Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Student Assistance and Other Measures) Bill 2021, in its primary form, is really a tidying up of some loose ends around the support for isolated children and people who receive support under Abstudy. It goes to the heart of the requirement to provide tax file numbers. Sometimes, when incomes are not important for that part of the grant, the Commonwealth doesn't need to know those tax file numbers. The other case, of course, is where younger people are involved who are not entitled to a tax file number. In fact, I met with the Isolated Children's Parents Association in my office today. We discussed a number of issues and we ticked off on this one as well. This will tidy up some loose accounts which they will be most appreciative of.

For the record, the block amount in assistance to isolated children is indexed to the CPI and is $11,011 per annum. Of that, $8,557 is a grant that comes basically without question. There is a further $2,454 of additional payment, depending on parental income—hence, the need for a tax file number—and the actual boarding costs of the student. These arrangements are roughly similar to the Abstudy payments as well as are the criteria surrounding them. That is where this legislation cuts across those payments.

Isolated children are also eligible for the district education allowance, and that is significant. There is also the tertiary access payment—and 2021 is its first year of operation—which is the relocation grant for those students who have to relocate to another place and set up some kind of accommodation. That is a one-off $5,000 grant. The criterion there is that you must be 90 minutes or more from your place of education by public transport. The vast majority in the electorate of Grey would qualify for that since the recent extension of Grey towards the city.

The treatment of country students was one of the issues that galvanised me to get involved with politics at a higher level than just supporting my local Liberal Party branch. We wanted our children to access the last three years of secondary education in the city rather than in our small country town, which has a very good school but years 9, 10 and 11 are quite limited in the subjects that are available. My first daughter had her heart set on being a chemical engineer. In those days chemistry was one of the requirements, unsurprisingly, yet chemistry was not on offer at the local school.

When I queried the education department about that issue I said, 'She can't do year 12 chemistry there.' They said, 'Yes, we will do it through distance education.' I said, 'That's interesting because you can't do year 11 chemistry there.' They said, 'Year 11 chemistry isn't a prerequisite for year 12.' I thought this system isn't working correctly. It is one of the reasons that I got involved. We got our kids through the education system, but we had no assistance at all from governments at any level, except when the kids went off and did some work and we were able to access independent youth allowance for them.

I pursued some things through my party's mechanisms, and I had the opportunity to get elected to federal parliament. I came here determined to make life better in this area. That was the 2007 election. The result of that election was that then Prime Minister Rudd's team with the then education minister Julia Gillard actually severed the pathway for independent youth allowance that my children had been able to access. They made it far more difficult for others in a similar situation to access. Essentially, there was no government support to get these students into higher level education in the city. It has been a long battle. I have been here 13 years now and we have incrementally won back what we lost and gone further. Country students are now in a better position when it comes to that kind of support than they have ever been. Having said that, there is still more to do. While they are better supported than in the past and while the percentages of country students accessing tertiary education have risen, so too has the number of city students accessing tertiary education. In fact, the gap, if you like, has widened rather than closed, even though we have got more country students as a percentage of the cohort in tertiary education.

This is an ongoing issue for regional Australia. Most of our industries that actually drive regional Australia now are becoming higher and higher technology. The primary industry in regional Australia is agriculture—and I guess the other one is resources. Both of them require people with higher education to actually access the best information and the best technologies available to provide the right outcome for Australia. So we need our bright kids—and they are bright—to be able to access tertiary education and bring those skills home to the farm and home into our communities to drive our communities to the next level. So we will need to keep campaigning in that space.

There have been some good moves, though, including the government investment over the last few years into the uni level—the spoke level, if you like. You need a driver in local communities, and in some of mine it is the local council. We have three uni hubs established in Grey at the moment. The first at Port Pirie, the second at Port Augusta and the third at Kadina—and I think we've got the opportunity to maybe establish one or two more yet. There isn't a regional university as such in the electorate of Grey but there is a regional campus of UniSA in Whyalla. So that community is probably pretty well serviced.

