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

My sisters and I are living proof of the transformative powers of a quality public education and the transformative powers of a tertiary education. Like so many Australians, and so many in this chamber, I am the first in my family to go to university. It was thanks to the changes that the Whitlam government introduced in the seventies that I was allowed that transformative opportunity. My sisters and I are living proof of the power of education and of the way it transforms lives. It broke our cycle of disadvantage. It broke an intergenerational cycle of disadvantage. My great-grandmother, a cleaner in the western district of Victoria, had 13 kids and brought them up on her own in a house with dirt floors and paper walls. She had a very early death as a result of being a cleaner. Can you imagine the western district in the early part of the last century and having to do everything by hand? Her hands would have been red raw after doing the washing just for her own family, let alone for the wealthy properties around the western district. That was my great-grandmother's life. She had to leave school at 12 because she was from a poor background.

My grandmother was also a cleaner. She had three cleaning jobs, in Melbourne. She brought up seven kids on her own in a Housing Commission house in Preston with an abattoir down at the end of the street. Once a month, the cattle would wander down my mum's street, heading to the abattoir. Her house was in Stoke Street, Preston, but a very different Stoke Street to what exists today. It is very much gentrified now but it was pretty rugged in the thirties, forties and fifties when my mum was growing up in Housing Commission house with a single mum who had seven kids and was on her own. Her mother was a woman working three jobs just to keep food on the table. I've said many times in this chamber that the abiding fear that my grandmother had was that the state would take her children away because of her poverty. That was her abiding fear, which is why she worked those three jobs day in and day out to keep food on the table. My grandmother had to leave school at 13 because of the circumstances of my great-grandmother.

Then there's my mother, who was dragged kicking and screaming from school at 15. She wanted to matriculate but didn't get the opportunity due to the circumstances into which she was born. She was denied the opportunity of education but was desperate to have the opportunity. When my father left us, when I was 11, with just $30 in the bank and a pretty bleak future, we were all staring down the possibility of not one, not two, not three but four generations of poverty and disadvantage as a result of a lack of access to education. But my mother was determined that her daughters were going to be educated and to at least finish high school and, hopefully, go to university. As I said, thanks to the Whitlam government, I was the first in my family to be educated. It broke that cycle of disadvantage. It broke that cycle of poverty.

My sisters also had the opportunity to be educated. I proudly say that my middle sister is Australia's first female master of wine. She is a wine consultant who has worked throughout the world. Her tertiary education has opened up so many opportunities. She has worked in South America, Europe and Asia, and it is all thanks to the choice and opportunities—and the wine!—that have been provided to her from tertiary education.

My baby sister, my little sister, is an internationally renowned neurologist and an expert in dementia and stroke. Can you imagine what my grandmother would be thinking now if she saw these three women? Here am I, with the great honour of being the member for Canberra, representing my community in this great chamber in this parliament. Imagine what my grandmother would be thinking. There she was, scrubbing her hands red-raw all those years ago just to put food on the table for the 13 kids, denied every opportunity, denied choice, denied a life that so many others had, because she didn't have access to education. I cannot rave enough about the transformative powers of education. It has changed my sisters' lives—Meg and Amy—and my life. Without a tertiary education, we would not have the choice, the opportunities and the rich and wonderful experiences we have had as a result of tertiary education.

I want that opportunity and that choice for every Australian. I want every Australian—should they choose—to have access to tertiary education and the opportunity to have those cycles of disadvantage and poverty broken, particularly for Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander communities and people like me. With my dad having left us $11.30 in the bank every second night during my teens, we would eat out at family's and friends' places because mum couldn't afford to put food on the table every night of the week. I want people from low-income backgrounds and also women to have the access to opportunity and choice that is offered through tertiary education. I want every Australian to be able to aspire to a university education and have the opportunity for a university education. That is why I was recently at my alma mater, the Australian National University, to protest against the government cuts in this area and the fact that the Australian National University and the University of Canberra are looking at cuts of $52.5 million over the next four years.

We've seen cuts already in the school sector. Schools right across my electorate have been victims of the $17 billion in cuts. We've seen cuts in TAFE of more than $2.8 billion, with a further cut in this year's budget. What's the impact of those cuts in vocational education sector—a sector that provides great opportunity, particularly for low socio-economic people, those from disadvantaged backgrounds, those who don't necessarily see tertiary education as the option for them and want to go into a trade or a vocational career? This government, through its cuts, has denied not just access and opportunity through tertiary education but also the opportunities and choice that are provided by vocational education.

Since this government took office, the number of apprentices has dropped by more than 145,000. This is at a time when we need skills. We have a significant skill shortage in this nation in every sector and this government has had this impact on skills. That's what you get when you have cuts to TAFE, schools and now universities. The national day of protest that I attended at the Australian National University just recently was about the many fears of these students, including the shutting of the door to opportunity and choice, to a future that offers endless possibilities. They're very concerned about the fact that their fees are going up. They're concerned that it's going to make it more challenging for them to actually make ends meet. Many who have been to university have pulled beers somewhere. For me, it was cleaning houses here in Canberra and waitressing as well. I did a range of jobs. It's challenging enough just to make ends meet as a student—and here they are with the fees going up. They are also concerned that we're going to see a brain drain in this country because it's going to be too expensive to go to university here.

