Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today Labor supports the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019 and the introduction of deterrents to academic cheating services in Australia's higher education system. The bill before us implements recommendations made by the Higher Education Standards Panel. That panel concluded that inadequately constrained cheating activity 'has the potential to cause great damage to the domestic and international reputation of Australian higher education.' Unfortunately no Australian jurisdiction currently has offences aimed specifically at deterring or punishing organised cheating services. We know that the higher education sector is critically important to Australia, and Labor will always support legislation that defends the sector's integrity.

The bill before us makes it an offence to provide, offer to provide or arrange for a third person to provide an academic cheating service to a student undertaking a higher education course in Australia. Commercial services will face both commercial and civil penalties, while services not operating commercially will face civil penalties. It also makes it an offence to publish or broadcast an advertisement for one of these cheating services, and you'll see this in proposed section 114B. We have expressed some concerns about the design of this offence and we will talk through them now. A person prosecuted for publishing an advertisement for an academic cheating service operating for a commercial purpose could face a potential jail term, even if they are receiving no personal gain. The concern among Labor is that this provision could unintentionally capture vulnerable students who are simply forwarding or sharing electronically an advertisement for commercial services. It could easily be disguised as something more innocent, and the student may not be aware of exactly what they're sharing. It could be advertised as some kind of academic support service, whereas embedded in it is in fact a cheating service.

As the explanatory memorandum acknowledges, these can be persuasive and sophisticated operations. These operations are aimed at vulnerable people and they often try to portray themselves as being altruistic. We have alerted the minister to these serious concerns, and an addendum to the explanatory memorandum has indeed been tabled by the minister in the House. This addendum makes clear that the circumstances about which Labor is concerned are not intended to be caught by this legislation.

So, as I said, we very strongly support the deterrence measures for academic cheating services. But we also want to make sure that the legislation does not implicate vulnerable students who have received no personal benefit from their unintended actions. Cheating services are very well known to target vulnerable students as part of their business model. Indeed, there are a great many vulnerable students in our nation at the moment. We've got students who are away from home and family and are separated from their usual support systems and they can, as we know, be particularly vulnerable to rogue services like these. We know that the reputation of the sector is vitally important, and unfortunately our reputation has copped a severe battering among international students this year. Sadly, we've seen international students lined up around the block, desperate for a free meal, with no support from this federal government. What are these people going to tell their friends and families about Australia when they get home, with all of the pressure that is upon them to get good marks and pass as well as be able to support themselves while they are here?

We're talking about an industry that provides Australia with some of its most significant export income. It provides huge value to our nation's regional communities, and it is a sector that is absolutely critical to our nation's ongoing economic prosperity. But we have a government that is absolutely throwing this critical sector under the bus. We should be a nation that knows that Australian universities are good for all of us. The minister acknowledged himself that productivity improvements in the sector can increase economic growth by some $2.7 billion a year. However, we have a government that is now sitting by and watching as universities shed jobs, close campuses and cut back on courses and degrees. We have a government that has gone out of its way to exclude universities from COVID support. We have a government that has repeatedly changed its policy to stop uni staff from accessing wage subsidies. Hundreds of university jobs in our country have already gone. Campuses have closed, and thousands more jobs are at risk.

But, most unfortunately, this is just the beginning of a sector-wide crisis. The impact of these losses on our nation's regional communities will be devastating. Universities support some 14,000 jobs in country Australia and help underpin the economy in countless towns. Across the board we are looking at tens of thousands of livelihoods being destroyed. Here we are talking about academics, tutors, admin staff, library staff, catering staff, ground staff, cleaners, security and so many others—all people with families, with bills to pay and with commitments to meet. This government has gone out of its way to exclude these workers from JobKeeper, and I am extremely alarmed at the Prime Minister's determination to abandon them. Why have this government and this Prime Minister been so determined to abandon these workers? To me, it seems like a deliberate attack on Australian higher education.

