Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are hundreds of thousands of 18-year-olds who began university this year. Those people were born in 2005, and they'll be at university from 2023 to 2025 if they do a regular, three-year bachelor's degree. Those people won't be eligible for the pension until 2072. At the end of their working lives, they will be dealing with the advanced technology of a workplace in 2072. We don't know the exact contours of what that labour market will look like, but we do know that it will be the sort of labour market which will reward high levels of skills. Just as the level of skill in the Australian economy has steadily increased over the last couple of generations, it will continue to do so for the current cohort. That means that, to a school leaver today, who was born in 2005 and who isn't eligible for the pension until 2072, university looks increasingly attractive. University won't be for everyone, but, in an age in which artificial intelligence is increasingly taking more routine jobs—automation of mobile services and factory automation are filling niches once filled by workers—higher levels of education are valuable. Our crystal ball for forecasting the precise jobs that will rise is a bit cloudy, but we do know that it's a very good bet that the jobs of the future will require higher levels of formal education than the jobs of today.

Where will those new university graduates come from? They'll tend to come from groups that are currently underserved. At the moment around half of Australians in their late 20s and early 30s has a university degree, but that level differs quite markedly across Australia. In the outer suburbs of major Australian cities, only 23 per cent of young Australians have a university degree. In the regions, only 13 per cent of young Australians have a university degree. Among young adults from poor families, only 15 per cent have a university degree. Among Indigenous Australians, only seven per cent have a university degree. For a young Indigenous man today, you're more likely to go to jail than you are to go to university. Right across the population, 36 per cent of Australians have a university qualification today, and it's been forecast that by mid-century it's going to be necessary to have 55 per cent of the population with a university qualification.

Labor is committed to ensuring that we provide more opportunities to get to university for those who currently struggle to find a pathway into university. This bill flows from an interim report by a panel which is chaired by Mary O'Kane and whose other members are Barney Glover, Shemara Wikramanayake, Jenny Macklin, Larissa Behrendt and Fiona Nash. Commissioned by Education Minister Jason Clare, this is the most important higher education review in 15 years—that is, since the Bradley review. Among its recommendations are recommendations contained in this bill. One of those is to remove the 50 per cent pass rule and to improve student support.

At present, students are required to pass at least 50 per cent of the units of study they undertake to continue eligibility for Commonwealth assistance. These pass rate requirements were brought in at the beginning of 2022 under the former coalition government's Job-ready Graduates Package. Their aim was to dissuade students from continuing in courses that they're not academically suited for, but the practical effect has been overly punitive. We should be helping those students to succeed, not forcing them to quit. Western Sydney University this year alone has seen 1,350 students lose their funding and withdraw from their courses. The 50 per cent pass rule affects a disproportionate number of students who are Indigenous. It pushes out of university a disproportionate number of students who are first in family. It forces out of university a disproportionate number of students who are from poorer backgrounds. These are the very students that we need to continue on in university if Australia is to ensure that the education of the population matches the technological demands of the labour market. If we don't manage to do that, inequality will worsen.

In their book The Race Between Education and Technology, Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz lay out a simple way of thinking about inequality. That is that inequality worsens at times when education stagnates and technology advances. Their theory is that only by education keeping up with advances in technology can we ensure that the gap between rich and poor doesn't widen. But the benefits go, too, to growth. We know that attending university boosts the productive capacity of those who get further education. It doesn't just benefit them; it benefits their coworkers. There's a positive spillover from higher levels of education. The earnings benefit is somewhere in the order of 10 per cent additional earnings for every additional year of further studies, meaning that a three-year bachelor's degree delivers something in the order of a 30 per cent wage gain. Then, on top of that, we see the benefits to those who work around university graduates. By scrapping the 50 per cent pass rule, we're going to ensure that there are more students who are able to get support, rather than simply be forced out. The rule has hit more than 13,000 students at 27 universities. Its scrapping has been called for by universities right across the country, including the University of Adelaide, Monash University, the University of Technology Sydney, the University of the Sunshine Coast, the University of New England, Queensland University of Technology and Western Sydney University.

This bill introduces requirements on universities and other providers to have policies in place to help students successfully complete their studies. Those policies will identify students who are struggling and connect those students with support services. The Department of Education will issue a discussion paper to consult with universities and providers on the content of those policies, including how they're going to identify students and connect them up; provide non-academic supports, including financial assistance, housing assistance and mental health supports; have crisis and harm response arrangements in place; identify trained academic development advisers; and ensure that those supports are culturally appropriate.

It's also important that universities consider proactively offering special circumstances arrangements, where a university is aware of a significant life event for a student, and that they provide targeted literacy, numeracy and other academic supports. It's important, too, that these interventions be properly evaluated. We have set up, within Treasury, the Australian Centre for Evaluation, which will work collaboratively right across the Commonwealth in improving the quality of evaluation and carrying out more rigorous evaluations, including robust randomised trials. In the area of student support, a randomised trial carried out by Alfred Paloyo, Sally Rogan and Peter Siminski looked at the impact of peer assisted study sessions at a major Australian university. They did that through an encouragement design. All students were eligible for the peer assisted study sessions, but the study sessions were randomly marketed to a subset of students. That then increased uptake and allowed the researchers to look at the causal impact of peer assisted study sessions on student achievement. It is that sort of careful, rigorous evaluation which needs to be conducted on these programs, on the programs which are providing academic supports and on programs that are providing non-academic supports.

The other key measure in the bill that I want to draw the House's attention to is extending demand driven places to all Indigenous students. The existing demand driven measure applies to regional First Nations students. Under this bill, the eligibility for demand driven funding will cover metropolitan First Nations students studying bachelor and bachelor honours courses, except medicine at a table A university. That goes towards Closing the Gap outcome 6: to increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25 to 34 who have completed a tertiary qualification—that is, certificate III and above—to 70 per cent by 2031. It means there will be no cap on the number of First Nations students who can enrol in Commonwealth supported places. The Department of Education estimates this may double the number of Indigenous students at university within a decade. The measure has received support from Universities Australia, the Australian National University, the University of Queensland, Western Sydney University, Macquarie University, James Cook University, the University of Southern Queensland, the University of Melbourne, the University of Adelaide, the University of Queensland and the University of Technology Sydney. It builds on the government's election commitment to deliver up to 20,000 Commonwealth supported places and fee-free TAFE.