A few years ago, I met with students at another of my alma maters, the RMIT—the wonderful Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, the oldest workers college in the world. I was down there meeting with students from the Labor club there, and these students, particularly engineers, were really concerned about the fact that it was going to become too expensive to get an education here in Australia. They were talking to me about the possibility of going to Europe—particularly to Germany, because of its expertise in engineering, and STEM more generally, but also because of the expertise and opportunities that are offered there for engineers. So they were weighing up whether they should stay in Australia and go on to do postgraduate education or whether they should go to Germany and get their education there, because they were very, very concerned about the costs here in Australia of doing that. The German option would be wonderful not only in terms of educational opportunity but also just in terms of the experience of living in another country and learning another language. My concern was that, in a country like ours, which is desperate for engineers—it has a significant shortage of engineers—here we were, basically sending them away to be educated elsewhere, and that then they were probably going to stay there, because of the opportunities in industry that we see that Germany provides. So we're not just seeing a brain drain in terms of students going off to other countries to be tertiary educated; we're also seeing a brain drain in terms of people actually staying in other countries and using the benefits of that education in those other nations—particularly in engineering, in which we have such a significant skill shortage here in this country.

We also spoke at the national day of protest about the fact that students actually have to start paying back their HECS debt earlier. That's also going to have a significant impact in terms of students weighing up whether they will do a university degree.

The government is also making changes in relation to enabling courses. The beauty about education now is that it offers so much flexibility. When I was going through, and when those opposite were going through, it was very rigid as to what you could study and when you had to study, in terms of when you had to complete the degree. Now you can pull in subjects from all over a university, and also from vocational education institutions, to create a very bespoke degree. What's available to students now is extraordinary. This has real benefits. Something that this side of the chamber has fought for, for so long, is the need to provide pathways for those students who may not have got the level to get into university but who still aspire to go to university and for those who have gone to TAFE and done a trade and then have worked out later, 'Okay; actually, I do want to go and become a lawyer now,' or, 'I do want to become an engineer now.' A range of pathway options have been provided, so that students do have that flexibility to transition into a new career option, through these enabling courses. Now the government is making changes to these enabling courses so that, where they've traditionally been free, these courses are now going to cost students $3,200. These enabling courses are usually attended by students from under-represented and disadvantaged backgrounds, and we know, from speaking to these students, that the pathways that have been opened have been extraordinary—possibly, from a plumber to an engineer, from a hairdresser to a doctor or from an electrician to an accountant. That's what my father did. But he did it the hard way—it was not actually through an enabling course but through the hard grind of night school after doing his day job as an electrician.

Universities Australia has condemned these changes. Universities Australia Chief Executive Belinda Robinson said that:

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

She said:

This confirms that the Government's plan to impose a $2.8 billion cut on universities and students is way out of kilter with community sentiment …

Voters don't want to see cuts to universities—which are key drivers of economic growth—

I mean, this is what's so extraordinary; these are key drivers of economic growth—

because they create new jobs, reskill Australians and secure $24 billion a year in export income.

Labor understands the importance, the transformative powers, of education—of tertiary education and of secondary education. We see investing in education as investing in our future and in our economic prosperity. Unfortunately, those opposite don't.

Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Listening to the previous member, the member for Canberra, share her personal story of the opportunity that education provided to her and her family really, really resonated with me, as I'm sure it resonates with many Australians who might be listening today. It resonates with me because of my personal story and the story of my grandfather and his determination to see his three daughters educated. It resonates with my because of my personal story of having the opportunities of going to university and of working my way out of poverty, out of a single-parent pension. But it also resonates with me because I've spent a good part of my life in the higher education sector—in the training sector and in the university sector—and I've spent a good part of my life advising young people about their pathways to an education to realise their dreams, and to realise their potential.

In this place, we rise to speak on a lot of bills. We rise to speak on things that sometimes don't really touch your heart very much—things that sometimes I don't completely understand either. But it's bills like these that really get you. Bills like these really get to the heart of things, because they are really about our future and about our young people. If you deal with a lot of young people, as I have in the past and as I continue to, you get a sense of just how important it is to assess the impact of bills like these before they are introduced.

Just the other day, I was flying back home to Perth and one of the cabin crew came up to me and very quietly nudged beside me and said, 'I've read a lot of your work,' and I said, 'Oh, well, thank you very much'. Michelle was her name, and Michelle is doing a bachelors degree in criminology while at the same time working full-time as cabin crew. She has an aspiration to work in counterterrorism and security. She asked for my advice and I said to her, 'Look, send me an email. I'm really happy to sit with you and advise you on how you can realise your dream and how you can craft your pathway through education to achieve this dream.' Since then, we've been contacting each other and I have been advising her on appropriate postgraduate courses for once she finishes her bachelors degree.

