Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

As Senator Campbell reminds me, and as I was about to address, the fact is that the government signed a referral for this bill. That seems extraordinary, given the comments in the other place that were critical of such referral. Any problems with this process are of the Howard government’s own instigation. This might be an uncomfortable truth for the government, given its distaste for any form of scrutiny, but the Senate should not believe those opposite in their historical revisionism of events which only occurred a month or so ago.

I want to turn to some of the more substantive issues in the bill itself. Schedule 1 of the bill funds commitments made by the government arising from the COAG health workforce and mental health packages. Labor welcomes the additional places to deal with health workforce shortages, but the fact is the Howard government has neglected this important area for too long. The government has failed to invest in education, training, distribution and retention measures to ensure that all of Australia has enough doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals to meet current and future health needs.

The bill also increases funding to the capital development pool for universities from 2007 and to the commercialisation training scheme for new postgraduate research places in science and innovation; $1.5 million is also provided to the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies and to the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. I want to indicate that Labor supports these new measures.

Included in the funding this bill proposes is the application of indexation to university grants across the forward estimate years. The fact is our universities continue to suffer from inadequate indexation. The rate of indexation being applied to university operating grants this year means they will increase by just two per cent. By comparison, average weekly earnings rose by an average of 4.5 per cent annually between 1998 and 2004. As salary costs are the largest component of university operating expenses, ranging between 45 and 70 per cent, this gap between indexation and wage costs continues to rise. Since 1995, the gap between rising average salary costs and the rate of indexation provided by the Commonwealth has accumulated to more than $500 million.

Let us just reflect on that for a moment. What these figures demonstrate is that, over the term of the Howard government, the gap between the amounts the universities on average are required to pay staff and the rate of indexation provided through the Commonwealth funds is over half a billion dollars. In their submission to the Employment Workplace Relations and Education Legislation Committee’s inquiry into this bill, the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee said:

... the existing index is not realistic. This Bill does not adequately address the real cost of the provision of services.

It seems extraordinary that the government continues to refuse to listen to our vice-chancellors. The fact is that Labor believes the government must listen to the vice-chancellors and must reverse the current indexation policy because, fundamentally, this is about ensuring Australia’s universities are properly funded—something this government does not seem to regard as a priority. Adequate indexation is essential to sustain and strengthen the quality of university education in Australia.

The opposition also supports the indexation, in schedule 9, of the funding cap for research spending in the Australian Research Council Act. The significant measure in schedule 2 of the bill is to increase the FEE-HELP limit to $80,000 for most students and to $100,000 for medical, dental and veterinary science students. This was announced in the budget and is the second proposed FEE-HELP increase this year. I have to interpose here that the acronyms and the names that the government chooses to use are interesting. I recall Senator Abetz taking through this chamber what I think was called the ‘fair dismissal bill’, which actually involved the removal of unfair dismissal rights. Here we have FEE-HELP, something that suggests that people are actually being helped when, of course, what we know is that they only need to borrow money because this government has so massively increased the cost of going to university and introduced extremely expensive higher education fees for certain courses—which I will come to shortly.

The fact is the changes to FEE-HELP are significant, increasing the total debt available to students. These measures will generate an additional $78.5 million in student debt over the period 2006-07 to 2009-10. There are now almost 100 full fee degrees in Australia costing more than $100,000, so it is clear these increases which are set out in the legislation and to which I have referred are simply not sufficient to meet the real cost of these degrees.

Under the Howard government you can pay as much for a degree as you do for your home. The average mortgage today is about $222,000 and, according to the Good Universities Guide 2007, a full fee paying place in medicine/arts will set students back a staggering $237,000 at the University of New South Wales and $219,100 at the University of Melbourne. Medicine at Bond University costs $233,100, while medicine/law at Monash University racks up a debt of $214,600. These are extraordinary figures, and this is an extraordinary increase in the level of student debt in this country.

These massive increases in university fees imposed by the Howard government are forcing up the total debts faced by students and graduates by $2 billion a year, and this is doing one thing: taking Australia further down the track of an American style university system. New figures from the Department of Education, Science and Training, provided through the inquiry into this bill, show university graduates and students will owe more than $20 billion by the 2009-10 financial year. It is an extraordinary increase in the level of debt that we are loading onto students—primarily young people—at this point in their lives.

Labor also welcomes the clause in the bill that clarifies that a person who has had FEE-HELP recredited does not have their future entitlement to FEE-HELP reduced by that amount of recredited FEE-HELP. This change was apparently required because of the new differential caps which are contained in the legislation and to which I have referred. It will be important for students that administrative complexities, such as this recrediting system, are minimised as the FEE-HELP system evolves.

In their minority report on the Senate inquiry, the Australian Democrats indicated that they would be moving an amendment to abolish schedule 2 of this bill, which deals with the FEE-HELP changes. Labor will not be supporting such an amendment. Whilst we agree that $200,000 degrees should not be a feature of our public universities, we will tackle that policy problem by a different route. We do recognise that FEE-HELP provides necessary support to students in certain courses, especially those undertaking postgraduate coursework degrees. In our recent white paper, Labor indicated that we would support the continuation of FEE-HELP for private universities and other private higher education providers. To prevent crippling debt for students in our public universities, Labor will eliminate the problem at its root. Labor oppose full fee undergraduate degrees in our public universities, and Labor will phase out these $100,000 and $200,000 degrees when we get into government.

