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:

"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:

(1) slash billions from university funding;

(2) are bad for our economy and labour market; and

(3) impose massive debts on people seeking a higher education".

We don't oppose these bills. In fact, in November last year I wrote to the minister asking him to consider making exactly these changes, to ensure that all students were subject to the same rights and protections, regardless of fee status. It's been almost a year since I wrote to the minister but, despite that, I welcome the legislation which will end the exclusion of domestic up-front, fee-paying students from the tuition protection scheme. This will have a real and practical impact, creating simpler arrangements for students and making it easier for them to make decisions about their future study. It will also simplify student placement and loan recrediting.

The simplification of the rules and equalisation of status for students brings into stark relief just how complicated and unfair the government's other university policies are. Australian universities have suffered an absolute horror year at the hands of this government. Under siege, suffering relentless pressure, Australia's fourth largest export industry has scrambled for survival. This government has deliberately stood by as one of the sectors most critical to our economy has seen thousands of workers lose their jobs, regional campuses closed, whole university departments shut down and funding dwindle. Every week there is another one of these grim announcements: another campus closure, another course ended, another round of job cuts. That's 12,000 jobs lost at last count. And I'm talking about the permanent jobs here; that doesn't take into account the sessional staff that haven't been rehired or the casuals who have fewer shifts or no shifts. It's 12,000 jobs lost so far, and it's estimated that another 10,000 will go in coming months. After a while, it seems like there is some sort of momentum to these job losses, as though they're somehow inevitable. They're coming like waves crashing onto a beach.

The sad, infuriating truth is that this is not inevitable. This is a choice that the government has made to allow these jobs to go and to allow the university sector to be smashed by the funding that it's lost. Throwing our universities into the crisis they're facing now is a policy decision of the Morrison government. No other industry of this size has been treated with contempt in the way that the university sector has. No industry that employs 260,000 Australians has been thrown under a bus as gleefully as this sector has been. Universities are our fourth largest export earner. What are the first three? Coal, gas and iron ore. Imagine if we'd seen 12,000 job losses in one of these industries already. Quite rightly, the government would be there saying, 'What can we do to help?' Imagine if any of these other industries were facing this sort of devastation. But, as the government has been stepping in to help other industries, it has deliberately excluded higher education. You know it's deliberate, because they changed JobKeeper legislation three times to make sure universities were not eligible. Public universities—that educate our workforce, that conduct life-saving research, that protect our history, that nourish our culture, that attract billions of dollars of export earnings—were carved out of JobKeeper deliberately.

The impact of this on regional universities will be devastating. Universities support 14,000 jobs in regional Australia. Take a couple hundred jobs out of the Sydney CBD, and we feel it. I can tell you we can already feel it in my seat. You see the apartments that used to be rented by international students empty. You see the restaurants where the students used to eat; they're empty. We're feeling it in Sydney. But take a couple hundred jobs out of a regional community and, oh my goodness, you feel it. We're talking about academics, tutors, admin staff, librarians, gardeners, cooks, maintenance crews—all of them with families to support. They've had their government turn its back on them.

You know, the government was so careful to make sure that Australian universities were excluded from JobKeeper, but they weren't so careful when it came to the private universities—the tiny local campus of New York University in Sydney, a private American college not even registered as a university here in Australia, was eligible for JobKeeper. Australian universities are not eligible, but universities from overseas with, I might say, large endowments—and good luck to them—were eligible. How is it right?

I tell you who was excluded from JobKeeper: workers at the University of New England in Armidale; 200 have already lost their jobs. Workers at Central Queensland University were excluded; 281 jobs have gone there and three campuses have closed: Yeppoon, Biloela and Sunshine Coast are all due to close their campuses. That is hundreds of jobs lost and campuses closing. How are these regional communities affected by the jobs that are gone and the students that won't get an education, because those opposite have turned their backs on Australian universities? What about workers at the University of Newcastle, where 150 lost jobs were announced just recently? What about workers and their families at Deakin University, where the member for Chisholm has stood by as 2,902 people have lost their jobs? That includes 386 continuing positions.

Across the country, in every state, in every region, the story is the same. Those 12,000 job losses, with thousands more still to come, have been because this government has chosen to exclude universities from JobKeeper.

What's so sad about this is that the Prime Minister hasn't tried to stop the job losses; he's actually been cheering them on. He's been cheering them on. The treatment of universities by this government only makes sense if you see it as part of their broader project to discredit and undermine higher education in this country. It's a project that came before COVID-19, but it's using COVID-19 as its cover now. Why else would the Prime Minister watch on as tens of thousands of Australians lose their jobs without making any effort to help them? Why else would the Prime Minister make no effort as he stands by and watches hundreds of jobs lost in regional towns like Armidale and Rockhampton? He would know how devastating these hundreds of job losses are in those regional communities. If he doesn't know, he should know. Why would he allow the reputation of these world-class institutions to crumble in front of prospective new students?

Now, to add insult to injury, the government has this so-called 'job-ready graduates' legislation. Again, that cuts about $1 billion a year from our universities. Legislation just passed through this parliament makes it more expensive for people to get an education at a time when one in three young people is looking for a job or more hours of work. I cannot understand why this government would rather see young Australians on the dole queue than getting an education. This government is trying to price people out of the degrees that they don't like. It's this bizarre effort to engineer what students are interested in, what they're competent at, what they decide to study. It's so ironic, isn't it, coming from those opposite, who bang on about academic freedom? You don't have the academic freedom to study what you're interested in, the career that you want to pursue.

This government has called our university researchers heroes during the COVID-19 crisis but is standing by watching as those researchers walk out of the lab door for the last time because they don't have the funding to continue their life-saving research. The government's talking about support for high-tech manufacturing and yet it's watching the institutions that drive that high-tech manufacturing—the discovery, the innovation—bleed to death. The government talk about boosting advanced manufacturing by a billion and a half dollars while they're cutting a billion dollars a year from universities. And, of course, until very recently, they were doing their very best to cut $1.8 billion from research and development tax concessions as well. Those opposite have also taken this slapdash process to try and interfere with the sort of international collaboration that helped Australia discover the Gardasil vaccine, the sort of international collaboration that has helped Australia sequence the COVID-19 genome. At the same time as we are facing unprecedented challenges, those opposite are more than doubling the cost of a university degree for thousands of students.

