Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I want to speak about what I believe is my home state of Queensland's most significant achievement over the last 25 years. I am not here to talk about rugby or cricket, and it is not about mining, or tourism or even XXXX beer. Of course, these are all things that Queenslanders are very proud of, Senator O'Sullivan! But they are not as significant as the achievement I want to talk about just briefly, and that is about the rise of education and, in particular, of higher education in Queensland.

Many times in this chamber I have said that Australia is a superpower, not in many things but in just a few things. Of course, we are a superpower in resources—clearly—and also in agriculture. But we are also a superpower in higher education. Behind the United States and the United Kingdom, Australia has the most universities in the world's top 100—we are third in the world. We have the highest number of foreign students per capita in the world and, of course, the sector is our fourth-largest export and our largest services export. People do not only come to Australia for our beaches but they come here to be educated. This is an extraordinary achievement for a country of only 24 million people, to have the third-strongest higher education sector in the world.

It is one of the benefits of our proximity to Asia; its expanding middle class is hungry for a high-quality foreign education. And they come to Australia, where they know that not only is the quality of higher education very high—and you would know that from your background, Acting Deputy President O'Neill—but also that our lifestyle is incomparable. I would like to say today, of course, that the success and the rise of higher education in Queensland is part of that broader success story.

But this was not always the case. When I was growing up in Canberra I went to the ANU down the road here in the early 1980s, and people would often laugh about Queensland and Queensland universities. When the Commonwealth was allocating additional places in the late 1980s, the Melbourne university vice-chancellor at the time, Professor Alan Gilbert, infamously said that Brisbane did not need these additional places because there was little culture of higher education in Queensland. Jokes were then made back in those days about Griffith being the 'University for the Third World' and that QUT was the 'Queensland University of TAFE'. But no-one says that any more.

I remember the former premier, the late Wayne Goss, saying that Queensland faced a decision. We could choose between what he described as two futures: we could be like Alabama or we could be like California, and how much we were willing to invest in education would largely determine the outcome. Queensland chose California. Thanks to creative and farsighted leadership from premiers such as Peter Beattie, in his decision to make Queensland the 'Smart State'—you will recall that, Acting Deputy President—and more recently Campbell Newman, for investing in lifelong learning; the contribution made by successive federal governments; and, I should also mention, leadership by inspired vice-chancellors in Queensland, the Queensland higher education sector has developed rapidly and has overcome this 1980s' perception of tropical torpor in the north.

Three of Queensland's universities are ranked in the world's top 400 by Times Higher Education, with the University of Queensland in the top 100 and currently, of course, ranked third in Australia. Many schools and faculties across our nine Queensland universities are ranked at the top of their disciplines in Australia. For example, numerous times UQ has had the top MBA program in the Asia-Pacific; Griffith University has an outstanding physics centre and dentistry school, and its law school is ranked in the top 50 in the world; and QUT, where I was delighted to teach all those years ago, was the only university in Australia to receive the highest possible rating for its information systems research.

And it is not just in Brisbane. James Cook University stands out for its marine science research; Bond University is at the cutting edge of forensic science and DNA profiling; the Australian Catholic University has a unique focus on ethics and a strong global network that fosters community engagement; Central Queensland University and the University of Southern Queensland are world renowned for their agricultural, environmental and veterinary research; and the University of the Sunshine Coast is a leader in sustainability research across tourism, environment and biology, and has its world-famous GeneCology Research Centre. And the cooperation our universities display when competing against other states for funding is also crucial to their success, and unique among the states. Higher education is truly Queensland's untold success story.

This success is paralleled by a dramatic change in the culture of primary and secondary schooling in Queensland. Just look at the retention figures of students at schools. My friend, Senator McLucas, sitting over there, would know all this! In 1954, when my mother was at school in Brisbane—I hope she is not listening to this!—Queensland had the lowest retention rate in the country; only 16 per cent of students completed year 12 in 1954. But by the 1980s Queensland had one of the highest retention rates. What happened was an enormous change in attitude during those years. People realised the importance of education, and this is reflected in the number of students continuing into tertiary study. Over 60 per cent of young Queenslanders now enter university, or apprenticeships or training programs. But, of course, there is more to be done

Last year, the OECD released its regional wellbeing report card, and Queensland schools have not quite kept up with the other states. It is ranked fifth in Australia and in the lower 37th percentile across all regions of the 34 countries in the OECD. This goes to show that we need to do a bit more if our students are to have the opportunities they deserve.

There has been a lot of debate I know in recent days about higher education in this chamber. I am not really here to add too much to that debate, except to say: to put it simply, I do believe that there has to be reform at some stage. What form that reform takes is a matter for this parliament, but currently access is limited only by what students universities feel competent to teach. But of course ultimately, to retain quality, that may have to be restricted, and somewhere we are going to have to make some important policy decisions, and I say that not in the spirit of partisanship but simply reflecting on the future of the sector.

I did not always agree that everything that Mark Latham said, but I did agree with his idea that education provides a ladder of opportunity for Australians who are prepared to work hard and to climb. I agree with him there. There is no doubt it made an enormous difference to my life, and to the lives of many of us sitting in this chamber. I will always be grateful to my parents for their support and grateful to the community who, through their taxes, funded my education.

Not only is education important for personal development and fulfilment but—as we all know in this chamber; we all know it today, and Australians know it—it is now directly linked to the economic success of our nation as a whole. Knowledge is becoming the world's most important import and export. That might sound like a funny thing to say, but knowledge is now the world's most important import and export, and it is education that provides the raw material for this trade. Educating foreign students, mostly from Asia, contributes about $15 billion to the economy each year. So, again, it is not only our beaches that are bringing visitors to Australia; it is very much our lecture halls.

While we are well positioned to take advantage of the Asian century, the waters of its rise will be quite difficult to navigate. A recent PWC study indicated that by 2050 Australia will likely be pushed down the global economic ladder, barely remaining in the top 30 economies. At the moment, I think we are the 12th largest economy on earth—12th or 13th.