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

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable Deputy Leader of the Opposition has moved as an amendment that all words after 'that' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House I will state the question in the form that the amendment be agreed to.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to my feet to speak on this bill with great joy and gusto. I'm so pleased that the Assistant Minister for Vocational Education and Skills is here to be part of this debate. I want to welcome the students from Narromine Christian School in the gallery up there. I'm not quite sure about the school behind me, but the young students up there are our future and education is all about them.

They could be—if they've been sitting in here listening to the matter of public importance—forgiven for thinking all sorts of things about where we stand as legislators on this issue. But before I embark on a detailed examination of the bill before us, I think it's important that we also look at a little bit of history. The Turnbull government has taken responsible measures to try to end the rorts of the VET FEE-HELP scheme that saw such a debacle from those opposite when they were in government. Let me just give you a few statistics, Mr Deputy Speaker: between 2009 and 2016 the number of students accessing the VET FEE-HELP jumped 3,600 per cent, from 5,229 to 193,868. Now, you might think, 'Well, is that such a bad thing?' If you look at it overall, average course costs in that time nearly tripled from $4,000 to $11,300. Loans increased by nearly 6,000 per cent, from $25 million to $1.5 billion.

I say to the young students up there from Narromine Christian School that whilst those opposite have an absolute predisposition to ensuring that all young people should go to university I'm going to take a different tack with you right here and right now, because I'm one who'll stand here and actually say that I don't think all students should go to university. I come from a trade background. I did my carpentry and joinery apprenticeship at Holmesglen College of TAFE and I'm proud of it. I worked as a builder for 10 years, and I'm proud of it. I then went back and did a law degree at uni, and some might say it has all been going downhill from there!

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why aren't you proud of that?

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, some might say it's all going downhill from there. But, I want to encourage the young people from Narromine Christian School and from all schools across the country. You don't have to go to university if you don't want to. If you want to go to university, great, knock your socks off, but you don't have to go to university. The Assistant Minister for Vocational Education and Skills is doing a fantastic job in trying to promote young people into trades. Whether you want to be a bricklayer or a carpenter or a plasterer or a butcher or a baker, there are plenty of other jobs, meaningful employment, available in Australia. To be quite honest with you, you might earn more money as a carpenter or a plasterer or a brickie than you would if you did a business degree. So, whatever you do, challenge your teachers, your vocational instructors and your guidance counsellors. Find out more about what it's like to be a tradesman or a tradeswoman, because that is an equally important path in our lives. If anybody tells you otherwise, you should challenge them on that.

Back to the bill: this bill is all about making university education in Australia the great system that it is and improving upon the great system that it is. It's more important than ever to protect the future of a system which currently supports 1.4 million students and has 16 Australian universities in the top 300 of world university rankings in 2017 and 2018.

As the member for Fisher, I have one of the newest universities in Australia in my electorate, and that is the University of the Sunshine Coast. It is a fantastic university that's only been going for a little less than 20 years, but in that 20 years it has seen its graduates list almost 20,000 in number. It is a university that I am very proud of because it engages with its local community.

This government is focused on encouraging quality and excellence in Australian higher education and ensuring that students have the support they need to succeed, while also making sure that the system is sustainable for future generations so students yet to come have the sorts of opportunities that this and other generations have had. The Higher Education Reform Package has been developed after substantial consultation and discussion with a broad range of stakeholders and focuses on three key themes: improving the sustainability of higher education, providing more choices for students and increasing transparency and accountability. This government 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 has a skilled workforce.

The reforms proposed by the government are fair. They drive quality and excellence and focus on ensuring that Australians who want to study have the right support and the right opportunities. A key challenge is how to make the system sustainable for future generations of students. Since 2009, taxpayer funding for teaching and learning has increased by 71 per cent, twice the growth rate of the economy as a whole. The current funding arrangements are not sustainable, and reform is needed if future generations like those up in the Narromine Christian School are to take advantage of higher education—a world-class higher education—into the future.

A key element of the higher education system is the Higher Education Loan Program, which supports universal, merit based access to higher education in Australia and is one of the most generous student loan schemes in the world. Those opposite would have you believe that the government is attacking that. We are not attacking that at all. We want to ensure that, no matter whether you come from a wealthy family or a non-wealthy family, if you have the ability, the skill, the interest, the talent and the desire to go to university, you have every opportunity, as much as anyone else.

However, the HELP repayments—that is, the Higher Education Loan Program repayments—have not kept pace with the HELP lending growth rate. Due to the income-contingent nature of HELP, debtors do not start making compulsory repayments until their income is above the minimum repayment threshold, currently in 2017-18, set at $55,874. Since 2009, the fair value of student loans has increased from $12.5 billion to $36.8 billion and is expected to increase further to $59.7 billion by 2019-20. The total outstanding student debt underwritten by taxpayers now stands at $50 billion, with a quarter of that not expected to be repaid.

The Commonwealth supported places which provide places for university students are subsidised by the Australian government so that students are only required to pay a student contribution amount for each unit that they're enrolled in. Universities and other higher education providers set their own student contribution amounts within limits set by the Australian government. It's necessary with increasing enrolments and budget pressures to increase the maximum contribution each student can be asked to make. These reforms will rebalance the contributions made by taxpayers and students to the cost of higher education. After the changes have been implemented, the taxpayer will remain the majority funder of higher education by 2021, providing on average 54 per cent of base funding for the costs of teaching and learning.

The Deloitte cost-of-delivery report undertaken in 2016 showed that universities spent 85 per cent of their total funds for bachelor level courses on teaching and learning in 2015, compared to the 2011 base funding review which found that 94 per cent of base funding for bachelor level courses was spent on teaching and learning. These findings suggest it is reasonable to expect some of these efficiencies should be shared with the government. Effectively, costs per student for teaching and learning have increased by 9.5 per cent since 2010, while revenue per student has risen by 15 per cent over that time. This efficiency dividend equates on average to 2.8 per cent of base funding for teaching and research. When last in government, Labor proposed its own efficiency dividend of 3.25 per cent, but you don't hear anything at all about that from the other side. Then Prime Minister Julia Gillard said on 16 April 2013:

… the number of places has grown, but funding has also gone up per student place.

Money to universities is still going to grow. We've got universities on a growth path.

What we are asking them to do is for one year to accept a two per cent efficiency dividend, and in the second year a 1.25 per cent efficiency dividend.

That means their money would still grow, it just wouldn't grow as fast as they'd obviously wanted …

Once again, you don't hear any of that from the other side. In opposition, Labor is playing politics. I'm sure that won't come as a surprise to anybody who's been around this place long enough. And they are using delaying tactics when they well know what we are proposing is fair, reasonable and necessary.

HELP is here to stay. The Australian government remains committed to a system of higher education that is affordable for individuals but it must be affordable for the country. Australia has one of the most generous student loan schemes in the world. The Higher Education Loans Program is one that will see young people go to university and pay no up-front fees. We will keep that loan system in place. There will be no up-front student fees. The system of student loans will be protected. Students will only have to pay their loans back when they are earning a high enough income. No eligible domestic student has to pay up-front fees, because they are able to borrow from the government to meet their share of the cost of study. No real rate of interest is charged on their loan. The government effectively absorbs this cost.

Australia's HELP scheme, which provides assistance for young people and old people to get into university to improve their education, is the envy of the world. It means that anyone who has the ability and motivation to participate in higher education is not prevented from doing so because of the need to pay their tuition fees up-front. We will improve the sustainability of the HELP scheme by introducing new HELP repayment thresholds and rates for all current and future HELP debtors from 1 July 2018. The proposal to index HELP repayment thresholds at CPI will maintain the value of thresholds in real terms, as the thresholds will increase in line with the cost of living, rather than wages. With average weekly earnings typically being higher than CPI, indexation by CPI will slow the growth of repayment thresholds and ensure they remain appropriate when compared to an individual's capacity to repay.

I'll finish off by saying that this government is absolutely 100 per cent committed to providing an effective, world-class higher education university scheme for all Australians, no matter what their socioeconomic background is. (Time expired)

Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of Labor's position on the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017. I represent a community of hardworking people. Traditionally, we have been the tradies, the labourers, the administrators and the retail staffers. We now live in a time when those jobs are changing, and as those jobs change so too does the way in which we educate—especially for people in any community.

It's one year ago today since I got to stand here and address the federal parliament with my first speech. One of the things that led me here was a comment made by a Liberal predecessor of mine as member for Lindsay, former MP Jackie Kelly, who famously declared Western Sydney did not need a university, because we were in pram city. So outraged at her comments was I, as a 20-year-old, that I wrote a letter to my local newspaper about my disgust for such comments. I'm pretty sure this was my first interaction on my political activism journey. The future of work is changing: the jobs are changing and our workforce needs to change. I'm so glad that Kelly's comments were not heeded and that, instead, we have Western Sydney University right in my backyard. It is a university whose alumni I belong to, in fact, along with my mum, who was the first in her family to study and studied as a mature single mum of two kids. This provided me with a great desire to go on to university, and I followed there a few years later.

This isn't a unique story across my community. Sixty per cent of the students who attend Western Sydney University are the first in their families to attend university, and that is a staggeringly high figure. Twenty per cent of the students are considered low-socioeconomic status, and 37 per cent of those students speak a language other than English at home. These statistics indicate the transition my community faces from the traditional jobs we have had and the ones we will need to be prepared for in the future. The changes that the government seeks to make in this bill will diabolically affect my community and my university. In fact, the cuts this lousy bloke who calls himself the Prime Minister wants to make are the second-highest in this country. Western Sydney University will lose more than $98 million in funding over the next four years. This is the highest amount of money being taken out of any university in New South Wales.

For 25 years, Western Sydney University has been at the forefront of addressing the educational inequity facing our community. In Western Sydney, 16.5 per cent of under-34-year-olds have a tertiary qualification, while greater Sydney enjoys a level of almost 25 per cent for the same age bracket. These figures are important. They help businesses to decide where to locate, to know whether the population will be able to support their company with adequately qualified and trained staff. Why on earth would Turnbull support anything that jeopardises the access to university for anybody in Western Sydney? Does he think so little of the people that I represent in Western Sydney that he would callously allow these cuts to take place? Does he think so little of our community and that we're all just a bunch of high-vis-vest-wearing workers who are not capable of university-level study? You only need to look at his actions. He skulked into Western Sydney—I know, right? I'm surprised he even knew the way. He didn't come by public transport, though, to give his press conference—which is a shame, after his famous electioneering train-rides not so long ago, because, if he had, he might've learnt that, where he was headed to, there is actually no train. He went to Erskine Park, he got out there, and he said to the press that he promised plenty of jobs for locals and that we should all live where it takes 30 minutes to get from home to work, to education and to recreational facilities. I mean, really! Thirty minutes! Did he drive, from Erskine Park, 30 minutes in any direction? He might've tried, but I can guarantee he wouldn't have got very far. He made this announcement at TNT, a freight and logistics depot. We know that, on average, one of those warehouses has five jobs for every hectare of land, like this warehouse takes up. Again, it exemplifies my point that the Prime Minister thinks Western Sydney is a community of high-vis-vest-wearing jobs. I have no argument or issue with people working in those fields whatsoever.

But back to his catch-cry of the 30-minute city and being within 30 minutes of educational opportunities: how is that going for the Prime Minister? They just cut $23 million from Lindsay's schools, and now they want to come after our university for $98 million. Apprenticeships have dropped 37 per cent in my area. If you gut Western Sydney uni and it has to continue cutting programs and services, where is our next university within 30 minutes, I ask you, Deputy Speaker? I know it sounds old-fashioned, but someone needs to hand this bloke a map. Across Western Sydney we have campuses located in the south, the north and the west. And I say to the Prime Minister: enough is enough. End the war on Western Sydney. Stop treating my community like we don't matter and start valuing the contributions that come from the educated workforce that Western Sydney can and will happily provide.

Fundamental to making Western Sydney strong is supporting its university and addressing the gaps our area suffers from. The measures announced in this bill will do nothing to support this. The cuts this government proposes for Western Sydney uni will hurt the students out there already doing it tough. The cuts mean that funding for the critical outreach programs which support coming into university from various pathways will go. The cuts put a handbrake on the school engagement program encouraging young students to get into higher education. And the cuts mean that industry-led partner programs will be gone. Obviously, this Turnbull government believes that educational equity gaps should remain.

Disturbingly, these cuts affect jobs, job creation and the critical support required for start-ups and for ideas. Western Sydney University supports 150 Sydney start-ups and small-to-medium enterprises, through its Launch Pad incubator. Some I have been lucky enough to meet—like Stephen Brinks, from 3DBrink, a very successful start-up. Stephen was designing and building 3D printers in his Werrington garage. He had the opportunity to move into the Launch Pad and has grown his business. Now he has the opportunity to give back, and he collaborates with students. Why would the Prime Minister want to see this facility cut, after he famously visited there and referred to it as 'essential'? Now it will be cut to the bone and will be unable to support the start-ups and small businesses in Western Sydney.

On top of these cuts, this Turnbull government will put an end to Western Sydney uni's ability to partner with industry and government in proven job-creation programs. Just one example of this co-investment that the university undertook with the former Labor federal government was the $30 million investment in the Werrington business park. This investment saw 400 high-value jobs come into Penrith. It forges vital links between industry, researchers and students. Great opportunities were delivered to people in my community. But now all we see is Mr Turnbull's 'opportunities'. Well, I have news for him: we don't need your opportunities. We have had to look after ourselves because you cannot be trusted. People in Western Sydney have created their own opportunities, and they know that Labor will support them. Labor will support their jobs, support their pay and conditions, and support investment in the services they need, like universities. But those opposite only see a life of privilege and not one of opportunities being shared.

Opportunities come from investment, not trickle-down tax breaks afforded to big businesses. All these tax breaks—to ensure big businesses and millionaires can enjoy the cosy spoils. The government has decided to destroy any opportunities for students and institutions, especially in Western Sydney. And, for the people in my community, it is absolute proof that we have a federal government devoid of any heart. It isn't a cliche. The Turnbull government is hell-bent on handing out degrees in hard knocks.

Imagine for a moment—close your eyes—that we were here discussing investing $65 billion into our education system, not giving $65 billion in tax breaks to big business. Just let that sink in. Let's have a discussion about that. Imagine how that would trickle down through our nation. Imagine that investment trickling down through every single student across Western Sydney. I would love to have and I would absolutely welcome having that discussion, but we are not having it.

