Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Singh for her contribution because I think Senator Singh, particularly early on in her contribution, demonstrated where the Labor Party's thinking is on this when she harked back to the Whitlam era of university funding. I will touch on how far we have come from the Whitlam era and how far we need to go from the Whitlam era. Whilst it may have been well intentioned, the kind of policies pursued by the Whitlam government when it came to higher education were not good for universities or egalitarianism. In fact, they were good for a small number of rich and middle-class kids to get a free education on the back of other taxpayers. Those were the reforms of the Whitlam era to which Senator Singh approvingly harked back in her speech—we do not want to go back there—and governments of both persuasions have recognised that over many years, and that is how we got to the point where we are at the moment.

I want to go to the necessity for reform and the big picture as to why these types of reforms to our university sector are important. Virtually every vice-chancellor and every serious higher-education leader have gotten behind these reform because they understand where we sit and, as we look forward as a nation, how higher education will be funded and conducted in this country. We are at a very important moment. That is why this reform is very important.

Let us look at the problems that we have at the moment. There is a recognition on both sides of politics that we want to see more people accessing higher education in this country. The Labor Party recognised that when they were in government and it is central to the coalition's reforms and agenda. We want to see an extra 80,000 supported places in higher education. Both sides agree that we want to see more people accessing higher education. Believe it or not—although you would not know it from any of the contributions from the Labor Party—from the Labor Party's actions in government, we know that they acknowledge there is not an endless blank cheque from the taxpayer as more students come into the sector. If you acknowledge that you want to see more people accessing higher education in this country—and the Labor Party has said that they do and the coalition has policies aimed at seeing more people access higher education and more people getting supported places in higher education—then you must acknowledge that you cannot give a blank cheque and that the money is not endless. We know that because of the savings outlined by the previous Labor government.

Even the reckless Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments eventually recognised that, if we going to have more people in the sector, as we want to see, and if we are going to have more supported places, unless we reform the way we fund those places we will have a serious fiscal problem. The Labor Party recognised that in that past—but they do not recognise that now—and that was their $6.65 billion in savings out of the sector. We both agree about more places, we both agree about no blank cheque and we both agree that you have to make savings. That being the case, we have to reform the system. If we agree on all those things but do not do anything else, then we are absolutely ensuring a reduction in quality. There is no other way of splitting this up. More students, more supported places, supported on both sides of politics, not an endless amount of money from the government to continue to subsidise each of those places more and more and a recognition for the need for savings: if we do not reform higher education we will get a lack of quality. And that is what the vice-chancellors have very clearly said. This has been the case of a long time.

Under the current system, the way for a university to make ends meet, to make their institution viable in a financial sense, is, effectively, to have as many students coming through as possible and as many students as they can get away with. That is the way to bring more money in but it is not a recipe for higher quality; in fact, it is exactly the opposite. It is a recipe for lower quality because they just jam more students into lecture theatres. You have one lecturer and you have more students in the lecture theatre; you have one tutorial and you have more students in that tutorial.

In my own experience at university I had a HECS-funded place, not a free place, and I had the opportunity to pay for that privilege once I was earning. Like many Australians, I did not come from a privileged background. I worked hard at school and I had the opportunity to get a HECS-funded place at university. For me it was choose your course, do your best and try to find a job at the end of it, and once you are earning a certain amount you will pay back that debt. That was a great opportunity for me and for countless other Australians. Those opportunities will continue to exist under this system. But even in my own experience, I saw the limitations on this system in the way that it is at the moment. I can remember tutorials of 50 and 60 people at the Australian National University in the law faculty in succession law. Now, no matter how good you are, if you have 50 or 60 people in a tutorial, you are probably not learning that much. That is an example of the business model and why the business model is broken: you jam in as many people as you can, you get those HECS-funded places which are fixed, you bring in that revenue, you try to keep costs down by not having as many staff or by not having as much support. Is that the kind of future we want for our university sector because, as we bring in those extra places, those pressures will only grow? If we agree that we open up more and more higher education places—and I have not heard anyone say they do not want to see that because it is good and necessary for our future—do we want to see students getting a lower quality education? I certainly do not. I want to see the quality improve. And the only way to do that—short of a blank cheque from the government, which is not going to eventuate—is to look at how we can fund things better. The Labor Party acknowledged in government that eventually there is not enough money for a blank cheque. It has to be reasonable.

Individuals get a significant benefit from that university education and from the taxpayer. It is often put in this debate that there are societal benefits from higher education. There are private benefits as well, significant private benefits. What this seeks to do is better balance who contributes, so that society can continue to fund higher education more and more. We are saying that, in order to deal with those funding issues and in order to improve quality rather than see quality go backwards, in some cases there will be a greater contribution asked for from individuals. There is no doubt about it.

Andrew Leigh has said that in some cases fees will go down. We will see what competition does but there is no doubt that we are asking for a different type of contribution. This is what Andrew Leigh said about the results of deregulation—and I agree with Andrew Leigh on this point:

The result will be a better funded, more dynamic and competitive education sector.

