Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the motion from the member for Holt. The member understands, like so many on this side of the chamber, the transformational nature of education and the importance of improving access to university study. That's why the Albanese government is putting in place a range of reforms in response to the Australian Universities Accord to provide cost-of-living relief and make higher education better and fairer for students, including those from low socioeconomic status or disadvantaged backgrounds, particularly in regional and suburban areas. We're making good progress on priority actions from the accord interim report recommendations. This is really important in outer suburban and regional electorates like mine, where the percentage of the population with university qualifications is quite low.

Firstly, the Albanese government is helping the HELP system to be fairer by improving the way HELP indexation is calculated, wiping around $3 billion in student debt for more than three million Australians, including 22,000 people in my electorate. Secondly, we're introducing a Commonwealth prac payment system to support teaching, nursing—including midwifery—and social work students complete their university placements. The government is fully funding fee-free TAFE university-ready courses to help more students prepare for university and giving them the skills they need to get into the courses they want. We've guaranteed funding for student led organisations and committed to establishing an independent national student ombudsman to investigate student complaints and resolve disputes with universities. We've announced the first 10 regional university study hubs, and we've opened 14 applications for new suburban university study hubs. They build on the 34 existing regional university study hubs across the country, which supported almost 4,000 students last year.

Too often someone's postcode is a brick wall that's stopping them going to university, with the cost of moving close to a campus a major disincentive to study. The postcode you live in shouldn't be a barrier to getting a degree. The opportunity is life-changing for outer suburban communities like mine in Ipswich. Today almost one in two young people in their 20s and 30s have university degrees, but not in my electorate. This has to change because, in the decade ahead, more and more jobs will require TAFE or university qualifications. That means we're going to need more people to get those qualifications—more people getting degrees, more people completing TAFE and more people in the workforce upskilling and reskilling. These community driven spaces located in outer metropolitan and periurban areas with low tertiary education participation need help. We provide convenient wraparound support targeted at underrepresented and educationally disadvantaged students who face barriers to accessing tertiary education and who would otherwise need to travel long distances to get to and from an inner-city campus. The evidence is that, where university study hubs are, university participation goes up.

I was the first person in my family to attend university. I want young people in Ipswich and the Somerset Region to get the same opportunities that I did. This is one way to do that—by providing higher education closer to students. I'm excited the Albanese government is doing this, and I'm very keen to see one or more suburban university study hubs established in my electorate to make it easier for young people in our community to get a degree. To that end, I've been engaging with a range of local community organisations to gauge their interest in hosting a hub. Last Friday I attended a round table at the Ipswich campus of the University of Southern Queensland attended by representatives not just from that university but from Griffith University and councils across the southern part of South-East Queensland and a number of other stakeholders looking to establish a network coordinating hub sites in Ipswich, Logan and south-west Brisbane.

I'm hopeful that we see a strong proposal coming out of these discussions for a South-East Queensland south-west study hub. This hub could raise awareness and improve and advance student engagement, including preparedness, participation and engagement with academic pursuits. The government has an ambitious and big agenda when it comes to higher education reform, and we've set an overall tertiary education attainment target of 80 per cent of working-age people by 2050. We've estimated that, if the broader accord targets are achieved, $240 billion will be added to the economy over the period to 2050. This is about building a better and fairer education system for every Australian. It's about social justice, equality of opportunity and a fair go for young people and people who want to reskill in my electorate.

Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the member for Holt's motion on the Australian Universities Accord. I have spoken many times in this House about the importance of education to my family and many in my community of Fowler, and I want to share it here again. My beloved late mother, who passed away almost a year ago this week, told me while we were interned in refugee camps in Hong Kong why she chose to apply to be resettled in Australia and not the US. It was because she was told Australia has the best education system in the world. We had no idea where Australia was other than that it was this island surrounded by waters and far away from conflicts of the world, but we heard it had quality education.

For the thousands of refugees and migrants who have settled in Fowler over the decades, many see education as the key to successful integration into wider Australian society. Just yesterday at lunchtime Sunday, while I was shopping in my community, I saw groups of parents and children swarming around the many tutorial centres in the city. I thought to myself it was Sunday and yet here were the kids going to extra courses. I know that, for many parents, despite their current struggles with high energy and grocery bills, they would prefer to cut spending in many areas but not education. Over four million students are enrolled in our education system, with over 40.5 per cent attaining higher tertiary. In my Fowler community, over 15 per cent attend university, around seven per cent are studying for a diploma and around 22 per cent of students are currently in the high school system.

Our education system no doubt has changed a lot since my family's settlement in Australia in 1979, and so has the world. Since my election in 2022, I have been calling the government to cease HECS indexation to assist students, especially with increasing costs of living and in particular those in low socioeconomic areas like mine in Fowler. I therefore welcome the government's announcement in the May budget to modify the HECS indexation. My persistence and advocacy have not been in vain.