Just for a minute, I want to speak directly to year 11 and 12 students, particularly the year 12 students—they have had the year from hell this year. They've had their education disrupted, they've had remote learning and they've been uncertain about their exams. I say to them: You have done so well. We are so proud of you. And, on this side, we are doing our very best to make sure you have choices next year and for the rest of your life—the choice to go to TAFE, the choice to go to university, the choice to study something that will help you get the job of your dreams. That's what we're fighting for. And we'll keep fighting for you, and for your parents, too, because all your parents and your teachers and your carers and supporters want for you is that you have opportunities and choices in life. That's why we want you to have an affordable education—so that you can have a real choice in your life. The last thing the government should be doing is making it harder and more expensive for you to go to university.

On average, Australian students will end up paying seven per cent more for their university education. But, as I have said, some will pay more than double. Their fees will increase by up to 113 per cent, going up to $14½ thousand a year. I did a four-year degree. That would be $58,000. They will be taking on a $58,000 debt at a time when unemployment will be high for years—the government's own figures show that it will be years until we're back at pre-COVID level unemployment rates. They will be leaving university to go into, at best, an unpredictable labour market. They will be coming into adulthood at the same time that they're trying to save a deposit for a home of their own, maybe start a family, get married. I know what my parents would have said to me if I'd been a high school student and said: 'Mum and Dad, I want to study communications and do an honours year. The good news is it's only going to cost $58,000.' They would have had palpitations. I would have been helping them off the floor if I'd gone home and said that. Working class kids don't take on $58,000 worth of debt, with the uncertain job prospects, to be repaid at a time when their families are saying to them, 'We want you to get a place of your own and start a family of your own,' and all the rest of it.

We are in the deepest recession since the Great Depression, and we're telling these kids to take on a debt that will take decades to repay. We on this side will always oppose American-sized university debts that take a lifetime to repay. When you look at the sorts of jobs created today—nine out of every ten require either a university or a TAFE qualification. We say that young Australians should be able to choose what they study not based on what their parents can afford but on what drives them—the work they want to do, the passion they have, what they're good at.

There's a false dichotomy being set up by those opposite. They say, 'Labor is all for universities, but we're on the side of TAFE.' This is not a competition. We want strong and excellent universities and a strong and excellent TAFE system. Those opposite have cut both. They're trying to say, 'Don't look at the cuts to universities, because we're all about TAFE,' but they've cut both. We have 140,000 fewer apprentices and trainees today than when the Liberals came to office. We have skills shortages. Before COVID-19, we had three-quarters of employers saying they couldn't find the skilled staff they needed; we were relying more heavily on temporary skilled migrants from overseas than at any other time in Australia's history. Right now, one in three young people are unemployed or wanting more hours. We've got shocking unemployment figures. More than a million people are unemployed, and, according to the government's own calculations, another 160,000 are due to be unemployed by Christmas. Why on God's earth are we making it harder and more expensive to get an education? It is honestly like those opposite would rather see people on the dole queue than getting an education. It's like those opposite think it's somehow wrong to aspire to go to university, that it's somehow elitist. It's like they think it's all about vague academics wandering around campus having Marxist culture wars, selling the International Socialist newspaper and engaging in student politics, like the member for Mitchell did for so many years.

What is actually wrong is not the aspiration to go to university. It was good enough for all those Liberal frontbenchers, and plenty of them have two or three degrees. Incidentally, plenty of them are humanities degrees, which they're trying to price other students out of. The education minister has three—Mr Three Arts Degrees himself! The government is desperate to make people embarrassed about aspiring to go to university. I think that is just so dishonest coming from a group of people who all had the opportunity themselves and who all took up that opportunity themselves, sometimes on multiple occasions, doing multiple degrees. What is wrong isn't aspiring to go to university or parents aspiring for their kids to go to university; that's not wrong. What is wrong—100 per cent wrong—is being prepared to deny that opportunity to others when you've had that opportunity yourself. That's wrong, and that's what those opposite are doing.

The cuts made by those opposite—the refusal to help universities at this phenomenally difficult time—and the changes to the cost of university education are of course unfair. They attack school leavers after they've had the year from hell, when they need support. But they're not only unfair; they're also illogical. The Prime Minister and the Minister for Education have said they want more students to study STEM subjects. That's the whole point of the legislation and the package as they have presented it. I don't know how they could have designed the package this way. They say they want more students studying STEM subjects, but the package actually reduces funding to universities for the teaching of those subjects. So—here I scratch my head—we want more people studying these subjects, so we're going to cut the funding to universities for these places. Every extra student they take is actually going to cost them money. What will happen when universities receive 30 per cent less—32 per cent less, in fact—to teach medical scientists, 17 per cent less to teach maths students, 16 per cent less to teach engineers, 10 per cent less to teach agricultural students, eight per cent less to teach nurses? We know what will happen. The tutes will get bigger; there'll be less face-to-face teaching; there will be fewer pracs and a degraded quality of education. The alternative is that universities will simply offer fewer places in these subject areas because they can't afford to keep teaching them. That's what will happen.

The CEO of the Grattan Institute, Danielle Wood, said:

I honestly think it's one of the worst-designed policies that I have ever seen. Even if you accept its stated rationale, it doesn't go anywhere near achieving it.

So the Prime Minister's being either dishonest about the rationale for the legislation or incompetent in designing the legislation, or he simply doesn't understand that you do not promote science and engineering by starving science and engineering departments at universities. You don't promote growth in manufacturing and infrastructure jobs by slashing the funding to train and teach engineers and others who will work in those sectors. You don't support critical medical research in the midst of a pandemic if your world-class researchers are lying awake at night wondering whether they'll have a job the next week or next month.

When Labor were last in government we saw massive increases in the number of students going to university. An additional 200,000 students got the chance to go to university because we uncapped student places. We decided that, in an increasingly complex economy, one of the best investments we could make was in the education of our people. We saw 200,000 additional people get an education because we uncapped university places. We nearly doubled university funding, from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013. Under Labor we saw huge numbers of Australians who were the first in their families ever to go to university finally get the chance. The number of students from poorer backgrounds went up by 55 per cent. Indigenous student numbers jumped by 89 per cent. Enrolments of students with a disability more than doubled, and enrolments of students from country areas grew by 48 per cent. These are the goals that have always driven Labor's policy. We want more people to get the chance to go to university. Our record over the decade speaks for itself. The suggestion that the government believes that the Job-ready Graduates Package, that has passed this parliament recently, will somehow make our university system more efficient and more effective—none of that stacks up. This is a disguise for a billion dollar cut to universities that comes on top of the billions of dollars lost because international students can't come to Australia at the moment.

