Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill. Of all the misrepresentations the Labor Party have been guilty of through the course of this parliament, their lies about the higher education bill just about take the cake. These are reforms that increase access to higher education. These are reforms that make an individual's access to trades training not reliant in the least on their family's means. This class rhetoric that Labor's reliably falls back on when in doubt is the antithesis of reality. In Australia the only determinant of one's access to higher education is one's academic merit. This is a bill which will not only enable Australia's universities to excel on the world stage but, critically, provide opportunities to potential students who would otherwise miss out due to location or financial issues.

But that is Labor for you. That is the Labor we have come to know. If the choice is between a crucial economic deregulation reform that provides a sustainable system which at its heart opens education to participants with aptitude rather than just participants with means and a politically profitable scare campaign, Labor will reliably embrace the latter, even to the detriment of poorer Australians. Don't take my word for it. Professor Ian Young, the Vice-Chancellor of the ANU here in Canberra and the Chair of the Group of Eight, a coalition of Australia's elite universities, has also stated that it will not have $100,000 degrees.

These higher education reforms come at a critical time for the university sector. In a recent submission to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, Universities Australia said the following:

We have a choice. We can keep going as we are where the demand for quality university education continues to outstrip the capacity of the system to pay for it; or we do something different.

I commend Minister Christopher Pyne for acknowledging and tackling this problem.

The future viability of our university system is essential in extending the knowledge base and the prosperity of future generations, but it is only part of a suite of programs which this government is endorsing to create jobs. In addition to the higher education reforms we see before us, we have introduced Trade Support Loans, which will provide up to $20,000 for apprentices to assist with their daily costs and the purchase of tools and supplies as they complete their training.

As a South Australian, I was concerned to see that in 2013 Australian apprentice and trainee commencements fell by 39 per cent—the worst performance of all states and the lowest South Australian commencement rate on record. There has been 12 years of Labor government in South Australia, and what do they do? They call for a new minister for trades training in the northern suburbs. Their only answer is to put more bureaucracy in place. I see Senator Cameron shaking his head over there. These are the very people who in your union days you used to represent. You would stand on the picket lines and chant about the inequities. We are trying to get more apprentices and you have watched over a decline of 39 per cent over that period. Six years in federal government and a 39 per cent fall—the worst performance of all states and the lowest South Australian commencement rate on record. Well done!

Something needs to be done, and the passage of this bill will ensure that the rot that has set in will abate. It is noted that one of the key impediments to people undertaking and completing their apprenticeships is the cost of equipment and other necessities. By supplementing apprentice wages with Trade Support Loans, we will be encouraging apprentices to go the whole way with the course, which in turn stands them in good stead for a higher income and stable employment. The Trade Support Loans scheme will work identically to the HELP scheme, a system which ensures that students do not have to pay a cent up-front for their higher education. This allows students to attend university without any discrimination as to their wealth or their socioeconomic status.

It is only once they earn about $50,000 per year that HELP recipients are required to repay their loans—thoroughly reasonable and thoroughly equitable. Nonetheless, as with other loans, people are able to pay it down faster with their own contributions earlier, should they desire. This government is spearheading policies which are designed to minimise the pressures of pursuing further education for people of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. Over 80,000 extra students will be provided support under this new scheme by 2018. This comprises 48,000 more students studying diploma, advanced diploma and associate degree courses and 35,000 additional students undertaking bachelor courses.

The government is investing $371.5 million expanding the current higher education system, which will allow institutions to offer more courses to more students. This increased diversity in courses will give a prospective student more choice in what they want to study, which provides career opportunities and pathways to further qualifications, should they choose.

The subbachelor sector will also receive a significant boost. Each year, this sector supports thousands of students in developing their skills and their skill sets, as well as expanding their knowledge of the trade they intend to pursue. When considered alongside the training components of, amongst others, the Green Army and Industry Growth Fund programs, it just goes to show how committed this government is to upskilling and enhancing the job prospects of Australians. The expansion of the higher education system includes more support for the regional sector, where for too long choice in higher education has been limited. The potentially off-putting trek from the country to the city to study is quite often a barrier for teenagers who have grown up in the country, and the need to obtain accommodation outside of their home towns can certainly place a financial burden on families. Many will now be able to pursue higher education outcomes closer to their family and friends.

Regional universities will receive an additional loading for the cost of running a non-metropolitan campus. They will be able to offer more courses and compete to attract more students. Further to this, the new Commonwealth scholarship scheme will create a major support pathway for disadvantaged students wanting to go to university. Under the scheme, universities and higher education providers will provide funding to students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds. This funding may take the form of a needs based scholarship to meet the cost of living, covering fee exemptions, tutorial support and other items.

I have spoken before in this chamber about the staggering youth unemployment rate in my home region, particularly in the Wakefield electorate in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. The need for education reform could not be greater. As I said before, under the state Labor government the youth unemployment rate in that region has hit 45 per cent. Across the whole of South Australia, 31 per cent of 2013 school leavers are not engaged in full-time study, work or training—well above the national average.

I note that Senator Day is in the chamber, waiting to make his contribution to this debate. His sector is the building sector while mine is the wine sector. He knows, as do I, that these two industries—so critical to South Australia's prosperity—have suffered as a result of the constraints on our education sector, as well as from the lack of South Australian government support for affordable land. The policies of the state Labor government do not promote growth in the building industry. They do not promote growth in apprenticeships—or trades or training—to the extent that, as I said earlier in this contribution, there has been a drop of 39 per cent in trades training starts over the period. That is an appalling statistic and is something that will obviously be an issue for the building trades—stonemasons, plumbers, electricians and so on—in years to come.

People forget that this bill is about making change in the trades area. They think this is about universities and more doctors, physiotherapists and scientists. It is not. It is about kick-starting the engine room of the economy. As Senator Day did so many years ago, my son has just completed the third year of an apprenticeship in carpentry and is looking forward to a successful career in building. Tragically over the weekend he said to me that he was looking at moving interstate from the country centre where he has learnt a broad cross-section of skills and trades training. He said, 'I might look to go where the growth is, where they are releasing land and they are getting an increase in population, unlike in South Australia where it is decreasing.' People are leaving South Australia because South Australia is the highest state taxed state in the nation. It has an appalling record.

For us in South Australia, this higher education bill provides an opportunity for one of our most glorious exports in South Australia, which is education. We have three universities—the University of Adelaide, the Flinders University and the University of South Australia. This will strengthen their position on their core subjects which they are very good at. Not all universities are good at everything. But the way in which the system works now promotes mediocrity in just about everything. Those universities which have a long history and some very good academic support for headline subjects and courses will excel. They will be able to afford to put money into those courses and attract students from all over the world. Likewise, universities in South Australia and, indeed, around Australia will be able to play to their strengths. Isn't that what a market economy is all about? This is no different.

This provides the higher education sector the opportunity to go to a market economy. For what they are very good at they will have a high level of applicants. They will be able to offer those courses competitively with courses around the world. This is about being globally competitive. This is about getting our universities in the top 100 universities around the globe. This is about all the emerging wealth of people in India and China and them looking on Australia as an aspirational place to come and study. This is about not having to have a Colombo Plan like in the 1960s and 1970s. This is about having the ability to attract a lot of people from these emerging economies around the world and having them come in Australia. Whether it is Murdoch University, the ANU, Sydney university, Bond University, Adelaide university, the Melbourne universities or any of the universities in Perth, Sydney or Queensland, they will all develop their strengths in their various areas because they will be open to a market economy. They will do what they do best and what they excel in now. They will not have to be dumbed down into a position where they have mediocrity across all levels and all courses and a funding base which is based upon offering courses that they really are not equipped to run.

This crosses over into the agricultural sector as well because in South Australia there are none better served than we are by the Roseworthy Agricultural College campus. I say that because it has produced many fine natural resource people who are working on the environment. It has also produced many fine viticulturists who are working in our great wine industry. It has also had many oenologists graduate. These are graduates from courses which will be, by virtue of the passage of this bill, opened to the global market economy. I feel sure that these courses will be competitive. They have such good reputations and they will attract international participation.

The higher education reform package will deliver outcomes for all Australians. For those who had already intended to study, the university system will be open and competitive, making universities specialise in specific areas and offering best in the world courses for students. For those who had not considered further education, there will be more funding for sub-bachelor programs and training courses which will allow them to enter or re-enter the workforce with new skills. With HELP being extended, there will be opportunities for first generation students and their respective families. The need for reform was glaringly obvious, and it has taken this government to deliver the reform that will stand the children, families and workforce of Australia in good stead for many years to come.

Before I finish this contribution, I will say that I spend quite a lot of time at the University of Adelaide. I just recently attended its 140th anniversary celebration. It came into existence with a group of people who founded South Australia who had foresight and vision and were able to inspire fundraising to build that magnificent facility that we have today. It is an aspirational university. I was at Flinders University yesterday, a Sunday, going around the grounds there. It is another magnificent university. The sprawling west end of the University of South Australia is also ever growing.

Universally when people from these universities speak to me they tell me that they want this reform. The people who run these universities are now looking to be globally competitive, with everybody vying for a good education sector reputation. Those people want this bill to pass. They understand what Minister Pyne is seeking to achieve. They also want to be able to play to their strengths in their syllabuses. I think that those on the other side should spend some time with the vice-chancellors, boards and students of these universities. I commend the bill to the chamber. (Time expired)

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill, a bill which promises to make higher education in this country the preserve of those with significant financial resources. I thought the contribution from my colleague on the other side of the chamber only reinforced that. He thinks that the only way we can have world-class universities in this country is to increase the fees. So, if you pay $100,000, that is the new guarantee that you are going to have a higher standard. It just goes to show how he might have gone along to celebrate 150 years at a university but he did not speak to any of the students. He did not speak to those mature-age students who want to go back and further their education. He certainly has not spoken to anyone with any disability who wants to attend university.

In simple terms, this is another heartless government attack to reduce the contribution to course fees by 20 per cent to allow universities to decide how much to charge students. The government has denied this charge for some time, but it seems like they are finally owning up to it. During his address to the G20 leaders' retreat, the Prime Minister said:

Two issues in particular that I lay before my colleague leaders: we have tried to deregulate higher education, universities, and that’s going to mean less central government spending and effectively more fees that students will have to pay. We think that this will free up our universities to be more competitive amongst themselves and more competitive internationally but students never like to pay more.

That is what our Prime Minister said.

Just what does this mean? I think the member for Ballarat had it just right in the other place when she said:

Among those young Australians who will be hit the hardest are those attending our regional universities. Over the last 40 years, the reforms of successive Labor governments have opened up our universities, providing those who previously could only dream of going into higher education with the opportunity to do so. Labor successfully ended the cycle of young academic talent being overlooked due to the size of their parents' bank balance. This bill aims to absolutely smash that legacy. Just as the Abbott government did with health and with pensions and with superannuation, they are pursuing a cruel and flawed—

position which is part of their DNA. They are 'directly attacking Australia's sense of social equity, the very framework that has made our country the envy of the developed world'.

What these changes to higher education mean is that for the first time in Australia we will have $100,000 degrees. We will have the cost of degrees in engineering increasing by 58 per cent. We will have graduates in nursing never clearing their debts. Just imagine entering into a degree, embarking on your choice of career, looking to perhaps start a family and realising that you may never clear your debts. Just consider the mental strain this will put on people seeking to further themselves through higher education. It will hang around their necks for decades. It will weigh on them. It will completely change the way we look at obtaining a degree. A degree will appear more like a sentence than a chance of a better life.

The impact that these changes will have are not always immediately apparent. That is what is arguably the most terrifying aspect of all this—the hidden knock-on effects that will affect so many different parts of Australian society. Recently I have been analysing how we can improve palliative care services in Australia. It is my firm view that we as a nation should aim to be the world leaders. But these changes to higher education may actually halt this objective in its tracks. Given that some 80 per cent of palliative care medicines are prescribed by GPs, it is important to consider that GP numbers, distribution, skills and availability have a considerable impact on palliative care outcomes. Alarmingly, the government's budget proposal to deregulate university fees and to change HELP indexation will discourage Australian students from studying medicine.

This will have a particularly profound impact on candidates from rural, regional and outer metropolitan areas, where palliative care demand is high and GP resources are often under considerable strain. Evidence from the United States and Canada indicates that medical students who incur high levels of education debt are less likely to aim for general practice. Therefore, the future viability of palliative care in Australian could be compromised by changes to higher education that deregulate fees. This is just one example, of course. It is one of many. The ripple effects will not always be immediately apparent, but this legislation would make our society more unequal and would have a particularly severe impact on those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

In my hometown of Launceston, in Tasmania, this debate has been brought sharply into focus. The University of Tasmania's Newnham campus is an outstanding institution in every respect. It undertakes research in groundbreaking, innovative fields such as biomedical science. It is the city's largest employer and a key economic driver for the region. Sadly, its security, its capacity to educate students from a range of backgrounds—its very existence, in fact—is under threat. UTAS Vice-Chancellor Peter Rathjen has warned that the Abbott government's $30 million cut to its funding may force the university to raise student fees, slash courses and abandon research. This is in stark contrast to the contribution made by Senator Edwards, so obviously he has not been to very many university campuses in the regions.

Professor Rathjen also said:

The ability to recoup those reductions in revenue through fee premiums may be limited by the economic circumstances of the island.

He said the university would be forced to re-evaluate its mission and decide which of its goals would be—and these are his words—'diminished or abandoned'. He has noted:

Those subjects that we do not teach, the research that we do not conduct, or the social programs that we do not support are unlikely to be replaced easily by other providers.

At this year's state Labor conference a motion was successfully carried which vehemently opposed the Abbott government's planned changes to the higher education sector. The motion was a simple one but its message was incredibly powerful:

Conference reaffirms its stance that education is a right not a privilege and that your economic circumstances or background should not be a barrier to equal opportunity.

That for me sums it up. It is about equal opportunity. Whether or not you can aspire to go on to university should not depend on your parents' bank balance or credit card.

Sadly, the Abbott government doesn't seem to get it. In July this year the Minister representing the Minister for Education, Senator Payne, stumbled badly in her response to several questions from shadow higher education minister Kim Carr during Senate question time. When asked about reports featured in northern Tasmanian media raising the possibility of campus closures in the state's north as a result of the Abbott government's $30 million cut to UTAS, Senator Payne completely stalled. She appeared to think that creative thinking could overcome a lack of proper funding for higher education. She said:

What is actually the problem here is not the government's proposals but those opposite's complete incapacity to think outside the square for even a moment in terms of the operation of Australia's higher education sector …

That is right: we had a lecture from Senator Payne on how we should 'think outside the square'. You couldn't think this stuff up if you tried. Members and senators in the coalition are so glaringly out of touch, so closeted in their thinking, that they think saying stuff like that is actually normal. It represents a reasonable line of thinking for them.

Senator Carr also asked Senator Payne to cite a single example—just one—of where university deregulation in another country has resulted in lower fees and lower student debts. Tellingly, she could not provide a single one. Yet Mr Pyne has been quoted as saying:

… we are trying to help rural and regional Australians by allowing their universities to compete on price …

So he clearly doesn't understand this issue from a global perspective. The Abbott government have not done their homework on what these changes could mean for higher education. Senator Carr and I share the same concerns when it comes to UTAS. The Abbott government have been given several opportunities to guarantee the future of higher education in the state and failed spectacularly each time. It certainly is dawning on many people that the Abbott government are closing opportunities to prospective students and sentencing others to a lifetime of crippling debt.

Over the course of the last year I have asked again and again for the federal Liberal member for Bass, Mr Nikolic, to provide leadership on the future of the UTAS campus. But just like other coalition backbench MPs across the country, glancing nervously back at their electorates but sitting idly on their hands, he has not stood up for his constituents. He has not stood up for those from disadvantaged backgrounds who want to be able to go on to university. He has not stood up for those mature age students who want to go back and continue their education. He has not stood up for people with disabilities, who already have to overcome enormous obstacles to enter higher education.

The only time he has made some noise is when an opportunity has presented itself to promote himself. Several months ago now he was caught red-handed taking credit for 180 new student apartments built at the Newnham campus under Labor's National Rental Affordability Scheme. This, I remind you, is a scheme that was unceremoniously scrapped in the 2014 federal budget. Yet there he was, cutting the ribbon. It was just incredible—taking all the glory but not standing up for his constituents, not standing up for northern Tasmania. It is just one example of how this government has abandoned UTAS.

During last year's federal election campaign, Labor pledged an additional $28 million over four years to build on the Northern Health Initiative. This would have allowed the university the freedom to target new university students and expand its horizons. It would have seen close to 700 more health students trained every year, while also creating 345 new jobs during construction, more than 70 new ongoing positions and a decade-long $1.2 billion economic return for the state. Instead of delivering on projects such as this, we have a government in power completely unconcerned about the Newnham campus. Mr Nikolic and his coalition colleagues are not concerned about saving industries, investing in new projects, protecting jobs or seizing new opportunities. They are stuck in opposition mode and out of their depth.