While I acknowledge the government's substantial efforts to reform higher education, the findings of the Australian Universities Accord report highlight the extensive work still required to secure a bright future for the next generation. The report spreads over 400 pages, with several key recommendations. Amongst the priority actions, in response to recommendation 14, the government will establish a new Commonwealth prac payment—CPP—to support students in teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work during mandatory replacements.

From July 2025, 68,000 eligible students can expect $319.50 per week during their placement. I have previously shared that many young students often spread their money thinly across rent, food and commuting, amongst other expenses, and $319.50 is invaluable assistance to struggling students, specially those from the Fowler electorate, during the cost-of-living crisis. However, I must express concern for the students in other allied health fields. I have had physiotherapy and podiatry students reach out and ask, 'What about us?' They are feeling overlooked despite their critical role as part of the health sector. It is imperative that the government clarify whether the CPP will extend to these allied health students as well. In 2023, I established the Fowler Youth Advisory Committee, which convenes quarterly to spearhead initiatives that matter to the youth Fowler. A recurring theme in our discussions has been the need for increased financial support for disadvantaged young people in higher education.

I also would like to remind the government that the 2024 budget disappointingly failed to address the inequity of the Job-ready Graduates Package from the Morrison government. This package encouraged students to pursue STEM subjects, whilst disproportionally increasing fees for arts students. The report clearly indicates that the JRG requires urgent remediation due to the financial barriers it creates. I understand the demand for STEM graduates, especially with the Future Made in Australia plan, but this approach is regressive and borderline utilitarian and has discriminatory effects. There are a significant number of female students undertaking arts and social science courses out of passion, and a continuation of the JRG will exacerbate the existing gender pay gap. Will the government advocate for a future that is short on understanding the riches of our history and philosophy? The government needs to have a long think about this. Addressing these concerns is essential to truly establishing Australia as a global leader in education.

Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to begin by acknowledging the member for Holt, who has moved this motion, because it's such a critically important policy area. We in this government know that, and that's why we're putting in place such significant reforms in response to the Australian Universities Accord to provide cost-of-living relief for students and to make higher education better and fairer for students. That's what government can do: real outcomes for the students that need it.

We all value the importance of a good-quality education. We understand that. I'm the son of migrants from Egypt who escaped a region engulfed by war. Every day they told me, growing up, that education was so important to my future and that I needed to study, to do my homework and to get a degree to have a better life. In Australia, I received a quality education that gave me opportunities throughout life and the opportunity to make a contribution in return. Frankly, education opens the door to opportunity. It is the key that opens the door because it gives people an opportunity to actually fulfil their potential.

Not everyone wants to, or can, do tertiary or higher education. But, for those who want that choice, there should be that opportunity—regardless of their background, regardless of their ethnicity, regardless of whether they're a migrant, regardless of whether they're from the inner city or from the regions, regardless of whether they were born in Australia or migrated here and regardless of their socioeconomic disadvantage. Education is the great leveller of our society, and it's incumbent upon all of us who were fortunate to receive such an education to make sure that more Australians are afforded these same opportunities.

That is why the Labor government is wiping $3 billion in student debt for three million Australians, many of whom are young people who need that assistance desperately. There are young people who work in my electorate, at the checkout in ALDI in Coburg North, at the accountants on Sydney Road or at the reception at the Glenroy family clinic. These are people doing part-time work just to get through their studies—we know that experience—and the cost of living has squeezed these young people the hardest. With inflation at 7.1 per cent last year and HECS payments indexed to this inflation, young people with debts of $50,000 would have been slapped with a $3,500 indexation cost—no more.

I personally know many students who have attempted to pay their fees upfront, rather than rely on HECS, to avoid those sky-high indexations. This completely defeats the point of the HECS system. No amount of sacrificing cups of coffee or breakfast is going to make a difference when you've got such a debt mounting out of your control. That's why the student debt that is here is so important under a Labor government that's here to stay. HECS loans will now be indexed to the CPI or the wage price index, whichever is lower. If your wages aren't growing, your debt shouldn't be either.

That's why we've introduced a Commonwealth prac payment for teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students. Unpaid prac is something I've been concerned about for years. I've heard the stories of how many in my community have had to give up their paid work commitments in order to do unpaid placement that is often quite far from home. That's not good enough. We know that there is a shortage of teachers and nurses in this country. The last thing we want is for students in these professions, in this stream, to defer their studies or withdraw altogether due to the increased costs involved in placements and their reduced capacity to do paid work. That's exactly the kind of wealth barrier that our government is committed to removing, and remove it we have.

That's why Labor is also making sure there are fully funded uni-ready courses for these students. We want to do more than just remove barriers to education. We want to actively encourage and incentivise skills and training. That's why the Albanese government has set a target of 80 per cent of the workforce having a tertiary qualification by 2050 and it's why we're fully funding uni ready courses. That's going to help make sure all Australians have access to an affordable, quality education.