It is vital that we increase the number of Indigenous students at Australian universities and that we create more of those opportunities that we know come from higher levels of education. We understand, as a government, the damage that was done to students, and to the sector more broadly, by the former coalition government's ill-conceived Job-ready Graduates Package—a package which did nothing to redirect student enrolments in the way the former government intended but simply disproportionately loaded more debt on students in disfavoured courses. The former government's scrapping of the demand-driven system has meant that fewer Australians can get the benefit of attending university. It's exactly the opposite of what Australia needs at a time when technology is racing ahead. As technological advances improve, we have to give more Australians the opportunity to attend university.

I want to commend the Minister for Education, Jason Clare, for thinking big in this space and thinking about questions such as whether we will ultimately require new universities. The number of universities per capita in Australia is significantly lower than that, for example, in the United States. New institutions can provide fresh opportunities and place useful competitive pressure on other universities to ensure they're doing their best job of serving their students and the broader community. When I look to the example in the United States, where I was fortunate to study for a bit, the liberal arts college model in the north-east in particular is one which seems to be largely absent from Australia—the notion of a university that prizes teaching above all else and whose faculty members are often researching effective teaching practices. That is, they are the leaders for the nation in improving the quality of academic instruction. Institutions along the lines of a US-style liberal arts college could be a benefit to the Australian higher education ecosystem. The minister is also thinking about the idea of a universal learning entitlement; more work integrated learning and courses; a jobs broker program; a national student charter, akin to the New Zealand model; and a national skills passport that would include all of your qualifications, microcredentials, prior learning, workplace experience and general capability.

We know that it is going to be essential to continue to learn through one's career. The old-fashioned model of a block of education at the start of a career which you draw down through the course of the rest of your career has gone out the window. When I visit mechanics workshops, as I did a lot when we were campaigning for mechanics to get the data they need to fix modern cars, I was struck by the degree of ongoing learning that's happening in those workplaces—mechanics learning to fix new electric vehicles and also tapping in to be able to update the software on new cars. Sometimes that learning was happening formally; sometimes it was through watching a YouTube video. But it was very clear that those mechanics who weren't engaged in continuous learning would be struggling in a decade's time. That's the approach we need to take right across education, creating continuous learners who are able to adapt and adopt new technologies to thrive in the modern age.

Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens of course think that the 50 per cent rule, which saw students lose government funding if they failed more than half of their subjects, should be scrapped. It was punitive and unfair and hit students who lacked support the hardest. And the Greens support improving access to universities for First Nations students. But, really, if the government were serious—if Labor were serious—about improving access to universities, they would do two things: take a leaf out of Whitlam's book and bring back free university education; and wipe the scourge that is the skyrocketing and surging student debt. Indeed, we know that free university education would be transformative for millions of Australians. In countries like Germany that provide free university education to both domestic and international students, we see a population highly trained in the most successful economy in Europe, where, regardless of your circumstances, your income or your fear of debt in the future, you can get a good-quality university education. In a wealthy country like Australia, there is absolutely no reason why we shouldn't be able to do the same here.

Student debt has become a giant, huge problem for millions of Australians right now, and it is, frankly, destroying many of their lives. On 1 June 2023, student debts were indexed by a staggering 7.1 per cent, effectively an interest charge on debt of 7.1 per cent. It was 3.9 per cent the year before. That means for many students their debt is rising faster than they can afford to pay it off. In fact, for those on low incomes it is worse. Take this from the Australia Institute. For someone with a debt of $24,000—that's the average debt—and earning $50,000 a year, their debt will increase by $1,259 after repayment of $500, which means that their debt is going up faster than they can afford to pay it. For someone on $50,000, they are copping a $500 hit to their income come tax time and at the end of it their debt will be higher. In fact, using the average debt, anyone earning between $48,000 and $62,000, roughly, will go backwards this year because of indexation. That is remarkable. That's just on the average debt. But, of course, the higher your debt is, the higher income you need to avoid going backwards.

Take Zoe, whose story was reported in the Guardian. Despite earning a salary of $100,000, she was forced to pay back $10,000 in student debt payments this year. But the kicker is that indexation saw her debt increase by $9,000, which means that in the end she was able to take only $1,000 off her debt. Her total debt of $124,000 has only reduced by $4,000, despite spending $15,000 in the last five years paying back against her student debt.

We already know that only 13 per cent of houses in Australia are now affordable for people on $103,000. For people on lower incomes it is even worse. But what's worse is that larger student debts make it harder to even get a home loan in the first place. Student debt held by the government is now $74 billion, and with indexation they will get an extra $5 billion on that student debt. In comparison, their so-called tax on gas operations will raise only $2.5 billion over the next four years, which means that Labor are raising more money off indexing student debt than they are from taxing massive gas operations.

Of course, student debt could be wiped and we could bring back free university education, especially when you compare it to the cost that the government is going to incur on the stage 3 tax cuts and the nuclear attack submarines alone. Over the next 10 years Labor will spend $313 billion on tax cuts for politicians and billionaires via the stage 3 tax cuts and Labor will spend $368 million over the next few decades on the nuclear attack submarines. For a fraction of that, we could bring back free university education, wipe student debt and transform millions of people's lives. How many working people right now are deciding not to go to university because they do not want to incur a student debt? It's money that could have been used to help cover the rent increase—and that, I think, is crucial. Think about what that extra $500 means for someone on $50,000 a year. For someone on even $100,000 a year, think about what $10,000 could cover. It could cover the rent. It could mean you are able to buy the fresh vegetables that have been price-gouged by Coles and Woolies.

At the end of the day, we have a financial and political system completely rigged against people who haven't already been able to buy a home or certainly investment properties. And you wonder why people are upset and frustrated by politics. Not only are real wages going backwards, not only is it becoming almost impossible for many to buy a home and not only are more people being trapped renting for longer than they would like and being smashed by skyrocketing rents; at the end of that, three million Australians also have a giant student debt that, in many cases, is increasing faster than they can afford to pay it off.