The Abbott government's first budget has been the most divisive budget in contemporary Australian political history. That much is clear. But I think it is this bill—the planned changes to higher education—that most starkly frames the difference between Labor and the coalition. It is this issue which highlights how divergent the world view of conservative politicians is from that of ordinary people across Australia seeking better outcomes for themselves.

What we have here is a clear choice. On the one hand we can have a higher education system that is accessible to all, that guarantees that talent, intelligence and hard work are the prerequisites for obtaining a tertiary degree—not one's bank balance. We can have a system that does not saddle students with unbearable levels of debt. On the other hand, there are the coalition's planned changes that will create an elitist higher education system, a system where people retire still crippled with student debts, a system that actually discourages people from seeking a degree.

When Senator Edwards made his contribution, he spoke about this bill enabling people from families that have never before had anyone go on to higher education to do so. Nothing could be further from the truth. In my home state of Tasmania, relatively few students take up the option of going on to tertiary education. This bill will not enable people from families who have never had anyone go to university to do so. I was out at the University of Tasmania very recently talking to staff and students—and many of the students I spoke to were the first from their family to go on to tertiary education. That will now be out of reach for far too many people in my home state. This cruel, heartless government is turning back the clock. We should be ensuring that everyone who has the intelligence and capacity to go on to university has the opportunity to do so. Whether they are disabled, mature age or straight out of year 12, we should be doing everything we can to ensure they have that opportunity.

The economic benefits from tertiary education are boundless. My home state, under a state Liberal government, is trying to encourage businesses to come and invest in the state—which I support. But the first place to invest is in the education sector so that all Tasmanians, from the time they start preschool all the way through, can know that, like everyone else in this country, they will have the opportunity to go on to university if that is what they choose to do. But this government is going to take away that opportunity.

This government wants to Americanise our universities—and we know what happens in America. With most things in America, whether it is in education or health or being appointed to be a judge on the bench, it is about how much money you have—how big a donation you are prepared to make to the university to get your child into that university. We on this side of the chamber say that we want our sons and daughters—and our grandchildren—to have the opportunity to go on to university.

We should not be denying them this opportunity. But, as with everything this budget is about and everything this government is about, it is about turning the clock back so that those people who support those on the other side of this chamber—those people from the big end of town—get all the opportunities. I hope that those on the crossbench will realise what this government is really about, and that is keeping people from low-socioeconomic circumstances back where they belong. That is not up front, that is not leading in science, that is not leading in health and that is not leading in research. I say that that is wrong—that is so wrong, and it is so un-Australian.

I am calling again on the member for Bass to stand up for northern Tasmania. He says, in every opportunity with the media and when he confronts the community, that Labor is out scaring students. Well, I am sorry: it is not us who is doing that. It is this government that is scaring people. What happens when a family has to consider if they should send their son or send their daughter to university? We know what happened in generations past: even if they could afford to go it was their sons who went to university. What I am saying is that whether you are the son or the daughter, you should have the same opportunities.

I call on the 'three amigos'—they so proudly call themselves the 'three amigos' from Braddon, Lyons and Bass—and say that it is about time they rode into town and stood up for the people who they were elected to represent! Their actions—which is no action—is resonating in the community. And those people on the other side do not want to talk about Victoria today! I bet we do not have any questions about Victoria today, because in Victoria the people spoke very loudly and very clearly. They have said, 'No!' to these changes to higher education. They have said, 'No!' to the cuts to health. They have said, 'No!' to the GP tax and they have said, 'No more changes to the pension.'

So if those opposite were a wise government that was prepared to govern for all, they would listen and would scrap this bill immediately. I oppose this bill because the people of Australia oppose it.

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We can all agree that Australia needs to invest in the minds that will shape the 21st century. Our decisions on university funding today are going to shape the opportunities of tomorrow. So the question that we are facing today is: do we want an Australia where opportunity is based on the content of people's character and ability or an Australia where opportunity is based on the size of their parent's wallet? We absolutely should strive for world-class education for all.

From 1974 to 1988, Australians enjoyed free university education. I was the beneficiary of this, and I imagine many of the people in this place were too. We must not take it for granted. I recall being at university, and the cost of my university education was not an issue at all. There was a sense that the world was my oyster; I could go on, realise my potential and do whatever education was necessary in order for me to be able to contribute to the best of my ability to Australia. I had the confidence to take on those challenges, knowing that the ability to be able to be educated and to be able to achieve to the best of my ability was there.

This Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill 2014 that we are debating today is going to make it harder—much harder—for students from disadvantaged backgrounds to achieve their potential, by stripping funding from public universities by $5 billion and forcing them to compete against private providers. And these private providers—the for-profit universities—will not be required to offer a wide range of courses, to undertake research or to engage in the community service that our universities do today, like their public competitors. Do we really want to create a system like in the United States, where the most vulnerable are lured by the promise of breaking the cycle of poverty only to find that they are in debt for the rest of their lives for a substandard education?

In my home state of Victoria, there are more than 325,000 students and around 30,000 staff at Victoria's universities who are going to be affected by these regressive higher education changes. I think of the students I have met from Victoria University, which is near my home. Most of the students at Victoria University did not grow up in the richest of households or go to the swankiest schools. The campuses are in Footscray, St Albans, Hoppers Crossing and Melton. These are people who have had to work hard, who have not had all the benefits of wealth. Some have left their friends and family in regional Victoria to take up the opportunity to pursue a tertiary education. Others have come from poor backgrounds, determined to break the cycle of poverty through education. Very large numbers are first generation Australians. They are kids from families with migrant and refugee backgrounds who are determined to get an education and to contribute to Australia to the best of their abilities. They are not, under this proposal, going to have the same opportunities to learn.

Even if they do manage to go to university, it is going to cost them so much more and it is going to take them so much longer to pay their debt off. For many, the prospect of this kind of debt is just too great, especially if they do not have a financially secure family to fall back on. If your whole life has been about scraping together enough money to survive, the prospect of taking on a huge debt is just too much and you say, 'No, I am not going to do it.'

It is not going to impact kids like my two sons, who are 23 and 20. Yes, it would be an impost on them, but I know they have a financially secure family to fall back on if they end up with a massive debt. They can have that confidence that comes with youth—not really thinking too far into the future. My 23-year-old gets his HECS fee statements and he says, 'Yes, that's fine', because he knows that, if things go wrong, his parents will probably come to the rescue. But I know so many of their friends who went to the same really great state public schools—they do not have that background. They have come from broken families, they have moved out of home at the age of 16, they have struggled to pay rent—particularly in the tight Melbourne rental market—and they are saying, 'No, I just cannot take the risk.' They do not have the confidence to take on that level of debt.

While on my way to Canberra, I had a listening tour through regional Victoria—stopping off on my bike all along the way. I asked people what they wanted me to be doing for them in Canberra, how they wanted me to represent them. Many of those hundreds and hundreds of people I met talked to me about these proposed higher education changes and talked to me about the brutal government budget.

One story that particularly sticks in my mind is that of a woman I met in Bendigo. We were having afternoon tea in a cafe in Bendigo and I just got chatting to her, telling her that I was about to go to Canberra to be her senator and asking her what she would like me to represent her about. She immediately talked about the higher education charges. She was in her forties. She had worked in dead-end jobs all her life and she told me she had just reached the stage in her life where she felt capable of going, and wanted to go, back to university. She wanted to do an arts degree. She wanted to end up as a social worker or to do something else using the benefits of a degree. But, having heard about the proposed changes in higher education funding, she said, 'No way.'

There was no way she was going to do it. She was going to keep working in the same dead-end jobs she had been working in. She said there was no way, at her stage of life, she was going to take on the massive amount of debt she would have to under these changed higher education rules. Because she had been on a limited income her whole life, she had been very wise in her financial management. She had never had a credit card, she had never gone into debt for anything and she was not going to even consider the prospect of doing a degree now under these new arrangements. I think that is just so sad.

All over Australia, there are hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of people like that woman in Bendigo who are saying, 'No, I am now not considering taking up the opportunity to try to reach my full potential.' And do not be fooled by the claim that the so-called 'Commonwealth scholarships' will come to the rescue of people like the woman I met in Bendigo and other disadvantaged students. The brutal Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey budget abolished $800 million worth of start-up and relocation scholarships, to be replaced by these Commonwealth scholarships that will be funded by $1 for every $5 of student fee increases. So these will only be created by massive fee increases paid by those not lucky enough to be awarded with a scholarship. Very few students will benefit from all the others paying through the nose.

Modelling by the National Tertiary Education Union shows that for a third of students at the University of Sydney to receive some form of limited financial support the annual fees paid by the remaining two-thirds will have to rise by more than 160 per cent. This will mean an extra $12,800 in student fees. This is not creating more opportunities. And what will these scholarships cover? Will they cover tuition? Will they cover books and equipment? Will they cover the cost of living? And at the end of it all, will it all need to be paid back as yet another loan? The answer is we simply do not know.

Neither the government nor the vice-chancellors of the Group of Eight universities have disclosed how their scholarship programs will work. They do not want the senators on this cross-bench to know the truth. And appallingly, the students who are going to be the hardest hit by these changes will be those in regional areas and in the outer suburbs of our cities.

The minister's claim that the universities so vital to these communities will benefit from Commonwealth scholarships is simply ridiculous. Students at these universities are already the most burdened by fees and the most in need of scholarships. Any scholarships they have to offer will be spread far too thinly across the large number of disadvantaged students. The bill will make it harder for disadvantage students to go to university, it will increase the cost for those who do go to university and it will reduce the quality of the education provided. The loss of opportunities for the people being affected by this and the loss of opportunities for innovation are going to affect us all.

It will no doubt hit our future jobs market because we know that jobs are available to people with skills and education in the areas for development in the Australian economy. Yet the government has the nerve to argue that this will help the youth unemployment rate. In my home state of Victoria, youth unemployment is hovering around 14 per cent and it is more in outer suburban and regional areas. Education is the key to reducing this figure. We need to be giving more young people the opportunity to excel, not to be imposing barriers. I really do think the results of the Victorian election on the weekend show that people understand this. The results really show that people were voting against changes that are not going to give people opportunities. Victorians were voting for providing services and opportunities through maintaining quality education being available to all.

The government has proposed a 10 per cent cut across the board to cut the Research Training Scheme, as well as a fee of up to $4,000 for PhD students. This is another incredibly regressive and backward element of the bill. It is also on top of cuts to the CSIRO, to the cooperative research centres, to the Australian Research Council, to ANSTO and to DSTO. These cuts are not just going to hurt the scientists and the inventors who have dedicated their lives to research. These cuts are going to hurt us all through a lack of Australian innovation.

As Australia continues to grow, we cannot let Australia lose its position as a preferred trading partner. We need to keep investing in education and innovation. It is the absolute bottom line, fundamental to the Australian economy. Otherwise, we are going to lose out to neighbours who continue to invest in research. It is a choice. We can continue to see our economy as, increasingly, the dig it up and ship it out mentality or we can be investing in education, in research, in innovation.

As a regional leader in education, we should be harnessing our knowledge not just to benefit ourselves domestically but to use these skills to export goods and services. That is the area that is going to make the Australian economy grow and that what the Australian economy is going to depend upon in the future. The renewable energy sector is a very good example of that. It is dramatically expanding in the United States, in China and throughout Europe. We here in Australia have an opportunity to be a world leader, but we need to be investing in education. We need to be investing in research. Otherwise, we will be throwing that opportunity away with the flick of a switch. For the sake of the minds that are going to shape our nation in the coming generations, we must not pass this bill.

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate about the future of higher education in this country, because the fact of the matter is that we can do better than we have been doing. But it is going to take a change of mindset. One of the curious things about this place is the attempt by those opposite to paint those of us on this side of the chamber as backward-looking, when on this bill, the Higher Education and Research Reform Bill 2014, as on so many important economic reforms over the last year, they are the ones looking back, clinging onto a world that no longer exists.

We live in an international economy that is constantly changing and constantly evolving. That is something we should all recognise and appreciate. If we want Australian universities to be the best, and if we want to attract the best and the brightest to study at them and to teach at them, then we have to recognise we are part of a global marketplace. I understand the sentiment surrounding the Whitlam era reforms has been heightened recently, but the truth is: that was four decades ago. Gough Whitlam governed in a very different time and in a very different Australia. The future needs of Australian students and of our education sector more broadly are not going to be met by indulging in misty-eyed sentimentality about how things used to be, which has been the response of some of those opposite in their pining for the age of 'free' university education.

As most of us in this chamber have worked out—or I hope have worked out—when we talk about 'free' education, what we actually mean is 'taxpayer funded' education.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nothing is free!

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I might just add, Senator Williams, that we are talking about taxpayers who might not come from privileged backgrounds but taxpayers with backgrounds like that of my parents and my grandparents. We are talking about people who have worked hard to raise families finding themselves funding the education of others. I will come back to that in a moment.

As Senator Williams said, nothing in the world is free. Ultimately it is paid for by working men and women in this country, men and women like those in the streets I grew up in—Perth's northern suburbs. Australians are rightly proud of our higher education sector and they make a significant investment in it with their tax dollars. That is equally true both of those who attend and of those who do not attend university. When some in this place dream of a return to 'free' education, what they are really saying is they think it is fine for those who do not attend university to fully subsidise those who do. That is the logical extension of their argument.

What this government is asking is very simple. We are asking students to contribute half the cost of their education, with the tab for the other half being picked up by the taxpayer. At the moment, it is a 40-60 split, with the majority of the cost falling on taxpayers. From the carry-on from some in this place, you would think such a suggestion was the end of civilisation as we know it.

As is so often the case in this chamber, I find myself drawn to the arguments made by Labor leaders past in attempting to convince those opposite to support sensible reform. If the facts and the evidence will not convince you, maybe a bit of tribal loyalty will. I wonder if Labor senators can tell me who said:

There is no such thing, of course, as " free" education somebody has to pay.

… a " free" higher education system is one paid for by the taxes of all, the majority of whom haven't had the privilege of a university education. Ask yourself if you think that is a fair thing.

Those words did not come from a right-wing radical—though, given Labor's present attitudes towards economic reform, his former comrades may consider him to be one. Do you know who said that? None other than Labor hero Paul Keating, who used those words in a speech as Prime Minister in 1995. He used those words in defence of the HECS system, a system that required students once they earned over a certain threshold to pay back some of the cost of their university education. Who introduced that system? Bob Hawke, Labor's most successful ever prime minister. I do not mind saying that. The same Paul Keating was his Treasurer.

It simply astounds me that, given a choice between the Whitlam-Rudd-Gillard approach of spending massively, running up huge debts and ending in electoral disaster and the Hawke model of market driven economic reforms that delivered a record string of unbroken electoral victories to the Labor Party, those opposite tend toward the first approach and not the latter. I do not mind, of course; I am more than happy for Labor to remain safely ensconced on the opposition benches, where their damage is restricted. But I do find it curious.

I could also at this point invoke another name that is sacred to those opposite when it comes to education policy: that of David Gonski. This is from The Australian newspaper on 2 September this year:

THE architect of the former Labor government’s education reforms has backed the Abbott government’s plan to deregulate higher education fees, claiming it will free up funds to make universities ''even greater''…

David Gonski, chancellor of the University of NSW and one of the nation’s most respected businessmen, also called on the Labor opposition to stop playing politics in the Senate and back the government’s budget reforms…

I will move to the substance of the reforms that we are debating this morning in the Senate. They set Australia's higher education sector up to compete on a global scale.

Education, as is well known to many of us, is Australia's third largest export. If we want to keep it that way and, indeed, grow that export potential, we have to act now because this government inherited a dire situation from its predecessors not only in terms of the budget but also in terms of higher education. Labor are very fond of talking about higher education and how it is in their DNA. There is a saying that you always hurt the ones you love; and if that statement is true then, yes, the Rudd-Gillard government truly loved our university sector. Under the former government international student enrolments in Australia fell by 130 places—about 16 per cent. When you have a 16 per cent fall in your nation's third largest export, it is time to act. If those opposite are too cowardly to do so, that is for them to answer, for them to be accountable to.

I know some argue that Labor did reform the system, and it is true, but it is only partially true. Labor deregulated student numbers, removing the cap on the number of places, but they failed to deregulate the fees, and that is the important part of establishing a demand driven model. As Paul Kelly, no less, put in an excellent opinion piece he authored last August, Labor 'can cover their eyes, block their ears, shut their minds, but the problem won’t change. Labor made a cart but didn’t provide a horse.' I turn to the views of Mike Gallagher, who is Executive Director of the Group of Eight, our top tertiary institutions. He has said:

Unless there is reform we will continue to drift, we will fall behind the emerging universities of Asia and we will fall out of touch with the vital global centres of knowledge.

