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

I move:

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

"the House declines to give the bill a second reading because this bill:

(1) cuts university funding by nearly $4 billion;

(2) hits students with higher fees;

(3) saddles students with bigger debts which they will have to pay back at the same time as they are trying to buy a house or start a family;

(4) compromises teaching and learning, and undermines research; and

(5) slashes investment in universities at a time when the Government should be investing in both universities and TAFEs in order to guarantee a strong and productive economy".

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017. This is an unfair bill which would rip billions of dollars from our universities, increase fees for students and saddle them with a greater debt. It would mean Australian students have to repay more, sooner, for a poorer quality education. At a time when we should be investing in our universities and TAFEs, this bill locks in nearly $4 billion of cuts over five years. This comes on top of an attempt by the government to abolish the $3.7 billion Education Investment Fund. Teaching, student programs and university facilities will all suffer. The cuts also damage Australia's research effort. Labor will oppose this unfair, economically irresponsible legislation.

Labor opposes this bill because there is no more important investment a government can make than in education. A strong education system is both a contributing factor to economic growth and a dividend from it. At a time when Australia's economy is transitioning from the resources boom to a more diverse, knowledge based economy, we must ensure that young Australians have the skills they need to compete in the global economy. Whilst so many countries around the world are increasing their investment in the skills of their people to ensure they are well-placed to compete, this government is doing the exact opposite. Research tells us that, by 2020, two out of every three jobs created in our country will require a diploma or higher qualification. We need more Australians with post-school qualifications. We should be encouraging participation in university and TAFE, not putting up barriers with higher fees and higher debts.

Children who started school this year will enter the tertiary education system in 2030. Will our post-secondary system provide them with the best opportunity to get the skills they will need in a vastly more globalised, more technology driven world? By that time, we'll be almost a third of the way through this Asian century. We should be preparing right now to seize the opportunities that that brings. A clever approach would have us investing in our people. But this bill is anything but clever, and it certainly doesn't invest in our future. In fact, it puts additional burdens and additional barriers in the way of our people. You can't ensure that we're set up for the challenges and opportunities of the future through cuts and cost shifting. That's not reform. We've now waited 2½ years for a government bill on higher education. We were waiting for something better than the cuts of the Abbott-Pyne era. Sadly, we've just got cuts again. That's what we've come to expect from this government when it comes to higher education.

As I said back in February in a matter of public importance debate, the one job the new education minister has been given is to find $3 billion worth of cuts in the university sector. I said it then and I stand by that now. The education minister has overperformed in only one area of his portfolio, and that's the cuts that he's managed to find. He has managed nearly $4 billion of cuts—$3.8 billion over five years. Of course, you can add in the $3.7 billion he's trying to cut with the abolition of the Education Investment Fund. So we're talking about a total cut of almost $8 billion from tertiary education alone.

Before the 2013 election the former Prime Minister told universities they would experience what he called a period of 'benign neglect'. He got the neglect part right, but it has been anything but benign. The Liberals have talked a lot. You wouldn't believe it, but there have been 29 reviews into higher education—reviews, inquiries, talkfests. That has cost the taxpayer more than $4.7 million. With almost $5 million invested in these talkfests, you would think we'd get something a little more nuanced in this bill. What we've got are the same old cuts. We know the government could not quite convince the Senate to allow fee deregulation—widespread $100,000 degrees or a 20 per cent cut to university operating grants. So this minister—the heir to 'the Fixer,' the heir to the member for Sturt, the 'son of Sturt' as we're calling him—was told to find a way to get cuts and fee increases through a parliament that generally values education. It's a shame that he has squibbed the opportunity for real reform and instead presented a package of measures that are just a series of cuts dressed up with minor tinkering around the edges. He's calling that a reform package. It's simply a return to the Liberals' only idea for universities, which is to cut funding for operating expenses and charge students more.

It's what happened in the Howard years. It started with Amanda Vanstone's devastating cuts to universities in the horror 1996 budget. That's when we first saw full-fee degrees. That was, in fact, the first $100,000 degree that we saw in the Australian market. We saw, of course, at that time as well the introduction of differential HECS when the Liberals hiked fees from $2,442 per year to $5½ thousand per year. After Amanda Vanstone, we saw Brendan Nelson jack up student fees again when he had the education portfolio. This is all part of a pattern. What we've seen is a minister who is heir to the tradition who is, in fact, claiming the exact opposite. He's claiming that there is an increase to resources for universities when we know what we're seeing is a real funding cut.

The chief of Universities Australia said just today that there is, in fact, a real funding cut to our universities, not an increase as the minister claims. But, to give credit where credit is due, at least the current education minister has managed to do one thing that the former education minister, the member for Sturt, couldn't do: he has managed to unify the university sector. He's managed to get institutions that are sometimes not on a unity ticket when it comes to university funding unified for the first time in many a year in opposition to his legislation. I note that Universities Australia on 16 May said:

An overwhelming majority of Vice-Chancellors agreed they could not recommend that the Senate crossbench pass the legislative package.

The Group of Eight said:

The Go8 is committed to an economically sustainable Higher Education System for Australia, but this package, for which we were not consulted, is fatally flawed in multiple ways, and will severely harm Australia's highly successful University system.

Many vice-chancellors have written to me directly, voicing their concerns about this legislation. Here are a few examples. The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Australia, Professor Dawn Freshwater, says: 'I'm also concerned that the changes to the HELP fees and repayment thresholds may discourage students, particularly from rural, remote and low-SES parts of our community, from attending university.' You would think that the Nationals had a thing or two to say about that. Apparently not. Martin Bean, the Vice-Chancellor of RMIT, said: 'We believe Australia must have a strong, sustainable and affordable tertiary education system that is accessible to all regardless of background and circumstance.' He continues, 'I do not agree with funding cuts to universities or an increased cost-burden on students. Universities and their students make a vital contribution to Australia's economy and play a critical role in the delivery of innovation and productivity.' Dr Michael Spence, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, has warned about the impact of cuts to our economy. He said: 'Negative economic and related impacts in Sydney and New South Wales will be unavoidable given the important role universities play in their local economies and communities.'

