Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

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

"The House declines to give the bill a second reading as it is of the opinion that:

(1)the Government is making it harder and more expensive to go to university; and

(2)the bill will:

(a)cause students to pay more to attend university;

(b)ensure thousands of students will have their fees doubled;

(c)result in billions of dollars being cut from universities; and

(d)do nothing to get young people into high priority courses or jobs".

This bill, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020, comes at a time when young people are hurting and universities are hurting. It's no exaggeration to say that higher education is in the middle of its most severe crisis in living memory. In the past few months, thousands of university staff across the country have lost their jobs—thousands have lost their jobs already. These losses are being felt everywhere—in Tasmania, in Rockhampton, in Geelong, in Sydney, in Darwin, in Warrnambool, in Bendigo, in Wollongong and in Melbourne. Students have seen lecturers leave and subjects cancelled. They've seen some regional campuses close entirely. And they've seen a government with shockingly little interest in acknowledging this crisis, let alone solving it.

At the same time Australia is experiencing a recession that is hitting our young people hardest. Young people were last onto the working ladder and now they're being pushed off first. Like in previous recessions it is youth unemployment that has skyrocketed, and so too has youth underemployment. For many young people their imagined future has changed overnight. Apprenticeships are banishing, travel is impossible and work feels out of reach for so many. Think about those poor year 12 kids this year, those young people who are in their final year of high school who had so much to look forward to—finishing their exams, finishing school, schoolies, formals. All of that has been taken from them. On top of that, on top of the confusion and the stress that they've experienced this year, their government is now telling them that it's going to be harder and more expensive to get into university.

So we have two problems here: a financial crisis in our universities; and a surge in youth unemployment. And what's the government's answer to these two problems? What is the proposal to protect our universities and help our young people? Would it be the extension of JobKeeper wage subsidies to public universities? Is it a new investment in TAFE to make our vocational education system world-class again? Is it the expansion of places to make sure that if young people cannot be working in the next few years they'll have at least have an opportunity to study and learn? Sadly, no. We see none of these things from the government.

What we have here is a bill that will make it harder and more expensive to go to university—a bill that gives universities fewer resources and then asks them to do more with less; a bill that does not begin to expand places nearly enough to meet the huge growth in demand we've already seen from students who want to go to university or TAFE because, let's face it, they're not having a gap year next year; and a bill that says that it's promoting science and engineering when in fact it actually does the exact opposite of what it says on the packet.

Frankly, this bill shows a basic ignorance of how university funding works and how the changes proposed will work in practice. The legislation is a mess. It is not legislation that can be salvaged with a few tweaks here and there. We can't amend it and adjust it to improve it to make it acceptable. It is irredeemable, and the government really ought to go back to the drawing board. If the coalition really wants to legislate to help university students, or potential students, it has to go back to the drawing board.

As I said, this bill makes it harder and more expensive for Australians to go to university. The government can't get around this with amendments because the central purpose of this legislation is to push the cost of education more onto students. Actually what's at the heart of this legislation is the continuation of the effort of those opposite, since Christopher Pyne was education minister, to make students bear a larger share of the cost of their education and government bear a smaller share of the cost of university education. That is the aim of this legislation. That is the purpose of this legislation. There's no getting around that from those opposite. They've been trying to do it for years. They tried to do it in the 2014 budget. They tried it again in 2017, and sadly they are trying it again now just as unemployment in this country hits a million.

On average, Australian students will pay seven per cent more for their studies under this legislation. Around 40 per cent of students will have their fees increased, some of them to $14,500 a year. For thousands of students, this means that the cost of their degree will more than double. It will increase by 113 per cent. So if you're studying commerce, you will pay more than a dentist or a doctor for the cost of your degree every year. If you're studying humanities, you will pay more than a dentist or a doctor for the cost of your degree every year. If you're studying communications and law, you'll pay more than a dentist or doctor for the cost of your degree every year.

What's more, the government have tried to claim that they are doing this in the best interests of students. It's supposed to be directing students to areas where they'll have greater opportunity of employment. In fact, that's not the case, and just this weekend the minister was actually caught out using dodgy figures to mislead students and their parents about the employability of graduates. In fact, the prospects for humanities graduates, when it comes to employment, are quite healthy. When you actually read the report, you see that the figures that the government drew attention to on the weekend show that, after three years, the employability of humanities graduates and science and maths graduates—that the government claims it's trying to support or promote—are about the same, at around 87 per cent. I expect the minister knows this, because he has three humanities degrees himself and it hasn't stopped him getting a job.

The business world gets it. Many businesspeople you talk to started out with arts degrees or generalist degrees. That's why they have spoken out so strongly against these proposed changes. To quote Megan Lilly, a director at the Australian Industry Group:

The one thing we know about the jobs market is that all the balls are in the air and they could land in a very different place … we have to be as open as possible to lots of different growth areas.

We're not of the view that the humanities is unnecessary. Graduates get very good generalist skills, and it can lead to very good career opportunities.

Even the CEO of Engineering Australia acknowledges that this bill would produce 'a harmful reduction in the diversity of skills necessary for a modern workforce'. So the government say they want more people studying engineering, and the engineers say that this bill would be harmful. These are people who are out there right now looking for graduates to hire in this tough labour market. Are they saying that what the government is proposing is a good idea? They are not.

We need humanities graduates and engineering graduates. This government is forever trying to divide Australians. Now they're trying to divide one group of students against another group of students. We need Australians to have access to a first quality TAFE system and a first quality university system. The government's forever pretending that there is a choice to be made in Australia. We either fund TAFE or we fund universities. We get people studying humanities, or we get people studying engineering. It's just not the case that we should be dragged into these hostile binary positions when the truth is that we need an education system that meets the broadest possible needs of our economy and the broadest possible interests of our students.

This bill doesn't make economic sense, particularly at a time when we will need a trained workforce to help us recover from the recession that we're in right now. It doesn't make sense for the economy, and it doesn't make sense for students. Honestly, you would think that those opposite could put themselves in the shoes of students who have been making these hard decisions this year. They've just completed their HSC, or equivalent in other states, under the most uncertain conditions you could possibly imagine. They've watched as all of the fun stuff that was supposed to come after their years of study has all been taken from them. Think about how they feel as they watch the labour market collapse around them, just as they're preparing to graduate into it. They've been trapped at home. They've had all of the energy of youth pent up within them. Many of them have been focused for years on what they want to study. They've been working hard to get the marks to get into the course they decided they wanted to do last year or the year before or when they were eight years old—who knows?