The purpose of the uni hubs is to provide a space and a bit of assistance for students to tackle distance education in a more friendly and supportive environment than trying to just battle through it on their own at home. The Port Pirie uni hub, which was the first established and is in its third year of operation, now has, I understand, around 120 students, which is pretty good. But it's not just about kids. Sure, kids leave school and they want to do tertiary studies. Many times some of those will be attracted to the idea of going to a major university campus anyway, but others can't for all kinds of reasons. They might be the primary caregiver in their family or they might have other issues that mean that they have to stay at home or feel as though they have to stay at home. So it's provided a real opportunity there.

We have come to know, and recognise quite well, that education is an ongoing and lifelong pursuit. So people are able to come back and get top-up degrees or get their first degree and actually get a start even though they may have already had a stint in the workforce or they may have already raised a family. There are all kinds of different points within people's lives now where they will seek that higher education. You can imagine that if you have a young family, you are the primary caregiver and you are trying to get to university and then maybe trying to juggle online distance learning at home, the idea of being able to go into a campus where you get a bit of support and where you have a cohort to work with is a far more supportive outcome than previously.

I know this young man—though he probably doesn't like me describing him as young anymore—who I first came across when I was elected as the member for Grey back in 2007. He was the apprentice of the year in Port Augusta. I knew his parents and him—even though he had not come from Port Augusta; he'd come from up the road at Ceduna—and I was so thrilled to be there and see his achievement. He worked a number of jobs and then found himself with a good local business and worked his way up through the system where he was basically the leading hand for a company employing 70 people. He is very, very good at what he does. He came to that uni hub opening in Port Augusta. He said: 'This is just what I've been looking for. I was terrible at school. I left at the end of year 10, and my parents, my teachers and I were all in agreement that it would be a good thing.' He said: 'I wasn't applying myself then but I have now. I realise now that, if I want to go to the next level, I'm going to have to get some tertiary education.' He said, 'This will be perfect for me'. He has since graduated and he has got his ticket and he is moving on to a different part of the world. That's a real celebration of what those uni hub arrangements can do.

So things have changed. Things are far better than when I got here in 2007. We went backwards, but I don't think it was intended. I don't think Minister Gillard, who was education minister at the time, intended to do damage, but she did, and we had to reconstruct the independent youth allowance criteria to make it work in a better way.

Another thing we did in that area was remove the family farm from the assets test. Many have spoken in this place before about family farms being worth a lot of money on paper but sometimes not producing a lot of income. I think it's quite right and proper that the income tests remain, because, if you're making money, you're making money, and, if you're not, you're not. That's quite simple, and I'm very happy to repeat that premise. But, certainly, removing the assets test has allowed more students to access that independent pathway than would have otherwise been the case, and that is a good outcome.

Generally speaking, I've been pleased with the government's action in the area of trying to address the imbalance with the country. I think we've got more to do, and I think we're going to have to keep applying ourselves. Let's hope that there are some more regional universities established in Australia over time. But, as I said at the start, this particular piece of legislation tidies up some loose ends and makes it a little easier for some people to get on with their lives, so I support it.

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

As with my other colleague in the House, I support the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Student Assistance and Other Measures) Bill 2021. But I rise today to speak predominantly to the second reading amendment and particularly to the part of the second reading amendment that notes that 'the government has made it more expensive for Australian students to undertake tertiary study, and has pushed students into taking on more debt'. That is a shame across Australia and it is a huge shame in my electorate of Dunkley, where there are many young people from hardworking families who are earning the minimum wage, or slightly above, whose aspiration is to go to university, to study commerce, to study the arts, to study law, to do degrees that help them to have careers that help others, and they can't imagine leaving university with something like a $50,000 debt or how they could possibly go on with their adult lives with that on their shoulders.

