Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Higher Education Support (Charges) Bill 2019 and the Higher Education Support Amendment (Cost Recovery) Bill 2019. Labor have indicated that we won't oppose these bills. This is the same position we took when bills to enact these measures were presented to the 45th Parliament. These bills introduce a range of small cost-recovery measures that the government proposed in the 2017-18 budget. The bills amend the Higher Education Support Act to introduce an application fee for higher education providers to offer FEE-HELP loans to Australian students. There will also be a small annual charge for higher education providers and universities to support the cost of administering the Higher Education Loan Program. In total, the measures in the legislation will deliver budget savings of $11.4 million over the forward estimates from 2019-20.

These bills are expected to have very little impact on the sector. However, we call upon the government to monitor the situation to ensure that these changes do not have a negative impact on students. It's simply not fair for any of the small additional charges in these bills to flow back to students through higher fees or higher charges for services. This would undermine equity in Australia's university system and be an wanted outcome of these changes. We're concerned about this possibility because Australian university students have faced nothing but attacks from this Liberal government during the last six years. Continued cuts to higher education funding, incorrect robo-debts sending students into poverty, attempts at fee deregulation and the shifting policy landscape have made life harder for Australian students. It's clear from the government's policy that they want to make it harder for Australian students to get a university education.

Unlike the Liberals and Nationals, we believe that funding education is an investment in our nation's future prosperity, not a cost burden. The Liberals and Nationals see university education as a privilege for an elite few and do not understand the power that education has to improve the lives of individuals and communities. Our universities and TAFE education sectors are struggling after six years of coalition government. It's time the current Prime Minister told us what his plans are to help more Australians gain a tertiary education. The government has cut $2.2 billion from universities and capped undergraduate university places. This means 200,000 people will miss out on the chance to go to university over the next decade. It's clear that the government does not care about Australian students.

Labor took to the last election a policy to undertake a once-in-a-generation national inquiry into post-secondary education, because we need to get this issue right rather than just stumble along on with whatever suggestions the government's mates come up with. This inquiry would have examined the current funding system and income-contingent loans scheme to ensure they are sustainable and are fair. In contrast, this government has no plan for higher education. Under this government, Australian students pay the sixth-highest fees in the OECD for university education. Costs have blown out for students. We know that if the Liberals had had their way they would already have introduced $100,000 university degrees in this country. The people in my home state of Tasmania don't accept the plans for $100,000 degrees. It's simply too much. Any government member who thinks that $100,000 degrees are a fair outcome needs to reflect on how out of touch they are with Australia.

In Tasmania, students often don't follow a traditional pathway. In fact, according to the 2018 Good Universities Guide, 84 per cent of UTAS students do not come straight from school. They may have done some casual work while figuring out what they want to do or may be transitioning from one profession to another or may be mums returning to study. Indeed, we are seeing university education as an important pathway back to full-time employment for people who have previously worked in industries which have lower employment levels than in previous decades. But no matter their story, the choice of Tasmanian students to move on to study at UTAS is a major turning point in their life. It requires dedication and perhaps a reordering of their life, maybe arrangements for caring for children, rearranging how or when they work or a move closer to the university campus that best meets their needs. But when the government makes it harder to gain a place and makes it harder with higher fees or lower repayment thresholds it can discourage or prevent people from pursuing their dreams.

While we're aware that graduates often earn more than nongraduates, and so study delivers a personal benefit, the overall economy of Tasmania also benefits when there are more graduates. Skills and knowledge gained by graduates can create new economic opportunities that flow through to everyone. In the 2016 census just 16.4 per cent of Tasmanians had a bachelor-level or higher qualification, compared to 22 per cent nationally. Tasmania has a largely regional population, and overall rates of university graduation are lower in regional areas. Unfortunately, I think those opposite look at the personal benefit of education and not at the social benefit. Last year, the Senate Select Committee on the Future of Work and Workers undertook an inquiry into the challenges facing our future workforce. A submission from the University of Technology Sydney to the inquiry outlined some of the societal benefits of increasing the level of university graduates. The submission said:

University graduates are increasingly critical for the whole Australian economy and workforce, particularly the knowledge economy that Australia needs to move towards. In 2014 Australian universities educated 1.3 million students and produced 300,000 skilled graduates and as a result are key economic powerhouses – universities directly contributed $25 billion to our GDP in 2013 and the skills of our graduates were worth $140 billion to the economy in 2014. The skills of our graduates will contribute more to Australia's innovation agenda than almost any other initiative.

