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

Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. Senator Rennick also talked about how many architects and builders there are. If they didn't keep cutting the funding to TAFE then I think there would be a lot more builders around to help fill that gap.

But I am speaking today against the government's Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020. It's a terribly poorly-thought-through bill. It was made in haste and is based on outmoded prejudices and ideology. I really don't know what made the government propose this ill-conceived bill. It's based on an ignorance of the higher education sector and/or of the wider community. Perhaps it's based on a dislike of arts graduates—although there are plenty of those on the government benches. But, honestly, I think they simply do not want young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds going to university.

The Liberals want a return to the past, where you had almost no chance of going on to a tertiary education unless you went to an elite private school and had wealthy parents. Those opposite should be ashamed that they introduced this bill and ashamed that they're supporting it. At least the Nationals, for once, managed to secure some government concessions with this bill. What did the Liberal party room secure? Did they all just sit there meekly and let it go through without giving it a second thought? I really believe that those on the government side have betrayed all those voters who believed that they did truly care.

The bill we're debating today makes it harder and more expensive for a lot of Australians to go to university. Why? Why are they making more people pay more money for the same qualification? And why, having hiked the fees, do they then still cut billions in funding from the sector? I'll tell you why: it's ideological, and I don't believe that this policy is backed by any evidence. Forty per cent of students will have their fees increased to $14½ thousand a year, doubling the costs for thousands. That means people who are studying the humanities, commerce and communications will pay more for their degrees than doctors and dentists.

The title of this package, the Job-ready Graduates Package, is farcical—like a lot of bills that we come across from this government. There's no evidence that these degrees make students less employable than other degrees. In fact, the job prospects of humanities students are very healthy. According to recent research, people with humanities degrees have higher employment rates than those with science or maths degrees. The government has provided no sensible or reasoned arguments for these changes; perhaps they should study some units in logical and critical thinking.

Terrible bills have terrible consequences, and I'd like to focus for a while on how this bill will affect my home state of Tasmania. In Tasmania we have only one university, the University of Tasmania, and Tasmanians are rightly proud of their university. It's an affordable and quality pathway to a higher education, and plays an important role in providing skills and training opportunities, as well as research and development capabilities. Higher education can have a transformative effect on individual lives. It creates employment and opportunities, and it results in generally higher salaries. It also creates employment opportunities in the wider society, increasing the capabilities of companies to deliver services and products, as well as the creation of new services, products and technology. The benefits of higher education do not just flow to students; they're shared by the whole of our society. Particularly in regional areas, like Tasmania, by working smarter and not harder, we can leverage our natural advantages and utilise them for the maximum benefit for our state and for our people.

We'll be relying on university graduates to drive our recovery from the recession. Recently, I spoke to the National Tertiary Education Union about the bill in general and, more specifically, on the impacts it will have on UTAS. They told me, 'Under the Job-ready Graduates scheme, some institutions will be more severely impacted than others due to the mix of disciplines that their Commonwealth-supported students enrol in. Put simply, the universities that have a relatively high proportion of students enrolled in disciplines which experience the largest cuts in total resourcing will be under even more financial pressure should the JRG package come into effect. No university will be better off under the JRG package. The University of Tasmania will see an average reduction of over $900 per Commonwealth supported place. In fact, the NTEU's calculations based on 2018 student data show that 60 per cent of the Commonwealth supported places at UTAS will see a reduction in total resourcing under the package. This means UTAS not only will have less resources per student but, like all institutions, will have to teach more with less in order to maintain current levels of funding. They also advised me that the JRG package will not alleviate the funding issues facing UTAS as a result of the COVID crisis. In fact, the JRG package will increase pressure on the university to increase its level of discretionary funding. While there are some sweeteners in the JRG that UTAS may be able to access, such as regional loadings, these do not outweigh the loss the university will be facing overall. Furthermore, most of these benefits also rely on the university substantially increasing domestic enrolments, which will be a challenge. So it's clear UTAS will be disproportionately impacted by this bill.'

The NTEU also made the following point about research funding: 'While the JRG package will see a reduction overall in the resourcing for teaching per student, it also removes the research allocation from CSP funding. In fact, the JRG package does not provide a single dollar for research, and the government has remained silent on any research funding changes, despite the importance of research in a post-COVID recovery.' Tasmania does important, innovative research, particularly in marine and Antarctic sciences, and it's disappointing that this government wants to attack not only students but the important research our universities are doing as well.

