Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move opposition amendment (1) as circulated in my name:

(1) Page 2 (after line 11), after clause 3, insert:

4 Review of Schedule 2 to this Act

(1) The Minister must cause an independent review to be conducted of the operation of the amendments made by Schedule 2 to this Act, with the purpose of assessing the expansion of the policy of waiving HELP debt to additional professions of high skills need in rural and remote Australia.

(2) Without limiting subsection (1), the review must consider, and make recommendations to the Commonwealth Government about, the expansion of the policy implemented by the amendments to other sectors in rural and remote Australia, including the health, mental health and education sectors.

(3) The review should consult widely with rural and remote communities and their health, mental health and education service providers and specifically, the following must be consulted as part of the review:

(a) the National Rural Health Commissioner;

(b) the Regional Education Commissioner.

Timing of review

(4) The review must start as soon as practicable after the end of the period of 2 years after the commencement of this Act.

Review report

(5) The persons who conduct the review must give the Minister a written report of the review within 3 months of the commencement of the review.

(6) The Minister must cause a copy of the report to be tabled in each House of the Parliament within 15 sitting days of that House after the report is given to the Minister.

Government response to recommendations

(7) As soon as practicable, and in any event within 3 months, after the report is first tabled in a House of the Parliament, the Minister must cause:

(a) a statement, setting out the Commonwealth Government's response to each recommendation included in the report, to be prepared; and

(b) the statement to be published on the Department's website.

This amendment, which I tabled in my second reading speech, is an important one.

The coalition pioneered this scheme, which the education minister has reintroduced. It was a MYEFO measure and was specifically designed to create incentives for new doctors and nurse practitioner graduates to go and work in the regional and remote areas. It will make a difference because they're very substantial incentives, one of which is to completely waive the HECS debt a doctor or nurse practitioner has if they go and work in the regional or remote areas for a certain length of time. We were very proud to introduce that, and I'm very pleased that the government has followed through in reintroducing this measure.

What this amendment does is actually call on a couple of things. Most importantly, it calls for a review to occur after two years. A period of two years is important because it gives enough time to see what the behavioural change will be from the operation of this bill in relation to the doctors and nurse practitioners. Secondly, it asks for the review team to specifically examine whether or not the measures which are proposed for doctors and nurse practitioners should apply to other professions where there are shortages in regional and remote areas. In particular, the amendment calls for an examination of other health measures—mental health in particular—and the education sector. But there may be other professions where there are shortages. In a couple of years time those shortages could be different ones, and we may want to consider providing the same HECS discounts for those professions. I think this is a good amendment, and I hope it will get support across this chamber.

The other important element of this amendment is that it documents at least a couple of different groups which should be consulted while the review is underway. Those include the National Rural Health Commissioner and the Regional Education Commissioner.

I notice that the member for Mackellar is also going to move an amendment, which has been circulated. It's quite similar to the opposition's amendment, but it doesn't go as far as ours. Her amendment says 'before three years', rather than 'after two'. I think two years is a more appropriate length of time after which to do that review. Secondly, it doesn't specify who should be consulted—it's an open question—whereas we think that the National Rural Health Commissioner and the Regional Education Commissioner should be, quite rightly, consulted as part of the review and should be documented in the legislation itself. Most importantly, the amendment I have moved on behalf of the opposition specifically says that the review 'must consider' the expansion of policy to other areas. The member for Mackellar's circulated amendment is blind on that question.

Consequently, I would put to the member for Mackellar and the government that the amendment that has been moved in my name is a better and more comprehensive amendment. It incorporates everything that the member for Mackellar's amendment proposes but goes further. Most importantly, it specifically says that the question in relation to other policy areas and professions where there may be shortages in regional and remote areas should be examined, and that advice should be provided to the government and, indeed, to the parliament for consideration. I commend this amendment to the chamber, and I hope that it gets broadscale support.

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We support the idea of a review. I think it's very worthwhile in making sure that the policy does what is intended and providing us with guidance, as a government and as a parliament, for where we go forward from here: if this works, what other areas might a policy like this apply to? In that respect, in the construction of the amendment that the shadow minister has put forward he mentions education. It's worth the House noting that on 1 January next year a scheme very similar to this will come into place for teachers and early educators in the most remote parts of Australia. So that's another example of where a policy like this, which waives or reduces HECS debt, is used as an incentive to encourage doctors, nurse practitioners but also teachers and early educators to work in some of the more remote parts of Australia.

We have before us two amendments to set up a review. We can't support both in these places. I've given an undertaking to the member for Mackellar to support her amendment, which we will deal with after this.

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nimble!

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You're sounding like Malcolm! Notwithstanding that, I've made the point to the shadow minister privately, and I'm happy to say it publicly, that there is some value in this amendment. As this bill moves to the Senate, I'm very open to working with senators and also with the shadow minister himself to see what further changes we might make to the construction of a review: Should it be three years or should it be two years? Should we build in that mandatory element that the shadow minister has talked about? We're all here to try to make sure that we get good outcomes. The concept of a review is a sound one, and we'll be supporting that through the member for Mackellar's amendment that'll come before the House shortly. We won't support this amendment, but I do undertake to the shadow minister that we're very happy to work with him and the opposition as this moves to the Senate.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is the amendment moved by the member for Aston be disagreed to.

