Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak in opposition to this garbage fire of a bill, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020, that the government's brought before the parliament. People have a right to be angry about the destructive nature of this legislation and the government's approach to what should be a key part of Australia's national capability, the university system. Senators have a right to be angry, people in the higher education sector have a right to be angry and Australian families have a right to be angry.

I listened to the quisling, craven contribution from Senator Griff and his capitulation to the government on this issue. I share with most Australians a profound sense of disappointment and anger, firstly, that the legislation was ever brought here and, secondly, with the decision by Senator Griff and the member for Mayo to wave this legislation through.

As we've gone through the coronavirus crisis, the people that we've turned to every evening on our televisions are scientists—public health experts and epidemiologists—all from our university sector, providing the advice publicly to the people, and privately to governments around the country, about how to deal with the public health crisis. But the government's response to the system that generates the expertise and the capability has been a series of savage cuts and then this legislation. The higher education sector is the biggest employer amongst our largest exporters. You would think, perhaps, that if academics wore high-vis to work the government might pay more attention. In the course of the pandemic, Universities Australia, the peak body—who, I have to say, have lacked a bit of courage themselves in their approach to this legislation—predicted that 21,000 jobs will be cut from higher education this year. Eleven thousand have already gone.

I want to reflect on what previous Liberal governments have done. The university sector was built following the Second World War. Previously, it was the preserve of the sons of Australian squatter families and other wealthy families to go to university, but in the postwar reconstruction there was a bipartisan consensus to build an effective university sector. There was a bloke called Robert Menzies, the former member for Kooyong. It was a bipartisan achievement. He said:

Are the universities mere technical schools, or have they as one of their functions the preservation of pure learning, bringing in its train not merely riches for the imagination but a comparative sense for the mind, and leading to what we need so badly—the recognition of values which are other than pecuniary?

It's from a small speech called 'The forgotten people' from 1942, which some of those opposite clutch when they're trying to remind themselves of what passes for what remains of the Liberal Party's moderate wing. I even picked up Quadrant magazine the other day. Robert Menzies, the former Prime Minister, said:

Our great function when we approach the problem of education is to equalise opportunity to see that every boy and girl has a chance to develop whatever faculties he or she may have, because this will be a tremendous contribution to the good life for the nation.

Under the Menzies government in the postwar reconstruction, UNE, Monash, Macquarie, La Trobe, the University of Newcastle and Flinders University all developed. The Whitlam government opened up education for everybody, and the Hawke-Keating governments, with Minister Dawkins, opened up the HECS funding model, which has provided so much income security for the system. This bill is a total repudiation of the Menzies and Whitlam legacy in higher education.

It used to be that the Liberals were for education. It used to be that they understood the Menzies tradition. You'd have to look pretty hard to find a moderate Liberal. They used to be called the 'wets'; now they couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag. Senator Birmingham, nowhere to be seen, has gone along with this total craven capitulation run by a group of aspirants from the IPA, whose experience of university was probably turning up as privileged, entitled young men, probably got talked over for the first time in their lives in a tutorial by a young woman who might have done that week's reading, when they're so used to just turning up and talking over everybody else.

This bill is a total repudiation of the equity principles that have underpinned the bipartisan consensus since World War II. The way that it manages underperforming students absolutely discriminates against those kids who are the first in their family to go to university. Those kids do have a stop-start beginning. Life is tougher for those kids who've got no experience of going to university in their family. Some of them fail in their first year. Some of them don't make it through, but they come back and they've got the resilience to keep going. I know some of them who failed in their first year, went away, did a bit of work, came back and are now professors making a great contribution to this country. But under your legislation the message to them is: 'Don't ever darken our door again.' That is a terrible thing to do to equity in this country.

It misunderstands the relationship between rural and city disadvantage. It has terrible effects on the University of Western Sydney, but the senators on that side of the chamber couldn't care less. It excludes people from high-status courses. It sends a price signal to them which says: 'Don't bother if you are a working-class kid worried about debt. Don't bother becoming a lawyer. Don't bother studying political science. Those courses are the preserve of the wealthy—people who are already privileged, who know people in their family who have gone through university.' That is a disgrace. I'm absolutely disappointed.

I watched the crossbenchers' consideration of this bill very closely. I've watched Senator Patrick and Senator Lambie apply a dose of healthy scepticism, and both of their contributions on this bill have been absolutely fantastic—particularly Senator Lambie. Her contribution earlier this week and last week showed exactly what working-class regional families think about this legislation. It should never have come before this parliament, and for the member for Mayo and for her colleague to support this legislation is a craven capitulation. The people of Mayo would be much better off with a Labor representative, but they may as well have had Georgina Downer or Jamie Briggs for all the good that it's done them. This capitulation is not only terrible for school leavers in South Australia and their families; it is a terrible result for universities right across Australia and what should be a jewel in the crown of Australia's industrial, economic and research capability: our university system.