This is a student debt incurred for what? It's for doing what we are told these days you basically need to get to get most jobs or an increasing number of jobs in the Australian economy, which is a university degree. We just had Labor members previously speak about the fact that, with a changing and shifting economy, being able to access a university education is crucial to being able to get many of the jobs of the future, and yet now we have a system where, if your parents can afford to pay for your university education, you can avoid that massive student debt but, if you are in the vast majority of people who have to cop a massive debt just to get it, it then sticks with you potentially for decades, often increasing faster than you can afford to pay it off. We essentially have a two-speed economy where, if you were lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family, you can get that start you need to go and live a good life. But, if you're from a middle- or lower-income family, you have to cop an average debt of $24,000 that often increases faster than you can afford to pay it off, be denied access to ever being able to afford to buy a home and be stuck renting in a rental market that sees rents go up by as much as a landlord wants. I think the gall of it all, the thing that frustrates so many people, is how many politicians in this place got to go to university for free, how many politicians in this place got to buy a house for a fraction of what it costs to buy a house today and how many politicians in this place—Labor members in particular—have the power to change that system. They could, for instance, introduce a bill into this place to scrap student debt and bring back free university education. They could phase out the stage 3 tax cuts and spend those hundreds of billions of dollars in building good-quality public homes, providing relief for renters and providing the sorts of things that previous generations, including the Prime Minister's generation, got to enjoy, like free university education and cheap and affordable housing.

The bottom line is that education should not be a debt sentence. In a wealthy country like this, we should be able to provide a free university education to anyone who wants one. Indeed, if you think about it, it is deeply illogical that in a fast-changing economy we put giant debt barriers in front of people who want to retrain. Germany, which has a very successful economy with a very high tech manufacturing base, understand that it needs to provide the opportunity to its population without any barriers to go and retrain. It has enormous flow-on social benefits. The bottom line is thinking about the benefits to those individuals. How many people, if we were to wipe student debt right now, would get that little bit of extra money and maybe that slightly bigger home loan to go and buy a house? How many more wouldn't have to choose between feeding their kids and paying the rent? How many more, come tax time, wouldn't be lumped with that extra $500 or $1,000 to pay off from their student debt, which ends up rising faster than they can pay it off anyway? What could that money be spent on?

We're an enormously wealthy country with an abundance of resources, and the fundamental question for us in this place is: how do we distribute those resources? How do we spend them in a way that maximises them and ensures that the greatest number of people get the things that they need to go on and live a good life? It's hard to think of something more grossly unfair, and more representative of how rigged our political and economic system is against the vast majority of people, than student debt. They have to pay for something that so many politicians in this place got for free. For so many today, student debt means tens of thousands of dollars of debt that is almost impossible to pay off. It makes it harder to buy a home, harder to make ends meet and harder at the supermarket, and it makes their lives and the lives of future generations harder. I couldn't think of anything more grossly unfair than student debt and the price of a university education.

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

Today almost one in two Australians in their late 20s and early 30s has a university degree. This is true for major cities, but for regions like mine it's a different story. In the outer suburbs of our major cities, it's only 23 per cent of young adults who have a university degree. In the regions, it is almost half that, at 13 per cent, while only 15 per cent of young adults from disadvantaged families have a degree. If you're a young Indigenous Australian it's even lower again—only seven per cent. If you are a young Indigenous man today, you're more likely to go to jail than to university. These statistics are alarming. They're a red flag to the serious challenges we face. The Albanese government understands this and recognises that quality education is vital for our workforce, our productivity, our international reputation and our capacity to advance as individuals and as a nation.

That's why I stand today in support of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill 2023. This bill is all about taking the first important steps to overhauling our tertiary education system. It builds on our fee-free TAFE reform and ensures better access and outcomes after nine years of neglect and incompetence by the former coalition government.

An OECD report released last year reveals just how woeful the coalition's education policies were, resulting in one in five Australian adults having low literacy and numeracy skills. This is unacceptable. Over the past decade, we have also seen an alarming decline in employment rates of university graduates and a growing level of employer dissatisfaction with the quality of graduate skills, adding to our current acute skills shortage.

The bill before us today includes key recommendations from the Universities Accord interim reportthat directly respond to these challenges. In acting on these recommendations, and in taking guidance from experts like Professor Mary O'Kane and her amazing team who led the Universities Accord, we are creating a strong foundation for our future prosperity. The interim report recognises that we need better representation and equity in our student university admissions, that we need to encourage Australians from regional areas, from First Nations communities and from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to pursue further education.

That's why the Albanese government has committed to enacting each of the five priority recommendations ahead of the accord's final report later this year. These five recommendations of the interim report include that we create more university student hubs—that makes sense—not only in our outer suburbs but throughout the regions; that we scrap the 50 per cent pass rule and require better reporting on how students are progressing; that we extend the demand-driven funding currently provided to Indigenous students from regional and remote areas to cover all Indigenous students; that we provide funding certainty during the accord process by extending the Higher Education Continuity Guarantee into 2024 and 2025, with funding arrangements that prioritise support for disadvantaged students; and that we work with state and territory governments, through the National Cabinet, to improve university governance. This is important work, and that's why our government will act on all priority recommendations as soon as possible.

In response to recommendation 2, the bill amends the Higher Education Support Act to remove the requirement that students pass 50 per cent of the units they study to remain eligible for the Commonwealth supported place and FEE-HELP assistance. It was the now opposition that introduced the 50 per cent pass rule, as part of its Job-ready Graduates Package, which has had dire consequences, with a disproportionate number of students from poor backgrounds being forced to leave university. More than 13,000 students at 27 universities have been hit by this in the past two years, mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds. We should be helping these students to succeed, not forcing them to quit.

A uni student, Jack, from my electorate of Corangamite said this to me just recently, when he approached me at a market stall to raise his concerns about our tertiary system. We had a very interesting conversation, and Jack said to me: 'Universities can't seem to keep up. They recycle lectures. They consistently re-use old content and don't often chase up students who are struggling with workloads. I've seen too many of my mates drop out because they don't have academic support. They can't afford to move to the city for study. They find it too hard to juggle part-time work to pay the bills and study full time.' These challenges that Jack identifies are real. I acknowledge some universities do well to address them. Others must do better.

It is our government's job to go on this journey, to work with universities and equip them so they get the best education outcomes possible. As part of that journey, and in response to the second recommendation of the report, the bill will require universities and other providers to have a dedicated plan—a robust support-for-students policy—that will proactively identify students who are at risk of falling behind in their studies and set out what they will do to help them to succeed. These student support policies will make sure universities assess students' academic and non-academic suitability for continuing study; connect students to support, and identify students who are not engaging with that support, before their census date; and provide sufficient non-academic support for students such as financial assistance, housing information and mental health supports. It will also ensure universities have appropriate crisis arrangements and, importantly, provide access to advisers who can help students to identify what's holding them back in their studies; proactively offer special circumstances arrangements where a provider is aware of a significant life event for a student; and offer access to targeted individual literacy, numeracy and other academic and peer supports. And, finally, it will provide targeted in-course support from academic staff such as check-ins and flexibility on assessment arrangements.