Mr Gallagher also said some pretty strong words for those who are trying to prevent these reforms from passing this Senate chamber. He said:

It is outrageous that they—

Labor and other senators—

have washed their hands of responsibility for the mess they created.

Universities Australia CEO Belinda Robinson has characterised the government's plan as a 'once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape an Australian higher education system that is sustainable, affordable and equitable in serving the best interests of students and the nation. She also says that failing to act now 'will condemn Australia's great university system to inevitable decline, threaten our international reputation and make it increasingly difficult for universities to meet the quality expectations of our students.' Yet, bizarrely, the self-proclaimed great friends of education opposite want to sit on their hands and do nothing.

I turn to my own state of Western Australia—indeed, your own state of Western Australia, Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle. I draw people's attention and the attention of all senators in this place to an excellent opinion piece that was published in the Australian Financial Review recently by Professor Alec Cameron, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Australia. Professor Cameron's article is a refreshing antidote to some of the more hysterical claims that have emerged from those opposite about these education reforms. He points out one group of Australians who stand to benefit most from these reforms are students from rural and regional areas, particularly in Western Australia. UWA, the university that I attended for my undergraduate courses, has thoroughly examined the matter and found that students who live outside the Perth metropolitan region are at a distinct disadvantage in terms of accessing tertiary education.

Regional and remote areas within WA account for almost 20 per cent of the state's population of 15- to 19-year-olds, yet only 12.4 per cent of commencing university students come from these areas. That means rural and remote students are only getting to university at 60 per cent of the rate of students from metropolitan Perth. It is not as though students in rural and remote areas are not performing academically; in fact, they receive offers of university placements at rates comparable to their urban counterparts, but they do not accept them at anywhere near the same rate. Even more interesting was this fact: around half of those who do accept an offer immediately defer their place in order to spend a year working to satisfy the financial independence requirements to obtain a higher level of Austudy or to qualify for other financial support mechanisms available to students.

Of course, many end up remaining in work and having formed various social connections while becoming accustomed to working lifestyles, never then actually taking up those deferred places. That is a problem; it needs to be addressed. None of this will be news, I realise, but I think that one of the tragedies of the stubborn refusal of those opposite to support these reforms is the loss of opportunities to rural students. It is far easier for university students who can remain living at home in suburban Perth to attend our universities. Those who come from rural and remote communities are faced with meeting a typical cost of living away from home of around $20,000 per year. One of the provisions contained within the legislation we are now discussing is the requirement to provide scholarships for disadvantaged students.

As I have just outlined, students from regional and remote parts of Western Australia are at a distinct disadvantage. These scholarships can actually be used to help students from rural areas to meet the cost of living away from home. Certainly that is the view of the University of Western Australia, based on Professor Alec Cameron's article. This has the potential to be the largest scholarship scheme in Australian history for assisting disadvantaged students, yet the alleged 'party of education', the party opposite, will not support it. These reforms do not alter the fundamental of Australia's higher education system. No student will have to pay a single dollar up-front for the cost of their degrees as a result of these reforms. HELP remains in place and no-one pays anything back until they are earning over $50,000 per year. It remains a matter of considerable irony to me that the only fees students are forced to pay up-front at university are compulsory student union fees, which the Howard government abolished when it was in office and which Labor and the Greens rushed to introduce as soon as they got back into office. Nothing demonstrates more the hypocrisy of those opposite than that they talk about higher education fees but are silent on compulsory student union fees or student amenity fees, as they are called in some places. So much for their claims about making life easier for university students.

There are other voices in our community highlighting the benefit of these reforms for university students. The Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University, Professor Ian Young, addressed the National Press Club on these reforms saying:

It would be a great tragedy for our nation, for our universities, for our future generations, if our senators pass up this opportunity …

Professor Steven Schwartz, Executive Director of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, whose annual awards dinner I attended recently in Melbourne, had this to say on The Conversation website:

As I travel around the nation, it pains me to find much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth in the senior common rooms of our universities. The academic union reports that morale has never been lower. What is the cause of all this angst? Deregulation of tuition fees.

According to the received wisdom, deregulated fees will create a crisis for the arts and humanities. Driven by the fear of large debts, students will abandon English, philosophy and art for accounting, forensic science and sports management. English departments will disappear and history departments will themselves be history.

This would all be pretty terrifying except for one fact. The humanities have supposedly been dying for decades. Curiously, the long slow death of the humanities seems to have little to do with the facts.

Last year, one in three Australian graduates received a degree in the creative arts, society and culture. (This is the government-approved title for the humanities and social sciences.) These enrolments increased 5% over the preceding year and 29% of all doctoral degrees awarded last year were in humanities, arts and social sciences.

Like most of the scare campaigns run by those opposite, I confidently predict that none of the predictions of doom in our tertiary education system will come to anything.

The other aspect of these reforms that I find particularly exciting is the expansion of the HECS system for the first time ever to include diplomas, advanced diplomas and the trades. That means that for the first time you will not need to pay a single dollar up-front to obtain a diploma or an advanced diploma. Now that is important because for many great young Australians, particularly those who come from disadvantaged or challenging backgrounds, a diploma is often an entry point into the world of higher education. I am proud to be a member of a government that has said that if a HELP-style scheme is good enough for university students, it is also good enough for those who want to pursue a trade so that people can get a $20,000 loan up-front and you do not have to repay a cent until you earn over $50,000. I think this contrasts drastically with the increasingly—if I may say—snobbish attitude of some of those who seem to think that a certain type of education is better than others. Our society needs plumbers, builders and carpenters every bit as much as it needs lawyers, doctors and architects. It is high time we afforded those pursuing vocational education the same opportunities as those pursuing university degrees.

We know that boosting this nation's research capacity is crucial to our economic development. These reforms will help Australia ensure we safeguard a strong, competitive research system. Again, it is curious that, when Labor was last in office, they left a situation where no funding was put aside for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy beyond 30 June next year, nor did they provide a single dollar for the Future Fellowships program that supports mid-career researchers to undertake world-class research in Australia. In contrast, this government, the coalition government, is committing to invest $11 billion over four years in research in Australian universities. Included in that is $139 million for the Future Fellowships scheme and $150 million in 2015-16 to continue the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy.

Labor can talk all they like about their commitment to education, but their neglect of both the Future Fellowships program and the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy is another demonstration—as if it were needed—that the Labor Party is all talk and no action.

I began my contribution with some wise words from respected Labor figures past, so I think it is only fitting that, in conclusion, I offer some words on this matter from Labor figures present. One Labor figure in particular is not only a member of this present parliament but is in fact a member of the opposition's front bench. The shadow Assistant Treasurer and the member for Fraser in the other place, in a 2004 book entitled Imagining Australia: Ideas for our Future wrote that our universities should be:

… free to set student fees according to the market value of their degrees ... Universities will have a strong incentive to compete on price and quality ...

What?—I hear you say. That is right. The Labor member for Fraser said universities should be:

… free to set student fees according to the market value of their degrees ... Universities will have a strong incentive to compete on price and quality ...

It is no accident that most politicians write their books after they have been in parliament. He goes on to say:

Much-needed additional funding will be available to universities that capitalise on their strengths and develop compelling educational offerings. The result will be a better-funded, more dynamic and competitive education sector.

Get this! The Labor member for Fraser, who sits in the House of Representatives today, has said the result will be 'a better-funded, more dynamic and competitive education sector'. Those are wise words from the member for Fraser, who is one of the genuine thinkers—I don't mind saying that—on the other side of the parliament. Of course he also supported the introduction of a price signal for medical services with a GP co-payment, but that is for another time—this afternoon, I suspect.

However, the Member for Fraser and the Minister for Education are both correct. The reforms proposed in this legislation will create a more dynamic and competitive tertiary education sector. More than that, they will create a more diverse and equitable sector, particularly for students wishing to study diplomas or advanced diplomas, as well as those from remote and regional communities. (Time expired)

Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to voice my serious opposition to the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill 2014. On Insiders on 1 September 2013, the now Prime Minister Tony Abbott, said to Australians:

I want to give people this absolute assurance: no cuts to education.

In the final hours of the election campaign Mr Abbott again cemented this message with his now infamous words, which promised:

No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to pensions, no changes to the GST, and no cuts to the ABC or SBS.

However, Mr Abbott has already told the people of Australia that we cannot trust his words, and that instead: 'The statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth are those carefully prepared, scripted remarks.'

In the area of higher education we are lucky because the Liberals also put their promises in print. In fact the Liberals 'Real Solutions' brochure states:

We will ensure the continuation of the current arrangements of university funding.

So it now seems that, not only can't we trust what our Prime Minister says, we also cannot trust the finely-honed, focus-group-tested, glossily-printed brochures of the Liberal Party either.

This is a very sorry state of affairs indeed and it poses serious concerns for the state of our democracy. It shows complete contempt for both the Australian people and for some of the most fundamental responsibilities of government. It was also particularly hypocritical coming from the man who assured Australians that under Abbott Australia would get:

… a no surprises, no excuses government, because you are sick of nasty surprises and lame excuses from people that you have trusted with your future.

Touche, Mr Abbott, touche! I am sure that all those young Australians who are starting to feel a university education might soon be out of reach would love to remind our Prime Minister of this particular pre-election promise. Although in the area of education it really should not surprise us that one of the first actions of this government has been to set out on a radical and regressive agenda of cuts and deregulation.

We should have remembered—and many of us did—the appalling form of the previous Howard government. Mr. Howard's first act on higher education was to cut the budget by five per cent. Per capita funding fell by nine per cent from 1995 to 2005. In the same period of time, direct public payments to universities saw no real growth.

When Labor returned to power in 2007, higher education was in a parlous state. During Labor's term in government, we committed to proper indexation of university funding, which meant that universities were $3 billion better off than they would have been under Howard's models. We also uncapped the number of Commonwealth supported places. This meant there were an extra 190,000 students on campuses across the country. Equality of access also improved, with Indigenous student numbers jumping by 26 per cent, and there was an increase in the number of students from low-income families of 36,000.

Labor is committed to quality higher education and to providing all Australians with the opportunity to get a degree. We know that an educated Australia lifts us all up. We also know that, if we really want to invest in our people, access to education cannot be determined by the depth of your pockets and the quality of education cannot be impacted by the distance you are from the capital city GPO. Make no mistake, this is deeply flawed legislation that will greatly increase the cost of higher education and shift the burden back on to students.

The bill before us today sets about creating a two-tier university system, which gives universities carte blanche to charge exorbitant fees. It will lead to $100,000 degrees that will burden individuals and their families for decades after their graduation ceremonies. Modelling by the National Tertiary Education Union found there will be an increase of at least 33 per cent in university fees, to compensate for the enormous federal funding cuts.

In an email to students, University of Melbourne Vice-Chancellor, Glyn Davis, revealed that the real situation is even more dire, saying that fees might have to rise by as much as 61 per cent just to cover the impacts of this government's cuts. Renowned economist and architect of the HECS system, Professor Bruce Chapman, and his ANU colleague Dr Timothy Higgins, warned that some universities will go beyond cost-recovery in their fee schedules.

Many have likened the impacts of this debt burden to taking on a second mortgage. This is a good analogy, but the situation is actually more serious. Students will have to sign up for a potentially lifelong debt before they know what they will earn in future years—and before they can determine their capacity to pay it back. For many it will be a gamble not worth taking.

There will inevitably be a trend of Australians opting out of higher education because it will not be a worthwhile investment. We are already starting to see evidence that this is exactly what is happening. At a recent Senate estimates, Department of Education officials revealed that early figures show university applications for 2015 have dropped a significant 2.9 per cent from last year. In many professions, the risk will outweigh the potential returns of the education. It is clear that the government's extreme attack on our higher education system could lead to serious skill shortages in some of the most necessary professions in the country. Key areas like teaching and nursing will struggle to attract the number of students that Australia needs. Massive debts coupled with modest future salaries would render certain career paths financially unviable.

The Australian Medical Association has warned that the changes could see the cost of a medical degree skyrocketing to $250,000 or more. This does not even factor in the impacts of a rapidly compounding interest rate charged at higher level. This could also lead to a shortage of general practitioners as students make the final decision to move into more lucrative areas like plastic surgery.

Similarly, with an average salary of $77,000, veterinary students could be left with unsustainable debts. The Australian Veterinary Association President, Dr Julia Nicholls, has warned that even if the interest rate is not hiked, vet students are likely to take around 30 years to pay off their student debt—repayments that would total well over $200,000. Likewise, the Australian Nurses and Midwifery Association has warned that Australian nurses would be 'chained to HECS fees for life' and 'forced to work into their 70s just to pay off their debt'.

So we can see how prospective students will be turned off studying particular degrees if the returns are low or repayment is unlikely. But for many thousands of Australians, the entire idea of tertiary education will be dismissed as being unfeasible. People from poorer families who are not able to call on their family for financial support will be particularly affected.

Professor Bruce Chapman's modelling suggests that poor graduates will pay 30 per cent more than those who are richer due to the proposed interest-rate. Women will also be unfairly hit as their debt will continue to balloon at real interest rates while they take time out of work to rear their families. A report from the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research confirms this. It predicts the HECS repayment time will double and up to 40 per cent of women will never repay the debt in full. This is simply unacceptable.

At the same time, regional universities will struggle to make ends meet as they try desperately to recoup the massive cuts to their budgets by raising fees but will quickly hit the ceiling in what the local community is able to pay. I am particularly concerned that Tasmania's economic future will be at risk if these are considered cuts go ahead. The university of Tasmania is slated to take a $113-million hit to funding over the next four years. Also at risk is the $1.7 billion that the University of Tasmania contributes to Tasmania's economy each year along with local employment and business confidence.

Recently I hosted the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, when he visited Tasmania to see the potential impacts of the government's cruel policies of the north-west coast. In Burnie we visited the University of Tasmania Cradle Coast campus and met with staff and students. Staff told us that the university's preparation program helped attract the first person in a family to take on higher education. Many of these were women and mature age students. However, cuts to the university will undoubtedly impact on this program and on the university's strong scientific research focus. Students told the Leader of the Opposition that the government's proposed higher education reforms could see the Cradle Coast campus close or be forced to reduce study options. Mr Shorten also heard that people from the north-west and west coast of Tasmania would not be able to afford to take on the huge level of debt that this government is so keen to burden them with. These are the concerns of the students at this campus. Thirty-one per cent of University of Tasmania's students come from low socioeconomic backgrounds. This is the third highest rate in Australia and nearly double the national figure. In the north of the state there is an even higher proportion of students from poor families going to university.

Recently, I received a letter from the Launceston City Council raising serious concerns about the future of University of Tasmania's Launceston campus as a result of the government's higher education plans. There is no doubt that if this legislation passes, regional Australia will be amongst the biggest losers. Tasmanians cannot afford $100,000-degrees and we simply cannot create a situation that discourages further education. But the truth is that the entire country will be poorer as we are denied the contribution of thousands of smart minds who will have to make the difficult choice to forego tertiary study—and all this at a time when Australia desperately needs to harness our intellectual capital to transition our economy. We can only do this by investing in education so we are ready and able to take our place in the global knowledge economy.

As I mentioned earlier, there were no signs that anything as sinister as this bill was on the minds of those now in government before the election. Nor was the community ever invited to have input into this ill considered plan. Indeed, the complete opposite has occurred. There was no green paper, no white paper and no exposure draft legislation for discussion. HECS architect Professor Bruce Chapman and his colleague Dr Timothy Higgins have raised serious concerns about:

…the apparent haste and seeming lack of expert consideration of the many complex and potentially inequitable outcomes implicit in the suggested radical free deregulation agenda that makes up the Commonwealth's plans.

The obvious question now is: why is the government so determined to proceed with this bad policy when the devastating impacts are well documented? It will be devastating to students, devastating to communities and devastating to our economy. Mr Pyne has trawled out a number of flimsy excuses for this radical plan. The first excuse uses the tried and true conservative tactic of fear mongering. Mr Pyne has tried to scare us into believing that our universities are lagging so badly behind global standards that they will no longer be able to provide quality education, and billions of dollars in income from overseas students will dry up. For an Australian education minister to be talking down a world-class university system is completely inappropriate—not only that but it is factually wrong. The reality is that Australia's higher education system is remarkably competitive.

Despite our relatively small population we have secured an international reputation for high-quality, innovative and highly internationalised universities. In 2014 Australia was placed ninth in Universitas 21's ranking of national higher education systems across the globe. There were no Asian countries ahead of Australia in this ranking, despite Mr Pyne's claim. This year, in the Shanghai ranking, we had four universities in the global top 100 and 19 in the top 500. This is a great improvement on 2004, when just two universities made the top 100 and only 14 were in the top 500 list. While it is true that Chinese institutions are improving their global reputation, there are still no Chinese universities in the top 100. It is not surprising that a recent ABC Fact Check found Mr Pyne's politically-motivated claims of decline in our university sector are 'far-fetched'. But even if we were to accept that the system is deteriorating, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that the measures before us today will improve the situation. Surely, dropping standards are actually evidence of the need for greater investment in education, not callous cuts?