Schedule 3 of the bill allows universities to charge different students in the same unit different amounts of HECS and tuition fees. This alters the existing rule that the same type of student enrolled in the same course of study pays the same fees. Under the proposed changes there will be wide discretion for the provider to set varying fee levels based on any factor they deem appropriate, with only limited scope by the government to determine matters that are not appropriate. There may be cases where differential fee structures are used to assist students from disadvantaged backgrounds through targeted fee relief based on location or mode of delivery. However, Labor would not support fee deregulation resulting in higher general fee levels, and we will be monitoring the implementation of this new provision.

The Labor opposition support the minor technical amendments in schedules 4, 5 and 7 and the creation by schedule 6 of the new concept of winter schools. These winter schools are analogous to summer schools and allow students to study units intensively, where academically appropriate, and complete their degree programs sooner. Labor support universities undertaking new and innovative activities to provide a wide range of educational options for our students. Unlike the government, for Labor this forms part of an overall and cohesive policy agenda. Our higher education white paper contains a new funding model for universities, one element of which is to provide specific funding for what we call ‘innovative activities’. The white paper targets accelerated degree options for students as one sort of innovative activity Labor will pursue.

Schedule 8 of the bill changes the procedures for accreditation and approval of higher education in external territories. The bill proposes to give the minister greater power over this process. Yet the department advises that the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, MCEETYA, which determines the national protocols for approval of higher education providers for the rest of the country, will not be consulted in the development or approval of the minister’s new guidelines for the external territories. Labor believe that the new guidelines proposed by this bill should also be endorsed by MCEETYA.

This bill contains a series of unconnected and piecemeal amendments to higher education legislation in this country. While the opposition understand the need for governments to make such amendments from time to time—and we support them in this—this seems to be all that the government is doing. At a time when our higher education system needs serious attention, all we have from the Howard government is an inadequate and incoherent policy response to the need of our university system to diversify, innovate and meet Australia’s higher education needs.

While the Howard government may have no direction for the future, Labor does. In July our deputy leader and shadow education minister, Ms Macklin, issued a higher education white paper entitled Australia’s universities: building our future in the world. This white paper set out a new policy framework for higher education, research and innovation that fits Australia’s modern needs and circumstances. Our nation-building reform will result in real choice and higher quality education and training for individuals. Lifting up all universities is central to a Beazley government’s economic agenda to build a prosperous future for all Australians.

Our universities are different. Labor understands this simple reality. It is time the Howard government recognised this difference through more than simple platitudes. The first thing that needs to be done is to release Australian universities from the straitjacket imposed on them by the Nelson changes. Particularly as a result of the government’s 2003 changes, universities have been given less discretion to spend the diminished proportion of Commonwealth government funding they receive. True diversity can only be achieved through fundamental change, freeing universities from red tape and bureaucratic control. Labor will end government interference in the internal management of universities and reduce compliance and reporting burdens. Labor’s stronger focus on the quality of educational outcomes will loosen the Howard government’s excessive controls on inputs and processes.

Labor will fund public universities through a compact negotiated to value universities’ individual missions and their different roles and circumstances. Labor’s approach will promote improved responsiveness of universities to student demand and community needs. Labor in government will provide additional resourcing to our universities through this new funding model and through adequate indexation of university grants. As mentioned earlier, the current indexation arrangements are costing our universities and must be changed. Labor will make these necessary changes and link these additional funds to quality improvements.

It is extraordinary and damning that for the second year in a row the OECD has reported that Australia is the only developed country to have reduced public investment in tertiary education. We went backwards by seven per cent while the rest of the OECD increased by an average of 48 per cent. This is the Howard government’s legacy for the higher education sector—our competitors go forward by 48 per cent; we go back by seven per cent. Australia is going backwards whilst everyone else is going forwards.

The consequence of 10 long years of Howard government cuts is that the quality of Australian higher education is under pressure, with consequent risks to the reputation of Australian degrees. There are no systems in place in Australia for assuring the standards of degree quality. Students deserve the confidence that they will receive a high-quality education and that their degree will be recognised in Australia and overseas as a credible qualification for work and further study. We should expect the best from our universities because of the public investment they receive. That is why Labor has proposed to establish a tough new standards watchdog, the Australian Higher Education Quality Agency, and give it real teeth to enhance degree standards and protect quality teaching and research.

Unlike the Howard government, which seems to be bereft of fresh ideas and unable to articulate coherent policy, particularly when it comes to higher education, we on this side of the chamber understand that the only way to promote diversity and innovation is to restore faith, confidence and, importantly, public investment in our universities. Labor have a vision for higher education in Australia and we are backing this up with substantive and contemporary policies that will tackle the problems directly created by the Howard government. On behalf of the opposition, I move:

At the end of the motion, add:

        “but the Senate:

Condemns the Government for:

             (a)    jeopardising Australia’s future prosperity by reducing public investment in tertiary education, as the rest of the world increases their investment;

             (b)    failing to invest in education, training, distribution and retention measures to ensure that all of Australia has enough doctors, nurses and other health care professionals to meet current and future health care needs;

             (c)    massively increasing the cost of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, forcing students to pay up to $30,000 more for their degree;

             (d)    creating an American style higher education system, where students pay more and more, with some full fee degrees costing more than $200,000, and nearly 100 full fee degrees costing more than $100,000;

             (e)    massively increasing the debt burden on students with total Higher Education Loan Program debt now over $13 billion and projected to rise to $18.8 billion in 2009;

              (f)    failing to address serious concerns about standards and quality in the higher education system, putting at risk Australia’s high educational reputation and fourth largest export industry; and

             (g)    an inadequate and incoherent policy response to the needs of the university system to diversify, innovate and meet Australia’s higher education needs”.