Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Tyrrell, for putting up this MPI. This is something close to my heart as well because placement poverty is a pressing issue and it has become even more urgent in the cost-of-living crisis. A big shout-out to Students Against Placement Poverty, who are running a national grassroots campaign for placements to be paid. Unpaid placements form part of a really cooked system of education that exploits student labour. We can't keep turning away when we know that students are forced do thousands of hours of unpaid placement work. These placements are often required for those studying and training to become essential workers, those who showed us during COVID lockdowns that it is only with their labour that we can have a functioning society with the most vulnerable among us being looked after. We are training these people and then forcing them during that education to work for free. Hundreds of thousands of students across the country are required to complete unpaid mandatory work placements as part of their study.

Placement poverty is gendered. Placements are especially common in feminised fields of study—teachers, nurses and social workers. Social work students have to undertake a thousand hours of compulsory placement and teaching requires more than 500 hours. On top of forgoing their income and not being paid for their work, students often have to fork out cash for travel, for parking and sometimes for professional clothing, leaving them out of pocket yet again. It's particularly tough for students with parenting responsibilities or those who are already marginalised in society, including First Nations people and migrants.

According to a survey by the Australian Council of Heads of Social Work Education, students are feeling exploited. They're being used to fill labour shortages in organisations and provide free labour. One student reported, 'I spent the majority of my time cleaning out homes and transporting clients.' This is harmful. This is just plain wrong. Students are being burnt out before they even begin their careers and are left with absolutely no time to have a life outside of work, and they end up being shackled with massive student debts. How is this fair? How is this equitable? Students should not be forced to provide their labour for free.

The immense financial, physical and emotional toll of student debt and unpaid placements is forcing people to drop out of university. This not only crushes their dreams of studying but also means we have fewer teachers, fewer nurses, fewer engineers, fewer social workers and fewer people in other professions we desperately need. There is a pretty straightforward solution: pay students for these placements. Students should be able to study for free and be paid for mandatory placements—no ifs, no buts.