Another argument that Mr Pyne has put forward to justify this regressive legislation is that Australia should be looking to emulate what is happening in America, saying 'We have much to learn from our friends in the United States.' This is a very curious position to take, particularly when you consider the massive debt burden and lack of equity in access that typifies higher education in America. In fact, American student debt adds up to $1.2 trillion, with more than 7 million people in default. While 79 per cent of students born in the top income quartile in the US get bachelor's degrees only 11 per cent of students from bottom quartile families graduate, and millions are foregoing university education as the fees spike well beyond what is financially viable. These are staggering figures indeed. The situation is so bad and so unfair that a group of academics have diagnosed a crisis of justice in United States higher education access in a recent paper.

When describing the US system, economist John Quiggin has said that it:

… does a great job for the 1 per cent who go to the Ivy League Schools (and whose parents are mostly in or close to the top 1 per cent of the income distribution), does an adequate but expensive job for the next 20 per cent or so, and leaves everyone else in the lurch.

There is absolutely no evidence that deregulation of the American university system has led to anything but decreased access, massive debt burdens and enormous equity problems.

The University of Canberra's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stephen Parker, got it right in the Canberra Times, where he wrote that the proposed Australian legislation:

… spells disaster for students and the country.

He pointed out that the measures might benefit a few elite universities but that they would damage the university system as a whole.

Nobel prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, went further, referring to these changes as 'a crime', and saying:

While we in the US are trying to re-regulate universities, you are talking about deregulating them.

There is always room for improvement in every system, but making Australian universities more expensive and less accessible is not the answer.

The third argument that Mr Pyne has been trotting out relates to the wider stories the government is trying to drive about the so-called 'lifters' and 'leaners'. Mr Pyne has been insinuating in a very divisive manner that university students are somehow unfairly taking from other taxpayers who choose not to go to university. Mr Pyne outlined the argument on Lateline in May, where he said:

… less than 40 per cent of the population have a university degree, so more than 60 per cent of the Australian public are paying 60 per cent of the costs of students to go to uni and those students will get a huge personal benefit.

Pitting Australians against each other in order to breed resentment and division is one of the lowest political tactics, but it is, sadly, one those opposite have been using a lot.

Putting that aside, it is a totally spurious argument which denies the reality that investment in education reaps rewards for the whole nation, not just the individual who gets the degree. In fact, recent OECD data pours a big jug of cold water all over Mr Pyne's assertions. This data, which was analysed by Fairfax, shows that the public rate of return from tertiary education in Australia is almost twice the rate of return that the individual who undertakes the study receives. It proves that it is the Australian public that benefits most from higher education, not individuals.

The data shows that Australia ranks second out of 29 OECD countries in providing the biggest benefit to society from an individual's education. So not only is the government's plan unfair; it is also economically reckless. We know that higher education is critically important, not only to our knowledge and skills base but also to national productivity and international competitiveness. We also know that if we are to maintain our strong wages and high standard of living, we need to actively drive the structural transition to a knowledge economy. Measures that discourage university entrance and lock people out of the university market based on their gender or family income will do precisely the opposite.

This bill is inherently unfair, will lock millions out of higher education, create massive skills shortages in vital professions and stifle Australia's transition to a knowledge economy. (Time expired)

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak today on the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill 2014 as a senator in this chamber who had a free university education, and as a senator for the Greens Party, which feels strongly that we need a fairer and more equitable society in this country and that education is an investment in our people. It is a public good and, of course, governments have a very important role in the provision of public goods.

I also rise to speak on this bill as a Tasmanian senator and as someone who has worked for a decade at the University of Tasmania. I have some very strong views, not just on the role and importance of the university to Tasmania, the Tasmania people and the Tasmanian economy but also on the future of the university and what is required to really lift the university's profile.

I fundamentally oppose this bill on a very simple platform—it was not raised before the last federal election as a key policy of the coalition. I remember listening to the Governor-General's speech in this chamber on the first day of the new parliament, and I listened very carefully to the speech of the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, bringing down his first budget. It became very clear to me that the government said it was going to redefine the role of government in the Australian people's lives. There was a lot of talk about far-reaching reform and that this government would be remembered not just for things such as free trade deals but also for its significant reforms. Following the sad passing of ex-Prime Minister Gough Whitlam I talked to my children about the legacy of that man, and the Labor Party, during the 1970s and why it is so unusual that one political figure, who was in government for only three or four years, can be remembered as having left such a significant legacy. Yes he was revolutionary, but the reforms he proposed were giving something to the Australian people—such as free education and free health care. The reforms this government are proposing, whether they be in health care, with the GP co-payment, or deregulating university, are about taking things away from the Australian people. As my colleague Senator Rhiannon has so eloquently put it, this bill is not about improving higher education in Australia—it is about a $5 billion budget saving. The amendments that we will be debating will likely see Mr Pyne look for cuts elsewhere.

Let us be very clear: this was not raised as a key election issue that the coalition campaigned on to get elected. It followed a number of studies commissioned by the government releasing messages that of course they wanted, and those studies have now been acted upon. It is so significant and so far-reaching a measure that the Australian public should have got the detail before the last election. You could say it is deceptive and it is dishonest, and it is something that I believe would have influenced the outcome of the last election. My feeling, having gone to the first estimates hearings after the announcement of this higher education deregulation policy, was that this had not been planned for very long. I got the distinct impression, as I am sure everyone else got at that estimates, that the department was very much grappling with something they had not been given very much time to look at. It was in chaos and disarray. There has been more time to go out and sell this package, and we know that since Mr Pyne and his department have gone out to talk to vice-chancellors and universities there have been a number of suggested amendments and compromises, but let us be very clear: no election campaign, no information for the public and it was sprung upon the department. It is hardly something we should be rushing, and opposing this bill is absolutely fundamental to who the Greens are. We do, as a party, believe that higher education— education—is a public good that all Australians should have access to and it should not be about the amount of money a person has; it should be about providing fair and equal opportunities for everyone. I myself had that opportunity—I did not pay for my undergraduate degree; it was free. It may be an alien concept to students now that higher education in this country can be free, but a number of generations of Australians did get free higher education thanks to the reforms set in place by Gough Whitlam. I must say I did pay HECS on my postgraduate degree, and on my studies in viticulture, but what we are looking at here is a fundamental rewriting of higher education in this country.

As a Tasmanian senator I would like to say that not only is my university, the University of Tasmania, very vulnerable to the risks posed by this deregulation—probably singularly vulnerable, as are a number of other rural universities—but Tasmania's society and its people are vulnerable to the risks of this deregulation. I will talk about that in a minute. The university is the second-biggest employer in my state and its growth is totally synchronised with the growth of the economy, not just in key areas such as, as we have often discussed in the chamber, scientific research at IMAS and at the climate institute down in Hobart but also in the two other regional campuses in Launceston, where I happen to be based, and in Burnie. I worked for the university for nearly a decade and I recently spoke about the 100-year commemoration of the first economics lecturer at the university. I am grateful for my time there and for meeting the people that I met. I had the chance to do some research and do some teaching in areas of significant passion for me.

What I know, and I suppose not many people in this chamber do know this, is that the University of Tasmania in the last four years has been going through a significant restructuring. This was put in place by the new vice-chancellor, Professor Peter Rathjen, who I happen to have a lot of time for. He began a process of what was called academic reprofiling. The university was cutting costs, putting in place voluntary redundancies and non-voluntary redundancies, efficiency dividends and a number of other cost saving measures to raise money for a war chest—a war chest to go out and hire in key areas some of the best academics in their fields. The target under this academic reprofiling campaign was for 50 new world-leading researchers—not necessarily teachers, but researchers.

I have to say, from my time at the university and the many friendships I still have with those who have left—because many have left—and the time that I have enjoyed working with the NTEU, the Tertiary Education Union in Tasmania, that it has been a very difficult time for the university. It has been difficult from a morale perspective for those who are still there, it has been difficult in terms of support services for academics and it has been difficult around job uncertainty. I campaigned very hard, as did my other colleagues at the last federal election, to get a 10 per cent increase in funding towards higher education in this country to help out not just my university but other universities. The truth is that we actually need to increase funding to universities, not to decrease it.

Getting back to the University of Tasmania, it has been going through this restructuring process and morale in some departments is at rock bottom—and I have to say that I know that at the northern campus that is the case, and I also understand that, given the large number of cuts we have seen in climate change and marine research, a number of the other big institutions are also feeling the pinch, if you will pardon the pun, down in Tasmania. May I say that, out of the academic reprofiling campaign, with a target of 50 new academics, the university so far has got 20 after four years, and only 12 of those are professors. That does not mean that the other eight are not high-grade recruits; they are very important to the future of re-ranking the University of Tasmania. So they are less than halfway through their target of attracting these high-profile academics. The theory was that you get these world-class researchers in, with big names, and you start getting the ratings that you need to become a tier 1 university. It was a very brave and ambitious campaign put in place by the vice-chancellor, Peter Rathjen, and his team. They are now facing the concept of university deregulation, a cut in funding and raising fees, with the significant pressure that is going to continue to put on the University of Tasmania, on top of four years of hardship already in trying to restructure this institution. It is going to be very difficult to manage.

To his credit, Professor Rathjen was quick out of the blocks on the back of this higher education package, saying that the university would have to find at least another $31 million a year in funding. I want to stress again that they have cut a lot out of the university already. Good academics have no support staff anymore in some departments; they have to do everything themselves. Of course, these types of things inevitably feed through to the quality of education.

The university is on an island. One of the theories with this higher education package is that competition from non-university providers was going to be essential to raising overall education levels. Well, guess what: in Tasmania we have only two—out of 150 around the country—registered non-university providers at the moment, and I am not downplaying their significance, but they are seminaries; they teach priests. So they are hardly going to be competition for the University of Tasmania.

If we are talking about the importance of lifting overall education standards, let's not beat around the bush here: Tasmania needs to lift its higher education standards, as it does its secondary education standards. But you see the flow-on effect here, the chain of events, where students are battling—or should I say the education system and the state are battling to keep secondary school students in school? Their retention rates are the lowest in the country, and suddenly you make life a whole lot harder for students contemplating doing the extra two years, getting their high school graduation diploma and then going on to university.

Suppose you were a student and you were sitting back making this decision—and let's be honest: Tasmania has a larger number of lower socioeconomic areas than other places around the country, and we have a very low retention rate in higher education. If you were trying to encourage and incentivise students to do their final two years and go on to improve their lives and invest in their own education, why would you make it harder for them? Why would you increase the amount of money they have to spend on loans into the future to pay for their degrees? It is potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus the fees they have to pay for their degrees, plus the probability—which is very real in this day and age, because it is a dog-eat-dog world that we live in, and I had absolutely no qualms in telling my students this when I taught them—that, unless they do really well at university, they are still going to struggle to find a good job, not just in Tassie but everywhere. You add this layer that suddenly, if they are unemployed and they are under 30—so they get a job and they lose it, which is a very high possibility—then they have no income support either. So not only have they invested in their future career by spending years studying with no income, building huge debts, but you then add the axe hanging above their head that, if they are to lose their first job, they are not going to get any support from the state. So all these things compound and add to uncertainty in the minds of students, young people—let's face it—who, while they have the world at their feet, also have so many of the stresses and anxieties of how they are going to cope and survive, what they are going to do and what choices they are going to make with their lives.

So to me this is pretty simple. We have a state that urgently needs incentives to get children into higher education; we have a university that is restructuring and desperately seeking a new direction being hit with another restructuring through this higher education package; and we have a state that is highly vulnerable to a failure at the University of Tasmania, given the flow-on effects of it being the second biggest employer in the state. But I know from my own work that I have done with the Greens for our Tasmania 2030 document that we are the only political party that has put together a 20-year plan for growing the Tasmanian economy, and university is one of the central planks in that. Not just in my home city of Launceston but in Burnie in the north-west and in Hobart, university has so much potential to offer so much more to Tasmania. This is another reason that Tasmania is so vulnerable.

It is written in every academic's contract at the University of Tasmania that they have a community service obligation. We have three campuses in a small state for this reason, because the university is a critical part of the community. Each academic performs a whole range of functions, which I did myself: going and talking at schools; attending public forums and all sorts of events; and working closely with community groups and social organisations. They do not get paid for this. This is what university is. It is written in the charter of the university. There are high-cost campuses that are subsidised by what we call the stars or milking cow campuses in places like Hobart. There is no doubt that the northern campuses are high cost, but remember that that was the way in which the university was set up. It was set up because it plays such an important role in the community.

I think we are faced with a very grave situation, if the crossbenchers in here were to buckle and vote for this deregulation package. Let us start with the fact that this is deceptive. It was never campaigned on at the last federal election. For something supposedly so revolutionary and good for us, you would think that Mr Pyne and Mr Abbott would have been champing at the bit to get out at the last election and campaign on this and how much money they are going to save in the budget. There is a reason they did not. Their so-called vision for this country is finding cost savings for a budget—who cares about people, fairness, equity and the anxieties of our young people?

Senator Back, I have heard you talk in here before—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President—and I understand your free-market arguments about education being a private good, but remember that, if we invest in our future, in our kids and even in higher education for older Australians and they go on to earn more money—which they do; the statistics tell us that—then that is more tax revenue for the government. The government earns a return on its investment in spades. Not only do we get a good outcome for people in this country that helps drive innovation and investment in so many areas right across our economy but the government gets it back in revenue, which it can reallocate to future generations of Australians. The US model for higher education service providers of charging high fees is not the way to go; that is not Australia. We should be different. We should be proud of the fact that education has been affordable in this country for generations. I am proud of the fact that I was able to get a free education that has given me all the things that I need to go ahead with my life, and I would like to see all Australians have that opportunity. What we are debating here is absolutely critical not just to my state but to the entire country. The best thing that the crossbenchers can do for the nearly one million university students across this country, for future students, the future leaders of Australia, and for the staff at these universities and their families is to vote down this bill and start a conversation about how to build up higher education in Australia and not rip it apart.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the words of a recently departed Prime Minister, it's time. It's time that this Australian Senate acted in the role that we are elected and placed here to do, and it's time that this Senate passed the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill 2014. I intend to spend the next few minutes arguing that case.

Senator Whish-Wilson, a person for whom I have a lot of regard and respect, a person with a sound economic and commercial background, knows very well—as, indeed, does Ms Cate Blanchett, who spoke at Gough Whitlam's memorial service—that they did not receive a free university education at all; they received an education paid for by the Australian taxpayer. It took the Hawke-Keating-Dawkins government to realise the stupidity of the so-called free education and once again to introduce a circumstance in which there was a shared cost between Australian taxpayers, students and their families with regard to university and higher education. Today, in this country, the taxpayer is paying 60 per cent of the cost of education in higher education, but they are actually paying more than that simply because the HECS—the Higher Education Contribution Scheme—at the moment is funded for students at a rate below the bond rate, the bond rate being the rate at which the government borrows. Who do you think actually pays the difference? It is the Australian taxpayer. We have a multibillion-dollar unpaid HECS liability. Who do you think pays the interest on that liability? The Australian taxpayer. It is time to become more reasonable.

We listened to Senator Urquhart for a few minutes going on about the costs associated with higher education and the way in which the coalition apparently is going to destroy circumstances as we know them. Let me remind the listening audience that the then Labor government were proposing to cut $6.6 billion from higher education, should they have remained in government, and indeed had already cut $2.2 billion of that $6.6 billion. Whilst every person in this chamber and this parliament obviously supports the needs of higher education and the opportunities for postsecondary and higher education, including non-university education, we all know that, in today's world, there are going to be cuts in funding.

Why do I say it's time? There are two reasons. Firstly, in a recent survey, 56 per cent of the Australian community supported the deregulation of university fees as opposed to eight per cent who strongly opposed it. Secondly, to whom do you go when you need to ask the question associated with the sorts of changes that are proposed in the legislation? Surely the parties best equipped to advise the community, to advise the parliament and particularly to advise the Senate would be those with responsibility—the university vice-chancellors and the directors of the non-university education sector.

But I want to start my quotation, if I may, with the words of the shadow Assistant Treasurer, Dr Andrew Leigh, who commented:

Australian universities should be free to set student fees according to the market value of their degrees.

He said:

A deregulated or market-based HECS will make the student-contribution system fairer, because the fees students pay will more closely approximate the value they receive through future earnings.

That is the shadow Assistant Treasurer of this parliament making the argument for the coalition, and I believe the crossbench senators need to take careful note.

But if we take the chair of Regional Universities Network, Professor Lee, he said:

… that the deregulation of student fees was the only way that the sector could maintain quality and access and remain internationally competitive, as significant, additional funding is unlikely, irrespective of political party composition …

Let us be logical in this argument. The Vice-Chancellor of the University of WA, which is in my home state, Professor Paul Johnson stated only two months ago:

The status quo is not feasible as it will over time erode the quality of our education and research activities—not a good position to be in when our nearest Asian competitors are investing so heavily in these areas.

