Patrick Dodson (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The opposition supports the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (2016 Measures No. 1) Bill 2016. The bill contains proposals for two changes to the Higher Education Act and related acts. The first schedule relates to grants available for universities to support their Indigenous students. Previously, there were three separate funding pools available for support services, grants and other programs and bursaries for Indigenous students. The proposal in schedule 1 is for the three existing funds to be pooled into one, which allows the universities to better respond to the needs of their individual Indigenous cohorts. It is a change that we believe will be welcomed by the sector because a more streamlined and flexible approach will better allow universities to meet their students' needs.

The second schedule amends various pieces of legislation to allow the Department of Education and Training to access tax file numbers for VET Fee-Help debtors in order to streamline data exchanges between the department and the Australian Taxation Office. This proposed change would make data exchange on individuals utilising VET Fee-Help consistent with other aspects of the HELP program.

The content of the bill that relates to Indigenous students deals with an issue that has long been a hallmark of Labor's work in this space. For many decades we have been the party that have sought to promote access to and participation in higher education, including for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. You only need to go back to the Second World War to see that it was Labor that was involved in ensuring there were scholarships for returning servicemen. In the 1970s Gough Whitlam made it possible for many to go to university who might not have otherwise had the opportunity. Today we still have many students who are the first in their family to go to university and who have been able to do so because of Labor's legacy in reforming higher education.

There are few main structural reasons that can prevent people from obtaining a higher education. One of them is the absence of aspirations, because universities do not seem to be an option for some people. For the creation of aspiration in the minds of students who are outside of cities and outside the types of families where it has been common over many generations to go to university, these types of students need to see role models and need to see opportunities to go to university. This is why equity programs are really important. They build the aspiration. They make universities seem normal and make it seem normal to go to university after high school.

This is why Labor is so concerned about the $152 million to the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program. It has already been booked into the budget, even though the review into that scheme is still underway. The Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program is not just a scheme that grows aspirations; it also supports students from more disadvantaged backgrounds once they get to university to help with participation and to help with graduation.

Labor has been working to build equity and participation for a long time. Gough Whitlam's reforms are a prime example. There was also Bob Hawke's 1990 landmark paper A fair chance for all, which explicitly talked about building involvement in higher education and graduation from higher education among students who have not had those opportunities in the past. That was a salient and landmark paper, and we saw an increase in those equity groups' representation in higher education.

The last Labor government in 2011 was in a situation where a lot had been done but still more needed to be done. This sparked the Bradley review, which found that Indigenous students continue to be vastly unrepresented in higher education. It is a challenge we still have to contend with today. Another review, the Behrendt review, which was specifically in relation to education access and outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in 2011 and 2012, recommended pooling together, amongst many other things, some of the programs—as we are seeing here in this bill today.

There has been a lot of work done over many decades to seek to improve representation by Indigenous students in higher education. Due to the previous Labor government's reforms, we saw a 26 per cent increase in Indigenous student numbers. But there is still more that needs to be done. At the moment the access rate for Indigenous students is around 1.88 per cent compared with a population of about 2.9 per cent. The 2014 figures on retention are 0.9 per cent for Indigenous students. We must maintain our focus on equity programs, particularly those that are aimed at increasing Indigenous student representation. The opposition is pleased to support this bill.

David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The disadvantage suffered by Aboriginal Australians and the dysfunction in some of their communities continues to be Australia's greatest policy failure, and yet, according to the latest figures from the Productivity Commission, this failure is not caused by a lack of funding. Total expenditure in 2012-13 on services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders was more than $30 billion, or $43,449 per person. This is roughly equivalent to the average wage in Japan, Italy and South Korea. This spending is on top of the general government spending that is supposed to benefit all Australians, and yet the annual Closing the gap report tells us every year that the gap is barely closing.

Nearly everyone agrees that education is the key, so this bill authorising higher education grants to Aboriginal people should be an issue of the utmost importance. And here I am, the only person who wants to talk about why our education policies are failing to address Aboriginal disadvantage. Everyone else in this place considers the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (2016 Measures No. 1) Bill to be non-controversial and that throwing even more money at the problem is somehow a solution, despite past experience. If I can borrow an Americanism: go figure!