Sophie Scamps (Mackellar, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move the amendment circulated in my name:

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 calls on the Government to:

(1)recognise that the financial benefit delivered under this bill, will, in many cases, not be sufficient to overcome other perceived barriers for entering the regional, rural and remote workforce;

(2)acknowledge that Australia is facing a nationwide GP crisis with a workforce shortage of 11,000 GP's forecast by 2032;

(3)acknowledge that not enough medical students are choosing general practice and commit to long term planning to increase the number of GP's including improving GP training programs; and

(4)substantially increase the Medicare rebate for GP services, as per recommendation 6 of the Senate Community Affairs References Committee Provision of general practitioner and related primary health services to outer metropolitan, rural, and regional AustraliansInterim Report".

I support the Higher Education Support Amendment (2022 Measures No. 1) Bill 2022 and the measures it introduces to abolish or reduce higher education debt in order to incentivise doctors and nurses to live and work in Australia's rural and remote areas. Rural and remote areas are facing a healthcare crisis. Patients are waiting sometimes months to see a doctor, and doctors are working up to 80 hours a week.

This amendment includes a review clause to assess the effectiveness of the measure by requiring review periods, reporting and for those reports to be tabled in parliament. This is an important amendment to improve the integrity and transparency of this bill. Extinguishing or reducing the HELP debt will deliver benefits to individual Australians using taxpayer money. Under current arrangements, the HELP forgiveness would equate to a benefit of approximately $45,000 to $68,000 for students who studied medicine and nearly $8,000 for nurse practitioners. As such, we must monitor and evaluate its application to make sure that the measure is delivering the intended consequence, to make sure that it is delivering value to rural and remote communities and, in short, to assess whether it is working or not. We cannot know its effectiveness without monitoring its implementation.

It has been suggested that incentives like this have been unsuccessful in the past. There is a suggestion, even in the Parliamentary Library's own Bills Digest for this bill, that the measure may be ineffective and deliver financial benefit to doctors and nurses who were planning to return to regional and remote areas anyway without bringing additional workers to the regions. This is not the intention of this legislation. I'm not suggesting that I believe this to be the case, and I support incentives to encourage doctors and nurse practitioners to move to remote and regional areas. However, what I am saying is that we won't know whether this is the case unless we track, measure and evaluate programs and their success. This is what this amendment seeks to do. We need to assess for both intended and unintended consequences.

Further to this, those reviews will allow us to determine how effective this measure is and consider how the relief from HECS and HELP debt can be used more broadly for other policies, including to help manage workforce shortages in other areas. It is good practice to include review and reporting clauses in legislation to improve transparency and integrity in policy measures. This is what I seek to achieve with this amendment.

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm disappointed that the member for Mackellar did not support the amendment which I moved in my name on behalf of the opposition, because the precise issues which she raised in relation to her amendment were in relation to so-called integrity and transparency and also to examine workforce shortages in other areas. The amendment which I moved on behalf of the opposition precisely refers to those other areas to be examined to provide recommendations as to whether or not policies should be extended precisely to those other workforce areas where there may be shortages, whereas her amendment does not. Hence I made the comment before that I thought the amendment the opposition moved was a better one.

Her amendment in itself also says that a review should occur after three years. We believe it should occur after two years. We suggested that it should have incorporated some consultation with particular groups—in particular, the National Rural Health Commissioner and the Regional Education Commissioner. Consequently, we will be seeking to again take up these other important measures in the Senate.

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Mackellar for bringing forward this amendment and indicate that the government will be supporting it. As I said a moment ago, having a review into a big and important piece of legislation like this is important. I also want to underline the point I made to the shadow minister, which is when the bill goes to the Senate there is an opportunity for us to try to find a bit of common ground and see whether we might make some further improvements. I'm very open to conversation about whether we build on what the member for Mackellar has put forward both in terms of time frame and identifying what other areas of the medical profession may be looked at for the purposes of policy development in the future. I recognise the member for Indi who is in the chamber. She spoke in this debate about mental health workers, and we've had conversations about that as well. That strikes me as the sort of thing that we could have a conversation about with senators when this bill is debated in the Senate.

On the point I made a moment ago about teachers, it's really important that from 1 January 2023, so in only a couple weeks time, measures like this will apply to teachers and early childhood educators who work in some of the most remote parts of Australia. That's fundamentally a good thing too. I think, generally, we all agree this is good policy, and that's why the government has brought back a measure that the former government put forward. We agree with the concept of a review and want to make sure that it works because it's taxpayers' money and you want to make sure it has the impact we all want it to have. I look forward to the discussions that the government might have with the opposition and crossbench in the Senate on any further changes we may make to the review when the bill is debated in the Senate.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is the amendment be agreed to.

Question agreed to.

The question now is that this bill, as amended, be agreed to.

Question agreed to.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.