Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

As Senator Rennick's remarks demonstrate to the chamber, this government is indeed choosing inequality and climate collapse as its agenda. This government has a record of entrenching inequality in our communities, in our tax system, in our schools, in our health system, in our university sector and on it goes. And yet we have a government that does not even want to address structurally or even recognise the nature of inequality in our nation.

We see inequality in the disproportionate financial burdens that we now see on Australia's young people in the higher education bill that's before us today to what we've seen in our health system. Many Australians fork out money for their health insurance, which they then can't afford to use because they can't afford the gap payments which they need to make in order to access the care that they need—the health protection they thought they were buying. In our university system we now see the astronomical levels of debt which students will be subjected to. In our tax system we see tax deductions for people who are buying their fourth, fifth or sixth house, and yet those young Australians who are buying their first house will struggle to get ahead. These are all policy decisions. These are all decisions of government which embed inequality in our nation, a fact that this government chooses to deny or thinks somehow that it is in the economic interests of the nation to behave in this way.

When we look at inequality in this country and when we look at the astronomical levels of debt that are now being accumulated—and I'm not saying it's not justified to stimulate the economy to make sure that people have enough money in their pockets to live—this government is going to make the tax burden on future generations of Australians even harder because not only is there that future debt to pay off but those young people have stacked against them a whole range of other policy settings that will make their lives more difficult from the difficulty of buying a house and low wages to the inequality in our nation's schools and our higher education system. We have here a government that is so ideologically opposed to fair access to higher education opportunities and so blind to the aspirations of young Australians who want to study hard to get ahead that it has put forward a bill that does the exact opposite.

I don't think most senators understand how perverse this bill actually is. For example, a humanities degree or a business degree might currently cost a combined contribution from the student and the government of about $13½ thousand. If you want to do a commerce degree or an economics degree—wow, it looks pretty good on paper—there is going to be a $14½ thousand bill to the student. That looks like a $1,000 funding increase in the funding for that student for that place. On top of that, there is another $1,100 in subsidy from the government. That's a cut of more than $5,000 in the government subsidy to that student place. But it's going to settle that student with $14½ thousand of debt when universities are currently only spending, and allocated, $13½ thousand on that student. So unless universities are going to start funnelling money into the business and arts faculties, those students are going to be used as a cash cow in fees for a cross-subsidy to the very faculties this government says it wants to prioritise. You've said you want to prioritise engineering, you've said you want to privatise maths, you've said you want to prioritise science. Instead you've reduced student debt in some places but you've also reduced the government contribution, capping the amount of funding for those places and reducing the capacity of universities to enrol in those faculties, which I think will, in the future, result in the over-enrolment of students in faculties where a university can afford to charge a student more than that student costs them.

That is the heinous level of inequality that is embedded in the higher education legislation that is currently before this parliament. It is unthinkable to me that we can have a government so committed to Americanising our education system that it's prepared to fundamentally break it so that it's no longer fit for purpose, so that every part of the university sector and university system in the future can be deregulated from a fees point of view. There can be no other reason for the government to approach this issue in this way. You're conveniently saying you want to increase the commitment to science and make it easier for students to study science. But this legislation will make it harder for students to study science. Sure, they will have lower fees, but universities will have to cap the number of places in those faculties because they cannot afford to deliver them on the income this government will provide to them.

It is unthinkable to me that we have a government that seeks to use inequality in order to create a dog-eat-dog society in our nation because it reckons that's what's going to get the best out of people in terms of having a fair go. Well, I have to say to you it's not at the core of the fundamental values of our nation to behave in that way. It is the kind of thing this government has done in keeping wages down, in cutting penalty rates, in harming the economic standing of women in this country. The cuts to JobSeeker payments will disproportionately affect older women, who have disproportionately lost their jobs so far as part of the COVID crisis. In our country, women over 60 represent the largest cohort of people on JobSeeker. They face the greatest difficulty in re-entering the workforce, grappling with structural barriers and age and gender discrimination. When we look to the future and to JobSeeker returning to its old base rate, older women very much risk retiring in poverty. In today's budget I would really like to see the government provide older women who are out of work with some certainty by announcing a permanent increase to JobSeeker.

The government's bungled decision on JobKeeper locked out short-term casuals, the most vulnerable in the workforce. There we go, Madam Acting Deputy President: no attention to inequality in our nation in their response to these issues. Instead of ensuring that casual workers, who are already the most disadvantaged in the system, also had access to JobKeeper, those opposite biased it towards those who were already in secure work. And what do we know? We know that those in our casual workforce are also more likely to be women.

With all of these women in the higher education sector and the childcare sector excluded from government assistance, it is extraordinary that those opposite have then left families and women to draw down on their superannuation. Do they know that there are now 600,000 working Australians—people who've been working—who have no superannuation of their own? It is utterly appalling that this government has such an explicit passion for entrenching inequality in our nation.