It is crucial to note that universities are job creators. For every 1000 university graduates who enter the Australian workforce, 120 new jobs are created for people without university degrees.

The National Tertiary Education Union, in their submission, cautioned that the policies of this government were undermining the sector. Their submission states:

Current government policy and direction in higher and vocational education and research is alarmingly short-sighted, driven almost exclusively by the budget bottom-line with the most recent consequence being major cuts to public investment in tertiary education. This has led to a lack of policy coherency and indeed contradictory measures to the stated aims of developing a tertiary education system able to meet future workforce challenges.

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There is a fundamental disjuncture between the significant structural change the Australian economy and labour market is undergoing and the direction of the Coalition government’s tertiary education policies.

Universities Australia also expressed disappointment with recent government policies in higher education. Their submission read:

Given the wide-ranging importance of higher education and research, UA is disappointed that recent governments have prioritised cuts to universities in the pursuit of Budget savings. There is no case for large cuts of the kind that recent governments have proposed.

So it's clear to me and to those on this side of the chamber that the government does not understand the importance of our universities. The government just sails blindly along, saying, 'Everything's all right,' when it's clear that things are getting worse and they're not doing anything to fix it.

While there has not been an inquiry into the bills we're debating today, when bills for these measures were introduced during the 45th Parliament, Labor referred them to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee for inquiry. In particular, we wanted stakeholders to be properly consulted—something this government cannot be trusted to do. Time and time again, we see this government making policy changes without discussing what these changes are with the people who are affected by them. In the higher education sector, in particular, the Liberal government has made significant changes without considering the impacts that these changes will have on students, lecturers, universities and the overall sector.

Consultation is a key part of the public policy cycle, and an important one in ensuring the best possible policy outcomes. However, we're seeing the disastrous impacts on the higher education sector that this government's ill-thought-out policies have wrought. Labor senators provided the following additional comments to the Education and Employment Legislation Committee report I mentioned earlier:

Since the election of the Government in 2013, universities and students have been under constant attack with cuts, attempts at fee deregulation, policy chaos and uncertainty. The 2017 MYEFO decisions to cut $2.2 billion from universities, effectively recap undergraduate places, and change the Higher Education Loan Program were reckless and unfair. Thousands of students will miss out on the opportunity of a university place because of the Government’s cuts and capping of places.

The government should be ashamed of these cuts. They're not in the interests of students, universities or, particularly, the nation as a whole. They have already forced students to start paying off HELP debts when they earn as little as $45,000, only $9,000 more than the minimum wage. Given the current housing crisis and higher rents, this additional impost on these low-income graduates has just made life unnecessarily harder.

Labor has said that this change forces thousands of students out of the opportunity for a university education and puts enormous pressure on other young people in having to repay their debts sooner—often at the same time as they're trying to start a family and buy a house, and when they have many other expenses. We on this side know that the debt is a barrier to study, particularly for students from low-income families. Unfortunately, there are many prospective students who look at the debt they could rack up at university and immediately give up on their dreams.

Before the election, Labor committed to return to the demand-driven funding system, to ensure three-year funding agreements, to fund more equity and pathway programs to encourage more students to go to university and to provide much-needed funding for infrastructure through our $300 million University Future Fund. Labor's positive policies would have seen around $10 billion in additional funding flow to universities over the next decade. We're proud that under the previous government we oversaw an increase of over 190,000 students. Labor is absolutely committed to the demand-driven system. Labor wants to boost participation. We're committed to increased equity and better pathways for students to study at university. It's simply not fair that a student on the North Shore of Sydney is much more likely to go to university than a student in Herdsmans Cove or Acton in Tasmania. We want to see greater participation in higher education in Australia. Labor wants to give every student who has the ability and who is prepared to work hard the opportunity of a university education. In contrast, the Liberals want to slam the door to university shut on more than 200,000 Australians.