalised left-wing student groups to oppose these reforms, in fact they are welcomed by a majority of providers and prospective students. They are welcomed because it is only through these reforms that we can continue to maintain and grow prosperity and ensure that our students remain educationally best equipped to meet market needs into the future.

The Leader of the Opposition's willingness to go around the country aligning himself with radicalised, hard left-wing unionists and professional student politicians—who have shown themselves to be the rabble they are as they try to argue the case for reform by burning effigies and bullying ministers and former members of parliament—is simply due to the fact that the red-flag wavers are the only ones opposing these reforms. Those opposite attend these rallies with great enthusiasm, not because they want to but because they cannot find anyone else willing to stand next to them. David Gonski, Chancellor of the University of New South Wales, and former Labor minister Gareth Evans have both given their broad support for these reforms.

It was only a few months ago in my office that I hosted a number of university students who wanted to put their case to me in relation to the budget measures that had been announced. What I found very interesting about that meeting was, firstly, they did not come in too many a number. That surprised me. I thought they might have needed a coach. Secondly, when I asked those who did turn up what the cost of their degree was they did not exactly know. They had a rough figure. I asked them, 'How much of that does the government pay?' And their quick response—both of them—was: 'Nothing. We have to pay it back through this damned HECS.' I asked: 'Is that right? You pay it all? So, if your university degree is $40,000, your HECS debt is $40,000.' He said, 'Well, no, my debt's nowhere near that.' And I said, 'Exactly.'

What the university students themselves do not realise, as mentioned by the member for Herbert a moment or two ago, is that the Australian taxpayer, up until this point in time today, meets 60 per cent of the cost of every university degree in this country. The 40 per cent that remains is in fact the HECS debt to be paid by that student when they get to an income of over $53,000. These university students did not know that fact. I cannot believe that in this country people believe that they pick up the total tab. It is not true.

Importantly, for the people in the north-west and west coast of Tasmania, there are a number of measures that are provided for in this bill that are of particular importance but that are conveniently overlooked by Labor senators in my state. It is these measures that I will speak about now. First is the fact that the bill provides important and improved opportunities and support to more students, especially disadvantaged and rural and regional students. Second, the reforms will support students wishing to undertake sub-bachelor degrees through the FEE-HELP scheme. We all know that diploma courses have long provided an important pathway into higher education for less-prepared students, giving them the opportunity to develop the skills needed to further their education. This is particularly important in regional and low-socioeconomic areas such as my electorate of Braddon, where students are far less likely to enter directly into higher education than students living in metropolitan areas. With less than 43 per cent of the Braddon school leavers having completed year 12 studies, alternative pathways to higher education are of fundamental importance to many young people in my electorate. By expanding the current system of Commonwealth subsidies and providing support to students completing accredited diplomas, advanced diplomas and associate degrees, the government is allowing students greater opportunity to either enter university or undertake education through a private provider.

Has anyone in this chamber today heard Tasmanian Labor senators—or any senator, or any Labor member of parliament, for that matter—talk about these exciting opportunities? The answer is clearly no. The member for Lalor, who spoke just before me, using very alarmist language, said that young people in her electorate have given up. I will tell you why they have given up. It is not because of anything we have done. This bill was introduced only this week, and we are only today debating it. People are giving up because leaders in that electorate, such as the member for Lalor, have told them to give up, using scaremongering and alarmist language, painting a dim picture that would certainly turn most people off pursuing their dream of further education. The member for Lalor is responsible for the young people in her electorate giving up and looking to the ground instead of to the sky. It was her party that in the last four years of its term cut $6.6 billion out of the budget for higher education—

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

How much?

Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

$6.6 billion—nearly $3 billion of that in the last 12 months alone—not to mention the cutting of research funds across the country.

We have two important outcomes in this bill for students. Firstly, the bill ensures that they are able to study at little or no up-front cost to themselves, even if it is not through a university or TAFE. This alarmist language that says that these reforms will price people out of commencing a higher education journey is absolutely false. There are no up-front costs. Nothing has changed. So, a person from the lowest-income, most-disadvantaged family in my electorate can step to the plate tomorrow and enter into a university degree that will change their life forever. They can enter into a diploma or associate degree that will change their life forever—at no up-front cost. And people opposite, including the Greens, should stop the scaremongering. If they want to have a debate, that is fine. Talk about the facts that are on the table, the measures in the bill that are fact, not alarmist language that scares the daylights out of people with untruths.

Secondly, and just as importantly, the bill provides the student with the due recognition that undertaking a sub-bachelor degree is of equal value to our community as undertaking a university degree. In the north-west of Tasmania that may mean that a student undertaking a course through a private education provider will not face the difficulty of needing to save for up-front course fees but, rather, can defer those fees through the FEE-HELP scheme. That will be a massive help to prospective students in regional Tasmania.