What do we all want? We want a system that is accessible. We want a system into which students can come paying no fees. We want a system in which those who are not ready to transition from school to university can actually benefit from the sorts of assistance, the HECS-type schemes, for sub-university programs—diplomas and others. From my own 13 years as an academic in regional and rural universities in this country, and teaching at the University of California and as a visiting professor at the University of Kentucky, I know there are many young people who are not yet ready for a university degree. But what the coalition is proposing is a scheme whereby up to 80,000 students each year will be provided with the opportunity of participating in non-university higher education courses, in many instances on their way to transition to degrees and even further beyond. That is the excellence of the proposal in this higher education bill as proposed by Mr Pyne.

Mr Shorten knows very well—and I wish he and Senator Carr would stop their nonsense about the 'Americanisation' of the courses. Firstly, there is no HECS in the United States of America. Secondly, those state-based schemes will often charge interest: they will charge interest at levels three or four times their own borrowing rate and they will require repayment the day the new graduate starts work. The circumstance here in Australia? No fee upfront; no debt initially; no repayment until a graduate is earning $50,000 or more, and even then only four per cent repayment; $100,000 of income repaying eight per cent. What sort of a deal is that?

If we do need to adjust the level of HECS post-graduation, let us talk about that in this chamber. But let us remember the people of Australia are saying to us that this is not some high school debating club in which, at the end of the debate, we all go home and nobody is the better or the worse for the experience. This is the Senate of the Parliament of Australia. The decisions that we make impact heavily—on individuals, on families, on communities, on businesses, on governance—and the time is now past for us to be having the sort of high school debating discussions that we have at the moment. We have got decisions to make. We have got existing students and future students and their families considering what their options are. We must move to pass this legislation with or without amendment.

Some interesting comments as to why we are where we are. In addition to cutting $6.6 billion from higher education, as was the intention of the Labor government should they have continued, we have a circumstance in which the then government removed the cap on student numbers, encouraging the universities and others to increase dramatically the number of students, but of course there was no concurrent increase in funding. Therefore, if you have more participants and the same number of dollars, then quite obviously and logically what you have is a deterioration in the per student delivery of services. That is the point being made about the fact that if we make no changes, we are going to have the inevitable circumstance where the quality of education for our students will deteriorate. If we existed in a bubble, you would say, 'Does that matter very much?' We know very well we are in an intensely competitive environment in higher education not just for our own graduates working in Asia but also the value that international students provide to our education system by seeing this country as a desired and desirable place in which to get their degrees. Therefore, if we do nothing we will see a deterioration in standards. We cannot afford for that to happen.

We have also heard this business about $100,000 degrees. We know at the moment the qualification for which I was once a graduate, veterinary science, is already more than $100,000. It is a six-year course. Some engineering courses are already more than $100,000. Our colleague Senator Kim Carr gets up there and talks about $100,000 degrees, but you have the UWA vice-chancellor saying that the capping will be $16,000 a year. So a three-year degree times $16,000 equals $48,000. Where is the $100,000? A four-year agriculture degree: four times $16,000? It is $64,000. We have to get rid of this nonsense. It is the high school debating standard. We are the Senate of the Australian parliament. We are making decisions that impact on people's lives, and it is just no good to have these cheap shots—multiplying 16 by four and ending up with 100. Maybe Senator Carr needs to go back to primary school, if not to university?

I do want to, if I may, for a few moments devote my attention to the non-university higher education suppliers. In the inquiries that we have had the information provided to us was that some 10 per cent of higher education students in this country are at the moment educated in the non-university higher education sector. What is interesting is because this group will be picked up under the umbrella of protection with this new legislation, far from courses increasing in fees, they will actually see fees come down.

Are these institutions intensely in competition with the universities? No, they are not. In many instances they provide the transition programs and the language programs so people who attend these institutions, particularly those coming in from overseas, such as migrants, who do not have high-quality English or the mathematical standards, subsequently go to the universities. A lot of programs are run jointly. They will see a reduction in their course fees, because at the moment these students and their families are electing to pay a higher fee than is being charged in the universities.

What was also interesting to me was that, whilst at the moment they do have access to the HELP scheme, for some reason, which nobody could explain to me, there is a 25 per cent levy on top of the HELP scheme or HECS for these students. So they already pay more, they are getting no support under Commonwealth supported programs and for the privilege of it they pay another 25 per cent HECS. Where is the equity in that? I absolutely do not know. Nevertheless, this group will benefit enormously because they will be picked up under the legislation as proposed by Mr Pyne.

I want to reflect for a few minutes on the international scene. When fees increased substantially in the United Kingdom in the recent past, in the first year attendance by low-socioeconomic students went down. Do you know what happened from the second year on? They actually went back up and have now increased beyond those levels. Why? Because all of us recognise the inherent value of higher education to our careers and to our lives. It is probably the biggest long-term decision some of us will ever make.

There is a very good argument being mounted about repayment of HECS by many people who go out of the workforce and then come back into it and whose debt will continue to increase and there is also conversation about what actions can be taken to protect these people. I make two observations. The first is that people returning to work on a part-time basis—and there are many from my own profession; many young veterinarians and young doctors go out of full-time work to have a family or for some other purpose and return to work part time—never get to that trigger of $50,000 CPI linked so they are not repaying the debt.

The second point that needs to be made in this circumstance is that it is beholden on a student in making their decision as to which course they are going to participate in to have a look at the employability and the worthiness of that course for their own future earnings, their career, their progression and their job satisfaction. It is the case in this country that we are incredibly generous when it comes to providing the opportunity for postsecondary education, but I do not think anybody armed with the fact that at the moment the taxpayer is paying 60 per cent of a student's education—and with the proposed changes in the Pyne legislation it will drop to 50 per cent—would suggest that a student should just wander off and participate in some vocational course to satisfy their own interest levels when indeed there never was the capacity for a reasonable income to be earned from that pursuit and therefore expect the taxpayer to fund a second course that is going to stand them in good stead for employment.

I have a lot of sympathy for the comments that Senator Whish-Wilson made with regard to Tasmania. I had businesses in Tasmania. I employed 250 or 260 people in Tasmania in the 1990s. I remind Senator Whish-Wilson that the provisions contained in this legislation, which are going to allow over 80,000 students a year to be provided with financial support so that they can participate in advanced diploma courses, associate degree courses and sub-bachelor courses, will be of enormous value in my view to Tasmania and to Tasmanians. Therefore, I see this as being of benefit.

In fact, it is interesting when you reflect on what is expected of the Australian taxpayer. We speak of the government. The government of itself has no money at all; it only gets money from taxpayers and businesses and distributes it, and all too often it does not distribute it all that effectively or wisely. The Chancellor of UWA commented not very long ago, in the middle of this year:

I’m a bit bewildered to see left-wing students campaigning for lower fees on the basis that people who don’t go to university should be funding their education. What they’re saying is people who don’t go to universities—

have never been to university and are not going to go to university—

should through their taxation be funding university students who in due course earn higher incomes.

It is an interesting question as to the ethics and the logic of that circumstance.

I want to go back now to the people we should be listening to—the vice-chancellors. John Dewar and Glyn Davis, two eminent vice-chancellors of this country, made the comment:

… unless the policy settings change, universities … continue to grow only by taking market share from each other. This will not be good for institutions that sit lower in student preferences but play such a vital role in providing access, particularly in smaller communities.

They say:

… rejecting the package, as urged by some senators, provides no solutions for a sector that cannot operate on present public funding and has fewer options to supplement income.

Then there are other comments relating to higher fees, making the point that I made earlier—that is, there is no suggestion that there is going to be a complete and utter increase of hundreds of thousands of dollars. What we are introducing is competition. If three or four institutions offer an equivalent degree in physiotherapy—courses of equal value, of equal input academically—and if one of those institutions is providing that education at a lower fee, the students will vote with their feet. And those who are charging unreasonably high fees will fall out of the market.

Dr Spence from the University of Sydney will not say how much the fees are going to be. He simply says that, based on his modelling, he supports that $16,000 per year flat fee first proposed by UWA in the looking to provide an equity package. Time has not permitted me to reflect on the sorts of scholarships that will be available. They will be of enormous benefit to rural and regional universities.

In summary I ask, where will we find ourselves if this Senate does not grow up and start making the decisions for which we are paid? What are those who are opposed to this doing? They are condemning students of the future to a low-quality, overcrowded education; to a lack of competition for quality courses; and a tertiary education sector at risk of falling behind our international competitors. They will deny low socioeconomic students a place in the institutions that are best equipped to offer the courses that they want. This will be an enormous burden as university leaders have told us and as community sentiment has told us, and as the majority of the parliament has said.

Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to contribute to this debate on Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill 2014 and outline clearly why Labor will not vote for this piece of legislation and why we will stand with so many Australians opposed to these measures—not just Australian students but Australian academics and members of the broader community, who have clearly outlined their opposition to the government on these measures because they are, simply put, unfair. There are unfair to the students. They are unfair to Australia's higher education system.

Senator Back has done a miraculous job in gilding the lily in trying to outline the benefits for regional Australia of this package. This package does the exact opposite. It actually completely disadvantages regional Australian students when it comes to higher education. We have knowledge of that in my home state of Tasmania, which does have campuses in regional parts of the state which are now in jeopardy if this legislation is passed.

This package really stands in incredible contrast to the university legacy of the Whitlam government. I know we are not living in the days of the Whitlam university legacy now but we certainly have not moved away from it to the extent that is proposed in this package. In fact, the policymakers who put forward this package lived under that legacy. They had that free education benefit and they know very well that it was about letting merit decide whether you went to university; it was not about how big your was your pay packet was or how big was your family's bank account.

That is why the Australian people have called this unfair package the Americanisation of our world-class university system. That is exactly what it seems to be to me—the Americanisation of the system. We know how it works in America. It is very much about how much a family can invest into certain universities to be able to get a seat within them, whereas here in Australia, where we have values of egalitarianism and a fair-go ethos, we have a higher education system that we can be proud of. It is based on equity and merit rather than income. I think that is a very pertinent way of describing this unfair package.

Australians opposed these things because they understand the value of our universities. The understand the value not just to themselves or to their children and grandchildren; they understand them in terms of the value of the research that is provided to our country and to our policymakers. They understand the broader value of universities to our community.

Many of us have degrees, as do members of our families—degrees that have prepared us for highly skilled work. One thing we know about jobs of the future is that we are continually going to need highly skilled workers. On this side of the chamber we value very much the role that universities play—not just in educating individuals but as contributors to the public good. But in this package the government proposes to deregulate university fees, cut course funding by an average of 20 per cent, if not more, and dramatically increase the interest charged on student loans.

So while the Minister for Education Christopher Pyne panders to the politics of envy—and in doing so pits payers of tax who were once students against students who pay tax—universities will have to raise their fees to make up the funding cuts and then raise them again to provide the revenue they deem necessary to keep them competitive. All the analysis highlights that. All the analysis—whether it is from the Group of Eight right down to the National Tertiary Education Union—agrees that fees will need to go up by around 30 per cent just to make up for the dramatic cuts that this government wants to place on our universities.

Let's have a look at those cuts. In total, the Abbott government's budget measures cut $5.8 billion from higher education teaching and learning and university research. The negative impact of that cut on funding for Commonwealth supported places is undisputed. Commonwealth supported places are an incredibly important part of a university structure—except, of course, in the minds of Christopher Pyne and Joe Hockey. Even the Prime Minister finally fessed up in front of the most powerful leaders in the world at the G20 not so long ago:

… we have tried to deregulate higher education, universities—

he whinged. He then went on and said:

… and that's going to mean less central government spending and effectively more fees that students will have to pay.

He has said it himself. There is no point in Senator Back trying to gild the lily by saying that this is somehow going to be of benefit to regional students, or students anywhere, when it is very clear from the Prime Minister himself that this is the deregulation of our higher education system and it is going to lead to higher fees for university students.

The University of Melbourne's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Glyn Davis, revealed that student fees will have to rise by up to 61 per cent. The University of Tasmania's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Peter Rathjen, stated:

Those subjects that we do not teach, the research that we do not conduct, or the social programs that we do not support are unlikely to be replaced easily by other providers.

For some degrees, that figure of 60 per cent is incredibly high. That is not, of course, a problem for students who can afford that, for wealthier students. But it is a real problem for middle-class people, working people—the bulk of Australian students. It is a perfect outcome for a reactionary government that has forgotten its people, because that is clearly what this seems to be: a government that has forgotten its people. A government is supposed to govern for all people, not just for those that can afford certain things. A government is not supposed to cherry-pick certain areas—vested interests, one might say—and look after those and leave the rest. So I do not think that it is governing for all people. It does not seem to like certain people—some people who feel that the economy should be assisting them rather than them being slaves to the economy, is perhaps how it looks at it.

Swinburne University's Vice-Chancellor, Linda Kristjanson, dismissed this winner-takes-everything package in a message to Swinburne University staff on 27 May:

… deregulation will inevitably lead to much higher fees for our students … Over time, full fee deregulation will lead to a higher education system characterised by the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’.

That puts what I was just saying pretty clearly. The haves, of course, are fine in this education package; the have-nots are not fine.

That is where I draw back to the Whitlam legacy, because that is where we had our university system opened up to the haves and the have-nots. It is where, for the first time, we saw university students from families where there had never been a student attend university before. Since that time, university has continued to be a part of so many families' lives, with families having so much pride that their family member—a child, perhaps—was able to attend university because of that Whitlam policy change to higher education. Now it looks like we are going back to those dark old days, just like we are going back to the 1950s in so many policy areas, such as with the Prime Minister's comment about coal being good for humanity. It is a very sad time in Australia's history right now, to see the unwinding of so many good policy decisions and so much good legislation that has been put in place. I think the higher education system, starting right back from that Whitlam legacy, is certainly one of those.

I have to say that this seems like conservative ideology at its best. The top of page 1 of such an ideology, if there were such a book, would be, 'Protect the powerful and the privileged.' As long as the haves keep on having through reforms like this, as long as wealth is transferred from the poor to the rich through welfare cuts and tax cuts and as long as the Australian meritocracy is undermined, this government will keep claiming that black is white and that these changes will benefit students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds because they include the so-called Commonwealth scholarships.

Let's have a look at the Commonwealth scholarships. In the real world, how much money is the Commonwealth contributing to these scholarships? Absolutely none. How much money are all students contributing to these scholarships? All of it. These are not Commonwealth scholarships. They are citizens' scholarships—citizens' scholarships that will underwrite the privileged over the struggling. The elite sandstone universities will charge higher fees so they will have more money in their scholarship funds. Meanwhile, the local universities choose between raising fees for all so that they can offer scholarships for some or watching talented students being lured away to those big cities. The talented students themselves face a choice between a lifetime of debt and a lost opportunity.

Common sense dictates that the talented students from disadvantaged backgrounds will be deterred from seeking a degree. The fact is that a number of those, of course, will be women. Bank of America Merrill Lynch chief economist, Saul Eslake, has warned of the consequence of higher interest rates on student loans, particularly for women. Mr Eslake said the prospect of repaying university loans while raising a family may in fact deter women, while many other prospective students would weigh up the costs against the benefits.

The coalition's imposition of a real interest rate on university loans will also deter those who are likely to earn lower graduate salaries. We know what Christopher Pyne had to say on this matter. He said that women would not be disproportionately worse off, because those are the only degrees that women attain.

How insulting and how wrong does he have it for so many professional women out there who have degrees in a range of areas?

So shutting the door on opportunities for women and putting up the glass ceiling for another hundred floors or so is no big deal to this government. This is what Christopher Pyne, the education minister, said on that front:

Women are well-represented amongst the teaching and nursing students. They will not be able to earn the high incomes that say dentists or lawyers will earn…

That is what your education minister said to the Australian people. No wonder this country has turned against this government when you have outlandish, insulting remarks made by the education minister about women—and how wrong he is in saying them as well. How out of touch is this education minister, and yet he is the one who through this parliament wants to change our university system for men and women now and for so many generations to come. It is a complete wrecking ball he is driving through our higher education system. He is a man who is incredibly out of touch not just with the system itself but with women on top of that.

Let's have a look at it. If the average Australian wants to be an engineer or a scientist, the professions that will determine Australia's future prosperity, according to Minister Pyne, those kinds of degrees will not be done by women. According to Universities Australia, the cost of important courses like engineering and science will have to increase by 58 per cent to make up for the cut. Environmental studies will have to increase by 110 per cent. Charles Sturt University vice-chancellor Professor Andrew Vann has calculated:

For CSU we calculate this to be an average of 23.5% across the board. Some areas would need to rise substantially. Science fees would need to be increased by 62%, Agriculture by 48% and Environmental Studies by 114%.