My message to the hundreds of thousands of workers, just over a quarter of a million workers, who work in the university sector; to our researchers, to our best and brightest working on the innovations and discoveries that will help us out of this recession; and to the young people and their parents who have had this shocker of a year, have got through year 12 in the toughest of circumstances and now face a government that's determined to make it harder for them to get a TAFE or university education, is: we share your disappointment. Labor shares your outrage. We will work every day in this parliament to stop, to reverse, the damage done by this government, the government that is damaging our once proud education system.

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

Is the amendment seconded?

Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment.

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

The original question was the bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member of Sydney has moved as amendment that all words after 'that' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I'll state the question in the form that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

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

I'm pleased to have the opportunity to speak in favour of these bills: the Education Legislation Amendment (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection) Bill 2020 and the Higher Education (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection Levy) Bill 2020. I want to start by saying we are not talking about the job-ready graduates legislation. I also want to correct the record: universities were not excluded from JobKeeper. If universities satisfied the turnover tests at 30 per cent or 50 per cent they could qualify for JobSeeker. In one sense it's actually really good that they didn't qualify for JobSeeker, because that meant that they didn't suffer the 30 per cent or 50 per cent downturn. I accept that universities are doing it hard, a lot of Australia is doing it hard. But those tests of 30 per cent and 50 per cent were in place for all other businesses and all other organisations.

I note the member for Sydney did point out that a small provider that isn't a university did manage to access JobKeeper. Yes, that's correct. It was a not-for-profit, charitable organisation that doesn't receive government funding. There is a distinction. They obviously satisfied the drop in turnover.

I am going to speak about these two bills because these two bills are about higher education, but they're not specifically about universities. These bills are designed to further strengthen the quality and integrity of our higher education system here in Australia, and to ensure that the diversity and choice which has been an increasing feature since of this system since the 1980s continues. Having a system where there is real choice for students, and choice that is not clouded by questions about quality, viability or reliability of the provider, is of utmost importance. Students need to know that if they start studying something they will be able to finish it. Students need to know that the money that they invest in their education is not lost if the provider ceases to exist midway through studies.

This sort of protection has been in place for quite some time for international students studying in Australia through the Tuition Protection Service. The Tuition Protection Service for international students is industry funded through an annual provider levy. It provides assurance and assistance to international students who may be affected by the closure of an education provider or course termination. The TPS helps international students either by placing them into a similar course with another institution or by providing a refund of tuition fees paid in advance for parts of the course that were not provided to the student.

The TPS has played a very important role in ensuring the international recognition of the quality and safety of studying here in Australia, and that has been wonderful and it has made Australia an attractive destination for international students, but the situation for domestic students has always been a little bit different. Ninety per cent of higher education students in Australia study at table A universities, sometimes referred to as public universities. Now, it's been a long-time policy of governments of both varieties that, given the low risk of these institutions, no additional levels of protection are required for domestic students enrolled in them. But alongside the public university sector sits a vibrant and diverse range of registered and recognised private higher education providers, and close to 10 per cent of Australian higher education students study at these providers. These providers include two Australian universities, a university of specialisation, an overseas university and, as at June 2020, 135 non-university higher education providers.

In 2019, the last time for which statistics are available, there were 127,000 full-time-equivalent students studying at these independent, private, non-university higher education providers. These providers educate students in a range of disciplines, including law, engineering, agricultural science, architecture, business, accounting, tourism and hospitality, education, health sciences, theology, creative arts, information technology and social sciences. And they teach across all AQF qualification levels, from diplomas through to doctorates. While they range in size, and some are very small, there are some that enrol over 10,000 full-time-equivalent students across multiple disciplines, and quite a broad variety of students, both domestic and international.

The overwhelming majority of these providers are highly reputable, with solid financial underpinnings and with sound academic oversight. All of these are things that TEQSA regularly examines these organisations on. I would also add here that many of these non-university higher education providers excel on student satisfaction and student outcome measures. However, given that they're not underwritten by a government guarantee and given that there is always a danger of such an organisation or such a provider ending or collapsing, it has been a long-time policy position that these providers do need to have extra protection for students who enrol at them. These requirements, both tuition and financial safeguards, are included within the Higher Education Standards Framework (Threshold Standards) and are mandatory for non-table-A providers to register as higher education providers. Given the practical problems that providers had with the arrangements which were in place until last year, the government undertook to tidy up the system, ensuring that it works as it was supposed to for domestic students while simultaneously not putting an overtly costly and cumbersome obligation on these providers.

Earlier this year, the government extended the TPS to cover domestic students receiving income contingent loans through the VET Student Loans program or the Higher Education Loan Program for students studying with independent education providers. This particular bill that we are discussing today will take that further. As of January next year, it will extend the tuition protection arrangements to apply to domestic students who pay their tuition fees upfront at a private, registered higher education provider under the TEQSA Act. This is intended to ensure that those students receive the same high-quality tuition protection as students who access FEE-HELP or HECS-HELP.

Just for clarity, these protections are for the benefit of students, not providers. These arrangements offer support through a suitable replacement unit or suitable replacement course for students to continue their studies, or through a refund of the upfront payment for incomplete units of study if a provider fails to deliver them.

It should also be noted that this bill amends the TEQSA Act to provide for the requirement that a defaulting provider has initial responsibility to take action to provide a remedy to their affected students. Only when the defaulting provider is unable to provide a remedy to their affected students will the tuition protection director step in to assist in providing that assistance and assurance to the affected students. These amendments ensure that the tuition protection process is consistent for both affected HELP students and upfront-fee-paying students in the higher education sector. It provides certainty for those students who might consider studying other than at a table A university, and there are students who choose this. Ten per cent of higher education students enrolled in Australia are enrolled at non-table-A institutions.

Having this tuition and course assurance embedded in the system is an essential part of ensuring that there is real diversity in our higher education offerings and real choice. It is on this point that I actually want to highlight that both the government and the opposition have supported diversity and choice in our education offerings, both at school level and at higher education level, for decades. Despite rhetoric at various times, both parties have long recognised that the existence of both public educational offerings and private educational offerings sitting side by side is a significant benefit to the provision of education in this country and ultimately to our country as a whole. While playing a much smaller part in the higher education sector than occurs at school level, the private independent higher education providers make a vital contribution to the entirety of the sector, and so students who choose to attend to study at them should be protected. I note here that those students who do choose to study at them rate them very highly. So it is my pleasure to support this bill, given that it is helping to embed the diversity and choice in our higher education system which has become a hallmark, and long may it be so.