Of course, it's not just limited to vice-chancellors. This month, the Times Higher Education world-ranking director, Phil Batty, also commented. I should perhaps explain to members opposite who don't understand. This comment is like getting a negative warning from a credit rating agency. He said:

… funding cuts proposed by the government could seriously harm the country's institutions in future editions of the rankings … Australia's leading institutions are already falling behind peers in mainland China and Hong Kong, which receive high and sustained levels of state funding.

The people who compile the rankings of the world's best universities are saying to us that, as Australians, if we want to stay in those rankings of the world's best universities, these cuts are exactly the wrong thing to do. If we don't heed this warning, we are nuts.

This bill deals with more than 12 measures from the government's higher education package which it released in May. But I think it's very unreasonable to call this, as the government does, a 'reform' package, because reform is generally meant to improve things. It's about investing in our people; it's about nation-building. This bill isn't reform; it is a wasted opportunity.

This bill will cut university operating grants, the Commonwealth Grant Scheme, by 2½ per cent over the years 2018 and 2019. It hikes up fees for Australian students by 7½ per cent over four years. It also requires students to pay off their larger debts sooner, with new repayment thresholds starting at $42,000 and changes in the way these rates are indexed. It forces New Zealand citizens and permanent residents off Commonwealth-supported places, and requires them to pay full fees just like any other international student from any other country. It cuts the number of Commonwealth-supported postgraduate places by 3,000. It forces students in enabling courses to pay fees for the first time, and threatens universities with existing funding for enabling courses by putting these places out to tender.

This bill will see, for the first time in Australia's higher education system, the introduction of a voucher system for the allocation of postgraduate places, and it will hand the distribution of those places, around 34,000 of them, over to someone. We're not really sure who—some unnamed entity. This mystery body could be, potentially, pretty much anyone. It could be one of the existing organisations. It could be a new organisation. It could potentially be a private company. Voucher systems in education—honestly, this is not reform.

We've been provided with a perfunctory amount of detail in this bill about these very substantial changes as well as a range of other measures. The government's glossy brochure, distributed to representatives of universities and the media, contains little enough comment on some of the details of this. We thought that individual measures would be more thoroughly outlined in the budget. They weren't. In fact, the entire package rated only two lines in the budget. The one thing the government has admitted is the magnitude of the savings, and that's $3.8 billion over five years. But it took until July for the minister to outline how much each measure would cost or save.

Last year, the same universities that had been struggling along with this uncertainty since the election of those opposite were forced onto one-year funding agreements, to accommodate the government's policy inertia in this area. They're now, once again, struggling to scramble to work out how they can deal with these cuts, including the performance payment cuts that there is scant detail of now.

Students, of course, are the real victims of all of this. It's students who are wondering whether they will be able to afford to go to university. This bill leaves us with as many questions as it answers. One vice-chancellor said to me: 'This is not reform; it's merely a series of thought bubbles wrapped around a funding cut.' It is a perfect description.

To look at some of those measures that I mentioned in a little bit more detail: this bill reserves 7½ per cent of Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding for a yet-to-be-determined performance-based funding system. All we know about the operation of this funding system is what we heard from the Assistant Minister for Vocational Education and Skills in her second reading speech: that next year the funding will flow to universities based on whether they provide certain data—details to come later. It's really like the government saying to the university: 'Sign here; we'll send you the bill afterwards. Give us your credit card, sign here and we'll send you the bill some other time.' In the meantime, 7½ per cent of the Commonwealth Grant Scheme, around $500 million a year, will be taken from the universities, held back by the government and handed to the minister to distribute as he sees fit.

It is an extraordinary thing to create a $500 million slush fund for the minister in such uncertain circumstances. The proposal doesn't meet the most basic standards of good governance and completely lacks transparency. Moreover, this sort of uncertainty, being at the mercy of ministerial fiat, does not provide the kind of certainty that this sector needs to plan for staffing, building and student numbers, and all of the things that they need to project years into the future. Universities cannot assume, for budgetary purposes, that they'll ever receive that 7½ per cent of funding that they're actually entitled to under existing legislation. So how is any organisation, particularly one of the size and complexity of a university, supposed to budget with that kind of uncertainty? And then if you put that on top of the 2½ per cent efficiency dividend you could see university grants cut by up to 10 per cent. That would be devastating.

Swinburne University of Technology said that the cuts to the CGS would mean a loss of $31 million for them alone. If you factor in the performance-funding changes, this could mean potential revenue loss of around $82 million over five years. Imagine an institution coping with that scale of uncertainty in their budget? The University of Sydney said that the CGS cut would mean a loss for them of more than $50 million. La Trobe University said that the cumulative impact of these measures in the bill could impact their budget by up to $126 million over the next four years. Deakin University said that the cuts will dampen their appetite for risk, especially in the areas of innovation, acceleration, and product incubation. Honestly, if you were trying to design a package that discouraged universities from taking the risks that will make them fit for purpose in 10, 20 and 30 years' time so that they're preparing their students in this incredibly rapidly changing world, you couldn't design something that was more guaranteed to dampen enthusiasm for actually innovating in our university sector.

The bill brings in a voucher system for almost 34,000 post-graduate Commonwealth supported places. There are about 100,000 Australians studying in post-graduate coursework programs in Australia at the moment. It means that students wishing to take a post-graduate coursework program in the future would have to apply to some yet-to-be determined body for the chance of a Commonwealth supported place. To make it look prettier, the government is going to call this a scholarship program, because scholarships sound nice, don't they?

Rebadging Commonwealth-supported places as 'scholarships' is just spin. Alarmingly, before a body is set up to administer this new voucher system this bill would hand the power to allocate those places to the minister: another blank cheque for another thought bubble. Of course, we don't support this kind of uncertainty. While we believe that there should be reform to what is admittedly an irrational system of allocating postgraduate Commonwealth supported places, this approach is so light on detail and so at the behest of the minister that it is impossible to support it.

I want to talk very briefly about enabling courses, because one of the meanest parts of this bill is the proposal to introduce for the first time fees for enabling courses and to put these courses out to tender. Enabling courses are actually designed to get people who missed out the first time round—who had troubles in high school or who had a job in a sector which is rapidly changing, lost their job and want to retrain and go to university. These enabling courses are programs that are designed to prepare students, including some of our most disadvantaged students, for university study. These courses have been targeted in this bill.

