Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2006 Budget and Other Measures) Bill 2006, but, before I do, may I welcome Graham and Caroline Jay from my hometown of Fremantle in Western Australia, who have been in the nation’s capital enjoying the best of the best. They have been overawed with what they have seen in Canberra this week.

The government can take no credit for this bill—you cannot take any credit for fixing something you stuffed up. The sad thing is that we are going to see a lot more of this type of legislation as the Howard government is increasingly forced to save itself from its own incompetence. Since coming into office the coalition government has not had a good word to say about the education system in this country. There has been a constant theme of badmouthing the standards of teaching and what is being taught in schools and universities.

It also explains why there has been such appalling underfunding of our public university system in Australia. This underfunding has become so chronic that all the enrolment growth in Australian universities since the change of government in 1996 has been in full-fee-paying students—predominantly in foreign full-fee-paying students but more recently in Australian full-fee-paying students. The government is so committed to full-fee places that it deprives young Australians of the opportunity of getting into university on a subsidised basis.

Commonwealth outlays on universities as a percentage of GDP has fallen consistently over the past decade. Australia now only spends 1.5 per cent of GDP on tertiary education, which is about the same as Poland and much less than our regional competitors like Korea, which spends 2.6 per cent of GDP.

If we look at the academic performance of the Howard generation as a result of the underinvestment, we see that Australia is 20th out of 28 OECD countries in terms of education attainment in the 25- to 34-year-old age group. What has happened while a succession of Liberal Party federal education ministers have been running around the country looking for Maoists? Australia has run out of doctors and nurses. It is going to make for an interesting history lesson in the years to come how the federal ministers for education saved us all from the Maoists but forgot to make sure we had enough doctors and nurses.

This bill is about fixing some of the problems that the Howard government has created. It is not about some far-sighted policy. It is not about having vision. It is not about good management. As such, I support Labor’s second reading amendment, which calls on the Senate to condemn the Howard government for, among other things:

... reducing public investment in tertiary education, as the rest of the world increases their investment;

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... massively increasing the cost of HECS, forcing students to pay up to $30,000 more for their degree;

... 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;

and:

... 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 …

The OECD’s Education at a Glance 2006 is a 454-page in-depth analysis of education systems across the developed world. It makes for depressing reading. This report informs us that, while the rest of the OECD countries have increased their public investment in tertiary education by an average of 48 per cent, Australia is the only country in the developed world to see a decline—of seven per cent. That is an increase of 48 per cent for the rest of the developed world and a decline in public investment in tertiary education by the Howard government of seven per cent. It certainly shows that this Prime Minister and this government deserve an F for their efforts in education and training. Our great trading partner Japan increased its investment in tertiary education over that period by just over 30 per cent. We have gone backwards by seven per cent.

Included in the funding this bill proposes is the application of indexation to university grants across the forward estimates years. The rate of indexation being applied to university operating grants this year means that they will increase by just two per cent, unfortunately. By comparison, average weekly earnings rose by an average of 4½ per cent annually between 1998 and 2004. As salary costs are the largest component of university operating expenses, ranging between 45 per cent 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.

The OECD members have shown an average increase of 48 per cent, but unfortunately Australia is going backwards. The very same report went on to indicate that Australian students are now paying the second highest fees in the world. The only country in the world with higher fees than Australian university fees is the United States. That is not a very good reflection on the way we treat education in this country. This government has set about a process of Americanising everything, and it has all but achieved it when it comes to education. As the OECD report which I referred to earlier noted:

In Australia, the main reason for this increase in the private share of spending on tertiary institutions between 1995 and 2003 was changes to the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) that took place in 1997.

The report comments on trends in higher education around the globe and says:

... increasing private spending on tertiary education tends to complement, rather than replace, public investment. The main exception to this is Australia ...

Under the Howard government, Australian students and their parents are footing the bill for massive funding cuts. I never went to university, but my daughter does. Fortunately, I am in a position where I can afford to pay her fees for her. But I struggle to comprehend how people on far lower wages, paying off mortgages and the like and facing rising fuel prices, can ever expect to send their children to university.

Massive increases in university fees are forcing up the total debts faced by students and graduates by $2 billion a year, taking Australia further down the track of an American style university system. Senate estimates figures from the Department of Education, Science and Training show that university graduates and students will owe $18.8 billion by 2008-09. From 2004 to 2005, domestic student numbers rose by just 0.2 per cent while the accumulated HECS debts rose by nearly $2 billion. The average HECS fee paid by Australian students has doubled under the Howard government, discouraging prospective students from taking university places that they have worked so hard for.

The Howard government’s HECS hikes mean that medical students are now paying more than $30,000 over and above what they would have paid when Labor left office. Law students are paying more than $20,000 extra; engineering students, more than $16,000 extra. These are massive increases in fees. Students and their parents only have one place to lay the blame, and that is squarely on the shoulders of the Howard government.