They've had the rug ripped out from underneath them by this government, which has just told thousands of them that they'll have to pay more than double the cost for the degree of their choice. This bill changes the rules on people who have been struggling to get marks to get into those degrees. It's unfair and it's heartless. It ignores the reality of those young people's lives, and it ignores the massive contribution that their parents, their teachers and their communities have put into getting those year 12s through their final year of school this year, trying to make it possible for them to graduate with some sense of security and certainty and predictability around them in a world that has turned so chaotic.

Australia is about to experience an unprecedented increase in demand for university places and TAFE places. Since this recession began, an extra 90,000 young people are now unemployed, and another 90,000 have stopped looking for work altogether. We know that in the last few years a lot of people have been taking a year off after their final year of high school. They've been working and they've been travelling; they've been taking a gap year. There are not going to be any gap years next year. There aren't those entry-level positions for high school graduates to go into and, let's face it, none of us are travelling very much at the moment.

As well as that, we are actually facing a demographic bubble. Many of you will remember when then Treasurer Peter Costello said he wanted Australians to have 'one for Mum, one for Dad and one for the nation'. Well, Australians followed his advice and they received that $5,000 baby bonus, as it was at the time. They went out and had one for Mum, one for Dad and one for the nation. Those kids are ready to go to university or TAFE this year. So, on top of the massive hit to young people's employment prospects, on top of the fact that we're not going to have young people going off on a gap year, on top of the increased challenge and insecurity of their final exams this year, we have Peter Costello's baby boom just hitting the system now. What that means is that there has already been a huge increase in the number of young Australians who are applying to go to university. In New South Wales, just as an example, applications to go to university next year have more than doubled compared with applications for this year. This legislation does not come close to addressing that massive increase in demand for university.

The government is making much of the fact that there are an extra few thousand places at university as a result of this legislation—well, potentially as a result of this legislation; it's not legislated that these extra places will appear. But who pays for those extra places? Other students pay for those extra places because of the increase in student contribution as a direct result of this legislation. Extra places are paid for by other students paying more for the cost of their education.

There's a lot of smoke and mirrors in this bill. There's a lot of moving money around. What there isn't—what you cannot hide—is the fact that students will pay more and the government will contribute less to the cost of university in this country. In fact, the government will provide about a billion dollars a year less for universities—on average, six per cent less to teach every student, and, as I've said, students will pay more. We're not going to manage to create the sorts of places we need at TAFE and university now simply by charging more to students who want to get an education. That is not the way this country should meet the increased demand for education that is created by the recession that we're in right now. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why any government presiding over the first recession in three decades would want to make it harder for people to get an education. If young people or anyone, like a middle-aged worker who's lost their job, want to train, retrain, get an education or develop their skills so they are more employable in this hostile labour market that they're entering into, with a million unemployed, doesn't it make sense for their government to support them in that effort? No. Instead, this government wants to make it harder and more expensive for people to upgrade their skills or get a new qualification. I can't understand why something that is so obvious to me is not obvious to our Prime Minister.

As it stands, this legislation will lock out thousands of students just when they need an education the most. What's sad about this is that all of the Liberal cabinet ministers have had the opportunity to get a great education—they've all been to university; it's good enough for them—but they're saying to thousands of young Australians that it's not good enough for them. They're saying, 'You don't deserve an affordable university education.'

Even if we were to take this bill on its stated aims, even if we were to have a look at what the government says it's trying to do and say, 'Well, let's measure this bill against what the government claims it wants for students,' the bizarre truth of the legislation is that in many respects this bill will do pretty much the opposite of what the government is claiming. When the Prime Minister announced the changes, he said that they would promote the study of engineering and science and that that is in fact the entire purpose of this bill. That's why he has given it another marketing slogan name: the Job Ready Graduates Package. But, as you often have to do with this Prime Minister, you look at the headline and at the slogan on one day and then over the subsequent days you look at the detail and you find that the detail doesn't always match up to the first day's slogan.

When you look at the detail here, you will find that, in academic areas that the government apparently wants us to encourage study in, universities will actually receive overall less funding for each place. The government says, 'We're going to encourage students to study in these areas by dropping student fees.' But most people say that that is not going to work. In fact, the former education minister, Julie Bishop, who is now the Chancellor of ANU, is the first to point out the fact that she tried this and it didn't work. When you look at the detail here, they're not just dropping what students will contribute to the cost of their education but they're also dropping what the government will pay for those places. For every extra student that universities take in these areas, they'll be losing more funding. In fact, under this legislation, universities will receive 32 per cent less to teach medical scientists. They'll receive 17 per cent less to teach maths students. They'll receive 16 per cent less to teach engineers. They'll receive 15 per cent less to teach clinical psychology. They'll receive 10 per cent less to teach agricultural students. They'll receive eight per cent less to teach nurses. You don't need a doctorate in aeronautics from one of these engineering schools to guess what the impact of that will be as universities are deciding where they're going to allocate places. When you cut money that supports the teaching of engineering and science courses, either you're going to get worse outcomes in those courses or you're going to get fewer scientists and engineers.

The Chancellor of the Australian National University, Julie Bishop, pointed out:

My concern is that under these new arrangements, there is a greater incentive for universities to take in a higher number of law, commerce and humanities than there is to take in students in engineering and maths … that appears to be contrary to the government's policy intentions.

That is the sort of diplomatic understatement that the former foreign minister learnt in the job as foreign minister.

The Australian Council of Deans of Science says the same thing: 'It will not serve to generate more STEM-capable graduates if the funding changes undermine the capacity of universities to produce them. The funds that will come to university science to produce graduates will shrink by 16 per cent under the Job-ready Graduates proposal.' That's the deans of science. They might know a thing or two about teaching science graduates at university.

