Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition has asked that several of these bills be referred to a committee for inquiry. I want to outline to the Senate some of the reasons behind these referrals.

The first bills that the Labor Party has asked to be referred to the committee for inquiry are the Higher Education Support (Charges) Bill 2018 and the Higher Education Support Amendment (Cost Recovery) Bill 2018. Since the Liberals have come to office they've only had one plan for higher education: cuts and making students pay more, sooner. While Labor is cautiously supportive of this legislation, we want to refer it to an inquiry to make sure the policy settings are right and fair for universities as well as for students. This bill would charge higher education providers, including Australia's 39 public universities, to access Australia's world-class student loan scheme—HELP, the Higher Education Loan Program. This was never the intention of the original income-contingent loan scheme, HECS, and appears to be part of the government's attempts to find savings in the higher education portfolio. The related bill, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Cost Recovery) Bill 2018, introduces a small charge to higher education providers who apply to access the FEE HELP scheme for their students.

While the changes in both bills look relatively benign, Labor have some concerns that we want the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee to examine. Importantly, we don't want new charges to become excessive; nor do we want to see charges flow on to students. Australian students already pay the sixth-highest university fees in the OECD, and in the last year the government introduced more punitive changes to the repayment threshold of HELP, forcing students to pay back loans when they're earning $45,000—only $9,000 more than the minimum wage. Because of the Liberals' cuts, universities are under huge pressure. The 2017 MYEFO decision to re-cap undergraduate places is going to hit universities particularly hard in 2019, and we'll see thousands of Australians miss out on a university place. As many as 235,000 could miss out by 2031, according to the Mitchell Institute. I seek to move the amendment, as circulated in the chamber, in the name of Senator Collins.