Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill 2023 is the response to the Universities Accord interim report. There are five recommendations, and, specifically, this bill will respond to two of them. We established the Australian Universities Accord to conduct a review of Australia's higher education system because the last time we had one was 2008, and we needed to look at how we develop and enhance the quality, accessibility and affordability of our higher education.

I remember the last review, in 2008, really well because I worked at the University of South Australia and worked on the university's response to that report. One of the things that has struck me is there are two similarities between the situation we were in in 2008-09, responding to that report, and the situation we find ourselves in today in 2023. The first one is that one of the first critical acts of a new Labor government was to look deeply at our education system. The second one is that we were coming off the back of a long period of time with a coalition government gutting our education system and ensuring it was focused heavily on providing for those who have as opposed to those who can.

I want to trip through, as a starting point, the list of people who are on the accord and who have delivered this interim report, and who will continue to work to deliver the final report at the end of the year. I think it is important to understand the depth of expertise and the spread of what these people have seen over their lifetimes, what they have experienced and what they bring to this job they have been given to do on behalf of our country to develop our education system. We have Professor Mary O'Kane, who is the former vice-chancellor of the University of Adelaide and the first woman to become the dean of engineering at any university in Australia. We have Professor Barney Glover, vice-chancellor of Western Sydney University. We have Ms Shemara Wikramanayake, the first female managing director and chief executive officer of the Macquarie Group. We have the Hon. Jenny Macklin, a former minister for families, community services and Indigenous affairs. We have Professor Larissa Behrendt, the first Indigenous Australian to graduate from Harvard Law School and who is a professor of law and director of research and academic programs at the Jumbunna Institute of Indigenous Education and Research at the University of Technology in Sydney. Finally, we have the Hon. Fiona Nash, a former senator for New South Wales, a former minister for regional development, regional communications, local government and territories, and now Australia's first Regional Education Commissioner. It's quite a spread of impressive people providing us with this advice on the back of their deep experience and the professional roles they have played out over many years. While we are looking at these recommendations, we should remember that.

The Universities Accord interim report makes very clear that over the next few decades we're going to need more jobs with university qualifications. In fact we know we are in a skills crisis and we are going to need more qualifications at the TAFE end of the market all the way through to higher education degrees within the university sector. We have to meet the skills challenge of the future. That is why this piece of work is so vitally important and why this bill is so vitally important. We know—and the accord team has totally entrenched this—that we must considerably increase the number of students we have that are currently underrepresented in our system. Students from outer suburbs, students from the regions, students from poorer backgrounds, students with disabilities and students who are Indigenous: these are the students that are really lacking in our system. These are the students who are there and who we can embrace, bring forward and provide with structures for them to succeed.

The interim report made five recommendations. This bill responds specifically to two of them. Let's be clear what those five elements are so that we're not looking at this in isolation. One is creating more university study hubs. They have proven so beneficial in our regional areas. In South Australia we've seen them grow from strength to strength. I thank Senator Chisholm for visiting the South Australian university hubs just a few weeks ago to show our commitment and talk about the future for those vital hubs. Another element that is actually included in this bill is the 50 per cent pass rule, and I will come to that more in a moment. Then there is extending to all Indigenous students the demand driven funding currently provided to Indigenous students from remote and regional areas—and I'll talk a little more about that as well; providing funding certainty during the accord process by extending the Higher Education Continuity Guarantee into 2024 and 2025; and working with the state and territory governments to improve university governance.

It is our intent to act on all of these, but this bill in front of us responds to two of them. The first is ending the punitive 50 per cent pass rule, given its poor equity impacts that we heard about extensively through the inquiry on this bill, and increasing support and reporting for students. It's support for students who are struggling, as opposed to cutting them off at the knees and throwing them out of university. It's providing support to develop their skills and to support them with the challenges they are facing so that they can succeed. The other part of the bill is ensuring that all First Nations students are eligible for a funded place at university, by extending that demand driven funding to metropolitan First Nations students.

The first of these actions is in response to the disastrous rule brought about by the previous government. Currently students must maintain a pass rate in at least 50 per cent of the units that they are studying in their course to remain eligible for Commonwealth assistance. I go to the points Senator Scarr made earlier. I think he missed one critical point. He stepped out that everyone should be able to pass in 50 per cent and it should not be a burden, but just the norm. That does not recognise the challenges that students may face, particularly early on in their courses. If they have come from a regional or a remote area, if they have come from a disadvantaged background and if they are not experienced in writing academic essays by nature of the education they've been exposed to, they need support and assistance and they need us to help them build those skills. If they're dealing with problems, they need to be supported. These are areas where we reach out and help. We don't just kick them out of university.

I myself failed a semester of university at one point because my father died and I was past the cut-off point. This may be an exemption in the current system, but there were all sorts of knock-ons. I was left in a situation where I had a lot of stuff to tidy up after we had got past the grief and I had a lot of support to provide to my family. This meant that I wasn't in a position to indulge all of my attention onto my studies. I'm not the only person who has been through drama, stress, grief or challenges. There are many, many things that students face but the current situation, where students who fail have to pay the cost of their course up-front, immediately cuts out so many people. Or they have to transfer to another course, or withdraw from their study altogether. We have to support students, not punish them. We have to encourage them, not isolate them.

We know from the submissions the Senate inquiry into this bill that more than 13,000 students at 27 universities have already been hit, have already been impacted by this punitive rule. The removal of the rule has been called for by universities right across the country. We heard from universities like the University of Adelaide, Monash University, the University of Technology Sydney, the University of the Sunshine Coast, the University of New England, the University of Queensland and Western Sydney University. That is quite a spread. It is not isolated that people think this is a terrible, terrible rule, so we intend to get rid of it. We need to look at how we identify students, we need to look at how we support them and that is what we will be doing as part of our process going forward.

The second priority action in this legislation is to extend access to demand-driven university places for metropolitan Indigenous students. Currently, if you are an Indigenous student from a regional area you have access but, if you are in the metro area, you do not. This goes against the entire push to have more Indigenous students in the university system. We know that often the pathway is different. The pathway and the advantages are not shared equally in our society and opening this up will genuinely make a difference. If you meet the requirements of the course then you will go to that course on a demand-driven place.

By following through on the recommended actions of the accord, I am very proud to say that we are improving the accessibility of Australian universities. We are ensuring that where you live does not affect your ability to get a degree. We are putting in place measures that will build our workforce, that deal with the skills shortages that we know we have right across our economy and right across our country. Dealing with those things, planning for the future, getting past the lack of planning for our future in skills and qualifications because that is where we stand right now.

We have been ill-prepared over the last almost 10 years of coalition government not looking to the future, not looking to see what skills would be needed into that future and not building for it, not making those provisions. The Albanese Labor government will plan for the future, provide the structures we need, the regulation we need, the environment we need to be able to fill those jobs of the future, to train and embrace the people of this country regardless of their background.

The interim report is an important first step. We are now taking the next steps. We are looking forward to the final report. The final university accord report will be out towards the end of the year and will address the other areas of concern. We look forward to those recommendations so we can truly see how we can build our future, truly do all the things that we need to do.

The measures in front of us today deal with two critical elements that are essential for us to build our university sector, to embrace everyone from across our beautiful country to fill the skills shortages to make us a stronger, smarter country that has a baseline of solid equity and inclusion.