Despite the feigned outrage of members opposite, particularly the Leader of the Opposition, who claim that students will be worse off under these reforms and that the sky will fall in, the truth is that under their government many students not only paid interest tied to the CPI for their loans but were slugged with a 20-plus per cent loan fee. That means that if a university charged $30,000 for a degree then students who were unable to pay up-front were actually charged $36,000 for the degree, plus interest. This bill proposes to remove that fee and instead use the 10-year bond rate to determine the interest rate and then cap it at six per cent. By removing all FEE-HELP and VET FEE-HELP loan fees that are currently imposed on some students who are undertaking higher education and vocational education and training, the government is making a real contribution to improving educational and employment outcomes for regional Tasmanian students.

I welcome these reforms, because the delivery of the government's commitment to introduce these reforms will change the face of higher education in this country forever. It will give us a fighting chance to place our universities back in the top of the rankings, not see them falling down the league ladder as we are seeing at the moment.

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

I move:

That the member for Braddon be granted leave for an extension of five minutes, given that he was interrupted before.

Leave not granted.

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

Earlier today I was lucky enough to attend a Smart Science Symposium held in his parliament where a hundred scientists, or so it seemed, from around the country gathered to talk about the future vision of this country. The cuts to parliamentary screening procedures must have kicked in. I am sure the government would not knowingly have let that many scientists into the building all at once to talk about what Australia's future might look like and the importance of putting money into research. On the very day that researchers and scientists came here to say that unless we secure the future of research in this country we are going to witness more brain drain as our best and brightest go overseas; that we are not going to secure the type of future economy for this country which would mean that in the 21st century we might have something to sell to the rest of the world, something which is not just coal but is, instead, based on our brains and on the things that people here produce; on the very same day those people have come here to say, 'Let's finally have a vision for a smart Australia where we respect education, where we respect research and where a job in research is treated as importantly as building a car,' this government comes along with a bill that will be a body blow to a smart Australia.

This is not only vital to our future but it is in the Greens' DNA to stand up for research and education. It is personal for me as well. My dad was the first person in his family to go to university. His dad before him worked in the post office as well as serving for his country. My dad's mum spent her life raising the kids, as many women of that generation did. My dad went to university because he could. It was an odd thing for someone in his position to do, but he went because it was affordable and he had the support—including from the government—to continue to study and then not leave with a crippling debt.

When I was at the university in the 1990s, the first campaigns I started getting involved with were on the rise in costs of education under the then Labor government. I still keep in my office a picture of me at a demonstration with a banner in the early 1990s in my best denim jacket with a Dawson's Creek haircut saying, 'Stop the ALP loans scheme.' I apologise to the students of today that we were not able to stop the Labor Party loans scheme. The point we were making then is the same as the point we are making now—that is, in a wealthy country like Australia we should have a higher education system where everyone can go to university no matter how much they earn.

I can see the cost of university rising to the point where people like my dad will not be able to go in the first place and this bill will hasten that trend. Secondly, it is vital to a functioning democracy that the population is as educated as they want to be and that everyone can continue to learn throughout their whole lives and not be deterred because they might graduate with a debt the size of a mortgage. If education becomes something only the privileged few can access or if some people start saying, 'Hang on, I don't know if I want to graduate with a $100,000 debt and, at the same time, have to find a house and a mortgage and then meet all the other costs of life,' then people who are highly educated will be the only ones who can afford to carry the burden of that debt and they in turn will govern and rule for themselves and for themselves alone.

An educated population is the cornerstone of a democracy, but over the years the pressures on our universities and on our students have been ratcheted up and up. Base funding has been cut under successive governments. Whether governments have been Labor or Liberal, university funding has not been increased to the level that it should, to the point where the Bradley review of higher education, when it was commissioned by the former Labor government, reported that universities need a 10 per cent boost to their base funding just to keep up. Of course, that never happened under either Labor or now under the current government.

The level of HECS increased. For me, it was something I was able to pay off within a couple of years, but that is not what students face now. The pressures on students have grown with youth allowance, Austudy as it was in my day, now not being indexed with other kinds of benefits. As an example, when I studied the income support I received was the equivalent of double my rent, sharing a three-bedroom place near the university. Now, if you want to rent near a university in a capital city you are lucky to have any change at all. Your full youth allowance pays for your rent. So students now are working 15 or 20 and sometimes even full-time hours while studying full-time, just to make ends meet.

On top of that, staff have been placed under more and more pressure. People may have an idea of universities being places full of tenured academics where people have life-long security, but only about 30 per cent of people working in higher education at the moment have ongoing secure employment. I spoke to people who worked in academia, who worked in research and teaching in university departments. I spoke to a woman who had worked there for 10 years without a day of sick leave in her life because she was on rolling contracts for those 10 years. You come to the end of every year and do not know whether you have another job. That affects university staff being able to plan their lives, to have a family or to buy a house.

