Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker Mitchell, I commend you on your facial hair as well! I move:

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

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes that Australia's higher education system is failing our kids, workers and businesses, due to Coalition Government policies that have:

(1) slashed funding from higher education and vocational education and training;

(2) restricted access to university, with 200,000 Australians locked out of university; and

(3) abandoned our regions".

I rise to speak on the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019. Labor will support this bill and the introduction of deterrents to academic cheating services in higher education. The bill implements recommendations made by the Higher Education Standards Panel. The panel concluded:

… inadequately constrained cheating activity has the potential to cause great damage to the domestic and international reputation of Australian higher education.

We know that these fears are both serious and widely held. A survey of academics found that, in their experience, more than two-thirds of university staff suspected that pieces of submitted work were not written by the relevant student. There is currently no Australian jurisdiction with offences aimed specifically at deterring or punishing organised cheating services. Labor understands the importance of higher education to this country, and we will support legislation that defends its integrity. We know there is strong support in the sector for legislation to safeguard academic standards in Australian universities.

The bill creates an offence of providing, offering to provide or arranging for a third person to provide an academic cheating service to a student undertaking a higher education course in Australia. This contains different offences for services that operate commercially and those that do not. Commercial services will face both criminal and civil penalties, while services not operating commercially will face civil penalties.

The bill also creates an offence of the publication or broadcasting of an advertisement for one of these cheating services at proposed section 114B. Labor has had some concerns about the design of this offence. A breach of section 114B(1) gives rise to a criminal offence and is subject to a maximum penalty of two years in prison or 500 penalty units, or both, in circumstances where the advertised cheating service is operating for a commercial purpose or if the person broadcasting the advertisement does so for a commercial purpose. So a person could publish an advertisement for an academic cheating service that is operating for a commercial purpose, and that person might receive no personal benefit from the conduct but still be subject to prosecution for breaching this provision and face a potential jail term. Labor was concerned that this bill could unintentionally capture vulnerable students who are simply forwarding or sharing electronically an advertisement for commercial services, even if it's disguised as something more innocent and even if the student is unaware of exactly what they're sharing. As the explanatory memorandum acknowledges, these can be sophisticated and persuasive operations that are actually aimed at vulnerable people and often promoted as an altruistic service.

We've discussed these concerns with Minister Tehan, who has committed to amending the explanatory memorandum. I particularly thank Minister Tehan, and his advisers especially, for being very cooperative with my office. I've been assured that the addendum to the explanatory memorandum will now note that the intent of this bill is not to prosecute those who inadvertently promote a cheating service—for example, on social media where there's no proof of intention, knowledge or recklessness. Again, I thank the minister for acknowledging Labor's concerns and making these changes. As I said at the start, Labor supports measures that deter academic cheating services.

But we want to make sure that the legislation doesn't implicate vulnerable students who have received no personal benefit from their actions or are ignorant of what these services actually involved. Labor is very concerned about vulnerable students in the higher education system being targeted by cheating services. On top of the deterrence included in the bill, we would encourage universities to offer and publicise support services for any students who are struggling so that instead of being tempted by these predatory operations they actually have somewhere trusted to go to for help, support, advice and guidance.

This is particularly important for those international students who are so far from their homes and families, particularly in a time of pandemic, and separated from their usual personal support systems and perhaps have come to Australia with high family expectations as well. Over the past decade—in fact, right up until the pandemic hit this year—the number of international students in Australian universities had increased dramatically. We have a duty to support people in what can be a very challenging experience for some. We've had issues with universities enrolling students who may struggle to meet course requirements, particularly with the English language, or who might struggle with the language standards generally, which make these students particularly vulnerable to the kinds of services that this bill is designed to deter—the rogues who will profit from people's fear of failure at university. These situations are often made worse by the circumstances international students face at their work, where sadly many have experienced wage theft or experienced exploitation of other sorts.

A recent survey by the United Workers Union of more than 200 international students found that 25 per cent of the people who responded were paid less than $10 an hour, 60 per cent earned less than the national minimum wage and 76 per cent did not receive penalty rates for weekend or night work. This only compounds the pressure placed on international students—stress at work on top of the stress of university. In fact, at the moment, some of them are in such stress that they don't even have enough food to survive. This only compounds the pressure placed on international students. We need to address these symptoms, but we also need to address the deeper causes.