We all know the PM is very keen on history. Every time one of his ministers is engulfed in scandal or dragged before a royal commission, he likes to trot out his ‘History wars in education’ diversion. And the dancing bears in the commentariat all prance around in full agreement with the PM and dutifully ignore the scandal of the day. Well, if the PM is so keen on history, here is some history he might like taught in our schools. On 14 October 1999 the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, was asked a question without notice by Mr Barry Wakelin MP, the member for Grey, in the other place. Senators will recognise that this was a dorothy dixer—a set piece by the Howard government, planned and rehearsed. The Prime Minister stood before the House and the Australian people and said:

We have no intention of deregulating university fees nor have we any intention of introducing HECS for TAFE courses. ... The government will not be introducing an American style higher education system.

Hansard tells us that the member for Fremantle interjected and that the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, went on to say:

There will be no $100,000 university fees under this government. That is a figment of the Labor Party’s propaganda machine, and everyone knows that is what it is.

That is history in Hansard in black and white. The Prime Minister, in answer to his own dorothy dixer, promised the Australian people that there would be no $100,000 university fees under his government and that any suggestion otherwise was a figment of Labor’s imagination.

In the years since Prime Minister Howard made that promise, the Howard government did deregulate university fees. There are now almost 100 full-fee degrees in Australia costing more than $100,000. 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 would rack up a debt of $214,600. These are the fees being imposed on students by the Howard government, and it is nothing more than a disgrace. I guess this is like the ‘never ever’ GST statement or perhaps like the ‘Work Choices legislation being good for Australia’ statement, or the government’s pledges on lower interest rates. I remember a certain Prime Minister announcing in the 2004 election that it would be an election about who the Australian public trusted the most. Mr Prime Minister, going from having no $100,000 university degrees, which was your promise, to 100 degrees now costing over the $100,000 mark answers that question.

Schedule 1 of the bill funds government commitments arising from the Council of Australian Governments’ health workforce and mental health packages, including new medical, general nursing, mental health nursing and clinical psychology places and increased funding for nurses’ clinical training. Labor welcomes the additional places to deal with health workforce shortages, but the government has neglected this area for far too long. The fact is that after we pass this bill we are still going to be waiting another five or six years before we have any extra doctors and three or four years before we have any extra nurses. We need the extra doctors and nurses now.

Not only do we have a shortage of doctors, the Howard government’s education ministers have not noticed that Australia’s dental services are going down the tube. Under the Howard government, the number of dentistry graduates in Australia per year is the lowest it has been for 50 years. Australia is ranked 19th out of 29 OECD countries for the number of dentists per 100,000 people. At The Nationals annual conference last weekend there was a motion calling for dentistry to be included in the Medicare scheme. It seems that The Nationals have only just discovered that dental services for Australians who cannot afford to see a private dentist have massive waiting lists. How ironic. The Nationals are, after all, members of the coalition Howard government that axed the Commonwealth Dental Scheme in its first year in power. The poor old National dodos do not seem to understand that the Howard government is too busy beating up on history teachers and state governments to worry about the dental problems of ordinary Australians.

While the government may have no future direction, Labor does. Labor firmly believes in the importance of our tertiary education sector. Labor believes in the nation-building and economic growth benefits of tertiary education. Under Labor’s policy, all Australian universities would be better off. Labor believes in an Australia that has a world-class education and training system that provides real choice and higher quality. In July this year the member for Jagajaga launched Labor’s higher education white paper entitled Australia’s universities: building our future in the world. That white paper sets out Labor’s new policy framework for higher education, research and innovation that is necessary to address Australia’s future needs.

Our policy would see a new national standards watchdog, the Australian Higher Education Quality Agency, established. The agency would ensure that Australian universities were producing quality graduates, underpinned by quality teaching and research. Labor would properly index university grants, ensuring that our institutions were adequately funded.

We would scrap full-fee degrees for Australian students at public universities, removing the two-tiered system that currently operates under this government where students with the ability miss out to those with the bank account. Under Labor, students will get access to higher education according to merit, not their financial means. That means there will not be any more $100,000 or $200,000 degrees at our universities. There is one government that believes in university degrees costing $100,000 or $200,000, and that is the Howard government. Labor will put an end to that. Labor will seek to actively address the current skills shortage by expanding associate degrees to give more Australians access to training in these technical areas.

The consequence of 10 long years of Howard government cuts to our universities is that the quality of Australian higher education is now under pressure, with risks to the reputation of Australian degrees. Funding cuts have pressured universities to increase student numbers, chase revenue wherever they can find it, raise student-to-staff ratios and class sizes, cut back tutorials and cut corners on student assessment. After 10 long years of neglect by the Howard government, Australia is crying out for more scientists, doctors, nurses, dentists, teachers and others. And instead of tackling the problem and doing something constructive to ease the shortage, the government has increased fees, has cut funding and blatantly refuses to adequately index university grants.

Labor supports this bill, as it provides the much-needed funding for extra medical and mental health workforce places, as well as much-needed capital injections for our medical schools. However, we are unwilling to let this government get away with its shocking neglect of our higher education system over the past 10 years. I commend Labor’s second reading amendment to the Senate.