Further to this, the bill provides the removal of the 50 per cent pass rule. This reform has been called for by universities right across the nation: universities like the University of Adelaide, Monash University, the University of Technology Sydney, the University of the Sunshine Coast, the University of New England, the Queensland University of Technology and Western Sydney University. Universities Australia has described the 50 per cent pass rule as a 'punitive measure widely regarded as being unnecessarily harsh' and noted that students most likely to fall foul of the 50 per cent pass rule are first-year students from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds. Universities Australia has welcomed this recommendation and the government's plan for action. Innovative Research Universities also called the rule 'punitive' and congratulated our government in moving to abolish it.

The other priority action addressed in this bill is recommendation 3, which will ensure all Indigenous students are eligible for a funded place at a public university if they meet the entry requirements for the course. This means those students will be able to access support in the form of a Commonwealth supported place, and a HELP loan. Since the Hawke government, this has increased access to university for underrepresented groups. Under current legislation, only Indigenous students from regional or remote Australia can access demand driven places. This bill means demand driven places for bachelor level courses will now be available to all Indigenous students wherever they live. The Department of Education estimates this could double the number of Indigenous students at university within a decade.

It should be noted this is another reform strongly supported by universities. Universities Australia said this about the reform: 'Universities have long called for uncapped places for all Indigenous students and the removal of barriers to a university education for students from underrepresented backgrounds. The creation of more study hubs will help to facilitate this.' On that matter, and in response to recommendation 1, we will double the number of university study hubs. There are currently 34 in regional Australia. The Albanese government will establish 20 more in the regions and, for the first time, introduce 14 into outer suburbs of our major cities where the percentage of people with a university degree is alarmingly low.

In response to the fourth recommendation, we will extend the higher education continuity guarantee into next year and the year after that. And finally, in response the fifth recommendation, we will work with the states and the territories on improving university governance. Our Minister for Education has already written to the ministers responsible for higher education in each state and territory to convene a working group. Its job will be to provide advice to our minister and to others ministers on the immediate actions we must take to improve university governance. There are three areas this working group will focus on: firstly, ensuring that universities are good employers providing a supportive workplace; secondly, making sure governing bodies have the right to expertise, including in the business of running universities; and finally, making sure our universities are safe and supportive for all students and staff.

In closing, we recognise that after nine years of the coalition government undermining and eroding the tertiary system, it requires a substantial rebuild to make sure that all Australians are given every opportunity to go to university if they wish to. Whether you're from Geelong, the Bellarine, the Golden Plains or the Surf Coast, and whatever your cultural background, gender or finances, we want to see every Australian have the opportunity to further their education, and that is what this bill is about. That's what this report is all about. And, thanks to the accord panel, we now know the scope of the problem. For millions of young Australians, it is time to act. To quote former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke:

We cannot continue to waste the talents and destroy the hopes of our young people … We cannot afford to lose so many able students from our …universities.

Like the Hawke government before it, the Albanese government is committed to this cause not only because it builds productivity and capacity but because it means today's young people and those transitioning to new careers will be able to secure rewarding work and a decent wage. These are the building blocks of a strong, dynamic country. I thank the Minister for Education for introducing this bill and I commend it to the House.

Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill 2023. I commend the minister for commissioning the important work of the Australian Universities Accord. This work, being led by Professor Mary O'Kane, is tasked with looking at higher education holistically to set Australia up for the future with the skills and knowledge we need to continue to grow our economy and capitalise on the changing nature of work.

The transition to a green economy will require a range of new tertiary skills and trades. We're also witnessing the emergence of artificial intelligence, and the world is making progress towards quantum computing. All these changes will require new skills and knowledge sets, and we need to ensure our higher education system is equipping future generations with the skills and wherewithal to capitalise on the opportunities.

In Warringah in the next five years some 90 per cent of new jobs will demand tertiary education, yet we are seeing a decrease in the completion of bachelor degrees, to the lowest level since 2014, and a worsening skilled worker shortage looms. I know businesses in Warringah and around the country are already feeling the shortage of skilled workers, and I have advocated previously more aggressive policies to support innovation in this country.

To meet Australia's needs and create the future we want for our society, our education system needs to be equitable, especially for marginalised groups. Thirty-six per cent of my electorate have a bachelor degree, 10 per cent more than the national average—I acknowledge that—because there is opportunity and access. So we need to ensure that higher education is more accessible, regardless of socioeconomic or geographic location.

It's a national shame, as stated by the current Minister for Government Services, that an Indigenous teenager is more likely to go to jail than university, or even finish high school. It really highlights the inequities we still very much have in this country.

This interim report is important. The Australian Universities Accord interim report recommends initial tweaks to Australia's higher education system to align with national needs. This bill addresses two of the five recommendations from the interim report—specifically, to cease the 50 per cent pass rule which disproportionately disadvantages students from equity backgrounds and really was acting as a deterrent to young people getting into and completing their tertiary studies; and expanding eligibility to all First Nations students, including those in metropolitan areas like Warringah, not just those in regional communities, because it's important we up the percentage of completion when it comes to tertiary education. These two provisions are important to restoring equality, and they enhance the accessibility of higher education.

The first provision, the 50 per cent pass rule means—or meant, because we are now hopefully getting rid of it—that any student who fails to pass at least 50 per cent of their subject in a year of study is denied the ability to study further. These kinds of one-size rules just don't work and don't take into account the circumstances students might find themselves in and need to address. It's an incredibly punitive measure that disadvantages those that can least afford it. It expels people from university without the opportunity to course correct and puts no incentive on the universities to assist students through those early years, which might be difficult. I strongly opposed it when it was implemented under the previous government, so I strongly support the repeal of that provision.

The second provision introduced aims to increase the access of Indigenous students to higher education. In light of the debate on Closing the Gap outcomes, it's incredibly important for this amendment to pass. The practical impact of this amendment would extend the guaranteed funding for students in remote and regional areas to students in metropolitan areas. It will assist in reaching the ambitious Closing the gap report target of 70 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young adults having a tertiary education by 2031. Access to higher education has many positive flow-on effects on broader First Nations families and communities, as well as individuals, embedding generational accessibility to tertiary education.

There are recommendations from the report that aren't included in the bill, so I call the government to implement the additional recommendations of the interim report, including those that address safety on campuses, particularly for women. In particular, in this place we have had a debate and have seen what the outcomes are when we don't have safe enough practices. It's incredibly important that universities very urgently engage with this problem. I've previously spoken in this place about the scourge of sexual harassment and violence on university campuses and in workplaces around the country and the need to urgently intervene with targeted programs to improve safety on campus.