This is why it's so important: education is so much more than just a commodity to be monetised; it's one of the strongest tools we have to improve our health outcomes, gender equality and socioeconomic disadvantage. The cost of living has squeezed so many young people. Under this Labor government, young people will be able to pursue their studies without the dragon of indexed debt breathing down their necks. If you're a child of migrants, you'll know what it's like to have your parent say, 'No matter what you do, just please focus on your studies, because we want you to have a better life.' Not everyone can go to med school. Whether you choose to study at TAFE or get one degree or two, you should not face barriers that are insurmountable. Under a Labor government, education is an investment, not a liability.

Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to begin by thanking the member for Holt for bringing this motion before us. Our government is absolutely committed to making higher education better and fairer for students. Ours is a government that believes in the transformative power of a tertiary qualification. We know the doors of opportunity that a university degree or a VET qualification can open, providing so much for people right across the country, and we know how important a tertiary qualification will become in the years ahead. That's why we're setting a new target—for 80 per cent of our workforce to have a tertiary qualification by 2050.

This target is critical to deliver on Australia's skills needs, but, in order to reach this target, we need more people to go to university and we need them to succeed when they get there. I deeply understand the importance of higher education. It has improved the lives of people in my own family and in my community. I hear so many personal stories about that all the time. In terms of my career, I was an academic for years and a passionate advocate for post-secondary education pathways. Now I have the great privilege to represent an electorate with two world-class universities as well as leading vocational education institutions in it.

I know that I share my deep passion for education with my community in Chisholm. There are many university students and academics who live in my community, and I know that families choose to make Chisholm their home in order to give their children a world-class education, with access to incredible higher education institutions and excellent schools in our suburbs.

I am proud to be part of a government that is conducting once-in-a-generation reforms to the higher education system through the Australian Universities Accord. I made a submission to the accord process on behalf of my electorate. My submission was based on many conversations with constituents at mobile offices, as well as a survey that received over 400 responses. Overwhelmingly, people in Chisholm wanted to see reforms made to the Higher Education Loan Program. I heard from students who were impacted by the huge spike in indexation on their HELP loans last year and from parents and grandparents who were concerned about how rising HELP loans would impact their children's futures. Our government has listened to the community and to the recommendations of the accord expert panel, and we are changing the way that HELP indexation is calculated. We are making the HELP system fairer. These changes will be retrospective. This will mean that $3 billion from HELP debts will be cut for more than three million Australians.

But our cost-of-living relief for students does not stop there. Our government is tackling placement poverty. We know we need to better support students who are required to undertake a placement as part of their university degree. Unfortunately, we've seen students having to choose between doing their placement for their studies or working to be able to afford their rent, food and medicines. So we are introducing a new prac payment to support teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students to do their mandatory pracs.

We are also doing more to support students on campus. Since I was an undergraduate student, which was some time ago now, I have been fighting for action to address gender based violence in higher education, which has been a persistent and awful problem for years. The rates of sexual violence at universities are alarming, and of course all students deserve to be safe at university and to feel that they can continue their studies, rather than what we have seen, where people who've been subjected to sexual and gendered violence have disengaged from study. All students deserve to learn on campuses free from gendered and sexual violence.

I'm really proud to be part of a government that takes the safety of students and staff seriously, through establishing a national student ombudsman to provide higher education students with an effective trauma-informed complaints mechanism to use when they're not satisfied by their higher education provider's response. This ombudsman will be completely independent, accessible for all higher education students and empowered by a new higher education code to prevent and respond to gender based violence. Our government is doing an awful lot for students in higher education, and I'm really proud to be able to speak on this motion today. (Time expired)

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to confine my remarks on this private member's motion around the Australian Universities Accord to regional, rural and more remote students. These young Australians have certainly had a really tough time under the Albanese government, with cost-of-living pressures pushing many of them, along with their families, to breaking point. They've seen skyrocketing increases in the costs of housing, power, groceries and fuel—as well as the housing crisis that's making it almost impossible to find an affordable place to live, particularly in the large cities. That's been driven by Labor's high inflation and their mismanagement of economic and policy decisions.

I'm getting an increasing number of parents coming to see me about the real challenges their families are facing in the regions in just trying to support students to be able to go to university. The students in my area that want to study things like medicine, law and engineering have no choice but to move away from the south-west of the state—and others often have to move more widely, from regional and remote parts of the state—to Perth to study those courses. They are not available in a regional university within their area.