Incidentally, students taking these courses don't actually end up with a formal qualification; it's just a pathway into university. It is a test to the student themselves; 'Do I like this environment? I'll get a little taste of what this university has to offer. Will I fit in here? Am I interested in this university and what it has to offer? Do I know how to write an essay and do the research that's required of me?' The students don't get a qualification; they get a taste of university. And, from next year, this government expects them to pay up to $3,200 for that. I've visited a lot of universities that have brought some of their best and brightest students in through the front door because of these enabling courses. Many of those students are from disadvantaged backgrounds; if they had been told they had to pay thousands of dollars to have a taste of universities, they would not be there. Those students told me that themselves.

And, to add further insult to this injury, these enabling courses are taught by such a passionate group of educators—people who see the best in the student in front of them, who invest so much in getting that student comfortable with the research and essay writing and group work that university requires—and those committed, passionate educators won't necessarily be offering these courses in the future. They'll all be put out to tender. They will be put out to the lowest cost. So there's no guarantee that students will get the same sort of high standards that they're getting now. It will be devastating for a significant number of universities, particularly those in the regions.

In July, for example, I visited the University of Newcastle's Ourimbah campus on the Central Coast with my colleagues who are here today. At the Ourimbah campus, I met just a few of the 800 or so students that are undertaking enabling courses at that campus, and those students told me exactly the difference that these enabling courses have made in their lives. They told me about how it is giving them a chance of a university qualification. They're building the skills and confidence in those students. They're helping those students overcome some of the difficulties that they had in high school. They're getting a second chance, and it's a second chance that many of them thought they would never have. But, to a one, every single one of the students I spoke to, when I asked them, 'Would you have paid $3,200 for the opportunity to do this?' said, 'No, I would not have had the confidence in myself to risk that sort of money.' And a number of them said: 'I just flat-out would not have committed to that debt. I couldn't have done it to myself.' So we've got people who are studying so they can better support themselves and their families being turned away because of these new fees. None of these students would have had the confidence in themselves to risk that sort of debt for an enabling course that doesn't even count as a qualification; it's just a pathway.

The member for Newcastle and the member for Dobell have been particularly taking up the case for these enabling courses, because the University of Newcastle really is outstanding when it comes to delivering these courses. I know that they'll speak more about this in their remarks later on. We won't support attacking these students and we won't support putting these enabling courses out to tender to the lowest bidder.

On New Zealand citizens and permanent residents, I want to say that hitting this group of people, seeing them forced off Commonwealth-supported places and on to full-fee international places, is particularly troubling, given that many of these students have been here for years. They've gone to Australian schools, they speak with Australian accents, they or their families have chosen to call Australia home and they'll be here for years to come. Wouldn't it be a good idea if they could actually get a decent job and contribute to the tax system?

They're contributing to our society, they're contributing to our economy, and this higher education opportunity gives them the opportunity of contributing in an even greater way—perhaps for the rest of their working lives. Many of them just want to have the same opportunities that their classmates have got, kids that they've gone to school with in Australian schools, so it's particularly troubling that the government is making these changes at the same time that it's created so much uncertainty around the pathway to citizenship. We won't stand by and make these students pay more for their courses. We know that New Zealanders who live and study here are likely to make an even greater contribution to Australia's economy and society.

We do support some of the measures in this bill. We support the additional funding for VET, science and dentistry units. We cautiously welcome the announcement of regional student hubs, although, again, details are scant. Where will they be? How will the sites be selected? Of course we are very supportive of seeing the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program legislated. It is a policy legacy of Labor. We're sorry that so much money has already been cut from it. During its years of operation, HEPPP, along with the uncapping of student numbers, helped boost Indigenous student numbers by 26 per cent, increased regional student numbers by 30 per cent and helped more than 36,000 additional students from low-income families into university. We are proud of that legacy. We are very sorry that in the 2014 budget HEPPP was cut by $51 million and then, in last year's budget, was cut by $152 million. But, yes, we would like to see what the government has left of HEPPP being protected by legislation.

We also support the expansion of sub-bachelor places—it's another recommendation of the Bradley review—but we have to make sure this is not at the expense of TAFE. We need a strong university system and a strong TAFE system working together in partnership to give our young people the best possible opportunity of getting a great job and to give Australians who are training and retraining to lift their skills the best possible opportunity to do so. We have seen $2.8 billion cut from TAFE, so we don't want to see an expansion of sub-bachelor places at the expense of TAFE.

We have a very proud record in higher education, and we will continue to fight to make sure that all Australian students have the opportunity of getting a terrific post-secondary-school education, because that's what our modern economy demands of them. It's good for them as individuals, and it's a great investment for us as a nation.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Sydney can't make her mind up. Her entire speech is sprinkled with the phrase 'tinkering at the edges'. These aren't reforms; they're 'tinkering at the edges'. Then, of course, she paints the picture of the world being turned upside down should this very bill, the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017, which apparently is just 'tinkering at the edges', get through the parliament. The member for Sydney and the Labor Party need to make up their minds: is this indeed tinkering at the edges or is it the Armageddon that they are in fact proposing it is?

If there was only one thread of consistency in the argument just put by the member for Sydney, it was the suggestion, as foolhardy as it is, that this bill is coming with cuts. Can I remind the member for Sydney, and the Labor Party, that funding to tertiary institutions is set to increase—increase!—from $17 billion up to $21 billion by the end of the forward estimates. Now, when you go from the number 17 to the number 21, it is actually an increase.

The Labor Party seem to not understand that when money goes up, when you get more of something, that's actually not called a 'cut'. Nevertheless, does the government need to ensure that universities are more efficient? Absolutely, we do. The Labor Party used to agree with the same principle. There are indeed economic benefits to this bill. Indeed, this bill is a microcosm of the great challenge that Australia faces to maintain the core values and responsibilities of our society at a time when our public finances are indeed in peril.

