Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Hansard source

This bill is important because it seeks to ensure the quality of all Australian higher education providers as the sector embraces a period of very rapid expansion. To that end, this bill will establish the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, or TEQSA for short. In essence, this bill aims to maintain the quality of our higher education sector, Australia's most valuable non-mineral export. Never forget, more overseas students study in Australian universities and other higher education institutions than in any other country on earth as a percentage of our population. It is one of our great national achievements. Meeting the aim of this bill then is critical to our national interest.

For such an important bill, when the initial draft was circulated last year it was substandard. I received many people in my office complaining about the bill. The powers were excessive, draconian and perhaps were not proportionate to the risks involved for different providers and in different contexts. But to the government's significant credit—and here I offer particular congratulations to Minister Evans—it undertook extensive and genuine consul­tation with the higher education sector. The bill was reworked and the legislation was greatly improved and most of its provisions and deficiencies removed. In Professor Greg Craven's words, 'It moved from boilerplate legislation to legislation more fit for purpose'—specific to the higher education sector, rather than off-the-shelf regulation. To give credit where credit is due, the government's approach to this really was model consultation and the government is to be congratulated for its efforts.

The Senate committee inquiry that followed was extremely useful and I thank the chair, Senator Marshall, and also the deputy chair, Senator Back, who were also at public hearings in April in Melbourne. Prior to the inquiry, the coalition held a number of concerns about aspects of the bill, and those were reflected in the eight key recom­mendations in the Senate committee's report. The threshold issue for gaining the coalition support was the recognition of universities' right of self accreditation—that is, the right of universities to accredit the courses they teach without having to seek the approval of government. We also had concerns about the length of time TEQSA had to make decisions. It often takes non-self-accrediting higher education providers 12 months to prepare a course for submission to the regulatory authority, and a further 24-month period would have meant any potential course could have been out of date by the time it was approved. Happily these issues have been resolved in the amendments circulated by the minister. We are heartened that he was able to join the Senate committee in supporting his worthwhile goals, and again to the government's credit they have accepted all of the Senate committee's recommendations and the coalition is now happy to support this bill. However, as this is the first major bill giving effect to a significant element of the new Bradley inspired architecture for our universities, let me take this opportunity to sound some notes of caution relating not so much to the ultimate aims of the Bradley reforms but to their implementation by this government. Implementation has always been the Achilles heel of both the Rudd government and the Gillard government. In the area of education one can name one program after another—Building the Education Revolution, Com­puters in Schools, Fibre Connections to Schools, trade training centres, Indigenous children family centres, Indigenous residen­tial colleges—which read like an encyclopaedia of government failure. This is despite the best and often the most noble of intentions. The most prominent of them, such as the BER, have now become public synonyms for waste, lack of planning, mismanagement and botched imple­mentation.

Part of the problem, in my view, is this government's obsession with metrics. The government will say: 'We need to achieve a one-to-one student computer ratio by the end of 2011.' 'The BER stimulus will be targeted, timely and temporary.' 'The internet connection for laptops will be up to 100 megabits per second.' Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The obsession with metrics comes at the expense of basic work that would make a government program successful. There does not seem to be much planning done after the initial brainwave from the minister's office or the Prime Minister's office. There are no cost-benefit analyses done and no mechanisms are put in place to properly supervise the implementation and oversee the expenditure of taxpayers' money by other parties—and often by state governments. We get the worst of all worlds and, in the end, the metrics are not achieved. Everyone knows that the BER largely did not provide value for money and its implementation is well behind schedule, as is that of Computers in Schools—and God only knows how many years it will take to connect computers to fibre internet.

In addition to the metrics not being achieved, the projects are plagued by a lack of foresight and detailed planning, mismanagement and wasted precious resources. In fact, the two problems are related. It is hard to achieve the metrics when you have not actually thought of what you are trying to do and how you are going to do it. Government senators think I am simply having a free kick at the government, but let me go on.