The real problem we've got specifically at the moment is the actual cost of accommodation. We've seen in WA that the rental vacancy rate is extremely low, at only 0.4 per cent. When we look at student accommodation in WA, there are 27 students for every purpose-built student accommodation bed. That's the competition. So, when you're a young person coming from the south-west of the state and you have no choice but to move to Perth to pursue your education dreams and opportunities, the family really has to bear the cost of that, and at the moment, along with the high cost of living that individuals and families are facing, this is now a bridge too far. I've not seen anything from the Labor government to address that. I have seen Labor remove those rural and regional enterprise scholarships, and we also saw the axing of the Destination Australia program that supported students studying in the regions as well. For those students that have no choice but to move, the actual cost of rent and accommodation is massive.

We have seen a significant increase in—I think it's almost a doubling—the number of international students coming to WA universities. Again, that puts even further pressure on our rural and regional students. I had a look in some universities' annual reports to see how they reported the numbers of regional and remote students in their list of students that they were supporting and representing and that were represented at their colleges, but there was no such figure in those annual reports.

It is a real challenge. I know families in which two parents are working to try to keep one child at university. The rent alone is at least $30,000 a year for them. I've got families with two jobs for each parent in an effort, and they've got a second child coming that really wants or needs to go to university in Perth as well. The family has no choice here; either the child can go to a university in Perth to study their preferred course or that course can't be done in our local university in the south-west. The family does absolutely everything it can, but, to the parents who are coming to see me: I have represented you on this issue repeatedly in this place and I will continue to do so. I just make the House aware that this is a rising problem for students in the regions, and it wouldn't be just in my electorate; this is being felt right around Australia by those students who have no choice but to move to a city to study. With this massive increase in international students, the competition for the accommodation and the lack of rentals are a massive issue for our regional students.

The prac placement uncertainty is there as well, because there are a whole range of other, different courses where the students are forced to undergo placements where there is no support, whether that's speech pathology, GPs— (Time expired)

Tracey Roberts (Pearce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the motion moved by the member for Holt. The Australian Universities Accord is the biggest and broadest review of the higher education sector in 15 years. It sets out a way forward to ensure we have a stronger, fairer economy and country, futureproofing our nation with the skills we need that are home-grown by our universities and TAFEs. As part of our response to the accord, the government has set a national target of 80 per cent of the workforce having a tertiary qualification by 2050. This approach is ambitious, but it will help to ensure that we build the skills we need for a future made in Australia, where no-one is held back and no-one is left behind.

The government is providing cost-of-living relief to make higher education better and fairer for students, including those from low socioeconomic or disadvantaged backgrounds and those from the outer suburbs or regional Australia. This is important. I know it is often a challenge for students living in the outer suburbs of my electorate of Pearce to pursue a tertiary education. Younger people have not been forgotten in this budget, and we are cutting student debt for more than 3 million Australians and wiping around $3 billion in student debt. To do this, we are introducing help-along credits for people impacted by the recent inflation spike. We are making sure that, in the future, student debt never grows faster than wages or the ability to pay it off. The way indexation is calculated will be improved, making sure last year's indexation spike cannot happen again.

From 1 July, these changes to student debt will help support nearly 18,000 persons with a HELP debt in Pearce. From 1 July next year, we are also delivering new financial support for students who undertake mandatory unpaid placements as part of their study, including in nursing, teaching, social work and midwifery. The Commonwealth prac payment will provide around 68,000 higher education students and approximately 7,200 VET students in WA with more than $300 per week while they are on mandatory placements as part of their degree. I know that these unpaid placements put real pressure on people. Too many students are forced to drop out of courses that they are passionate about, because they simply cannot afford to do their prac. We believe no-one should be held back from higher education because of the cost. We will deliver fee-free university-ready courses to provide more students with an enabling pathway into higher education. This is expected to increase the number of students undertaking these courses by 40 per cent in 2030, double the number of students by 2040 and give more Australians the skills they need to get into the course that they choose.

Importantly, the government will make needs based funding a core component of funding for higher education, teaching and learning. A new managed-growth funding system with fully funded places will be developed for Commonwealth supported places to meet student demand, maintain sustainable growth and increase opportunity for people from underrepresented backgrounds.

I was pleased to see the intention to improve tertiary harmonisation by supporting better student pathways between VET and higher education and by reducing red tape for dual-sector providers. I used to work in a school. I know that for some students the pathways to tertiary education can be a little intimidating, especially when choices are made as early as year 10, with some finding themselves locked into a course that is not ideal in terms of their long-term goals. It would make life so much easier to have more flexibility and recognition between sectors that support better student pathways.

Should the broader accord targets be achieved, $240 billion will be added to the economy over the period to 2050. I also commend the Albanese Labor government for progress being made on all five priority actions from the Australian Universities Accord interim report. In particular, I also wish to highlight that the government has agreed to establish an independent national student ombudsman; establish a higher education code to prevent and respond to gender based violence; undertake a study into the prevalence and impact of racism across the university system; and guarantee funding for student led organisations. I reiterate my support of the motion moved by the hardworking member for Holt.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.