The Turnbull government has decided we should not be the clever country anymore and has decided to dumb us down in the most horrible of ways. This government is creating chaos in my community. We need apprenticeships; we need jobs that keep our graduates in the area where they live; and we need to invest in our education system, not take money from it. The government has gutted funding at all levels of education. You name it; it's on the chopping block. The Turnbull government has already ripped off public education and cut $17 billion from schools, $23 million of which came from my electorate alone. Now the Prime Minister wants to deliver more cuts and raid the pockets of students, with nearly $4 billion of cuts to universities, higher fees for students and bigger debts for students that they will have to repay much sooner.

What does all of this add up to? It adds up to a compromise on teaching, learning and research. But, more importantly, it adds up to dumbing down and the taking away of opportunities. The Turnbull government wants the students of Australia to fix its own broken budget promises. And how are students going to fix them? They're going to start paying back their student loans not at $54,000 but at $42,000. And, for good measure, the government is going to ensure your student fees are higher and universities are restricted in investing in infrastructure, as the Turnbull government steals surpluses that were for future building.

What great opportunities and lessons this government is providing to students! Members opposite are providing some genuine life lessons right up-front. Well, I'm voting to keep Australia clever, even though we have a ridiculously stupid government—and the experts out there know, and they agree with me too. Again we see a bunch of ill-informed MPs coming in here, trampling over decades and decades of research and ignoring it in favour of cuts instead. Take the Innovative Research Universities, which said:

The Australian Government investment in Universities is low by international standards while our students are already paying some of the highest fees in the world for public university education …

Universities Australia said:

Students and graduates will be carrying higher levels of debt into an increasingly uncertain future …

And the Group of Eight said:

We have … reached a tipping point. It remains the fact that we receive less than half of our university funding from Government and this has forced us to be heavily reliant on alternative sources of income to fund the nation building research we must undertake.

At a time when we need investment in the jobs of the future and to be competitive in a global jobs market, we find the Turnbull government throwing lead into the saddles of students, who quite frankly were finding it tough to survive already.

Meanwhile, across the road, across the seas, in Asia, right on our doorstep, they're investing in universities. That's right. I know it seems a bit of an anomaly compared to what this parliament wants to do. Their governments are investing in universities. This was highlighted last week by Universities Australia, which said:

Smart nations understand that public funding in universities is an investment—

an investment, Deputy Speaker—

in long-term national prosperity.

It continued:

It's clear that China is becoming a increasingly strong competitor – which the rankings analysts attribute to its 'high and sustained levels of state funding'. Indeed, China is building the equivalent of almost a new university every week.

And that should be a reflection to those opposite about what we're doing to universities in this country right now.

What a morally bankrupt government we have when it comes to education. I'm waiting to hear them all fall over themselves and come in here and support these cuts. The government are pretty lousy because all they could muster up was less than half-a-dozen government members willing to come in here and spruik their cuts to higher education. I don't blame them, because it is a drastically, diabolically terrible decision.

Western Sydney University is a success story. Why is the Turnbull government stripping it back to its bare bones, leaving Western Sydney with the crumbs yet again? The Prime Minister keeps coming up with three-word slogans like 'an ideas boom'. Well, Prime Minister, it is hard to have an ideas boom when you keep having brain explosions like this one. Can you imagine Mr Turnbull sitting on his balcony at Point Piper penning his little quips, the glare of the sun in his eyes and the rays beaming up from the harbour and all of those yachts? Perhaps Mr Turnbull might like to sit in Western Sydney's peak-hour traffic on the M4 and see if he can get from Erskine Park to Penrith in 30 minutes. I can guarantee he can't.

Western Sydney University is important because educational inequity is a real issue happening right now. A $65 billion tax break to big business with no evidence of payback to the community isn't innovation. Tax handouts to wealthy businesses on the backs of every single student cohort across this country are nothing more than trickle-down idiocy. No jobs, no investment; just dividends to the big end of town. And, if you are in Western Sydney and want to get ahead, this government is happy to stand on you, put you down, confine you to a hi-vis vest and tell you that you do not deserve the same access and same equity of access to anything. We have no equity of access to education, transport or jobs. I am happy to come in here day after day and remind this government of how poorly they are treating Western Sydney. When the next election campaign comes along and Mr Abbott or Mr Turnbull—or whoever is the Prime Minister potentially—come into my electorate, sit in my football stadium, say no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no cuts to pensions and no cuts to the ABC and tell this country they have a unity ticket on education, it is the people that I represent who will be the most dudded by this awful, awful government.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There was a time when every galah in the coalition pet shop was talking about the importance of being innovative and nimble. They were talking about the importance of Australia being a clever country and about us projecting ourselves into the economy of the 21st century. Those very same coalition MPs are shortly going to file into this chamber and vote in favour of this bill which does the exact opposite of everything they have been talking about for the last two years. I am, of course, talking about the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017, which slashes funding for universities throughout this country to the tune of $3.8 billion. The minister at the table opposite has attempted to tell members of parliament that this is some radical reversal of the Abbott government's fateful 2014 budget, where they attempted to do a complete backflip on the promises they took to the 2013 election. Far from it being a radical reversal of the Abbott policies, this is the Abbott policies in a new guise.

Let's have a look at the cuts that this bill introduces on a state-by-state basis. Here in Canberra, it is $52.5 million. In my home state of New South Wales, it is $617 million. In the Northern Territory, a place that needs us to be supporting their TAFE and their higher education, they are suffering a cut of $15 million. In Queensland, it is over $400 million. In South Australia, it is $150 million. The list goes on and on and on. There are cuts to funding and to universities in each and every state. In my own university, the University of Wollongong—a fine institution which I will talk a bit more about shortly—there are $45.7 million in cuts as a result of this legislation. I'm imploring those members opposite: don't do what your leader is attempting to convince you to do. Vote in favour of the university students you represent in your electorates, and vote in favour of regional universities because they need your support today more than ever.

It's time we had a conversation with the Prime Minister about inequality. Every time we raise this he calls us communists. He thinks there's some sort of socialist plot going on. But we need to have a conversation about it. Where we stand today, the richest 10 per cent of Australians own 45 per cent of all wealth. That is 70 times the wealth of the lowest-income brackets. If you compare the amount of money they make year on year, it is a massive seven times the income they earn each year. We have to have a conversation about inequality. If you're in that top 20 per cent of income earners, the chances are that you live in one of our capital cities. If you're in the bottom 20 per cent, the chances are that you're living in regional or remote Australia. Against this background, why is the government and, certainly, any National Party or regional Liberal member, coming in here and proposing to support this bill?

Did you know that in regional Australia we have 13 per cent fewer school leavers participating in higher education than the Australian average? We all know on this side of the House that higher education is the pathway to a higher income and a successful life. But, if we have 13 per cent fewer people in regional Australia participating in higher education, we are reducing the chances of people in regional Australia closing the inequality gap that is growing between people who live in the regions and people who live in the inner cities of this country.

There may be a reason why the Prime Minister doesn't get it. There may be a reason why the Prime Minister cries 'Communist!' every time we start talking about inequality. The reason he doesn't get it is probably that he lives in one of the wealthiest electorates in the country and he is surrounded at his cabinet table by people who live in some of the wealthiest electorates in the country. I'm talking about the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party and I'm talking about the Treasurer.

Just under one in five school leavers in regional Australia participate in higher education, compared to one in two school leavers in the Prime Minister's local area of Waverley. The reason that he doesn't get the fact that we have a massive problem with inequality in this country, the reason that he doesn't understand that this bill is going to exacerbate the problem, not make it better, is that the world that he lives in is a very different world to that which the majority of Australians are living in. He lives in a world surrounded by privilege, while the rest of Australia is living in a world which doesn't enjoy the same sorts of privileges that the Prime Minister enjoys or that his deputy leader and the Treasurer enjoy. Is there any wonder that he cries 'Socialism!' whenever we start to say: 'Excuse me, sir; there are some problems with what you're doing. Excuse me, but not everyone enjoys the same privileges that you do. Excuse me; if you introduce this legislation, real people are going to suffer.'

In fact, if you live in regional Australia, participation rates in secondary school at age 16 are seven to 10 per cent lower than they are in the Prime Minister's electorate. In regional Western Australia and regional Tasmania, they're also considerably lower, around 20 per cent lower. There are other parts of the country, where people live very different lives to those who are recommending this bill before the House today. We should send a very clear message to this government that we understand the circumstances of people who are living in the outer suburbs of capital cities and the circumstances of people who are living in regional Australia. It's a very different world to the one that the decision-makers in this government are living in.

We understand their circumstances. That's why we're not going to vote for these massive cuts to university funding. We are not going to vote for an increase in the rate of repayment for the fees that are being proposed in this bill today. We're not going to support their plans to abolish the Education Investment Fund. If you compare the approach of Labor governments over decades to higher education to that of the coalition, the Liberal and National parties, you see the world through the prism of privilege. They vote accordingly. Others see the world through the prism that higher education is an opportunity to improve your lot in life. We put in place the Education Investment Fund, which improved the facilities of universities right around the country, particularly in regional campuses around the country, where millions and millions of dollars was invested, including in my own campus at Wollongong. Millions and millions of dollars was invested. What is this government attempting to do? Abolish that fund so that those funds aren't available to invest in university facilities around the country.

Not only do we understand the importance of universities as institutions which are educating the workforce and the citizens of a future society; we understand that in regional areas universities are major economic players in their own right. The University of Wollongong in my region contributes around $1.2 billion in total direct and indirect economic contribution to the GDP over the course of a year. More than 5,200 people are directly employed by the University of Wollongong, making it one of the largest employers in the region. For every 1,000 full-time equivalent roles that the University of Wollongong employs, there are probably another 1,000 full-time jobs that are created in the broader Illawarra economy. We can take from that that the 5,000-odd people the University of Wollongong employs are generating a total employment of around 10,000 for the entire Illawarra district. The University of Wollongong is an incredibly important contributor to our workforce, having over 131,000 graduates in its short time in operation across more than 300 different degree strands. It has a significant research arm and is an acknowledged world leader in the areas of engineering and information and communications technology. For every $1 million of value added as a result of the University of Wollongong expenditure, a further $1 million is probably generated in income elsewhere within the economy. This paints the picture of a very important regional economic institution.

A responsible government that understood the circumstances in regional areas—a responsible government that was in tune with regions like my own—would not be cutting $45 million from the funds of this vital economic institution in the Illawarra. We know the result will be staff cuts. We know the result will be increased class sizes. We know the result will be a university struggling to provide the same quality of education it did in the decades before.

If members opposite are going to do something to improve the lot of people living and working in regional Australia, if the coalition parties—the Liberals and the National Party in particular—are going to do something to represent others than those in the privileged classes living in the privileged suburbs of our capital cities, they have to reject this bill. They have to reject this bill because the results of this bill are going to be a disaster for people who are struggling to get themselves a higher education, for people who are struggling to pay off a university debt and for people who are struggling to get a toehold in a university in this country. It is bad legislation. It should be rejected.

I particularly implore members of the Nationals, who are supposed to represent people in regional Australia: do the right thing by your community. Tear yourselves away from your Liberal Party colleagues and reject this bill. You have to do more than beat yourselves on the chest and say, 'We are a tough, independent party.' You have to do more than be lions in your electorate and lambs down here in the parliament when you come and vote on legislation. You have to put those fierce words into action. You have to stand up for your communities. That's why, in a few minutes time, you should march into this chamber and you should sit with Labor members of parliament and stand up for your communities. We're going to do it, and we throw down the gauntlet to you: do the same thing.

Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to discuss the impact of the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017. It's a bill I absolutely will not support. I reject it outright. It is complex legislation, and that is fitting because we in this place all know that higher education is a complex issue to deal with, with a long list of stakeholders and participants, and there is always great community interest in our universities. Primary, secondary and higher education are as important as each other, and negotiating and creating reform that is complementary across sectors can create long-lasting benefits for the whole community. Education reform is challenging. Higher education reform is challenging.

The reforms in this bill purport to tackle the considerable challenge of funding universities while at the same time managing to fundamentally ignore how universities actually work. This bill displays a kind of wilful blindness to the reality of how universities make the most of their funding and the pressure facing this very important sector and export industry.

If this bill is to help the higher education sector, it should be designed to support the students in the institutions it professes to reform, but it does not do that. This is a bill that should be making universities more accessible to students across the nation, but it isn't. This is a bill which should pay attention to the vast range of activities that a university conducts, but it does not. This is a bill that should bring together relevant stakeholders to the table and develop meaningful, long-term policy for the sector. Again, it doesn't and it fails. Certainly, this bill should ensure the future prosperity of a world-class higher educational institution, and it certainly does not do that. Recent comments published in The West Australian and, of course, around the world say it advocates the exact opposite. The West Australian says:

Australia's performance on international university league tables could fall if the Federal Government pushes ahead with planned reforms, the editor of the Times Higher Education global rankings has warned.

In these rankings, six Australian universities were ranked among the top 100 in the world. Unfortunately, none of Western Australia's universities made the top 100, but UWA moved up 14 places, climbing to 111. The West Australian says:

Times Higher Education global rankings editor Phil Baty said Australia's future rankings could suffer if the Government went ahead with plans to cut funding by 2.5 per cent.

"It is good news that Australia's universities have held steady in this year's table but funding cuts proposed by the government could harm the country's institutions in future editions of the rankings," he said.

"The data also shows that Australia's leading institutions are already falling behind peers in mainland China and Hong Kong, which receive high and sustained levels of state funding."

Mr Baty said figures from the first quarter of this year showed a 15 per cent increase in international student numbers in Australia.

He said Australia could benefit from a potential decline in the number of international students applying to universities in Britain and the US because of Brexit and tightened immigration policies.

So we have the capacity already and we have the model and the opportunity.

The Minister for Education and Training, Senator Birmingham, has said Australian universities are punching above their weight on the international stage but they should not rest on their laurels in a competitive world. The education minister asked universities not to rest on their laurels, while this government has been doing exactly that in this policy area and others for four years. Mind you, as laurels are symbols of victory and status, one can't really accuse the Liberal government of much of that. It is laziness in application of policy thought. They've failed to consider the complexities of our third-largest export industry. How does cutting the legs out from our universities help maintain our national rankings? How does it help universities improve on their already excellent performance?

I want to talk about the university experience of students across Australia. For those of us who were lucky enough to go to university—and not many people in my electorate have been to university—it's not about just going to your lectures and going home. It's not a factory; students don't just go in one end and get churned out the other end with a piece of paper. We hope they go into positive learning environments, get to engage with peers, pick up life skills, network and build a strong, positive and well-thought-out foundation for life post graduation. We hope that it sets them up. But this bill does not do any of that. Instead of reforming the sector for the good of the students and the vast university communities, this bill has become a cash grab by the Liberal federal government to repair the budget bottom line at the expense of education and the future of our community.