I know that this is an issue that has been raised by many people in this chamber, and it's an obvious intellectual issue that you can imagine when you think about young people from families that don't have much money. I don't have to imagine it because I've had parents and students coming into my office and telling me about their genuine concerns about how the government's approach to universities and fees is going to impact their futures. I had a mother from Seaford write to me about the fact that her son, who is currently studying second-year law, and her daughter, who's in year 12 and wants to study law, are going to leave university with massively disparate debts. Her son is likely to get a job that, even at the entry-level graduate position, will earn him more money than her daughter because, despite all the laws and despite what everyone may say, it is still the case that, at the entry level, men and women are paid differently for the same job. Her concern is that her daughter is going to leave university with a much higher debt than her son. Her son is most probably going to start earning more money than her daughter. Her son, unless he chooses to, is never going to have to put a pause on his career to look after a baby. He will certainly never have to take time off to give birth. Her daughter will have to. She says to me: 'This is the part of gender inequality that this government doesn't get. I've got two children who I've brought up exactly the same, who have the same values, who have the same aspirations for employment, yet who are genuinely looking at careers and earnings in retirement that are significantly different because of structural inequalities and structural barriers in the system which this government is not fixing, but, indeed, is making worse with the changes to university fees.' So that's one of the consequences of the government making it more expensive for Australian students to undertake tertiary studies.

The other consequence is this attempt to skew students to study particular subjects at university. We all want our young people to get jobs of the future. We know that STEM is vitally important, and we all want people to go to university and study in a way that will help them with their future careers. But my concern is that only one half of this chamber also wants Australians to be great thinkers, to be innovative thinkers, to be challenging thinkers, and to go to university and become enriched with the history of Greece and Italy and the Indonesian archipelago, for the reason that that sort of learning matters. It might not immediately put you into a STEM job or what is known as a job of the future, but it helps us as a country to be smart, to challenge stereotypes and to learn from history so that we make a better future. It appears that that is what this government wants to stop. It wants to stop critical thinking, or at least critical thinking that doesn't agree with its own ideology, with the way that it's made university fees more expensive. That's a shame for the future of our country. And that's what's missing from this budget.

We're here in budget week. There has been a lot of money spent and a lot of analysis of the budget, and there will continue to be a lot of analysis of the budget—what's in it, what's not in it, who the winners are, who the losers are, what's an announcement without delivery, what's new money and what's old money. All of that is important. But you know what is missing from the budget? You know what was missing from the Treasurer's speech and media appearances and from the Prime Minister's speeches? A genuine vision for this country—a genuine vision for the sort of country that this government wants to steer us towards; a genuine vision for when we skill up Australians, when we get our young people into TAFE or university or apprenticeships, and how that contributes to the sort of world-leading nation we want to be. There is no vision about how we can harness the challenge of climate change to have new industries and new jobs, to not only save the planet but also engage that enthusiasm and passion and fierce fighting spirit that young people all over Australia have about the future in building a better one. We'll beat and meet our emissions targets, but that's it.

That's what's missing this week from the Morrison government, and its approach to universities underwrites that. There's no vision in a government that has abandoned university students and universities in their time of need. We know that as at January this year more than 17,000 people had lost their jobs at universities across Australia since the beginning of the pandemic. More than 17,000 people had lost their jobs. They weren't jobs we heard much about in the budget speeches. Universities Australia forecast further cuts this year. Thirteen per cent of the pre-COVID workforce has been lost from universities. That's lecturers, tutors, academics and some administrators, but it's also cleaners, people who work in the canteens, people who look after the gardens and people who do the maintenance. It's also the economic ecosphere that grows up around universities off campus—the cafes, the pubs, the boutiques, the accommodation. All of that has been affected because this government walked away from universities and continued to change JobKeeper so that universities couldn't get it and are still not thinking about how to support universities.

Sure, we want universities to do research which can be commercialised—that's great—but we also want universities to support the thinking that comes before and around the research. We also want universities to support the critical thinking that feeds into having a vision for the future. We're not going to have that if we don't have universities, and we're not going to have that if we only have private universities or universities that have to function predominantly in a privatised commercial mode—which is where this government is pushing them—and to rely on foreign students. Now that the foreign students can't come, the government not giving universities any support is another irony. We lose something if we lose that sense of worth of education in being able to think, debate and ponder. We genuinely lose something. I fear that that's why we haven't heard an actual vision from the government this week—because of that lack of valuing and understanding the importance of thinking.

The people who are affected are real people. Before I conclude my remarks, I want to give an example. I have this truly amazing young woman volunteering in my office at the moment in Parliament House, Lucy Skelton. She's a first-year student at ANU, studying public policy and other things. She told me today that, if she could basically live in Parliament House, she would, because it's so exciting for her to be here and to be part of all of this. She helped to put together some notes for this speech. Sorry, Lucy, I always ad lib and don't use all the notes that are given to me. One of the things she did was go through the member for Barton's speech to highlight some of the issues and, in the papers she gave me, I think she accidentally gave me part of what she'd marked up. There was a sentence in the member for Barton's speech that said, 'Think about the year 12s, who had a hell of a final year last year with COVID-19,' and Lucy had written on it, 'That's me.' That one sentence resonated with her so much that she wrote on it, 'That's me.'

