Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We have no guidelines for how this will work and no details at all of how the range of onerous new regulatory requirements co-opted from debt regulation will be enforced on universities.

Any one of these problems with the bill would justify voting against it. Taken together, they make Centre Alliance's decision to sell out students, young people and our universities for a reprehensible deal even more shocking. Rebekha Sharkie MP and Senator Stirling Griff, you've bought the government's spin hook, line and sinker. You should be ashamed of condemning generations of young students to decades of debt. You don't need to pass this unfair and unpredictable legislation in order to deliver new student places. It's really not a matter of accepting this messy bill, which punishes students and staff, or nothing. Minister Tehan's own conveniently timed announcement of millions of dollars for extra places has confirmed that it's not too late to do the right thing and block this bill. It's clear how far out of their depth Minister Tehan and the Prime Minister are. Instead of anything close to a vision for universities, we've got this jumble of competing priorities and a desperation to not invest in students or their education. They have neither the respect for higher education nor the command of the policy detail needed for reform.

Outrage is to be expected when the Liberals try to cut uni funding, as they have done time and again, but with the justified outrage this time came bafflement—an entire sector bewildered by the policy disaster that is this bill. Everyone, from the higher education unions to the business lobby to Julie Bishop, says this doesn't make any sense. The disciplines the government claims the bill will advantage, like physics and maths, were all out condemning this plan. The best defence the minister could manage was to tell the Herald that I, the only engineering PhD in parliament, should study a maths unit. That was mere hours before he was caught using dodgy figures in a press release in an attempt to talk this bill up. From the lack of detail in the original announcement to the mere six-day consultation period for the legislation and their opposition to a Senate inquiry into this once-in-a-generation legislation, the government has shown nothing but contempt for the university sector, the community and the parliament throughout this process.

Unlike the government, the Greens vision for post-school education could not be more clear. Uni and TAFE should be free for all students for life. We recognise that our collective future depends on the education and training happening in our public universities and TAFEs. We see that our ability to see this crisis through and the opportunity to rebuild as a more just society afterwards turn on ensuring that people can access that education and training without going into decades of debt. We know everyone has a right to education, whether they're leaving school, changing careers, retraining later in life or looking to gain new skills and knowledge. This is not a flight of fantasy; this is a matter of priorities. If the government closed the loopholes that let one in three major corporations pay no tax and stopped giving tax breaks to the super wealthy, which they are going to do in the budget today, we could make lifelong access to public education a reality for all students and reap the collective benefits. We can do this and ensure that staff have security of work with fair wages, so they can do their work teaching and researching side by side and with certainty. That's the vision the Greens will keep fighting for in this place and in the community.

It's only fair that students of today have the opportunity so many in this place, including many of the hypocrites sitting opposite, had. The Senate can and should reject this package. We should call on the government to come back with a plan to support staff and create new student places by adding funding, not cutting it. The Greens oppose this cruel attack on students, on staff and on universities. I move the Greens second reading amendment on sheet 1050:

Omit all words after "That", insert:

", the bill be withdrawn; and

(a) The Senate condemns the Morrison Government and Minister Tehan for attempting to ram legislation through the Parliament which would irreversibly damage Australia's higher education system and harm and disadvantage students, university staff and communities; and

(b) The Senate condemns the bill which will:

(i) hike fees, pushing students into decades of debt as they face rising unemployment and hurting women and First Nations students the most,

(ii) slash billions in funding from teaching, including from STEM subjects, which will mean bigger classes, fewer teachers and a worse education, particularly in regional areas,

(iii) force universities to do more with less,

(iv) fail to create anywhere near enough new places to educate school leavers and people who want to study during the recession,

(v) shift the overall costs of university education away from the Commonwealth and onto students,

(vi) fail to encourage students to do STEM courses,

(vii) punish struggling students by unfairly and unnecessarily forcing them out of Commonwealth Supported Places instead of helping them, and

(viii) fail to save a single university worker's job and worsen the research funding crisis; and

(c) The Senate calls on the Government to:

(i) fully-fund university education and research, and provide ongoing funding certainty into the future,

(ii) ensure job security and good conditions for all university staff, and

(iii) make university and TAFE fee-free for all.