I've worked in the university sector for over 10 years. Before coming to this place, I operated an international relations think tank, the Perth USAsia Centre at the University of Western Australia. Before that I was a lawyer for the University of Western Australia and I was chief of staff to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Australia. I have had the remarkable experience of working with students, the UWA student guild, educators, lecturers, heads of state, scientists, cleaners, researchers, heads of government, administrators, artists, Nobel laureates, gardeners, curators and carpenters—so many different people doing so many different things to make a remarkable institution what it is: a place of learning, a place of research, a place of effort and application and a place of beauty where all can seek wisdom should they choose to, and most do. In being director of UWA's centenary celebrations a few years ago, I had the chance to spend time helping a vast community celebrate the contribution of the first free university in the British Empire, a university which promoted equal access to tertiary education for all. It enabled the education of Western Australians and the research which enabled the development of that state's agricultural industry—its second-largest export industry—and the state's mining industry, which is WA's largest export industry.

Of course, now, with five universities, education itself is Western Australia's third-largest export industry. A hundred and five years after UWA first commenced in 1911, there are a further four great WA universities—Murdoch University, Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, and the University of Notre Dame Australia—each playing important roles in educating Western Australians of all ages and international students from many nations. These universities conduct research across a broad spectrum of subjects, and, like unis across the country, they contribute to local communities in hosting community events and providing sporting grounds and facilities. They are significant employers and create centres of activity that support hundreds of small businesses across WA.

Universities are complex, and I haven't even touched on what it takes to put together a university budget, but, mostly from my own experience, I know it's extraordinarily hard work. Simplifying the complexity of universities and all that they do in the community and assuming student contributions only get applied to teaching shows an absurd lack of attention to universities, to what they are and to how they work. For the education minister to say that unis are somehow pocketing the extra cash from student contributions that exceed the costs of teaching shows just how mammothly out of touch this government is with this sector. In July, the education minister described the increase in funding to the sector because of the demand-driven system as a 'river of gold'. How out of touch can you get. I can imagine more than a few university administrators shaking their heads at that comment and thinking, 'If only we could keep hold of that extra revenue and not have to apply it to research programs, or IT infrastructure, or maintaining heritage-listed 85-year-old limestone buildings or a collection of art carefully collected or gifted and curated and which the university holds on trust for the benefit of the public and the benefit of future generations.'

Our universities are not cash cows for this or any other aggressive Liberal government to raid for their budget repair, and neither is the foreign aid program, for that matter. But nothing will stand in the way of this government giving $65 billion worth of tax cuts to the most wealthy—not even those institutions which quite literally build the future of this nation's prosperity.

This government has resolutely ignored the reality of universities. It has not managed to grasp the reality of the implicit cross-subsidy where any funds left over from a teaching program go toward funding critical research. It is a failure to listen to universities. It is a failure to understand how they operate. And it is only one more of this government's many failures in this regard.

If I could, I'd like to speak briefly about Murdoch University in Western Australia. I hope the member for Tangney comes and speaks a bit later on this. I know it's in his electorate and it plays an important role in his community as well as in mine. It is the closest university to Brand and has offered a unique and valuable approach to tertiary education for many of my constituents. It's also close to my family's heart, having been named after my husband's great-grandfather, Sir Walter Murdoch, the founding professor of English at UWA and a local author and philosopher. Established in 1973, Murdoch University offers enabling programs for students who did not achieve the ATAR ranking they had hoped, or, in some cases, those who did not achieve an ATAR ranking at all—programs such as OnTrack. That is—or was—a fee-free program which is approved as a full-time study option by Centrelink.

This bill seeks to replace the enabling loading with a student contribution that will have a disproportionately negative impact on students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in the suburbs south of Brand, in the Peel region, across the seat of Canning as well as in my electorate of Brand. In 2016, there were 296 students from the region taking advantage of this program. This year, there are 453. The replacement of the enabling loading will undoubtedly put an immediate halt to this, flying in the face of the very great positive progress Murdoch University has made in opening up the university experience to people who are already at a disadvantage in comparison to many others around Australia. It is estimated that charging fees for enabling programs will affect more than 350 students across Rockingham and Peel. To rip up the opportunities and dreams of these students is, in my opinion, a national disgrace and should be reconsidered by the government.

Among OnTrack students enrolled at Murdoch University between 2008 and 2014, 55 per cent self-identified as being the first in their family to go to a university, and 56 per cent lived in low-SES denominated areas. Furthermore, and very importantly, 69 per cent of all funded enrolments translated into undergraduate degree enrolments at Murdoch University. That's a good thing for the region, it's a good thing for Western Australia and it certainly is a good thing for the people and potential students of Brand in Western Australia.

I will speak for a couple of minutes to a few of the other measures that are in this bill. We know what an efficiency dividend is, of course; it's a cut. The 2.5 per cent efficiency dividend will take out of an already-stressed sector. There will be an increase in student fees. Now, let's be clear, this increase in fees will not go to any kind of pool that's going to improve the student experience or go to funding facilities to support services to help improved infrastructure. No, it's going to go straight to the consolidated revenue and transform into that $65 billion tax cut for big business. This government is increasing the fees for students and is not applying that increase to the sector itself. Students will pay more and they will get less. Not only will the extra fees go elsewhere, but the 2.5 per cent efficiency dividend—cut—and the 7.5 per cent performance management daylight robbery scheme will all add up to taking more money out of universities to fund tax cuts. It's a disgrace, and it's a failure.

I'm going to reflect a bit on that performance based funding pool that we have no detail about. Earlier, the member for McPherson, I think, said that there was going to be some metrics put around it and that they would be related to student achievement. So here we have another 7.5 per cent to be taken off universities, coming out of their Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding, that will be put into some pool to be distributed in some fashion yet to be determined. That's very helpful for universities, some of which have billion-dollar turnovers and have to plan for these things.

The member for McPherson mentioned student achievement as a possible metric. That sometimes translates to attrition. Attrition of students is regularly and most often out of the control of universities, because students at universities, like all of us, have lives that are complicated. Sometimes they have to give up their studies for health reasons, because they become carers, because they've simply changed their mind or because they're not able to cope; there are so many reasons people do not finish their degree. And students that need the enabling courses that the government is now going to charge for are often those who are at most risk of not finishing their degree and going into that attrition lot of students. So if performance funding is going to be linked to attrition, then unis will find themselves being forced not to enrol students at risk of leaving their institutions—those at risk of not finishing their degree in full. And these are the people, as I said, who do the enabling courses. They are the most vulnerable in our community, the people we need to get into universities and to finish their degree. We need to do all we can to help them out so that they can finish their degree and create a better life for their families and for their future. Universities are highly motivated to keep students enrolled. It's part of their funding. The money flows with the students, so there is no need to have any kind of performance based funding managed around attrition, because that's well and truly dealt with.

I'll conclude by saying that I think these reforms are a disgrace. I've worked in this sector for over 10 years and I have been on the council of a university. I'm proud to have worked in the university sector and I'll do all I can to defend it and to improve the funding model for the universities in the future. (Time expired)

Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017 is fundamentally about one thing—that is, the sustainability of the higher education system. There has been a wonderful and very important expansion of the higher education system under the demand-driven system since 2009 but it has never been on a sustainable basis. It is very important that universities, that students and that the whole higher education system have the certainty and stability that only funding sustainability can provide.

Now the mythmakers and the luvvies would have you believe that nothing happened in higher education until 1972 with the election of the 'Sun King', Gough Whitlam, but that's not true. The greatest expansion in higher education occurred under the prime ministership of Sir Robert Menzies.

Sir Robert Menzies' own story is worthwhile recounting in this regard. Menzies was a country boy who grew up in a one-horse town, went to a one-teacher primary school and won scholarships to high school and then scholarships to university. It was those scholarships and that opportunity to go to university which transformed his life. It allowed him to lead his profession, to lead his party and to lead his nation for a record 16 years. He was an extraordinary prime minister and an extraordinary leader in education. He wanted to give other people the same opportunity that he had had in terms of higher education. That's why he sought to expand universities to the extent that he did. In 1957, he said:

It is not yet adequately understood that a university education is not, and certainly should not be, the prerequisite of a privileged few…We must, on a broad basis, become a more and more educated democracy if we are to raise our spiritual, intellectual and material living standards.

Expanding educational opportunity is actually part of the DNA of the Liberal Party. Indeed, the demand driven system which underpins the growth of higher education was originally a Liberal Party idea. It first appeared in the policy framework in 1992 as part of the first Fightback! policy package. As that package said:

Freedom for institutions, academics and students requires a decisive move away from a centrally administered system to one based on a greatly strengthened student market, in which students can choose their university according to their own judgements and institutions have the flexibility to respond to these choices…Institutions will be free to offer places as they chose in any course with limited exceptions.

That was the first appearance of the demand-driven system.

In October 1999, the then education minister David Kemp proposed a reform to cabinet, and part of this reform was the demand-driven system. As his submission said:

… the package delivers a universal entitlement to higher education for all who can meet entry qualifications. Students will have greater choice about where they study, subject only to meeting admissions criteria, and the range of courses available will be wider and more appropriate as institutions are freed up to respond more directly to demand for particular courses and in particular locations.

Menzies realised that any growth in higher education had to be sustainable growth. That's why, in 1965, in response to some calls for further funding by academics, he said:

If I have one complaint that I can make about my academic friends, it is that some of them – not all of them but some of them – appear to think that there is no limit to what can be produced financially. I've even known one or two like that at Canberra. The sky is the limit, they think. The sky isn't the limit. Considerable financial power doesn't mean inexhaustible financial resources and that is not to be forgotten…the task of a Commonwealth Government in economic and financial policy is to preserve a good economic climate in which growth can proceed from a stable foundation…

It's not just Menzies' academic friends that didn't understand that things needed to be paid for; it's Menzies' friends on the other side of the House that don't understand that. Just like the NDIS and just like school funding, it was the Labor Party that expanded the demand driven system, and that's a good thing, but yet again they've started a system and they haven't made it a sustainable system, because they haven't provided an adequate and sustainable funding source for it.

Towards the end of the last Labor government, they realised that they actually needed to provide a sustainable basis for this. That's why, in government at the end of the Labor years, they proposed their own efficiency dividend of 3.25 per cent. The then Prime Minister Gillard, on 16 April 2013, said:

The number of places has grown, but funding has also gone up per student place. Money to universities is still going to grow. We've got universities on a growth path. What we are asking them to do is for one year to accept a two per cent efficiency dividend, and in the second year a 1.25 per cent efficiency dividend. That means their money would still grow, it just wouldn't grow as fast as they'd obviously wanted.

The former Prime Minister Julia Gillard has demonstrated herself to be more economically responsible than those opposite who are opposed to this bill and who do not want to see this particular arrangement, which has provided extraordinary opportunities to students, to be held on a sustainable basis. It's important to remind people that the budget is still in deficit. Every year we're repaying $17 billion of debt. This is despite the fact that we've passed $100 billion worth of budget repair.

What we need to do is to ensure that the opportunity that's provided in the demand-driven system continues, and that people continue to have the opportunity to go to university. Today, 32 per cent of Australians have a bachelor degree or higher, and that is a great result. Our per student funding from all sources is 23 per cent higher than the OECD average, and we should be proud of that. But since 2009, the taxpayer funding for teaching and learning has increased by 71 per cent, that's twice the growth rate of the economy as a whole, and the introduction of the demand-driven system has seen a massive expansion in the number of students going to university, and that's a very good thing. For instance, in 2016 there were 720,970 domestic undergraduate students, and that's compared to 553,083 in 2009. That's a very, very good result. But you can't expand the system if you can't pay for the system. Over time, HELP has also ballooned. The fair value of student loans has increased from $12.5 billion to $36.8 billion, and is expected to increase further to $59.7 billion by 2019-20. The total outstanding student debt underwritten by taxpayers now stands at $50 billion, with a quarter of that—that's 25 per cent—not expected to be repaid. As I said, it's not responsible or fair to establish a system and then not provide for its long-term sustainability.

What this legislation proposes to do is to have an increase in student contributions in relation to their higher education. As we know, students who go to university, who have a higher education experience, are more likely to earn larger salaries and have better jobs over the course of their careers. Over their lifetimes they will earn, on average, between $700,000 and $900,000 more than a person who hasn't gone to university; therefore, it's fair that they should make a bit more of a contribution than they are currently doing. This doesn't mean that they would be contributing more than half—the Commonwealth is still contributing up to half—but that they should contribute a little bit more.

The legislation seeks to increase the maximum student contribution on Commonwealth-supported places, which are otherwise subsidised by the government. The increase in contributions will be phased in from 2018 to 2021, with a 1.8 per cent increase each year from 2018 and culminating to a 7.5 per cent increase in 2021. This will be offset by a reduction in taxpayer funding. These reforms will rebalance the contributions made by taxpayers and students to the cost of their higher education. After the changes have been implemented, taxpayers will remain the majority funder of higher education, providing on average 54 per cent of funding for the costs of teaching and learning.

As I said earlier, we know that one-quarter of the money in the HELP system isn't being repaid, and we need to do something to recoup some of that money. So the legislation is setting the minimum repayment threshold at $42,000, with a repayment rate beginning at one per cent of an individual's repayment income, which is much lower than the current rate of four per cent, which cuts in at a threshold of $54,869. To put this into perspective for a graduate teacher or a graduate nurse, for instance, a graduate teacher on a median full-time salary of $62,900 might currently expect to repay something in the order of $2,830 a year and a graduate nurse earning $58,400 would be expected to repay $2,336 per year. Importantly, from 1 July 2019 the repayment threshold, including the minimum repayment income, will be indexed using the CPI. This will maintain repayment value thresholds in real terms. Indexation by CPI will slow the growth of repayment thresholds and ensure they remain appropriate when compared to an individual's capacity to pay. The other advantage of the HELP reforms is that the proportion of debt not expected to be repaid, as the repayment threshold cuts in lower, reduces from 25 per cent to 18 per cent by 2020-21.

Finally, while eligibility for student loans will be extended to most Australian permanent residents and most New Zealand citizens, these students will no longer have access to Commonwealth subsidies, and this preserves a range of special cohorts, including some New Zealand visa holders who arrived in Australia as children, those permanent residents and New Zealanders who have already commenced on a course of study and Australian humanitarian visa holders.