The Prime Minister has either been dishonest about the intention of this legislation or, potentially worse, doesn't have a clue about how this funding arrangement will work in practice. You cannot promote the study of science and engineering by starving science and engineering departments in universities. We've heard a lot from the government this year about their attitude to universities. The Liberal Party have made it very clear that they think universities are hotbeds of Marxism, feminism and cultural studies nonsense. They have almost been suspicious of universities, and they been proud of their suspicion. It didn't stop them from attending university themselves, and it probably won't stop them from sending their kids there.

But this year we've seen this suspicion about the role that universities play in our society jump the shark to outright hostility. We've gone from suspicion to outright hostility this year. No other major industry has been treated the way universities have been treated at this time. There are thousands of university workers have already lost their jobs. That is professors and tutors, but it's also librarians, cafeteria workers, ground keepers and admin staff; it is people across the board. The Prime Minister has sat with his arms folded and his lip curled watching those jobs go. There are thousands more jobs set to be lost. One estimate is that 30,000 jobs will go. The government has changed the JobKeeper rules three times to lock universities out of receiving JobKeeper.

And now the Prime Minister wants to make it harder and more expensive for students to go to university. This government wants people to feel that universities are a bit dodgy, a bit strange, a bit weird—'You don't really want to send your kids there'! They want people to think universities are an indulgence, something to resent, a luxury for the elite. This is really the fundamental difference. I don't share that view and I don't think Australians in general share that view. I think it's worth saying that 41 per cent of Australians aged between 25 and 40 now hold a bachelor's degree because of the changes Labor made in government of uncapping places at university. All of those people we are looking to to help us during this pandemic—doctors, nurses, teachers, epidemiologists, scientists, researchers—have all been to university. Why is there this terrible suspicion about universities from the government? I know that people don't agree with them. I have 15½ thousand people who have signed this petition today, and another 11,000 people who don't agree with them have signed a petition that is being tabled in the Senate.

But it's more than that. I said earlier that this is a government that has spent its time in office trying to pit Australian against Australian. I think of my own family here. My parents both left school much earlier than they would have liked to. They were little children in a war zone in Europe during the Second World War. One day they woke up and all their teachers were gone, and basically there were teachers speaking German in their classrooms. They were two super-smart people who, like a lot of people of their generation, never had the chance to finish high school let alone go to university. Those opposites say we shouldn't look down on people who choose a TAFE qualification, people who want to choose a trade. We never have. My dad was a plumber and gasfitter. I never looked down on him for the work that he did, which fed our family and put a roof over our heads. He worked six days a week. But I'll tell you what: when he had a minute to himself, he'd pick up New Scientist or a newspaper and he would read and he would educate himself. When my brothers and I expressed an interest in going to university, he didn't say it was better than going to TAFE; he didn't say it was worse. He said: 'You should do what will satisfy you, what will make you happy, so long as you make a contribution to the economy that you're part of.' That's how Australians feel about education—not that there is a gap or a difference between TAFE and university, not that one is better or worse than the other, but that every Australian citizen should have the opportunity to do what makes them satisfied, contributes to our economy and means that they are employable, can support themselves and can make a contribution to our economy as a whole.

That's what we want to do on this side. We want to expand those opportunities so that there is no kid anywhere in Australia who is prepared to work hard and study hard and put the hours in when they're in high school who is denied a university education because those opposite have doubled the cost of the degree that they want to study. There should be no child anywhere who is saying: 'I can't afford to go to university. I can't afford $58,000 to do a university degree.' That is so fundamentally wrong.

Those opposite are saying I'm misrepresenting this. If you think that, you haven't read this legislation, because that's exactly what this does—it more than doubles the cost of a university education. And if you don't get that, you should be embarrassed that your minister and your Prime Minister haven't told you the truth about what this legislation does.

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The amendment is seconded and I reserve my right to speak.

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

This year will be like no other. The changes and pivoting required to deal with and navigate the COVID crisis have seeped into every part of our lives, not just here in Australia but overseas as well. The nature of our universities, with large-scale lectures and small, intimate tutorials, meant that, when social distancing restrictions came in, universities were one of the first sectors to close and were forced to move to online platforms.

I think it is worth noting that they've done remarkably well and should be commended on their quick transition to online learning. But the COVID-19 pandemic has also exposed our dependence on international students enrolling in higher education, which is our fourth-biggest export. Universities are working hard to ensure that the strength of this sector continues, and I know that they've had productive discussions with the Minister for Education in order to ensure the dynamism of our international student programs remains. But, at least in the short term, our universities will need to strengthen their focus on domestic students. That is because we know higher education is countercyclical. When the economy suffers, as it indeed is doing with the COVID pandemic, more people turn to higher education to improve their skills and training. The public understand that higher education helps them with the skills to succeed in areas of future job growth. That is why they turn to the sector, because they know it will help them to get a job.

The Morrison government understands that, in this COVID crisis, we now need to pivot to a job-ready workforce with job-ready skills. The job-ready graduates reforms in this legislation will support increased demand from school leavers and provide more options for upskilling and reskilling workers who have lost jobs due to COVID-19. The job-ready package will create 39,000 new university places by 2023 and 100,000 by 2030 and provide additional support for students in regional and remote Australia.

Despite Australia's strong health and economic response to COVID-19, there will still be more to come globally and we need to know how we're going to deal with this going forward. We know international travel is not going to come back very quickly. As the rest of the world continues to battle the virus, now is the time for Australia to look to our future and to prepare for the post-COVID world. The Morrison government is ready to support universities to educate the next generation for the opportunities that a new post-COVID economic order will indeed present. The future might be uncertain, but what we do know is that Australia must create a workforce that is prepared for the future. We know that will be dependent on our ability to innovate, to be ready for technology and to be ready for the 21st century, and the best way to do that is through our university sector and to encourage students to enrol in subjects with specific vocations in mind. Ensuring every student has the opportunity to access education, to learn, to upskill or to reskill will form a good base for Australia building its way out of the economic pressures that COVID presents. To do this we need to better educate and train the next generation in subjects such as science and technology so that we can grasp the opportunities with both hands as they present themselves.

