Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will attempt to continue. I understand how painful it may be for people now on the opposition benches to have to trawl through the past and the way in which higher education was gutted, defunded and disregarded under their policies, but now that they are in opposition they are just going to have to sit there and listen to us. Even though it might contain a little bit of history, that is just the way it is while we continue to push forward with our agenda. Sometimes we have to review the way in which policies were treated in the past in order to move forward.

Under the strong arm of the Howard government’s requirements under the Commonwealth Grant Scheme, failure to comply by the end of each August would see higher education provider funding reduced by, in some cases, nearly 7.5 per cent. The repeal of section 33.17 removes conditions that were compliant under the CGS funding. It in no way reduces the higher education provider funding. They will retain their full funding but regain their former freedom in how they operate in the areas of workplace relations and governance.

The higher education workplace relations requirements were imposed on providers purely to support the previous government’s ideological workplace relations policies. At a time when they were espousing flexibility in the workplace, at a time when they were trying to abolish pattern bargaining and at a time when they were trying to impose Australian workplace agreements on workers and businesses in this country, they also decided that they would restrict what was happening in the higher education sector.

It is a peculiar sort of ideology here, where under the former government you had the hypocrisy of wanting to ensure higher education workplaces and universities conformed and were restricted in the way in which they could operate, but, out there in the big wide world of industrial relations, flexibility and individuality was being promoted. Quite clearly, Australian voters found this approach to be grossly unfair and unbalanced when they so soundly rejected that party in the November election last year. This government, however, is replacing past policies with a much fairer set of rules and a balanced system and is doing so at the earliest opportunity and removing the previous, unfair Work Choices laws.

The HEWRRs included the requirement that providers offer AWAs to all staff—they had to offer AWAs to all staff; there was no choice at all. If they did not, their funding was restricted. The HEWRRs were implemented along with a whole other set of criteria that universities were forced to offer in their bargaining rounds. Universities had to deal with staff with no automatic third-party representation. As with all the former government’s workplace relations legislation, this simply made it harder for employees to negotiate and bargain their terms and conditions with their employers. It meant extra work for university management too, but the negotiating balance weighed against the workers.

There is another, underlying story to this. This was not just about universities being compelled to comply with the previous government’s ideology on workplace relations policies, and it was not only about trying to offer AWAs across the board. We know, as Senator Collins has said, AWAs had been a resounding failure, since at that stage only one per cent of the employing population had taken up offering AWAs. So this was an attempt by the former government to push their workplace relations policy by force onto the university sector, hoping that AWAs would be taken up by universities and by staff.

The underlying message is that that was an attack on the National Tertiary Education Union, who has repeatedly represented workers very successfully in this industry. It was the third union that had been in the gun sights of the previous government. They started with the MUA with the waterfront dispute, they moved on to the CFMEU with the building industry royal commission and then they decided to move on to the National Tertiary Education Union through the higher education sector. All three attempts of course have failed. Those unions are now stronger, better and richer for that attack by the previous government. There is no doubt that all three unions have continued to survive and will continue to survive, and the National Tertiary Education Union has in fact gone from strength to strength. So the former government’s subliminal attempts to deregulate the workplace and to cut out the trade union movement so successfully representing workers in this area failed.

The removal of the HEWWRs means that there will now no longer be any requirement that higher education providers offer AWAs as a condition of receiving their full funding. Of course, they will not be able to offer AWAs because thanks to our government they no longer exist under law in this country. The previous government thought that this intervention in our higher education institutions would improve their flexibility, productivity and performance—that is the excuse that they gave, not based on any evidence of fact. We know that most universities found it to be a gross interference in the way in which they operated, both as academics and as researchers. Organisations of excellence in this country when it comes to educational and intellectual outcomes, they saw it as yet another attempt by the previous government to have control without responsibility and to try to get more from universities already severely stressed by the ongoing real funding cuts by the Howard government. Let’s remember that in 1996, the very first year of the Howard government, $800 million was gutted from this sector. It has never recovered from those massive funding cuts.

The national governance protocols were a set of standards mainly covering the size, composition and duties of the universities’ governing bodies. It was a one-size-fits-all model. The protocols made it more difficult for certain groups of people to get representation on a university governing body, through size limits and through requiring certain other groups to have representation. So politicians, students and of course trade unions found it harder, if not impossible, to get representation on governing bodies. Even though quite a number of universities still wanted them to be there, they were forced to not be there through the legislation the previous government introduced.

Removal of the national governance protocol requirements in no way indicates that we do not support good, sound governance. But I actually believe universities do operate on a model of sound governance, had done prior to the previous federal government coming into existence and will continue to do so. We will most assuredly continue to encourage the adoption of good governance policies. I am sure our higher education institutes will welcome this change in the way in which they can operate.

The removal of these two elements from the field of higher education funding reflects our public election commitments in this area. Our commitment to remove AWAs from the workplace will be and has been welcomed across the board, not only by higher education providers. In 2005 the AVCC, now known as Universities Australia, opposed HEWRRs, claiming they would be inflexible and intrusive and would increase administrative workloads. This was evident in their submission to the Senate inquiry into the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Workplace Relations Requirements) Bill 2005. Going back three years, even those who were in charge of universities—vice-chancellors around this country, through the Vice-Chancellors’ Committee—were not impressed and were not supportive of the moves of the previous government.