This is not just important for the students we're taking in but important for the health of our higher education system itself. Services like this survive by their international reputation, and the reputation of Australian universities has copped a battering among international students over the past few months. Some might suggest that it all started when the bloke responsible for the 'Where the bloody hell are you?' campaign said, 'Why the bloody hell are you here?' When the Prime Minister said, 'Go home,' to our international students, that actually delivered a big blow to our reputation. I hope his words weren't deliberate and divisive and that they weren't part of some cheap political point scoring and that maybe he just misspoke, but it was certainly not what we needed and not with the international university sector needed.

Since then, we've seen international students lined up around the block. I heard on AM this morning about the stressful situation for Brazilian students at the Gold Coast. We've seen international students desperate for a free meal and not getting any support from the federal government. I've seen the Korean community in my electorate lining up to actually give food to some of these students, but not everyone is as well organised as the Korean community. Many of them are cut off from support networks.

So what are these international students going to tell their friends and family about Australia when they get home? They are some of the best diplomats we have, which is especially important at a time when DFAT funding has gone down over the last seven years and when our aid program has gone down over the last seven years. One of our best ambassadors have been the people who've been turning up from our universities, but what are they going to say?

We are talking about an industry that provides Australia with some of its most significant export income—its third-biggest, in fact—that provides huge value to regional communities and that is vital to this country's ongoing economic prosperity. It is a system that this government seems to be deliberately throwing under a bus.

Investing in Australian universities has always been good for this nation. The minister himself acknowledged that productivity improvements in the sector can increase economic growth by $2.7 billion a year, but the Morrison government is now sitting by and watching as universities shed jobs, close campuses, and cut back on courses and degrees. In fact, the Morrison government has gone out of its way to exclude universities from some of the COVID support programs. The Morrison government has repeatedly changed its policy, in order to stop university staff from accessing wage subsidies, and it is putting thousands of jobs at risk. We have already learnt that hundreds of jobs will go in Geelong and Warrnambool, where Deakin University announced they would be losing 400 jobs, and in Rockhampton, where Central Queensland University has announced that three campuses will close—the Sunshine Coast, Yeppoon and Biloela—resulting in up to 180 jobs. I haven't seen the National Party speaking up for these rural and regional universities. We have also seen it in Melbourne and Bendigo, with La Trobe flagging job losses. Where are The Nationals when it comes to speaking up for their universities? Unfortunately, this is just the beginning of a sector-wide crisis, I suggest. From consultations that the member for Sydney and I have had with the universities, we know that so many of them are under stress. It will only get worse next year. If we don't have students arriving, that might actually lock in long-term problems.

The impact of these losses on regional communities will be particularly devastating. Universities support 14,000 jobs in country Australia, the home of The Nationals. They help underpin the local economy in countless towns. Across the board we're looking at tens thousands of livelihoods being destroyed. We're talking about academics, tutors, admin staff, library staff, catering staff, ground staff, cleaners, security, and so many others, all people living in country towns and country cities, all with families and with bills to pay and commitments to meet. Why has the Morrison government gone out of its way to exclude these workers, and are the Nationals now officially the 'silent Australians' in the Coalition agreement? Why is the Prime Minister so determined to abandon universities? At this point this action seems like a deliberate attack on Australian higher education.

This has never been Labor's approach to universities and it never will be. When Labor was last in government we made changes to ensure that university education was accessible to all and that access was never limited by background or location. We wanted and needed our smartest people to go to university. We boosted investment from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013. We opened up the system, uncapping places, giving an additional 190,000 of our brighter people a spot at university. This decision was driven by our commitment to improving Australia's productivity and our commitment to breaking down disadvantage and inequality in the system. It succeeded in bringing in new people to university. Indigenous enrolments went up. More Australians with disability entered the system, as did people from regional and remote areas.

Education helps to create jobs and results in higher wages and a better quality of life for all Australians. This should be the guiding principle of Australian education policy—a vision of equity and productivity, supported by funding and resources. Sadly, it's not a vision shared by the myopic Morrison government, which is watching thousands of jobs go and campuses close, and is doing nothing to stop it.

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

Is the amendment seconded?

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Cities and Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

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

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time, to this the honourable member of Moreton has moved as an amendment that all words after 'that' be omitted with a view of substituting other words. The question now is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question. I call the member for Higgins.

