Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the motion moved by Senator Carr:

That the Senate condemns the Abbott Government’s vicious cuts to higher education and the devastating impact they will have on regional students, families and universities.

The Australian Labor Party is the party for universal education. Like most Australians, we oppose the idea of having to pay $100,000 for a degree and we certainly oppose cutting funding for university courses. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to receive higher education and we look forward to the prospect of our children and our grandchildren having the opportunity to achieve a higher education. We believe the system should be fair. The system should pursue excellence and help secure the future of the nation by ensuring as many people as possible have that opportunity. That is why the Australian Labor Party condemn the Abbott government's vicious cuts and will be doing all we can to stop this attack, including opposing the legislation when it comes before this place.

Labor's record speaks for itself. Back in 1973, under Gough Whitlam, the Labor government was the first government to put university education within the reach of ordinary Australians, people without wealth, by making it free. When the Hawke government sought to move higher education to a mass system so that many more Australians could obtain a degree, we kept it affordable and introduced HECS and set that at $1,800 for a full degree. Next time we were in government, the Rudd-Gillard government, Labor's support for higher education saw an additional 190,000 students in our universities. We had targets to increase the number of Australians from a disadvantaged background accessing higher education. The coalition has abandoned these targets and now it will be more difficult for people to go to university, particularly people from a disadvantaged background and particularly people from a lower socioeconomic background. We should not be surprised about this ideological attack on higher education and direct attack on aspiring students. The coalition has always had a different agenda.

I was very interested to hear Senator Cameron refer very heavily to what occurred in the 1996 post-election mini-budget by the newly elected Howard government. Immediately they increased the cost of HECS by an average of 40 per cent and allowed wealthy full-fee-paying students unprecedented access to universities. It was described at the time as wealthy kids being able to jump the queue.

Senator Cameron was also correct to reflect on the writings of George Megalogenis in The Australian Moment. He made an observation of the magnitude of the Howard government cuts at the time. When seeking to make savings, within those budget cuts the highest single cohort was higher education. I remember it well. There was much distress because people, like now, had heard nothing foreshadowed in the election campaign of 1996, which lead to the election of the Howard government, of the magnitude of cuts and nothing of the depth of the cuts to our higher education system. And, on a related note, none of the cuts to research and development were forthcoming in that mini-budget, if you like, and the subsequent 1997 budget.

These things did combine to do a great deal of damage to Australia's capacity to innovate. We have smarts in our universities—that is, the human beings with great brains who go on to run businesses that contribute to the research effort. We did endure a brain drain during that period. There was a great deal of commentary and report after report talked about taking the high road rather than the low road, which was the road we were perceived to be on as a nation. A great number of reports reflected on the fact that we had to as a nation come back from this bleak place where the early Howard government had left us and reinvest in our clever people and our clever institutions and allow those institutions to work their magic, working closely with industry and so forth.

This is an area Labor is incredibly strong in. Each time we have been in government we have mapped out strong reform agendas and increased funding in a clever and efficient way. Most recently under the Rudd-Gillard government we were able to engineer, under the leadership of Senator Kim Carr, a funding regime for both our higher education system, investing in people, and our industry suite of policies, investing in our businesses' capacity to grow and improve exports. The two go together with our research and development investment and yet again under this coalition government we are seeing these things being specifically unpicked measure by measure in the most recent budget. Again, like in 1996-97, there is a budget that in no way reflected what the coalition government took to the election campaign preceding the budgets of their early period of government. It is a pattern of behaviour. Let's not be slow learners, Australia.

The Labor Party warned many people going into this election campaign that we could not trust the coalition. That is a truth that has come to pass, and I hope that, next time, as the cycle unfolds itself over the next couple decades or whatever, there are enough people who remember this pattern of behaviour and that they cannot be trusted—certainly not in the area of higher education, research and development, and industry program support.

The Howard government did a few more things. In 2005 they had their own effort to deregulate fees, allowing them to be charged at an additional 25 per cent, and then attempted to rebrand HECS as Commonwealth supported places in 2007, before the election, which meant that students could only undertake a maximum of seven years of full-time study under HECS. And now we see the Abbott government teaming up with the Group of Eight universities to push through what can only be described as an ideological, ill-thought-out and unfair attack on higher education. It is not a single-pronged attack—there are many spears to it—and it will see higher education become less accessible than it has been before.

I will go through the suite of measures that they are imposing. They are reducing funding to universities and driving that funding down in perpetuity. I will expand on these points shortly. They are deregulating university fees, which will drive up student costs, and at the same time they are increasing the interest on HECS and HELP debts and lowering that repayment threshold. It is the combination of these ideological measures that had University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen Parker describing these changes as 'the worst piece of policy' he has seen in Australia—policy that he went on to explain in an address to students in June of this year at the ANU as being 'unfair, unethical, reckless, poor economic policy, contrary to international evidence and woefully explained'. In the same address, which I will reflect on extensively today, Professor Parker cited Simon Marginson, one of Australia's leading higher education scholars, when noting:

… no government anywhere in the world has introduced a full-blown capitalist market in higher education, despite three decades of talk, because they realise the public good component of education would be destroyed.

It does not seem that there was too much thought of the impact put into this raft of changes by those opposite—indeed, by the Abbott government.

The changes, as I mentioned earlier, certainly came as a surprise to the Australian public, considering that in the lead-up to last September's election Mr Abbott promised that he would—and this is a very important point to make—'ensure the continuation of the current arrangements of university funding'. Forgive me, but to me that is unequivocal. When you say that in an election campaign, people take that as being the party's policy, and yet we now find ourselves debating these significant measures, these substantive cuts to higher education. In vast contrast to this unequivocal statement—now demonstrated to be completely untrue—there will be around a 30 per cent cut to funding for universities. This will have the effect of slashing the government's contribution from 60 per cent to 40 per cent of course funding. At no point could any reasonable person consider this the continuation of the current arrangements of university funding.