She's lucky enough that she's at university and she's doing all she can to live her dream. I want everyone to have Lucy's opportunities. I want everyone in my electorate to be able to dream Lucy's dreams: to be able to come to parliament and sleep here, if they could—as Lucy puts it—because they're so excited to be here and to be able to study things like public policy and politics because they want to be part of this democracy and the bureaucracy that supports it and everything that makes the world a better place. That's what I want for everyone in my electorate. But they can't have that if they can't afford to go to university, buy the books or pay the accommodation costs. They certainly can't have those opportunities if Monash University Peninsula Campus, in my electorate, can't afford to keep offering what it's offering because it doesn't get the support from the government. That's why I stand to speak on the second reading amendment today. I commend it to the House, and I commend the other side of the chamber to really think about the value of universities and what they give to society.

Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Dunkley for her contribution and also thank the member for Grey, who spoke earlier. Following on from the member for Grey's speech, these changes are technical in nature. The bill seeks to amend the Student Assistance Act to make it consistent with the social security laws in the areas of tax file number collection, information management et cetera. These amendments don't place any additional administrative burden on funding receipts, and in some cases will lead to a streamlined process in terms of Abstudy and the Assistance of Isolated Children Scheme, or the AIC. They are technical, but I would like to address the issue of the real disadvantage of some of my communities and the opportunities they are now receiving through government programs and partnerships with country universities.

I grew up in the country town of Kempsey. There were no universities between Kempsey and Newcastle or Queensland. There are now two excellent universities at Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour: Southern Cross University and Charles Sturt University. One might think that the people who are disadvantaged in our smaller communities might just go to those closer universities only 50 or 60 kilometres away, but the opposite is indeed the fact. These people are people who need to work, who don't have the opportunities to go to the private universities, to pay those fees or to travel. So I was really pleased that a country university centre was opened in Kempsey only recently.

When I was preparing and looking at the figures something in those statistics really hit me. During semesters 1 and 2 in 2020 in the country universities they supported over 1,060 students from 38 universities. Forty-seven per cent of those people studying were the first in their family to study. Just let that sink in—the first in their family. Seventy-six per cent of that 47 per cent were female, eight per cent were of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander heritage and 57 per cent were over the age of 25. So, in opening a country university centre, you're not just opening a place where people can go to do their work online. It's not just a pretty centre with a cafe or a kitchen or world-class internet. It is opportunity—opportunity for people who have never had that pathway to change their life. It is life-changing. It's not just a certificate. It's not just a degree saying you have a Bachelor of Laws. It's an opportunity to get a better job. It's an opportunity to get better pay, and, in doing so, to have a better lifestyle and, in the circumstance that you have a family, provide a better pathway and a better lifestyle for them.

Selfishly, as the member for Cowper, I say that what it does is makes our communities better. There was a young lady who was at the opening. She told the story that she started with one of the country university centres. She was working part time, going to the country university centre where she was living, and she completed her first degree. She was the first person in her family to do so. She is now doing her masters at the country university centre in Kempsey. She was in her mid-20s. She said she never thought she would even have a degree. She thought she would be working in retail or in the supermarkets, like her family had done, like her siblings had done. But because of these opportunities she now has opened up her world. While she might have started in retail, she can go and do all those things that the member for Dunkley said. She is not precluded by anything because of those opportunities presented.

When we talk about universities, sometimes we need to wind it right back and talk about those opportunities, which the small changes in this bill are providing to those who are not so fortunate. Many of us in this chamber don't know adversity. We've been privileged. I put myself in that category. I've never had to struggle. We've all gone out and got jobs, or second jobs, and put ourselves through university, or gone off and then studied later in life. But some people don't have those opportunities. They don't know how to get them. They don't know the pathways. And this country university in a small country town, like the other 25 or 26 across Australia, is changing people's lives, one by one, because of those opportunities.