The government's Job-Ready Graduates Package will just make things worse for universities. Under this package the sector will face an overall cut of almost $1 billion a year in government funding. So much for job-ready graduate support. For students this package means it will be harder and more expensive to go to Australia's universities. This has never been Labor's approach and it never will be our approach. Under Labor we saw a boost in investment from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013. We opened up the system, uncapped places and gave an additional 190,000 students a spot at university. Labor's decisions were driven by our commitment to improving Australia's productivity and by our commitment to breaking down disadvantage and inequality in our education system. Indeed, it has succeeded. It succeeded in bringing new people to university; Indigenous enrolments are up and more Australians with disability entered the system, as did people from regional and remote areas.

Education has helped create jobs, higher wages and a better quality of life for all Australians. These are the issues and guiding principles that should be at the heart of Australian education policy. It should be a vision of equity and productivity that is funded and supported with strong resources. Unfortunately, this is not a vision that is shared by this government, which is watching thousands of jobs go in the higher education sector. It is watching campuses close. It is making it harder and more expensive for students to go to university. So, while we have this legislation before the chamber, in relation to academic cheating, I would really like to draw the government's attention to the bigger picture of the state of Australia's higher education institutions for Australian students and for international students.

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

I rise on behalf of the Greens to speak to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019. This is indeed a serious issue. I thank the stakeholders across the sector for the time they've taken to engage with the bill throughout the process. In recognition for the need for stronger protections against commercial contract cheating operations, the Greens will not oppose this legislation. But we do have deeply held concerns about the approach it takes to addressing academic issues within our universities and the impact the bill will have on students, on their friends families and on academic communities.

In the first instance, it's not at all clear that the threat of penalties like those contained in this bill effectively deter contract cheating operations. In 2019, research from Melbourne and Toronto examining real incidents of contract cheating online found that heavy penalties on contract cheating seemed not to be limiting the impunity with which it occurs. They concluded:

We do not think supply-side approaches to the contract cheating problem are likely to have any significant positive effects. Even worse, they direct resources away from other approaches, and they may have unintended negative consequences for students.

It is those negative consequences for students that I'm particularly concerned about. The first version of this bill needlessly exposed individuals such as family and friends of students to significant penalties, including jail time. So I was glad to see that revised after feedback from our office that came from many in the sector. I'm also pleased that our comments resulted in amendments to the definition of a cheating service, a definition which lacked clarity and risked criminalising or disrupting perfectly normal collegial behaviour and collaboration to the detriment of students' learning.

Unfortunately, the second version of the bill—the one that is before us today—still exposes individuals to civil penalties of more than $110,000. Whereas universities are not well placed to tackle large commercial providers of cheating services, they are best placed to identify and respond to inappropriate, non-commercial assistance provided to students by peers or family and friends. This is not an issue that we want universities to pass the buck on to TEQSA, nor are these penalties remotely commensurate with the low-grade academic misconduct that universities should actually be resourced to deal with. As such, it remains completely inappropriate to expose individuals to the civil penalties this legislation prescribes for commercial providers. I do note that there's been a lot of language from the minister and the department about the supposed targets of this bill not being students or their friends or families, and I hope that that is the case. But it's easy for us to guarantee that today, by restricting the application of both the civil and criminal penalties in this legislation to commercial providers of cheating services alone. I will be moving an amendment to that effect.

The broader issue here, for which this government is as culpable as any other, is that decades of systematic underfunding of our universities has put them in a funding situation where it is easier to surveil and sanction students than to support them. In this, we are seeing a shameful tendency towards increasingly strict monitoring as an antidote to a lack of meaningful connection between students and their teachers. This legislation's punitive response to academic misconduct reflects that. So too do the concerning reports of universities rapidly adopting exam surveillance software with little regard for the privacy implications or the impact on their students' learning experience. The use of this software must stop. More recently, the government's craven plan to strip HELP loan support from students who fail more than half their subjects reflects the government's drive to police and punish where it should provide support and help. Blame for this should be laid squarely at the feet of successive governments, whose cuts to funding have seen university class sizes grow and the quality time academics get to spend with their students diminish. If the government's cruel uni cuts and fee hikes get through, this situation will only worsen. There is no question about that.

