Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes the Government's abject failure in higher education policy, including:

(a) repeated attempts to introduce a United States style, user pays approach to tuition fees which will leave young Australians with $100,000 degrees;

(b) a continued policy to slash 20 per cent from Commonwealth Grants Scheme funding; and

(c) the short-sighted 2016-17 budget decision to remove 40 per cent of funding to the Higher Education Participation Program by 2019-20; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) recognise that two in every three jobs created in the future will require a university degree;

(b) acknowledge that investment in human potential is critical to boosting productivity and driving innovation; and

(c) immediately work to improve access to higher education and stop putting barriers around our universities through massive debt burdens.

We know that a university education makes an enormous difference to the lives of individuals. Many of us in this place were the first in our families to attend university, and we know the difference that has made to our lives and the different paths our lives have taken because of that. What we do not discuss nearly enough is the fact that a university education is not just a private benefit for the individual; it has a public benefit for all of us. We are better and stronger as a nation when we invest in education. In fact, the OECD estimates that the real rate of return to the Australian government from investing in tertiary education is more than 13 per cent, putting us at the higher end of that public benefit if you look across OECD nations. In fact, in 2013, the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency found that every dollar invested in tertiary education would on average grow the economy by $26 within the decade.

I have seen that personal benefit within my own family. My older brothers were able to go to university because of the Whitlam reforms. The reforms that came after, during the Hawke and Keating years and during the Rudd and Gillard years, have built on that fine tradition of ensuring that a university education is accessible to anybody who is prepared to work hard and study hard. We invested in our universities because we wanted to make that difference in people's lives; also because we wanted to make that difference in our economic life as a nation. After years of neglect under the Howard government, Labor boosted investment in universities from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013. We opened up the demand-driven system, which has seen an additional 190,000 Australians go to university. Around one in every four of the 750,000 Australians who are undergraduates in our universities are there because of those reforms.

What is particularly important is that these reforms have meant that people who struggled to go university in the past are now able to attend. Since 2012, we have seen a 26 per cent boost in the number of Indigenous students, a 30 per cent boost in the number of regional students and more than 36,000 extra students from low-income families—most, as I said, the first in their family to go to university. What you see in contrast, since the election of the Abbott and Turnbull governments, is a plan simply to cut university funding. If the Liberals had their way, more than $4.4 billion will be cut from Commonwealth grant schemes over four years. You cannot have the innovative and agile economy that the Prime Minister likes to talk about without investing in higher education. We heard him speaking today about advanced manufacturing replacing the jobs of the car workers. Thousands of them will lose their jobs over coming years because of the neglect of this government.

To have that advanced manufacturing future, we have to not just invest in the capacity of our existing workforce but also ensure that we have the designers, creators and engineers who will lead that advanced manufacturing future. It was fantastic recently to go to Monash University's Woodside Innovation Centre in Clayton, where I met the students and researchers who are working in collaboration with Woodside and their Goodwyn platform, right over the other side of the country off the coast of Western Australia. They lost a lever—a very simple piece of equipment that would have taken weeks to replace if they have been relying on traditional means. But, in collaboration with Monash University, they were able to send 3D imagery to a 3D printer, have their technicians work on it and helicopter this replacement part out to the rig much more quickly than they otherwise would have been able to. Of course that is the future of manufacturing in Australia, but you cannot do it without a partnership with universities.

Our young Australians are already paying the sixth highest fees in the OECD, and the idea that we would ask them now to pay $100,000 university fees is disturbing, to say the least, particularly with the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program cuts that this government plans. A 40 per cent cut is already planned for HEPPP, which is the program that has really supported young Australians who do not come from a background where university education is an easy thing to get into. Labor supports our universities; the Liberals are just about cuts.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, I stand in this chamber as a proud member of a government committed to ensuring that education continues to plays a key role in bettering the lives and careers of every Australian. I do not have a degree; I was fortunate to build a career in my electorate of Maranoa by working my way up in the finance sector. But, when I was at school, the line 'fail to prepare; prepare to fail' was repeatedly used. Never has a line had more relevance than today, right here in this particular motion. If any government fails to balance the exponential growth in university loans, the current economic pressures and the need to transition our economy through education, then the system that was designed to universally provide opportunity to students electing to study will surely fail.