It's a stark contrast to what Labor did in government. In government, we made policies to ensure that university education never remained out of reach. In order to achieve this goal, we invested in our universities and we supported them when they needed it. After years of neglect under the Howard government, Labor boosted investment in universities from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013, and our policy resulted in an additional 200,000 going to university. Sadly, those opposite don't have that kind of vision.

It's clear that this is a bad bill and it's coming at a really bad time. We all know what a terrible year 2020 has been. We've seen increases in the rate of youth unemployment. It has risen by more than 90,000 in recent months alone. We're in the depths of recession, so now is the perfect time to be training young Australians. The demand for university places has surged, yet we've got Mr Morrison refusing to provide enough extra places to meet the increase in demand. Even when the government promise new places, they provide no extra funding to support them and no guarantee that those numbers will eventuate in practice. The effect of this bill would be to increase the student fee burden and reduce Commonwealth funding for higher education.

As I said earlier, perhaps the government simply doesn't have an understanding of the current labour market, and the industry stakeholders tend to agree. Bronwyn Evans, CEO of Engineers Australia, said the government's announced changes may:

… lead to increased inequality and a harmful reduction in the diversity of skills necessary for a modern workforce.

…   …   …

An increase in university fees risks increasing structural inequality for women and people from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds who choose to study humanities, law and other courses that will now leave them in even more debt.

Megan Lilly from the Australian Industry Group said:

We're not of the view that the humanities is unnecessary. Graduates get very good generalist skills and it can lead to very good career opportunities. There is also potentially a problem with reduced total funding to some courses being promoted. Universities might have limited places for engineering courses (despite student fees being slashed) and that could be very problematic.

Dan Woodman, President of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, or CHASS, said:

Some of the fastest growing job areas for university graduates are new, many of which require exactly the skills and experiences that the study of HASS subjects can provide. Content Specialists, Customer Officers, Data Scientists, and Sustainability Analysts are in high demand. These jobs did not exist five years ago, and a strong humanities or social science degree provides a foundation for working in these and the new, related fields that ·will inevitably emerge in the corning years.

The bill has even been criticised by the former Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Representatives, Ms Julie Bishop. That's right: Ms Julie Bishop has criticised the bill. Ms Bishop, who is now chancellor of the Australian National University, has argued that the substance of the bill won't result in the government's stated policy goals. Similarly, the CEO of the Grattan Institute, Danielle Wood, has said:

I honestly think it's one of the worst-designed policies that I have ever seen … Even if you accept its stated rationale, it doesn't go anywhere near achieving it.

When industry, students, business groups, unions representing staff including academics, and even a former Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party are all opposed to the bill, you know it's a bad bill. It's just another move in a continuing pattern attacking our higher education sector.

Of course, we shouldn't be surprised. This government has had a habit of attacking and failing to support the university sector. For months now, Labor has been urging the federal government to finally step in and help universities save jobs during the pandemic. Since then, thousands of jobs have been lost across the country. Australian universities forecast 21,000 job losses in coming years, and Scott Morrison has done nothing to stop these job losses in our fourth-largest export industry. He's shown no interest in the thousands of university staff who are losing their livelihoods or the communities that depend on their jobs. The federal government has gone out of its way to exclude public universities from JobKeeper. It's changed the rules three times to ensure that they don't qualify.

The impact of this crisis on regional universities will be devastating. Universities support 14,000 jobs in regional Australia. These are not only academics and tutors but also admin staff, library staff, catering staff, ground staff, cleaners and security. All these people have families. All are trying to make ends meet. We know that Australia will require an additional 3.8 million university qualifications by 2025. Yet, when it comes to our higher education system, this government's priority has always been to cut. While promising to support the study of maths, science and engineering, this legislation reduces the money universities will receive to provide those courses. In areas that the government say they want to encourage, universities will receive less per student, and, in areas that the government say they want to discourage, universities will receive more per student. It provides a disincentive for universities to enrol extra students in these disciplines.

In total, this package will cut $1 billion from universities. As always with this Prime Minister, the detail doesn't match the announcement. Mr Morrison is making students pay more for degrees and he's locking others out altogether. While promising to support the study of maths, science and engineering, this legislation reduces the money universities will receive to provide these courses. Either the Prime Minister is misleading Australians about the intention of this bill or he doesn't know how university funding works. The reform is a complete miss. It can't be amended or fixed, and we can't trust the Liberal Party with universities. All they do— (Time expired)