Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I stand proudly with the Labor Party in opposing the Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020. I do so because this bill ushers in probably the most radical overhaul of higher education we've seen in the last 20 years. It does nothing of what it actually claims to do. It will not make graduates better prepared for jobs. In fact, with a six per cent reduction in government support in funding, it will make funding of universities places actually produce poorer-quality higher education. It reduces public funding for science. It reduces public funding for so many areas—engineering and other fields—that we assert are central to the future directions of the country. This bill will increase, not decrease, the obstacles faced by regional universities, because it simply does not take into account the higher-than-average teaching costs in those regions.

This bill is another step towards the Americanisation of our higher education system. It's been done in an unseemly rush. It's ill conceived and it's extremely poorly drafted. It probably has the highest level of ministerial discretion of any higher education bill I've had to deal with in my time in this chamber.

The system is inherently inequitable. It will reinforce inequality and reinforce privilege and the patterns of power and wealth this this country. Instead of opening the doors for opportunities, it will undermine the capacities of poorer and less privileged people in our country to participate. It's about extending the levels of debt, particularly at a time when people are forming families, trying to buy houses and trying to set up their lives. With many people facing debts of $45,000 for an undergraduate degree plus of course another $60,000 for the postgraduate degrees that many jobs now require, there will be debts of $100,000 being accumulated by many of our young people setting up jobs—for instance, in the Australian Public Service. We are seeing circumstances which actually reduce the capacity of people, and we are moving further and further away from the principles that underpin the way in which the Higher Education Contribution Scheme was originally established.

This bill changes the funding of student places, which means that we now have to have more places with less money. There can only be one consequence of that: lower quality. There will be larger class sizes, bigger lectures, more casualisation of our university staffing arrangements and less ability to provide the wherewithal for a quality education. The bill will also undermine the research capability of our public universities. It is a capability which is essential to our long-term national prosperity and our ability to build a more productive, more innovative and more complex economy. It is a capability upon which our universities' reputations depend, the basis on which they attract international students. Their international rankings depend on their research rankings, and this bill will undermine those. The bill breaks the nexus between teaching and research.

What have the university vice-chancellors got in return? Of course, they've been dealing with a government that treats them like a bully treats a victim. They think that by trying to be nice to the bully the bully will leave them alone. The evidence, of course, is to the contrary. This is another example of where hope exceeds experience.

On the question of research, the government has now come forward with a proposition: 'We'll provide you with emergency funding of $1 billion'—for one year. How many research projects last for one year? What happens in the second year? How many staff are employed beyond the one year? There's no answer to those questions, because it's emergency funding for one year. It includes a number of research infrastructure projects. It's not what it's made out to be; it's not about rebuilding the research capacity of our universities. It's in fact probably about one-seventh of what's actually needed and probably about half of what's been lost in this one year alone. This is a bill that takes a billion dollars a year out of the university system. I suppose that's what you mean by 'stability' and 'certainty': you know you're going to have reductions of that size.

Is it any wonder that the 'Scotty from marketing' team is able to promote this so completely with the media the way it is at the moment? It is so often presented in a totally distorted manner, and it's part of a broad pattern of hostility towards universities, which we've seen, for instance, in the longstanding assault upon the research and development capabilities of this country. How many times have we seen attempts to amend research and development laws and to cut research and development be made through this time? Of course, those have failed in this chamber. This bill, however, produces amendments to the higher education act which commit higher reductions than even the Birmingham bill and higher reductions than the Pyne bill. This minister has been able to secure, through these private arrangements he's entered into, more dramatic changes, more transformational changes to the universities than his two predecessors. It's openly speculated in the press, and the point was made in the Senate inquiry, that he's now open to any portfolio he wants in the forthcoming reshuffle. It will be an interesting point as to whether or not any of the concessions that have been made are actually in the bill, because the minister may not be there come December, and much of this bill relies upon ministerial discretion. It may well be that the promises made don't ever have to be honoured because there'll be a new minister on the scene. These are the assumptions that are being made.

Of course, we see in other bills that are being presented—like the sister bill, the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Provider Category Standards and Other Measures) Bill 2020—that there will be changes to the way in which research is calculated in universities. We may in fact see fewer universities in this country being classified as universities, because of those changes, and other devices will be brought to bear, including what may be interpreted as another form of intimidation. Universities are constantly told, 'You're not following our version of what freedom of speech is about.' If it's not freedom of speech, they're told, 'Well, of course, you're subject to foreign interference,' despite the fact that there have been no publicly declared breaches of any of the extraordinary regulations in the defence export control acts or any of the associated provisions. We have our academics pilloried across the front pages of our newspapers like some sort of giant 'wanted' poster. They are alleged to be some sort of collaborator with a foreign power. Our vice-chancellors are told that they're too China friendly. Various devices have been imposed to suggest that the universities should be more compliant. Universities are told they have to get a good relationship with the government and, if they don't get a good relationship with the government, their funding will be cut. Of course, if you try to get a good relationship with this government, your funding will still be cut, and we see that very much in this bill.

What we see is that this government has a profound, deep and abiding hostility to the university system. It has a bizarre notion that somehow or other universities are hostile to it. It's a nonsense. The university system in this country represents all the strengths and all the weaknesses of the country at large. Universities are not the great centres of radical thought that some people on the opposition benches suggest. For instance, in the current parliament, the member for Curtin is a former vice-chancellor, the member for Higgins is a former medical academic, the member for Reid is a former lecturer at Western Sydney University, our own President is a former political science academic at the University of Melbourne and Senator McKenzie was a lecturer in education at Monash University. Of course, in past times there have been many others. Former education minister Dr David Kemp was a lecturer in political science, again at the University of Melbourne, and a professor of politics at Monash. There have been other former senators who went off to be ambassadors and the like. The universities of this country have produced a whole range of people of conservative backgrounds, as they have produced people of Labor backgrounds and many other shades of opinion. It's a terrible, terrible mistake to make an assumption that the universities are hostile to conservative thinking in this country and that they have to be tamed, controlled and dominated. It's anathema to the very principles of democratic thinking, but this is the presumption that exists within this government.

This produces results such as this bill, which is about punishment, retribution and demonstrating an attitude towards the university system that we've got to reduce their expenditure and undermine their public support as measured by that expenditure. So much of what is in this package is not actually in this bill, because it relies upon government discretion. A point that various committees—and you, Madam Acting Deputy President Fierravanti-Wells—have made on numerous occasions is that an increasing problem with the legislation of this parliament is that the legislative principles, the policy principles, are not contained in the bills themselves but are left to delegated legislation and to ministerial discretion, and are not subject to parliamentary accountability.

There's a persistent theme here within this government, and throughout various governments, that has been demonstrated through the various education ministers we've seen in recent times. This bill is a culmination of that thinking; it is profound hostility, prejudice and dishonesty dressed up as support for the regions, when it in fact undermines the regions. It suggests we are going to have more student places which are in fact underfunded, a cut to our research program of catastrophic proportions and a one-year emergency relief package which gives no security, no certainty and no defence for our long-term national interests. This is a package of measures that clearly demonstrates the government doesn't understand, appreciate or value higher education. It doesn't understand the importance of the university system to the future welfare of this nation.