Katie Allen (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

From the co-discovery of penicillin to aircraft black boxes, wi-fi and Google Maps, Australia has always prided itself as a country of ingenuity. The higher education sector in Australia plays a critical role in driving innovation and productivity as well as equipping students with the necessary skills for future success. My background as a professor at not just one but two universities—one here and one in the UK—gives me a strong appreciation for the higher education sector. I will always be a champion for efforts to strengthen and grow the sector here in Australia.

I've taught across the full spectrum of educational sectors and supervised dozens of higher-degree students. It's been a great privilege to teach these young students, a privilege that I have taken very seriously. Not only was I teaching them research methodologies and content expertise but I was also providing guidance on how to approach their subject with an ethical and open mind. I actually think Brand Australia has, at the heart of it, a very authentic, ethical, pragmatic approach to education, learning, academia and the pursuit of higher education, and central to that is the concept of integrity.

In recent decades there has been tremendous growth in the number of students pursuing higher education in Australia. As of 2016, approximately 56 per cent of Australian 19-year-olds undertake post-secondary-school qualifications, jumping from 41 per cent a decade ago. At the same time, those pursuing a postgraduate degree rose by 46 per cent. With regard to post-secondary-school qualifications, my own children currently contribute to the statistics. This has occurred alongside Australia emerging as the third-most-popular destination for international students in the English-speaking world. That is something to be proud of, particularly when we know that Australia is a long way from Europe and the US. Prospective students are drawn to our proximity in the Asia-Pacific region, and we are respected for our institutions but also for our way of life and, as I said before, our way of thinking. We are a reflection of the culture that we embody.

Economically, the provision of education to overseas students amounts to $32 billion as an industry. Additionally, the emergence of virtual learning technology, really pioneered here in Australia, is allowing more Australians than ever before to pursue higher education. From 2011 until 2015, domestic enrolments from regional locations increased by 17 per cent—this is very pleasing—and Indigenous enrolments increased by 38 per cent. One in four Australian students are now completing university units online. It is literally a plethora of opportunity.

As our fourth-biggest export, it is crucial that we endeavour to maintain confidence and integrity in the higher education sector. However, the growth of our education sector and the development of technology have also coincided with the development of third-party academic cheating services. This commonly involves the provision of academic material for student assessment or impersonating a student in an exam or a practical test. This is big business. Companies such as MyMaster and EssayMill reaped $160,000 in 2014, before being investigated.

I commend the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019 for seeking to curtail this activity and safeguarding the integrity of the higher education sector. The bill will make it an offence to provide, arrange or advertise academic cheating services to students studying with Australian higher education providers and imposes harsh criminal and civil penalties. TEQSA will be appointed to enforce the new laws and will be empowered to gather intelligence, investigate and prosecute offenders. Importantly, the bill targets the providers of cheating services, not the students who might use such services. Instead, those who cheat will remain subject to their institution's own academic integrity policies. This is important, as third-party academic cheating services often target vulnerable international students. I have experience, in my own professional life, of seeing young students from Asia with poor English struggling to deal with their courses and being targeted by these terrible services.

Furthermore, university administrative services are often stretched as they attempt to meet the complex needs of international students in Australia. This bill is an important step in protecting the value of our international students and the value of our higher education sector. And we do value the sector. The bill, importantly, sends a message to employers that Australia takes the integrity of its higher education system and its graduates very seriously.

The University of Melbourne flagged concerns in 2019 that punitive measures would be imposed against unpaid assistance under the proposed bill. This has been addressed by exempting legitimate academic services, such as certified tutoring companies, from the bill. The bill therefore appropriately balances the preference of universities that they address the issue of unpaid assistance through existing academic integrity frameworks.

The value of our higher education sector relies on us protecting its integrity. This bill equips TEQSA with the appropriate tools to stamp out third-party academic cheating services and ensure our education institutions remain world-class. It will ensure that universities remain competitive on a global scale and an attractive destination for students and will also make our graduates more attractive to our employers.

Australia is not the only country susceptible to the threat of third-party academic cheating services. However, by taking stern action we will safeguard the reputation and legacy of our academic pioneering. I'm pleased to support this important bill.

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

I thank the member for Higgins. The question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor supports the intention of this bill, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019, and will be supporting this bill. It is of course very important that we have a strong integrity system everywhere: in this parliament, in our general lives and in our university systems.