This government should tell the Australian people precisely how much of our future they are willing to burn, because that is exactly what they are doing through this terrible piece of legislation. They should take an explicit policy implementing this funding bonfire to an election and get a clear mandate to try to do it. I bet you they will not receive it from the Australian people. They have already made it incredibly clear that they do not support this terrible policy to deregulate and drive up the fees of our higher education system.

The coalition does not have a legitimate mandate to implement this university funding dystopia. In fact, as the education minister admitted prior to last year's election, the government did not have a higher education policy which it was possible to seek a mandate for. It did not even have a higher education policy. There was no platform upon which the Australian people could judge them on higher education, because they simply did not have a policy. Now, some one year later, now in government, to tell the Australian people they are going to drive a wrecking ball through the higher education system and put students into decades upon decades of debt through cutting university funding is, I think, an act of complete deceit to the Australian people.

But that is all part of the plan of this government. They say one thing before the election, as we know, and then do the complete opposite afterwards. The minister has cited a speech he gave this February. He said 'that comprehensively outlined almost exactly what we did in the budget'. That was a very long speech in which the minister devoted 38 words to a 'comprehensive outline' of his budget plan. In fact, it was a some 6,000-word speech, and yet 38 words were for his budget plan for higher education.

How did the Australian public miss this, I wonder? I think it was because the government did not want to highlight what it was going to do tho the higher education system. No-one really saw these reform coming, because I think the government did not want us to see the reforms coming. I think they thought they could get away with us not seeing these reforms coming. But how short-sighted were they? What a way to treat the Australian community by seeing if they could just sneak this through in the budget and hope no-one would notice. In fact, what this does is drive such a detrimental change to every student in this country, especially those that, as I have highlighted, simply cannot afford to pay these incredibly erroneous debt degrees that it is placing on so many students.

The Australian people will certainly compare this government's performance with those of the Labor Party. The Labor Party stands very clearly for the values of egalitarianism and inclusiveness when it comes to higher education. In fact, we value very much the roles that universities and students play not just in educating themselves or universities educating individuals but as contributors to our public good. That is why we oppose cutting public funding to universities. That is why we will stand for what is fair and decent, and that is for our university system not to be gutted and for our students to have a future in that system.

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Singh for her contribution because I think Senator Singh, particularly early on in her contribution, demonstrated where the Labor Party's thinking is on this when she harked back to the Whitlam era of university funding. I will touch on how far we have come from the Whitlam era and how far we need to go from the Whitlam era. Whilst it may have been well intentioned, the kind of policies pursued by the Whitlam government when it came to higher education were not good for universities or egalitarianism. In fact, they were good for a small number of rich and middle-class kids to get a free education on the back of other taxpayers. Those were the reforms of the Whitlam era to which Senator Singh approvingly harked back in her speech—we do not want to go back there—and governments of both persuasions have recognised that over many years, and that is how we got to the point where we are at the moment.

I want to go to the necessity for reform and the big picture as to why these types of reforms to our university sector are important. Virtually every vice-chancellor and every serious higher-education leader have gotten behind these reform because they understand where we sit and, as we look forward as a nation, how higher education will be funded and conducted in this country. We are at a very important moment. That is why this reform is very important.

Let us look at the problems that we have at the moment. There is a recognition on both sides of politics that we want to see more people accessing higher education in this country. The Labor Party recognised that when they were in government and it is central to the coalition's reforms and agenda. We want to see an extra 80,000 supported places in higher education. Both sides agree that we want to see more people accessing higher education. Believe it or not—although you would not know it from any of the contributions from the Labor Party—from the Labor Party's actions in government, we know that they acknowledge there is not an endless blank cheque from the taxpayer as more students come into the sector. If you acknowledge that you want to see more people accessing higher education in this country—and the Labor Party has said that they do and the coalition has policies aimed at seeing more people access higher education and more people getting supported places in higher education—then you must acknowledge that you cannot give a blank cheque and that the money is not endless. We know that because of the savings outlined by the previous Labor government.

Even the reckless Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments eventually recognised that, if we going to have more people in the sector, as we want to see, and if we are going to have more supported places, unless we reform the way we fund those places we will have a serious fiscal problem. The Labor Party recognised that in that past—but they do not recognise that now—and that was their $6.65 billion in savings out of the sector. We both agree about more places, we both agree about no blank cheque and we both agree that you have to make savings. That being the case, we have to reform the system. If we agree on all those things but do not do anything else, then we are absolutely ensuring a reduction in quality. There is no other way of splitting this up. More students, more supported places, supported on both sides of politics, not an endless amount of money from the government to continue to subsidise each of those places more and more and a recognition for the need for savings: if we do not reform higher education we will get a lack of quality. And that is what the vice-chancellors have very clearly said. This has been the case of a long time.

Under the current system, the way for a university to make ends meet, to make their institution viable in a financial sense, is, effectively, to have as many students coming through as possible and as many students as they can get away with. That is the way to bring more money in but it is not a recipe for higher quality; in fact, it is exactly the opposite. It is a recipe for lower quality because they just jam more students into lecture theatres. You have one lecturer and you have more students in the lecture theatre; you have one tutorial and you have more students in that tutorial.

In my own experience at university I had a HECS-funded place, not a free place, and I had the opportunity to pay for that privilege once I was earning. Like many Australians, I did not come from a privileged background. I worked hard at school and I had the opportunity to get a HECS-funded place at university. For me it was choose your course, do your best and try to find a job at the end of it, and once you are earning a certain amount you will pay back that debt. That was a great opportunity for me and for countless other Australians. Those opportunities will continue to exist under this system. But even in my own experience, I saw the limitations on this system in the way that it is at the moment. I can remember tutorials of 50 and 60 people at the Australian National University in the law faculty in succession law. Now, no matter how good you are, if you have 50 or 60 people in a tutorial, you are probably not learning that much. That is an example of the business model and why the business model is broken: you jam in as many people as you can, you get those HECS-funded places which are fixed, you bring in that revenue, you try to keep costs down by not having as many staff or by not having as much support. Is that the kind of future we want for our university sector because, as we bring in those extra places, those pressures will only grow? If we agree that we open up more and more higher education places—and I have not heard anyone say they do not want to see that because it is good and necessary for our future—do we want to see students getting a lower quality education? I certainly do not. I want to see the quality improve. And the only way to do that—short of a blank cheque from the government, which is not going to eventuate—is to look at how we can fund things better. The Labor Party acknowledged in government that eventually there is not enough money for a blank cheque. It has to be reasonable.

Individuals get a significant benefit from that university education and from the taxpayer. It is often put in this debate that there are societal benefits from higher education. There are private benefits as well, significant private benefits. What this seeks to do is better balance who contributes, so that society can continue to fund higher education more and more. We are saying that, in order to deal with those funding issues and in order to improve quality rather than see quality go backwards, in some cases there will be a greater contribution asked for from individuals. There is no doubt about it.

Andrew Leigh has said that in some cases fees will go down. We will see what competition does but there is no doubt that we are asking for a different type of contribution. This is what Andrew Leigh said about the results of deregulation—and I agree with Andrew Leigh on this point:

The result will be a better funded, more dynamic and competitive education sector.

That is right. The alternative is actually a not-as-well-funded, less dynamic, lower quality, less competitive education sector. I cannot believe that those who are arguing against these reforms are arguing for those things. They would never say that they are arguing for those things, but ask any vice-chancellor—except perhaps Professor Stephen Parker, my good friend from the University of Canberra, who I have a lot of time for but who I disagree with on this, and there may be some others but I have not heard from them—in this country what the result will be if we do not get these reforms through, and they will say: it will be less competitive and less dynamic and, over time, there will be a further reduction in quality. We will not get the type of extraordinary outcomes that we would expect from our higher education sector; we will not get the kinds of extraordinary things happening in our universities that we would like to see.

Our universities do some amazing things at the moment, but the model that we have for funding them is broken—unless someone wants to argue that we should now have fewer students accessing higher education. You could perhaps make an argument that, if you reduce the number, you might be able to stick with the current model, but that would still be flawed. But when you accept that we are increasing it—that we want to see more people accessing it, that there is no blank cheque from government—then these reforms become absolutely critical. The downside of not doing these reforms will be that my kids and your kids and the kids of millions of Australians as they access higher education in this country will get a substandard higher education, a lower quality education.

It was put again by Senator Singh and by those opposite that somehow these reforms will stop someone from a poor background from going to university. That is absolute rubbish. Even as they say it, they know it not to be true. We heard them harking back to the Whitlam era. The Whitlam reforms saw a small number of predominantly middle- and upper-class Australians accessing universities and not paying a cent for them. Those reforms were so successful that the Labor government under Hawke and Keating had to change the system. So we see this continuum in university funding and policy. We have come a long way.

While Senator Singh and parts of the Labor Party might want to hark back to the Whitlam era, we do not want to go back there; we cannot, we should not and we will not. In fact even the Labor Party does not argue that we do. Is that Labor's position; that it will now be free university education? I thought we had that debate almost 30 years ago. I thought it was settled that that system did not work and that it was not a fair system. It was the most unfair of systems. We heard from Cate Blanchett that she got a free university education. I do not know what her background is; I think she went to a fairly good private school. Was it fair that the local plumber or the local cleaner was paying for her free education at university? I do not think so. I do not think that was a good system. We have moved on a continuum since those failed policies and we have improved the system over time. But it needs significant further improvement if we are going to meet the challenges of the future.

We have seen it in postgraduate studies, where we have seen deregulation. We do not see the same type of regulation for postgraduate education as we do for undergraduate education. Yet we have seen good competition in the sector. Going back to this idea that people from a poorer background are going to be denied a university education; that is absolute rubbish. In the United Kingdom, we saw more people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds accessing university since deregulation, because it is not about how much income you have as you go in; it is about the amount of income you can earn as a result of that university education.

The relevant factor is the capacity to pay. It is not about whether your dad is a truck driver, a brickie, a university lecturer or anything else. It is about how you go at university, how hard you work, what you make of those opportunities. And as you take advantage of those wonderful opportunities that have been given to you through your own hard work and through the support of the taxpayer, as you go into the workforce and make a good living then you are asked—then and only then—to make a contribution to that education. We think that is fundamentally fair. In fact we think the alternative is fundamentally unfair—that we do not ask you to make a reasonable contribution to that privileged education, to that ability to earn on average a million dollars more than those who do not access higher education.

This reform opens up sub bachelor degrees. We have not seen that kind of reform before. We are going to see people in a whole range of different sectors having access to what many university students have accessed for the last 30-odd years. Surely that must be an improvement in improving access. That is a wonderful part of these reforms.

I actually think that these university reforms will be a significant improvement and will present a wonderful opportunity for the ACT. We have some extraordinary education institutions here in Canberra. We have the Australian National University. Notwithstanding Stephen Parker's opposition, we have the University of Canberra, which I believe to be an excellent tertiary institution. In fact I pay tribute to Stephen Parker for the fact that he recognised some years ago that he needed to make hard reforms within his university. He inherited a bad state of books and poor management. He turned that around, and I always backed him making those hard decisions. Some of those decisions were unpopular but the likes of Stephen Parker would acknowledge that you have to balance the books—as does the coalition government. He acknowledged that within his own university and he did turn things around.

I think this will present some extraordinary opportunities. I think the ANU will grow and prosper under this as will regional universities. But we will see the Australian National University growing, employing more people, providing more opportunities, doing even greater levels of research and making a greater contribution to our national life and to international advancement. We have got the Australian Catholic University here and the University of New South Wales through ADFA has its campus here. We will see other private providers coming up and increasing their presence. Canberra is well placed. This will be a significant thing for the ACT.

As a parochial Canberran, this really provides some great opportunities because it plays to our strengths as an educated city, as a city with some great tertiary institutions already but institutions that if we do not reform could go backwards in the next decade, and I do not want to see that. I want to see them continue to go from strength to strength. The only way we can do that is if we reform the system.

We all agree we want more people accessing tertiary education—that is a great thing. We are all working on that. We all agree there is no blank cheque here. If you agree on those things, you have to reform the system. You have to make it fairer. You have to make sure that the relevant contributions are fairer and that will see a more dynamic system—as Andrew Leigh says, as the vice-chancellors say and as so many others say. So for all of those reasons, I commend this bill to the Senate.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Higher Education and Research Reform Bill 2014. It gives me an opportunity to point out the vast ideological differences between Labor's approach to higher education and the approach of those economic vandals opposite. It also allows me an opportunity to talk about how the Abbott government's regressive changes to higher education will impact on the one university in my home state, the University of Tasmania.

It is important that we are having this debate, because higher education is one of the key drivers of Australia's economic productivity. The way Australia invests in higher education is a key determinant of our global economic competitiveness. Not only does Australia need to invest in higher education, but we need to ensure equity of access. After all, higher education is a powerful tool for lifting disadvantaged families out of poverty and giving people the opportunity to succeed in life.

Labor has a proud record of investing in higher education. We lifted investment in universities from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013. We boosted the student population of Australia's universities to 750,000, putting another 190,000 students on campus. But despite the massive increase in student numbers, the additional funding we put into higher education still translates to a 10 percent real increase in funding per student. Not only are there more students at university since Labor came to government in 2007, but there have been massive increases in the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Indigenous student numbers have been boosted by 26 per cent, regional students by 30 per cent, and there are now an extra 36,000 students from low-income families going to university compared to 2007.

Labor also invested $4.35 billion in world class education and training facilities through the Education Investment Fund, including $500 million earmarked for regional Australia. By contrast, what we have from the Abbott government is a plan for the Americanisation of Australia's university education system. Why we would want to copy the United States by adopting a system that has been a disaster for equality is beyond me, especially at a time when the US is actually trying to move in the other direction and re-regulate universities.

Nobel-prize winning economist, Professor Joseph Stiglitz, was quoted in TheSydney Morning Herald in July this year as saying, 'Countries that emulate American model are kidding themselves.' He cautioned that deregulation of universities would lead to greater inequality. Professor Stiglitz did not pull any punches. He described the Abbott government's proposal as 'absurd', 'a crime' and 'a way of closing off opportunity'. At a forum at Central Queensland University, Prof. Kwong Lee Dow, former Vice-Chancellor of Melbourne University, talked about the impact of the changes on rural and regional communities:

… students will be paying significantly more, and rural and regional students will be disproportionately affected.

In poorer communities, including regional and rural communities, families will not be able to meet these higher fees so the institutions will have less funding and so become less competitive over time.

While deregulation will push up fees for university courses there are two other elements of the Abbott government's plan that will lead to making university education less affordable. They are introducing a real interest rate on all HECS-HELP debts and cutting funding for university courses by up to 37 per cent. The funding cuts for university courses are completely arbitrary. Some courses have had an increase in their subsidy while others have been savagely cut.

Universities Australia estimates that to make up for this cut the cost of engineering and science will have to increase by 58 per cent and environmental studies will have to increase by 110 per cent. According to analysis by the National Tertiary Education Union, course fees will have to increase by an average of 30 per cent to make up for these cuts. This is the major component of the $3.9 billion of cuts provided for by this bill, the others being changes to indexation of university funding and cuts to the Research Training Scheme.

With this bill and the savage cuts announced in the budget, this government proposes to hack a massive $5.8 billion out of our universities; $5.8 billion of cuts will gut our universities, yet this government promised no cuts to education, amongst other things, before the election. This is a betrayal of every student, prospective student and parent who voted for this government.

Not only will students pay more for their degrees through higher course fees but they will pay more through the introduction of real interest rates on their university debts. The government wants to increase the interest rate on HECS-HELP debts from that of the consumer price index, typically around two per cent, to the government bond rate, capped at six per cent. The current government bond rate of 3.8 per cent is quite low, historically, and the rate more typically sits between five and six per cent. Seven-hundred and fifty thousand undergraduates and 250,000 postgraduate students, as well as 1.2 million graduates with existing HECS-HELP debts, will be hit with thousands of dollars of additional interest on their loans after 2016.

At least under the current scenario of CPI indexation, if a graduate does not earn enough to make compulsory repayments their debt maintains its value in real terms. Without even factoring in the government's changes, the current outstanding HECS-HELP debt is projected to grow over the forward estimates from $26 billion to $42 billion. Bank of America Merrill Lynch economist Saul Eslake has warned that higher interest rates on university loans could deter many students from studying as they weigh it up against other investment decisions. Talking to the Hobart-based newspaper, the Mercury, Mr Eslake said:

It would be irrational for people not to consider the cost in relation to their working life, in the same way as when you borrow to buy a house.

Mr Eslake has warned that there would be a particular deterrent effect for women, who earn less than men on average over their working life. Prof. Bruce Chapman, the architect of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, more commonly known as HECS, has modelled the impact of the higher interest rates and found that they will result in graduates on lower incomes paying 30 percent more than their wealthier counterparts.