I want to have a look at the efficiency dividend, which the member for Brand spoke about earlier. This legislation will require subsidies provided under the Commonwealth Grant Scheme to be subjected to a 2½ per cent efficiency dividend in both 2018 and 2019. It is to be remembered that, as I said earlier in my remarks, when Labor was in government they proposed their own efficiency dividend of 3.25 per cent. The Deloitte cost recovery report, undertaken in 2016, showed that universities spent approximately 85 per cent of their total funding for bachelor-level courses in 2015 on teaching and learning compared to the 2011 base funding review, which found that 94 per cent of base funding for bachelor-level courses was spent on teaching and learning. These findings suggest that it's actually reasonable to expect that some of these efficiencies should be shared with the government.

Effectively, the cost per student for teaching and learning have increased by 9.5 per cent since 2010, while revenue per student has risen by 15 per cent over that time—so a larger revenue and, while there were rising costs, costs have not risen as much as revenue. This efficiency dividend equates to an average of 2.8 per cent of base funding for teaching and research. It's an essential contribution from the revenue benefits of the demand-driven funding system, which have not just been beneficial to individual students but have also been beneficial to universities and the university system as universities have been able to increase their resources and increase their offerings as a result of the extra funding that's come their way.

Some of the most important measures in the bill actually relate to less advantaged students, whose geography or background might disadvantage them in attending university. I think the most important of these is the legislating of the HEPPP program. The HEPPP program is the major equity program. It has never been legislated, and it has often been a source, on both sides, of funding cuts that have occurred from time to time. This government is securing HEPPP by entrenching it in legislation. It's providing a loading of $985 per low-SES student. That will allow universities to provide them with a consistent level of support. Additionally, with performance funding of over $13 million a year, it will provide universities with incentives to ensure that disadvantaged students actually achieve success at university.

These provisions provide funding certainty to universities so that the benefits to low-SES students of accessing higher education are maximised. It's been a bipartisan goal since the Menzies era to increase the number of low-SES students attending university and the number of low-SES students participating in higher education. Yet, despite all of the expansion, on a per capita basis the greatest period in which low-SES students actually participated in the higher education system was the Menzies era. So it's very important that the HEPPP system is maintained on a legislatively secure basis.

We want to collaborate to provide the most effective education experience for all disadvantaged students. That's why we're creating our national priorities pool to support projects that research and trial innovative ideas for the more effective implementation of HEPPP. This will ensure that universities will engage in the long-term planning needed to guarantee accessibility. Such planning and collaboration is absolutely essential if we are to guarantee disadvantaged students a valuable experience of further education. That is very important.

There will also be supports for regional higher education, improving opportunities for students from rural and regional areas to study in regional hubs, for those who can't get to their local regional university, and also for scholarships, particularly directed at STEM courses, of up to $18,000 a year for programs from certificate IV right the way up to PhD. There are also important elements of the package relating to enabling courses, relating to the expansion of the demand-driven system of Commonwealth supported places in approved sub-bachelor courses. Being a sub-bachelor student is often a great pathway in as part of the second-chance university system into the sector. The expansion is a very good thing and will provide further opportunity to more Australians.

In conclusion, is it very important that the demand-driven system is maintained so that it gives opportunities to so many people, but we need to ensure that it is maintained on a sustainable basis.

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

I am really pleased to rise tonight, following the member for Brand, because I felt that the member for Brand took this debate to a higher level, to an aspirational level. It was fantastic to hear from somebody who understands the university system but who, most importantly, understands the aspirations of higher education.

We say 'higher education' in this place—we say it every day—but what does it mean? The member for Brand asked some really important questions. She asked the critical questions: what is driving this so-called reform? Is improvement in higher education what's driving this reform? Is access to higher education what's driving this reform? Is excellence in higher education what is driving this reform? Sadly, I believe it is none of the above. What is driving this so-called reform are savings and cuts, because whenever you hear this government say 'savings' you can understand clearly what it means is 'a cut'.

You have to ask yourself: what would the great thinkers in our history make of this? The bean counters are in charge of learning in this place. We just heard from a member opposite who has had the value of a higher education, and he can turn bean counting into oratory, supposedly. The value of higher education is about the value of our society. It is about what we aspire to be. It is about what contribution we, as individuals and as a collective, are going to make to the rest of the world. If the bean counters are in charge of the learning then we are going to have what we've got here tonight: dumb policy, dumb legislation and dumb cuts, from a government who understands the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

As someone who came from education, I have spent my life talking to children, young people and adult learners about lifelong learning. What I see in this legislation is the end of the aspiration for lifelong learning for many of the young people and middle-aged people who live in the electorate that I represent here. As a teacher I spent 27 years in schools, working with students towards building aspiration and motivation from prep through to year 12, telling every student that they can learn if they are given the appropriate levels of support and the appropriate levels of challenge. The primary tenet of teaching is a belief that everybody can learn if given the appropriate levels of support and challenge.

Since coming and joining this parliament I find myself in schools telling children very clearly: 'I'm in the federal Parliament of Australia, and I can tell you that you can do anything,' because when I look around this chamber I can see many of us here who wouldn't have thought that this is where we'd end up. But it does not happen by accident. The people who find themselves in this chamber as members of the House of Representatives in the federal parliament have had aspiration and they have had motivation. They have had supports put into their lives to assist them to reach for the stars. So we here are examples for the young people that we're talking about.

Tonight we're talking about a piece of legislation that is going to rip away that aspiration and stomp on that motivation that I know is being built in schools in my electorate as we speak. As a former educator, I believe in the transformative nature of education and the transformative nature of higher education in particular. I represent a community where 47 per cent of people are not born in Australia, where 72 per cent of people have at least one parent born overseas and where 56 per cent of people have both parents born overseas. All parents in my electorate want to see their children do well, whether they are from families where no-one has gone to university or whether they are from families with the first person going to university or whether they are from families for whom there's a long tradition of tertiary education. Everybody wants to see their children do well. This is particularly the case in my community. People have come to this country to make the most of our story and to join us here. A lot of what drives them is a relentless drive for their children to get that tertiary education. They are motivated. They are encouraged to achieve as much as possible because in this country, while we have some way to go, there are fewer barriers to a person realising their potential than in a lot of other parts of the world.

People in my electorate work hard so that their children can achieve academic success. Whenever I meet with people at graduation ceremonies, they are hopeful that their kids will be able to access the skills they need to make a better life for themselves. In my electorate, as recently as this weekend I was at a local festival, where I often seek out the mums and the kids to talk to them about what their aspirations are and what schools they're attending. I'm always thrilled to hear from parents that they think that our school system is doing a great job. They think that their child is having that aspiration instilled in them in their classroom and that they're getting appropriately challenged.

I want to talk specifically about the kids in my electorate. I made a call today to friends at Werribee Secondary College. Last year, 2016, of a cohort of 205 students completing year 12, 124 students went on to higher tertiary education, 60 went on to TAFE, 12 are completing an apprenticeship and 16 are in full employment. Of those that went to university, 27 went to Melbourne and Monash, 68 went to Swinburne, RMIT, Deakin and La Trobe, and 23 went on to Vic uni, ACU and other tertiary institutions. That was unheard of 15 years ago in my electorate. I congratulate the teachers involved in those journeys, and the parents with them, to build that aspiration and expectation and to build an understanding that lifelong learning will change lives. But, if this bill passes and this government gets its way, students will be faced with 7.5 per cent higher HELP fees and the threshold for when they begin to pay them back will be lowered—that is right: lowered. The loan repayments currently kick in at around $55K and will be reduced to $42,000. That's just a few thousand dollars more than the minimum wage. Changes to the indexation from average weekly earnings to CPI will also increase the burden on students.

We have to know—I do after four years in this place—that, where there's a change like that, there's a calculated save, so that means a cost to the students. One could be cruelly ironic and suggest that, after the penalty rate cuts, the government is lowering the repayment threshold to account for reduced wages, but surely that would be too cruel. The justifications come back to bean counters looking at education as a cost rather than as an investment—rather than from the point of view of what we as a country should aspire to be: a highly educated population of people committed to lifelong learning so that we can continue to change and shape this nation, change and shape our economy, change and shape our industry and change and shape our science. The bill's practical application risks entrenching poverty and enshrining privilege. It risks locking out our best and brightest because of the family income or the travel costs and the time. All manner of things go into motivating young people to pursue and fulfil their potential. The measures in this bill will make that harder.

Another objectionable measure is the changes for permanent residents and New Zealander students living in Australia. They will be moved from Commonwealth supported places to full-fee places with access to FEE-HELP loans. This is an injustice and I cannot speak too passionately about this. I spent Saturday morning in my electorate at the Rugby Union junior finals. As you can imagine, there were a few Kiwis there—a few taxpaying, hardworking New Zealanders who've spent their lives in this country and are raising their children in this country—and they are furious about this measure. How dare a government in this country determine that their children don't deserve the same chance as the kids they're sitting next to in the classroom? What manner of government cannot foresee what this means? Let me take it from a simple perspective. It means that those families will have to think about sending their child back to live with relatives in New Zealand so that they can access higher education or take on enormous debt by paying full fees. This is unfair and it is cruel.

Let's think about the other ramifications. I know, as a classroom teacher, a senior English teacher and someone who taught years 11 and 12 for years and years, that, if you set up this double class system and say, 'You can go to university, and you can't because of cost,' you've just destroyed my senior classroom, because I've got children I can't motivate. I've got children whose aspiration has been killed before they walk through the door. This is crazy—absolutely crazy. To do this to these people is beyond belief. The impacts will be felt throughout the country. It's just the cruelty of it that I do not understand. I really do feel for those New Zealanders who I know who live and work in my electorate, who work hard every day and whose children go to our schools. They are going to be cut off from the contribution that they might make to this great country.

This legislation is all about cuts. I want to go to one of the areas where we're not sure yet what the ramifications are, but we should have known that this minister, once he had finished gutting schools, would move next to universities. We should have known that, although they couldn't get the last tranche of their changes to higher education through, they would be back with a different version, a slightly adjusted version, but a version with mostly bad news. One of those things is the lack of modelling and the unknown implications of the legislation that's before us. One of those things is, of course, the extension of the demand-driven sector to sub-bachelor for universities. We don't know what impact this will have on our public TAFE sector, which states around this country are desperately trying to rebuild. We don't know what the impact will be on that TAFE sector, and that is a crying shame. This government should have modelled that, and this government should make sure that, whatever it's doing in higher education, it's not doing anything that will stop TAFE being re-established and back in public hands where it belongs.

The other area that I'm really concerned about—I'll go back to the notion of lifelong learning—is that they are going to now charge people for what has been called an enabling course. In my neck of the woods, we call it a bridging course. They're courses that I have worked on in schools with students who have gone off and got a job and perhaps lost the job. Then they reconnect with the school, and careers counsellors sit with them and say: 'You always had the potential. You just never made the commitment. How about you do one of these bridging courses and pursue the dream you had when you were in year 10 of going to university? Why don't you do that?' These aren't kids from families who can just splash out $3,000. If they've left school, had a job, taken on debts—probably a car loan—and lost their job then their parents are already helping out, and now we're going to put a charge on their bridge to tertiary education.

It's not just young people. The figures will reflect the number of mums, the number of women with children, who decide to establish themselves in a bridging program with the hope of pursuing tertiary qualifications and being able to cut themselves free from any kind of government support and raise their children on a decent salary.

There are so many elements of this bill that are not good news for Australia. There are elements of this bill that reflect poorly on this government. They reflect poorly because in a time when we should be investing in our young people, in our adults, in our future and in our training, and in a time when we should be aspiring to be the best in the world and we are in a highly globalised and competitive market, it is the time to invest in our people. It is not a time to let the bean counters loose so they can find money for a $65 billion tax cut for multimillionaires and corporations. This is not that time.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017. I do so because if this legislation is carried by this parliament it will undermine tertiary education in Australia as we know it. This bill represents a $3.8 billion cut to higher education in this country. It is a cut that's across the board and a cut that will damage the nature of educational opportunity in this country.

This is a cut, of course, that overwhelmingly will have an impact on young Australians. It is an increase to the average student contribution towards the cost of a degree from 42 per cent up to 46 per cent. It represents a $12,000 decrease to the amount that a graduate is allowed to earn—a decrease to $42,000—before the mandatory repayment of HECS-HELP fees begins. Furthermore, access to Commonwealth supported places for permanent residents and New Zealand citizens studying in Australia will be removed indefinitely. It is ironic, given the debate that has taken place over the citizenship of the Deputy Prime Minister in this country, that they're undermining the ability and capacity of New Zealand citizens to fully participate in Australian society.

It is a concern that across the board this represents an attack on opportunity. Whilst student contributions are increased and repayment thresholds are lowered for all tertiary institutions, including TAFE and vocational education and training students, those worst hit in this latest round of cuts are our universities. Australian universities are about to be subjected to a 2.5 per cent funding cut that Malcolm Turnbull's coalition, in its finest example of doublespeak yet, calls an efficiency dividend. Not to mention the 7.5 per cent hike in student fees over the next four years and the removal of Commonwealth supported places for postgraduate students.

This, of course, is about government priorities—whether a government priority is corporate tax cuts for the top end of town or whether it is providing support for the higher education needs of our country. If Australia is going to prosper in the Asian century, we need to prosper on the basis of how smart we are and how innovative we are, and on the capacity of our human capital to compete in this region. We shouldn't try to compete by lowering wages and conditions and we shouldn't try to compete by undermining the capacity of our population—particularly our young population—but this is what the government would do. This is what this legislation represents.

It also represents, I believe, a fundamental, philosophical divide across this chamber. Those in the Liberal Party seem to believe that education is just about benefitting the individual—that an individual benefits and gets a higher income, and that they should therefore contribute more to that educational opportunity. The problem with that is twofold. Firstly, it doesn't understand or take into account the fact that increasing educational opportunity and increasing the capacity of our population—particularly our younger generations—to make the most of themselves and to educate themselves in ways which both contribute commercially to the economy and contribute to their capacity to make a difference in society, is a benefit for that society as a whole. It's not just about the individual and the benefit to them.

That is a fundamental difference in what Labor has always understood about education: that education is the great enabler. That is why the Hawke government and the Keating government were very proud of the fact that in 1983 some three out of 10 Australian young people completed their Higher School Certificate and, at the end of that period in 1996, that figure was above eight out of 10. That was a great legacy of the Hawke and Keating governments. That followed the great Whitlam government reforms that opened up tertiary education to working-class people.

Many of us who sit in this chamber would be the first people in their families to complete a university degree. I was the first person in my family to complete schooling, let alone a university degree. That means that we maximise the benefit for the individual, but we also maximise the benefit to the economy and to society as a whole by maximising the collective potential of those people who make up our local communities.

Federal Labor came into office in 2007—something that we will be celebrating in coming months. We increased funding for universities from $8 billion to $14 billion over our six years in office, a $6 billion increase in contributions to universities. During that period, we saw again a massive increase in the number of people who were able to go to university. That changed the composition of the people who were going to universities. People from lower and middle incomes who had been missing out then got that opportunity.