People struggle at university. We know this. We also know that people from vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds particularly struggle at university. Many people go to university as the first person in their family to do so, and it has been a matter of aspiration and hard work and sacrifice to get there. But, for someone who is the first person in their family to attend university, it can be a shock to the system. It can be a difficult place, because they don't come from a family or a community where people know what university is like and have been there before and can talk them through the difficulties. Particularly in some parts of my community, in the electorate of Dunkley, those young men and women who've worked so hard to get to university and are the first person from their family to go to university often come from financial disadvantage. So they have dual burdens. They have to adapt to this new way of life, to the burden of learning in a way that they haven't had to learn before, because it's all about personal responsibility and where they don't have, necessarily, the guidance of the teachers or tutors—though they wouldn't have had tutors because they were at public schools—that they've had in high school. On top of that, they also have the burden of balancing their social life and having to work just to support themselves, to be able to buy the textbooks and the other things that are needed to get by and to pay the rent. So it's easy to see how vulnerable students who don't have a support network around them can be targeted by these professional organisations for cheating.

So this bill is important. But what is also important is that we make sure vulnerable students get assistance so that they're not an easy target for these commercial operations that want to benefit from the cheating, that we target the commercial operations and that we help the students who are, by and large, their victims. I and my Labor colleagues urge governments and universities to work together to make sure that proper support is there.

I urge this government, as it is looking at JobKeeper, to look at two groups who have been left out that are relevant to this legislation—that is, vulnerable students and casuals who haven't been in the same workplace for 12 months. Many of the people I've spoken about are young students who are working to support themselves—not for extra pocket money—to get through university and, of course, the universities themselves. I'll return to that point.

There is no doubt that investing in and maintaining our world-class universities is good for everyone. Education is the ticket. There is no doubt that education is the ticket. We know that a university education adds to Australia's productive capacity about $140 billion in GDP and we know that Australia will require an extra 3.8 million university qualifications by 2025. We won't do that with a government that continues to cut funding to universities and to research and which excludes universities from any support package to get through COVID-19 and the economic consequences. By capping university places, cutting $2.2 billion from the system and locking more than 200,000 students out of the opportunity of a university qualification, this government is doing the current generation and future generations of Australians a massive disservice. Cutting $328.5 million from university research is something to be ashamed of. The minister himself said at the National Press Club that productivity improvements in the higher education sector can deliver $2.7 billion to Australia's GDP per annum. How can that occur when universities are experiencing the cuts that I've talked about?

Universities provide a cauldron for research, for knowledge, for culture and for learning but they're also economic drivers within the community. We know in my community of Dunkley of the economic benefits and opportunities for young people from our community, particularly young people who may well be the first person in their family to attend university, that the Peninsula campus of Monash University brings. The university campus in our community also brings a sense of pride. We can point to it as part of our culture of learning, of striving, of betterment and, in particular, of doing courses that then benefit the community. Studying paramedic medicine, studying nursing, studying early childhood, doing research into addiction and mental health problems, being part of a community with a university that's partnering with the Peninsula Health and Frankston Hospital to build a centre of excellence to do research into healthy ageing and doing research into how to better help people who suffer from addictions and mental health problems bring a sense of pride for my community. The university campus is a source of economic input and will provide an opportunity for people from my community to study and be part of world-class cutting-edge research in our own backyard. But these things won't be able to happen at the level we want them to if universities continue to be left to fend for themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic and coming out of it.

In May of this year, as one of the members of parliament which has a campus of Monash University in their electorates, I received a letter from Professor Margaret Gardner, the president and vice-chancellor of the university. The letter was sent to all members of parliament who have a campus in their electorate. The vice-chancellor was writing to let us know the significant issues that universities were facing then and would continue to face if they didn't get government support. I quote:

The economic effects of the crisis are now being felt by Monash and other Australian universities and there are no signs of recovery on the horizon. For Monash, 2020 and 2021 will be the most challenging circumstances we have ever faced. We have lost a large portion of the financial ability to support the current quality of our education and research. Our loss will be felt throughout the community; for every dollar lost, the community will lose close to two dollars supporting employment in every other sector.

The crisis is creating hardship among our students. It is also hampering Monash's ability to continue to invest in research and infrastructure and to maintain our hard-fought reputation in a hugely competitive global market.