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

I rise to speak on the Education Legislation Amendment (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection) Bill 2020 and the Higher Education (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection Levy) Bill 2020. These two bills expand the tuition protection scheme arrangements to include protection arrangements for domestic upfront-fee-paying students. Labor supported bills last year to expand the scheme to cover students accessing VET student loans, FEE-HELP and HECS-HELP assistance at private education providers. Labor was concerned when those bills were introduced that domestic upfront-fee-paying students were excluded from the scheme. The shadow minister for education and training wrote to the Minister for Education requesting that he consider expanding the system to all domestic fee-paying students. I am pleased that, although it took 10 months, the government finally tied up the loose ends in this scheme. These bills will see that domestic upfront-fee-paying students are included in the scheme and so Labor won't oppose these bills.

These bills will expand the scheme to give all students confidence they will not be left in debt and without a qualification if their training facility fails before they have finished their course. Sadly, both in my time as a politician and in a former job I have seen that happen and how it wrecks young peoples' lives. Australia has seen it happen too often. Dodgy providers overloaded with students, merely for a quick profit, go belly up, leaving those students out of pocket and without the qualification they need to get a job.

While I welcome this tweak of the tuition protection scheme so that all students are covered, I am still concerned about this government's treatment of the university sector more generally. Unfortunately, the Morrison government has done nothing but attack the higher education system in Australia. I don't know what happened to the Prime Minister when he was at university, but it must have been a traumatic experience—whether he was rejected by his peers, attacked by a tutor or snubbed by a professor. I am not sure what happened, but he really needs to go and see a therapist rather than roll out his rage on the universities of Australia.

It's as if those opposite fundamentally don't care about or don't understand higher education. I know that there are members there that have a strong history of being involved in universities, but, sadly, we've got some people in charge of portfolios who must be losing battles in the cabinet room. Some of the decisions that they're making are reckless and short-sighted. They say they care about jobs, but universities support an enormous range of jobs, not just academics and tutors, but the admin staff, the library staff, the catering staff, the ground staff, the cleaners and the security staff. These jobs have been disappearing under this government. What have we seen? More than 12,000 jobs lost across the country already and, sadly, thousands more are predicted to go before the end of the year.

In particular, it will have ramifications for regional areas as we come up to Christmas. The Morrison government went out of their way to exclude public universities from JobKeeper. They changed the rules three times to ensure that our public universities didn't qualify. This government could have stopped the job losses but they deliberately chose not to. They chose not to in a sector that is Australia's fourth largest export industry. It is the regional universities, as I said, that are going to be hit the hardest—universities that support 14,000 jobs in regional Australia, in places like the Sunshine Coast. And this is at a time when we are relying on universities to support our brilliant researchers who are working on a vaccine for COVID-19, yet the government are doing this. Could this luddite government's priorities be any more skewed?

Recovering from this pernicious Morrison recession will take vision and it will take planning, neither of which has been evident in this government. We know that by 2025 Australia will require an additional 3.8 million university qualifications. We need our universities to be skilling up students for the jobs of the future. They need support, not constant cuts. The Morrison government's job-ready graduates legislation cuts funds from universities and makes it harder and more expensive to go to university. Basically, overall, Australian universities will receive less funding to teach students. Imagine that: in 2020, being a government that will provide less funding to universities to teach students. The university sector faces a funding cut of around $1 billion a year. That cut is on top of the $16 billion projected revenue drop from international students being locked out and the $2.2 billion in cuts already made to university funding by the Liberal and National Party government.

This coalition government is nothing if not consistent in its betrayal of higher education, making short-term political decisions that are betraying our nation's future. Not only are universities like Griffith University in Moreton or the universities that I attended such as QUT and the University of Queensland being attacked but students will individually be paying more for their degrees—on average, seven per cent more. Forty per cent of students will be paying more than double for the same qualification before the Morrison government touched the process. Fees will be increasing to $14,500 per year, and we're not talking about medical degrees here. The degrees that will double in cost are degrees in the humanities, commerce and communications. These are degrees that this government thinks produce graduates that are less employable. But there is no evidence that this is true.

I am pretty sure there are a few graduates of those disciplines occupying the government benches in this parliament. In fact, the job prospects of humanities graduates are very healthy. Recent research suggests that people with humanities degrees have higher employment rates than science or maths graduates. So this Morrison government is cutting billions from the university sector, while doing nothing to help young people get into the high-priority courses and jobs. The Morrison government wants to encourage enrolment in maths, science and engineering—and I say up-front that these are noble and strategic aims—but what the government's legislation actually does is reduce the money that universities will receive to provide those courses.

Consequently, there will be a disincentive for universities to provide more places in these courses, or perhaps even to provide those courses at all. Thus, the government is shooting itself in the foot—or shooting the nation's future in the foot, if I could mangle metaphors. Under the government's plan, universities will receive 32 per cent less to teach medical scientists.

They will receive 17 per cent less to teach maths students, 15 per cent less to teach clinical psychology, 10 per cent less to teach agricultural students and eight per cent less to teach nurses—this at a time when their budgets are being hammered. How short-sighted is this? This is a bad policy from those opposite. When you cut funding support for engineering and science courses, there can only be two possible outcomes: you will get courses of a lesser standard or you will get fewer scientists and fewer engineers.

The Morrison government claims that its policy will create 39,000 places over three years, but, even if it does, that would be woefully inadequate when it comes to meeting demand. There is nothing in the Morrison government policy to account for the expected increased demand due to the recession or for the increased enrolments due to the so-called Costello babies now reaching university age.

So this is a disaster for young Australians that is being rolled out by those opposite while we're in the depths of a deepening Morrison recession. We see youth unemployment that has risen by more than 90,000 in recent months. With thousands of young people out of work, getting them into study rather than on the dole queue should be a priority for the Morrison government, but obviously it is not. The poor students who are in year 12 right now are the ones who will be most disadvantaged by this policy, and that's after they have had the year from hell. The seniors of 2020 have had such a tough, uncertain year already. Arguably no other year 12 cohort has had to endure a final year of schooling quite like they have: online classes, less face-to-face time with their mates, curtailed sports and cultural activities, no schoolies and now the Prime Minister making it harder and more expensive for them to go to university—the cherry on top of a rancid cake.