Returning to the deregulation issue; Dr Geoff Sharrock, program director at the University of Melbourne's LH Martin Institute has described fee deregulation for the Group of Eight universities, as a 'license to print HELP debt'. Dr Sharrock has modelled scenarios for Group of Eight universities which have shown medical degrees costing over $200,000 without even taking into account the interest on the debt. Modelling by the National Tertiary Education Union—or NTEU—found that an average degree could cost between $40,000 and $65,000, with medical degrees increasing to $180,000.

Universities Australia modelled the potential cost of engineering and nursing degrees and found that an engineering graduate could have a HELP debt of over $100,000 and repay it over a period of 20 to 25 years, compared with the current debts of less than $50,000 and a repayment period of 14 to 18 years. A nursing degree could cost over $50,000 compared to around $24,000 under the current arrangements. Those opposite say our claims of $100,000 degrees are scaremongering, but you cannot fault the modelling.

And the Prime Minister himself has conceded that deregulation will lead to higher fees. When he addressed the G20 meeting in Brisbane, Mr Abbott said:

… we have tried to deregulate higher education, universities, and that's going to mean less central government spending and effectively more fees that students will have to pay.

In justifying these massive fee increases, the government puts forward the argument that students only pay 40 percent of the cost of their degree and have average additional earnings over their working life of $1 million.

There are several reasons why this argument is flawed. First of all, at the time HECS was introduced the 80-20 split between the taxpayer and student contributions to the cost of a degree was roughly what was considered to represent the public benefit to the country and the private benefit to students. The 40 percent contribution students make towards the cost of their degree used to be 20 percent when the HECS system was introduced. There are no suggestions that over this time graduate earnings have doubled, or that they will increase again if we increase the student contribution.

Secondly, because we have a progressive income taxation system in Australia graduates who earn more also contribute back through higher rates of tax. And finally, there are many more professions that require a bachelor's degree to qualify for entry than before—for example, nurses and teachers—but these occupations do not lead to high rates of pay. Because of the lower rates of pay for these occupations, higher HECS-HELP fees and higher rates of interest could lead to many potential students being deterred from studying nursing or teaching. What will that do to the supply of skilled graduates for these professions? What impact will that have on the health and education systems across the states and territories of Australia?

As if this will not be disastrous enough for the supply of qualified nurses and teachers, this bill also discontinues the HECS-HELP benefit, a scheme which provides an incentive for graduates of certain courses to take up a related occupation. This benefit was designed to address Australia's shortage of skilled workers in mathematics, science, statistics, education, nursing, midwifery and early childhood education. Some graduates who made study decisions based on this policy will now be hit with debts that they did not plan for.

A particularly concerning aspect of the deregulation agenda is the proposal to offer Commonwealth supported places to non-university higher education providers. The Victorian Liberal government tried something similar by introducing contestable funding for vocational education and training, opening up the market to non-TAFE providers. This led to a massive increase in government expenditure for courses which failed to get students in jobs or fill skills gaps. Similar concerns have been found in a two-year inquiry into for-profit colleges by a United States Senate committee, which found that they charged higher than average tuition fees and spent considerable resources on recruitment and marketing but little on student support. The Australian Skills Quality Agency has already raised concerns about the misleading marketing practices of many training providers, including guaranteeing qualifications without the need for assessment, claiming that qualifications can be completed in unrealistically short timeframes, and guaranteeing students jobs on completion when the provider is not in a position to make such guarantees

We have a robust system of accreditation of higher education providers in Australia, and undermining that system will substantially undermine Australia's reputation for quality higher education. The evidence from other jurisdictions is that fully contestable funding does not benefit students, it just benefits training providers who are seeking to make a profit with little or no regard for the welfare of their students. The current vice-chancellors have not been particularly complimentary about the government's proposed changes, no matter what Senator Seselja has tried to put across. Let me tell you what some of them have had to say. Professor Warren Bebbington, from the University of Adelaide, said:

… it is starting to look as if the student debt burden for many under the proposed reforms might well be worse than in the US.

Professor Linda Kristjanson, from Swinburne University, said:

… deregulation will inevitably lead to much higher fees for our students … Over time, full fee deregulation will lead to a higher education system characterised by the 'haves' and the 'have nots'.

Belinda Robinson, the Chief Executive of Universities Australia, said:

… if we're not careful, what we will start to see is a situation where students are being deterred not only from participating in university study but from in fact taking time out of the workforce to do things like raise children, because it will be such a financial burden for them once they re-enter the work force.

For the most refreshingly blunt contribution, we have Professor Stephen Parker, from the University of Canberra, which Senator Seselja is so keen to talk about:

… these changes, taken together, are: unfair, unethical, reckless, poor economic policy, contrary to the international evidence and being woefully explained, raising suspicions about how much thought has actually gone into them.

… it is the combination of all these components that makes this the worst piece of policy I have seen in Australia in my 26 years here …

Professor Kwong Lee Dow, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, in a speech on 25 July this year, talked about the impact the government's plans would have on rural and regional communities. Professor Dow said:

In poorer communities, including regional and rural communities, families will not be able to meet these higher fees, so the institutions will have less funding and so become less competitive over time.

Despite the overwhelming evidence about the devastating impact the Abbott government's policies will have on rural and regional universities, the Nationals, the so-called party of the bush, is once again selling out their core constituency. I have given many examples in previous speeches to this place about how the Nationals have abandoned the interests of the people they purport to represent, and this is just another example to add to the list. It behoves the Nationals in the Senate and in the other place to explain to rural and regional Australia why they would support a plan that will gut regional universities—like the University of Tasmania in our home state, Mr Acting Deputy President Whish-Wilson. It seems clear to me that the coalition is not a partnership on equal terms. Instead, the Nationals just roll over to their Liberal masters and accept their free market ideology, regardless of the impact it has on their constituents in the bush.

If the Nationals do not represent regional Australia then who do they represent? They do not believe regional Australia should have decent telephony and broadband services like their city counterparts. They do not think regional Australia should have access to trade training centres, GP clinics or bulk billing doctors. They do not think regional Australia should have modern infrastructure. And now we see that they do not think regional Australia should have access to affordable, quality higher education either.

On the subject of education in regional Australia, I will now turn my attention to my home state of Tasmania. We have one university, the University of Tasmania. UTAS is of particular importance to Tasmania because it is a major economic driver, not just as a provider of tertiary education and research but as the state's biggest employer. Of the government's $5.8 billion in cuts to universities, UTAS is expected to have $113 million cut from its budget over the next four years. Vice Chancellor Professor Peter Rathjen warned about the difficulties UTAS will experience in the face of these savage cuts when he said:

The ability … to recoup those reductions in revenue through fee premiums may be limited by the economic circumstances of the island … Those subjects that we do not teach, the research that we do not conduct, or the social programs that we do not support are unlikely to be replaced easily by other providers.

UTAS has said that the cuts to their funding are so devastating that they will be presented with the choice between significantly raising fees, cutting courses, abandoning research and even closing one of their northern campuses. In August this year, I joined a forum hosted by my Tasmanian colleague, Senator Brown, and the shadow minister for higher education, Senator Carr, at the University of Tasmania. Invited to the forum were representatives of staff and student groups, as well as other university stakeholders. There was universal agreement among the stakeholders that the Abbott government's proposed changes to higher education would result in low-income families, regional students and women being worse off. Tasmania, having a higher proportion of low-income families, is a place where many students already struggle to make it to university.

This bill—and the government's whole higher education agenda—breaks so many of Mr Abbott's pre-election promises. He promised 'no cuts to education'. He promised to lead a 'government of no surprises'. His education minister, Mr Pyne, said that the government would not raise university fees. The Liberal Party's Real Solutions policy document promised to 'ensure the continuation of the current arrangements for university funding'. And, in February last year, Mr Abbott told a conference of Universities Australia:

First and most important, we will be a stable and consultative government. If we put in place a policy or a programme, we will see it through. If we have to change it, we will consult beforehand rather than impose it unilaterally and argue about it afterwards. We understand the value of stability and certainty, even to universities.

Obviously, the value Mr Abbott once placed on stability and certainty has now been thrown out the window.

In concluding my contribution to this bill, I ask those opposite: what is the rationale for these changes when we have a system of higher education contribution that has served Australia well for decades? Is it just a crude grab for cash? Is it another savage cut to prop up tax breaks for billionaire miners or your profligate Paid Parental Leave scheme for millionaire mums? Or is there something more ideological underlying this push?

We know from the government's approach to other issues—paid parental leave, universal health care, superannuation, pensions and income support for jobseekers—that this government believe that your opportunity in life should be driven by your wealth. They will deny it, but policy after policy and bill after bill brought into this place demonstrate that this government is about entrenching wealth and privilege and punishing the vulnerable and disadvantaged. They have demonstrated it with tax breaks for billionaires, with $50,000 cheques for millionaire mums, with their GP tax, with their pension cuts and with their cuts to income support for jobseekers. Now they are demonstrating it again with a scheme that will ensure that students on low incomes or from disadvantaged backgrounds cannot afford a university education. (Time expired)

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have sat in the chamber for the last little while and I also watched much of this discussion on the television in my room before I came in here. Some of the comments from across the chamber have been quite extraordinary, including some, Mr Acting Deputy President Whish-Wilson, which came from your good self when you were giving your contribution earlier this morning. Senator Urquhart claimed this morning that Mr Pyne, the education minister, had made these claims about our universities falling behind the rest of the world, as if it were only Minister Pyne who was making those comments. But I would like to draw to the senator's attention to a letter that I am sure we all received. It has been in the media. It was issued by Universities Australia. It says:

Dear Senators,

As you are aware, without strong and sustainable universities, Australia risks being left behind.

Unfortunately, competing calls on constrained public finances have meant that per-student funding has decreased in real terms over a number of years.

It is now clear that a new approach to funding is needed to maintain the quality education students expect, but that approach needs to be fair.

This is where you, the Senators of Australia, have the chance to make a difference, a chance to champion a new higher education package that is fair for all: fair for students, families and taxpayers.

If you have a look at that, you can see that these are not the words of just Mr Pyne; they are the words of Universities Australia, which is the peak body representing Australia's universities. I will draw the attention of the chamber to the last three comments I quoted from this particular letter—fair for students, fair for families and fair for taxpayers.

One of the things that was very, very clear in the original suite of reforms that was put up by Mr Pyne and the government was that student was not going to be required to pay back one cent of the loan for their education until they were earning in excess of $50,000. It was also very clear in the package that there was an intention to expand the loan opportunities for post-secondary education to courses that were nongraduate, something that has never happened in the past before. In creating a level of equity for students, there is no expectation for them to start paying when they cannot afford to. There is also a broader equity in this space to make sure that it is not just students who seek to have a graduate education who are going to be looked after under this particular scheme but also students who possibly do not wish to go for a graduate education but want to undertake vocational education and the like. This means that there is a huge base of people out there that previously had not been covered by the opportunities to get financial assistance for their education that now will be.

It is fair for families. Not everybody in a family will want a tertiary education. Some may well want to do vocational education. If you have a look at the opportunities across the broader family space, each individual in a family will be able to choose the area that they wish to pursue in their education and not feel that they are disadvantaged by one of the other members of their family who decides they are going to do a tertiary degree.

This is particularly fair for taxpayers. Many of my colleagues have made a comment in their contributions about the fact that, at the moment, 60 per cent of a university degree is paid for by the taxpayer and that the individual student is required to pay approximately 40 per cent. So non-tertiary educated people are paying for the education of those who seek a tertiary education. Whilst the argument for universal education is one that has been put forward here, we also have to have a balance with the argument for equity. Those people who want to seek a tertiary education need to be very mindful that those people who are paying their taxes out there on the ground are the ones who will actually be funding their education.

In the immortal words of one who is often quoted by those opposite, the Hon. Paul Keating:

There is no such thing, of course, as "free" education somebody has to pay. In systems with no charges those somebodies are all taxpayers.

This is a pretty important point: a "free" higher education system is one paid for by the taxes of all, the majority of whom haven't had the privilege of a university education.

Ask yourself if you think that is a fair thing.

That was said by Prime Minister Paul Keating in 1995. Nobody is saying for a moment that higher education is not a fantastic thing for the community and that it does not bring a public good, but the point that Mr Keating makes is that you cannot have a free education. There is no such thing as a free education because there is a cost associated with it. If there is a cost associated with it, somebody has to pay.

Through the debate that has occurred since this bill has been touted and negotiated amongst those in this place, it is very clear from just about everyone you speak to—apart from those whose heads remain well and truly lodged in the sand—that doing nothing is not an option. There are also a whole heap of things within this suite of proposed changes in the education space that those opposite would be happy to throw out, to have no changes and to continue along with the status quo. But, as we have seen from the comments made by the universities of this country, standing still and doing nothing is actually tantamount to going backwards. We are going to throw out even things that those opposite would have to admit are good in this suite of legislation. I certainly would be surprised to hear anybody opposite suggest that extending loans to those people that were not choosing to get graduate courses was a bad thing. I am sure no-one in this place would be saying that. I also do not think that anybody in this place would be considering that it is a bad thing that additional funding is made available to support scholarships for people that come from low socioeconomic backgrounds—I am sure that would not be the case. We need to be very clear about the fact that doing nothing is not an option. If we holus-bolus throw this legislation out and do not seek to address and make the changes so that we can end up with the best working model that we possibly can put out there for the benefit of everybody in this country—not just a few people—then I think it would be very disappointing that, with this bloody-mindedness, we would see some fantastic changes that are being purported in this space not pursued.

The other thing is that there are some really significant budget implications. We talk often about the issue of the HECS debt that students who undertake courses will have to be responsible for into the future. These young people are going to have a debt, as those who undertook their education in the last 20 years have incurred a debt. The choices here are that we either allow these young people who have received an education—which allows them in most instances to be able to get a job that pays more and gives them greater capacity to pay back the debt—to pay, or we continue with the escalating debt incurred by an unsustainable position with the amount of money that has been paid in the higher education space so that everybody in Australia is going to be burdened into the future with higher debt repayments. It is either taking a user-pays approach to things or continuing to rack up debt on the Australian public's credit card so that, into the future, these people may well not have the same level of debt that they might have specifically relating to their tertiary education but the debt that they will have individually, because of the burden that is going to be placed on them by the increasing debt that has been occurring in this country, is likely to be far greater. So we have to make a decision about how we are going to deal with debt. Are we going to stop increasing our deficits and try to deal with our debt so that these future generations, whom we are talking about now, the young people that are about to get their higher education, when they are in their 30s, 40s and 50s, will have a smaller debt burden? What kind of debt burden as a nation are we going to leave them—let alone worrying about the burden that they possibly will have in relation to their education? What about the greater debt burden, which we as a government should be seeking to reduce in this place and not increase?

I noted that Senator Whish-Wilson, in his contribution earlier today, made the comment that the reason that he was not going to support this suite of deregulation activities in relation to higher education was that the government had not flagged it before the last election. I do not know whether this is too much of an extrapolation, but I would suggest that, on the back of that, he was basically saying, 'Had the government taken this intended piece of legislation to the election and the government was subsequently elected, then the government had obviously sought and achieved the mandate that it was asking for in relation to this policy position.' That was the logical conclusion I reached from the comments made by Senator Whish-Wilson. If you take that one step further, you would suggest that the government had a mandate for removing the carbon tax, it had a mandate for removing the mining tax, it had a mandate for stopping the boats, but it also has a mandate for reducing the budget deficit and debt. That is absolutely clear. We went to the election with a very clear policy position about the fact that we want to be fiscally responsible and that we were going to try and reduce the debt and deficit, yet time and time again we have come into this place with measures that we think are reasonable to reduce the level of deficit and debt in this country, and time and time again people like Senator Whish-Wilson and his colleagues in the Labor Party seek to stop us from achieving that. I would say to Senator Whish-Wilson, if he is going to hold the view that, if you take something to an election then it is reasonable that you should be allowed to enact it, he probably should have a look at some of the other legislation that he and his colleagues are choosing to block in this place.

The other thing I would like to do today is to commend the rational, responsible behaviour of a number of the crossbenchers in relation to this suite of measures. I particularly refer to Senator Madigan and Senator Day, who are currently in discussions with all of the stakeholders that are involved and likely to be impacted by this suite of changes. I draw your attention to a media release from this morning from Universities Australia, and I would just like to read a couple of lines from it. It says:

Chief Executive of Universities Australia Belinda Robinson praised Senator Madigan and Senator Day for their constructive dealings with the Government and urged other crossbench Senators to work towards a new, fairer package.

She went on to say:

The elements that both Senator Madigan and Senator Day have put forward are very consistent with what Universities Australia considers to be a fair and reasonable compromise …

Our message to all Senators this week is not to defer decisions and ignore the unique opportunity they have to shape a new, fairer higher education package this year.

Delaying taking action, or rejecting the package outright, is not the answer and risks condemning Australia's higher education system to inevitable decline.

It is not possible for universities to continue to deliver the quality that students and parents expect under a system that remains both financially unsustainable and uncertain.

Senators this week have the opportunity to shape a new, fairer higher education package and end the uncertainty and anxiety felt by students and their families who have no idea what will happen in 2016.