To suggest that the federal government is taking these opportunities away from young Australians who want to better themselves—I'm sorry, but that's just a falsehood. That's a myth. The federal government is out there, trying to help these people help themselves, because, in doing so, we create more jobs, we create the environment to create more jobs and we make Australia a better nation. I commend this bill to the House.

Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Student Assistance and Other Measures) Bill 2021. Labor will support this bill, as it makes commonsense administrative changes to the operation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Study Assistance Scheme, or Abstudy, and the Assistance for Isolated Children Scheme, or AIC. The two schemes were introduced to provide financial assistance to students and their families, improving equality of access to education and study.

In 2020 the Abstudy scheme provided financial assistance to around 27,000 students at school, university and TAFE. It helps to reduce financial barriers for First Nations people to tertiary education and training, and access to education is a key target of Closing the Gap. In 2019-20 the AIC scheme assisted around 13,000 students, enabling children living in rural and remote areas to have access to continuing and appropriate education. The provisions in this bill align the tax file number regime under the Student Assistance Act 1973 with the collection and use of tax file numbers under social security laws.

Currently, all claimants of the two schemes, including primary school children, are required to provide a tax file number to Services Australia. This bill removes this anomaly and puts in place tax file number provisions that are consistent with social security law. Only the parents will now need to submit a tax file number when applying for the AIC scheme. That makes a lot of sense. The provisions will also clarify the information management arrangements for the isolated children scheme, aligning them with existing Abstudy provisions.

While the contents of the bill are uncontroversial, it does highlight failures by the Morrison government, including its coalition partner, the Nationals, to provide high-quality education for students in regional and remote areas. For students accessing Abstudy and the AIC scheme, the legislative changes are inconsequential, and real reform is needed to ensure the fast-tracking of benefits to families. This is a government that goes on and on about red tape, but it sees the mantra extending only to business and to wealthier Australians. For these students and their families, reducing the red tape of these schemes and actually delivering better education outcomes for them should be a priority. Updating the administrative processes of these schemes does not require legislative change, just political will.

University is transformative for anyone who attends. We should be ensuring that anyone with the ability and the will can attend university, if they want to, without barriers. That is why the Labor Party, during World War II, introduced support for Australians to undertake study and training.

Under the Whitlam government, Abstudy was reformed into a means tested payment scheme, and the Assistance for Isolated Children Scheme was established to assist students in the bush. Despite 27,000 students accessing Abstudy, we know that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students are significantly underrepresented in higher education. They are underrepresented in universities, comprising 1.3 per cent of the domestic higher education student population compared with 3.3 per cent of the total Australian population. Research from the University of Newcastle also shows that many high-achieving Indigenous students are not going to university, despite the fact that their non-Indigenous counterparts with similar academic scores are going to university. This is not good enough. It shows how much work there is to be done.

For this, we need a well-funded and strong university system that can provide support for First Nations students to access university and excel while they are there. Following COVID-19, it is clear to me that our universities are not in a strong position to do this. The budget last night was a further indication of the disdain that the Morrison government holds for the Australian university sector, which it abandoned throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

As the member for Canberra, I represent a university town. The Australian National University, the University of Canberra, UNSW, the Australian Catholic University and Charles Sturt University mean that Canberra is a true centre of excellence for Australian research and learning. Students and academics from across Australia and around the world come here to contribute to this academic ecosystem, and I am proud to represent them all. The pandemic has been an incredible challenge for all of Canberra's universities, with almost no support from the Morrison government for the university sector, including the absurd decision to prevent universities from accessing JobKeeper. Our universities have faced major budget cuts and job losses. Major projects have been put on hold. Important research has been abandoned. Students have been forced to study remotely or withdraw altogether.

The border closures have posed an incredible challenge with international students unable to return to Australia to study. The impact for these students is immense and the economic impact on our universities cannot be understated. This is an existential threat for our universities across Australia, who are struggling to adjust to the reality of restricted budgets. As Professor Brian Schmidt, Vice-Chancellor of the ANU has said:

… a wholesale border closure for another couple of years … will have profound effects on the higher education sector, to the point where it's hard for me to actually imagine.

