Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate tonight on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011. For too long Australia has lagged behind the rest of the OECD when it comes to the proportion of our population who have a tertiary qualification. We invest so much in trying to inspire our children on a lifelong journey of learning and yet, for some, there are still limited educational opportunities beyond formal schooling. Despite huge growth in the numbers of women attending university, the fact remains that there are still groups of Australians who are underrepresented in tertiary education, including Indigenous Australians, those from low socioeconomic backgrounds and those from rural and regional areas.

In my home state we have a fantastic university, the University of Tasmania. We also have one of the lowest participation rates in higher education in Australia. Whilst I do not believe that this restructure will be the panacea to that participation problem, I hope that our progressive reforms to the tertiary system will make higher education more accessible. There is overwhelming support and evidence to suggest that the legislation that is before us today is the best way forward for higher education across Australia.

This legislation is about revolutionising the way in which the tertiary sector in Australia is funded. Moving toward a demand driven model rather than forcing each institution to come back year in, year out and negotiate capped places will only work to promote and enhance the accessibility of higher education to Australians regardless of their background. Moving toward a demand driven funding model is also the most appropriate way to ensure that we are equipped for the future challenges in a rapidly changing global economy.

This bill ensures that as a government we meet our commitment to introducing an uncapped student demand system for universities for 2012. Through these funding reforms we will provide our institutions with a flexibility within the sector to meet our national target of having at least 40 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds with a bachelor level degree or above by 2025. As we work towards achieving our participation target, we will boost our rankings within the OECD and serve to bolster our credibility as a thinking and innovative nation in our region and beyond.

This bill is also significant insofar as it adds the finishing touches to the Labor government's reform agenda for the higher education sector. We have progressively delivered on the commitment that we made in 2009 so that from 2012 our universities will benefit from the deregulation of the allocation of university places through the introduction of a demand driven system for domestic students, except for medicine, and the abolition of student learning entitlement, the SLE, for all courses and the introduction of mission-based compacts and the strengthening of academic freedom.

Fundamentally, this legislation ensures that Australian students can access tertiary education based on their ability, on academic merit and on a willingness to participate rather than just their capacity to pay for it. As well as transforming funding for the tertiary sector, this legislation also abolishes the student learning entitlement. The student learning entitlement is a hangover of the Howard years which limited a student's access to a Commonwealth loan, HECS-HELP, after seven years of study. The introduction of the student learning entitlement created equity issues and posed a threat to lifelong learning. It was proven to have discriminated against low SES and mature-age students and those who chose to change their study pathway. Moreover, the SLE created an administrative burden on universities and, whilst the student learning entitlement was allegedly introduced to promote retention, it did not translate in any way to provide funding for support for students at each institution.

It follows that the abolition of the student learning entitlement will remove a regulatory burden that has been placed on universities since 2003 and ensure that there is no time or dollar limit on a student's learning achieve­ment. It will also remove a significant barrier that medical students have faced since 2003 and has been welcomed by the AMA. No longer will medical students, particularly those who have articulated into medicine from science streams, be disadvantaged when they choose to study medicine because of a fear of exhausting their entitlement.

Those opposite have criticised the government's move to abolish the student learning entitlement but I challenge them to find anyone else who is advocating for it to remain.