Labor also has a plan for TAFE and the vocational education and training sector. The last Labor government contributed over $19 billion in Commonwealth funding towards the VET and TAFE sector, including investment in infrastructure and technology upgrades. There is legislation before this parliament to abolish funds that Labor established—the Building Australia Fund, to build transport infrastructure, which was approved by Infrastructure Australia; and the Education Investment Fund, which was for building education infrastructure around the country. They just want to abolish those.

The reinvigoration of TAFE and VET courses is of particular importance to me. The Design Centre Enmore, one of the most notable TAFEs in New South Wales, resides in the inner west. This centre specialises in industrial design, fashion design and visual design, and has flourished in spite of the cuts to services imposed by the coalition and reinforced by the state government, which has also undermined TAFE. Just down the road, Petersham TAFE in West Street has been forced to close its doors. It specialised in communications. How extraordinary is it that a TAFE centre in a global city like Sydney specialising in communications, giving young people that opportunity, has shut its doors because of cuts by the New South Wales coalition government, reinforced by the attitude of the federal government?

It is because of Labor's proven track record and our belief in higher education that we will oppose the measures in this bill that increase student fees and lower the HECS, HELP, TAFE and VET repayment thresholds. We oppose these changes, just as we opposed and successfully defeated the proposal from Tony Abbott in the last term of government to have $100,000 degrees. We know that the changes proposed in this legislation come at a time when Australians are paying the sixth-highest level of university fees in the OECD. The memory of university fee deregulation is still fresh in the minds of most. Had this plan been accepted, we would have had a two-tiered higher education system—the privileged, who could afford it, and the underprivileged, who could not. One of the great distinctions and divides in Australian politics is between Labor, who believe in creating opportunity, and our conservative opponents, who believe in entrenching privilege. And that is why we see education as the great enabler.

I am concerned with this legislation and the impact that it has on universities. Universities support more than 130,000 jobs across Australia. If you cut an amount of funding from an institution, somewhere down the line a job is lost. If you cut $3.8 billion from the institutions, you could be certain that the jobs lost will be in the thousands. That's important in local institutions like the University of Sydney and the University of Technology Sydney, which service my electorate even though they're just outside my boundaries. But it is also critically important for universities like the University of New England, in Armidale, the University of Newcastle and the University of Wollongong. All of these campuses have had a critical role to play in those local regional economies.

One of the things Australia has been very good at over the years is developing new technology and innovation—whether it be solar technology at the Australian National University or the University of New South Wales or wi-fi and information technology down at the University of Wollongong. Across the board our universities have been world class in innovation, research, ideas and breakthroughs. What we haven't always been good at it commercialising those opportunities and value-adding so that we create the jobs here in Australia. And the real debate should be how we do that, how we maximise the intellectual capacity that we have here into job creation down the line.

This government really isn't interested in that, though. A university campus, a TAFE campus or a school they just see as a target for cuts. Australian electrical engineer Dr John O'Sullivan invented an integral component of wi-fi while looking for a way to measure the mass of a black hole. Dr O'Sullivan undertook his undergraduate degree in engineering at Sydney uni. Australian writer Garth Nix penned the Old Kingdom trilogy, an internationally successful series that raised the bar for science fiction and fantasy writers worldwide. He was a graduate of the University of Canberra. Across the board, there is enormous success that we should be proud of.

This legislation would provide a loss of over $600 million in my home state of New South Wales alone. This legislation is not worthy of support in this parliament. This legislation will undermine our capacity as an economy. It will hurt individuals and their capacity to make the most of themselves in life and provide support to their family. It will undermine our standing on the global stage, where we've been very proud of the high ranking that our universities have reached over recent years. Nelson Mandela said that education is the most powerful weapon with which you can change the world. Nelson Mandela was right. This legislation is wrong.

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

From 1996 to 1999, Prime Minister John Howard and his education ministers consistently and systematically attacked the Australian higher education system. Two billion dollars was taken from the university system in that period alone. Clearly, cutting university funding is in the Liberals' DNA. The Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017 would bring about almost double those cuts, $3.8 billion, and, on top of that, $4 billion to go from the education infrastructure fund. The Group of Eight, representing Australia's top universities, describes it as 'the most brutal cuts by a federal government in more than 20 years'. And this comes at a time when the need for post-school education has never been as high.

Right from the start, I want to make clear that the TAFE and university sectors both require fair funding. Both have a vital and complementary role in skilling up the workforce for employment opportunities that lie ahead of us in the 21st century. Let's talk, though, about the impact of these government cuts to university education on students. When Labor were last in government, we lifted investment in universities from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013—$1 billion a year, every year, of improvement. What was even more significant than that money was that we opened the door to universities to an additional 190,000 Australians. Many of them were the first in their family to go to university.

But this government's decision to increase student fees delivers a blow to aspiring students just like them. In my electorate of Macquarie, students attend universities all over Sydney and beyond—Wollongong, Charles Sturt, Newcastle—but a large number, around 2,000 of them at any one time, attend Western Sydney University, and more than half of them are the first in their family to go to university. This university, Western Sydney University, is the uni that will lose the biggest amount of any university in New South Wales.

I just want you to imagine what it's like to be the first in your family to consider going to university. The current university fees are daunting enough, but this bill means that if you're thinking about university they're going to get worse. I have noticed in my time here that those opposite seem to lack a bit of imagination. It might be hard to imagine, if they were lucky enough to have a whole family of tertiary people around them and have an expectation that university was their path. I was lucky enough to have that expectation, but I see so many kids where that is not the case. So I'm going to ask you to imagine, just for once, Deputy Speaker, what it's like. I'd ask those on the other side to imagine what it's like.

It isn't easy being the first in your family, especially when people quiz you on just what job you'll do when you've got your arts degree or even your master's. And trying to explain what a master's is—that's a whole other conversation. It's hard to explain that the skills you learn, which I know these kids learn, are sometimes as much about the journey of processing huge amounts of information, researching things, taking on new ideas and turning them into a coherent argument. It's as much about that as the actual subject itself. Until you've done your degree, you don't even realise what you've learnt or where it might help you contribute to the world of work. So it can be hard trying to explain to your family that you're just not sure what your major will be, let alone what job you might ultimately do. I see the uncertainty of young people, really capable young people, who are not sure if university is for them, because no-one in their family has ever done it before. It doesn't take much to discourage or dampen that ambition, to deter them from pursuing it and to destroy their confidence in themselves. It's a really intimidating situation.

This government might think you can keep making it harder and harder for people to lift their educational standards, but future employers and our economy will pay a heavy price for this failure to invest in higher education. One of the most short-sighted and mean parts of this bill is around funding for enabling courses. The crushing of confidence is nowhere more apparent than in the decision to introduce fees for enabling courses. Enabling courses help students prepare for university study. These students are overwhelmingly from disadvantaged backgrounds, and, until now, these courses have been free. Even then it's daunting. It's a taste of what might come, and that in itself is intimidating. It's a pathway for students to test and see whether they could thrive in a university environment and whether they're ready for a degree course.

Now the government is trying to make students pay $3,200 for these courses. The member for Dobell and I did some quick calculations, and we worked out a way that this might be able to be removed from this legislation. The cost of the marriage equality survey—that's $122 million—would pay for around 38,000 enabling courses. We think that would be a much better use of money. As it is, these young kids and older people who haven't been to university but who think that it might be a way forward for them to improve their professional standing and to give them a broader job opportunity are now facing a $3,200 bill.

The danger of the change, which will affect in my electorate, on average, about two dozen people who go to Western Sydney University at any one time, is that these people will simply be deterred from even considering entering university. Right now we should be encouraging people, young and older, to be exploring their education options so that they're equipped for the workforce. All this measure will do is marginalise a group of people, stifle their hope and stifle their opportunity. That may well be the aim of those opposite, although I hope not—to keep people in their place and not give them access to ambition.

I also want you to imagine what impact this bill has on people paying back their HELP debt. After years of subsistence as a student, followed by the time it takes to get a full-time job even with a degree, it can feel good to have a half-decent income, not just a mishmash of casual hospitality jobs that so many students use to support themselves through that study. But, before you've even had a chance to build your savings and get ahead, the repayment kicks in. At $54,869, as it stands now, there is a bit of a buffer, but under this bill you have to start paying back the loan you've accrued when you're earning $42,000. That's only $6,000 above the minimum wage. In Sydney, and in my electorate in particular, that doesn't go very far. When you do the numbers, an income of $51,000 with tax taken out and repayments made means you actually leave someone with $32,000 in disposable income. So, if you adjust those figures down, you are making life really, really difficult. It's another disincentive to people who look to university education to lift their job prospects and earning power that it will become an even longer slog to get your head above water financially.

As the National Union of Students says, these changes leave young Australians far worse off than generations before them. They point out:

This generation is already faced with a severely insecure job market, low wages and a housing market that is in crisis.

Already they face the sixth-highest university fees in the OECD countries. Their fear is of a lifetime of serious debt. And let's not assume that the students are only interested in the impact on themselves. As the NUS says, higher education is Australia's third-largest export, and expenditure of 0.7 per cent of GDP returns around eight per cent in GDP. So it is a small investment for a big return, and that's just one part of the equation.

One of the other impacts of this bill, inevitably, is that it will likely dent the quality that Australian universities are able to provide, which puts at risk that international reputation. Just this month, eight Australian universities were listed in the top 100 for their ability to produce employable students, something we would all welcome. But the global rankings editorial director, Phil Baty, has said that these cuts to government funding could actually result in Australia's standing falling. He said:

It is good news that Australia's universities have held steady in this year's table but funding cuts proposed by the government could seriously harm the country's institutions in future editions of the rankings.

Mr Baty points out that the data shows Australia's leading institutions are already starting to fall behind peers in mainland China and Hong Kong, who, of course, not only are sources of students for our export dollars but also will compete for those export dollars. So really this bill is not great for the economy.

Another short-sighted decision in this bill is to cut the Education Infrastructure Fund—the extra $4 billion cut. This fund, established under Labor, has helped create innovative and modern learning and research spaces around the country. I know a bit about three of them. The Australian Centre for Indigenous Knowledges & Education in Darwin—ACIKE—is a collaboration between the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education and Charles Darwin University. This fund allowed a building to be created, a space where Indigenous learning could happen. ACIKE aspires to international renown for excellence in teaching programs, community engagement and research endeavours all through this state-of-the-art learning hub. It is a real asset for Darwin and for higher education in Darwin.

Another facility funded by the EIF is the nanoscience lab—one of the most advanced research and teaching facilities globally in the field of nanoscience—at the University of Sydney. I know very little about nanoscience, but what I know is that to do the research you need an incredibly stable building. It can't move when the wind blows outside or when the trains run underneath. This centre houses high-level research in one of the most advanced buildings on this planet. It looks into areas of battery technology and the growing field of photonics, where you have laser lights directly interacting with traditional semiconductors, and all this cutting edge technology.

The third building that has been funded under the EIF that I know of and have familiarity with is what was originally called the Centre for Climate Change and Energy Research—now called the UWS Institute for the Environment—in Richmond on the Hawkesbury campus of Western Sydney University. Again, this is a place doing world-leading research. In fact, researchers from all over the world move to my electorate to do their research here. I had the privilege of taking the climate change shadow minister, Mark Butler, to this site just a few weeks ago to look at some of the incredible work they're doing on soil biology, genomics and plant and animal interactions.

One of the projects that they're doing is the 'eucalyptus free air CO2 enrichment experiment', otherwise known as EucFACE. This is a series of six metal structures in the Cumberland Plain. They surround patches of bush. They are nine storeys high, with 43-metre cranes hanging above them. In this open structure, which looks a bit like a cylinder with metal prongs sticking up, is native bush, and CO2 is pumped into it. It's pumped in at an elevated concentration similar to that which is predicted to occur in the next 35 years. It is billed as the most complex climate change experiment in the world, and the data that is constantly generated in the soil, in the canopy and everywhere in between is made available to researchers globally. None of this would have been possible without the Education Investment Fund. I can only imagine what new innovations we are going to miss out on because this government has effectively suffocated opportunities for universities to build these incredible spaces. Those are some of the immediate impacts.

When I look at my local university, Western Sydney University, I see we are going to lose jobs. Those jobs will be based on all the campuses—Penrith, Hawkesbury, Werrington, Parramatta. We're also going to potentially lose the opportunity to nurture SMEs, start-ups and entrepreneurs. This is something the university does out of its surplus funding—a whole $10 million surplus, not very much in the big scheme of things, but that surplus is going to disappear. I worry about the jobs we will lose, the innovation we will miss out on, the opportunities that the students at that university will not have—but, even more than that, the opportunities that will be lost to students who make the decision that they can't face a debt of the size that this bill will land on them. That's actually our economic future we are talking about. We are making a choice in this parliament. If those on the opposite side support this bill, it is an active decision to reduce the opportunity for higher education that students around this country have, and that is shameful.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member and I'm sure she was aided by 'the member for Port Adelaide' and not 'Mr Butler'. I just remind members to refer to other members by their correct titles. I give the call to the honourable member for Kingsford Smith.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm speaking in opposition to most of the elements of the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017 and in support of the second reading amendment moved by the member for Sydney. Pensioners, families, small businesses and school students have all been attacked by this government, and now, with this bill, we can add to that group university students. These are the groups of Australians whose lot in life has been made much harder by this Turnbull government. We've seen skyrocketing electricity prices make life more difficult for families, pensioners, and small businesses. We've seen cuts to school budgets through changes to the Gonski principles and that model of funding introduced by this government. We've seen cuts to health care and Medicare and an ideological attack on universal health care in Australia by this government. We've seen low-paid workers have their incomes attacked through changes to the Fair Work Act and, of course, through cuts to penalty rates that have been cheered on by this Turnbull government. And now we have an ideological attack on the university students of Australia through this bill.

At a time when our economy is stop-start—two steps forward, one step back—when the economy has been spluttering over recent years and when we need to improve our nation's productivity if we're going to boost growth and employment in our community, the worst thing a government can do is underinvest in education, make life harder for students and increase fees for university students. That is exactly what this bill does and it is why Labor opposes it. At a time when we should be investing in education for our young people and ensuring that they have the skills necessary to compete in a much-changed and more competitive marketplace, this government prefers to cut funding for universities and make life harder for students across Australia.