Since John Curtin introduced Commonwealth scholarships in 1940 and improved access to university education, there has been a largely bipartisan commitment to giving every Australian, where possible, the opportunity for the sort of advancement that we hold so dear in our classless, egalitarian society. Despite differences, that effort is ongoing. Sir Robert Menzies, throughout his record-breaking 16 years as Prime Minister, was perhaps Australia's greatest champion of tertiary education by providing far greater student access to university. This imperative was an abiding preoccupation for Menzies, central to his entire approach to leadership and his vision for Australia. Sir Robert greatly increased the number of universities and significantly expanded the scholarship system to open up access for many hardworking students, irrespective of their wealth or privilege. It was Menzies who brought in tax breaks for education expenses and for living allowances. In 1939, Australia had just six universities and just over 14,000 students. By 1966, the year that Menzies stepped down as Prime Minister, there were 16 universities and over 90,000 tertiary students.

Gough Whitlam, in 1973, went much further by removing all direct course costs for tertiary students, at least in terms of fees; although the cost of living for students, a cost largely falling on parents, remained a significant burden and meant that there was no great expansion of opportunity, despite what Whitlam may have hoped for. Bear in mind that 1973 was still a time when the great majority of high school students did not matriculate. John Dawkins, author of the so-called 'Dawkins revolution', made massive changes to the higher education sector in the late 1980s, not all of them universally praised, including introducing as a measure to help protect the budget what was then known as HECS, the Higher Education Commonwealth Scheme. Fees were reintroduced and were paid in part by loans to students with the funds passed on to the universities. These covered some of the costs of their degrees and only had to be repaid as students entered employment and achieved higher income levels, which then often triggered only modest repayments.

That system has been maintained ever since. It underwent tweaks in the later years of the Hawke and Keating governments and under the Howard government, yet it remains a cornerstone of the system today—as does the philosophy behind it, which was to relieve the taxpayer of total responsibility for the provision of a university education and to ensure that the principal beneficiary, the student, bore a proportion of the cost of their academic betterment. The view in the late 1980s, as it is today, was that the major beneficiary of a university education is indeed the student. A tertiary degree opens the potential, if not always the reality, of achieving an income greater than would ordinarily be possible for a person without that level of education. In broad terms, that remains the case today.

The last major change was in 2012 when the Commonwealth removed caps on the number of places that universities could offer, which, in turn, took the cap off student loans. The result was an explosion in the number of students and an almost exponential increase in HECS debt owed to the Commonwealth. There are now 1.4 million university students, up 100,000 over the past three years alone, attending 39 universities. There are almost one million students doing bachelor degrees, over 300,000 doing post-graduate courses and more than 65,000 doing postgraduate research. There are over 120,000 staff. That is significantly more than there were only 50 years before.

Today our HECS debit has ballooned to an astonishing $50 billion, and that debt, tied up in loans to students, is expected to grow even more dramatically in the years ahead as increasing numbers of students rush to take advantage of uncapped Commonwealth loans and almost unfettered tertiary access. The positives of this serial, steady, generally bipartisan expansion of opportunity are many. The first of that access has been continuously, incrementally and even exponentially, since the Curtin and Menzies years, extended to the sorts of levels that fit our national commitment to a classless and egalitarian society.

Over the decade to 2015, for example, there was a 50 per cent increase in the number of students from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds attending university. There was a 45 per cent increase in the number of regional and remote students, from just over 100,000 in 2008 to almost 160,000 in 2015. There were just over 7,000 Indigenous students in university in 2008 but over 12,000 in 2015, while the number of people with disabilities going to university was up an astonishing 94 per cent, from 24,000 to over 47,000. Thirty seven per cent of Australian 25- to 34-year-olds now have a bachelor's degree, or higher, and the Australian university sector has become an extraordinary contributor to the national economy. In 2001 there were just over 150,000 foreign students paying full fees here to study. There are now over 350,000, mainly from north-east and South-East Asia, and this generates export income that is third only behind iron ore and coal—an extraordinary achievement. It was almost $22 billion in 2015-16.

Australia is now, and has been for some time, one of the leading international providers of tertiary education. These are outstanding outcomes from a great deal of effort, but there are also some equally outstanding problems. The 2012 uncapping of entry, such that universities now decide how many students they enrol without the need to meet government-imposed quotas, means that at least some universities have dropped their standards in the grasp for dollars from students and from taxpayers, who continue to foot most of the bill, which has increased by 71 per cent since 2009. People are being enrolled with entrance scores for some disciplines that are so low that the potential for them to successfully complete their chosen course is likewise very low, and the universities know it. Clear evidence of this is a dropout rate of about one-in-three—a tremendous waste of time for the student and an equally tremendous waste of resources, including precious taxpayer dollars, bearing in mind that upwards of 80 per cent of the cost of many degrees continues to be borne by the taxpayer.

There is also a lot of wasted effort and resources for students enrolling in courses where the opportunity for employment, once they have their degrees, often varies from limited to virtually non-existent. The universities enrolling students for these courses know that too—and if they don't, well, they should. These are clear flaws in the system. These are unintended consequences, if you like, of a rampant, self-regulation that we simply can no longer afford. This bill, it is hoped, will go some way to correcting such flaws in the interests of students, universities and the economy, not to mention, of course, the interests of the taxpayer.

Members opposite, in signalling opposition to at least some of the measures in this bill, are simply continuing their long, ubiquitous flight over the cuckoo's nest, just as they still flap away in relation to their fake commitment to Gonski, the National Disability Insurance Scheme and their mad plan for 50 per cent renewables by 2030. Labor has no plan to fix this. They certainly have no money when the public debt is now at $500 billion—half-a-trillion dollars—and headed upwards to $700 billion on the trajectory they established with their spendthrift ways when they were last in government. Via their relentless opposition now and ever since they were booted from office in 2013, they stymie each and every attempt by this government to rein in debt, preserve our AAA credit rating and restore our budget to balance.

Australia simply cannot afford more nonsense from those opposite, whether across the board or in relation to the crucial goal of ensuring a university system that is sustainable, fair and transparent. The key measure in this bill is a 1.8 per cent increase each year for the next four years in the share of the cost of university education that is borne by students. It is a cumulative 7½ per cent increase by 2021 with the Commonwealth contribution reduced by the same amount. We cannot afford more. This bill is driven by the same imperative that drove John Dawkins and Neville Wran—who was a key advisor to Dawkins and Bob Hawke in 1988—when they reintroduced fees and established HECS, and that is the budget.