We know that when unemployment rises the biggest impact is on the young. I know this because my four children are in this age group of 16 to 23. I know they and their friends are looking to the future, and they know that they need to be focused on how to be ready for the jobs of the future. Projections show that the overwhelming majority of new jobs will require tertiary qualifications. With health care, science and technology, education and construction projected to provide 62 per cent of total employment growth over the next five years, these are the opportunities we need our children to hear about. These are the focuses that our children need to grasp with both hands.

Recently, the parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth, of which I'm a member, handed down the inquiry report Trade transformation: supporting Australia's export and investment opportunities. The report reiterated what we all know: Australia is an export nation and we have a growing opportunity to build on our service exports, particularly in health, professional services and financial services, as well as travel when the restrictions are lifted.

Amongst other growth areas, the future of energy in this country will be dependent on a trained and educated workforce, and this particularly includes the renewable sector and other novel technologies, which have been outlined by the Morrison government's Technology Investment Roadmap, the draft of which was released last month. If we are to carve our own future, we will need to pivot to new market opportunities as the resilience on our resources shifts in the new energy order.

For the last decade, our pretertiary education system has focused on students' participation in the STEM disciplines—the disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. That has been supported by both sides of the House and indeed by the crossbenches, because we do understand the importance of STEM in primary schools and secondary schools. I am sure every local member in this House has been down to their local school to celebrate the wonderful science and technology innovation happening in our primary and secondary schools, from prep students right through to students at the highest levels of secondary school.

I want to alert you to something that's happening in my electorate of Higgins. I was approached by a young girl, Grace Halifax, who is eight years old. Grace understands that coding is the ABC of mathematics. She had a meeting with me and her mother, and she said, 'I would like to teach other children about coding.' This is an eight-year-old girl in my electorate, Grace Halifax. She had a great plan, which was to have a community hall with laptops and volunteers.

I thought, 'What a great idea, but how can we do it when we're in stage 4 lockdown in Melbourne?' So I said to Grace, 'Why don't we host a Zoom?' We advertised it to the local primary schools, for children from grade 2 to grade 5, in the electorate of Higgins. Lo and behold, 250 students signed up for Grace Halifax's 'ABC for Coding' via Zoom! Every Thursday, from four o'clock—please sign up, if you want to; it's still open and it's free—for six weeks, she's teaching the children of Higgins, peer to peer, how to code, the ABC of coding. It's a fantastic initiative. She's using Scratch, micro.bit and machine learning. She is a digital native. More importantly, she's a coding native. That is because she understands that the world that is opening up opportunities for her and her peers, her cohort, is full of maths, and she really understands that coding is a very important part of that. It was an amazing experience, to see these kids enthusiastically participating in coding. I wish I had learned coding.

That is why we as a government understand that nurturing the lifelong love of science makes sense not just for our employment and jobs of the future but for our understanding and place in the world. That is why the government will increase the number of graduates in areas of expected employment growth and demand. These include STEM and IT but also teaching, nursing and agriculture. This growth will seek to complement the Job-ready Graduates Package. We will incentivise students to make more job-relevant choices, which lead to job-ready graduates, by reducing the student contribution in areas of expected employment growth and demand. Our reforms will create an extra 100,000 places at university by 2030.

Importantly, the proposed changes are focused on a unit, not a degree level. This means students studying for a Bachelor of Arts can reduce their total student contribution by choosing electives in subjects like maths, English, science and IT within their degree, because we know these are the skills that employers want and seek in their prospective employees. This, in turn, will encourage students to embrace diversity and not think about their education as a silo degree that remains in one area. Most importantly, the students of today will not be penalised. This scheme is grandfathered. No current student faces increases for the duration of their course. It's also worth noting that continuing students that are set to gain from the policy will do so from next year.

Our government is committed to supporting students in paying back their loans. Our higher education loan program remains the world's most generous income-contingent loan scheme, and these new measures will continue to maintain the arrangements that are currently in place. Overall, more than half of the cost of Commonwealth supported places will continue to be subsidised for students. This funding will be prioritised to the areas of high public benefit and those most needed by the labour market. This means that the Commonwealth supported students studying in key growth areas, including science, nursing, teaching, engineering and IT, will see significant reductions in their student contribution to those units. Students enrolling in teaching, nursing, clinical psychology, English and languages will pay 42 per cent less for their degree. Students who study agriculture and maths will pay 59 per cent less for their degree. And students who study science, health, architecture, environmental science, IT and engineering will pay 18 per cent less for their degree.

We also recognise the importance of a growing burden on mental health, and we know that mental health will be an enduring challenge of our time. The Prime Minister, along with the Minister for Health, is particularly committed to investment in mental health services, so we know we will need more people in these areas. As such, the government will also recognise two more disciplines, psychology and social work, as part of this legislative package. Students completing units in those areas will also see a reduction in the student contribution for those subjects. This will form an incredibly important pathway to employment in these areas—the employment of psychology and social work. These payments are incredibly important because we know this is a particular growth area.

Overall, government policy is to lower the cost for students through fee structures, and our continued record $18 billion investment into the sector will grow to $20 billion by 2024. The 2017 higher education report from Deloitte argues it is:

… crucial that funding appropriately relates to the cost of higher education provision such that the signals that funding sends—to both students and providers—positively influence decision making.

In summary, subsidies offered by the government to students need to reflect the national interest and align with the whole-of-government approach of ensuring Australia's future prosperity, which means an employed workforce with job-ready degrees.

Unsurprisingly, those opposite are whipping up unnecessary anxiety amongst current students through misinformation about the cost of university courses for students already enrolled. This is in the context of Labor's own previous support for this form of incentivisation. A 2008 Rudd government decision saw a reduction in student contribution for mathematics, statistics and science that was aimed at addressing falling enrolments in these disciplines. Importantly, the Rudd government student contribution reduction saw an almost doubling in STEM course participation, from 13,795 in 2009 to 26,272 in 2012—that is just three years later.

Now is the time to prepare the next generation for the jobs in the century ahead. These reforms will deliver more job-ready graduates in the disciplines and regions where they are needed most and help drive the nation's economic recovery post-COVID. I'm proud to support this legislation.

Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I could not feel more strongly that this legislation, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020, is the wrong direction for our country. It's a tax on students. It's a knowledge tax on Australia, and it says a lot about this government that this is its priority in the middle of a pandemic.