I want the class of 2020 to feel the excitement that I did when I completed school: the promise of learning in an environment that fostered ideas and promised a future paved with opportunity. I don't want to see them worrying about debt before they have even walked on campus. I understand the importance of education, as so many on this side do, both as a student and as a former teacher of English. Labor has always valued education. It is the great transformational social policy, where lives are changed, lives are saved, lives are improved.

When in government Labor ensured that a university education was never out of reach for our best and brightest. This nation needs them. Labor invested in universities, boosting university investment from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013. From 2012 we opened up the system with demand-driven funding. An additional 190,000 smart Australians were able to go to university, and we ensured that structural disadvantage did not preclude a university education, something of particular benefit to those electorates represented by National Party people in this parliament. An extra 220,000 Australians were given the opportunity of a university education under Labor's policies, and I'm proud of that. That included financially disadvantaged students, whose enrolments increased by 66 per cent; Indigenous undergraduate students, whose enrolments increased by 105 per cent; undergraduate students with a disability, whose enrolments increased by 123 per cent; and students from the bush, from the regional and remote areas, whose enrolments increased by 50 per cent. Labor knows that, if you lock kids out of an education, you lock them out of employment. This government fundamentally doesn't understand that or is ignoring that fact.

Investing in Australian universities is good for all of us. Labor will not oppose the bills currently before the house, but I urge the Minister for Education and Training to give universities the support they need now and to rethink his legislative agenda that perhaps was motivated by some cruel things that happened to the member for Cook. He needs to rethink his legislative agenda and all of those things that make it harder and more expensive for students to obtain a degree.

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

I always enjoy following my friend the member for Moreton in debate. He is the parliament's foremost author of creative fiction, and it was wonderful to hear over the last roughly quarter hour of debate his latest work of fiction! So thank you to the member for Moreton.

When someone pays for a higher education experience, they need to be sure they'll get what they paid for. Over the last couple of decades there's been a rapid expansion of the private higher education and vocational education providers in the sector. Many of these providers are of outstanding quality, but, sadly, some of them have proved dodgy, and about a decade ago a number of them went bust, leaving students in the lurch. As a result of this, the Gillard government created the Tuition Protection Service. The Tuition Protection Service has assisted international students affected by the closure of an education provider on course determination. It's an industry funded through an annual provider levy. It is internationally recognised as a mark of the quality and surety of studying in Australia. From 2012 to 2019 the TPS assisted approximately 12½ thousand international students with over 4½ thousand calls on funds from 47 providers that didn't meet their obligations to their students.

The TPS was a good idea but it never covered the whole sector. Earlier this year we saw the domestic expansion of the TPS. From 1 January the Morrison government expanded the TPS to cover domestic students receiving income contingent loans through the VET Student Loans Program or the Higher Education Loans Program for students studying with independent education providers. This means there are now around 60,000 domestic students with similar protections to international students in case a provider closes unexpectedly. The TPS helps students by placing them into a similar course with an alternative institution, by providing a refund of tuition fees paid in advance for parts of the course that were not provided to the student, or by requesting a student's HELP balance.

When the scheme was expanded to take into account domestic students, there was a Senate inquiry at which a number of the higher education providers, or HEPs, called for the scheme to be further expanded to include all domestic students, not just those on a HELP loan. When you look at the submissions to that Senate committee, it is interesting that many of the providers who provide submissions were actually small theological colleges. One of those providers is Broken Bay Institute-The Australian Institute of Theological Education, located in Pennant Hills in my electorate. In fact, it is located just across the plaza from my electorate office. The BBI is an accredited higher education provider. Most of its courses are online. Most of them are postgraduate theological courses with students from all over Australia, including regional areas. Most of the students are primary and secondary teachers who are primarily subsidised by the employer, and many of them are teachers in the Catholic education system who want to ensure that they have appropriate theological qualifications and understanding in order to teach in that sector. They are a small HEP, and, at the time of the Senate inquiry, they had 465 active students and up to 350 unit enrolments each trimester. I thought it worth sharing with the House some of the words of the CEO, Gerard Moore, from his submission to the Senate committee, on this particular point and on why the bill before the House is so important to an institution like the Broken Bay Institute. He said:

BBI-TAITE supports expansion of the TPS to include domestic students with student loans. However, we believe this expansion should go further to also include domestic self-funded (fee for service) students.

Having to plan for and administer TPS levies and separate protection arrangements (and costs) for domestic self-funded students is not only a red-tape and reporting burden, but also a cause for confusion where there are different protection arrangements for different students. It is important for BBI-TAITE, as an independent HEP, to have equity in protections, and it is important for our students to realise this equity.

Furthermore, as a small HEP, the rising costs of TAS insurance has certainly been realised, with a 25% increase in premiums from 2018 to 2019. These rising market costs puts pressure on student fees as we strive to remain competitive in the market while also managing increasing operating costs.

Equal coverage of all students under a government managed TPS will not only provide the best protections for students, it will remove the high costs of private insurance and ensure TEQSA protection requirements are met without the need for us and other institutions to report their individual protection arrangements. If this does not occur, private insurance for self-funded students will be expensive, premiums will no doubt continue to increase, and these costs will end up being passed on to our students through increased student fees.

BBI-TAITE strongly advocate for universal student protections provided by the proposed domestic TPS.

The Minister for Education, Dan Tehan, has listened and delivered for the sector and, more importantly, for those students in the sector. Last year, Minister Tehan committed to explore options to expand the TPS to include students from the higher education sector who pay their tuition fees up-front and do not, or are not able to, access a HELP loan. The bills that are before us today give effect to this commitment, enabling the highly regarded and effective Tuition Protection Scheme to be extended to domestic up-front fee-paying students and to have an annual levy payable by providers that contributes to the Higher Education Tuition Protection Fund. These new arrangements will ensure that all higher education students—regardless of whether they're domestic or international, regardless of whether they pay their fees upfront or through a loan scheme—receive the same protections and assistance against providers defaulting on their course of study. Under the expanded TPS, if a provider goes bust, all students will either be placed into a similar course or with an alternative institution, or receive a refund of tuition fees paid in advance for parts of the course that were not provided to the student, or have their HELP balance recredited.

As before, the new arrangements will be funded by the sector and not by the students. They'll be funded by a framework developed by the Australian Government Actuary which will cover the long-term costs of tuition assurance by requiring all private higher education providers to contribute annual levies commensurate with their size and risk.