As part of this bill, the maximum student contributions will rise by 1.8 per cent for four years from 2018, resulting in a total 7.5 per cent increase from 2021. The first increase will take effect on 1 January 2018 and will apply to all students, including those who are currently enrolled, and Commonwealth contribution amounts will be similarly adjusted each year from 2018 through to 2021 to reflect increased student contribution amounts in those years. An efficiency dividend of 2.5 per cent per annum will apply to grants made under the Commonwealth Grant Scheme in 2018 and 2019. The efficiency dividend is a contribution from the revenue benefits of the demand-driven funding system. Medical students' loading will be extended to include veterinary science and dentistry units under study in 2018 to improve the funding arrangements for these courses. Currently our students pay the sixth-highest fees in the OECD. The fee hikes in this bill will make that situation even worse, and our rankings will once again fall in terms of affordability.

In the community that I represent, in Kingsford Smith, we're quite fortunate to have a world-class university in the University of New South Wales at Kensington. I was fortunate to be a student at this university and it's what all kids in the community that I represent aspire to. They dream of being able to get the marks in their HSC to attend the University of New South Wales and get a world-class tertiary education. This bill makes it harder for those kids in our community, particularly those kids that come from a low-socioeconomic background or are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids, because, quite simply, some of them will not be able to afford the fee increases proposed in these bills. Unfortunately, the coalition has made life more difficult for younger people to participate in our society and to get a good job.

Kingsford Smith has the sixth-highest rates of mortgage repayments in the country and the eighth-highest rents. The cost of housing in our community is bringing many young people to their knees. Many times when I walk down the street, I'm approached by young people and their parents saying they simply will not be able to afford to buy a house or to rent in the community where they grew up and where their family networks are, and go to universities in their community, like the University of New South Wales. Joe Hockey's solution to this was just, 'Get a better job,' and the Prime Minister's solution to this is, 'If you've got rich parents, they can chip in and help you buy a house.' We all know that that is not the reality for most Australian families in this country.

In contrast, Labor knows and understands just how difficult it is for people to get an education, but we want to support them. We want to make sure that there is a clear pathway for kids to undertake a decent education in Australia, from early childhood development right through to emeritus professor at university—a pathway such that education and access to education are based on your talents and on your commitment, not on your parents' bank balance. But, unfortunately, this type of reform reintroduces that sort of system into this country.

Now, when Labor was last in government, we increased our investment in universities. We lifted the investment in universities from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013. It was the largest commitment and investment in university education from an Australian government at the time when we left office. We opened the doors to universities for an additional 190,000 Australians, many of whom were the first in their families to get access to a university education. And why did we lift participation in universities? Because it's good for the individual and it's good for the Australian economy. Every single study, every single bit of research, indicates that the more you educate a person then the more productive they become not only in terms of their own personal contribution to the economy but for the nation's income growth and productivity.

Labor is also supportive of the wonderful research that is undertaken at our universities. At the University of New South Wales, we have world-leading research facilities in photovoltaic and solar research and in quantum computing, where Professor Michelle Simmons and her team are leading the world in developing a silicon based quantum computer. The research world is in awe of some of the results that they have received so far.

One of the world's greatest medical teaching resources is at the University of New South Wales, working in collaboration with the Prince of Wales Hospital. This is world-class leading research that has changed the world. It has definitely changed the world. The fact that the University of New South Wales PV and solar research facility has the world record for conversion of sunlight into energy is something that we all should be very, very proud of. And they are housed in a building that was funded by the Labor government through the Education Investment Fund—the Tyree Energy Technologies Building. It has a six-star energy rating, I might add; it is one of the world's most energy-efficient buildings. When you walk into that building you see many, many students undertaking research. They are doing their PhDs and working with some of the best researchers in photovoltaic and solar research anywhere in the world.

When I was there recently—and the member for Port Adelaide joined me there over the last 12 months to have a look at the research that's going on there—one of the researchers who is working there described that facility perfectly to me. He said: 'If you want to work in space research, you want to go to NASA. If you want to work in solar and photovoltaics, you want to work at the University of New South Wales.' You want to work in that Tyree building, funded by the Education Investment Fund that this government is seeking to cut through its cuts to that particular fund and its cuts to university research.

In his 2014 budget reply, Bill Shorten, the Leader of the Labor Party, set an aspiration for Australia to devote three per cent of our GDP to research and development by 2030. Achieving this will require governments, universities and research organisations to work with industry to boost the development and the resources that go into research in this country. And what we're doing here with this bill is the complete antithesis of that; it's the complete opposite of that. Labor believes that every university in Australia should be doing great research, and we've pledged to help our regional outer metropolitan and smaller universities to get a fair go through the Collaborative Research Networks program. As well as working together, Labor wants universities to work better with industry and other end users to spread the benefits of their research and, of course, to encourage entrepreneurialism in students.

We aim to boost the Industrial Transformation Research Program introduced by the previous Labor government, which would have enabled at least four additional research hubs to be funded in each of the five rounds that were coming up. This would have facilitated more industries in transition to have access to excellent research, to improve their productivity and to create the jobs of the future. The bill before us is the complete antithesis of that.

This bill before us is also quite lacking in detail. There is very, very little detail about how the bill will work. The government's new voucher system for postgraduate places is simply a thought bubble. It's an idea without substance. It's a solution without a problem. There are approximately 35,000 postgraduate CSP students in Australia, and the government is proposing to hand over the funding allocation to the minister or some new private body to distribute it. The unis think that this is a poorly thought out idea, and so does Labor. In fact, according to a poll conducted recently by JWS Research for Universities Australia, almost two-thirds of Australians are opposed to what this government is doing when it comes to universities: increasing fees for students, cutting grants for research, cutting funding and making fees rise. Up to 62 per cent of voters are opposed to the changes, compared with 16 per cent who support what the government is doing through this bill.

As quoted by The Guardian today, Universities Australia chief executive Belinda Robertson said the poll showed that cuts contained in the bill were 'way out of kilter with community sentiment'. She said:

Voters don't want to see cuts to universities, which are key drivers of economic growth because they create new jobs, re-skill Australians and secure $24bn a year in export income.

Universities and their students have already contributed almost $4bn to repair the budget over the last six years. Clearly, the Australian community is saying enough is enough: no more uni cuts.

I couldn't have put it better myself. That's exactly what the Australian people are thinking. They're sick and tired of this government attacking pensioners, attacking young families, attacking workers, attacking school students and now attacking university and TAFE students through initiatives such as this. They want to see a government that is fair dinkum about education and fair dinkum about universities and their research, investing in universities and investing in the future. I urge my colleagues to vote down those particular provisions in this bill.

Cathy O'Toole (Herbert, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017. What can one say about a government that is hell-bent on deliberately cutting funding to university education? It is hard to believe that the Abbott and Turnbull governments have done and are doing to Australian universities and university students.

When the Turnbull government announced they were going to cut university funding by $3.8 billion over four years and lower the payment threshold for students, I thought the member for Warringah, Tony Abbott, was Prime Minister again. This is the same outrageously unfair university package that the Abbott government tried to sell in 2014. All the Turnbull government has done is wrap up the same unfair package in glossy paper and put a fancy tinsel bow on top. No-one is fooled. Everyone can smell this bill for what it really is: an attack on the less fortunate in our community because it promotes elitist education.

Time and time again, coalition governments want to attack universities and university students. For the life of me, I simply cannot understand why, especially when the majority of the Turnbull government front bench have benefitted from a free university education thanks to the Whitlam Labor government. The majority of coalition frontbenchers attended university between 1974 and 1988, when students did not pay any fees. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and front bench members such as Attorney-General George Brandis, Minister for Defence Marise Payne and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott are among those who attended university when a university education was free. In total, eight Turnbull government ministers were at university when students were not charged fees, while another eight would have had at least one year of free university education. Why is this noteworthy? It points to the absolute hypocrisy of the Turnbull government frontbenchers who have benefitted from a free education at university but who want to make savage cuts to universities and students by raising the costs of their degrees and lowering the income threshold.

The Turnbull government will not allow anyone else to reap the same benefits from a university education as they have done. Their degrees have given them greater earning capacity and career opportunities than those people who have not had the opportunity to gain a university qualification. Universities Australia's chief executive, Belinda Robinson, said:

… the Australian community could see it made no sense to cut university funding at a time of rapid and dramatic economic change.

Ms Robinson also said that the government's plan to cut funding to universities is 'way out of kilter with community sentiment'. She went on to say:

Voters don’t want to see cuts to universities – which are key drivers of economic growth – because they create new jobs, reskill Australians and secure $24 billion a year in export income.

Universities and their students have already contributed almost $4 billion to repair the Budget over the last six years. Clearly, the Australian community is saying enough is enough: no more uni cuts.

According to a 2012 report by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, based at the University of Canberra, people with university qualifications are likely to earn more than $1 million more than those without degrees. The irony of this is that a number of the Turnbull government's members started their careers in politics at university. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott enrolled in a combined economics/law degree at the University of Sydney in 1976 and became president of the student representative council in 1978. Nine years later, former treasurer Joe Hockey also became student representative council president at the University of Sydney. Minister for Environment and Energy Josh Frydenberg was President of the Monash Law Student Society. Most politicians have had access to a quality university education that has delivered them myriad benefits, and it is time the Turnbull government put all of today's students at the heart of their policies.

The Group of Eight comprises Australia's top eight universities. A number of the Turnbull government members have attended a Go8 university, so one would think that they would take recommendations made by the Go8 very seriously. Recently, the Group of Eight made a number of recommendations as a result of the independent review into regional, rural and remote education. Not surprisingly, the No. 1 recommendation was

That the Senate block the current Higher Education Reform Bill as this puts at risk a broad range of university capacity-building, including highly successful equity programs.

The same university that Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull attended is recommending that the Senate block his own legislation—recommendations wisely given but, sadly, falling on deaf ears.

The Group of Eight have also recommended that the federal government ensures that policies to support higher education outcomes for regional students are well designed and adequately and consistently funded. The federal government continues to invest in equity programs over the long term to support regional and remote students, including by increasing the value of the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program to $205.1 million per year as was forecast in Labor's 2012-13 budget for the 2015-16 year. They recommended that the federal government review eligibility criteria for youth allowance and other linked student income support programs to ensure that they provide an appropriate level of support for students from regional areas. There is absolutely no mention of cuts to university funding and no mention of drug testing for those people on Newstart or youth allowance. The members of the Turnbull government have received a big fail on their policy, a fail on their cuts and a fail on their plans for university, which were handed down by the universities that they attended.

The Turnbull government is cutting $401.8 million from Queensland universities. James Cook University in North Queensland will receive a cut of $37.1 million over four years. Teaching, student programs and university facilities will suffer as a result of these cuts. These cuts will damage Australia's research effort. There is an implicit cross-subsidy to research, accepted throughout the higher education sector, through the Commonwealth grants scheme and this comes on top of the government's attempts to abolish the $3.7 billion nation-building Education Investment Fund. Australia has the second-lowest level of public investment in universities in the OECD. These cuts will only make our record worse.

Our students already pay the sixth-highest fees in the OECD. The fee hikes in this bill will only make that record worse as well. Students will be put under pressure with higher fees and paying off larger debts sooner. Students will have to start paying back their loan when they are earning $42,000 instead of $54,869. The Higher Education Loan Program repayments will hit students at a time when they are trying to save for a house or start a family. Forty-two thousand dollars is approximately $6,000 more than the minimum wage.

Lowering the HELP repayment threshold, in combination with tax and transfer measures included in the 2017 budget, will mean that some graduates will face an effective marginal tax rate of more than 100 per cent. Graduates caught between these policies will experience considerable fiscal and financial stress. Graduates earning $51,000, most of whom are likely to be women, will have less disposable income than someone earning $32,000.

The Turnbull government's disastrous policies go beyond attacking university students. They are also attacking TAFE students. As a TAFE teacher in a previous life, I know just how unfair that truly is. But the government doesn't like to talk about this. The lower repayment threshold for HELP debt will also apply to TAFE and vocational students who took out VET FEE-HELP or VET student loans. This means that some of the hardest working but most modestly paid people in the country will be affected—for example, people with a diploma or advanced diploma qualification, such as early childhood educators, enrolled nurses and technicians.

What is even worse is the move by the Turnbull government to introduce fees for enabling courses, which provide essential skills and confidence to prepare students for university. Students who finish these courses have gone on to become nurses, accountants, doctors and lawyers. These students are overwhelmingly from disadvantaged and under-represented backgrounds. These courses have been free, as they do not lead to a formal qualification. However, this government is trying to make these students pay $3,200 to sit in an enabling course. This shift is mean and unfair because we know that, for a majority of these students, fees and debt are a barrier to study.

And what impact will these cuts have on jobs? Universities support more than 130,000 jobs across Australia. Cuts to universities will put jobs at risk, especially in regional areas—like in James Cook University and Central Queensland University in Townsville. No-one, absolutely no-one, is in favour of the Turnbull government's university cuts. The peak body for universities, Universities Australia, said that an overwhelming majority of vice-chancellors could not recommend that the crossbench support this bill. The NTEU, the sector's union, is opposed to the bill because of the impact that the cuts and fee hikes will have on students. TAFEs are deeply concerned about the impact that changes will have on their ability to offer certain enabling and pathway courses. Student groups are fiercely opposed to increases in fees and changes to loan repayments.

It seems as though the only plan that the Turnbull government has for universities is to cut, cut, cut. It's simply in its DNA to cut education funding—for example, $17 billion in cuts to schools; $2.8 billion in cuts to TAFE, with a further cut of $637,000 in this year's budget; a $3.8 billion cut to Australian universities; and increases in fees and debts for students. The question is: why is this government so hell-bent on these cuts? It is because it wants to give a $65 billion tax cut to big business.

Labor governments are the only governments that will ever fight for a fair and properly funded education system. It is only Labor that has a history of delivering accessible and affordable education for all. Labor understands that governments are supposed to support universities to support students to support the jobs of the future. When Labor were last in government, we lifted investment in universities from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013. Labor also opened the doors to our universities for an additional 190,000 Australians, many of whom were the first in their family to attend university. Why did Labor lift participation in universities? It was because Labor understands that education is the cornerstone to innovation and our economic future. We know that many of the jobs of the future will require a postschool qualification. That's why cutting funding to TAFE and universities is one of the worst decisions a government can make.

Many parents across Australia see a university education as a necessary opportunity to give their children the best career options. Tertiary education is not only the right of a privileged few. If we are to be a nation that is ready for the challenges, innovations and jobs of the future, we must invest in education. The Turnbull government is out of touch in creating a situation where students are required to pay even more for their education while the government gives corporations making millions of dollars a tax cut. The Parliamentary Budget Office is predicting that student fees will soar by 40 per cent as universities recover the costs as a result of the Turnbull government's planned 20 per cent government funding cut.