First they denied JobKeeper to universities, sending people to the unemployment queues because universities could not afford to keep their staff on the books. That was a decision of this government. Now they are proposing to increase fees for education and give less money to our higher education institutions—all in one piece of legislation. Fairness and opportunity should be the values that drive our work in this place—no-one held back, no-one left behind. This legislation does hold Australians back. It holds them back in the middle of the first recession in 30 years. It leaves behind people who find that university is too expensive. It is a war on our universities—a war that, in my view, the Liberal Party have been raging every time they are on the government benches.

I noticed the contribution from the member for Higgins—'no current students'. She was at pains to stress that no current student would pay these fees, because the government know that students are worried about the fee increases that will come as a result of this legislation. The reality is that, while they say 'no current students', from next year we'll have students sitting side by side in humanities classes who'll be paying different rates of fees. Some will be paying more than 100 per cent more than the student that they are sitting right next to.

As the member for Sydney really appropriately pointed out, this legislation is being debated in this place at the worst possible time for year 12 students across Australia. Year 12 students in my electorate, and indeed in every one of the 151 electorates in Australia, have had an incredibly stressful year. Already, they feel like they don't know what the opportunities are going to look like next year. They don't know what their world looks like next year. The government's solution to that is to say: 'Well, let's just pile uncertainty on top of uncertainty.' I also noticed the member for Higgins paid tribute to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard for reducing university fees. If you want to copy the Rudd and Gillard governments for making it more affordable for people to go to university, be me guest; however, we will not let you get away with increasing fees for students at the worst possible time.

I'm pleased the Labor Party is opposing this bill. The University of Western Australia have publicly stated that this legislation will cut their revenue by three to four per cent—a three to four per cent reduction in their gross revenue. It does make it more difficult for students to go to university. It makes it more expensive for students to go to university. On average, students will pay seven per cent more for their degree. That's a pretty hefty tax to whack on higher education.

Some 40 per cent of students, however, will see their fees increase to $14,500 a year. That's doubling the cost for thousands of students. A law and a commerce degree will increase by 28 per cent, and the cost of a humanities course will go up 113 per cent. I studied humanities at Curtin University and business at the University of Western Australia. I am very happy to be standing up for students who are studying the courses that I studied a decade or more ago.

We know universities are already taking huge whacks to their operating revenue. Former UWA Vice-Chancellor Jane den Hollander—someone who I got to know when she was a deputy vice-chancellor at Curtin University, a great Australian—says they will face a funding shortfall this year of some $64 million. Curtin University Vice-Chancellor Deborah Terry says that their revenue will be down $60 million on what it's budgeted, and this legislation makes the challenge for them all the more hard. Today we saw the ABC, a great broadcasting institution, get information leaked out of Curtin University that they are going to cut $41 million worth of staff wages next year. They are looking at potential forced redundancies. These things are all happening while the government continues to press along with this legislation.

I was out at Curtin University a few weeks ago talking to Hana Arai, the Curtin Student Guild president. They were in the middle of their virtual O-Week. Most of us in this place probably got a pretty good in-person university experience. New students are having to start their courses and their education entirely online—and that's a legitimate choice for many people to make—so if they wanted a real university experience they're having a really tough time. They were saying one of the most stressful things for new students is the uncertainty around fees going forward. Indeed some students had brought forward their studies to get ahead of any changes that the government might make.

If you think about young people in Australia right now, they are having an absolutely terrible time. We criticise Senator Colbeck a lot in this place at the moment for his failures on aged care. The reality is: he is also the minister for youth. We have no youth strategy—we've had no youth strategy for seven years under this government. The things they've done for our young people are pretty rotten. We've got 140,000 fewer trainees and apprentices than when this government came into office. In July the ABS labour force figures show that we now have a million Australians unemployed and 345,000 of them are young Australians. We have the highest youth unemployment in decades because of this recession. We have young people starting out with the least secure financial footing in generations. They've been forced to raid their superannuation, what little superannuation they've been able to accumulate, and now the government's going to cut down the superannuation guarantee, giving them even less in their future.

We know we've got record youth unemployment. We know they've put a huge dent in their superannuation. We know that young people are going to be saddled with paying back government debt for decades. Again, I come back to this knowledge tax that the government has proposed. Most people in this place believe in an equitable education system. In the past I've been one of those people who've said I'd love education to be free. I recognise that that's probably out of reach, but to go in the direction we are now going at this time in Australia's economic situation is wrong.

My parents went to university for free. In fact, if they hadn't gone to university for free, I don't know if they'd ever have met, so I'm very grateful to the Whitlam government and Kim Beazley Sr, who made that possible. They studied education. They spent their lives as primary schoolteachers; they spent their lives educating others. And I take this opportunity to give a shout out to Ron and Wendy, aka Mum and Dad, and to all teachers in Australia who do a great job and, in particular, have done an immensely difficult job this year in dealing with the challenges of delivering learning via remote and other mechanisms. So you don't need to tell me that education is an investment—an investment in the next generation.

The first time I ever walked into this building, in fact, was to campaign against the Howard government's 25 per cent fee increase. That was a long, long time ago, back when an arts degree cost only $12,000. Under this legislation, that same arts degree could cost $45,000.

When I spoke to a bunch of university students in Western Australia about this tax and this legislation, I talked to them about the history of education in Australia. I said, 'There's a great, proud Western Australian story about making higher education more accessible to Australians.' Kim Beazley Sr was 27 years old when he entered the federal parliament. As we in this place know, he was able to enter the federal parliament because of the tragic death of John Curtin, a great Western Australian and a great Australian. Kim Beazley Sr entered the parliament at 27 years old. It was another 27 years until he became Minister for Education in the Whitlam government. It was Kim Beazley Sr who delivered the education package. I will never forget that it was a Western Australian who made that possible, and I credit the Beazley family in no small part with my parents meeting at university in Western Australia.