In the white paper of 2006 on higher education and research—you might remember the infamous Australia’s universities: building our future in the worldLabor promised to end government interference in the internal management of universities and reduce compliance and reporting burdens. So this has been on our statute for quite a number of years. The removal of the governance protocols was one such step towards implementing what was our policy from those years.

This bill reflects our belief that our providers of higher education know best how to operate their institutions and do not need and certainly do not appreciate heavy-handed interference from government in running them. Vice-chancellors are well-educated, very intellectually informed and are good and competent managers. The protocols’ removal will allow our universities to give their time and effort to where it is needed most, and that is in the delivery of good quality teaching and even better research. It is expected that removal of those requirements will also open the way for a more trusting, healthy and cooperative approach between government and higher education.

Let’s be honest; in the years under the Howard government that relationship had certainly not prospered, developed and come to fruition in the way that it would have if there had been a more genuine dialogue between the universities and the federal government. Clearly, we now see the demarcation of the extreme difference between this government’s policies and those of the last, which was increasingly prescriptive, with funding conditions being held over the providers like a big stick.

Our policies remove from our higher education providers the unwarranted and unfair Work Choices requirements and the bullying government interference. The policies remove the previous government’s ideologically driven workplace agenda, and adherence to an interfering, one-size-fits-all governance model.

As I said earlier, the Howard government had seemingly believed that their bullying intervention would squeeze more productivity out of our universities, which were already severely strained by funding cuts over many years. They believed that AWAs would enable university administrators to reduce the terms and conditions of staff. Let’s face it; that is what it was all about. It was not about better quality education or improving research outcomes; it was about reducing the terms and conditions of staff to employ more short-term or casual staff and to try and get more output for less input.

The previous government believed that universities were very inefficient administrators and wasted resources through poor management and governance. Unfortunately, while it was bullying our universities the previous government also presided over a huge decline in public funding for our universities. This is sufficiently well known. From 1996 to 2004, while most other OECD countries increased spending on tertiary education by up to 49 per cent, our government managed to buck the trend in an almighty way. It cut tertiary expenditure by four per cent, forcing universities to rely more and more on student fees for their income. We certainly saw the reduction in public funding in the university sector compensated for by an increase in student fees and a heavy reliance on third-party contributions from business and industry.

The minister pointed out in a speech to the Australian Financial Review Higher Education Conference in March of this year that world governments had been putting an increasing focus on all areas of education, particularly higher education—except here, in this country. Minister Gillard described higher education in Australia as having been ‘subjected to a seemingly random blend of neglect with occasional bursts of ideologically driven interference’, where overall public funding was cut. From my point of view that is a very able synopsis of the scenario over the last 10 years in the higher education industry in this country.

Our universities have had to struggle for the last decade to increase class sizes, cut tutorials and seminars, and cut out some courses altogether. Infrastructure maintenance has been neglected, leaving a huge backlog in this area. Financing has become chaotic and unsustainable, based on an ever-increasing fee burden and reliance on revenue from overseas students—a dangerous situation indeed as more countries invest in higher education and compete for these students.

Can I just say that my study tour to China some two years ago, where I investigated and researched the impact of the funding decline in higher education on Chinese students coming to this country, highlighted to me that the decisions that we have made in this country, to defund and neglect higher education, ripple around the world. I think it was a point that was lost on the previous, Howard government. Certainly Chinese public servants and credible representatives from their Ministry of Education were saying to me, ‘While ever you neglect higher education in your country it has an amazing impact on where our students choose to study.’ The students do not come to Australia because it is cheap. They want to come to Australia because the quality is good, and they will not come to Australia if they believe that they can get a better deal in other countries around the world. But the previous government failed to realise and appreciate that, of course.

The legacy of this is of course that our higher education system lags behind other OECD countries, and we are now faced with a massive skills shortage. We are falling behind our competitors in graduating numbers in science and agriculture, and even further behind them in engineering and manufacturing. Minister Gillard acknowledged—in her speech on 13 March to the AFR Higher Education Conference mentioned earlier—that, despite the Howard government, our universities have struggled through remarkably well, which is testament to the quality and commitment of our university leaders and the academic community as a whole.

Many of the problems, though, will ultimately require long-term solutions, and this bill before us today is not part of that long-term objective; rather, it is a quick solution to cutting the red tape and administrative work heaped on universities by the previous government. It will release staff for more time in teaching or research—the productive work—rather than in satisfying overly zealous government demands for more and more paperwork and proof of compliance with ever-increasing regulation. The Rudd Labor government will trust universities to manage their own industrial relations affairs within these laws. No longer will they have the threat of losing funds held over them—to the contrary, they will have funding certainty.

The other aspect I want to talk about very quickly is amending the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to make it easier for the approval of a provider to be revoked if or when they fail to meet the required criteria. While our universities are proven quality-program deliverers, this gives more assurance to the students that standards will be maintained by the multitude of other higher education providers which exist nationwide. The quality-auditing arrangements too are amended. The only audit body at present in this country is the Australian Universities Quality Agency. Amendments in this bill change that to allow the Commonwealth to designate additional audit bodies to carry out that role.

In conclusion, I say that the Northern Territory higher education institutions along with all the other higher education institutions in this country will have a major role to play in the long-term success of our education revolution package as we roll this out. In the meantime this bill, as I said, is a good start to representing an immediate improvement in the ability of our higher education providers to really run their affairs and concentrate on quality education. This bill represents a sound starting point for the Labor government to meet our higher education revolution commitments in this country and must be supported.