That is right. The alternative is actually a not-as-well-funded, less dynamic, lower quality, less competitive education sector. I cannot believe that those who are arguing against these reforms are arguing for those things. They would never say that they are arguing for those things, but ask any vice-chancellor—except perhaps Professor Stephen Parker, my good friend from the University of Canberra, who I have a lot of time for but who I disagree with on this, and there may be some others but I have not heard from them—in this country what the result will be if we do not get these reforms through, and they will say: it will be less competitive and less dynamic and, over time, there will be a further reduction in quality. We will not get the type of extraordinary outcomes that we would expect from our higher education sector; we will not get the kinds of extraordinary things happening in our universities that we would like to see.

Our universities do some amazing things at the moment, but the model that we have for funding them is broken—unless someone wants to argue that we should now have fewer students accessing higher education. You could perhaps make an argument that, if you reduce the number, you might be able to stick with the current model, but that would still be flawed. But when you accept that we are increasing it—that we want to see more people accessing it, that there is no blank cheque from government—then these reforms become absolutely critical. The downside of not doing these reforms will be that my kids and your kids and the kids of millions of Australians as they access higher education in this country will get a substandard higher education, a lower quality education.

It was put again by Senator Singh and by those opposite that somehow these reforms will stop someone from a poor background from going to university. That is absolute rubbish. Even as they say it, they know it not to be true. We heard them harking back to the Whitlam era. The Whitlam reforms saw a small number of predominantly middle- and upper-class Australians accessing universities and not paying a cent for them. Those reforms were so successful that the Labor government under Hawke and Keating had to change the system. So we see this continuum in university funding and policy. We have come a long way.

While Senator Singh and parts of the Labor Party might want to hark back to the Whitlam era, we do not want to go back there; we cannot, we should not and we will not. In fact even the Labor Party does not argue that we do. Is that Labor's position; that it will now be free university education? I thought we had that debate almost 30 years ago. I thought it was settled that that system did not work and that it was not a fair system. It was the most unfair of systems. We heard from Cate Blanchett that she got a free university education. I do not know what her background is; I think she went to a fairly good private school. Was it fair that the local plumber or the local cleaner was paying for her free education at university? I do not think so. I do not think that was a good system. We have moved on a continuum since those failed policies and we have improved the system over time. But it needs significant further improvement if we are going to meet the challenges of the future.

We have seen it in postgraduate studies, where we have seen deregulation. We do not see the same type of regulation for postgraduate education as we do for undergraduate education. Yet we have seen good competition in the sector. Going back to this idea that people from a poorer background are going to be denied a university education; that is absolute rubbish. In the United Kingdom, we saw more people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds accessing university since deregulation, because it is not about how much income you have as you go in; it is about the amount of income you can earn as a result of that university education.

The relevant factor is the capacity to pay. It is not about whether your dad is a truck driver, a brickie, a university lecturer or anything else. It is about how you go at university, how hard you work, what you make of those opportunities. And as you take advantage of those wonderful opportunities that have been given to you through your own hard work and through the support of the taxpayer, as you go into the workforce and make a good living then you are asked—then and only then—to make a contribution to that education. We think that is fundamentally fair. In fact we think the alternative is fundamentally unfair—that we do not ask you to make a reasonable contribution to that privileged education, to that ability to earn on average a million dollars more than those who do not access higher education.

This reform opens up sub bachelor degrees. We have not seen that kind of reform before. We are going to see people in a whole range of different sectors having access to what many university students have accessed for the last 30-odd years. Surely that must be an improvement in improving access. That is a wonderful part of these reforms.

I actually think that these university reforms will be a significant improvement and will present a wonderful opportunity for the ACT. We have some extraordinary education institutions here in Canberra. We have the Australian National University. Notwithstanding Stephen Parker's opposition, we have the University of Canberra, which I believe to be an excellent tertiary institution. In fact I pay tribute to Stephen Parker for the fact that he recognised some years ago that he needed to make hard reforms within his university. He inherited a bad state of books and poor management. He turned that around, and I always backed him making those hard decisions. Some of those decisions were unpopular but the likes of Stephen Parker would acknowledge that you have to balance the books—as does the coalition government. He acknowledged that within his own university and he did turn things around.

I think this will present some extraordinary opportunities. I think the ANU will grow and prosper under this as will regional universities. But we will see the Australian National University growing, employing more people, providing more opportunities, doing even greater levels of research and making a greater contribution to our national life and to international advancement. We have got the Australian Catholic University here and the University of New South Wales through ADFA has its campus here. We will see other private providers coming up and increasing their presence. Canberra is well placed. This will be a significant thing for the ACT.

As a parochial Canberran, this really provides some great opportunities because it plays to our strengths as an educated city, as a city with some great tertiary institutions already but institutions that if we do not reform could go backwards in the next decade, and I do not want to see that. I want to see them continue to go from strength to strength. The only way we can do that is if we reform the system.

We all agree we want more people accessing tertiary education—that is a great thing. We are all working on that. We all agree there is no blank cheque here. If you agree on those things, you have to reform the system. You have to make it fairer. You have to make sure that the relevant contributions are fairer and that will see a more dynamic system—as Andrew Leigh says, as the vice-chancellors say and as so many others say. So for all of those reasons, I commend this bill to the Senate.