Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill, a bill which promises to make higher education in this country the preserve of those with significant financial resources. I thought the contribution from my colleague on the other side of the chamber only reinforced that. He thinks that the only way we can have world-class universities in this country is to increase the fees. So, if you pay $100,000, that is the new guarantee that you are going to have a higher standard. It just goes to show how he might have gone along to celebrate 150 years at a university but he did not speak to any of the students. He did not speak to those mature-age students who want to go back and further their education. He certainly has not spoken to anyone with any disability who wants to attend university.

In simple terms, this is another heartless government attack to reduce the contribution to course fees by 20 per cent to allow universities to decide how much to charge students. The government has denied this charge for some time, but it seems like they are finally owning up to it. During his address to the G20 leaders' retreat, the Prime Minister said:

Two issues in particular that I lay before my colleague leaders: we have tried to deregulate higher education, universities, and that’s going to mean less central government spending and effectively more fees that students will have to pay. We think that this will free up our universities to be more competitive amongst themselves and more competitive internationally but students never like to pay more.

That is what our Prime Minister said.

Just what does this mean? I think the member for Ballarat had it just right in the other place when she said:

Among those young Australians who will be hit the hardest are those attending our regional universities. Over the last 40 years, the reforms of successive Labor governments have opened up our universities, providing those who previously could only dream of going into higher education with the opportunity to do so. Labor successfully ended the cycle of young academic talent being overlooked due to the size of their parents' bank balance. This bill aims to absolutely smash that legacy. Just as the Abbott government did with health and with pensions and with superannuation, they are pursuing a cruel and flawed—

position which is part of their DNA. They are 'directly attacking Australia's sense of social equity, the very framework that has made our country the envy of the developed world'.

What these changes to higher education mean is that for the first time in Australia we will have $100,000 degrees. We will have the cost of degrees in engineering increasing by 58 per cent. We will have graduates in nursing never clearing their debts. Just imagine entering into a degree, embarking on your choice of career, looking to perhaps start a family and realising that you may never clear your debts. Just consider the mental strain this will put on people seeking to further themselves through higher education. It will hang around their necks for decades. It will weigh on them. It will completely change the way we look at obtaining a degree. A degree will appear more like a sentence than a chance of a better life.

The impact that these changes will have are not always immediately apparent. That is what is arguably the most terrifying aspect of all this—the hidden knock-on effects that will affect so many different parts of Australian society. Recently I have been analysing how we can improve palliative care services in Australia. It is my firm view that we as a nation should aim to be the world leaders. But these changes to higher education may actually halt this objective in its tracks. Given that some 80 per cent of palliative care medicines are prescribed by GPs, it is important to consider that GP numbers, distribution, skills and availability have a considerable impact on palliative care outcomes. Alarmingly, the government's budget proposal to deregulate university fees and to change HELP indexation will discourage Australian students from studying medicine.

This will have a particularly profound impact on candidates from rural, regional and outer metropolitan areas, where palliative care demand is high and GP resources are often under considerable strain. Evidence from the United States and Canada indicates that medical students who incur high levels of education debt are less likely to aim for general practice. Therefore, the future viability of palliative care in Australian could be compromised by changes to higher education that deregulate fees. This is just one example, of course. It is one of many. The ripple effects will not always be immediately apparent, but this legislation would make our society more unequal and would have a particularly severe impact on those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

In my hometown of Launceston, in Tasmania, this debate has been brought sharply into focus. The University of Tasmania's Newnham campus is an outstanding institution in every respect. It undertakes research in groundbreaking, innovative fields such as biomedical science. It is the city's largest employer and a key economic driver for the region. Sadly, its security, its capacity to educate students from a range of backgrounds—its very existence, in fact—is under threat. UTAS Vice-Chancellor Peter Rathjen has warned that the Abbott government's $30 million cut to its funding may force the university to raise student fees, slash courses and abandon research. This is in stark contrast to the contribution made by Senator Edwards, so obviously he has not been to very many university campuses in the regions.

Professor Rathjen also said:

The ability to recoup those reductions in revenue through fee premiums may be limited by the economic circumstances of the island.

He said the university would be forced to re-evaluate its mission and decide which of its goals would be—and these are his words—'diminished or abandoned'. He has noted:

Those subjects that we do not teach, the research that we do not conduct, or the social programs that we do not support are unlikely to be replaced easily by other providers.

At this year's state Labor conference a motion was successfully carried which vehemently opposed the Abbott government's planned changes to the higher education sector. The motion was a simple one but its message was incredibly powerful:

Conference reaffirms its stance that education is a right not a privilege and that your economic circumstances or background should not be a barrier to equal opportunity.

That for me sums it up. It is about equal opportunity. Whether or not you can aspire to go on to university should not depend on your parents' bank balance or credit card.

Sadly, the Abbott government doesn't seem to get it. In July this year the Minister representing the Minister for Education, Senator Payne, stumbled badly in her response to several questions from shadow higher education minister Kim Carr during Senate question time. When asked about reports featured in northern Tasmanian media raising the possibility of campus closures in the state's north as a result of the Abbott government's $30 million cut to UTAS, Senator Payne completely stalled. She appeared to think that creative thinking could overcome a lack of proper funding for higher education. She said:

What is actually the problem here is not the government's proposals but those opposite's complete incapacity to think outside the square for even a moment in terms of the operation of Australia's higher education sector …

That is right: we had a lecture from Senator Payne on how we should 'think outside the square'. You couldn't think this stuff up if you tried. Members and senators in the coalition are so glaringly out of touch, so closeted in their thinking, that they think saying stuff like that is actually normal. It represents a reasonable line of thinking for them.

