Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to be able to contribute to the debate that we're having here today on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020. I have listened to most of the contributions and, I have to say, they've been of very high calibre, making very important points for the argument to vote against this bill.

This bill is a bad bill, and it's very disappointing that Senator Griff has decided to vote with the government on this bill. He has decided that this will be one of the lasting legacies he leaves in this Senate. Does he really want to vote for this bill to saddle huge debt on Australian kids—South Australian kids? Does he really want that to be part of his legacy of being in the Senate? I hope not. I hope he has a change of heart, because this piece of legislation, as so many people in the debate have already said, is a despicable piece of legislation. It's designed to make it harder and more expensive to get an education. We all know that. That's what this bill is about. I do not understand how the member for Mayo and Senator Griff don't get it. This is what this bill is about.

You have to wonder why this government is so intent on pushing this bill through. What the bill does is to shift the burden on to students, and it will impact young people from poorer backgrounds the hardest. Why on earth would any government want to make it harder for our young people, particularly disadvantaged young people, to get an education? Why on earth would they do it right in the middle of the deepest and darkest recession in almost a century? It doesn't seem to make any sense. But, of course, when you realise this isn't about increasing levels of educational attainment but, quite deliberately, about decreasing opportunities for our young people in the pursuit of cutting costs and making savings, it starts to become clearer what the endgame is here. This is about attacking universities and quite deliberately undercutting them, because the Liberals have an ideological objection to poor kids getting a degree. For the Liberals, universities should only be accessible to those who have the right school tie.

If this bill passes, students will pay seven per cent more for their studies—that's an average increase in fees. Around 40 per cent of students will see the cost of their education hiked up by as much as 113 per cent. For some, this will shift the cost burden onto them so much that they will be paying 93 per cent of the total cost of their course delivery. What a regressive, backward step from the days of free higher education. The many students studying in the field of humanities will see the cost of their degrees more than double. The fees these students will pay will jump to $58,000—up from just over $27,000—for a four-year degree.

It really is amazing that these students will be forced to pay more than their counterparts studying medicine and dentistry degrees. It makes no sense to me. In fact, the CEO of the Australian Industry Group, Innes Willox, said of these changes:

A large financial burden is being shifted to these future workers who will fill important professional roles required by industry.

This bill doesn't even achieve the additional student places that the government claim it will. The government somehow expect additional places to appear despite the fact they are providing no extra funding; in fact, they are reducing the average funding per student. However, those opposite claim that 39,000 places will be added over three years. Even if that were achieved, it would fall substantially short of forward demand for places.

The bill provides no recognition of the increased demand for university places brought about by the Morrison recession. Indeed, it doesn't even take into account that well-understood increase in demand brought about by the baby boomers of the 2000s, the children of whom are now reaching university age—one of whom is my own daughter. It should come as no surprise to anyone in this place that applications for places at our universities have more than doubled this year, because of limited opportunities to work or travel. What is abundantly obvious with this so-called reform is that our universities will be expected to do more whilst getting substantially less. It's called a funding cut, plain and simple.

If this bill is successful in this place, the Australian university sector will experience an overall cut in government funding of around $1 billion a year. That's what this bill does; it cuts almost $1 billion in funding to unis. And who bears the cost? Who pays the price? Australian students, our young people and our nation. We all pay a price from cuts to education. This bill will see the average funding per student paid to universities drop by 5.8 per cent. For an engineering course, the fee per student will drop by around 16 per cent. If we look at a nursing degree, course funding is facing a cut of eight per cent. In education, the funding cut amounts to six per cent. In clinical psychology, we're talking about a real funding cut from government of 15 per cent towards the cost of delivery of a degree.

Of course, the cuts in this bill are on top of cuts this government has already made to university budgets. The Morrison Liberal government has already cut funding from our universities, as people here well know, to the tune of $2.2 billion. Then there is the loss in revenue that universities are facing due to the loss of international students, projected to be around $16 billion. Our universities simply can't cut any more, yet that is what is being asked of them by this government. It is our students, our young people, who will bear the brunt of the costs imposed on them by this government through this bill.

I want to draw attention to the impact of this bill on students in my home state of Tasmania. If the Morrison Liberal government gets its way with the passage of this bill through this place, Tasmanian students will face a funding cut 33 per cent greater than mainland students. We know this because compelling evidence was provided through the inquiry by the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee into the bill. During the hearings the committee heard from Mr Mark Warburton, an expert who worked extensively on higher education funding policy for the federal government for around nine years. He pointed out that the University of Tasmania and its students would be more adversely affected by the bill than their mainland counterparts. Mr Warburton is an honorary senior fellow at the University of Melbourne's centre for the study of higher education and an analyst for Universities Australia. He described the University of Tasmania's stance on the government's cut as inexplicable during the Senate committee hearing. Mr Warburton told the committee:

… the package has clearly been rushed out to achieve savings that the government has been seeking since 2014, but has been unable to secure; it's more marketing than substance—

We're not surprised by that—

it's riddled with mistakes; and arguments enunciated for it do not withstand scrutiny.

The position of some stakeholders in the higher education sector is inexplicable. They've argued that the package should be supported to bring certainty to the sector. It will do the opposite. Regional universities will be subject to this uncertainty, and they bear a disproportionate share of it …

He continued: 'The University of Tasmania will be more adversely affected, potentially losing eight per cent, more than the national average of six per cent. This change will be permanent.' There you go.

The cut to the University of Tasmania, and therefore Tasmanian students who remain in Tasmania to study, will be worse than the cuts to universities and students across Australia, on average. Of course, this will be particularly bad, particularly hard felt by students from and students studying in the north and north-west of Tasmania, whether they be students in Launceston studying nursing, social work or psychology science or even students in Burnie studying humanities or education. All of them will be worse off. All of them will be paying higher fees. All of them will be deeper in debt. All of them will be discouraged from getting an education. In the other place, the Liberal member for Braddon, Mr Gavin Pearce, and the Liberal member for Bass, Mrs Bridget Archer, support these fee hikes and uni cuts. They support disadvantaging north and north-west Tasmanian students who come from their electorates. That's a shame.

It is essential for the future of young Tasmanians and our university that these cuts be blocked right here in the Senate. I would hope that all Tasmanian senators would vote in the interest of our state and vote to block this bill. Once again, it's regional, remote and disadvantaged students who will bear the brunt of the Liberals' ideological attack on universities, on students and, quite frankly, as we've heard in the many contributions here, on education.

What we have here is a total shemozzle of a bill that is thinly veiled as reform but is, in fact, quite clearly nothing more than a cut. Let's be clear: this bill is nothing more than a funding cut and a fee hike, and it couldn't come at a worse time. It is a cut that will only saddle our young people with more debt and fewer opportunities. I urge the Senate to once again reject the government's attempts to gut our universities. I ask senators to vote down this bill.