Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian universities accord: final report has backed in what I said six months ago: university students should be paid to do a mandatory placement. If people have to put themselves into poverty to study, if they can't afford to pay their rent or buy groceries, then they'll drop out, and they're dropping out of courses where we have critical workforce shortages like nursing and teaching. The accord report recommends that governments should fund placements for nursing, care and teaching professions, and public and private employers should fund placements in other fields.

It's great they've recognised that something needs to be done about it, but I don't think this recommendation is the way to go about ending unpaid student placements. It's the most expensive way to do it and it will just waste taxpayers' money. If this were a test, they would get an A for effort but an F for execution. This recommendation would see students pay for their placements, regardless of their financial situation. You might think that that makes sense, but does a student from Sydney's northern beaches with a trust fund really need taxpayer money to make ends meet? We can't have people dropping out of study because they can't pay their bills, but we also can't break the budget to do it. It's not an endless money pit. We need to make sure help is targeted to where it is needed the most.

The accord report also doesn't point out that universities are profiting off placement units when students are in classrooms. Along with the real-time financial burden placements put on students, they're also adding thousands of dollars to their HECS debt. It puts them at a disadvantage now and at a disadvantage when they have to put it off down the track. This isn't something that should be overlooked. I'm glad that unpaid student placements are on the agenda and that the government seems keen to make changes, but we have to make sure these changes help those who need it most, without blowing taxpayers' money up the wall.