This bill is about completing the TPS and bolstering the higher education sector as a whole. Registered higher education providers are required to have adequately resourced financial and tuition safeguards to mitigate disadvantage to students who are unable to progress their course of study due to unexpected changes in the provider's operations. At the end of last year, the last commercial tuition protection insurance provider closed its doors, and it's been a challenging time for providers like the BBI and others to meet their tuition protection obligations for domestic upfront students.

These bills place a requirement on all private higher education providers to be a party to the TPS as a condition of registration with TEQSA, and that's a very sensible condition. This expansion of the TPS provides certainty to those students and ensures that private higher education providers will no longer have to source and secure their own tuition protection policies, which, as we've heard from the submission from the BBI, can become onerous to maintain.

This bill is good for students. This bill is good for providers. This bill is good for the higher education sector. I commend the bill to the House.

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

I rise to speak on these two bills, the Education Legislation Amendment (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection) Bill 2020 and the Higher Education (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection Levy) Bill 2020, which we aren't opposing. And why would we oppose them, when the shadow minister actually wrote to the Minister for Education asking for these very changes? As members before me have noted, these bills basically mean that domestic students would not be excluded from the tuition protection scheme. It's taken about a year since the shadow minister first raised this issue with the minister, but it's good to see that these changes are finally being adopted.

Labor will always put quality education at the core of what we do in giving opportunities to young people, and, indeed, to anybody who is seeking to further themselves through higher education. If you have a look at Labor's record, particularly on universities and higher education, the last Labor government opened up universities. We had almost 200,000 additional people in higher education. We boosted investment from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013. It was during those years, as well, that I was employed in the higher education sector at various universities throughout that time.

Under these policies, we saw a new kind of diversity enter into our universities. Because of Labor's policies, because of our investment in higher education and in universities, we saw the number of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds go up by 55 per cent, we saw Indigenous student numbers jump by 89 per cent, we saw enrolments by students with a disability more than double and we saw enrolments by students in country and rural areas grow by 48 per cent. These are the kinds of goals that Labor strives for when we're in government. This is the kind of investment that we believe creates a better country and a better future for our young people.

But, Deputy Speaker, who am I to speak? I stand before you, a mere woman with four humanities degrees. Yes, Deputy Speaker, I am a humanities graduate. I suppose that as a humanities graduate I should be grateful that I have a job. I suppose that as a woman and a humanities graduate I should be grateful that I'm allowed to drive on the roads that all those non-humanities graduate people designed and built for me to drive on. I suppose that as a woman and a humanities graduate I should be grateful that my husband let me go to university and let me complete my PhD in between baking cookies and changing nappies. I suppose that as a humanities graduate I should be grateful for the sheer luck that has allowed me to be employed ever since I graduated from university. Blessed be! I should just be grateful for a whole lot of stuff as a humanities graduate, because this government would have you believe that a humanities degree is worthless. That's what this government would have you believe, yet many members of the government have benefited from access to university to pursue whatever it was they wanted—to pursue a humanities degree or a degree in any area they wanted—unencumbered by any kind of government policy, by any kind of ideological war on what they wanted to study.

I, like many members in this House, engage quite regularly with the high-school students in the electorate of Cowan and, indeed, beyond the electorate of Cowan as well. It's one of the joys of this vocation that we get to go and meet with young people, that we get invited to different schools to address the year 11s, the year 12s and the year 10s. It's certainly the part of this role that I enjoy the most. When I'm sitting with these young people and I'm talking to them about their futures and their careers, I ask them: 'What do you want to do?' Inevitably there are some who say, 'I don't know.' They might be in year 11 or even in year 12—some are in year 10—saying they've no idea what it is they want to do. I know that they advice that I give them is not much different to the advice that anybody else in here gives them. That is: do what you love and do what you're good at. That's what I did. I started out studying economics, discovered how boring that was and ended up studying my first degree in the arts, in English and comparative literature. I followed that up with a degree in linguistics, then a master of education and then, of course, a PhD. So it makes sense to me that if you pursue your passion, if you do what you love and you do what you're good at, you're going to succeed. That's probably the best bit of advice that I can give to any young person.

Last week, the government introduced legislation into this House that's going to make it a lot harder for young people. Already I've had several young people in my electorate contact me, young people who had their hopes pinned on studying a degree in communication, in law, in social work or in sociology, who have said that now they're going to have to revisit their plans, the dreams that they had hoped they could achieve, because it is simply untenable for them to attend university and pay the fees that are now going to be charged under this government's legislation. Even if you accept the rationale for this, the fact is that under this legislation the government's aim of pushing young people to do degrees that they have no passion in and probably aren't even interested in or are good at is not going to work. Time and time again, we've heard the experts tell us that it's not going to work, because, under this legislation, students are going to pay seven per cent more, on average, for their degree. Forty per cent of students will have their fees increased to $14½ thousand a year, doubling the cost for thousands of people. That is in areas such as the humanities, commerce and communications. People studying those degrees are going to pay more for their degree than somebody studying medicine or dentistry. I just don't think that's fair. It's not that I don't think that's fair because I happen to have degrees in those areas. I don't think it's fair because I hear members on the government side talk a lot about choice—individual choice and opportunity and aspiration, and these are noble things. These are noble values to have. When you come into this place you want to contribute to a society and to a country where your kids and your grandkids have it better than you. That's what everybody wants. They want their kids to have more choice than them. They want their kids to have better choices than they did. So I find it incredibly unfathomable that this government would introduce legislation that increases the cost of some degrees, thereby decreasing choice for young people, particularly because many members on that side had that choice, had that opportunity—it was given to them.

Why would you want to take away something from the next generation that was given to you? Do we not come to this place to make it better for the next generation? Correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm confused. That's why I came here. I came here to make Australia better for the next generation. I came here to make sure that the next generation had more choices than I did or that my parents did. I came here to make sure that, when I leave this place, I will know that I've done everything that I can to ensure that the young people that I face in my electorate every day have it easier. So I just cannot for the life of me fathom why a government would make it more difficult, harder, and more expensive for young people to get an education, to go to university, and then stand here and talk about choice, opportunity and aspiration. If you truly believe in choice, opportunity and aspiration, then you don't cut university places, you don't make it harder for people to pursue their dreams and you don't break down dreams. That's what you're doing.