These are still very competitive arrangements for our students. In New Zealand graduates pay 12c in every dollar they earn over $17½ thousand. In the United Kingdom graduates pay nine per cent of their income once their income reaches the equivalent of $36,000. In Australia the new threshold set by this bill is $42,000 and a minimum repayment is one per cent, or just $8 a week, and it is only slightly more for higher-income earners. That is, by international standards, extremely generous, and I'm confident it will pass any fair-minded pub test in any part of this country.

Other important measures in the bill will ensure that universities are more open, more transparent and more responsive to students by giving them clearer information about the prospects of employment at the completion of their course. There will be expanded support for subdegree courses to reflect the reality that for many students a diploma or certificate course could serve them and their community better than attempting a degree. This is indeed a very sensible and positive move. It continues the historic, generally bipartisan effort in this country to enable those who want to achieve a university education to obtain it regardless of their wealth, social standing or background. We are very deliberately, even fiercely a classless and egalitarian society. That attitude, typically supported by Australian governments, recognises and reflects the core values of the Australian people. This bill advances that cause but also recognises—as did the mentors of the members opposite back in the late 1980s—that budgetary pressures are real and have to be responded to. It is for these reasons that I am delighted to commend this bill to the House.

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

Last night, my grandfather passed away. He was born in 1932 and he was incredibly intelligent—the smartest person I ever met. But there was never any risk that he'd be able to go to university; there was never any prospect of that. He left school as a child and became a fireman on a steam train. Later, when he started his own business, he was incredibly successful. The business he founded is still running today. I think it is fantastic that people of his generation were able to do well without the same opportunities that people of my generation have. But I also think it would have been incredible had he had those same opportunities.

I'm a first-in-family to have gone to university, like a lot of people on the Labor Party's side of this parliament and like a lot of people who are at universities today. I got opportunities two generations after my grandfather, but they're also opportunities that my mother never had and that my father never had. They left school at grade 10, as was normal at the time. Again, there was never any suggestion they would go to university. Again, they were very intelligent people who started small businesses, who have worked very hard their whole lives but who just have not had the same opportunities. Yet there I was finishing school in the nineties and going off to James Cook University to start a degree. Why? Why was I was able to do that? It was because of Labor reforms to higher education. It was because of Gough Whitlam's reforms, and it was because of Bob Hawke's reforms.

I just heard the coalition member who spoke before me in this debate try to appropriate Bob Hawke and John Dawkins and the reforms that they made in the 1980s and try to compare this bill, the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017, to those reforms as though that is a rational thing to do, but it is not. Those were reforms under which students were asked to pay a small contribution into the public purse to help defray the cost of university and to increase the availability of funding for universities. This bill seeks to implement Liberal Party ideology, where they think students should pay more. They just think students should pay more. You heard why, because of what the member before me said. He said it is because students are the principal beneficiaries of higher education.

This bill seeks to increase the overall proportion of the costs of university study paid by students to the highest proportion it has ever been since Gough Whitlam freed up higher education in this country. At the same time, this bill, unlike Bob Hawke's reforms, unlike John Dawkins's reforms, seeks to cut funding to universities. This is a bill that is aimed at putting up fees for no other reason than that the Liberal Party think people should pay more, because that's what they reckon, and at the same time they want to deliver funding cuts to universities. It's a disgrace to be doing it, and it's definitely a disgrace to be appropriating Labor heroes like Bob Hawke in doing so.

To argue that students are the principal beneficiaries of university education is, I think, really revealing on the part of the coalition member who spoke before me. Not even the minister's own documents argue that students are the principal beneficiaries. Even the leadership of the Liberal Party acknowledges that the public benefit of university education is greater than the private benefit that accrues to individuals. But the member argued that students are the principal beneficiaries, and let's talk about that. Is a student who becomes a community legal centre employee, working in an Aboriginal legal service for family and domestic violence victims and survivors, the primary beneficiary of their legal education? They're not earning much. They're taking longer to pay off their HECS debt. They're doing the right thing by their community. Are they the principal beneficiary? What about the engineer who ensures the safety of the bridges we drive over every day? Is she the principal beneficiary of university education? Emergency department doctors who save lives get paid well—absolutely, of course they do—but are they the principal, the primary, beneficiaries of university education?

University education is a good. It is not the only good, and it's not better than vocational education. It's not better than a life in business, but it is nonetheless important. People deserve to have the opportunity that comes with being able to go to TAFE or go to university, or do neither and go into business—whatever they see as their path. They deserve that opportunity.

It is an utter nonsense to suggest that increasing the amount of private debt that people have to take on in order to get a university education will not affect that choice. It is an utter nonsense to suggest that a 33-year-old woman with two kids who is thinking about how she can improve her qualifications so she can make more of a contribution will not be affected in deciding whether to go to university by the prospect of an even greater amount of private debt that she would be taking on than under current settings.

It is an absolute nonsense to suggest that the parents of working-class kids in Western Sydney would not think twice about encouraging their kids to go to university if the consequence was decades of debt for those kids. It's also a nonsense to think that the couple in their mid-30s with a massive higher education debt won't find it harder to save for a house deposit, particularly given the housing market in Australia at the moment. Do you really think—does anyone really think—that this greater burden of higher education debt that they carry through their lives won't make them think twice about going to their local small business and buying a coffee or buying locally to support small businesses? Of course, people aren't just one thing. They aren't just HECS debt owers. They're also small-business consumers; they're also customers; they're also parents; they're also, hopefully, homebuyers.

This is a bill that seeks to do several objectionable things. It seeks to increase the fees that students are asked to pay, on an entirely spurious, ideologically driven basis. It seeks to decrease, by corresponding amount, the public funding provided to universities and then seeks to further decrease the public funding provided to universities. I understand that the previous speaker claimed that there were no cuts to higher education, which is, frankly amazing.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Incomprehensible?

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

Incomprehensible—thank you, Member for Scullin. It is an incomprehensible proposition given that the government's own budget papers acknowledge that this is a $2.8 billion cut, or $3.8 billion in fiscal terms. The government's budget papers acknowledge that this is a cut—and, in fact, it is a cut.