It's incredibly important to remember that tertiary education at university level is where these young people are starting their independent adult journey, and the statistics of the occurrence of sexual harassment, violence or assaults on university campuses are just unacceptable. The statistics are devastating. Some 85,000 students have experienced sexual assault on campuses since 2017. As a parent, that is just staggering. These are our children that we send to universities in the hope they are going to learn and develop the skills to be the leaders of tomorrow, and so many of them are having such a negative experience.

I welcome the government's commitment to address the issue and its willingness to engage with those with lived experiences, such as the STOP Campaign and Fair Agenda. But I should note that it took for young people to come into this place, meet with so many of us and raise it on social media to pressure the minister to meet with them and include them in this process. They still report a process to me, though, whereby universities are not facilitating the programs they are trying to put forward, they are not making rooms available and they are putting obstacles in the way of these very good programs that are student led and for students, to keep them safe. I urge universities to engage proactively in the process and take action on the ground now. Don't wait. It's already gone on for too long. Facilitate prevention programs and recovery programs for those already impacted.

The interim report also recommends providing funding certainty through extending the Higher Education Continuing Guarantee to 2024 and 2025. We need to look at funding for the sector to ensure that it is sustainable and adequately supported by government, to ensure that we don't end up with a US-style education debt burden for future generations. The recent Intergenerational report shows that this generation has a huge burden on its shoulders. We will be the generation retired when they will be expected to carry the load, and they will be burdened by massive student debts. I recently wrote to the Minister for Education expressing my concern about the sudden spike in HECS debt due to the high rate of inflation this year. HECS debts were indexed to 7.1 per cent. That is a huge increase in burden for many people, and I fear numbers like that will both add to the anxiety for those who have already accumulated debts and deter others from entering university.

I believe that indexation should be linked to the wage price index, as it is in the United Kingdom, or the lower CPI or the official cash rate. We must ensure we are not burdening students with unrealistic interest rate hikes on their HECS debts. That way we will ensure that student debts rise incrementally rather than astronomically if inflation gets out of hand once again. Students with debts should not be paying the price for poor government control from the past government in allowing inflation that really has got out of hand.

In conclusion, I welcome these initial moves and urge the government to commit to the full implementation of the remaining recommendations of the interim report. I look forward to the outcomes of the final report and trust that it will address two key areas: the long-term funding arrangements for universities and indexation, and the balance of funding allocated by government to humanities degrees as opposed to STEM. As someone who has studied a humanities degree, I strongly oppose and reject the previous government's attempts to disadvantage some students over others. We need all areas of tertiary education to advance us as a society and to develop young people with the skills to come up with solutions. Picking areas that you want to support over others is not the way to guarantee a strong and productive Australia of the future.

The interim report begins with a mission statement for higher education. Higher education's mission is to make a better future possible for Australia. Let's work with the sector and future students to make sure that mission is achieved. We need to ensure we hear the voices of young people a lot more in this place. We need to make sure the education minister is hearing the voices of young people, because the decisions that are being made by government are going to impact on the future of those young people. We have a number of big challenges ahead, but we also have amazing opportunities. As a parent of a number of students at university myself, I know what an important opportunity this is. It is an incredible privilege and opportunity to do this, to study for qualifications for jobs. But we need to ensure it's a safe environment. That should be an absolute necessity. The university sector needs to be a safe one. And it should be forward thinking. It needs to address future challenges. So I look forward to further discussions with the minister to ensure we keep progressing in this area.

Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to start by congratulating the Minister for Education on the excellent job that he is doing. He informed me just a little while ago that, in my electorate of Solomon, in Darwin and Palmerston, the capital of the north, 29 per cent of people 15 years and over have completed higher education, which is a bit higher than the national average of 26.3 per cent. But, at the same time, I think it is important to point out that that figure that is than the national average hides a truism, which is that for many people, young people in particular, in my electorate higher education is but a pipe dream. The Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill 2023 is going to make it easier. It's going to provide more support for young Territorians in my electorate to get higher education.

What will also help is the referendum that we have coming up. The establishment of an advisory body to give advice on things like higher education will undoubtedly continue the good work in this bill because it will give feedback directly from those elected representatives in that advisory body to the parliament and to the government. So I welcome it and encourage all honourable members to support a 'yes' vote at the referendum.

I rise to speak on this higher education support amendment bill and, in doing so and having pointed out the situation in my electorate with regard to higher education, I want to acknowledge the hard work of vice-chancellor Professor Scott Bowman and all the good folk at Charles Darwin University, including those at the new CDU TAFE, and congratulate them on a great open day at the Palmerston campus on the weekend.

This bill implements priority recommendations of the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report, which was released by the minister on 19 July. The accord team, as honourable members would know, comprised pre-eminent Australians with enormous experience across our universities, in industry and in public policy, and it was bipartisan in its composition. Hopefully, honourable members have had a chance to speak with some of the member of the panel. They include Professor Mary O'Kane AC, former vice chancellor of the University of Adelaide; Professor Barney Glover AO, Vice-Chancellor of Western Sydney University and a former vice-chancellor of Charles Darwin University in Darwin; Ms Shemara Wikramanayake, the first female managing director and chief executive officer of Macquarie Group; the Hon. Jenny Macklin AC, former minister for families, community services and Indigenous affairs, a former member of this place and a friend. I spoke with Jenny just recently about a range of issues, including the disease MJD, which she is a passionate advocate for.

Another member of the panel is Professor Larissa Behrend AO, the first Indigenous Australian to graduate from Harvard Law School, a professor of law and the Director of Research and Academic Programs at the Jumbunna Institute of Indigenous Education and Research at the University of Technology, Sydney. That has prompted me to acknowledge the good folk at Bachelor in the Northern Territory who do excellent work in training our First Nations students, not just from the Territory but from other places in Australia. The last but certainly not least member of the panel is a former member of this place, the Hon. Fiona Nash, who was a senator for New South Wales, a former minister for regional development, regional communications, local government and territories and is now Australia's first Regional Education Commissioner. I met with Fiona in Darwin just recently, and we had a great conversation about how we need to include regional universities like Charles Darwin University in the national picture and in the national ecosystem of universities in this nation if we are to develop our greatest resource, which is our people, in regional areas of Australia. I thank Fiona for her time and for her work.