It is important in a debate as important as this that the facts are clearly articulated: We know higher education is a fundamental component of the Australian workforce and will play a key role in transitioning our economy by building the next generation's skills sets and intellectual property and diversifying our industries. The funding of university loans to students has grown by 59 per cent, almost twice the rate of the nominal GDP growth rate of 29 per cent over the same period. In 2016, our government will contribute more than $16 billion to funding student places at record levels. The cost of a degree is not a determinative factor to the decision of students in choosing their field of study or career path, which even the opposition have conceded, with various members acknowledging that lower student contributions have no impact on student demand; rather, that a student's interests, abilities and career preferences brought about demand. If Labor had a mascot in this space, it would be the sidestepping, body-burrowing sand crab. They have a remarkable ability to run a scare campaign, while at the same time failing to accurately cost a policy in higher education—or any other policy, for that matter.

This government cannot be accused of not doing its job when it comes to finding the balance. I commend our government and, in particular, Minister Birmingham for today announcing the expert advisory panel that will work hand in glove with government to holistically tackle the issues facing this sector and ensure that we deliver a world-class, future-proofed, sustainable and progressive system that promotes excellence and innovation for the future generations to come. This diverse and qualified panel will be entrusted to examine the merits of a number of policy options emanating from the various key stakeholders and make recommendations.

I look forward to the outcome of this process, but I also look forward to the outcomes I know this government will attain in bolstering participation by students in regional and remote areas in higher education. In my electorate of Maranoa, in regional Queensland, we typically have lower enrolment rates at universities given the tyranny of distance and the issues associated with children relocating after schooling, in addition to the challenges often posed by studying externally. Our government is aware of those concerns, has heard them clearly and over the next five years will invest more than $350 million in supporting higher education delivery in regional areas. That is in addition to reforming the requirements around the assets test for youth allowance to make it easier for geographically disadvantaged children to get to university, and reducing the self-supporting criteria for youth allowance from 18 months to 14 months for regional and remote students. This is in addition to the coalition's recent announcement of 1,200 rural and regional scholarships aimed at facilitating access to further education for undergraduate, postgraduate and vocational education students from the country.

Make no mistake, it is this government that knows just how important our kids and their aspirations will be to transitioning our economy now and into future. The government is consulting widely. We care about making sure this important system remains sustainable and affordable for all students—no matter their gender, background or postcode. I implore the opposition and the crossbenchers to come with the government on this journey to ensuring that our future generations can look forward to a world-class, sustainable system that delivers on our new economy.

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was at the Stones Corner park run on Saturday morning—a fantastic park run with hundreds of people—and I did it with a friend of mine. We were at university together in 1996. She is a bit older than me; she is in her mid-40s. She said to me, 'I'm finally paying off my HECS. I'm finally finishing paying off my HECS.' I said, 'Really?'—because we were at university together and undergraduates together. She said, 'All I did was that undergraduate degree and a postgraduate certificate,' which is the very shortest form of postgraduate course. She is someone who has worked in the community sector and in lower paid sectors all of her life. She has worked in a lot of part-time work. She has a daughter with special needs and she has stayed home a lot to look after her. The consequence for my friend is that it has taken her until her mid-40s to pay off her university degree. That means, with indexation, she has paid more for that same degree than someone who left university, went straight to the workforce and got a high-paying job and worked full time. A lot of that has not been of her doing.

In fact, if you think about the workforce ramifications of higher university fees, if you have a great big lump of private debt, you are less likely to go and work in the small community legal centre or the small health not-for-profit where you are going to get a lower salary. You already take a lower salary than someone who might work in a more highly paid private sector job, so you have that decrease in your earnings. Then you pay more for the same degree, of course, because it takes you longer to pay it off. That is really the consequence of what we are talking about when the Liberals want to put up fees for university degrees.