The Turnbull government must stop recycling former Prime Minister Tony Abbott's policies. Nobody wants the zombified Abbott policies—they were scary enough the first time! Education is a human right. It is not for the few who can afford it. Education is for everyone. In particular, aspiration and access should not be based on your earning capacity or your parents' credit card. In the words chanted by some of the many passionate university students, 'BS, come off it. Our education is not for profit.'

Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017. Higher education is very important. I know people of my ilk and many others benefited from the reforms that Gough Whitlam introduced, and many members who have contributed from this side of the House in this debate would have been the first from their families, as I was, to go to university.

The electorate I represent is very multicultural, as everybody knows, but it is not a rich electorate. Mums and dads there work pretty damn hard to make sure their kids get a good education. Education is one of the biggest things that ring true to those people in my community aspiring to create a better life for their families and their children.

The minister, in her second reading speech, boasted of the reforms as being fair, driving equality and excellence, and ensuring students have choice and opportunity. Maybe that was the speaking point she was given, because how does the government think they are convincing anyone that that can be possibly true? This bill aims to cut university funding by nearly $4 billion, hitting students with higher fees and saddling students with bigger debts that they have to pay back at a time they are probably trying to start a family and service a mortgage. The cuts will compromise teaching and learning, undermine research, and slash investment in universities at a time when the government should be investing in both universities and TAFE to guarantee that we as a country have a strong and productive future. Therefore, we on this side oppose the bill and we oppose it on good grounds.

This is an unfair piece of legislation. It does nothing but undermine the integral value of our tertiary education system, and it will act as an impediment for students and their respective futures. To put these cuts in some perspective, New South Wales institutions alone will lose $617.8 million over the next four years according to Universities Australia. That is $617 million out of various economies. New South Wales is fortunate to have a number of regionally based universities, so this will clearly impact on them. A good colleague, Professor Barney Glover, Vice-Chancellor and President of Western Sydney University, summed up the ramifications of these measures when he stated that these changes the government is proposing constitute a significant risk to the sustainability, quality and competitiveness of Australian universities.

These cuts will be delivered by the same people opposite who cut $17 billion from our schools and $637 million from our TAFE colleges, and now they want to do something very similar to our universities. Bear in mind—you only have to go back to 2013—this is the same group of people that said, 'Trust us; we will not cut education.' They also went on to say they would not cut a raft of other things, all of which they have done.

The government seek to justify this because they are committed to handing out $65 billion of tax cuts to millionaires and big business in this country. Just a piece of simple advice: if you can't cut your coat according to your cloth, don't start taking it off universities and don't start taking it off TAFE colleges, because we actually do need them for our future. We need them to develop our human resources for the future prosperity of this nation. So this cut is nothing other than bad, because what it will do is to enshrine a backward-looking approach to tertiary education in this country. As Professor Colin Stirling, Innovative Research Universities Chair and Vice-Chancellor of Flinders University, said, 'How can we ask students to contribute more to get less in return?' That's a pretty good question, and it raises another.

When the minister said they consulted widely in bringing forward this piece of legislation, she didn't actually go on to say what the universities said. I would've thought that they were critical stakeholders, and these universities certainly aren't running to champion the minister's view. The government keeps proving that it can't be trusted when it comes to some of the most important investments in this country. Investing in our people must be paramount when it comes to determining the priorities of our investment strategies. As I said, the minister said that the government consulted widely, but she failed to say what anyone in the university sector said. But I don't have to advise you; I think everyone in this room knows that the overwhelming majority of vice-chancellors from Australian universities are opposed to this piece of legislation. Vicki Thomson, the chief executive of the Group of Eight universities, believes that the universities have now reached a 'tipping point', a view which she sums up in the following way:

… on top of the $3.9 billion in cuts we have suffered since 2011, our sector has surely done our fair share of the heavy lifting for Budget repair.

That's the issue with the $65 billion tax cut to big business. If you can't afford to give a tax cut to big business of that magnitude, don't. It's as simple as that. But don't think that you can pay for that tax cut by taking it off the future welfare and development of this country, by taking it off our students and those who produce our quality higher education sector.

When these cuts take place, don't forget: there are going to be many, many casualties out there, particularly in electorates like mine—people who just cannot afford to make the changes necessary to accommodate the financial impost that the government are imposing on people. This bill introduces a funding cut for universities through an efficiency dividend of 2.5 per cent on the university grants for 2018-19. Combined with that efficiency dividend, in the bill there is an increase in the student contribution amount of 7.5 per cent over four years. While 7.5 per cent of Commonwealth grants will be reserved for performance funding—and I have got to say that is a principle which our side actually supports—the approach of this government is nothing but punitive. Unlike what we were told by the minister, it doesn't seem that these could be in any way described as 'modest adjustments'. They are clearly an attempt by the government to shift the responsibility of the cost of higher education primarily to the institutions and students. This government is taking away 7.5 per cent of university funding, in addition to a 2.5 per cent efficiency dividend, which will effectively amount to a 10 per cent structural cut to higher education over the next two years. While Mr Turnbull might like to proclaim that he is all about fairness, a $3.8 billion cut to tertiary education, as proposed in this bill, certainly demonstrates that his priorities lie elsewhere. Universities Australia Chair Professor Margaret Gardner sums it up this way:

If 7.5% of each student's funding will not follow the student, but will flow depending on the minister's assessment of whether a university has met benchmarks determined on a changing set of education indicators, then this money cannot prudently be included in the budget.

In other words, there are no specific parameters which form the guidelines, so how could you actually include that as part of a budget scenario? It's clear that the government has gone about implementing the principle of performance based funding the wrong way. It's a policy that amounts to performance funding simply at ministerial discretion.

At the core of this bill is the extension of demand-driven funding to sub-bachelor places. This is a principle that the university sector and Labor in the past have also advocated, following the recommendation of the Bradley Review of Australian Higher Education. The bill introduces, in three parts, demand-driven sub-bachelor places: students accessing sub-bachelor places must not hold a degree, the courses must meet industry needs, and the courses must articulate into undergraduate programs. While the concept of a sub-bachelor course is great for those looking for qualifications that fit outside traditional TAFE and university offerings, there is certainly a big concern in the TAFE sector that the sub-bachelor places could give universities an unfair advantage over the normal offerings of TAFE colleges. The government's proposed restrictions are not sufficient to protect TAFE or to support the integrated tertiary education system.

The bill also introduces measures that seek to introduce fees for enabling courses, lower repayment thresholds for HELP, shift New Zealanders and permanent residents from Commonwealth supported places to full-fee-paying places, and introduce a new allocation system for postgraduate Commonwealth supported places.

These measures will no doubt have a significant impact in electorates like mine. They will affect those who are most disadvantaged in our society. Unlike what the name of this bill suggests, these measures do not support a sustainable, world-class higher education system that remains affordable and accessible to all who are eligible, regardless of background or circumstance. For instance, in my electorate of Fowler, which I have already described as not a wealthy electorate, Professor Barney Glover said this bill 'may have an unintended impost on, for example, mature aged students, Indigenous students, individuals with interrupted career paths or reduced employment due to child raising or other life events'.

A very interesting scenario was brought to my attention by a police officer in my local area command, which gives a law enforcement perspective to this. Crime Manager Detective Chief Inspector Darren Newman, from Cabramatta police area command, said he believes that this bill would have a devastating impact on my local community—that's the community that he serves. He believes this would be a massive blow to the aspirations of many young people, undermining the extensive work that police have put in communities such as mine. One of the issues that Darren Newman related to me, which is particularly relevant to those newer communities in the country—particularly those from either African or Islander nations who come here—is that the police work very hard with them. The whole idea is not to wait until a crime is committed but to work with the community, show them that there is opportunity and try to make young people more engaged not only with law enforcement but with the community generally. What Darren Newman said to me was that, where you can show a person who comes from another nation where education may not be valued to the same extent that it is in this country that they can achieve a university qualification and they can graduate with a degree, they can go on to do a range of different things. Where you can show that to their peers, there's a very strong argument that it's almost me-tooism for them: 'If they can do this, I can do this too'. And the police who serve my community say this is very significant, to be able to show all of these young people that they can justifiably have the expectation and aspiration to go to university. To simply make that more difficult, to simply take that away and make it less possible for them, creates a significant problem, as the police see it, in a community such as mine.

There's got to be a better way than doing this. On the one hand, they're simply trying to be the economic rationalists out there and trying to actually justify all this, while on the other hand they're trying to give away $65 billion to big business. If you can't afford to make such a donation to big business, don't do it. Maybe you'd do it at a time when you could afford to, but what they are doing here cuts across all those in a community such as mine. It's necessary for their aspirations, for their expectations of what they can actually do to grow in a country such as Australia. We need these young people. We need these people developing. This is the Whitlam strategy played out large.

Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's an exciting time for the University of Newcastle.

Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There has never been a more exciting time.

Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolutely. The new inner-city campus, NeW Space, has recently opened. The previous Labor government provided $30 million for the new campus, along with contributions from the state government and the university. The building is not only visually stunning; it's a tremendous enhancement to Newcastle's CBD and a proud legacy of the last Labor government and our commitment to the Hunter region. This significant funding commitment from the Labor Party is in stark contrast to the Liberal's approach to tertiary education. Indeed, the University of Newcastle will have its funding cut by a staggering $100 million if the government is able to pass its proposals contained in this legislation we are debating right now.

For the past four years, the government has been trying to shift our universities to a user-pays system that excludes poor and middle-class kids. Labor believes in tertiary education as a great enabler. The economic and social benefits of tertiary education speak for themselves. Access to tertiary education should not depend on the wealth of your parents or young people taking out very significant amounts of debt, and so at a time when the University of Newcastle is celebrating an important milestone, it is very disappointing to see the coalition renewing its attacks on this vital sector.

Before outlining what this bill proposes, I briefly want to draw to the attention of the House some shocking statistics about tertiary education in Australia. Of the world's richest countries, Australia has the second-lowest level of public investment in universities. This is a damning statistic. A nation whose economy has grown every year for over a quarter of a century should be leading with investment in universities and research. The government's proposals will only make our record worse. In relation to fees, Australian students already pay the sixth-highest fees amongst developed countries and, again, the government's proposal will make fees even higher.

The government is proposing the following in this bill: a 2.5 per cent efficiency dividend on university grants; increasing student fees by 7.5 per cent; making radical changes to HELP repayments; reducing the threshold when repayments start from $54,800 to $42,000—this is very serious at a time when wages growth is actually shrinking; making significant changes to enabling programs, which are so important for my Hunter region; and attacking New Zealand permanent residents and citizens, some of whom have lived nearly all their lives in Australia. In speaking on this legislation, I also want to bring to the attention of the House the powerful impact enabling programs have had in the Hunter and the fact that the government is cutting these programs.

The statement released from Universities Australia is a damning indictment on the government's proposal. It states:

There was unanimous opposition to the proposals to cut university funding and lift student fees.

It went on:

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

This is clearly identifying what the government is doing: cutting funding and increasing fees. They are trying to make our education system further restricted to only the very well-off, just as they are trying to restrict our healthcare system to the wealthy in this country. In Australia, access to university should be based on ability, not on a student's ability or their parents' ability to pay for a degree.

I want to talk about the significant impact this bill will have on the University of Newcastle, my local university. The university, as I said, will be worse off to the tune of $100 million because of these cuts. These aren't Labor's figures. The vice-chancellor of the University of Newcastle has confirmed this on the front page of the Newcastle Herald and has recently told a Senate inquiry:

This is really, really tough on universities … We've already contributed to the fiscal efficiencies of the government. You can't continue on that basis.

The University of Newcastle is an icon and a much-respected institution in the Hunter, Central Coast and northern New South Wales. It is a great promoter of economic and social justice. One quarter of students at the University of Newcastle are from low-socioeconomic backgrounds, and almost half are mature-aged students and students who are the first member of their family to attend university. It also has a very significant Indigenous student population—indeed, it ranks first out of Australia's 39 universities for Indigenous enrolments, and we are rightly proud of this. We trained the first Indigenous doctor in this country and we trained the first Indigenous surgeon in this country. Half of all Indigenous medical graduates in this country are produced by the University of Newcastle each year. We've got a great record in that particular area and we are rightly proud of it.

The university is also the largest and oldest provider of enabling programs in Australia, and so it will be particularly impacted by the brutal changes the government is proposing to enabling programs. The government is directly and intentionally limiting the ability of potential mature-aged students and young people from low socioeconomic backgrounds to access tertiary education. Again, this isn't just Labor rhetoric. It has been confirmed by the vice-chancellor, who recently told a Senate inquiry that changes to enabling programs could make it harder for Indigenous students and people from low socioeconomic backgrounds to access higher education. Twenty per cent of enrolments at the university had previously completed enabling courses. Intelligent and keen people who want to go to university and to make a contribution to our society should not be denied the opportunity to access a tertiary education.

My Labor colleagues and I will not tolerate this assault on enabling courses. Labor believes that people from modest backgrounds and people who have lost their jobs and are determined to get further education and training in order to re-enter workforce should be encouraged to seek a university qualification, not discouraged. Our belief is in stark contrast to that of the Liberals. The outcome of these proposed changes will make it harder to get into university, particularly for the many thousands of older Australians who are desperate to get a job, so Labor strongly opposes the changes to enabling courses. The proposal contained in this bill would introduce a fee on some of the most disadvantaged people in the higher education system.

A little more than 40 years ago, the University of Newcastle introduced a groundbreaking program. In 1974, Open Foundation was one of the first university enabling programs implemented specifically to allow people who missed out on matriculation for a variety of reasons a second chance to qualify academically for a place at university to study for a degree. The stories of Open Foundation's alumni are compelling. There are classics scholars like Leanne Glass, who was once a retail worker and who hadn't completed Year 12, and is now in the final stages of writing her PhD thesis. Daniel Frost suffered from a rare, debilitating bone disease that prevented him from completing his HSC, and he has recently graduated with a Bachelor of Business thanks to Open Foundation. Rhea Barnett entered the Open Foundation program as a 24-year-old with no more than a year 10 school certificate, and has recently spent time in Antarctica researching her science and physics honours thesis.

Very famously, Murray Lee, who is now a professor of criminology at the University of Sydney, when he left Belmont High School at age 15 was told he could be a boilermaker or a sign writer. Those were the options he was restricted to under that system, but after working as an electrical tradesman, he completed the Open Foundation course and was able to complete a degree. Professor Lee is of the view that these reforms will fundamentally harm the enabling program and has stated:

Giving people the chance at a career by keeping enabling courses free has got to be a win/win for the individual, and the community.

Labor could not agree more.