This government has missed the opportunity, time and time again, to step in and help universities save jobs. The university sector itself estimates that some 21,000 staff will lose their jobs because of falling international student revenue and the lack of support through JobKeeper—21,000 staff ripped out of our higher education institutions. The knowledge that leaves those institutions when those staff walk out the door—we will probably only recognise the full impact of that in the years and decades to come. We know that the Group of Eight universities have actually stood up to this government and criticised this government's 'knowledge tax', saying:

… the legislation will force universities to teach more students with less funding.

The legislation will force universities to teach more students with less funding. Modelling by the group shows that, in 2024, universities will be expected to teach an additional 5,000 full-time students, with a decrease in base funding of $92 million—that is, ripping out $92 million and pumping 5,000 more students into the system. Even the chancellor of the Australian National University, someone whom we used to know in this place as the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, Julie Bishop, has raised concerns about the legislation. I would be interested to know if the current member for Curtin will be speaking on the legislation, given her well-regarded work as a former vice chancellor at the University of Notre Dame. But I wish it were just universities this government cut when it came to education—child care, TAFE, apprenticeships. It's all part of a pattern, a 20-year long agenda of trying to privatise universities. And, if this legislation goes through, who knows what this government will then do to our TAFEs and our vocational sector over time.

My community is very worried about this legislation. More than 800 people in Perth have signed my petition against the knowledge tax. It says:

We call on the Morrison Government to Stop the Knowledge Tax, cancel its increase fees for humanities, law and commerce degrees, and properly fund our universities.

In the Perth electorate, there is strong support for our universities. We've received messages in response to that petition, and I'm just going to share a few pieces of commentary that have come through to my office. Maia says:

Australia will benefit from building a country that understands diversity; is able to think critically; and has skilled, knowledgeable and diverse communication skills. The Humanities contribute to a better future.

Sky wrote:

These changes will not only discourage low-income students from studying important areas, they will undermine the quality of education across the tertiary sector.

Helen wrote to me:

We should be keeping educational horizons open and free from political interference. We need creative, critical thinkers at this time more than ever. Give youth choice so they can be contributors to the future.

Liz said:

The message these fees send is not the one we want our young people to receive. Valuing one area of education should not lead to devaluing of another. All strengths with individuals should be valued. Every individual should be valued.

I thought: '"Every individual should be valued"—where have I heard that before? Isn't it the foundational principle of the Liberal Party of Australia that every individual should be valued?' Yet they are now saying that some individuals and the things that they choose to study and apply their life to are not as important as others, and that is wrong. I have had a total so far of 800 signatures, and the number keeps climbing. I was going to read in the names of all the people that signed the petition, because I published them in the Perth Voice, a great local independent newspaper in my electorate, but I will spare people on both sides of the chamber from that 800-person list of names.

I'll finish by just reminding people that Labor has a proud history of investing in university education. We invested so that an additional 190,000 Australians could get a place at university when we changed to demand-driven funding. We boosted investment in universities from $8 billion when Labor last came to office, in 2007, to $14 billion when Labor left office in 2013. As a result of those changes, financially disadvantaged student enrolments increased by 66 per cent. Those opposite can never claim that they did some sort of transformation like this. Indeed, we will see those sorts of numbers go backwards under the Liberal Party's knowledge tax. This is bad legislation, and this House should not pass it.

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I see the Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020 in two parts. On the one hand, it implements several of the recommendations of the Napthine review into rural, regional and remote tertiary education. These reforms are important and overdue. They're evidence based and they're supported by the regional university sector. In fact, since the Napthine review was released in October of last year, I've been advocating for the full implementation of its 33 recommended actions. On the other hand, this bill involves what can only be described as a radical overhaul of the way we charge students for higher education. These second reforms are unexpected, were not prompted by a wholesale and detailed review of the sector, have caused significant angst amongst universities and university students, and appear not to be based on clear evidence at all.

Since the minister announced these changes in June, I have analysed them with deep concern and trepidation. Unfortunately the bill before us does both of these things at once. The government has combined a good bill with a very problematic bill and asked us to vote on them as one. It feels like it's rushed this. I've consulted widely and listened carefully to the regional universities in my electorate, and they've told me of their very real concerns. They've also told me, though, that they need some certainty. And I've met with students from Indi who are worried by the increase to student contributions in the humanities subject categories but ultimately welcome the measures that address some of the issues that have historically held regional students back from participation in higher education. As such, I have honestly anguished over my position on this bill, but I've determined that I cannot in good conscience vote against a bill that involves significant new measures to support regional universities and regional students. Full of imperfections as this bill is, I cannot vote against the implementation of the Napthine review recommendations that I have so strongly advocated.

Today I'd like to explain my position and call on all members of the upper house to refer this bill to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee before considering its passage. There are five measures in the job-ready package that together represent a significant investment in improving access to higher education for regional Australians. First, the tertiary access payment. This has been rebadged by the government, but while the name is different the point is the same: over four years $160 million will be invested into scholarships to help kids who move out of home for uni. This is important, because we know that, compared to their city cousins, students in rural and regional areas are less likely to apply for uni, less likely to accept a place if offered and less likely to complete a degree. Cost is a huge part of the reason. It costs money to move from a place like Corryong, Myrtleford, Wodonga or Ballarat to Melbourne for uni. The Napthine review found that moving can as much as double the cost of a degree, adding $25,000 to $30,000 to support a student out of home, and found that cost is the most common reason for regional students deferring university.

Second, as a result of this bill, any Indigenous student from regional Australia will be guaranteed a Commonwealth supported place when they enrol in university. Importantly, this is nowhere near the Napthine recommendation, which called for places for all people in regional Australia to be uncapped. But this is obviously a significant step forward for Indigenous Australians and a measure I fully support.

Third, the bill increases access to the fares allowance which would help students return home in the uni break. Right now the waiting period is six months but this bill will take it down to three months, allowing students to return home in their midyear break in their first year of study. This is important, because 70 per cent of students from regional Australia who undertake tertiary study relocate to do so, and stress and loneliness is the most common reason for the higher drop-out rate that regional students face when they get there. Giving those students a little bit of extra support to come home in their first year might make the difference between being able to complete a degree and feeling despair and dropping out.