I reflect again on Professor Parker's comments. He said:

On average universities will need to increase student contributions by about 30% from where they are now just to compensate for the Commonwealth reductions to course costs: that is, just to stand still. So expect about a 30% increase anyway.

Some universities like Sydney and Melbourne, the point has been made elsewhere, estimate that some course fees will have to rise by up to 60 per cent just to cover the cuts.

This immediate cut is not the only cut our universities are facing under the Abbott government. Commonwealth funding will be cut in perpetuity by the change in indexation. Linking indexation to CPI rather than the higher education grant index means that funding is on a downward trajectory and fees will inevitably go up again over and above what I have already described for students. Not just on the back of these cuts but also as the government pushes universities into a competitive, non-collaborative, user-pays environment through fee deregulation—and, make no mistake, when you hear the words 'fee deregulation', under a coalition government this is not some kind of red tape reduction. This is not about some kind of reform. With all due respect to you, Mr Acting Deputy President Back, it is certainly not about creating some student utopia of engagement and being able to demand the course one wants to study.

Fee deregulation means that universities will be able to charge essentially what they like for a university degree. The only upper limit is the international student fee level. This is an irrational concept in itself, being exposed to currency and world market considerations. In addition, as Professor Stephen Parker again points out:

… where a university models that it would gain more in domestic fees than it loses in international fees it will just put its international fees up to give it more headroom to gouge Australian students.

It is interesting to note, as Professor Parker has pointed out:

Fee deregulation is poor economic policy, particularly from a conservative government’s perspective.

He cites research from Penn State University that has found a significant negative correlation between the changes in student loan debt and the formation of small businesses. Professor Parker also suggests:

… if anyone had taken time to evaluate fee deregulation they would see alarming evidence elsewhere. In the UK, which in some ways now has a scheme more favourable to the student than Australia will have, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has recently found that an average school teacher who has no breaks in their career will still not have repaid their debt by their early 50s.

That is right: schoolteachers and, for that matter, nurses, with student debt until their early 50s. Is this the kind of Australia we want? Professor Parker goes on to say, as my colleagues have noted:

In the US, student debt has tripled in the last 8 years and now exceeds credit card debt.

That is an amazing piece of statistical information and it should put this government, which claims that it is so afraid of debt, on notice. This is the Australia that these policies will create.

The government did not stop at fee increases that will see students graduating with inordinate debt for their qualification. To compound the impact on students, their loans will be subject to a lower repayment threshold. This will subject the loan to a real interest rate, which will compound even when the student is not in graduate employment, further decreasing their ability to pay off their loan. They will essentially have to pay more off. This increase will hit all students, even those students who took out their loans under the condition that there was no interest on them and they were only indexed to reflect their present value. This is a fundamental breach of faith.

But what is possibly the most troubling about these ideological changes is that, with students paying up to six per cent compound interest on their debts, we will see people—for example, women and those who take career breaks or go overseas—unfairly disadvantaged.

It seems that those opposite just do not understand that not all students have the support of parents who can pay off or reduce their debts while they are studying. Not every student finds themselves in the high-paying job that the statistics that are used like to indicate. And not every person who undertakes study ends up in the field in which they studied. That is a good thing, to have an education system that is open and accessible and in which highly educated people move around in different careers, exploring their own abilities and their own aspirations.

This lack of understanding could come as a result of the free or low-fee education that the majority of the decision makers in cabinet perhaps received. I generally think one should avoid speculating on one's own education experience. I do not have a great depth of material to draw on myself and, in so doing, I think it is difficult to draw analogies about our individual experiences with respect to the policies that we are contemplating and debating. In this regard, our responsibility is to keep an eye on the future of Australia, to understand the current market conditions and to act out our responsibilities for the future of Australia. In this way whilst, again, I respect the commitment and perhaps the fees paid by many a senator past, it is not a relevant point to make in the context of a system that will sustain a nation of highly educated young Australians into the future.

Professor Stephen Parker notes that these changes are on the wrong track. I move to my conclusion by quoting him once again. He said the reforms:

… are on the wrong track because higher education is an investment in the economy, not a cost to it.

And they are on the wrong track because research should not be funded by students. If you want to engage in an arms race with the US and China over top-ranked universities—which this Government seems to want—then simply merge the Group of Eight into a single powerhouse institution that would shoot into the top 20. You could call it “The Australian National University”, save on 7 Vice-Chancellor salaries, and leave the rest of us alone.

That is what he purported. I should say that, importantly, that was said in a highly sarcastic tone, none of which is ever reflected in Hansard, which we subsequently read. It was a sarcastic comment but, nonetheless, a cutting one. He makes the point, I think very succinctly, that these policies are not the way to achieve excellence in the Australian university system; it is a race to the bottom. What we need to do is take care of our current conditions and remember that education is an investment, not a cost to the nation. We must ensure that our universities have the best capacity, the best ability to engage in and collaborate with the wider community, and that they respond to industry needs and work with the research community. We must allow that group of incredibly clever people to collaborate so that the new ideas that they are coming up with will filter through the whole community. We will be able to start new businesses, innovate existing businesses and keep our whole society up to date and at pace with the massive challenges that we are facing as we go forward.

Professor Parker speaks with authority on this issue. As the vice-chancellor of a leading university, the University of Canberra, he clearly thought deeply about this statement, given its provocative nature. I was proud of the points he made on behalf of the University of Canberra and I am pleased to be here today supporting Senator Carr's motion. (Time expired)