Enrolments for Semester 1 are now confirmed and we can predict the likely financial outcomes for this year. The 2020 revenue shortfall for Monash is $350 million—

because primarily of a fall in student fees. Monash Peninsula campus has experienced a 43 per cent decline in enrolments for business studies, primarily due to a loss of foreign-student enrolments. I'll go on to quote from the letter:

To address the shortfall in our 2020 revenue the University has made reductions of approximately $100 million of capital works, and reduced operating costs by around $200 million. Some $80 million of these cost reductions will come from a freeze on staff recruitment, the reduction in casual and sessional staff (which we have tried to minimise), and a 20 per cent pay cut taken by the Senior Executive.

The university is also drawing on cash reserves and is increasing borrowing. The vice-chancellor wrote:

At present, we face this crisis largely relying on our own resources. The guarantee of Commonwealth Grant Scheme (CGS) funding has no effect on Monash finances since it is payment for the domestic students we currently have enrolled. Less than one-third of Monash's total revenue comes from the CGS and Higher Education Loan Program payments.

Yet the vice-chancellor confirmed:

Despite these challenges Monash remains committed to continuing to play an active role in supporting the community.

That was in May. Despite repeated calls from me, my Labor colleagues, the shadow minister, universities, unions and students, the government has continued to refuse to do anything to support our universities that it says it values, the students it says it values or the research it says it values, to get through this crisis. It's not good enough. It's just not good enough.

We could see 21,000 jobs being lost in the next six months. We know that it's hitting regional universities very hard. We know that for every dollar of revenue lost by universities $2 is lost to the community. The federal government can't explain why a university student working a $100 shift per week receives the full $1,500 JobKeeper wage subsidy but a full-time university worker with kids to support is not eligible. We're relying on our brilliant universities and researchers to find a vaccine for COVID-19, but they can't rely on this government to protect their jobs.

Released just today was a substantial study by Monash University, the biggest study done into the impact of the social restrictions on young people in Australia. It is a really important piece of work that gives us insights into why loneliness and isolation is linked to mental health issues. It's a substantial piece of work that gives insights into how we can help people who have been impacted by social isolation and loneliness to be positive about the future, to help avoid significant mental health impacts and to help deal with the ones they're already feeling.

If we don't have universities like Monash University, then our society, our community, will be diminished. It will be diminished because people from communities like mine—people who don't have mums and dads, grandmas and grandpas, and great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers who are university graduates with white-collar jobs, and who don't grow up in families of lawyers and bankers but are working so hard to have a better future for themselves—won't be able to go to university. They won't be able to go to university if universities end up having to impose enormous fees on students in order to survive. They won't be able to contribute what we know they can with their brilliant minds if universities are not supported by this government.

So it really is great that the government is bringing in this legislation to try to crack down on commercial cheaters. But it's not enough to support this really crucial sector and all of the work that it does.

Celia Hammond (Curtin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019. This bill will make it an offence to provide or advertise academic cheating services to, or arrange academic cheating services for, students studying with Australian higher-education providers either here in Australia or overseas.

Cheating is not a new phenomenon. I would proffer a guess that since the modern university has existed there have been occurrences of students cheating—and by 'cheating', I mean putting forward work that is not, either in whole or in part, of your own doing. The ways in which it can occur vary, but typical examples include: copying someone else's work or ideas; getting somebody else to write your essays or do your work, either in full or in part; and copying wades of text from reputable sources, without citing them, with the intent of passing it off as your own work.

Just as cheating isn't new in the university context, nor are the responses or approaches that universities have taken to address it. Maintaining and preserving the academic integrity of a university, given that it goes to the heart of a university's purpose and reputation, has been a primary focus and concern of university governing boards and academics for a very long time. There have always been university statutes and rules setting out penalties for breaches of academic integrity.

In more recent times, and with the guidance of TEQSA and the Higher Education Standards Panel, all universities have invested significant time and resources in addressing cheating. They've implemented new initiatives to educate students about academic integrity and to promote good student conduct. Yes, we're all worried about vulnerable students. Yes, we're all worried about those students who come to university who may not know the rules about how to cite or refer to other texts. Universities all run introductory-level courses, and maintain them throughout the degree's progress, to educate students and make sure that they are aware.

Universities are also taking steps to promote a wider understanding across the sector of the best types of assessment, to minimise opportunities for fraudulent activity by students. They've also invested significantly in new mechanisms to detect cheating and to detect academic fraud. There has been a concerted effort by the university sector where universities have worked together to share best practices, and universities should be highly commended on the action that they have taken.