Our government is committed to opening the door of opportunity for more Australians to go to university, including Australians in regional areas of Australia like the one that I represent. Part of this means acting on the priority actions of the interim report. These actions are: creating more university study hubs; scrapping the 50 per cent pass rule; requiring better reporting on how students are progressing; extending the demand-driven funding currently provided to First Nations students from regional and remote areas to cover all First Nations students around the country; providing funding certainty during the accord process by extending the Higher Education Continuity Guarantee into 2024-25 with funding arrangements that prioritise support for equity students; and, lastly, working with state and territory governments to improve university governance.

The government has confirmed it will implement each of the interim recommendations. Recommendations 2 and 3 need legislative amendment, which this bill provides by amending the HESA. These amendments extend the current demand-driven funding for regional and remote First Nations students to all First Nations Australian undergraduate students studying bachelor or honours levels courses, other than medicine, from 2024. They also remove the pass-rate requirements for students to remain eligible for Commonwealth assistance, which we know is so vital. The amendments also introduce new requirements on universities and other providers to support students to successfully complete their studies. The removal of the 50 per cent pass rule is a major reform. Students are currently required to pass at least 50 per cent of the units of study they undertake to continue eligibility for Commonwealth assistance. The pass rate is assessed after they have completed eight units in a bachelor's degree or higher or four units in a shorter course. Students who fail more than half currently lose eligibility for Commonwealth assistance. The pass rate requirements were originally introduced in January 2022 by the former coalition government as part of its Job-ready Graduates program to dissuade students from continuing in courses they are not academically suited for.

However, the practical effect of these measures has been overly punitive for students. We need to be helping our students more, supporting our students more, to get them across the line. The impact of the pass rate requirement disproportionately affected students from First Nations, low socioeconomic status and other underrepresented or educationally disadvantaged cohorts. More than 13,000 students at 27 universities have already been hit by the rule. Removal of the rule has been called for by universities right across the country, and we have listened to those calls. They are universities like Adelaide, Monash, University of Technology Sydney, Sunshine Coast, New England, Queensland University of Technology and Western Sydney University. They made the calls to overturn that ruling, and we have listened because we should be helping students succeed, not forcing them to quit.

The bill introduces requirements on universities and other providers to have policies in place to help students successfully complete their studies. Under these policies, universities and other providers would be required to demonstrate how they will identify students who are struggling, connect to those students and provide support services to help those students. The Department of Education will issue a discussion paper to consult with universities and providers on the content of these policies. It is expected to contain measures such as processes for identifying students who need help, as well as assessing a student's academic and non-academic suitability for continuing study, particularly where they have triggered an alert. It is also important to connect students to support, identifying students who are not engaging with support before their census date wherever possible, to keep them in the game, to keep them on a pathway to education or to quickly identify whether another pathway may be. We need to consider whether there is sufficient non-academic support for students, such as financial assistance, housing information and mental health supports. That's so important because many students can struggle because of non-academic issues, so we need to have an academic approach and a non-academic approach, helping the student in a holistic way.

We also need to have appropriate crisis and critical harm response arrangements. That's also really important. We need to provide access to trained academic development advisers who can help a student identify what's holding them back and come up with the right response for that student. The theory here that we will put in practice is that no-one gets left behind. We give the supports that wrap around those students to keep them in the game of education. The idea of proactively offering special circumstances arrangements where a provider is aware of a significant life event for a student is so important. When I reflect back on my job and the situations you come across, we had a situation where several international students were killed in a tragic car accident just outside of Darwin. That had a massive impact on their fellow students. Special considerations were assessed locally by the university team, but making that more of a part of the arrangements for everyone in the sector going forward is a very good thing.

We also need to provide access to targeted individual literacy, numeracy and other academic supports. Provider-driven and evidence based additional support, such as peer support, is also important, as is targeted in-course support from academic staff, such as check-ins and flexibility on assessment arrangements. Universities and other providers will be required under this legislation to comply with their student support policies, and civil penalties will apply for compliance breaches. That is an example of how seriously we take this issue. There have to be consequences for those that show such disregard for keeping students in the game. They need to have a policy to support students and they need to stick with it.

The existing demand driven measure was implemented in 2021 in response to the National Regional, Rural and Remote Tertiary Education Strategy, which was also known as the Napthine review. The proposal aims to increase First Nations enrolment numbers by expanding the eligibility of demand driven funding to include metropolitan First Nations students studying bachelor and bachelor honours courses—as I mentioned earlier, except for medicine—at Table A universities. This measure directly supports efforts towards achieving Closing the Gap outcome 6, which is to increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25 to 34 years who have completed a tertiary qualification—that is, certificate III and above—to 70 per cent by 2031. We believe we can do that. This means there will be no cap on the number of First Nations students that can enrol in Commonwealth supported places, and Table A providers will receive Commonwealth funding for all First Nations students under part 2 of the HESA. The Department of Education estimates this may double the number of First Nations students at unis within a decade, and the measure has strong support across the university sector. The measure builds on the government's election commitment to deliver up to 20,000 Commonwealth supported places and fee-free TAFE places.

In the time remaining, I want to give a personal reflection on the power of education to improve lives and improve livelihoods. In the Northern Territory, around 30 per cent of people identify as First Nations Australians. Aboriginal Australians who have a multigenerational—going back up to 2,000 generations. I'm the first in my line, on both my mum's and my dad's side, to go to university, and it has given me incredible opportunities. You could argue that if I hadn't been to university I wouldn't be here. What we want to do is provide, for First Nations Australians, the opportunities that so many other Australians have had. This bill goes towards that. That's why I recommend to all honourable members to support this and the referendum.

Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I couldn't do any better than begin by echoing the sentiments that the member for Solomon gave just there about the transformational power of higher education and the need to extend that opportunity to as many people as possible in our country, particularly those people who, in the past, haven't had the access to higher education that they should have had, people from First Nations backgrounds and from socioeconomic disadvantaged backgrounds. We know that higher education transforms lives, and, in fact, this bill sets out to do some of the work we need to do to make it accessible to more people. I, like so many other people in this place, have the advantage of a higher education degree; in fact, I'm fortunate enough to have two. I know personally how important access to higher education is for setting you up later in life. It is important on a personal level, but, as I was just explaining and as the member for Solomon was explaining, it is also important for our communities and country.