The shadow minister spoke at length about young people taking on a $58,000 debt for a university degree. She's absolutely right when she says that a $58,000 university degree is a disincentive for a lot of young people to go to university. But I also want to talk about mature age students and what a disincentive it is for them as well, because I was one of those mature age students. I want to talk about women returning to work. Perhaps they have taken a break from work because they've been rearing children. Perhaps, like me, they never had an opportunity, because they got married young, because they had children young, because they spent their 20s rearing children and it wasn't until they were in their late 20s or 30s that they decided there was an opportunity for them to go back to university and study something and make something of themselves in that regard.

I want to talk about men and women who want to retrain. Perhaps COVID has forced them to look at their lives and see that they've been in a job that they haven't really enjoyed. Perhaps it's given them pause to think and perhaps it's given them the courage to finally pursue a passion by going back to university. When I went back to university, many of my classmates were mature age students. Many of them were women returning to the workforce or seeking to return to the workforce. Many of them were men and women who were seeking to retrain. When I taught counterterrorism, intelligence and security at university, many of my students were mature-age students. Many of them were former service men and women who came to do a degree to retrain and get back out there into the workforce. Why would you take that opportunity away from them? Why would you do that?

University isn't just about getting a job. Education isn't just about getting a job. Yes, you do it and you hope that it leads you to the vocation you want. You hope that, if you study something you love, with the passion that you have for it, it's going to be your career and that's where you're going to work, because you love it so much. But university doesn't always lead to a job, and the purpose of university is not always to get a job. There are a whole range of other benefits that come with a university degree. There's personal development. There's critical thinking skills and teamwork skills. There's discipline. There's self-learning and self-paced learning. There are a whole range of other skills that are applicable in any workforce and in any workplace.

If we continue to see university only as a means of getting a job, and if we continue to value university only as a means of getting a job, then we are never going to come to a position in this country where we value knowledge for its own sake. We are never going to come to a position where we can go back to a proud tradition of having some of the best universities in the world and the best education system in the world. So, while I support this bill, I reiterate that we have to see this in the context of this government's persistent battle against the universities.

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to support these bills, which are part of a package of legislation to expand the Australian government's tuition assurance arrangements to protect domestic upfront fee paying students at private higher education providers. This will ensure these students receive the same protection as students who access FEE-HELP or HECS-HELP assistance at private higher education providers. These amendments are about protecting students and, in so doing, supporting the viability of the higher education sector at this incredibly challenging time.

Delivering opportunities for higher education is important to me. I was fortunate to complete two degrees concurrently, in arts and social work, at the La Trobe University campus in Mildura, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy degree at the Australian National University. My experiences at university were some of the most rewarding of my life, and I want other people to have the opportunity to discover and explore their passions, as I have. I also believe that the intrinsic value of higher education, regardless of career or financial outcomes, is often understated. The pursuit of knowledge in and of itself is something to be encouraged and celebrated. To have a well-informed mind is a great asset, regardless of the career you undertake.

The first bill, the Education Legislation Amendment (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection) Bill 2020, amends the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 and the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to implement the expansion of the Australian government's Tuition Protection Service to include domestic upfront fee paying higher education students. Tuition protection aims to ensure that students are protected and supported in the event that their provider either fails to start to provide a unit to the student on the day on which the unit was scheduled to start or ceases to provide a unit to the student on the day after the unit starts but before it's completed. The second bill, the Higher Education (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection Levy) Bill 2020, imposes the upfront payment tuition protection levy, specifies the amounts that are payable by providers and prescribes the levy components and the manner in which they will be determined each year. These changes are about protecting students, and they demonstrate the government's commitment to the higher education sector. They reduce administrative burdens for providers and ensure that higher education remains affordable and accessible even during difficult times.

I support these changes as well as the Morrison-McCormack government's higher education reforms and Job-ready Graduates Package. The government responded to calls from the higher education sector by guaranteeing Commonwealth funding for universities even if there is a fall in domestic student numbers. This guarantee totals $18 billion in funding across the sector this year, which amounts to around 50 per cent of total revenue across the sector. Providers will also benefit from regulatory fee relief so they can focus on their operations and on supporting their domestic and international students.

We are also working with the sector to help Australians upskill or retrain by rolling out short online courses for new students in fields of national priority such as teaching, health and agriculture. I spoke recently to the Vice-Chancellor of La Trobe University, Professor John Dewar, and he told me how well these courses had been taken up by students in Mildura. These short courses are heavily subsidised by the government to increase uptake, reduce costs for students and generate stimulus for education providers. I was very pleased to learn about the $251.8 million announced in the 2020 Commonwealth budget for an additional 50,000 short-course places in 2021.

We know that, as with many parts of the economy, universities and other higher education providers are facing extreme difficulties due to the outbreak of COVID-19. That's why it's so important to support higher education providers to increase their offerings and protect students at this difficult time. A highly educated, well-trained and skilful population is a key element of Australia's strength as a democratic nation and will be instrumental in our economic recovery on the other side of the coronavirus pandemic. We need highly educated minds to build, restore, innovate and grow. The delivery of priority infrastructure projects announced in this year's budget, the Technology Investment Roadmap in the energy sector and the implementation of the Modern Manufacturing Strategy will deliver enormous economic benefits to the country. That is why it is so important that the government, through measures such as those contained in these bills, supports the higher education sector to provide more opportunities for students and make it easier for students to take up these opportunities.

There is also an ever-growing need for healthcare professionals, especially in regional areas such as the electorate of Mallee, and the current crisis has laid bare the extent of that need. Delivering sufficient healthcare service provision for Mallee is a key priority for me. In Mallee we face shortages of general practitioners, nurses, and primary and allied health professionals. In 2017, the Victorian Skills Commissioner completed work in the northern half of my electorate to identify the future workforce demands of the region. The Mallee regional skills demand profile estimated that between 2017 and 2020 up to 4,400 new workers would be needed to support growth in the region. The report identified that almost one-quarter of these workers would be needed in the healthcare sector. Work has commenced to refresh this skills profile for 2020. I hope the new report shows that we have met this identified need, as I expect the future demand for the next five, 10 and 15 years will be just as great, if not greater, than in the preceding few years.