Then of course in the last parliament we had the Labor government threatening to cut $2.3 billion out of higher education and putting that debt onto students. We took to the streets and beat that proposal but this proposal now, from a government which went to the election saying 'No cuts to education,' will be a body bl

Five billion dollars is the impact on spending on higher education, on research and on students. It is going to hit those researchers that the people here in parliament today, the scientists and the researchers, were saying are going to safeguard Australia's economy in the 21st century.

The bill proposes a 10 per cent across-the-board cut for the Research Training Scheme, and charges a fee of up to $4,000 a year for PhD students. So if you want to undertake research in the medical field—an area where Australia is leading the world in many respects, and an area we should be boosting—you could be facing a cost of up to $20,000 plus interest.

The interest component here is vital as well. We know that the government are governing for the one per cent in this country—I think fewer than a quarter of the members of the front bench went to a public school, and the others are private-school born and bred. What this bill will mean is that lower-income graduates could be forced to pay twice as much for their degrees as those on higher incomes, as a result of the compounding interest rates on their HELP debt. And it is going to be worse for women because, when women take time out of the workforce to raise a family, their debt is going to keep on going up and up at these higher rates. So women will find themselves at the end of their working lives with higher debts that have taken longer to pay off, thanks to this government.

This government says, 'We've got to reduce the debt and get rid of it,' but they are not reducing it; they are just shifting it onto students and people who have been to university. Plot the graph and you will find that in a couple of years the debt levels of students crosses over with the debt level of the Commonwealth, and you will see that the level of student debt, percentagewise, increases and the level of Commonwealth debt, percentagewise, decreases. That is because they are in a process of shifting debt onto the population, who are not in as good a position to bear it as the government. The government can borrow much more cheaply than students can. But that is of no concern to this government. 'Let's put people into more debt'—that is this government's mantra.

Then of course the bill allows for the deregulation of fees. Expect university degrees to cost you a second mortgage—especially in those areas like medicine or those higher demand areas where now, the government boasts, the market will rule. Well, if universities can charge as much as they like, they certainly will. And it will be of no concern to them that people like my dad would not be able to get in; that will be of no concern, because it will be, 'Let the market rule,' and they will charge whatever they like.

The minister says, 'It's okay, because we'll have Commonwealth scholarships'—taking an old term that used to mean something good and, in a move that would please George Orwell, turning it into something that will hit universities and students even more, because there is not one dollar in this bill for Commonwealth scholarships; the universities have to fund them themselves. These are the same universities that are being met with a 20 per cent funding cut. How will they fund them? They will fund them by putting up fees. And that is the hypocrisy that lies at the heart of this bill that the minister needs to come in here and explain. How can he say that there will be Commonwealth scholarships and that university funding will be cut but that fees will not go up? Of course they will. The universities are going to have to make up the shortfall somehow.

Lastly I will turn to something that slipped under the radar a little in this debate but which needs to be put up in lights: for the first time, Commonwealth funding is going to be redirected from universities to private providers. So universities are now going to have to compete not just against each other; they are going to have to compete against new private entrants who want to come in and make a quid thanks to a new government subsidy. I want our universities to manage their money properly, of course. But I do not want our universities to be businesses—that is not what they are. Businesses exist to make a profit, and some businesses go bankrupt and new ones arise, and it is a constant churn and a constant quest to make as much money as possible. That is all right; that is the business world. But that is not what I want for our universities. I want our universities to be centres of learning and teaching and research, where the people who work in them are well looked after and where students are able to go, regardless of their wealth, and come out without a debt the size of a mortgage.

This government talks about competition amongst universities as if it is a great thing. Well, I would much rather the money that universities spend on television ads and tram ads and glossy brochures went into teaching and research, and into helping us find the next cure for cancer or into creating the next Nobel laureate, because once we start saying, 'Our universities are just like businesses,' then we redirect money that could be going to students and to staff into the pockets of advertising agencies. And that is what is happening at the moment. Worse: if you take it to its logical conclusion, under this government's proposal we might see some universities fall over, not because the staff there are not good and not because students cannot go there, but because now we will have two tiers of universities in this country—we will have the wealthy ones that can charge as much as they like, and we will have the others, in regional areas or perhaps servicing smaller populations or offering smaller niche subjects, that will struggle under the might of the bigger universities that they now have to compete with.

I congratulate the efforts of the National Union of Students and the National Territory Education Union in bringing a national fight up to this government—this government that told us that there would be no cuts to education—because what is at stake is the future of this country and whether we will have an educated population and whether we will invest in research and education or whether we will gut them. This is being brought in by a bunch of people who had the benefit of a free education themselves, and who could probably afford to pay whatever was charged, but we will not let them pull the ladder up behind them. (Time expired)

Debate adjourned.