Michelle is just one example of the many young people that I come into contact with—and not necessarily young, some people who are mature-age students as well—who see education as a real pathway, a real opportunity, to improve their lives and to achieve something not just for themselves but also as a way of contributing to Australian society, to the political, economic and social wellbeing of our community as a whole.

It's those stories that make me proud to stand up here today to speak about this bill and to oppose this bill, because in its very essence this bill actually means a $3.8 billion cut to our universities. And these cuts come at a time when Australia really should be investing in education, and particularly investing in our universities. Cuts to education simply seem to be part of this government's DNA. We've seen them do the same thing to schools. They have a track record of not just undervaluing education but actually ripping the heart out of our education system, with no understanding and no commitment to delivering a high-quality and equitable education system.

Importantly, the bill also means increased fees and debt for university students. Australian students already pay the sixth-highest fees in the OECD. Australia is already one of the most expensive places in the world to study, and our university students are already feeling the pressure of having to struggle through their university courses. Let me tell you, as somebody who has worked a lot with university students, they're not going out for avocado on toast every morning. They're struggling with the stress of having to make ends meet while they go to university, as the previous speaker, the member for Canberra, also elaborated on in her speech, and they do this while those who have enjoyed the benefits of a free university education are introducing cuts that are going to force them to pay more.

The fee hikes in this bill will make fees and student debt even higher in this country. It will lower the threshold for HELP debt repayments, meaning students will have to pay back that bigger debt even sooner. So we're not just creating bigger debts for students while they're at university and we're not just putting more pressure on them while they're at university but even after they leave university, if they are fortunate enough to find a job in this current climate, we're putting more stress on them by making them pay a bigger debt earlier. So there is little wonder why the higher education sector unanimously opposes this package.

The government like to call the measures in this bill 'reform.' They like to dress it up as education reform. That's a handy bit of semantics that they like to use whenever they want to make it look like they're actually doing something worthwhile. The higher education sector on the other hand, which, I might add, is full of people who understand this policy and its impacts very well, can see that it is not reform at all; it is simply cuts—cuts dressed up as some kind of reform. All this bill amounts to is $3.8 billion of cuts—just like their tax cuts for millionaires and big business.

In contrast, Labor has always supported higher education in this country, and we have delivered real reform for our universities. When we were last in government we increased investment in universities because we understand that investing in education is investing in the future of both the individual student and Australian society generally. We know that a qualification from a TAFE or a university can set you up for life, as the member for Canberra iterated in her personal story and as I have iterated before in this House with my personal story as well. As I said earlier, I'm sure many, many Australians can relate to the story of just how much the opportunity for an education, whether it is a TAFE degree or a university degree, helped them to contribute more positively to Australian society.

We on this side know that many jobs both now and in the future are going to require post-school qualification. The Liberals seem to think that education is a choice, one that can only be afforded to those with rich parents who can afford to pay for it. But they need to know that, increasingly, education and post-school education—TAFE or university—is not a choice but a necessity. That's why these cuts are some of the worst decisions that a government could make. Labor's not about to take money from universities and students in order to give the big end of town a tax break. That's not who we are; that's not how we do things. As I mentioned, I've spent a lot of years in the higher education sector—at TAFE and at university—and I know from experience the devastating impact that this bill will have on universities, on students, on Australia's research capabilities and ultimately on our capacity to meet the needs of a changing world.

As the previous speaker mentioned, there is a danger here of a brain drain in Australia. Already we are seeing our young people who may be university educated in Australia going overseas to work because they can't find jobs here. What this bill will induce is a mass migration of our students to countries overseas where it's cheaper to study and where there's a better quality education framework. We simply can't afford to be losing our young people in this way.

This government likes to talk big. They like to use words like 'innovation,' 'reform,' and 'action', but in actual fact all they've shown is that they lack an understanding of any of these words. How can you 'innovate' while ripping the heart out of universities, which is where innovation begins? How can you 'reform' a sector when all you're doing is cutting funding to that sector? How can you claim to be taking 'action' when all you're doing is slugging already struggling students to pay for your $65 billion tax cuts to the big end of town? I just don't understand how this government can claim to be innovative, how they can claim that this is some kind of reform and how they can claim to be taking action when they have demonstrated absolutely no understanding of the value of education, the value of innovation or the value of research—particularly research that's undertaken in universities. They've shown a lack of understanding of all of those things, because all they are proposing with this bill is a massive cut to universities and a massive cut to the research sector while, at the same time, slugging already struggling students with higher fees.

If we take a closer look at some of the measures in this bill, there is this idea of imposing a fee on enabling courses. These courses are pathway or preparation courses for some students and for some of the most disadvantaged students. There's absolutely no support for this measure from the sector, and I would echo that. I have advised so many students from disadvantaged backgrounds who want nothing more than to be able to rise out of their circumstances, who want nothing more than to be able to get a university education and make a life for themselves. I've come across these people; I've sat with them; I've had them in my home. I've talked to them about what opportunities might be there for them. I've seen young men who are at risk of following a negative pathway in life. I have seen their lives change and their trajectory change by going through a pathway course, an enabling course, and eventually getting into university. I've seen the change that a pathway course, an enabling course, can make to the lives of some of the most disadvantaged young people, people who are vulnerable, and people who are at risk of becoming involved in criminal and terrorist activity.