At the same time, universities have been faced by increasing challenges in the contract cheating area. Contract cheating is the purchase of somebody else's work to present it as your own. While it's not new, the ready availability of sophisticated communication technology and the rise of social media have increased the opportunity to access and/or repurpose another person's work to present it as your own. The availability of essay-writing services is pervasive, with both local and international websites advertising their services. In fact, prior to coming into the chamber I did a quick google search, typing in 'I want to buy an essay on torts'. Immediately, 10 sites came up on the first page. The parliamentary blocker blocked the first site, I'm pleased to say, but I managed to get through to the second website, where I could have purchased an essay on torts had I chosen to do so—I didn't.

In looking into this, the Higher Education Standards Panel noted in a report in 2017:

No Australian jurisdiction currently has offences on the books specifically aimed at deterring or punishing cheating by students or organised cheating services.

Instead, what we've got is an array of laws, civil and criminal, across all of the jurisdictions, which potentially could be used, but there are significant hurdles with all of them. So the Higher Education Standards Panel came to the conclusion that, in order to assist universities and the sector in general in their steps to address the rising concern of contract cheating, additional legislation is required.

The amendments to the TEQSA Act which are being put forward in this bill are based on the advice of the Higher Education Standards Panel. In accordance with that advice, this legislation is aimed at those who provide cheating services and not at the students who might use such services. Students who cheat remain subject to the institutions' own academic integrity policies, their own processes and their own sanctions.

An exposure draft version of the bill was publicly released on 7 April last year for comment, and there has been strong stakeholder support for the legislation. For those providers that offer academic cheating services, criminal and civil penalties of up to two years jail, and fines of up to 500 penalty units—around $100,000—will apply where the cheating service or advertising is for a commercial purpose. Civil penalties will also apply where the cheating service is provided without remuneration. Strict liability will apply to the criminal offence of providing an academic cheating service in order to undermine services' tactics of putting up disingenuous disclaimers regarding the purpose and use of their products.

TEQSA will be appointed to enforce the new law, with its powers to include monitoring, intelligence gathering, investigation and prosecution of identified offenders. TEQSA will have additional power to collect and disseminate information about cheating websites and their users to help institutions combat cheating activity on campus, but with safeguards to protect unwarranted sharing of personal information about those who purchase cheating materials. TEQSA will have the ability to seek court injunctions to force internet service providers and search engines to block cheating websites.

Ensuring academic integrity in our higher education system is of vital importance. The consequences of not having a robust and multifaceted approach to ensuring academic integrity can result in great damage to the domestic and international reputation of Australian higher education. It's also a risk to employers. How do you know that the person that you're employing actually did all of the work that led to their qualification? It is a risk to student mobility. Once our border restrictions are lifted and our students are able to travel internationally to undertake further studies, if the academic integrity of our system has been put under attack and is in question then the mobility of our students, either as students or as graduates, will be greatly harmed. It also undermines the integrity of all of the certifications. Academic integrity is key to universities. It is key to our Australian university sector, and we must ensure that what we do protects and enhances that.

This bill, as I said, reinforces the work that has already been undertaken by universities and by TEQSA to educate students about academic integrity, to promote good student conduct, and to prevent and detect academic fraud. The amendments being put forward in this bill address a missing element of the current steps. I'm happy to commend this bill to the House.

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

It's 12 June 2020, and this piece of legislation was tabled in the chamber on 4 December 2019. We've had at least eight sitting weeks since then, so it's good to see it finally find its way here for debate and to become law. It does demonstrate, however, this government's absolute lack of commitment to this sector overall.

I rise to join my colleagues in support of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019. Importantly, this bill seeks to criminalise and create an offence for providing, offering to provide or arranging for a third person to provide a cheating service to a student at one of our institutions of higher education. This isn't about stopping collaboration, importantly, or about penalising people for incidental or inconsequential assistance. It's about putting an end to systematic criminal cheating.

There is currently no Australian jurisdiction with offences specifically aimed at deterring or punishing cheating by students or organised cheating services, and that's something I'm glad we are here finally fixing. As the Higher Education Standards Panel noted in their advice to the minister in March 2017:

… inadequately constrained cheating activity has the potential to cause great damage to the domestic and international reputation of Australian higher education.