It's been incredibly encouraging that La Trobe University has been investing in regional health qualifications through a number of initiatives to meet the expected demand. Over the past 30 years La Trobe has become integral to the Mallee community. Eighty-seven per cent of the students who graduate from the Mildura campus stay and work locally, and there are around 1,600 La Trobe graduates working in the region. The importance of this university to our region cannot be understated. The changes made by the Commonwealth government to give greater flexibility to the use of Commonwealth supported places for postgraduate courses were welcomed by Professor Dewar and La Trobe University. These changes meant that La Trobe University was able to offer a number of online postgraduate health courses to regional areas, with Commonwealth supported places attached, resulting in extensively subsidised costs. The following month Rebecca Crossling from the La Trobe Mildura campus told me that eight staff at the Mildura Base Hospital had applied for a Master of Mental Health Nursing, with a further four applying for a Masters of Mental Health. Simple initiatives like these show how the government has supported universities to provide more opportunities, making life easier for students at the same time, thereby improving outcomes for the local community.

La Trobe is also doing fantastic work with their rural medical pathway program in partnership with the University of Melbourne. This program is the first to commence as part of the Murray-Darling Medical Schools Network, an initiative announced in the 2018 Commonwealth budget. Under this program 15 students from regional and rural areas begin their studies at La Trobe's Bendigo or Albury-Wodonga campuses, and undertake a three-year Bachelor of Biomedical Science degree before going on to study a four-year Doctor of Medicine at the University of Melbourne's Shepparton campus.

The Murray-Darling Medical Schools Network is one part of a $95 million investment to set up the 'train in the regions, stay in the regions' program. The guiding logic behind this program is to train locally to stay locally. We know that people from a regional city or town who learn in a regional place have the best possible chance of graduating and staying in the regions to work. There are seven Mallee students undertaking this program in 2020. They are: Alfred, Isabella, Abdo, Abigail, Kunind, Madeline and Oscar. When I met these students virtually, they all indicated they aspire to work in regional and rural areas after completing their studies. Alfred, who was born in India, says he wants to travel Australia, working in remote communities, ultimately returning to Mildura to work locally. Kunind wants to pursue a career in craniofacial surgery and hopes to bring this area of medicine to areas such as rural Victoria. This is a fantastic example of what can happen when we support higher education providers to increase their offerings and make it easier for students to take up these opportunities. There are more reasons why higher education is important for Mallee.

Recently I spoke about the need to improve access to vocational education and training opportunities to meet the rising need for skilled local jobs in Mallee due to a number of emerging industries with massive growth potential. In Mallee we have seen extensive investment and growth in solar energy. We are becoming increasingly reliant on new technologies, like artificial intelligence and robotics in agriculture and horticulture, and we are pushing for more value driven invasion and value-adding manufacturing.

There is no reason why Mallee can't be a leader for 21st century innovation, but bright minds will be required to lead these developments into the future. Again, the train local, stay local approach will be crucial to support this growth and development. I'm eager to see increased opportunities to be offered in STEM degrees in regional areas, similar to what we have seen with the Murray-Darling Medical Schools Network and the rural medical pathway program by La Trobe and the University of Melbourne. Supporting higher education providers to increase their offerings and make it easier for students to take up opportunities will improve outcomes for regional areas and will help places like Mallee meet their full potential. That's what the government aims to do with the changes outlined in these bills, and that's why I support their passage. I hope that we will continue to see further developments in higher education policy that work towards these regional goals.

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about the Education Legislation Amendment (Up-Front Payments Tuition Protection) Bill 2020 and Higher Education (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection Levy) Bill 2020 and amendments. Labor won't oppose these bills, as we heard earlier. The member for Sydney, in her speech to the chamber, was saying that in November last year she wrote to the education minister to ask him to consider exactly these changes. She voiced her concerns and outlined what the changes were and I suppose we are pleased that this particular tinkering with the education policies happened, ensuring that it will streamline some of the things that we've been talking about here tonight. It may have taken about 10 months, but we're pleased that the government has come around to legislating to tie up these loose ends and we welcome the practical effect. These changes will create simpler arrangements for students and processes for decision-making, student placements and loan recrediting.

More broadly, while we welcome these tweaks to the tuition protection scheme, we also have to consider this in light of this government's policies that have been put through—last week we saw a particular bill go through—and the detriment that this will have on Australia's higher education system. For months now we've been urging the federal government to step in and help universities save some of their jobs. I heard one of the members opposite saying that they didn't meet the benchmarks for assistance. Well, since this pandemic started, 12,000 jobs have been lost across the country in this sector, with thousands more predicted to go before Christmas. When you have an industry or an area where 12,000 jobs have gone and there are more to go before Christmas, if it were any other sector, whether it be mining, resources or manufacturing, there would be an outcry and the government would step in. So we cannot see the reasons why the higher education sector is not receiving the support that it deserves from this government. We want to make that point, and I want to urge the government to perhaps think about stepping in and doing something for universities to try to assist them. They are the fourth-largest exporter of this nation. They bring millions into the country. They educate the youth of this country and they're building a better Australia for the next generation.

With the COVID-19 pandemic we've seen universities working brilliantly to try to come up with a vaccine. We're relying on our brilliant universities and their researchers to find a vaccine for COVID-19. Unfortunately, they can't rely on this government for a bit of assistance to save their sector. We know that Australia's going to require an additional approximately 3.8 million university qualifications by 2025, yet, when it comes to higher education and the education system, this government's priority is always to cut.

What we saw in the bill that went through this place last week was that this government wants to make it more expensive for students to get a degree or to achieve their higher education aspirations. The job-ready graduates bill makes students pay more for their degrees, and thousands of students around the country will pay more than double for the same qualifications. It cuts billions from the sector while doing nothing to help young people get into higher-priority courses and jobs. What we're doing is the Americanisation of our education system, where how deep your pocket is determines the degree you get and what sort of education you're going to receive. We're going down that track, and that is wrong.

Education should be for everyone regardless of your background, regardless of which side of the tracks you come from, where your neighbourhood is or what your post code is. Education is one of the magic levers that governments have to encourage people to go to universities and to turn their lives around. If you want to make someone's life better, if you want to get someone out of poverty, the best way to do it is through education, and we have a duty as legislators and members of parliament—and the government has a duty—to try to better the lives of Australians that perhaps aren't as fortunate as the many in this place who went to university. I must add the majority went for free when that was introduced by Gough Whitlam.

We have to give the opportunities to the next generations of Australians, those that perhaps are doing it tough because of their family circumstances or for whatever reason. We have to try to encourage and assist those people, and we know that one of the best levers that exists to change someone's life is education. Governments should be making it easier and encouraging people to attend universities, not making it harder by increasing fees, by not supporting the system or by having continuous cuts to the sector. It is really important that we encourage people to get a university degree or to aspire to higher education. We know that, the higher your education, the more likely you are not to be unemployed.

Debate interrupted.