I stand here to say that I have personally helped several young men get to university by accessing these very enabling courses and diverting them from a path that could have led them to a very tragic end. To propose a fee on these enabling courses will simply shut that door for all of those young people coming from disadvantaged backgrounds who seek nothing more than a better station in life through the opportunities that a university education can afford them.

The cuts in this bill will also damage Australia's research efforts. Australia already has the second-lowest level of public investment in universities in the OECD, and these cuts are only going to make that record worse. Governments around the world understand that investing in higher education is critical to ensure the futureproofing of their country's workforce, but we don't seem to get that here. We do need to futureproof our workforce. We need to do that through innovation and through research that comes through our universities.

I know how important funding and support for university research is because it was my life before entering parliament. As a professor I had several research grants that I was working on, from the Australian Research Council and from other sources. Through those research grants, partnering with some of the top universities around the world, we were able to do some groundbreaking research into what leads young people down a path of radicalisation and terrorist violence. At one of the universities that I worked at, the cuts to the sector meant that dozens of PhD students lost supervisors, leaving them and their studies up in the air.

In conclusion, we don't support this bill. We don't support cuts to education. Labor will always stand for opportunity. Labor will always stand for a quality education sector.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) 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. Like many people in this place, I am one of the lucky ones. I got my tertiary education for free in that small window between when Labor made education free and when we introduced a modest fee for it. I slipped in there and went to the conservatorium at a time when people where I lived didn't go to university. I was one of four daughters. I had three incredibly smart sisters who all left school at 15 or 17 and later got their university degrees part time at night over many years. They were all very successful people, but university just wasn't on the agenda when I was growing up. I was incredibly lucky.

When I was studying, even though I was working part-time jobs to pay my rent I knew that the bulk of the costs of my education were being paid for by people who were paying taxes. I knew that the generation before me was paying for my education, and my expectation was that I would pay for the next one. I would use that education to do well, I would work and pay my taxes, and the next generation would go to university on my tax dollar, just as I went to university on that of the generation before me. That was my expectation.

Like many people at that time who were working our way through uni—in fact, 72 per cent of students at Western Sydney worked their way through—I had some weird jobs. I worked from midnight to dawn at a chicken factory. When people buy a chicken they think it has always looked like it does in the shop. Well, chickens don't die like that. It was my job, from 10 pm to 6 am, to bend those chickens' legs back into the aesthetically pleasing shape you see in the shop. They weren't like that when they reached me on the line, but they were like that when they left. At six o'clock in the morning I would take off my white babushka, my white coat and my white gumboots and go to the conservatorium to get a good piano so I could practise for three hours before my first lecture. Then I would get a few hours of sleep and go back to the chicken factory at 10 o'clock. I did that for quite a while. There were a few other weird jobs as well. In spite of that, I am well aware that the bulk of my education was not paid for by me; it was paid for by the generation before me, and I thank them every day for that.

This bill cuts $3.8 billion from our tertiary education sector on top of the $3.7 billion cut to the Education Investment Fund. To me, this is intergenerational theft. This is a sign that this generation is not prepared to do the work for the next one—that we've taken what we got for free and at someone else's expense and we have refused to pass that on. I think that is an incredible shame. This bill reduces access to education.

In Western Sydney, where I live, it is particularly unfair and unwise. The educational attainment gap in Western Sydney is 31 per cent. Tertiary qualifications among 25- to 34-year-olds in Western Sydney run at 16.5 per cent—significantly lower than the broader community. This bill says that's okay. It is not. It's not okay that people in Western Sydney have an educational attainment gap of 31 per cent. Through the cuts, this bill also puts at risk the outreach programs and the partnerships that work to reduce that attainment gap. Western Sydney works incredibly hard to reduce that number to get young people into university through a range of paths. The $98.3 million cut that Western Sydney University will sustain over the next four years puts that at serious risk.

My electorate is incredibly diverse. It's a fabulous place. People literally cross the oceans to get to Parramatta to build a better life for their children. But whether they are born here or migrated here, they have an extraordinary commitment to educating their children. Fifty per cent of students at Western Sydney University are the first in their family to go to university. As I'm quoting that figure, I'm realising that that's a 2015 figure—50 per cent in 2015 were first in families. It's actually 60 per cent now, so it's grown in two years—a great indication of the work Western Sydney University does to go out into the community and bring people into the education stream.