The other highly objectionable problem with this bill is the proposition that we should reduce the threshold at which HECS repayments kick in to a much lower threshold. So, when people are earning not much more than the minimum wage, and a long way from average weekly earnings, they will start to pay an additional tax to the government. They will start to pay to the Commonwealth a contribution for higher education. I've seen the press this morning reporting on government media that suggests that this is great. It's going to mean we recover more debt, as the Commonwealth. It seems to ignore one little aspect of income contingent loans, doesn't it? The income contingent aspect of them. Of course, the point of these income contingent loans is that if you never earn a high enough income—and by high income I'm talking about $54,000; I'm not talking about $180,000—then you never pay it. People might like to describe that as bad debt; I see that as the liability not arising in the first place because you don't get this lauded private benefit that the government carries on about. Are you really trying to tell me that someone earning $42,000 is somehow enjoying an amazing massive windfall because they've had a higher education? It's a ridiculous proposition. If people want to claim that it is somehow good that we're recovering higher taxes from people on low incomes, they can go ahead, but I will not support that. I will not support the argument that graduates who earn $42,000 should pay higher taxes than nongraduates on the basis of some perceived private benefit that they have obtained.

It's not just a question of the regressive nature of that arrangement, though that is obvious; it's also a workforce issue. Not-for-profit organisations may say to people, 'We'll pay you much less but you'll have the satisfaction of making a contribution,' whether it's social work, whether it's community legal or whether it's medical or pharmacy—whatever you might do for a community organisation. Those people might take a significant reduction in the amount of income they get and, yes, that might mean that it takes them longer to pay off their HECS ultimately as they move up. How are these organisations now going to say to people, 'You should still come and work in a lower-paid job even though it's going to be much more expensive and difficult for you to do so'?

I notice that there's not much focus and attention being given to the gender ramifications of this bill, but the fact is that this reduction of the threshold is more likely to affect women. Women are more likely to be in part-time work or in low-paid work. This is absolutely a gender-impact bill and we should be considering it in those terms. This will have an effect on women's ability to get a higher education. It will have an impact on their ability to manage the cost of living after they've got that higher education.

Labor opposes the fee increase. We say it is unreasonable, it forgets the impact on individual students and it is oblivious to the impact on the broader economy because of the impact it will have on household consumption by graduates who have high debts. We oppose the cuts to the Commonwealth Grant Scheme. We do not support cutting public funding to higher education. Last year, higher education was part of the international exports sector, which had a record trade of $23 billion. One of the reasons that we do so well in our international education exports is the high quality of Australia's universities. Countries in our region know this. China knows it. Japan knows it. Our competitor universities are getting the benefit of additional public funding and additional investment. And what's Australia doing to this really important export service? We're going to cut funding to it. We're going to make it harder for it to be a quality service. That's what Australia's going to do under this bill, and that's yet another reason why it's so ridiculous.

We're concerned about the performance-contingent funding for universities. We support performance based funding in principle, but reducing the funding by 7.5 per cent and then using that as a pool to pay for the performance pay for performance indicators which are as yet unknown is the wrong way to have gone about doing this. On top of the cuts to higher education public funding, there's a further reduction of 7.5 per cent of the funding which will be put into a pool which will be contingent on, as I said, as yet unknown performance indicators. That is very problematic.

The bill also goes to a reorganisation of scholarships for postgraduate coursework places. I think most people would agree that the current distribution of Commonwealth supported places for postgraduate study needs review and needs to be rearranged. But without consultation about how that should be done, and without apparently really formulating the actual policy mechanisms by which that will be done, there are significant difficulties in just announcing and legislating and hoping the rest will fall into place later. So we're concerned about that as well.

In relation to sub-bachelor courses, obviously this requires a lot of discussion and negotiation with the vocational education sector to ensure there's not inadvertent cannibalisation there. In respect of enabling courses, we are gravely concerned that taking away the loading and turning it into student fees will limit the opportunity for people to take enabling courses and will therefore limit the number of people from low-socioeconomic backgrounds who get to go to higher education. We oppose the bill.

John McVeigh (Groom, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today it is an honour to rise and speak to the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017. Education is a passion of mine. My wife is a qualified teacher. All of our six children either are currently studying or have undertaken higher education in recent years. And I'm a proud graduate of undergraduate and graduate studies at Australian universities. In my home electorate of Groom, back in Toowoomba, the University of Southern Queensland, my alma mater, has just seen the appointment of its new vice-chancellor, Professor Geraldine Mackenzie. Professor Mackenzie returns to USQ from Southern Cross University, where she was deputy vice-chancellor (research). I look forward to catching up with her shortly to discuss higher education in our city and in our region.

This year, the coalition government is investing a record $16.7 billion in higher education. This means, for the University of Southern Queensland, base funding of $206.7 million in 2017. This is projected to rise to $239.7 million in 2021—a rise of $32.9 million, or 15.9 per cent—and that is a tangible investment in the future of regional Queenslanders from anyone's perspective. This figure is also just base funding. It doesn't include research funding, or other additional revenue from resources such as the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program, and, when it comes to research, USQ is attracting plenty of notice for the work that it does in agriculture and agribusiness and in the creation of environmentally sensitive building materials, for example.

We know that Australia must continue to improve the commercialisation of such research. Toowoomba's Wellcamp airport is a fantastic example—the world's first and largest application of modern geopolymer concrete, saving 6,600 tonnes, or 90 per cent, of carbon emissions. This product and its development and the work of the university highlights the value of regional universities.

As a part of the Higher Education Reform Package, the government will provide $15 million of funding over four years to assist in the establishment and maintenance of up to eight community-owned regional study hubs across Australia, to improve access to higher education for students from rural and remote communities. Regional study hubs will provide infrastructure such as study spaces, videoconferencing, computing facilities and internet access, as well as pastoral and academic support for students studying via distance at partner universities. I certainly will be encouraging the government to consider Queensland as the base for such hubs in the future.

The Higher Education Reform Package has been developed after substantial consultation and discussion with a broad range of stakeholders and will continue to support the best features of the current higher education system, underpinning a vibrant education export industry, supporting student career aspirations and ensuring that industry as a whole has access to a skilled workforce. We are encouraging, for example, more and more of our young students, particularly women, to look at a future in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics—an effort which, I'm pleased to see, extends back into high school and primary school education spheres as well. We are doing this because this is a government that supports work for Australians, jobs for Australians and a future for Australians in the future industries of Australia.