We already have record levels of private debt in this country, which is a massive drag not just on those individuals and the lifelong burden that they are carrying in relation to private debt but also on the economy. You would know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that in the recent GDP figures the last quarter of growth was driven by government purchases because investment and consumption were so weak. That is a real problem. To try to continue to put a handbrake on consumption by increasing private debt would be a bad idea not just for the individuals who would suffer from that consequence but for the economy as a whole—for all of us. The idea of increasing levels of private debt burdens on households seems to me to be not just an unfair one but quite a silly one economically. But that is exactly what the Liberals tried to do. What they tried to do was to deregulate university fees, which would have seen the $100,000 degrees that the electorate so comprehensively rejected. The consequence for the Liberals was that they were unable to get that regulation through. In fact, if you look at their record on higher education since 2014, all you have seen are cuts and uncertainty. They have sent out a bunch of different thought bubbles into the community and into the sector. The poor old university sector is coping with one uncertainty after another as this mob continues to come up with ideas that are patently going to be unacceptable to the community and, therefore, will not be passed.

Let's think about some of their other ideas. You have had the $100,000 university degrees. How about the 20 per cent cut to public funding of universities? Another source of GDP growth is net exports. One of the key sectors for us, as a nation, as we seek to diversify our economy, is to build our services exports. Tourism and international education, which go hand in hand—are symbiotic—are very important exports for us. What do they want to do? They want to cut public funding to universities and make it harder for universities to maintain quality. I think that is an obviously terrible idea because it is difficult enough for us to compete on our current footing when universities in China, when universities in Japan, when universities in South-East Asia are putting more and more public funding into universities. It is becoming more difficult for us to compete, not less difficult. So we would be cutting off our nose to spite our face as a nation to cut public funding to universities when we are becoming more and more used to the idea that higher education will be a key export for us for the future. So let's not do that because it is a terrible idea.

The 40 per cent cut to HEPPP is another problem that I think is really significant and needs more attention. I recently visited the University of Western Australia and met with a group of students who were first-in-family to go to university, just like I was. These were students from a long way away from the capital city who had not even necessarily thought about the idea of going to university until programs aimed at building aspiration came to their towns. It is important that we continue to build aspiration and make university education accessible to all of those who have got the capability to perform.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It must have been a very quiet day in the Labor ranks when they were looking for a topic for today. We have gone back to the 2013 debate of funding universities and $100,000 degrees. Let's hope that this does not become a sleeping tablet for the Australian people as they hear Labor talking points rolled out all over again. What a passionless contribution first of all from the shadow minister. Did she not just read that with zero enthusiasm for the tertiary education sector? Let's peel that away and ask what she was talking about.

The member for Griffith talked about $4 billion in cuts when in fact education funding goes up every year. Why do we not from this side just commend the Labor Party and its government for improving funding when they were in government, just as we have when we have been in government? We have actually had generous funding increases from both sides of politics. The problem is you cannot tell your union members that and you cannot tell your student unions that. Let us also acknowledge that you, on the Labor side of politics, have made very good efforts to have more demand driven approaches because there were limitations with the original design of university places. There was this notion that if the Commonwealth was not going to fund your place, you could not go to university no matter what. So well done to the Labor Party and its administration for changing that. But of course they then unlocked VET FEE-HELP and HECS into these huge problems that we now have to clean-up. Labor are a little like the rogue tenant, who, when you turn up to put out the house fire, starts attacking fire and rescue services for trying to clean up the mess that they created. Here we are just trying to clean up border problems, VET FEE-HELP, HECS and we are doing our very best.

Let's remember that today was a very important moment not just for HECS but an important moment for TAFE and VET FEE-HELP as well because today is the last day that the diploma of styling will be funded under the Labor Party model. Today is the last day that the diploma of circus arts will be funded under the Labor VET FEE model. Today is the last day that the diploma for expressive arts and group work will be funded under the Labor VET FEE-HELP model and today is the last day that the diploma of dance therapy will be funded under Labor's model.