They say that parents are the greatest indication of a child's education. Well, in Western Sydney, 60 per cent of university students are the first in their family. If you go to a graduation ceremony at Western Sydney University you can see that, because it's a bit like a football match. Someone goes up to get their certificate, and there's cheering and hollering and shouting from the crowd. They're fabulous, fabulous moments. Seventy point two per cent work their way through. One in four students come from a low socioeconomic background, and 37 per cent speak a language other than English at home. This is a university that we in this place should be supporting to the full extent. This is a university doing the hard lifting in Western Sydney, working to close that educational attainment gap, and it's an extraordinary place. It's a great place to visit.

So let's look at what impact these cuts will have. They do a range of things. For all the talk of innovation and jobs and growth, they actually make access to education much more difficult. It's a $3.8 billion cut, even though Australia already has the second-lowest level of public investment in universities in the OECD, and our students already pay the sixth-highest fees in the OECD. This will make the situation even worse. Students will be hit with higher fees, and they'll have to pay off larger debts sooner. They'll have to start paying back their loan while they're earning $42,000 instead of $54,869. The HELP repayments will hit students at a time when they're trying to save for a house or start a family, and $42,000 is only $6,000 more than the minimum wage. By the time you take transfer payments and marginal tax rates into account, we'll see a situation where a person earning $51,000 will have less disposable income than someone earning $32,000.

The government doesn't like to talk about it, but that will also flow through to those who have received VET FEE-HELP or VET student loans for TAFE and vocational education or training. It also attempts to introduce fees for enabling courses. Enabling courses are all those ways that universities have of assisting people who perhaps didn't go to high school or are older. They may have workplace qualifications but not university entrance qualifications. They are ways for universities to take people into the possibility of a university education. Because they don't give qualifications, they've been free. But, under this bill, there'll be charges of up to $3,200 for these courses. Again, that alone would put these courses out of reach of many, many people in Western Sydney and put a hold on one of the great attempts to close that education gap.

Of course, for New Zealanders and permanent residents, there's a nasty in this bill. For the majority of New Zealand citizens and permanent residents studying in Australia, fees will jump significantly, as they'll no longer be able to access Commonwealth supported places. For a lot of the New Zealanders in my electorate who are working very hard to provide the best possible opportunities for their children, this is a serious blow. It simply beggars belief that many of those families would be able to afford the full rates to educate their children. It's not good for that person or for Australia to have large numbers of people who are cut out of university because of an inability to pay.

I want to talk particularly about my fabulous university and the role it plays in Western Sydney. For me, it's one of the great universities. It's incredibly innovative. It built a wonderful building across the road from my office. I had to put up with all the jackhammers for ages, but, once it topped out, it was fine. It's the most extraordinary place, where people gather. It has full IT support. Every wall is a moving whiteboard. It's an extraordinary place for new ways of thinking and for people to assemble to solve problems. The university has been working really hard on stimulating innovation in Western Sydney. It has a start-up incubator called Launch Pad and a small-to-medium tech enterprise accelerator, and neither of those would be able to continue—both would be at serious risk—under what is a $98 million cut to the university. These nice add-ons that the university provides, which solve problems in the community, reach out into the communities and take the skills of universities out into the community, are the things that get cut first as the universities get their budgets cut and pull back to the courses that they deliver. That would be an incredible shame, because it's a great program and we're already seeing the benefits of it.

They have 400 knowledge jobs created at Penrith—again, something outside the standard course structure and something that would be incredibly at risk under these budget cuts. It puts an end, really, to Western Sydney's ability to partner with industry and government in proven job creation programs like, for example, Western Sydney University's co-investment with the Commonwealth in the $30 million Werrington Park Corporate Centre in 2013. Part of the Suburban Jobs Program, this facility brings more than 400 high-value jobs to Penrith in outer Western Sydney, something incredibly important for the region, good for the local economy and good for families that benefit from these really high-skilled jobs.

We also have strategies within Western Sydney University to prepare the labour market for digital disruption, and these would be at risk. Western Sydney University, for example, initiates tests and invests in courses that support the changing labour market paradigms. Starting these courses has high transactional costs initially. It takes a while for these things to take off. For example, the university has recently developed courses in fields such as digital cultures, data visualisation, innovation and change, enterprise innovation and markets, leadership and entrepreneurship, social web analytics, robotics and automated manufacturing—all courses with high start-up costs and high transactional costs that will not generate the kinds of returns that would make them self-sustaining for quite some time. Universities in all places need to be in these spaces.

When I go out into my community in Western Sydney, one of the things I really notice that is perhaps our biggest difficulty at the moment is people with great ideas or great capacity being able to find others with whom to partner and finding fertile ground for ideas to land. You will have a great entrepreneur there, a person with a great idea there and a person with a great need over there, and there are very few places where those people will actually see each other. There's no mirror in Western Sydney that allows a person with a great idea to look and say, 'Well, there's me, and there's my community around me.' So we waste an incredible capacity by not having those linkages.

I know that, even in the last four or five years, the work that Western Sydney University has done in reaching out to the community to build those connections, not just between the university and others but within the community itself, is quite phenomenal. I have mentioned some of those programs, but there is also that extraordinary building they built across the road which is designed for that. It's designed to become a thought hub, a place where a community can think, where it can share its ideas, where it can recognise its skills deficits and where the university can step in, as they have in many of those new courses, and provide structured training in some of the new job areas. That's where our universities need to be.