Australia's higher education system is one of the best in the world. That's why it is our third-largest export. The market for international education was valued at $18.8 billion by the Bureau of Statistics in 2014-15. It is crucial that our universities maintain their reputations as institutions with rigorous academic standards and a firm commitment to academic integrity. That's why I'm glad to see this bill introduce tough offences for cheating, with commercial cheating service operators facing penalties of up to two years in prison.

I do worry, however, that, with this bill, we'll look past what's causing this rise in the academic cheating market. In order for there to be commercial cheating rings, there has to be a significant amount of demand. We need to ask ourselves: why are students studying in Australia turning to cheating? Without a doubt, the business model of academic cheating services is becoming more insidious. We know that these cheating organisations have slick online ads and present themselves as legitimate services providing assistance to students undergoing academic stress, while doing something very different.

Universities and higher education providers have already done a great deal to provide and publicise support services for students, but clearly universities need more support so they can do more to ensure that students are able to get through their time at university successfully, without reaching out to a cheating service. This is particularly important for regional, rural or international students, who may be away from family and friends for the first time.

Over the last decade, the number of overseas students studying in Australia has increased sharply. There were more than 350,000 international students enrolled in the higher education sector in 2017. While I've heard the stereotypes of cashed-up foreign students coming here with fancy cars and designer labels, the reality on the ground in my electorate is that a lot of international students, burdened with the dreams of their families and an unimaginable fear of failure, do it incredibly tough. A recent survey by United Voice, of more than 200 international students, found that 25 per cent of those responding received $10 an hour or less in paid work; 60 per cent earned less than the national minimum wage; 79 per cent said they knew little or nothing about their rights at work; and 76 per cent said they did not receive penalties for weekend or night work.

Many international students are here desperate to make a better life for themselves. Unfortunately the economic reality of being a student in Australia, particularly an exploited working student in Australia, means that many students are unable to give their studies appropriate attention. As these important new protections are put in place, the government and universities need to make sure proper support services are in place and clearly publicised so when people are struggling they have somewhere to turn for help and assistance.

It is also important that we ask ourselves why universities are struggling to get across to their students. Has anything impacted the quality of teaching and learning in universities in Australia? The better part of a decade of conservative cuts to university has certainly taken a toll—capping places, cutting $2.2 billion from the system, locking more than 200,000 students out of the opportunity of a university qualification, and cutting $328.5 million from university research. And the universities had been abandoned by the government's COVID-19 response. This anti-intellectual government has done everything in its power to silence and diminish the influence of our experts.

I understand that this is a complicated and challenging world, but the fact that we need a bill like this to deter students from accessing cheating services saddens me as an educator. We've turned our places of higher learning into factories for jobs. Kids are there to get the piece of paper that will help them end up in any office that will give them a consistent pay cheque. That's not the kind of academic culture that will foster the innovation this country needs to deal with everyday life, let alone COVID-19, nor the challenges we were dealing with before this and certainly not the challenges we are yet to discover. But that's the culture that is fostered when you make having a HECS debt more onerous. It's the culture you foster when you slash funding to universities. It's the culture you foster when you disrespect research. The minister himself said at the National Press Club that productivity improvements in the higher education sector can deliver $2.7 billion to Australia's GDP a year. How will this be achieved when the government's policy is to cut everything? The Treasurer has a spare $60 billion that he can't give back to the bank. He should spend some of it in the sector that's going to see Australia through the foreseeable future.

For weeks now, Labor has been urging the federal government to act to help universities and save jobs. Their reluctance to do so speaks volumes about what they really think about this incredibly important sector. But the Prime Minister has done nothing to help, and now jobs are being lost, with thousands more to come. The federal government keeps moving the goalposts to stop staff at universities from getting fair access to JobKeeper, and that's putting tens of thousands of jobs at risk, including many in regional Australia. Already we've heard that hundreds of jobs will go at universities in Geelong—at Deakin, 400 jobs—in Rockhampton, with 180 staff gone last week and three campus closures, at Sunshine Coast, Yeppoon, Biloela, and in suburban Melbourne, at La Trobe. Without serious federal government help, universities have predicted, 21,000 jobs will be lost in the next six months alone.

The impact on regional communities will be devastating. Universities support 14,000 jobs in country Australia—that's tens of thousands of livelihoods destroyed. We're talking about academics, tutors, admin staff, library staff, catering staff, ground staff, cleaners, security staff and many others, many with families trying to make ends meet. The federal government cannot explain why a university student working a $100-shift per week is receiving the full $1,500 JobKeeper wage subsidy while a full-time university worker with kids to support is not eligible, and they have refused to date to do anything to change this.