Ms Ryan interjecting—

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Lalor will have her turn in a moment.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not just about how much money you can shovel out the door. It is not just about how many people graduate; it is patently about the quality of the graduates you create. The shadow minister was talking like Indigenous people being offered baubles by explorers, seeing plastic 3D modelling and saying how wonderful it is that they can turn around a part. I mean for goodness sake, it is way more than just 3D modelling and printing. This is about, in the peleton of developed economies, having a nation whose graduates can create new ideas and operationalise them. It is not about how many teachers you can graduate. With a BA from the University of Melbourne in teaching, 16,000 unemployed primary school teachers are added onto the waiting list of unemployed teachers, half of them with their expertise in health and physical education.

For goodness sake, it is about keeping women in STEM. It is about encouraging young women who are at school to take up a STEM career. Again, it is not just about waving their HECS debt; it is about the quality of the degree. I know you have got a BA. For anyone who has a BA on that side of the fence, you can speak with all the authority you want about your BA but this is about high-tech degrees in STEM, engineering and maths, and this is what we have to achieve. It is not about the simplistic model of just waiving a HECS fee; it is about encouraging young women at school to take on a career in STEM and do the highest quality degree they can.

A $100,000 degree—doesn't it sound horrible? Most universities charge $15,000 a year for a quantitative degree. A medical degree is six years—that is $90,000. Memo to the Labor Party: we are already paying $90,000 for a medical degree. These individuals will earn more than $2 million. That is more earnings in a lifetime than what people who do not get that medical degree earn. I do not think that a $10,000 premium for a quality medical degree is that much of a problem for a medical student. Those on the other side have never met a medical student complaining that their $90,000 degree might be a $100,000 degree. If it gets them the $2 million lifetime earnings premium, they have no problem paying it.

What we have a larger problem with is Labor's system that led to massive debts for those who took out VET FEE-HELP degrees. They now labour under a massive debt burden thanks to your system. The Labor Party did way more damage than they ever did to science graduates by queuing up people under that model and leaving them with a massive public debt. Let there never be a complaint from universities focused on quality that this is a debate about money. It is about the finest graduates that we can create, and Australia is doing very finely in that respect.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the member for Lalor, I ask that all members refer to members by their correct titles. The level of interjection has been too high, and I ask that order be maintained. The question is that the motion be agreed to, and I call the member for Lalor.

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

I rise to join in this very lively debate in the Federation Chamber this evening and note that, after the contribution that the member for Bowman has just made, we are glad that clowns is off the VET list, because clearly we do not need training in it; it comes readily to some. It is interesting to listen to those opposite talk about higher education and defend the indefensible, because this government has failed—absolutely failed—in higher education policy and its implementation since coming to office in 2013.

This motion focuses on higher education. On this side of the chamber we would like to highlight the government's disastrous attempts at reform that see students leaving universities and the people who work in that sector living in a state of anxiety. They have now been living in a state of anxiety for three years. The government began with their cruel and unfair 2014 budget with the notion of $100,000 degrees, which would almost double the standard HECS bill for most students. In fact, for some courses it would triple the HECS debt for students over the longer term. Our objections to this model are about fairness and also about how it actively disincentivises higher education for the broader community. I can see what is behind the government's Americanised model. Clearly the plan is to entrench privilege. We all know it. The research is in and has been in for some time: children of parents with higher degrees, with a masters or a PhD, are more likely to succeed at school. This has been known for some time. It is also true that they are more likely to access higher education and that there are lots of things that block other children from engaging in that pursuit.

Talent, IQ and capacity are not determined by postcode—we know that—yet, over 40 years, this seems to be the reality. I go back to conversations in my electorate. The member for Bowman mentioned that we would never meet a doctor complaining about $100,000 degrees, yet a student doctor in my electorate spent some time—in fact, more than one meeting with me—explaining how, although he was not concerned for himself, he was very concerned about other students and their capacity to repay a $100,000 degree. I go back to a young single mother in my electorate, in the small community of Little River—a hamlet, if you like—who found herself alone in parenting a couple of kids and wanting to re-educate herself, wanting to go back into the education system. She was shattered by the thought of $100,000 degrees, because she saw them as a serious block for her to go and get the education she needed to allow her to earn the income she needed to break the poverty cycle and to ensure that her children had a different future to what she had herself.