Now is not the time to try and force universities to pull back to their core activity. Now is not the time for that. It's the time to grow it. It's the time for our best minds within universities and in the community to get together and find ways to position us for 20 years ahead. How a university does that when it's facing these kind of cuts I just don't know, and I know that my university will find it increasingly difficult to do that.

We've had great work by all of our universities in the last few years in trying to position their education programs for the new requirements of work and the new requirements of business, and they are profoundly different from the requirements of even five years ago. They will be profoundly different again in five years time, and that's the space that we need our universities to be in. We need universities working with local business and with local thought leaders and local innovators to work out exactly what we need for the future and deliver it.

These cuts will send us backwards. They will send my families backwards. They will send the economy backwards. They will send the community backwards. There couldn't be a worse time to do it. For all the talk about innovation—being an innovation country, being an innovation leader—and for all the talk of this government about jobs and growth, this is probably one of the most anti-jobs and anti-growth acts that this government could do, because the jobs of the future will come from these kinds of programs and these budget cuts put them at risk.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think you can see from the length of the speakers list just how importantly Labor members regard our opposition to this terrible bill. The Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017 will set tertiary education in this country back even further than it has been going under the Liberals and the Nationals for the last 4½ years.

As my colleague the member for Parramatta just stated, this is exactly the wrong time to be contemplating these sort of cuts. I note that yesterday the member for Hughes said: 'There are no cuts. Funding's going up. Funding's going up.' He was his typical garrulous self. What he failed to mention to the House is that these are cuts, because the coalition went to the election stating a certain level of funding and now it has cut that funding. Every commentator and every university agrees that what is before the House and what is before the parliament is a series of cuts. What we are talking about is $3.8 billion to be cut from universities over the next five years.

This represents a philosophical divide between those on the other side and those on this side. We believe in higher education. We believe in the way it can elevate people's lives. We believe in its transformative effects. We don't see higher education as merely a contract between the student and the university. There is not merely a private gain or an individual gain, but there's also a community gain, a social gain and a national gain from having more, rather than less, young people go to university.

We all want the books to balance. Those on the other side often cry: 'It costs so much money. We've got to make sure the books can balance. It's a budget emergency.' These are some of the ridiculous statements we've heard in recent years. Well, it is a question of priorities. Do you prioritise education or do you prioritise corporate tax cuts? As we know, this Treasurer and this Prime Minister are hell-bent on delivering to this country either a $50 billion tax break or a $65 billion tax break, depending on who you talk to and on what maths you agree with. Let's go with the lower figure: a $50 billion tax break over the next 10 years. Compare that—why on earth would you be cutting university funding in order to fund a corporate tax break? It doesn't make sense. It's a corporate tax break that's only going to deliver 0.1 per cent of GDP growth over 10 years? It's a rounding error. If you put that money into higher education alone, the extra economic activity that that will generate for this country over the next 10 years will be many magnitudes higher, not to mention the benefits to the lives of those involved.

I look up to the gallery and I see school children who have come to this place—hi, kids—to see their parliament in action. Over the next 13 years, they'll be looking at going to university. Why on earth would this parliament be contemplating making it harder for these kids to go to university, rather than easier? Surely, it is the job of this parliament to make it easier for these kids to get into university, not harder? Why was it easier for the members of this parliament to have gone to high school and university and to have had either a free education—thanks to Gough Whitlam—or a low-cost university education? Why was it easier for members of this parliament, myself included, and certainly members on the opposite benches, to have a low-cost university education, and yet we're going to tell these kids in these galleries, 'Sorry kids, mum and dad have to pony up $100,000 over the next 10 or 15 years to pay for you to go to university.' It's absolutely unconscionable. It's unnecessary. It's mean.

This government just gets it wrong on everything. You would think that, if there were an area of public policy that it would have put some thought into, it would be higher education. They've had 29 reviews. Twenty-nine reviews, costing $4.7 million, and they still can't get it right. That's because this minister has not been tasked with improving higher education; he's been tasked with cutting funding, because what we have is a Prime Minister and a Treasurer who are so obsessed with their $50 billion corporate tax break that they have tasked this minister, the so-called minister for education, with cutting costs rather than improving education. What an indictment of him and his capabilities as a minister that he gives no thought to improving higher education and thinks only of running a red line through costs! When your sole motivation is to feed the slavish desires of a Treasurer and a Prime Minister more interested in corporate tax breaks than education funding, you really should be hanging up your boots as a minister.

In my electorate of Lyons in regional Tasmania, we have areas of very high disadvantage. At a forum on inequality with the shadow regions minister, the member for Whitlam, earlier this year, we listened as people in my community talked about the challenges of getting through high school, let alone contemplating college in my state—we don't have senior high school; years 11 and 12 go onto college—and how thoughts of university or other further education are simply not on many people's radar. That's now, before these cuts, before the higher charges kick in, before the demands for earlier repayments and before the $3,000 fees for the enabling courses.