Taylah Gray is in the second year of her law degree. She's angry at the government's proposals, which will affect the University of Newcastle's Yapug program, along with Open Foundation and Newstep. Taylah has said:

These programs are free to give people who might have struggled in school or in their lives a chance to try. What is proposed will put up obstacles for people whose lives have been about obstacles.

This is a very sharp and eloquent analysis of the government's plans. Taylah believes people should be given a chance. Labor believes this as well. This proud tradition, and similar programs such as Newstep for younger students at the University of Newcastle, is under very real threat because of the proposals of the Turnbull government.

I want to be very clear on this proposal. The government is targeting enabling courses, which some of the most disadvantaged students in the sector access. This will have an enormously negative impact in the region that I represent and will result in fewer people in the Hunter region having a tertiary education. The change is socially unjust and economically irresponsible, and Labor condemns the government for deliberately targeting people who are trying to get a tertiary education to allow them a better chance of getting a job and making an important contribution to our community and the country.

I now want to discuss the government's changes to HELP repayments. The philosophy behind HELP is that those who finish a degree should only be required to start paying back the loan once they are earning a decent wage. Australians are proud that we are the land of the fair go, and the HELP system is a fundamentally fair system. However, the Liberals want to reduce the HELP repayment threshold from $54,869 to $42,000. This is a very significant reduction, particularly in an economic environment where wages growth is actually negative. The latest HILDA report showed that wages have stopped growing and that since 2012 they have actually declined. Another key fact is that university graduates are getting paid less than in previous years. It is not appropriate, given the current wage environment, to be making these unfair changes and further deterring young and old alike from university. In fact, lowering the threshold to $42,000 means that a university graduate who is unable to find employment in their chosen profession and is instead continuing a full-time job, say, as a baker at Coles or Woolies would actually have to start paying back the cost of their degree. In fact, when you combine it with the changes to the Medicare levy surcharge, which, disgracefully, this government is applying to everyone who earns more than $19,000, it means that people who earn more than $42,000, up to $54,000 in certain scenarios, actually have an effective marginal tax rate of over 100 per cent. Let me repeat that: because of these regressive changes, workers below the average income—some of them below the median income—will have an effective marginal tax rate of over 100 per cent. They will pay more in tax for each dollar spent than they receive. That is a disgrace, it is deeply regressive and it needs to be opposed.

The British Poet Laureate John Masefield once said: 'There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university.' While this sentiment is lovely, universities are far more than this. They are fundamentally important for our economy and our society. The role of the federal government in supporting and investing in tertiary education is essential. There are two clear distinctions between the major parties on this issue. The Liberals want to cut funding to universities and make tertiary education the domain of the privileged. Labor, the party of education, will always support our tertiary sector and ensure widespread and equitable access to universities. The statistics prove this. International studies have shown that mature aged students and those who are entering through a non-conventional pathway are most easily deterred by higher debt levels and greater repayments. They often have fewer years in the workplace to repay that debt. So anything that increases the debt on them or makes them pay that debt back faster is a deterrent to mature aged students retraining and to those who haven't been able to finish year 12. This is a deeply regressive move. When you combine it with the attacks on the enabling courses, I can only conclude that this government is intent on closing the door to tertiary education for working-class and middle-class families—and that's a disgrace. Not only is it an attack on those people, on those Australians, and limiting their potential, but it is actually a deeply illogical move economically because we need every Australian to fulfil their potential. We need every Australian to fulfil their productive potential, to get the best training possible, so that they can make an active contribution to this economy. The policy contained in this bill counteracts that and closes the door on those people.

When you think about the fabric of this society, with income inequality at a 75-year high, why are we preventing working-class people from getting a good education? Why would we be saying to them, 'You can't fulfil both your potential to contribute to a great society and to earn a wage'? Why are we doing this in a period of high inequality when wages are going backwards? This is a sign, yet again, of a government that is out of touch, a government that has no concern for the vast majority of Australians and a government that says: 'Well, I made it. I might have had wealthy parents, but I made it, so everyone else can.' This is a deeply regressive move. It is a move symbolic of a party stuck not in the 20th century but in the 19th century, where, unless you are part of the squattocracy or you happen to be born into a wealthy family, we don't care about you and we don't care about your future. The vast majority of Australians disagree with that. The vast majority of Australians support a well-resourced and fair tertiary sector. History will condemn this as yet another regressive move from a regressive and reactionary government that, quite frankly, does not care about the vast majority of Australians.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor is rightly opposing this bill. We oppose this bill because it is profoundly unfair to young people, especially those from disadvantaged or middle-class backgrounds. This bill will make it even harder for young people from everyday backgrounds to climb the ladder of opportunity through education.

When I doorknocked over 13,000 houses in the lead-up to the election, people told me that education was the single most important thing. Everyone said it: young people, parents and grandparents but most especially migrants, who come to this country to seek a better life with a laser-like focus on education being the key to a better life for their kids. But, rather than helping young people to fulfil their potential to climb that ladder of life and opportunity and secure a better future, unless they are lucky enough to be from a very wealthy family, this bill will weigh young people down with a lifetime of debt accrued through higher fees as they struggle to climb just a rung or two while being expected to repay these higher debts even earlier.

As has been said, Australian students already pay the sixth-highest fees in the OECD. This bill jacks them up by another 7½ per cent. Repaying debts when you earn $42,000 will make it harder—for many people, impossible—to buy a house or provide for a family. I've heard those opposite prattle on with, 'Oh, it's only 10 bucks a week here and 20 bucks there,' and, 'What's another 50 bucks?' The point is that it's in the wrong direction. It makes it more unfair and more unequal, and it is the wrong way to go, especially with stagnating wages, poor graduate employment outcomes and spiralling house prices fuelled by regressive tax concessions.

We oppose this bill because it will worsen inequality in this country—although the Treasurer says that's not a real thing. LOL! The Bill's Digest states clearly that, when compared to the existing arrangements, the new proposal has a disproportionate impact on lower-income earners. It's a particular problem when you consider it against the backdrop of the broader Liberal budget as a whole. Lower repayment thresholds plus tax rises like the Medicare levy and changes to other transfer payments will mean that some Australians will face effective marginal tax rates of 100 per cent. Using one example, Australians with a HELP debt who earn $51,000—most of whom are women—will have less disposable income than someone earning $32,000 when you take it all into account. This may sound fanciful for out-of-touch Liberal members, but the average graduate salary in Australia is under $55,000. Good luck with saving for a house, repaying a uni debt, saving for or paying off a car, paying rent, paying utilities, paying for food and paying for electricity. God help you if you start a family on that income, and you better hope you don't get sick. What on earth have young people done to deserve this?

If we as a nation want to ensure that Australia really is the land of the fair go, we need to do more to address all forms of inequality, especially those that are entrenched or intergenerational in nature. Education is the best tool governments have to encourage social mobility. People in my electorate get this. We oppose this bill because it sells out our country's future and takes us in the wrong direction.

In considering these proposals, everyone in this House must have it fixed in their mind just how critical higher education is to Australia's future successes. This is not the kind of thing we're supposed to say, but Australia's best years are not necessarily in front of us. I'm optimistic that they can be, but it's not certain they will be. We are at risk now—and the signs are not good—of being the first generation in modern Australia to leave a worse standard of living for the next generation. That is shameful. It doesn't have to be that way, but it depends on the choices we make today. That is why I and other Labor members feel so strongly that this bill takes our country and our society in the wrong direction. It doesn't just hit student fees; it also locks in large and ongoing cuts to universities.

Education, as has been said, is a critical enabler of our future economic prosperity and security. Modelling by Deloitte shows that university education added an estimated $140 billion to Australia's GDP in 2014 alone. Our region of the world is the fastest growing. This century holds enormous opportunities, but the world does not owe us a living. We can choose to innovate and compete, or we will get left behind. Australia now has the second-lowest level of public investment in universities of any country in the OECD. While our neighbours and competitors and partners in Asia are investing more in education research and creating wealth from that knowledge, our government spends time thinking up new ways to cut school funding, cut universities, threaten research funding, raise fees, burden young people with a lifetime of debt and slug disadvantaged Australians a fee of $3,223 for bridging courses that don't even give them a qualification. That's a real little gem. Nice one, government; well done! These enabling courses are run by some universities to help some of the most disadvantaged students in the country just to have a crack at getting into uni. There are currently no fees. Yet this bill proposes to charge fees, which is particularly harsh for students from a disadvantaged background. They don't get a formal qualification. There is no stakeholder support. It is a brain fart of the minister.

Australia needs an equitable higher education system if our best future is to be realised. Our smartest and brightest minds get the same access to learning opportunities. That's the goal, and we don't deter or punish young people from poor families. This access must not be conditional on the postcode you were born in, the school you went to or your parents' capacity to pay for a house.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Member for Bruce, will you withdraw that.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw 'brain fart'. Is that the bit you meant?

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, I wasn't sure if that is what you meant.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just withdraw it without qualification.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw it without qualification. That is why we oppose this bill and hope it dies in the Senate or wherever in the parliament the government sends this kind of rubbish to rot.

I want to make a few remarks about HELP debt levels and repayment. The government is concerned about growth in unpaid student debt. Overall, student debts are increasing significantly due to the growth of higher education, the government's own higher fees, extension of HELP to non-Commonwealth-supported places and so on. Over four years, we now have 2.5 million students—up from 1.7 million students—holding a debt. The amount of debt has gone up from $25 billion to about $49 billion. On current estimates, 23 per cent of those students are not expected to repay anything at all. Unpaid debt is largely with people who haven't earned above the income threshold long enough, and the debt is written off at their death.

On pages 8 to 10 of the Bills Digest is an interesting discussion on the options around this issue. One option is to just accept that this is part of the scheme—an equity measure, if you like—and a percentage won't be repaid. You can take the government's premise that we need to recoup more of this debt—fair enough, that's an argument. But there are two broad arguments. You can do what the government wants to do—lower repayment thresholds to, in effect, push young people into a poverty trap, which is the option the government has chosen—or you could take the interesting but politically much more difficult option of exploring requirements to recoup debts from certain estates.

The Bills Digest notes that many people who die without repaying debts are actually from very wealthy households with wealthy estates. The family arrangements are such that they have never declared enough income to repay their full debt, but they may pass away with significant wealth, whether through superannuation, housing or other assets. This is politically difficult because, if anyone suggests that, the other side may say, 'Oh, it's a death tax, it's a death tax!' which is clearly nonsense. There is a case to look more closely at this. The Bills Digest notes analysis that requiring HELP debts to be repaid, just like tax or social security debts, from estates over $100,000 in value would save $2.83 billion over three years.

Obviously, you'd need to craft such a policy carefully. I think most people would think a higher threshold would be reasonable, as well as appropriate exemptions or delayed payment provisions to protect people like families where a parent dies young or for people with surviving partners and cash flow issues. I understand this is not my party's policy and it's not the government's policy. It was in the discussion paper, to their credit, but there does seem to be a policy case to look at this option further. If difficult choices have to be made, that kind of approach is far less regressive and far less unfair to young people than the government's policy.

In terms of the impact on universities: at a time when Australia should be investing in our universities, this bill would enshrine $3.8 billion of bottom-line cuts. Teaching, student programs, research and university facilities will suffer. You have to admit that the minister is doing his best to earn himself an honorary degree from university in media manipulation and spin. He's all over the shop suggesting to people, 'Oh, this is just a temporary efficiency dividend. There's nothing to worry about. It's just a couple of years. It's just the universities doing their bit for fiscal consolidation and a bit of budget savings. Nothing to see here. Oh, look over there, let's pick on some migrants. Let's have a quiz about other people's relationships. Let's beat up on vulnerable people who rely on welfare to eat and live—that's a good idea. That'll distract everyone while we hack away at education, won't it?'

There are two main measures that comprise the cut when you stop being distracted and look at this bill. Firstly, the efficiency dividend is 2½ per cent in 2018 and again in 2019. From that the universities suffer a direct cut of $384 million in just two years. Monash University, on the border of my electorate—my old university—suffers the largest cut of any Australian university of $104 million over the forward estimates. I don't see the member for Chisholm listed to speak on this. I would suspect she is far too ashamed, given that it's technically in her electorate.

The minister pretends this is a one-off, but it is effectively a great, big, locked-in permanent cut, because when funding eventually gets reindexed it's from the level after the cut. You can't pretend this won't have an effect on teaching quality, and the resultant cuts will damage Australia's research effort. Higher education in Australia is a little bit weird by the world's standards. It's an accepted part of our system that there is a cross subsidy and that you make a bit of a profit off teaching students to fund your research, which is what keeps you in the rankings. That's bad enough, but a further 7.5 per cent is then taken out for performance funding.

We support the principle of performance funding, indeed, we proposed it, but the government is going about it the wrong way. Ripping another 7.5 per cent off universities for a yet-to-be-determined performance-based funding pool is, in prudent budgeting terms, a further cut because there is no detail in the legislation or from the government about how this scheme will operate.

I will quote Monash University Vice-Chancellor Professor, Margaret Gardner, who said:

A university budgets principally on the basis of the number of students enrolled and the average amount of money each student will bring…If 7.5% of each student's funding will not follow the student, but will flow depending on the minister's assessment of whether a university has met benchmarks determined on a changing set of education indicators, then this money cannot prudently be included in the budget.

Universities Australia has said the policy amounted to performance funding at ministerial discretion without any clarity as to the problem to be solved. All this means is that in prudent budgeting terms universities will have to plan for a 10 per cent cut in 2018 and a 10 per cent cut in 2019. We will not write a blank cheque which will force this 10 per cent cut and so future ministers can do what they want or cut that funding completely.

Finally, with regard to the extension of CSP to sub-bachelor courses: I understand this has been supported in principle for years, since the Bradley review in 2008, but that is almost 10 years ago. I have serious concerns about this measure and its impact on TAFE. There's no detail from the government. The landscape has changed a lot in this area. TAFE is under enormous pressure. You've got changes to the VET FEE-HELP loans, which have capped loans and fees. This measure has the potential to seriously erode TAFE revenues further, to make the provision of critical, high-quality TAFE unviable in more areas and to confuse students.

I note that while universities would be given access to CSPs for sub-bachelor places, TAFE does not have access to CSPs for higher education. Personally, I think this move is premature and that it's dangerous to support it at this time. Time doesn't permit me to go into the plans to sneak in massive changes to how postgraduate places are allocated, or the wedge for privatisation, the little gem in there that some other body may allocate these scholarships or the anti-New Zealander, anti-migrant measures. But suffice it to say that there are a lot of very good reasons for why this bill should be opposed. There are a few sensible things in there, and the government could well pull them out and put them in another bit of legislation that we would support and wave through tomorrow, while these other things go to die, as zombies, as they should.