Senator Carr also asked Senator Payne to cite a single example—just one—of where university deregulation in another country has resulted in lower fees and lower student debts. Tellingly, she could not provide a single one. Yet Mr Pyne has been quoted as saying:

… we are trying to help rural and regional Australians by allowing their universities to compete on price …

So he clearly doesn't understand this issue from a global perspective. The Abbott government have not done their homework on what these changes could mean for higher education. Senator Carr and I share the same concerns when it comes to UTAS. The Abbott government have been given several opportunities to guarantee the future of higher education in the state and failed spectacularly each time. It certainly is dawning on many people that the Abbott government are closing opportunities to prospective students and sentencing others to a lifetime of crippling debt.

Over the course of the last year I have asked again and again for the federal Liberal member for Bass, Mr Nikolic, to provide leadership on the future of the UTAS campus. But just like other coalition backbench MPs across the country, glancing nervously back at their electorates but sitting idly on their hands, he has not stood up for his constituents. He has not stood up for those from disadvantaged backgrounds who want to be able to go on to university. He has not stood up for those mature age students who want to go back and continue their education. He has not stood up for people with disabilities, who already have to overcome enormous obstacles to enter higher education.

The only time he has made some noise is when an opportunity has presented itself to promote himself. Several months ago now he was caught red-handed taking credit for 180 new student apartments built at the Newnham campus under Labor's National Rental Affordability Scheme. This, I remind you, is a scheme that was unceremoniously scrapped in the 2014 federal budget. Yet there he was, cutting the ribbon. It was just incredible—taking all the glory but not standing up for his constituents, not standing up for northern Tasmania. It is just one example of how this government has abandoned UTAS.

During last year's federal election campaign, Labor pledged an additional $28 million over four years to build on the Northern Health Initiative. This would have allowed the university the freedom to target new university students and expand its horizons. It would have seen close to 700 more health students trained every year, while also creating 345 new jobs during construction, more than 70 new ongoing positions and a decade-long $1.2 billion economic return for the state. Instead of delivering on projects such as this, we have a government in power completely unconcerned about the Newnham campus. Mr Nikolic and his coalition colleagues are not concerned about saving industries, investing in new projects, protecting jobs or seizing new opportunities. They are stuck in opposition mode and out of their depth.

The Abbott government's first budget has been the most divisive budget in contemporary Australian political history. That much is clear. But I think it is this bill—the planned changes to higher education—that most starkly frames the difference between Labor and the coalition. It is this issue which highlights how divergent the world view of conservative politicians is from that of ordinary people across Australia seeking better outcomes for themselves.

What we have here is a clear choice. On the one hand we can have a higher education system that is accessible to all, that guarantees that talent, intelligence and hard work are the prerequisites for obtaining a tertiary degree—not one's bank balance. We can have a system that does not saddle students with unbearable levels of debt. On the other hand, there are the coalition's planned changes that will create an elitist higher education system, a system where people retire still crippled with student debts, a system that actually discourages people from seeking a degree.

When Senator Edwards made his contribution, he spoke about this bill enabling people from families that have never before had anyone go on to higher education to do so. Nothing could be further from the truth. In my home state of Tasmania, relatively few students take up the option of going on to tertiary education. This bill will not enable people from families who have never had anyone go to university to do so. I was out at the University of Tasmania very recently talking to staff and students—and many of the students I spoke to were the first from their family to go on to tertiary education. That will now be out of reach for far too many people in my home state. This cruel, heartless government is turning back the clock. We should be ensuring that everyone who has the intelligence and capacity to go on to university has the opportunity to do so. Whether they are disabled, mature age or straight out of year 12, we should be doing everything we can to ensure they have that opportunity.

The economic benefits from tertiary education are boundless. My home state, under a state Liberal government, is trying to encourage businesses to come and invest in the state—which I support. But the first place to invest is in the education sector so that all Tasmanians, from the time they start preschool all the way through, can know that, like everyone else in this country, they will have the opportunity to go on to university if that is what they choose to do. But this government is going to take away that opportunity.

This government wants to Americanise our universities—and we know what happens in America. With most things in America, whether it is in education or health or being appointed to be a judge on the bench, it is about how much money you have—how big a donation you are prepared to make to the university to get your child into that university. We on this side of the chamber say that we want our sons and daughters—and our grandchildren—to have the opportunity to go on to university.

We should not be denying them this opportunity. But, as with everything this budget is about and everything this government is about, it is about turning the clock back so that those people who support those on the other side of this chamber—those people from the big end of town—get all the opportunities. I hope that those on the crossbench will realise what this government is really about, and that is keeping people from low-socioeconomic circumstances back where they belong. That is not up front, that is not leading in science, that is not leading in health and that is not leading in research. I say that that is wrong—that is so wrong, and it is so un-Australian.

I am calling again on the member for Bass to stand up for northern Tasmania. He says, in every opportunity with the media and when he confronts the community, that Labor is out scaring students. Well, I am sorry: it is not us who is doing that. It is this government that is scaring people. What happens when a family has to consider if they should send their son or send their daughter to university? We know what happened in generations past: even if they could afford to go it was their sons who went to university. What I am saying is that whether you are the son or the daughter, you should have the same opportunities.

I call on the 'three amigos'—they so proudly call themselves the 'three amigos' from Braddon, Lyons and Bass—and say that it is about time they rode into town and stood up for the people who they were elected to represent! Their actions—which is no action—is resonating in the community. And those people on the other side do not want to talk about Victoria today! I bet we do not have any questions about Victoria today, because in Victoria the people spoke very loudly and very clearly. They have said, 'No!' to these changes to higher education. They have said, 'No!' to the cuts to health. They have said, 'No!' to the GP tax and they have said, 'No more changes to the pension.'

So if those opposite were a wise government that was prepared to govern for all, they would listen and would scrap this bill immediately. I oppose this bill because the people of Australia oppose it.