Professor Schmidt has called on the government to find safe ways to quarantine students to Australia at scale with appropriate safeguards in place. Professor Schmidt said:

We need to really work to find systems that do not cause public health issues for the nation, but really enable our students to get on with their lives

Considering all this, the Morrison government's decision to further gut university funding by 9.3 per cent in last night's budget is truly breathtaking. It is an unbelievable decision by this government who do not value higher education and do not understand the massive economic benefits of a highly educated workforce and world-class research being done here in Australia. Last night, the Morrison government's budget confirmed that over $1 billion in cuts will be made to Australian universities, gutting funding from research and finally confirming that the increase in university fees previously announced is to compensate for cuts to Commonwealth funding. This government attacks not only our universities but also the students who go there. They are loading up our students with a lifetime of debt, increasing the barriers to university for poorer students for whom university could be transformative. We know that it is poorer students who are more debt averse, so it is clear that the government has chosen to abandon students of low-income families who want to go to university.

Last year, Scott Morrison passed a bill that makes it even harder and more expensive for Australians to go to university. Around 40 per cent of students will have their fees increased to $14,500 per year, including students of law, commerce, accountancy, economics and communications; doubling fees for some students in humanities. That is more than the fees for people doing medicine and dentistry degrees. Fees for law, commerce, business and communication degrees will increase by thousands of dollars per year. It is making students go into American style debt ,which will have lasting consequences throughout their life, including when saving for a home.

What's more, there's no evidence that studying these degrees will make you less job-ready than studying any other. The employment prospects of humanities students is extremely healthy. In fact, according to research from Victoria University, people with humanities degrees have higher employment rates than science or maths graduates. Think about the year 12s graduating last year or this year and what they've been through as they have completed their high school studies. The last thing they need is for the university sector to be gutted. It should be something we are investing in at this time, more than ever.

Labor believe that education and jobs go hand in hand and, by locking young Australians out of uni, Scott Morrison is locking them out of jobs. We want every Australian to get a great education, no matter where they live, to have the training they need to get a job and to get ahead and stay ahead, whether that's at uni or TAFE. But this government abandoned unis when COVID-19 hit. As of January 2021, more than 17,000 people had lost their jobs in Australian universities since the beginning of the pandemic. Universities Australia forecasts further cuts this year. I guess this government doesn't see some jobs as important as others. So far these losses equate to 13 per cent of the pre-COVID university workforce.

Job losses have been tragic for universities such as the Australian National University. ANU has announced 465 job losses, with 415 people already out of work due to this government's abandonment of the national university. ANU is the only national university, which means this parliament is responsible for it. All the other universities receive support from their state or territory parliaments, but for ANU this parliament is it's source of funding. The Morrison government should have done more for ANU during the pandemic, as well as all the other universities in my electorate and around this country. I commend the work of the National Tertiary Education Union and its secretary Cathy Day at ANU for standing up for their members and workers at ANU. But the Morrison government has put the ANU in an impossible position by providing no support. Job cuts are incredibly difficult for institutions and for communities like Canberra, and for my constituents who have lost their jobs I am so sorry that their federal government didn't protect their jobs by providing JobKeeper to universities.

One of the other groups that this government did nothing for through the pandemic is students. They missed out on JobKeeper if they were employed in casual employment, as most of them were, and they also missed out on the increase to JobSeeker. We provide youth allowance to students who are eligible. It is my deep belief that, by enabling students to study, this is an investment in the future of this country. I believe that all social security payments are an investment in our citizens and people having dignity and a decent standard of living, but this government clearly doesn't see it that way. Not only are they placing these enormous debts on young people who want to go and study at our universities; they are making it impossible because young people cannot meet the living costs. Think about moving to an expensive city like Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane and just trying to get by if you don't have parental support—or even if you do. It is a huge sacrifice and it is very hard for students. We see rates of dropout from university in Australia that are incredibly high, and they shouldn't be this high. It's my guess that the reason is that people simply cannot sustain trying to work enough to meet their rent and bills while they are trying to study.

We should be investing in these young people, particularly in First Nations people, who want to be going to university in this country. We should be investing in all Australian citizens having a decent standard of living. But particularly in this way we're not just hitting these young people with an enormous debt that might prevent them from saving for a home, making it difficult for them when they are starting a family; they also simply cannot make that decision to move to an expensive place to study at university if they cannot work full time in multiple jobs at the same time in an increasingly hostile job market.

