Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I thank senators for their contributions to the detail of the debate on the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019. I note there were a range of other more extraneous and unrelated comments and contributions made during the debate as well. On that front, I would again remind senators that higher education in Australia continues to receive record levels of funding, support continues to grow in the forward years of the Australian budget and indeed the government has provided guarantees in relation to the flow of taxpayer support to Australian universities during the pandemic. But those matters are not what this bill seeks to address.

This bill seeks to ensure that we as a nation deliver a strong stand against cheating in Australian universities which tarnishes the reputation of our very valuable higher education sector. Our efforts here are designed to ensure that we continue to deliver a world-class higher education offering to students from Australia and from around the world who choose to study with Australian institutions. The penalties in this bill are designed to deter the undertaking of cheating and particularly to deter the provision and advertising of cheating, especially for academic cheating services. The capacity to block cheating websites will make it harder for students in Australia to access those services and for those websites to provide their scurrilous offerings.

I would like to thank the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills for their consideration of this bill. As requested by the committees, an addendum to the explanatory memorandum was tabled to explain the compatibility of the civil penalties in the bill with the processes used in criminal law and reasons for placing the burden of proof on the defendant for particular offences. I'd also like to thank the opposition for their constructive engagement on the bill. Several other amendments to the explanatory memorandum were made to provide additional clarification on matters they and other stakeholders raised. These include clarifying that students who publish their old essays will not be subject to prosecution under the bill and that people who inadvertently promote academic cheating services on social media will also not be affected.

The development of this bill has been, indeed, a lengthy process. It commenced during 2016 and 2017 with consideration by the Higher Education Standards Panel of the issue of contract cheating. I was pleased to have initiated those considerations by the panel at the time. The panel found the complex array of state, territory and Commonwealth laws relevant to cheating offences made it difficult to pursue legal solutions against providers of cheating services. The panel's advice was that additional legislative backing was needed to more effectively deal with such risks, and the panel advocated that this should be modelled on New Zealand's approach, which ensures legislation is aimed particularly at those who provide the cheating services rather than at students who might use those cheating services.

I thank the Higher Education Standards Panel, which reviewed this issue and whose work under the then chair, Professor Peter Shergold, has provided the strong basis for our government's actions in this bill. I thank the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, under its leadership, for their work and advice, as well as various universities, advisers and other stakeholders to government, including previous advisers Professor Don Markwell and Darren Brown, who have helped to drive this. I note the very valuable consultation and work that my successor in this portfolio, Minister Tehan, has continued to undertake with his advisers and team to ensure that we have a bill that will give public confidence in the quality of graduates from our higher education institutions and stop unscrupulous cheating services preying on vulnerable students.

Once again, I thank senators for their engagement in this topic and commend the bill to the chamber.