Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to add a few words on this Higher Education Support Amendment (New Zealand Citizens) Bill, a measure that I am sponsoring in this chamber. This bill is important both for the injustice that it remedies and for the political context that makes it necessary. This bill allows New Zealand citizens who have been long-term residents of Australia to receive financial assistance under the Higher Education Loan Program. This is a reform that both sides of this chamber agree is necessary and overdue. The bill ought to be non-controversial. It ought to have been, however, unnecessary to introduce this bill as a private senator's measure.

Labor foreshadowed such a bill when we were in government. We supported this measure all throughout the last two years when it was put together, bundled with the government's ill-conceived, unfair and unnecessary measures with regard to the university system's deregulation. The problem is that the government has bundled a non-controversial measure together with highly controversial questions. At the same time it has sought to reduce the level of funding to universities by 20 per cent by cutting money to the universities teaching program by 20 per cent. The government has chosen to make the passage of a sensible and comparatively minor reform dependent upon the passage of a highly complex, highly unfair and totally unnecessary set of measures.

Under no circumstances will Labor be supporting legislation that creates such injustices. Yet the Minister for Education and Training continues to spurn our efforts, our offer of bipartisanship, to extend access to HELP to include long-term New Zealand citizens resident in Australia. He could have done that by simply introducing, as a government measure, a separate bill on this question. It would have been dealt with as part of the non-controversial legislation and passed this chamber, in my judgement, in quick order. But he insisted on linking an uncontentious measure to a highly contentious set of changes which has twice been rejected by this chamber and overwhelmingly rejected by the Australian people because they understand just how unfair and how unnecessary the $100,000 degree program is that this government is seeking to impose.

What this minister is doing is seeking to make New Zealand students in Australia hostages to his desire to siphon off public funding for Australia's world-leading university system. What he is seeking to do is to hold hostage the legitimate claims of students from New Zealand by undermining the rest of the university system. We are not going to stand by and allow that to happen, and that is why we have moved this measure—to break that link.

The bill's provisions are clear and are set out in the second reading speech that I have already tabled. Suffice to say that the bill complies with the principle that the beneficiaries of various HELP schemes should be people who will be able to repay their debt because they are paying Australian taxes. The bill imposes strict residentiary conditions that preclude recent arrivals to Australia from New Zealand from applying for that assistance. It opens up access to the HELP only to students who, although they have retained New Zealand citizenship, could be expected to seek employment here after graduation because they are long-term residents.

The bill, as I say, should be non-controversial, but of course the fact that it is not has become lamentable, given the state of Australian politics. This is particularly the case now, because the government has the opportunity to abandon its $100,000 university degree program. It has the opportunity now, as the ministers in this government scramble to get a new chair on the deck of the Liberal ship. We know that the minister for education is desperate to go to the defence department and the Assistant Minister for Education and Training, Senator Birmingham, is desperate to get into communications. They are all desperate to get away from these measures, but the government remains committed to them, as the new Prime Minister stated just this Tuesday.

We know that throughout the period of the last two years he has supported the government measures through the cabinet processes, although there have been numerous media reports about how he really does not support them. There has been a process of white-anting and destabilisation that has gone on for two years. When it comes to the crunch he says, 'Well, I'm really very much part of the Right of the Liberal Party and I'm sticking with the policies'. Just this week, in answering a question in the House of Representatives about university fee deregulation he said that all the policies and all the measures of the Abbott government are the policies that he supports. So we have a new Prime Minister with the same old policies, a new Prime Minister committed to the unfair and unnecessary changes that Mr Pyne and Mr Abbott have been so dedicated to. The opposition will oppose the deregulation of fees. It will oppose the cuts to a teaching program, not just in this place whenever the legislation is returned, if it is returned, but in the broader community. We will oppose it vigorously at every possible opportunity.

There was a phalanx of vice-chancellors, and the minister had made assumptions that they were marching in lockstep with him. They have all now melted away. All of them have melted away because they understand the folly of the proposals that were before them. It has always been understood that the chief argument the minister relied upon was that there was a funding crisis in the university system, but we simply know that that is bogus. The only funding crisis, which I reminded the Senate earlier, is that confected by a government that does not want to pay its bills.

The structural changes the government is seeking to impose upon the universities would see cuts to the university teaching program of over $20 billion over the next 10 years. That is the effect of a 20 per cent reduction in government support for the teaching program. A 20 per cent reduction means a $20-plus billion cut over a 10-year period. The minister knows he cannot get the measure through the chamber. There is no evidence that there has been any change in the attitude of senators, despite various efforts to dragoon former public servants to do the lobbying on behalf of the government. There is no evidence whatsoever, but there is a change in attitude.

Of course everyone knows that the system is not, in any sense, facing a crisis. It is not in imminent danger of collapse. What universities are requiring, which I think they are entitled to, is funding certainty. They are entitled to know that the threats and intimidation that this minister has made, whether it be to the research program or to the claims that he is going to reduce the funding, only to find that he has to repay it a year after the threats are made, has to come to an end. We know that the change in leadership in the Liberal Party does provide the opportunity to do that, but we do not see any evidence that that is actually what is going to happen. There is an opportunity to avoid the havoc that the government's plan would inevitably inflict. I asked the question just last week and the Leader of the Government in this chamber said that they were sticking with the plans to introduce these changes from the beginning of next year. We have not seen this legislation, but the government remains committed to a policy position that has received widespread condemnation across this country.

The Prime Minister talks about the need for there to be a change in attitude on the questions around innovation and creativity in terms of shaping the future. He has denounced the government's failure to be able to get its message across, its failure in terms of economic leadership, its failure to explain that the policies which are inflicting pain and suffering are actually in the public's interests. He has not actually changed his attitude on those things, but has simply said that there needs to be a better way to explain the nasty medicine that people should take.

We know that the talk about changes in regard to innovation policy is something universities are particularly interested in given the central place that universities play in our national innovation system. The Prime Minister needs to do a little bit more than mouth silver-tongued rhetoric. This is a government that has actually cut $3 billion from the innovation budgets. The biggest changes that have been affecting start-ups for instance has been the abolition of Commercialisation Australia and the slashing of funding for the entrepreneurs and commercialisation activities, all of which the current Minister for Small Business has endorsed. I am told that the Minister for Small Business is also likely to lose responsibilities for these areas. Just as the Minister for the Environment has lost control of the water program, it would appear the Minister for Small Business is to lose control of the start-up program.

We do know that Mr Turnbull is worried about one thing, that Australia's economic policy has been heading in the wrong direction for the last two years. Shuffling the deck chairs will not remove the stain that is upon this country, because it is the government policy that needs to change. It is the government of Australia that needs to change not just the person that appears before the cameras at night trying to explain these unfair and unnecessary changes.

The Prime Minister will need to do far more to inspire and allow young Australians, through the university system, to reach their aspirations, to develop their talents, their imagination and their abilities. Taking $20 billion out of the university system will not do that. Taking $3 billion out of the innovation system will not do that. If the Prime Minister is serious, he will understand that we have to do far more to restore programs and capacity and to not undermine our science and research effort, to not undermine our ability to generate new knowledge, new understandings and new ways of thinking. If we are to be an innovative, creative economy, it has to be built upon partnership with government, with the support that government programs bring. It will not be built upon imposing $100,000 degrees on students, saddling students with crippling debt, or by loading up taxpayers with a loan scheme which is now out of control. The vocational education system is open to widespread rorting by shonks, which seems to go uncontrolled by this government. The government has been in office for two years and has had the opportunity to do something about it.