So, while we'll pass this bill, as I say, there is so much more that this government could do to support our university sector. It's an absolutely critical time at the moment when it should be doing that, as we are in a global pandemic. And it could be better supporting our young people. They are facing an incredibly difficult future at the moment under this government that refuses to back them.

Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make my contribution to the debate on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Student Assistance and Other Measures) Bill 2021. The pandemic has devastated many sectors in Australia, higher education chief amongst them. But the situation in our tertiary sector needn't have been as bad as it has been. This sector is reeling not only because of the pandemic but also as a result of the government's failure both currently and historically. Job losses are in the thousands and increased fees make a university education harder to acquire. This will be the legacy of the government.

Higher education should have a bright future in Australia. Australia is a world leader in education, and that reputation should not be taken lightly. Australian students and our educational institutions deserve our support, but this government is choosing not to act. The risk from the government's negligence and inaction is real and measurable. As the Victoria University found in its April 2020 report, Australian investment in education: higher education, despite increases over the past decade, funding for domestic students has plateaued and participation rates for domestic students in higher education are decreasing for the first time in over 10 years. The OECD data shows that Australia spends less as a total on education than Austria, Canada, Denmark, Greece, Botswana, Libya, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Senegal and many other countries. This government either doesn't understand or doesn't care about the important socioeconomic role that higher education plays now and will play into the future. Instead, it passes a bill that makes it harder and more expensive for Australians to go to university.

Last night's budget confirms that the government is saving money by increasing university fees and student debt. Fees for law, commerce, business and communications will increase by thousands of dollars per year, and fees for humanities degrees will double. Many young Australians will be graduating with debts of up to $60,000 for a basic degree. The government pleads that these courses are not job relevant, but statistics say otherwise, with humanities graduates more likely to get a job than some of their counterparts in the STEM subjects. Students who want to pursue a degree in the humanities are frowned upon by this government. On the one hand it say it wants to benefit all students, but then, on the other, it takes away aspiration. It is yet another attack on arts and humanities in Australia that this government so silently but gleefully engages in. Forcing students to take on American-style debt will not help them into the future.

But Labor knows that a good education and good jobs go hand in hand. By locking young Australians out of uni, the government is locking them out of jobs, and it doesn't help that now, particularly in regional and remote Australia, there is a wide gap between regional and urban areas in access to education and study. This gap will stagnate and widen with the changes to university fees. It's already very difficult for those in regional and remote areas, and especially difficult for Indigenous students, who are more likely to enrol in courses affected by these changes. A Senate inquiry into the impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students found that 52 per cent of Indigenous students were enrolled in humanities based disciplines. This means that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students will graduate with higher HECS debts and will move into the workforce with a higher financial burden than their non-Indigenous counterparts. This bill is designed to support the Indigenous students who are facing this incredibly unfair financial burden. It also enables students who live in rural and regional areas to access continuing and appropriate education. However, it's not enough. The higher education sector needs more support, and it needs it now.

Since the beginning of the pandemic more than 17,000 people have lost their jobs at Australian universities. Thirteen per cent of the pre-COVID university workforce is now out of a job. There have been 300 job losses from Central Queensland University, 145 from Charles Sturt University, 210 from the University of New England and 400 from Deakin University. These are small numbers compared to the job losses in our cities and suburbs. Universities Australia forecasts further losses this year.

The impact of the job losses on regional communities is particularly devastating. Universities support 14,000 jobs in country Australia. They can often be the largest employers in regional towns. Academics, tutors, administration staff and many other workers have lost their jobs—and it is crucial to point out here that, with fewer teachers, a student's education also suffers. These people have families. They need to put food on the table and pay their bills. This year's budget shows that the Liberals don't care about these families. In last year's budget the Prime Minister withheld JobKeeper from universities, amounting to an estimated $9 billion in support lost for the families. This budget hurts university workers; it doesn't help them. These families deserve support.