We know that in the decades to come more and more jobs will require a university qualification. The transformations we are seeing across our country, across our economy and across industries; and the investments in new green energy and new technology mean there will be a number of new jobs with new skills required. What we want is for those jobs to be filled and to be available to all. We want them to be jobs that young people in my community, in the north-east of Melbourne, are able to access and that young people in the member for Solomon's electorate, in the northern parts of this country, are also able to access. We want to open up university education so that these jobs of the future that are going power our country forward are accessible to all, setting our country up for the best possible future and setting up young people in my community and communities around the country for the best possible future. That's what this government is focused on and that's what this bill is focused on.

We are fortunate in my electorate of Jagajaga to have a wonderful university, La Trobe University, located right on our doorstep. At that university they do a very good job of trying to be as inclusive as possible, of trying to draw a broad demographic of students and support those students through their higher education journey. We as a government are aiming to support more and more universities to do that and to do it better. I know that La Trobe is a destination of choice for many young people in my community to access higher education. I'm fortunate enough to visit it frequently. Most recently, I went and saw some students training in allied health, learning how to give remote consultations, helping people with speech difficulties—a really important skill that is vital to so many in our community and something that we need more and more people to be working in. La Trobe also does great work when it comes to developing a food hub and agribusiness—again, crucial industries for the future of our country—working together with organisations like the CSIRO, building the industries and the job opportunities of the future. I know that it, as a university, is seen by local students as an excellent, accessible option that sets them up for their lives and careers. It is a university that will benefit from these reforms, and I hope that others around the country will as well.

The bill before us is based on the work of the Australian Universities Accord Panel and the interim report they produced. Unlike previous approaches, our government's approach is to want to do things that actually make a difference. In planning these changes, we brought together a group of experts to do the hard work, to come together and put the experience they have together to inform us on how best to shape our university sector into the future. That panel has found that 36 per cent of the current Australian workforce have a university qualification today, but its estimates were that that could jump to 55 per cent by the middle of this century. That gives us, as a government, and as a country, an idea of the skills challenge that we are facing in the years and the decades to come.

As a result of that work, the report that the panel gave us put forward five priority actions, all of which our government has committed to implement. In those five priority actions, we are extending access to tertiary education in regional and suburban locations, ceasing the ridiculous 50 per cent pass rule put in place by the previous government, ensuring all First Nations students are eligible for a funded place, providing funding certainty through the extension of the Higher Education Continuity Guarantee into 2024 and 2025 and, through National Cabinet, engaging with state and territory governments and universities to improve university governance. That last part is very important. We want universities that are run well, that have good governance in place.

I am also really pleased about an important piece of work that our government has also announced, a working group that will be providing advice on making universities safe places for both staff and students. We know that there is still a lot of work to be done on making universities safe places for staff and students. That has been raised time and time again by students. Universities have taken some action to address sexual assault and harassment on campuses to date, but it is very clear that that hasn't done the job yet. The complete job is not done, and this needs to change. Our government believes that education should be not just accessible but it should also be safe and fair. That is a really important part of that reform.

I mentioned earlier that one of the recommendations of the panel, and a recommendation that this bill addresses, is taking away the 50 per cent pass rule put in place by the previous government. That rule was introduced by the previous coalition government as part of its Job-ready Graduates Package. It was a harsh rule. It was introduced to try to dissuade students from continuing in courses that they were 'not academically suited for'. The government pulled together a list of what it considered 'job ready' or 'national priority' subjects and lowered student contributions to attract students to those subjects. Other subjects were set at prices at neutral or increased levels to deter them. We've seen that the changes have had little impact on what subjects students are choosing to study, but what they are doing is making it very unfair. They do mean that if you've got more money you've got more choice, and if you don't have the money you're being deterred from getting an education that you might need or deserve to get based on what a previous government deemed worthy or unworthy. The 50 per cent pass rule disproportionately disadvantaged students from poor backgrounds and the regions. Those students are more likely to be in difficult circumstances and to have unexpected things happen that may interrupt their ability to study and pass exams. These people are the people who can least afford to be slugged with higher fees. This was not a well-thought-through reform. It has not had a positive impact on our higher education system, and our government is doing the sensible thing in taking this away.

As a country we can't thrive and we can't get people ready for the jobs of the future if we are in fact penalising people who need support the most and preventing them from being able to take up those opportunities. In changing this we will be able to change our focus so that we are improving the success rates of at-risk students, not punishing them, not saying, 'That's it, you're done,' or 'You have to pay more.' We will work on how we help those people to be able to have the success they should have at university. We know that for all these students life isn't one thing at one time. They are juggling a lot. This rule meant that those students were facing undue pressure, and it is important that we change that. The advice we have suggests that more than 8,000 students have been or are at risk of being affected by this rule, and clearly that is 8,000 too many. We are asking universities to have a plan for these students, requiring them to proactively identify students at risk of falling behind and to set out a plan to help them to succeed. This plan might be connecting those students to support or providing them with available financial assistance. It could be arranging crisis response or offering special circumstances arrangements, a much more sensible approach going forward and an approach that will see these students able to complete their degrees, rather than saddling them with unfair debts, higher costs and dissuading them from being part of our higher education system.

One of the other actions in the bill relates to priority action 3 from the panel report, which is extending demand-driven funding to metropolitan First Nations students, recognising that in some ways these First Nations students haven't had the emphasis that should have been put on them in supporting them to get a university degree by ensuring that all First Nations students are eligible for a funded place at university. Currently, this particular measure only applies to First Nations students in regional and remote Australia. Going forward it will apply to all First Nations people undertaking higher education, including in metropolitan areas. The Department of Education estimates that this change could double the number of Indigenous students at university within a decade. This measure directly supports efforts achieving Closing the Gap outcome No. 6. Broadening this funding will have flow-on benefits for all First Nations communities across Australia by increasing the number of First Nations graduates in the workforce, so there are positives that come from creating more culturally safe and diverse workplaces by increasing the delivery of professional services and supporting other enterprises requiring university educated workforces. Again, this is good not just for these individuals who will benefit from this opportunity to have greater access to higher education but for our country and our communities. It is good for making sure that we have people who are qualified to do the jobs we need to make our communities run as strongly as they can.

It gives First Nations youth role models in communities, and it means that First Nations young people can look around and say: 'That person did it, I can do it too. That can be my future. That's the trajectory I can be on.' This will help our country by developing the crucial knowledge and skills we need going forward and, more broadly, help us take an important step forward towards equality between First Nations people and our broader community and towards the reconciliation that we are working towards. Interestingly, the report told us that too few Australians are beginning and completing their qualifications in higher education at the moment. It is predicted that 90 per cent of the jobs created over the next five years will require a post-secondary education and 50 per cent will require a higher qualification. But at the same time completions and demand for places at universities are falling, and completion of a first bachelors degree is currently at its lowest level since 2014.