What sort of a government would introduce fees for enabling courses for people who have struggled through their lives and maybe have got to adulthood through high school or maybe have struggled through high school and thought, 'You know, I want to improve my life, and maybe I'll try to get to university'? At the moment, those enabling courses allow adults to sample university life at no cost to see whether they are suited for life at university in order to improve their lives, and this government wants to introduce $3,000 fees for enabling courses for people who want to improve their lives. There's no qualification with enabling courses. There's no diploma or certificate. An enabling course merely allows people to taste what university might be like to see whether they're suited for it. This government wants to say: 'Well, you can pay $3,000 for that. You can pay $3,000 to see whether you are able to go to university. Then, if you still decide to go to university, we're going to heap a whole pile more fees on top of you and you'll be paying them back earlier.' What sort of signal does that send to people who want to improve their lives and get a university education in this country? It is the wrong signal and the wrong priority from a government that is all wrong on just about everything it touches.

When you're busy trying to keep a roof over your family's head—I'll come back to that forum on inequality—and you're dealing with life issues in the outer suburbs and the regions and thinking of putting food on the table, even the thought of fitting anything else into your life is often too much. The thought of going to university doesn't even enter your head. When you make it out of reach, when you make it seem so insurmountable that you can't even contemplate the idea that you can even afford to go to university, people won't even think about it. It won't even be on their radar. It is just an assault. It is an absolute assault on people in regional communities by the ministers at the table today, including the Nationals Minister for Infrastructure and Transport. How the Nationals can be supporting this bill is just beyond me, because it's going be people in regional communities who will be deeply affected by this bill.

You don't need to look far to see other nations that are providing free and low-cost education. There are a number of European countries now, Germany amongst them, that are starting to go back to free education for university, and they are booming. Their economies aren't diving down the toilet. They're doing very well. Their citizens are happy. Their horizons are wider. Their economies are going from strength to strength.

The notion that this bill is needed to cut costs in order to balance the books is a lie. It is an absolute lie, because, at the same time that this government wants to cut costs for higher education, it wants to give $50 billion away to corporations in tax cuts and give tax breaks to people earning more than $180,000 a year. Look, I love tax breaks. Who doesn't love a tax cut?

But when you're faced with a choice between putting money into higher education and giving corporations who are recording record profits, it is no choice at all—you put your money on the kids. You put the money on the kids and the families of this country who want to improve their lives, because we all know that higher education improves not just individual lives but Australian life. Can those opposite really look me in the eye and tell me that it is a good plan for Australia to cut this much money out of higher education over the next 10 years at the same time they want to shovel $50 billion into the pockets of CEOs and corporations? Why on earth are we following the failed model of the United States, when the evidence that it hasn't worked is before us? Sure, the United States has some great universities in the Ivy League, but, gee, you've got to pay to get into them.

A lot of universities in America are rubbish. They give out rubbish certificates and rubbish degrees. Some of the community colleges are called McDonald's universities. Is that really the model that we want to employ, when we've traditionally had one of the best-performing university sectors in this country for the last 30 or 40 years? When Gough Whitlam introduced free tertiary education, it transformed lives. It transformed the lives of so many young people in regional communities and outer suburbs who previously hadn't thought they could go past high school. And I would say it has also transformed the lives of some of those opposite. It kills me that the Minister for Education and Training, Senator Birmingham, is a product of a public school education and a publicly funded university education. Here he is, turning his back on those sectors and making it harder for people like him, for the kids like him, to get the education that he got. It is a travesty.

Let's dig down for Tasmania. The ABS did a longitudinal study of the Tasmanian student cohorts of 2006 and 2010. Of the students who completed year 12 in 2010, 57 per cent were fully engaged in work or study one year after leaving school. Just under a quarter were in full-time employment and a third were in full-time study. A small proportion were in both part-time work and part-time study. Seventy-two per cent were fully engaged. So many Tasmanian schoolkids just don't even think of university.

We've already seen what this government is doing with TAFE—the TAFE cuts which have affected my state so dreadfully. One of the first things it did in 2013—in fact, I think it was the very first thing it did in 2013—was kill the Trade Training Centres in Schools Program, a program started, actually, by John Howard. That was a program that Labor did believe in. Labor thought, 'You know, that actually works well; we'll keep it.' And we did keep it through the Rudd-Gillard years. But one of the very first things this government did in 2013 was kill that program, and that ended opportunities for kids in my electorate. I'm so passionate about it, because I know that Campbell Town, in the heart of my electorate, was pretty much next off the rank to get one, and it didn't happen, so the kids in Campbell Town have missed out on that opportunity.

I'm a big believer in TAFE. I'm a big believer in apprenticeships. And I'm a big believer in higher education and university education because I know, and all the evidence shows, that a university education is the best pathway for higher pay and better life opportunities. Those opportunities should not be denied to people based on how much they can afford to pay or how much their parents can afford to pay. We do not want this country going back to a pre-Whitlam system, where the only way you got into university was either through a scholarship or because your parents were wealthy enough to send you there.