In terms of technology, I refer to the Toowoomba Technology Park, which consists of a number of market leaders in their respective fields, including FK Gardner & Sons, who are project managers and the site developers; the University of Southern Queensland, which is the technology and education collaborator; and Energy Queensland, the electrical and fibre infrastructure provider. The tech park will represent Australia's largest facility of this type, with capacity for retail and wholesale data centres, an incubator, disaster recovery facilities, and, of course, industrial and office space. The total investment for the overall project is estimated to be $573 million over a 20-year period. Over this 20-year initiative, the tech park will employ more than 2,600 people directly in this new economy, and they will be in high-value-added jobs. The multiplier impact will see an additional 6,600 positions in my community, created through our broader economy.

As this new tech industry continues to emerge, we need skilled Australians to take up the positions on offer, and, as these jobs of the future come online, our universities—regional universities in particular—will need to provide courses to train students in these new technologies. There is an exciting time ahead for our education sector, and this government realises that and is seeking to make the system sustainable for future generations of Australian students.

Since 2009, taxpayer funding for teaching and learning has increased by 71 per cent—twice the rate of growth of the economy as a whole. The current funding arrangements are not sustainable, and reform is needed if future generations are also to enjoy the benefits of an affordable, world-class higher education. A key element of the higher education system is the Higher Education Loan Program, HELP, which supports universal, merit based access to higher education in Australia and is one of the most generous student loan schemes in the world. We are keeping that loan system in place. We will improve the sustainability of the HELP scheme by introducing a new HELP repayment system of thresholds and rates for all current and future HELP debtors from 1 July 2018.

As I touched on earlier, Toowoomba is the heart of the Darling Downs and the service centre for all of southern Queensland, and to the west and into northern New South Wales. Many young people in those regions may not have seen university study as an option in the past, and they may not see it as an option in the future. The Turnbull government recognises that students from rural, regional and remote areas are underrepresented in higher education, often facing obstacles such as a lack of financial resources and, of course, distance from campuses. The government aims to improve access to these students by providing rural and regional enterprise scholarships to students from regional and remote areas to undertake, in particular, science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and certainly in the areas of agriculture and most health courses. The scholarships will be valued up to $18,000 each and will be available for certificate IV courses right through to PhD courses. The first 600 scholarships will be awarded for the 2018 academic year, and there will be 600 more in 2019.

The Australian government will also change the fee arrangements and allocation of Commonwealth supported places for enabling courses. An enabling course is a course of instruction provided to a person for the purpose of gaining entry into a degree program, and that is particularly important for regional universities such as my own University of Southern Queensland. The provider will be able to tell a student if they are in an enabling course, which is sometimes also known as a foundation study or pathway program. From 1 January 2018, students enrolled in such courses will be required to pay a student contribution amount, and the amount that a university can charge a student will be based on a maximum rate set by the government. The average enabling course is less than half a year, full-time, and equates to around $1,400, which eligible students can defer through a HECS-HELP loan. Additionally, from 1 January 2019, a fixed number of Commonwealth supported places for enabling courses will be allocated to universities on a three-year basis. These allocations will be made to universities which demonstrate high standards of academic preparation and deliver high-quality student outcomes. This will improve the quality of enabling courses that are offered under the program and will enable a better match, if you like, to place students' needs and to meet those needs.

Overall, the Commonwealth government is supporting Australians living in rural and regional communities through a range of programs. Rural students, Indigenous students and students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds will benefit from the government's higher education reform package. Regional students will benefit from enhancements to the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program. The reforms to this program will help remove the barriers that many regional and remote students face in seeking high-quality education and, of course, in accessing support.

The reform to deliver three funding streams to universities—a loading for each eligible SES student, performance funding based on success rates of low SES and Indigenous students and a national priorities pool to give a greater focus on rigorous evaluation research and to encourage collaboration between universities—will also be a feature. This is essential as our knowledge economy continues to grow in capital cities and across regional Australia. Education is our third-largest export. It was worth $21.8 billion to the Australian economy in 2016 and supports more than 130,000 jobs nationally.

International students studying in Australia, along with visiting friends and family, also add significantly to the tourism industry over and above our education sector. They enrich our campuses and our communities—that's certainly the case in the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba—as do our students, of course, who travel overseas to other communities under programs such as the New Colombo Plan. This reform package means so much to the entire country, particularly to young students who want to make their way in the world to the benefit of regional Australia. I commend this bill to the House.

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

I want to indicate to the House it's my attention to support the amendment moved by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition on this bill and to oppose the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017. I'd like to first of all go through some of the detail of the bill and why I think it should be opposed and also address how that will impact in my own local area. This particular piece of legislation has been debated around not only this place for a while now but also in our communities. I can assure the parliament that it is very hard to find anybody on the grounds of my own university at Wollongong who has any affection for these particular so-called reforms that the government has encapsulated in this bill, the 'triple-whammy bill'.

First of all, it will reduce funding to universities so will be a direct cut in funding. Secondly, it will increasingly shift the cost on to students, seeing students have to pay more for their courses and pay back at an earlier pace. These combined effects are significant also because despite what my colleague, the member opposite, said before my contribution, while it is important to have more and more people with post-secondary skills and an education, this particular bill does nothing to increase participation and everything to discourage participation. It is, in particular, of great concern that despite the fact that this has been roundly rejected across communities, across the university sector and across student bodies directly affected by it, we continue to have it fed to us in this place, and so again we do today.

It is important to note that, in fact, Australia has the second-lowest level of public investment in universities in the OECD. And so what does this bill contribute? It contributes to making that position worse. Our students, despite the previous speakers claiming that we're extremely generous to them, already pay the sixth-highest fees in the OECD. This bill will only make that worse too. It is again an example across the education sector of this government saying we need to upskill the nation and then doing everything they can to either cut funding or shift costs in a way that will achieve exactly the opposite. We've seen it in schools with the cuts to the Gonski funding and with their bandaid proposal to say that they were doing something on school education. We've seen it in the TAFE sector; every time there is a budget or a MYEFO, they've cut funding to the skills sector. And we see it in the higher education sector as well. In fact, it is very important to point out that the money a government spends on education at all levels is an investment. If we want to talk about economic growth and if we want to talk about jobs and growth—which apparently was once the priority for those opposite—then we have to invest in our people, and cuts such as are before us in this bill are not the way to achieve that.

