Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I rise tonight to speak on the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Charges) Bill 2021 and the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Cost Recovery) Bill 2021. It's always entertaining to follow on from Senator Rennick. I'm going to put facts on the record here tonight. The purpose of these bills is to establish a new charge to recover the cost of Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency risk monitoring and regulatory oversight activities for registered higher education providers. This will transition the authority's operations from partial to full cost recovery over the next three years. The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, TEQSA, is Australia's independent national quality assurance and regulatory agency for higher education. All providers that offer higher education qualifications in or from Australia must be registered by TEQSA.

These bills will give TEQSA the capacity to collect and administer a new registered higher education provider charge, and authorises regulations to be made to prescribe the amount and the method for setting charges. In what is becoming more and more common by this government, they have excluded the majority of detail about the proposed cost recovery framework from the legislation. Instead, key details will be contained in regulations and a new TEQSA charging guideline. With every chance that this liberal government gets, they want to minimise transparency and accountability. It's a hallmark of the Morrison government. How can we, as senators, perform our job if we cannot properly scrutinise legislation? As such, Labor will be opposing this legislation. Now is not the right time to move to full cost recovery for higher education providers, who have had a tumultuous 18 months. The majority of these providers are experiencing major financial difficulties because of the COVID-19 pandemic and have been largely excluded from any financial support from the Morrison government, and now the government wants to whack them with more fees.

It's interesting to listen to the contributions of the Liberal senators in this place tonight. What they've said is that there's been an acknowledgement that the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on tertiary education providers and, in general, university students. But they still want to push through this legislation. Universities faced revenue losses of around $3 billion last year and laid off more than 17,300 staff—that is, 17,300 people who lost their jobs because the Morrison government refused to help. They're not only the researchers, the academics and the tutors but also the cafeteria workers, the librarians, the grounds keepers, the maintenance staff, the admin staff, the cleaners. These jobs are not only in our cities but also in regional areas, where some of our universities are based. That has a direct impact on those regional communities, and there is a flow-on effect, a negative one, throughout our economy. Worse still, higher revenue losses are expected this year as the pipeline of international students dwindles, and uncertainty about our borders reopening remains very relevant here today. Because of the completely bungled vaccination rollout by those on the government benches and their refusal to implement a nationally coordinated quarantine system, these uncertainties are likely to remain for some considerable time.

This is all in the context of the Morrison government providing little if any support to this sector. We must not forget that the government changed the rules three times to exclude our public universities from JobKeeper. Education is our fourth-largest export industry, and it has been completely neglected by the Liberal government. Now they want to add greater costs to higher education, costs which will obviously more than likely flow through to students. Like with Medicare and with superannuation, the Morrison Liberal government will take every chance they get to cut funding from our universities. They have really taken it in their stride, doubling costs for students, cutting government support to education and, in the middle of a pandemic when one of the main streams of income for universities effectively went to zero, they have nothing—nada. Our universities are engines for innovation, and we rely on them to overcome problems in the future. We need just look at our responses to COVID-19 and how important our researchers and academics have been in informing our response to this virus. But right now they feel abandoned and kicked to the kerb by the Morrison government.

The government's proposal to move to an annual levy contradicts TEQSA's guiding regulatory principles to take a risk-reflective and variable-touch approach. University peaks argued that an annual levy means the burden of regulatory cost will be carried by the lowest-risk providers, which are large public universities. Haven't they endured enough? At the same time private providers are concerned that increased application based fees, which will rise by a whopping 700 per cent in some cases, will threaten their financial viability entirely. For smaller providers, it could be their undoing. These institutions have flagged that providers' closure, at a time when the financial viability of many providers is already threatened by this pandemic, will lead to higher cost to the government through reliance on the Tuition Protection Service. The Liberals are just seizing on this as a cost recovery exercise, but what they don't realise is the impact that they will have. They don't care about the students who will have to face US-style debts or they will threaten through the viability of their providers. Let's face it, the Morrison government have no plan for higher education. The Morrison government don't care about this sector, as they have so ably demonstrated during this pandemic. Labor have a plan to boost the skills of our nation. Our $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund can help translate innovation into Australian businesses and into jobs. Labor also understand and appreciate the importance of commercialisation of research, and that is why we will also introduce a start-up scheme that will offer income-contingent loans to 2,000 final-year students or recent graduates to support their participation in accelerated programs. This will help drive innovation and grow much-needed links between universities and the start-up community.