We're relying on our brilliant universities and their researchers to find a vaccine for COVID-19, but they can't rely on this Prime Minister to protect their jobs. University jobs can be saved, if only this government would act and act now. If I were the government right now, I wouldn't want to look back after thousands of job losses, including in regional Australia, and know that more could have been done.

I also rise today to take the opportunity to point out the difference between the attitude of those opposite to this important sector and the attitude of my colleagues. In government, Labor continued to ensure that university education did not remain out of reach for everyday young people like the people I represent in Lalor. In order to achieve this goal, Labor invested in universities and supported them when they needed it. In fact, Labor's policy saw an extra 222,000 Australians get the opportunity of a university education. This included enrolments of financially disadvantaged students, which increased by 66 per cent. Enrolments of Indigenous undergraduate students increased by 105 per cent. Enrolments of undergraduate students with a disability grew by 123 per cent, and, under Labor, enrolments of students from regional and remote areas increased by 50 per cent.

In my time here, Labor has supported any and every positive measure the government has brought into this place in this sector, including today. This has included increased support for regional students so that they can better support themselves away from home while they study. Labor stood with the government to do that. And we've done this while, in Labor-held electorates like Lalor, opportunities for young people have shrunk, and despite growing youth unemployment and underemployment. Capping student numbers locks out young people from the electorate I represent. Increasing HECS debts and reducing the income threshold for repayments actively discourages students from pursuing tertiary education. And opportunities in VET have also shrunk under this government, driven by cuts to public TAFE. Under this government, we've seen the loss of 150,000 apprenticeships, and the projections in the recession are truly mortifying. We are losing 2,000 apprentices a week as we meet here today.

But what does this government do when we call out the impacts of their cuts across the sectors, both vocational education and training and higher education, and the shrinking opportunities for young people across the country? What do they do when we call out the deadening effect this has on aspiration for children in the regions, for children in the suburbs? What is their response? Well, their response is to indulge in culture war rhetoric. They deride higher education and shout that vocational education and training is as worthy—as if there is anybody else on the other side of the argument. In short, they reach for a distraction, a faux debate, to hide their deliberate failure to support the next generation. This leaves me absolutely despondent.

Those opposite don't intend to restore opportunity for the young people I represent and young people across this country. Their actions speak volumes about their disinterest in this. If those opposite want to have a serious debate about aspiration, if they seriously want to raise vocational education and training in the eyes and minds of the public, they should have a real conversation with business about the age-old responsibility for business to actively train the workforce of the future. They should engage immediately with the businesses who have lost and who are losing apprentices in this recession. They should thank them for meeting this unwritten obligation, this social compact, and they should be properly supporting them to hang on to every single one of those apprentices. But, no, none of that is happening. If they want to address the skills short that we are seeing, if they want business to thrive, if they want to plan a way out of this recession, they need to acknowledge the damage of their cuts to vocational and higher education and get serious about supporting young people and their aspirations.

As ever, I join my colleagues to support a sensible measure today but I am appalled that the real issues confronting vocational and higher education in this country, now heightened by the economic pain of a recession and the urgent need to plan for recovery, are left fallow for another term of this government.

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank all members for their contribution to this debate on the Tertiary Education Quality and Safeguards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019. It clearly shows that this government is taking a strong stand against cheating services which tarnish the reputation of our higher education sector. The strong penalties in this bill will significantly deter the provision and advertising of academic cheating services. The capacity to block cheating websites will make it harder for students in Australia to access these services. I would like to thank the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills for its consideration of the bill.

As requested by the committees, I now present an addendum to the explanatory memorandum to explain the compatibility of the civil penalties in the bill with the processes used in the criminal law and reasons for placing the burden of proof on the defendant for particular offences.

I would also like to thank the opposition for their constructive engagement to the bill. Several other amendments to the explanatory memorandum have been made to provide additional clarification on matters they and other stakeholders have raised. These include clarifying that students who publish their old essays will not be subject to prosecution under the bill and that people who inadvertently promote cheating services on social media will also not be affected.

This bill will ensure public confidence in the quality of graduates from our higher education institutions and stop unscrupulous cheating services praying on vulnerable students. Once again, I thank everyone for their engagement. I commend this bill to the House.

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

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Moreton has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

Question agreed to.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.