I want to particularly make the point, as the Deputy Leader of the Opposition did, that there are proposals in this bill around sub-bachelor degree programs. As the deputy opposition leader indicated, we have some concerns around ensuring and taking action to ensure that the outcome of that is to not to cut at the heart of our TAFE sector. Diplomas and associate diplomas can appropriately be delivered in the university sector when they're specifically designed for the sorts of target areas that a university might be better delivering, but they are not intended to compete for little purpose against the TAFE sector, which already has a world-class reputation in delivering those sorts of qualifications. So I want to make the point that I think it is very, very important that we be careful what we do in that space.

Across the board in this particular bill, it's clear that the efficiency dividend—the 2.5 per cent efficiency dividend that the government is placing on grants for 2018-19—means that there is a funding cut at the heart of this bill. The increase in student contribution amounts—student fees—of 7.5 per cent over four years is a cost shift onto students, which can significantly decrease the capacity of students to consider undertaking tertiary education, and that is a serious issue. The change to the repayment threshold—lowering it to a $42,000 income, at which point you start to repay—is going to have significant impacts on young adults starting out in life. They're already dealing with the fact that they've finished their tertiary education with a debt that has to be repaid and they're going into a workforce that is increasingly irregular and unreliable. Many young people I talk to are working full time, but none of those jobs and hours they work are actually permanent, reliable income, so, whilst they may actually be earning a reasonable flow of income, the reality is that they don't have the security on which to build a life—security many of us took for granted when we first came out of our post-secondary training and education and were able to do things like start a family or get a mortgage. They're facing an intergenerational unfairness in terms of housing affordability, often paying rents that are so prohibitive that they can't save in order to get a deposit to get ahead in the housing market. If they could save to get a deposit, they'd be facing a market that increasingly shuts them out because of the cost of housing. These are the issues that they are already facing. Quite rightly, I think, they're looking at our generation, saying, 'Why is it that you continue to make decisions that make it even harder for us to get a start as young adults'? This bill, by decreasing the repayment level to $42,000, will affect that.

Across the board, I think that the government should understand that this bill and the proposals within it have been discussed and debated across the community. It doesn't matter how they try to put it together; it's not a proposal that is supported by the broader community, and it is certainly not supported by this side of this chamber, because we actually understand the challenges that people are facing in our communities when they look at getting a start as a young person in the community: making a family, buying a house, and doing all those things that they have a right to do. It's important for our communities that they be able to do that. They're not doing it, and this will add to that difficulty.

In the time that's left to me, I want to particularly talk about how the bill will affect my own region. Obviously, I have a world-class university, the University of Wollongong, in my area. The implication of this legislation is that my university, the University of Wollongong, will have a funding cut of $45.7 million over the next four years. Of course, that's part of a $617.8 million cut across New South Wales. That is a direct hit to the bottom line of the university, which plays out in reduced quality, a reduced range of offerings for students and increased costs being put onto the students.

The students at my university have had many rallies and protests about their serious concerns about the implications of this bill for them. It is the case that we have persistently high youth unemployment in my area, and I will not stop campaigning and lobbying in support of post-secondary education in my area. At the end of the day, that is the thing that will give young people a fighting chance in an employment market that is rapidly changing and in which they need the foundation of a post-secondary education for them to be competitive in it. I will continue to fight for my TAFEs and my university and for the students who need them to be there in our community.

I'm particularly concerned to see some of the proposals by the government around the Higher Education Partnerships and Participation Program. This is a program that particularly supports disadvantaged Australians to get a university education. I'd like to point out that I met, in a number of universities across the country, Indigenous students who found access into higher education through this program. There has already been nearly $200 million cut from it, and I have really serious concerns about how we're going to continue to make sure that students from all walks of life, those who have the capacity and interest, are able to participate in a university education.

Finally, I want to contrast the approach of the government with what Labor did when we were in government. It is important to note that we took very seriously the significance of investing in education, and also in investing in higher education. It's very clear that the focus of both the Rudd and Gillard governments was to invest in higher education. We lifted funding in it when we came to government: in 2007 it was about $8 billion; by 2013, we had lifted that to $14 billion. That's a significant increase after the Howard years, when universities were under the pump and saw their funding consistently slashed.

In my area, through things like the higher education infrastructure investment that we put in place, there was $135 million invested in my university: $25.1 million was invested in the Sustainable Buildings Research Centre; $42.8 million was invested in the Australian Institute of Innovative Materials; $35 million was invested in the SMART Infrastructure Facility, which is the Simulation, Modelling, Analysis, Research and Teaching Infrastructure Facility; and $31 million was invested in the Early Start facility, which is about driving transformation and outcomes for children, particularly those from vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds. That's $135 million, and the deputy leader visited it only recently with me and saw the wonderful work that they are doing there.

In the Rudd and Gillard years, Labor governments invested $135 million in my university, and we are now seeing world-class research in critically important areas to our economy and society. It is seeing significant employment boosts in my area. It is seeing the university enabled, in partnership with my local businesses and councils, to help transform our region at a time when we're under real pressure to make sure we have a future for manufacturing and steel. My university is working with local manufacturer and working with BlueScope to ensure that research and development can partner with them to give them a future.

This university is driving so much of that agenda in my local area, because Labor governments invested in it. I couldn't name anything from the Howard years that was anywhere near a match to the investment in my university by a Labor government, and I can't name anything that's happened under the Abbott and Turnbull governments that would even come close to reflecting the investment by Labor governments in my university and in the people in my region. This bill before us today is only an addition to the gallery of shame of Liberal governments in the higher education sector. It should be rejected, and I support the amendment that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has moved. I will continue to fight on behalf of my university and my community and the students who rely on it. (Time expired)

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member for Cunningham will be given an opportunity to conclude her contribution at that time.