If we combine this with the skills shortages we already have in our country, you can see the sense of urgency and why our government is bringing these changes forward and why we are taking expert advice to fix the mess that we were left with in higher education. It is to make sure we are building the skilled workforce of the future and giving young people in our communities the opportunities that they should have. Again, the evidence shows us that students from underrepresented groups at university make up most of those people who were affected by that 50 per cent pass rule that I spoke about earlier, and First Nations students are around twice as likely to be affected as their non-First-Nations counterparts. Fixing these problems means we will have more students enrolled in higher education. It will mean we have a fairer system of higher education that does ensure that we get those levels of access and attainment that we need, and a system that better meets our national job and skill needs.

We also know this will be good for people's wages because obtaining a university education is one of the biggest things you can do to increase your wage. The evidence shows us it leads to a 38 per cent increase in men's wages and a 37 per cent increase in women's wages. So, unlike those opposite—who when they were in government did not value our higher education system, did not look at these issues around equity and attainment and around making sure that we had a system that was set up to prepare students for the jobs of the future—our government is interested in making sure that we support individuals both for their growth and for the growth of our country. We do know that those opposite—in fact, at a number of points—actively attacked the higher education system in this country. When they refused to provide JobKeeper to public universities, it was a very pointed attack and it caused at that time a lot of difficulties for universities and, of course, for the staff there.

I'll end where I started, which is by saying that many of us in this place benefited from a higher education. We need to extend that to as many people in our community as possible. That's what this bill does. It's what our government is doing—setting up a higher education system that is accessible, that is fair and that puts our country in a place where we are creating people who can do the jobs of the future.

David Smith (Bean, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the speech just made by the member for Jagajaga. I also rise today to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill 2023 and to give my full support to it. I'm proud to be a member of a government and a member of a party which places education at the core of our policy efforts. The Labor Party has always understood the importance of training and skills for all Australians. That is why, through this bill, we are implementing the recommendations of the Australian Universities Accord interim report. I would like to extend my thanks to the authors of the report, especially Professor Mary O'Kane AC, who has been successful in leading the largest review of tertiary education in 15 years. I look forward to the release of the full and final report.

The interim report, which forms the basis of this bill, makes a number of recommendations for improving Australia's higher education sector. They are that we create more university study hubs, particularly in regional areas; that we scrap the 50 per cent pass rule and require better reporting on how students are progressing; that we extend the demand driven funding currently provided to Indigenous students from regional and remote areas to cover all Indigenous students; that we provide funding certainty during the accord process, extending the Higher Education Support Continuity Guarantee into 2024 and 2025; and that we work with state and territory governments through National Cabinet to improve university governance.

This is all part of our work to undo the higher education policy failures of the former government, and it is essential to put education in Australia back on the right track. The shadows of past policies loom large, reminding us of missed opportunities and unfulfilled policies. It's a shame that the former government couldn't or wouldn't recognise the importance of higher education for the benefit of our country. The former government revealed themselves, time and time again, to be against giving all Australians their fair go in higher education. By making degrees both more expensive and more precarious, they denied young Australians their turn to have a fair go. By further marginalising already marginalised groups, they did nothing but increase inequality in our country.

I'd be remiss not to mention that many of those sitting in this parliament received their higher education for free, thanks to Labor policy. This bill is a reminder to all that we must reflect on the true purpose of higher education in our lives. It is through education that we uplift individuals, families and communities. It is through education that we unlock the potential of every Australian and provide them with the tools for their future. It is through education that we will solve the problems of the future. Education should never be a barrier but, rather, a pathway to greater opportunities.

That's why it's so important we pass the Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill. We envisage a university sector that fosters a culture of compassion and one that is supportive to students. Education is not a solitary endeavour. It's a collaborative journey, where institutions, educators and policymakers share the responsibility for nurturing the minds of the future.

Here in the ACT, tertiary education has been a cornerstone of our contribution to the nation. We're not just the home of the parliament and the Public Service, but home to Australia's only national university. Established in 1946, the Australian National University is the only university to have been created by the Parliament of Australia. It represents a long-term vision that Labor had for Australia. We simply could not have achieved our postwar prosperity without the skills that our National University was able to provide us with. Our nation's best and brightest have all, at some point, had an association with the Australian National University. For high-achieving school students across the country and the world, the ANU has been the light at the end of the tunnel—the reason they've pushed themselves. It's been the goal that has driven them. Our country would not have the knowledge, skills and curiosity we have today without the Australian National University. Many in this chamber are, and many in previous parliaments have been, proud alumni of the ANU, myself included.

But just down the road from the ANU is the University of Canberra—which is really the better one, according to my staff. It sits at No. 17 in international rankings for young universities. It was, this year, named in the top five for reducing inequalities in the world, and it produces some of the best teachers in the country—not bad for a university than just recently celebrated 30 years.

These universities, along with the Australian Catholic University and the University of New South Wales, are contributors to local, national and international skills and knowledge. However, they are all located on the north side.

In my electorate of Bean, there are no undergraduate university campuses. MacKillop College hosts postgraduate teaching classes. The Canberra Institute of Technology has campuses on the south side. In fact, my electorate office is in the same building as the Tuggeranong CIT campus. If you are a school-leaver or are looking at furthering your qualifications and you live south of the parliament, your only option is to travel north. For some, this is no problem, if they own a car and can afford the fuel and parking costs. But, if you are reliant on public transport and a schedule that doesn't necessarily complement your class timetable, or rely on active travel or sharing a car, this is a major barrier. That's why I am particularly interested in seeing the potential that will come from this bill's provisions to expand local access through the establishment of regional university centres and to establish a similar concept for suburban metropolitan locations.

I'm not arguing for a joint UC, ANU, ACU or UNSW campus in Tuggeranong, right now—although I would not oppose that if it did come. But if this is a barrier in Canberra, I can only imagine that, in our larger cities or rural communities, this is magnified, at times, tenfold. Rural university centres and their suburban or metropolitan equivalents will go far in reducing those entry barriers.

I'd like to give a quick shout-out to all those students in the ACT that will be doing their AST exams this week. I wish them the best as they deal with the stress that occurs on their pathway to, hopefully, getting better access to universities as well.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm sorry, but the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. Given your speech was interrupted, you will be granted leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.