Having lived in Western Sydney my entire life, I know the impact a well-funded tertiary institution can have on a region. When Gough Whitlam was first elected as the member for Werriwa in 1952, there wasn't a high school, let alone a university, in the electorate. University participation rates in Sydney's south-western suburbs were the lowest in Australia. Gough was not just instrumental in ensuring that tertiary education was a right of all Australians but also an active champion for the establishment of a university in Western Sydney. In just over three decades, Western Sydney University's impact on the region has been immense, becoming one of the driving forces in the transformation. No doubt this true for many regional universities, cities and towns.

From the beginning of the pandemic Labor urged the federal government to act to help universities and save jobs. The sector forecast these job losses from early 2020—so it wasn't a surprise. It is unfortunate that the government chose to do nothing. Our fourth-largest expert industry, built under Prime Ministers Whitlam, Hawke, and Keating, should have been supported by this government. The government's disregard for higher education became even more clear when they declared higher education institutions not eligible for JobKeeper. It was not just the barring of JobKeeper that was the main region for the job losses in the sector; it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

The pandemic has exposed chronic under-resourcing by consecutive coalition governments. Many Australian students are working to support themselves during COVID-19 while also studying and paying tuition fees. Many have also had their income significantly reduced or their jobs were lost altogether. As higher fees make higher education less accessible, there is a limited opportunity for students who want to study and contribute to our society and economy—a limitation that is based solely on their financial standing. Access to higher education should never be subject to one's financial circumstances. Supporting higher education for students has been key to our economic success over several decades. It is also key to our long-term future if we want a smart and a dynamic economy.

In Werriwa I see the impact that higher education can have. Western Sydney University has, in just 30 short years, become a driving force of transformation in Sydney and contributed to advancements across Australia. I have previously, on many occasions, spoken in this place about the fantastic job that WSU does—and particularly during the pandemic, where it supported its international students and other students. However, WSU has now succumbed to involuntary redundancies. Just over 150 staff are now out of a job, as the university's continuing struggle with the pandemic has meant that these jobs needed to go.

So there are higher fees and fewer staff. It seems that this government doesn't want people to be educated, especially in areas that are already disadvantaged. We know that, if universities were supported, these people would still be in a job and students would be receiving a much higher standard of education than what they are now facing, and the stress on the teachers would be much less. These institutions are working hard to keep their digital doors open, but it pales in comparison to the efforts that this government has made to ensure equity in education and the long-term survival of one of our largest industries.

Australia was built on the idea of a fair go. If you've got raw talent and skills, we'll harness them and ensure you become the best possible person you can be. We're not a country that hinders your choice of career or education because of your financial or economic background. We have the power to protect university enrolments as well as ease the burden for university students in all regions of the country. By protecting enrolments and assisting universities now, we have exponential benefits for future generations.

But the support for students and higher education institutions across Australia is not happening, and we know who is responsible. More needs to be done to support institutions that mould our society and create platforms for economic growth and success. My colleagues and I will make sure that the higher education sector receives what it fundamentally needs and what it wholeheartedly deserves—investment in our social and economic future. We need these things to happen. There needs to be real structural change and reform if we are to improve equality of access to education Australia-wide.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present an addendum to the explanatory memorandum. This bill makes amendments to the Student Assistance Act in relation to Abstudy and Assistance for Isolated Children, known as the AIC scheme. Abstudy provides support to Indigenous secondary and tertiary students and apprentices, while the AIC scheme provides support to isolated primary and secondary students. In 2020, about 27,000 students were assisted through the Abstudy scheme and around 13,000 through the AIC scheme.

The Student Assistance Act provides the legislative framework for Abstudy and AIC matters, including in relation to tax file number collection and information management. This bill amends provisions in the act to provide greater clarity around their operational intent and, where appropriate, aligns them with equivalent provisions within social security legislation to reduce red tape and improve operational efficiency. The amendments in the bill do not impose an additional administrative burdens on recipients and in some cases will reduce it.

This bill makes a number of technical amendments to social services legislation to confirm that the definition of 'social security law' includes legislative instruments. This bill strengthens our student support system so that it can focus on the important task of ensuring that Indigenous students and isolated students from across Australia have the opportunity to gain a first-class education. In response to the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills, I thank the committee for their work, and to address their concerns I have tabled an addendum explanatory memorandum.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

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