With key changes, such as those announced today, the Senate can design a package that strengthens our universities while keeping it fair for students, parents and taxpayers.

I think that epitomises exactly what we should be doing in this place. Everybody cannot always have everything that they want, but that is not to say that by a process of negotiation, by putting forward alternatives—some of which may have been better than the original legislation put forward; some of which recognise that some things may have been 'mismodelled' or whatever—and by constructive dialogue amongst the crossbenchers and the opposition on these sorts of bills we sometimes can actually deliver the best possible outcome for everybody. A bloody-minded approach that says, 'Because the government didn't tell us before the election that they were intending to make changes to higher education means that we are just not going to accept anything', is not in the best interests of the Australian public. It is certainly not, in this instance, in the best interests of the students and the families who are seeking to have an education.

The question that really does need to be asked is: why are those opposite scared of deregulation? Deregulation does not necessarily have to cost more. Quite often, in a number of instances, deregulation can actually see a reduction in costs because, as we have seen in so many instances, an overregulated marketplace can mean that the regulation itself increases the costs. We do need to be very clear here that deregulation, if it is enacted and introduced in a responsible and well thought out manner, can actually have massive benefits for everybody—to the taxpayers, to our communities and to our students—and most particularly it can ensure that the level of education and the quality standards of our tertiary institutions are at the highest possible level that we can hope for them to be. So there are huge amounts of benefits that can come from deregulation, and I would just like to quote from the chair of the Group of Eight universities, Professor Ian Young, who is the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University. Professor Young said:

Deregulation will enable universities to differentiate. To play to their strengths.

It may generate some of the diversity that is enviable in the US system, where students have a real choice. They can go to institutions that include tiny specialised liberal arts colleges, outstanding state universities, niche private institutions, online private providers and world leading Ivy League schools.

What Professor Young is basically saying there is that by giving students choice, you give them choice about what they actually want to achieve out of this and allow the market to find where things are going to play out. There seems to be very little point for us to continue on with a one size fits all approach to our tertiary courses, only to find that we continue to graduate vast amounts of a particular course that is not in demand and we are under delivering in other courses where there is a demand. If you let the market determine where this is going to go, then the market, I am afraid to say, as much as those opposite do not like to hear this, will always find its own level. The market, if it is left alone, always comes up with the best possible outcome, and it will allow supply and demand to actually match each other.

What Professor Young is saying there is that it just allows each individual student to be able to determine what it is that they want to do. It allows them to specialise if they want to. And instead of everybody being thrown into this great big melting pot of one size fits all and pumping out at the other end a generic blancmange of students, which is what this particular suite of legislation is seeking to do, it aims to make our students as sharp as a possibly can be and to make sure the education that we have for our students when they go out into the workforce and are seeking to get a job are best matched to what the market is demanding of the skills that those students come out of university with. We need to be very clear that there are two parts to this bill: one is about deregulation, and that is the broader issue we are talking about here; the other is a whole heap of things that sit underneath that to work out how that deregulation is going to be achieved and to ensure that we have things in place so that we do not disadvantage people who come from lower socioeconomic areas and so we do not disadvantage students who live in rural and regional Australia.

I was quite astounded at some of the comments made by Senator Bilyk in her contribution, such as that this government did not care about NBN or modernising infrastructure. I think you will find that it is this government that is choosing to provide the NBN to people who have the worst possible service first, and most of those are in rural and regional Australia. And in terms of modernising infrastructure, I think you will find it is this government who has a massive infrastructure fund, which it is spending on building the roads and the infrastructure in rural and regional Australia that has been neglected for such a terribly long time. All I can say is that the scaremongering and the belligerence of those opposite means they have probably overlooked great benefits of this particular legislation. (Time expired)

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise to happily speak once again on an education matter—the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill 2014. I want to put on the record that in this place I have spoken on school funding, that there is legislation before the other place with regard to childcare funding and that this legislation completes the suite. What we are seeing from this government is a massive reduction of investment in education as an economic and social driver of equity for Australians. We are seeing this barefaced attack on every level of education right across the country. Today's particular focus, in terms of this government's cuts to education, is the higher education sector.

I have to go to Senator Ruston's comments about why we should not be afraid of deregulation. She said that, if we have a responsible government with a well thought out policy, we should not be frightened of deregulation in this sector. Anybody making a judgement of the Abbott one year in can clearly see that the government are not responsible and that we cannot trust a single word they say—not a single word they say. Higher education is too important an area for us to go on the say-so of a government in a deal with well-meaning and well-intentioned crossbenchers, who are doing their level best to coerce this government to come to the point of figuring out that we need to support and invest in higher education. I note the efforts of Senator Madigan and Senator Day.

Frankly, we have seen over and over in this place already in the first year of the Abbott government that we cannot trust a word of this government's commitment. If we do trust the government on deregulation, what essentially is happening? What does that word mean? For every student who intends to go to university, for every parent who looks over the education for their child, for grandparents who have aspirations for their grandchildren to go to university and for mature age students who want to improve their life and that of their families by returning to university, what does this government's deregulation mean? Essentially, it means the removal of price control for student contributions to the cost of their bachelor and sub-bachelor degrees. Let us not be misguided in any way about what is going on here. This is about getting rid of a cap and letting the market rip. We had Senator Ruston saying that the market never gets it wrong. Even those opposite with a little bit of respect for history and a little bit of decorum in terms of economic conversations should be able to say that they might have noticed the odd market failure—just the odd one.

We cannot trust this government in moving forward in this area. There are cuts of up to 50 per cent in course funding for undergraduate students. While they say, 'We cannot afford to put this on the debt for the nation,' they are in a mad rush to load up individual students with massive levels of debt. In their arguments they continue to separate Australians who want to learn from those who earn and pay tax. They try to construct students as somehow different from taxpayers. In my conversations with students many are completely offended by this marginalisation, as if they are not taxpayers already. Many of our students are mature age students, particularly in the regional areas, and are already paying taxes. With the taxes they are paying they are relying on the Australian government to give them the opportunity of further education in a rapidly changing economy so that they can reskill, upskill and advance their own interests and those of their families. They are already taxpayers and they want their money invested in good things for this nation, and investing in higher education is a powerful economic driver of the advancement of our economy as well as our society. Taxpayers do not sit outside the student population. Even those doing part-time work and study early in their life, who are in their early 20s, are taxpayers. I am sure that they are very keen to see the taxpayer dollars they are contributing invested in their future in education.

If the argument put by those opposite in their quite mild mannered way were to actually hold water, taxpayers in New South Wales should never put money in that could be used to invest in a road in Western Australia. Here we see revealed what is really going on with this government in every policy area. They are seeking to create fear, constructing policies of division and putting taxpayers separate from the people who are being affected by the policy they are trying to get through this place. We are not a fragmented nation. Yes, we have states, but we are Australians. We are a federation. We need to grow Australian students, who will move all over this country and indeed around the world. We need to give them the opportunity of a great education and we need to make sure it remains affordable. One thing we know is that we cannot trust the government to do anything that they say they are going to do, so when they give their word that deregulation will be looked after and they will set up a system, I do not believe them and I do not think any thinking Australian, going on the record of what we have seen so far, could possibly believe that.

In the seat of the member for Warringah, the leader of the government, Mr Abbott, I had the opportunity to meet with many students. Large numbers of them were year 12 students, who I congratulate on completing their qualification. I know many of them will be waiting with bated breath for results that they hoped prior to this legislation coming to the parliament was going to allow them to go to university. The economic profile of the people in the seat of Warringah is a lot different to the economic profile of the people in the seat of Riverina, where Charles Sturt University is, or the economic profile of people in the seats of Robertson and Dobell, which are well served by the University of Newcastle. There is a lot more wealth in the Prime Minister's seat than in the two seats I mentioned and the seat of Riverina, which is looked after by Mr McCormack. The other seats I mentioned—Riverina, Dobell and Robertson—have much poorer communities so any impact is going to be amplified, but in the Prime Minister's own seat students and their parents are alarmed. Career counsellors from across that whole area—right up and down the northern beaches peninsula and going into the Speaker's own seat—have communicated with me that families are rethinking their capacity to support their son or daughter to go to university. Young people themselves are saying: 'I don't know that I can afford to do this. I did want to go to university, but I am thinking that I can't.'

And perhaps there are young people here in the gallery today, who have a grand vision of a future that has been instilled in them because we believe in education in this country—at least we do when Labor is in charge. We believe in the opportunities that education gives, and we build hopes and dreams on the back of being able to provide that into the future, using those taxpayer dollars that we have earned and put into the bank because we want to make sure that we give our kids a chance.

But today there are fewer students that are applying for university places. There have been fewer immediately, even before this legislation passes, because this government has put a big question mark over the rights of young Australians even to think that they can go to university—even to begin to think that that is possible. That is a retrograde step. It is taking us back to a very dark day.

In a global economy—in a knowledge economy world—we should be ramping up our education. That is why I am so proud of Labor's own record with regard to this. We know that accessible higher education changed the nature of opportunity in Australia. We know that accessible higher education has changed the nature of class in Australia, but that is what will be stripped away if this bill passes. We have made incredible strides towards creating a more equal Australia, where your postcode does not affect the opportunities that you can aspire to have in this great country.

Labor believes that no young person or their families should be turned away from education because they do not think they can afford to pay for it. And during our time in government we gave flesh to that belief. We made sure that the doors of universities—which were already partially open—opened further in response to student demand. And that meant that 190,000 Australians—it is not a small number!—got into university because Labor removed the cap on student places. When I was the member for Roberston in the other place, we kept asking the higher education sector, 'We finally let those students in; how are those students going?' I am pleased to report to you that as soon as you open the door to a hard-working student with capacity, they get in there and they do the job. Those students were advancing. There were staying and they were being successful. This government, for a reason that is completely inexplicable to me, wants to shut that door and shut a few more and make it harder and harder for young people to go to university.

I want to go, in my remarks, to one of the most shameful indications of how cynical this government is and how much we should not trust them on this issue. I refer to what they are loosely calling 'Commonwealth scholarships'. 'Commonwealth scholarships' has a lovely ring to it. You could be completely mistaken in your understanding of what the government means by that. When you hear the words 'Commonwealth scholarship' you would think that the scholarship comes from our Commonwealth as a nation, providing scholarships to students. The government have deliberately called this the Commonwealth scholarship program in this piece of legislation because they know that that is what people will think is happening. But this government is so despicably sneaky and arrogant that they think they can get away with this. They are actually introducing a scheme which has no Commonwealth money in it at all. There is not a single cent of Commonwealth money going into the Commonwealth scholarships that they are articulating in this bill.

What is really going on is that instead of the government putting in money, they are going to get money from the students who can afford to go—we know that pool is going to shrink—and then, in some scheme that has not been clearly explicated, they are going to hive off part of the students' money and put into another little fund of scholarships that will be delivered in some way, which is still not clear, to students at that university. That is the plan. How sneaky to pretend that it is Commonwealth money that is supporting the scholarship plan! That is why we cannot trust this government on any legislation. We certainly cannot trust them on this piece of legislation because they are trying to sneak the most disgraceful misrepresentation through in this one area alone.

And that reveals the whole way in which they are going to infect access to the system that is part of this great country's tradition. In terms of this Commonwealth scholarship we have a problem with just how far backwards this government has gone. Even Menzies, back as far as 1950, when he brought in the real Commonwealth scholarship scheme, made sure that money was allocated from the Commonwealth to support students in their education. Here I have an article from the Kalgoorlie Miner from Tuesday, 18 July 1950. It says that they made scholarships available to students throughout Australia who wished to commence a course at a university or a similar institution.

There were two kinds of scholarships with federal money attached—Commonwealth money. One provided fees only; the other provided, in addition, a living allowance to the student. So they were supporting students to go to university in 1950. It was a genuine Commonwealth scholarship scheme. This sneaky, despicable government is trading off the back of that scheme. Back in 1950 they were able to write: 'Under the new scheme there will be no-one in Australia who will be denied a university education because of financial difficulties, providing his matriculation results are sufficiently high to justify selection under the scheme.'

In 1950 the Menzies Liberal government knew that this economic use of brainpower could not but help to improve the Australian economy generally and to make a more highly qualified community. I will admit to often saying in this parliament that the Prime Minister wants to take us back to 1950, to the 'father knows best' days, where we should trust that he is going to look after us all—while he is breaking his word every single day. I cannot put him back in the 1950s anymore; I am going to have to go back further because, frankly, in 1950 it looks like the Liberal Party had a better idea about investing in the education of this country than they do right now with their miserly, despicable, deceptive naming of the Commonwealth scholarship program. There is absolutely no truth in what they are doing.

Senator McKenzie interjecting—

In the Ballarat Courier, in an area where Senator McKenzie comes from—she is supposed to be representing the community in the west and north of Victoria—the Vice-Chancellor of Federation University wrote:

The shallow rhetoric about having more scholarships for regional students, including assistance to help them to attend metropolitan universities, and the availability of more sub-degree courses, ignores the real differences we have in this nation between metropolitan and regional higher education.

The differences are structural and not simply related to student choice and cannot be easily ameliorated by the application of market forces.

We cannot allow this government, which is going to let the market rip, to preside over a yet-to-be-disclosed set of scholarships that amount to one student supporting another.

I want to put on the record what this would look like in a tutorial. I can remember my very first tutorials at Sydney university. I was a girl from the western suburbs and the first in my family to go. I had a wonderful tutor by the name of Alex Soborslay. I want to put on the record today how indebted I am to him for his guidance, care and support in that first year of university and transition. There were students in that tutorial with me who made me feel very uncomfortable and that I did not belong there. Certainly, I had not read the same things that they had read and I had not had the opportunities that they had had to experience the world. I was a girl from the western suburbs. I did not sound the same, I did not look the same and I did not have the same cultural capital that they had when they landed at the doors of Sydney university. But that tutor taught me the same way as he taught all of them. Bit by bit, I was able to become very successful at the university alongside those people.

Under what those opposite are trying to construct, if I were a scholarship student today and that was the only way I could get to university, I would be sitting in that tutorial with students who had paid for my tuition. Firstly, how can we be asking students to pay for the tuition of a fellow student when they are already under so much financial pressure? Secondly, what does it do to the learning dynamics in that room where there are second-rate students who are having their education and their scholarships funded by people who are sharing that class with them? If there was any truth in what these guys had to offer, if there was any truth at all in anything they say around policy, we could perhaps envision some adjusted system. But the reality is that this Commonwealth scholarship scheme that they have put into this legislation is one of the sneakiest and most deceptive elements of a piece of legislation that I have seen come through this place yet. People need to understand exactly what this government is trying to do by ripping apart student equity right down to the very level of the classroom.

One of the things that I wanted to say as we approach the close is that Labor is the party of education, we have always believed in it and we will fight for it every day. (Time expired)

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not think that we will get a lot of time before question time, but I would like to commence my contribution—without interjections from my colleague Senator Bernardi, I hope! I rise to contribute on the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill 2014. Continuing on from Senator O'Neill's comments on scholarships: under these proposed changes, anyone can go to university with HELP assistance. They can then pay for it once they start earning more than $50,000 a year. That is a pretty good system. In my days, you either won a Commonwealth scholarship—and I was fortunate enough to win a scholarship to university—or you paid. That was out of your pocket or your parent's pocket. You can walk in now to a university without a red cent and get a tertiary education, which I think is a very good system. But it is not free. We have heard in the chamber today that it is a free system. The only thing that is free in this world is the air that we breathe, and of course the previous government tried to put a tax on that. Nothing is free; someone pays. The bricklayer or the shearer out there working today who have never stepped foot on a university campus will pay, as they pay their taxes. As I say, they have never been—

Honourable Senators:

Honourable senators interjecting—

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order on my right and my left!

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr President. That's much better. Now I can hear. So, in relation to this whole attitude about a free tertiary education, I repeat: nothing is free; someone pays. That is a fact of the whole situation.

As has been noted by others, there are 10 key points in relation to this package, and I want to refer to a few specific ones. Over 80,000 students each year will be provided with additional support by 2018. This includes an estimated 48,000 students in diploma, advanced diploma and associate degree courses and 35,000 additional students undertaking bachelor courses. There will be more opportunities for students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds through new Commonwealth scholarships. This undoubtedly is the greatest scholarship scheme in Australia's history. Effectively, this equates to free education for the brightest students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, especially in rural and remote areas. When I say 'free', they will not have the fees afterwards, but the taxpayer or the university sponsoring it will, of course, pay for them. Universities will be able to set their own fees and therefore can compete for students. That is a good thing. With competition comes quality, and higher education providers will be more responsive to the needs of students and the labour market. When universities and colleges compete, the winners are the students.

This government is a supporter of research. Let me remind you of our commitment: $150 million next financial year for the national collaborative research infrastructure, $139.5 million to deliver 100 new four-year research positions per year under the Future Fellowships scheme.

Debate interrupted.