Kids should be going to university based on merit, based on their academic ability and based on their aptitude and their desire to be there. The only things that should count when it comes to university education are whether you're up to it intellectually and whether you've got the drive to do it. Nothing else should matter. But under this government, through these cuts, what will happen increasingly is that young people will be denied a university education because their parents don't earn enough or because they live in a postcode where they're surrounded by family, friends and their peers at school who don't think that a university education is for them, because they just don't contemplate that it's on their horizon. Any barrier that this government or this parliament puts in the way of higher education is a travesty and absolutely disgraceful. We can see from the speaking list how seriously Labor members take our opposition to this bill. The bill sends the wrong signal to this country, it's the wrong bill for the times and we oppose it unequivocally.

Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, rise today to speak on the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (A More Sustainable, Responsive and Transparent Higher Education System) Bill 2017. As speakers on this side of the House have pointed out from the outset, Labor opposes this bill, and I strongly support the amendments moved by the member for Sydney.

You can see from the extent of our speaking list that many people on our side feel very strongly about ensuring that there's proper funding for education, particularly in this case for higher education funding. They are speaking on this to highlight how unfair this bill is. It is an unfair piece of legislation because, essentially, it means cuts for our universities, increases in fees for students, larger debts for students and making students pay back those bigger debts sooner. All in all, these changes are incredibly unfair. That's why we're seeing such a large number of speakers on this side and so few on that side, which is disappointing but which reflects their views on education generally.

Coming in here speaking about the Turnbull government's harsh cuts to education is a bit like Groundhog Day. We on this side of the House have been here many times in the last few years talking about their unfair cuts to schools, to TAFE, to apprenticeships and to training generally. Now we're here talking about their unfair cuts to universities. It seems that, over and over again, you just can't trust the Liberals and the Nationals when it comes to education and on many other issues that we've spoken about here. But, today, we're talking about education, another stage in education where they've got more harsh cuts. We make it clear that Labor stands with students and universities against the government's cuts and increases in fees.

This is a government that really is determined to push ahead with this harsh legislation to increase student fees and cut university funding by $3.8 billion. That's a huge amount. In the context of my electorate, the Liberal and National plan means that Southern Cross University, based in northern New South Wales, will have its funding slashed by $22.7 million over four years. That's a huge amount for a regional university like Southern Cross University. Of course, those cuts are part of the more than $617 million in cuts across New South Wales—a massive cut for my home state of New South Wales.

The fact is that cuts to universities risk lowering the quality of education that students receive. They also mean that students will be paying more for less and, as I said before, be forced to repay their debts sooner. Remember also that there will be university jobs at risk because of this. In contrast to these policies of the Turnbull government, the policies of the last Labor government meant a greater investment in education and an extra 190,000 students who got the opportunity to go to university. The fact is that the Turnbull government simply do not believe in investing in our young people's future and our country's future. They've already made $17 billion worth of cuts to schools and almost $3.5 billion in cuts to TAFE—massive amounts of cuts to training and education.

Today, I particularly want to focus on what these cuts mean for regional and rural Australia. It is already very difficult for younger people from the regions to get to university. There are many impediments, and this government just seems to keep putting more and more roadblocks in their way. This bill means that it will be very hard for those young people to access university. Many people tell me, all the time, that it's simply not on their radar and that it's just not possible for their children even to go to university. The cuts in training that we've seen from this government and the very high levels of youth unemployment, particularly in our regions add up to the fact that our younger people will have less opportunity to access higher education.

I would like to make it clear that it is the National Party that people in the regions blame for this. I often say, 'National Party choices hurt.' The National Party's choice and decision to support a bill that cuts funding to universities and increases fees for students from the regions will really hurt those younger people and their families in regional and rural Australia. They will be held to account for these harsh cuts and harsh changes to our university system.

The bill clearly demonstrates that the government's not serious about investing in a future that grows the economy and ensures that our younger people can access good and decent jobs. Instead the bill delivers almost $4 billion of cuts to the university sector. Those on the other side claim it's reform. In fact, it's not reform. It fails as reform because it fails to make a commitment to a sector that is absolutely integral and important to our younger people and their futures. It's not reform; it's another tedious Groundhog Day moment, where the basic rights of our young people are being eroded to make room for the $65 billion tax cut for big business.

Government is about choices and the choices that are made. The Turnbull government makes choices to give these massive tax cuts to multimillionaires and big business, but Labor makes choices about investing in education because we understand how important it is. When it comes to education, we should be ensuring that we are a country of equality and opportunity. We should be assisting every young person who wishes to improve their future by providing them with the opportunity to access higher education. Indeed, this bill goes to the heart of the inequality we see imposed on every sector under this government.

Universities support more than 130,000 jobs across Australia. Cuts to universities will put those jobs at risk, especially in our regional areas. And people employed in the universities in our regions also greatly assist our regional economies. So it will have a massive flow-on impact.

I seek leave to continue my speech at a later hour.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.