Fourth, the package involves a dedicated focus on regional and rural students as a specific equity group under the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program. This is the first time that HEPPP will look specifically at support for regional students. Moreover, it sets aside $7.1 million over four years to support outreach to regional schoolkids to consider, and to encourage them to look at, tertiary study. This is important, because we know the evidence tells us that schoolkids in regional areas don't have access to the same career advice or mentoring as their city peers. The Napthine review found that the career and educational aspirations of regional kids are hampered by a lack of resources to help them understand what a university education could bring, and how to prepare for it.

Finally, this package involves accelerated funding increases for regional universities. Funding under the Commonwealth Grant Scheme will increase 3.5 per cent a year for regional campuses, compared to 1.5 and 2.5 per cent in high- and low-growth metropolitan areas. This boost means there will be a faster increase to Commonwealth supported places at regional universities, which is good news for students and for cities like Albury-Wodonga, which will benefit from a larger student population. Importantly, though, this was not recommended by the Napthine review. The Napthine review went much further, calling for uncapping of places at regional universities. That would mean that every student granted entry to a regional university would be guaranteed a government supported place. Instead, the government is maintaining its handbrake on the growth of regional universities.

This leads me to the many deficiencies I see in this legislation. To state the obvious, Australia is in a deep recession. When people lose their jobs, demand for higher education goes up. At the same time, the baby boom of the early 2000s is reaching university age. Together these factors mean that over the coming years we will see a boom in demand for university places, and this package goes nowhere near far enough to cater for that. Yesterday the Innovative Research Universities group stated that the package ignores increased demand as a result of COVID-19, ignores increased demand from older students and ignores the general rising need for tertiary qualifications, and they called for an additional 10,000 places on top of what the government is proposing. Just imagine for one moment if we put those places into regional cities—another 500 students in Albury-Wodonga and another 1,000 at the University of New England in Armidale or CSU in Wagga. That would be transformational not just for those cities but for those students too.

But my greater concern is the truly drastic changes to course fees that the government is trying to rush through. Under the bill before us, some degrees will double in cost; others will halve. But regional students will be disproportionately impacted by higher course costs, because the courses that regional universities tend to offer are the ones facing increases under the subjects of this bill. Consider also the email I was sent by the vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney—an email that was sent to all MPs yesterday. Vice-Chancellor Spence said: 'The funding changes proposed in the bill are too significant and radical to rush. The proposed changes to university education and research funding have not been developed in accordance with the government's own guidance on best practice consultation.' He went on to say, 'Parliament and all higher education stakeholders must have full details of the proposed new funding arrangements before judgements can be made on the package of changes the bill seeks to implement.' The Innovative Research Universities group has contributed some considered good faith alternative subject funding tables that still achieve the government's budget and policy imperatives but spread the contribution across subject categories in a fairer way, and these should be considered.

This minister rushed through changes to the childcare funding arrangements during COVID-19 with not enough consultation and not enough consideration for how the changes would affect smaller and regional childcare providers. The result of that rushed policy was substantial pain for many of us in regional Australia. I'm extremely worried that with this rushed bill there will be problems experienced by us again. I'm worried that this legislation that we had just a week to review, which was substantially amended on the fly after the government publicly split in two over it and which key stakeholders have deep reservations over, is not how we should begin our task of rebuilding Australia.

I was alarmed to see that on Sunday the minister himself was forced to clarify incorrect statistics he'd released on employment outcomes for humanities graduates that falsely implied their employment rates are far below science graduates. The statistics were from the 2020 graduate outcome survey, which came out on Sunday. The survey showed that, after one year, the employment rates of students in humanities, cultural and social sciences and communications are higher than the employment rates of students who studied science and maths. After three years, the employment rates are about the same. The minister's press release contained exactly the opposite message, with statistics that were patently wrong. He said that students in the humanities and social science have the lowest employment outcomes and gave incorrect statistics to back up this claim. I'm not trying to make a pedantic point here. What I'm trying to say in pointing this out is that the entire justification for the minister's radical upheaval in the cost of subjects in these university degrees is that humanities and social science degrees don't lead to jobs, but maths and science degrees do. If that's not supported by the definitive empirical survey on the topic, what is the point then of this radical change? Where is the policy rationale?

I am supporting this legislation because it has the qualified support of the regional universities in Indi that I represent and because it contains many measures that I have long advocated. But the clear and glaring deficiencies in the bill cannot be ignored. When regional MPs raised concerns that the original bill would exacerbate regional workforce shortages in mental health, psychology and social work, the government listened and changed the bill. That was sensible, and I applaud it. I have spent years pushing for better policy on rural health workforce in those areas in particular. So I was very pleased about that. But I call on the minister to listen again: the Senate must refer this legislation to the education and employment committee for review. The future of our nation depends on decisions such as these, and they must be carefully scrutinised.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Financial Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am the son of working-class parents, parents who worked hard so that their kids had the opportunity that they never got, and that was the opportunity to get a university education. It was an opportunity that they could never afford, but I, like many of my generation, was the first person in my family who got the opportunity to go to university. In my later years of high school, I was the beneficiary of a great economics teacher, Peter Singer, who inspired in me a wonderful love and passion for economics and how governments make decisions about allocation of resources. He encouraged me to pursue and follow my passion to study economics at university, and, thankfully, I did. I got the wonderful opportunity to study at the University of New South Wales, a university in my home town, and develop that passion for economics. It was following that passion, I firmly believe, that led me to an interest in politics and how political decisions are made and, of course, to this place here. I would not have had the great privilege of representing the people of Kingsford Smith without the opportunity to pursue my passion for economics at university.

The crux of this bill, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020, is that the cost of university fees in humanities will increase and in some other degrees, particularly maths, science and other STEM based subjects, the costs will fall. I'm opposing this bill because it's unfair. It's unfair because many young people who are interested in studying humanities will have the cost of going to university increased dramatically for them, making university, in some cases, beyond their reach. So many of those young Australians who now are developing their passion for humanities subjects in their later years of high school may lose the opportunity to pursue that dream at university because of this legal reform, and that is wrong.