To understand Aboriginal disadvantage it helps to understand Aboriginal communities. According to the 2011 census, 550,000 Indigenous Australians, or 65 per cent, were employed and living lives much like other Australians; 22 per cent were welfare dependent and living in urban and regional areas; and 13 per cent, or 70,000, were welfare dependent and living on Aboriginal land where education and work opportunities are often limited. Many of these people in the third category are amongst the most disadvantaged in Australia and live in Third World conditions.

This third group needs a policy response that differs from that provided to the first and second groups of Aborigines, and yet our Indigenous education policy treats them as all the same. Someone from a comfortable, middle class family on the North Shore of Sydney who identifies as Aboriginal will scoop up the grants and the scholarships and fill in the quotas when it is time to get a job. They will continue to be middle class and their lives will not change significantly, except perhaps for an ever expanding sense of entitlement. However, the people living in remote areas who cannot read will not apply for university places or leave their dysfunctional communities, particularly given our policies to keep them there, and that is why the gap is not closing.

Ironically, this demonstrates why schemes to help people should be based on need and not race. If all university grants were based on need, they would better serve Aboriginal people who really need the grants. What is more, it would help prevent a disgraceful situation where a refugee from Africa who comes from the most impoverished background and suffers from racism can be beaten to a university place by someone from a middle class background who identifies as Aboriginal and suffers nothing but sunburn. I lived in South Africa for a time during the apartheid era and I know what racism looks like. I abhor it in all its forms. I am proud to represent the Liberal Democrats, who believe that all poor people should have access to a good education, but race should have nothing to do with it. I am proud to take a stand against racism today.

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (2016 Measures No. 1) Bill, and this is a great opportunity for me to correct a couple of assumptions made, particularly by Senator Leyonhjelm. But, first of all, I would like to thank the opposition for their support. In fact, I know that in the former Labor government Larissa Behrendt actually recommended to your government that the supplementary Indigenous support programs be amalgamated, made flexible and more practical. As I have said before, it is important that we do not see that as being some opposition position and have us take a different position. We need to take the good work that you started and we need to continue through that, so thank you for the support.

To Senator Leyonhjelm, I am not sure where you got your data, but, just to help you understand, the important element of this is: today there is $253 million being invested over the forward estimates. At the end of the forward estimates, after we pass this bill, there will still be $253 million being invested. There is no more money. This is to provide efficiency dividends, because we do not embark on a journey, find something out, stumble a bit and then do nothing about it. This legislation is all about ensuring what we are motivated by.

What are we motivated by? When we assist anyone going through university, there is a cost. We want to make sure that is an investment. Quite clearly the outcome we want is people graduating from university. So, instead of measuring how many people we got into university, we will be measuring how many people graduate from university to ensure that the cost of the investment we make is an appropriate investment. So this particular legislative amendment is there to ensure that we give the right level of support at the right time.

Aboriginal students, from what we know, are enrolling in universities in greater numbers than ever before. Enrolment rates are increasing. As I indicated, there was a recommendation to the previous government that the supplementary Indigenous support programs be amalgamated. We worked with universities through 2015-16 to develop the Indigenous student success in higher education measure that was announced last budget.

What this measure does is shift the focus from getting Indigenous students in the door—which I have to say, Senator Leyonhjelm, is very, very important, I know, to both myself and yourself—but more importantly helping the students to succeed and graduate. The new flexible arrangements mean that university staff working with Indigenous students will actually have a greater say in the assistance they provide, and we worked with universities to see how that will actually be effected.

It is racist, in an absolute sense, to say Aboriginal students, or any other students, who go to university are going to have exactly the same challenges at exactly the same time. Of course they are not. Some students might excel in one element of going through university but not so much in others. Instead we will allow the university to have the flexibility to understand that the level of support they need to provide is timely and appropriate to that particular student. Quite clearly these amendments that we are introducing are going to lay the foundations for reforms. We think they are going to be good for the students and they are going to be good for universities—in fact, good for all sides of the chamber.

Our guidelines are going to require that universities that provide scholarships and tutorial assistance this year will be required to provide them in the future. The other element that is really important is that we are moving to no longer just paying on when you start. As we will be staggering the payments there will be an incentive for the university in considering this flexibility to ensure that the individual who is going through stays there, because that is the nature of the payments. Instead of getting everything as a lump sum at the beginning, we are considering graduating that so that there are other payments and so that there is an incentive to provide for the students in that regard.

I thank the senators for their contribution to this bill that will improve support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students, and improve the administration of the VET FEE-HELP scheme and the VET Student Loans program. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.