Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This legislation, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020, is an ideologically driven attack on universities. It's an ideologically driven attack on young people, who were shafted so badly in the government's budget last night. And it's legislation that looks like it will pass through this place because Centre Alliance has traded off young people's futures for some roadworks in the electorate of Mayo.

As I said, last night we had handed down to us a budget that continued this government's shafting of young people. It threw yet more millions into the billions that the Commonwealth government already uses in corporate welfare for the big fossil fuel polluters, stealing young people's futures from them by failing to take action in regard to the breakdown of our climate. It was a budget which did nothing to address the rigged housing market young people are facing, where far too many young people simply can't afford to rent a home and where their dreams of one day owning one—an opportunity that so many of us have been lucky enough to have—are evaporating in front of their very eyes. So young people are being completely shafted by this government, both in last night's budget and by this legislation today—this ideologically driven attack on universities, education and young people.

This package will more than double student fees in the humanities and social sciences. It will slash up to $900 million in vital funding for teaching and learning, including STEM and nursing courses, and punish struggling students. The government's claims that this package will support regional universities don't stack up. It will force regional universities, including the University of Tasmania, in my home state, to teach more students using less money. It will force their students to go into huge debt to get a degree. The consequences for regional communities will be more jobs lost, less local investment and fewer options for students.

Mark my words: young people today who are being forced to pay through the nose to gain a university degree are not blind to the fact that the overwhelming majority of decision-makers in this place, who are going to make the decision today to shaft young people and shaft universities, got the opportunity to get a university degree for free—a free degree. That's where this country should be. We should be offering free TAFE to upskill Australians and give them opportunities to get better jobs, and we should be offering free tertiary education, the way it used to be when most of us had the opportunity to go to university. But, no, now that we're across the moat we've pulled up the drawbridge behind us. And the bill is going to pass all because the government is splashing a bit of cash for roadworks in the electorate of the member for Mayo.

This package doesn't create nearly enough new university places to satisfy what is an obvious and emerging demand for education during a pandemic and a recession. Seriously, anybody can see that in a recession during a pandemic, when job opportunities have dried up, of course more people are going to take the opportunity to upskill themselves; of course more people will want to enrol in a university to get a degree. We're seeing that happen as we stand here and debate this bill. But this legislation does not create the new places needed to satisfy that emerging demand.

It's worth pointing out that universities have been absolutely smashed during this pandemic. There have been massive job losses in our universities. The government rewrote the JobKeeper rules on multiple occasions just to make sure universities didn't qualify to access that essential lifeline for so many of their staff working in higher education. Why did the government do that? It's because they have an ideological hatred for our universities. They don't want a highly skilled community and they don't want highly educated Australians. That is the neoliberal ideology.

Another thing this package does is shift costs of higher education from governments directly to students. Again, this is the user-pays model, a central plank of the neoliberal ideology which not only underpins this legislation but also underpinned last night's budget, delivered by Treasurer Frydenberg. Cost-shifting from the government to the student is absolutely blatant neoliberal ideology. Universities in this country should be well funded, they should be high quality and they should be fee-free for all students. That should be our national vision for tertiary education in Australia, not cost-shifting from the government to students, not requiring a user-pays system, as this legislation does. We should collectively aspire to free universities and free TAFE so that Australians can upskill themselves and have the opportunities to become better educated.

We've seen, as I said, higher education in Australia be hit incredibly hard by the COVID crisis, and these new laws will only make things worse. We shouldn't be starving funds to our TAFEs. We shouldn't be starving funds to our universities. We should be increasing the funding. Don't think that we'll be letting the Labor Party off the hook here. I recall very well that when I was Minister for Education and Skills in Tasmania the then Labor government took the axe to university funding. I recall that very well. I recall senior figures in the University of Tasmania asking me, when I was the minister, 'Why do both major parties see tertiary education funding as an easy budget saving?' I said to them: 'It's because you're not well enough organised politically at a national level. If you want to see your funding retained into the future, you need to organise better at a national level and mount your arguments better not only directly to government but in the public conversation.'

Education is the pathway out of poverty. The Liberal-National Party, through its primary policy delivery mechanism of this year, last night's budget, has condemned millions of Australians to live in poverty with no pathway out. I acknowledge the Labor party would not support much of that, but the fact remains that millions of Australians are either unemployed or underemployed in casual, insecure, poorly paid and, in some cases, dangerous work in this country. This government, in last night's budget, has basically drawn a target of six per cent for the unemployment rate. I want to be clear: not having full employment in this country is a policy choice. It is a policy choice, and the government is choosing to allow millions of Australians to live in poverty with no realistic aspirations to one day have a job. Instead they are prioritising the $99 billion of corporate welfare that is in every single year of the budget delivered last night.

This legislation will more than double the price of humanities courses other than English, languages and social work. For those humanities courses other than English, languages and social work, fees will be raised by 113 per cent. There will be a 28 per cent price rise for law and business degrees. On average, course fees are expected to rise by more than seven per cent over the next year. And, of course, students are going to pay the overwhelming majority of this. They're going to be loaded up with HECS debts as a result. Our modelling shows that it could take up to 20 years to pay off a three-year arts degree, should this package pass, and that is a conservative estimate as it assumes graduates will be able to access full-time, consistent work from the moment they graduate. It doesn't account for the years taken off full-time for parental leave and other reasons, and doesn't account for further study. So this is a highly conservative estimate, that, on average, it could take 20 years to pay off a three-year arts degree.

This legislation cuts government contributions to teaching and learning by between $500 million and $900 million. And remember: as I said, last night's budget has $99 billion of corporate welfare embedded into every single one of the four out years that are covered by the budget papers. This package reduces the overall government contribution to a domestic Commonwealth supported place from 58 to 52 per cent, and the student contribution will rise from 42 per cent to 48 per cent.

The government says the package will produce 39,000 additional places by 2023, and 100,000 by 2030. Leaving aside this government's penchant for the absolutely heroic assumptions that underpin its budgets and its projections in regard to legislation like this, we need to understand that there was already a pre-existing issue with student places, because the Costello baby-boom cohort is going to start looking for university places over the next few years. So these kinds of demographic realities, these obvious increases in future demand, need to be factored in and need to be understood. As I said, the package does not account for the inevitable influx of people who choose to study during an economic downturn such as we are currently experiencing as we enter what will be a lengthy time in recession in this country. This package will not fund anywhere near enough places to meet demand, and the government has provided no evidence whatsoever that price signals will funnel students into the courses they claim to be prioritising.

This is terrible legislation. This is ideologically-driven legislation. It's legislation that none of us should be surprised has been put forward by a Liberal-National government. But what we can be—and, in my case, what I am—surprised about is that Centre Alliance and Senator Griff have indicated that they will be supporting this legislation. Clearly, they've done a deal to support this bill in exchange for some roadworks in the electorate of the member for Mayo. Well, our young people deserve better than that and our universities deserve better than that. I absolutely condemn this bill and I urge the Senate to vote against it.