Anyone who's looking at the prospect of pursuing law, accounting, economics, commerce, journalism and communication, or humanities will pay more under this legislation than someone looking to do a medicine or dentistry degree. About 40 per cent of students will have their fees increased under this Morrison government's plan for this bill. Some of those courses will have cost increases of 113 per cent, and that will mean, for many low- and middle-income families, that they will lose the opportunity that I have had to get a university education. Young Australians will lose the opportunity to pursue their dreams and passions and to study their subject of choice if this law is passed. That is a great shame, and that is why this bill must be opposed.

The greater effect of this legislation, unfortunately, will be on women. All of the studies and statistics that have been produced by some of the unions and others that are opposing this indicate that women tend to enrol in humanities subjects more than STEM based subjects, so the effect of this bill may be to make it harder for women to go to university. Similarly, I can't see how this bill is going to encourage and help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians to get a university education. In fact, I think it's going to do the opposite: it's going to make it harder for many to pursue that dream of a university education. So the crux of this bill is that it makes it harder for low- and middle-income families and their kids to pursue their dream of a humanities education at university. That is wrong, that is unfair and that is why this bill should be defeated.

The second point I'd like to make is that this bill and this change to our university funding structure represent government and politicians interfering in the decisions of young Australians and families about which subjects they can pursue at university and, ultimately, which career path they should go down in their working lives. It's effectively trying to force students into certain subjects and force some young Australians to abandon their dreams and their passion for other subjects.

Most Australians believe that there's enough government in their lives without government telling parents what they want their kids to study, let alone government telling young Australians what career the government thinks they should pursue over the career they have a passion for and want to pursue. Decisions about which subjects young Australians study at university should be made by those young Australians, not by the Morrison government.

The government says that the philosophy and purpose of this bill are to encourage more Australians to study STEM subjects. It says that we have skills shortages in some of these areas and it wants more Australians to move into studying those subjects. That's fine. That objective is a reasonable one. It's the means that the government is using to achieve that objective that is wrong and represents an interference in the decisions that young Australians have the right to make. We should be encouraging people into STEM and other areas of study with incentives and encouragement, not with a big stick approach such as this bill. We should be offering scholarships to young Australians to move into the STEM subjects. We should be ensuring that there are bridging courses available to ensure that people can get their skills up to a satisfactory level to move into some of those subjects. Importantly, we should be doing more to promote science based and mathematics based subjects at high school. We can achieve these outcomes with incentives, not by the government telling students which subjects they should be pursuing and so, effectively, forcing a whole generation of young Australians onto a path that they don't want to follow and that might not be their passion and their dream.

The third point I'd like to make is that this bill is inequitable. It won't produce the outcomes that the government believe and say it will. In fact, the legislation in many respects works against its stated aim. In areas where the government want a greater enrolment, they're paying universities less per student, which doesn't make any sense, and, in course areas where they want to discourage enrolment and push people into other subjects, they're paying universities more. It simply doesn't make sense. The overall effect of this legislation, once again, is to reduce the amount of funding that's going to Australian students and to universities to subsidise places for Australian students and encourage them to pursue a university education. It's part of the Morrison government's trend of undermining university education and removing the opportunity of a university education from a generation of Australians. That will have consequences for our nation down the track. It will have consequences for the individuals because they will lose access to the opportunity of a university education if they are passionate about a particular subject. We know that the more people stay in study—the more highly educated a population is—the greater the productivity of that workforce, particularly in future years. There is no truer statement than 'if we invest in education now, we reap the benefits for our economy down the track'. This bill undermines that objective and the statement of ensuring that we as a nation are encouraging more Australians into a pathway of university education and pursuing their dreams and wishes about where they wish to go with their education. It's all part of this government's plan for making it harder for young Australians to get a good education in this day and age, particularly if you come from a low- to middle-income family or socioeconomic background, because the effect of this legislation will be to ensure that the chance to study at university is beyond the reach of many families to afford. It will be beyond the reach of many individual Australians to afford to pursue a passion in the humanities subjects at university and in a career, and that is wrong. Decisions about what you study at university and what career you pursue should be based on your dreams, on your passions and on what you think you're going to be good at, not on what the government tells you you should have to pursue into the future. So the effect of this bill, once again, is to make it harder for many of this generation's young Australians to get a decent education, and that is wrong.

For those reasons, I will be opposing this bill, like my Labor colleagues. We're calling on the bill to go to a Senate inquiry so that these issues and many more can be thrashed out and so that Australians, particularly young Australians, have the opportunity to put their point of view to this government about what is wrong with this proposed change to universities. The effect of this bill is that it will be harder for many Australians to pursue their passion in education and it will be harder in what is a particularly difficult year for many people who are finishing their final year of schooling. We all know the challenges that young Australians finishing year 12 this year are facing with COVID and the disruptions that they've had to their education this year. They don't need government making it even harder for them to pursue their dreams and study the humanities because of this legislation. It's unfair to that generation of young Australians and it represents government forcing students into areas where the government wants them to study, not where the individual student wants to study, and that is wrong.

Finally, the bill is unfair and inequitable. It will result, once again, in a reduction of subsidised university places in Australia and a reduction in funding for universities so that they can educate more young Australians, and that is wrong. On that basis, I will be voting against this bill.

Libby Coker (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] Labor will be opposing the Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020 because it will make it harder and more expensive for young Australians to go to university. As one year 12 student said to me earlier this week, 'Why does Scott Morrison want to punish us for choosing to study humanities? It's so unfair.'

This is the voice of so many people across my region. Their concern is real, because this bill would increase the student fee load, meaning that students will pay more, a lot more. It would also cut Commonwealth university funding, meaning the government will pay a lot less. They will instead shift the debt burden to young students. It will leave universities with fewer resources to teach students, meaning students may miss out on the best education possible.

This is a radical, retrograde step regarding university funding. It is a dangerous threat to our system of higher education in Australia, and it would have a devastating impact on young people in my communities across Corangamite. As we know, 2020 has been a nightmare year for young Australians. COVID-19 has resulted in students having to study remotely. They've missed out on key milestones, from formals to schoolies to gap years to the pursuit of dreams. For young Victorians, in particular, this has been a year where they have been unable to see their friends and classmates. So the last thing they need now is to be saddled with a lifetime of debt if they continue their studies. Yet this government is trying to ram through this legislation—

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order, Member for Corangamite. The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.