In electorates like mine, decisions are made about education based on parent's experience. I think what those opposite cannot grasp is that when a family is determining whether a child will go on to higher education, they are also, partially, determining their income. This afternoon in the chamber we listened to the member for Longman's first speech. She referenced a person in her family—I think it was her father—winning a scholarship but not taking it up. That happens all the time in the real world. A person who wins a scholarship to pursue higher education might not act upon it, because their family may lose income if they do not go out and earn a wage early in life.

This government's uncertainty is reigniting those conversations in electorates around this country. At the moment, year 12 students are making those decisions in the space of uncertainty. They do not know, after three years of this government, what it is they are going to land on eventually. The government failed disastrously to convince the community that these proposals were a good idea and they failed to blackmail universities with a 20 per cent cut, tied to deregulation, that would have seen entrenched disadvantage.

Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Deputy Leader of the Opposition's private members' motion, which allows members on this side of the chamber—members of the Turnbull government—to highlight the inroads this government has made in higher education, particularly with respect to regional, rural and remote Australia, since we were elected three years ago.

As all of us in this place know only too well, higher education plays a vital role in opening up doors and opportunities for all Australians, and it greatly enhances people's career prospects and their lifelong enjoyment. Madam Deputy Speaker, as you may know, I presented my own private members' motion on this exact subject earlier this year. Higher education provides the skills and knowledge that the economy requires if we are to strive to build our entrepreneurial skill base and international competitiveness. Like all of us on this side of the chamber, I believe higher education will be pivotal to the successful transition into an economy focused on the creativity of all Australians.

We have heard a lot about how terrible those opposite think the Turnbull government is, but let us start to focus on what our record is. Firstly, the Turnbull government is investing the record sum of more than $16 billion in universities in 2016. If you say the number quickly, it does not sound like very much, but $16 billion in 2016 is a significant investment in education. More funding than ever before is being invested in Australian universities, with a focus on funding more student places at universities, and this will continue at an increase of more than seven per cent over the forward estimates. I am particularly pleased that students in rural, regional and remote Australia have never had better access to higher education following the government's $152 million regional student's access to education package. This package will help more kids from the bush gain access to tertiary education.

For some time, I have been lobbying the Minister for Social Services and the Minister for Education to implement a policy which will assist students wanting to undertake post-secondary education, and I am very pleased that we made these key announcements last June. This package includes 1,200 new rural and regional enterprise scholarships, up to $20,000 each, for undergraduate, postgraduate and vocational education students to undertake STEM studies, to the tune of $24 million—a significant investment. In addition to these new rural, regional and remote scholarships, the Turnbull government is investing $45 million in isolated children's education. This includes funding for assistance for isolated children's additional boarding allowance, which is a means tested supplementary payment to provide additional support to low-income families whose child boards away from the family home.

As promised, the government will increase the rate of the additional boarding allowance by 50 per cent, bringing it into line with the costs of education for isolated families. This will be of tremendous benefit to my electorate of Durack, which has over 300 towns and communities and is home to some of the most isolated towns in the world. For them, this is fantastic news. Part of the regional student access to education package is also the reduction of time that students need to be employed under the self-supporting criteria in order to receive the youth allowance and ABSTUDY living allowance, reducing the criteria from 18 months to 14 months. This measure will mean that a student will be able to qualify for assistance such as youth allowance within one gap year, not over two, instead of having to work for longer and delay their university commencement.

This all sounds very technical and very detailed, but I think that, if those on the other side really paid attention, they would see that we are focused on rural and remote students in Australia. These are our efforts to ensure that they do not get left behind and that we have got equity of education for them with respect to their city cousins.

In the time I have left I want to focus on the new VET Students Loans program that this government announced recently, which is going to lead to a more affordable, sustainable and student focused education sector. Our announcement is going to hit 'reset' on Labor's woeful, badly designed VET-FEE HELP scheme. Now Australia can start to rebuild its trust in vocational education, and taxpayers will not have their money wasted. As I said at the time, the VET Student Loans scheme is a win-win. (Time expired)

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.