In contrast, in their latest budget, the Liberals cut a further 10 per cent from university funding. The government did bring forward some emergency research funding last year, but that has now stopped. In their biggest attack on universities and students to date, the Morrison government have raised the cost of university degrees for thousands of students—up to $60,000 for a bachelor degree with honours. That is in stark contrast to the nonsense that Senator Rennick put forward in his speech tonight, because he is going to support this legislation. He supports $60,000 bachelor degrees with honours being implemented in this country by this government. At the same time, these students are worrying about trying to save for a deposit for a home, looking for a job and maybe even starting a family. This is also going to have an impact on mature-aged students who are considering going back and furthering their education. This will absolutely place an unfair burden on young people trying to get a leg up. That will be the result of this legislation if it is passed.

What is also invisible in these bills is that there will be less funding for the courses that the Morrison government is trying to promote. Universities will receive 32 per cent less to teach medicine to students, 17 per cent less to teach maths to students, and they will receive 16 per cent less to teach engineering to students. How can they spin that? How can Mr Morrison spin that extra burden being placed on students and on Australian universities?

The cuts to funding for universities have meant that it is harder for poorer Tasmanian students to go to university. Over half of Tasmania's school leavers are not in work, training or further education. Our youth unemployment rate is the worst in the country. And what do we see from the Morrison government? Nothing. There is nothing to support Tasmanian young people and mature-aged students from going to university. In fact, that government are adding to the burden. At the same time, the most common feedback we receive from employers is that they can't find the right school leavers to fill jobs because they simply lack the skills. Now nothing that the Liberals are doing is going to boost the skills of young Tasmanians. We have a potential to be world leaders in renewable energy export and manufacturing, but the lack of a solid plan for jobs and training means that Tasmanians will be left behind by this government. At the very same time, here in Tasmania, the state government is now debating within the Tasmanian community as to whether or not TAFE should stay in public hands. The state Liberal government, in combination with the Morrison government, is disincentivising young Tasmanians from going on to university. If young Tasmanians can't afford to go on to university and pay these exorbitant new costs, then they need to have access to TAFE so that we can skill up young people in this state. After all, we really do need to have the TAFEs and universities working together with the business sector to ensure we have the highly skilled workforce that is needed for our industries and to strengthen our local economies going forward.

If we don't have young people in TAFEs, universities or some sort of traineeship or job, then they end up being idle and getting into mischief. They need to have a future. The door is always opened when people have the opportunity to pursue their educational goals. That is fulfilling for them as individuals and it is fulfilling for our economy, for the health and wellbeing and social cohesion of our communities. That is what's needed. For people to be able to invest in a home, to be a full participant in our community, in our economy, we need to have our community as well educated as we possibly can.

That's the strength of a nation, when they invest in education. More money should be going into education. We should be encouraging more people to study maths, the sciences and engineering. That's what should happen in this country. But what do we see from the Morrison government? We see a lot of spin. We see a lot of smoke and mirrors, the government trying to pretend to be all things to all people. But when you scratch the surface, like with this legislation, you see that this is not in the interests of the Australian community. It is certainly not in the interests of my community here in Tasmania.

I oppose this legislation and implore the crossbench and minor parties to vote it down. This is not in our long-term interests. This is bad legislation. It is doing what the Morrison government always wants to do, tear down our universities. We cannot allow this to happen. Labor will not allow this to happen, and I ask the crossbench to join with us in voting this legislation down. It is too important to our economy. We need to have highly educated people to bring us out of this pandemic. We have never relied on them more than we do right now. (Time expired)