In my own experience as a university lecturer and course coordinator, I can frankly say that this legislation is no way to stop non-commercial participants in organised cheating. Why? Because it does not and cannot address the underlying causes of students' cheating. Let's not delude ourselves that these are simple cases of lazy students looking for a way to avoid the work on an essay or an assignment. We know that pressures like the financial consequences of failing a subject or academic requirements for visa retention are often present in cheating circumstances. This bill and the rest of the government's higher education policy settings do nothing to fix this. And that's not to mention the broader circumstances that are systematically denying students the opportunity to attend to their studies without worrying day to day about making ends meet, putting food on the table or having a roof over their heads. Even before the pandemic, it was all too common for students to work multiple jobs and live pay cheque to pay cheque, reliant on meagre government support. Many often went hungry. All of these conditions have worsened during the pandemic, as the move to online learning has isolated students from opportunities to seek support and has limited academics' ability to assist a student before they begin to engage in academic misconduct.

My firm view is that academic integrity is best protected, in the first instance, by adequately funding education and training providers, where low student-staff ratios allow staff to ensure integrity by developing an individual understanding of each student's abilities in order to detect and address issues before they become misconduct. I say this based on a number of years of experience. This approach comes with the benefits of improved educational outcomes. Instead of the attacks they are suffering from those opposite at the moment, our public universities and TAFE institutions need substantial long-term increases in government funding to allow them to provide the best possible education. We know thousands of university staff have already lost their jobs and thousands more are set to lose their jobs by the end of this year. Who knows what's going to happen next year? Yet this government is set upon cutting further funding from universities and hiking fees for students. It's absolutely abhorrent and shameful. It is cruel and callous. The Greens will work to block these attacks at every turn, and we will fight to see all students supported through free university and TAFE throughout their lives.

Jim Molan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019. We shouldn't have to do this but, of course, we do because human nature is what it is. Cheating services are a blight on our education system. There are criminals who are exploiting vulnerable students and undermining the integrity of our high quality degrees. Cheats should never prosper and, under our governance, if you sell a cheating service to an Australian student, you will face two years imprisonment or fines of up to $100,000. This bill is aimed at commercial cheating services—not, Senator Faruqi, at students who use them. Students who cheat will still be subject to their own institution's academic integrity policies and sanctions, including any consequences that flow from those. After consulting with the sector, we have clarified the legislation to ensure that parents and friends who might edit their child's essays or provide suggestions on how to improve an assignment, will not be impacted.

The national regulator will be given new powers to investigate and recommend prosecution of cheating service providers. The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency will also be empowered to seek court injunctions to force internet service providers and search engines to block cheating websites. This bill amends the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011, known as the TEQSA Act, to make it an offence to provide or advertise a range of academic cheating services to students studying with Australian higher education providers, whether the service is provided from within Australia or overseas. Criminal and civil penalties of up to two years jail and fines of up to 500 penalty units, around $100,000, will apply where the cheating service or advertising is for a commercial purpose. Civil penalties of up to 500 penalty units will apply where the cheating service is provided without remuneration. Strict liability will apply to the criminal offence of providing an academic cheating service, in order to undermine services' tactics of disingenuous disclaimers regarding the purpose and use of their product. The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency will be appointed to enforce the new law, with its powers to include monitoring, intelligence gathering, investigation and prosecution of identified offenders. TEQSA will have additional powers to collect and disseminate information about cheating websites and their users to help institutions combat cheating activities on campus but with safeguards to protect the unwarranted sharing of personal information about those who purchase cheating materials. TEQSA will also have the ability to seek court injunctions to force internet service providers and search engines to block cheating websites.

I, like Senator Pratt, would like to draw to the chamber's notice the state of the tertiary education sector.

Honourable Senator:

An honourable senator interjecting—

Jim Molan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What's this?

An honourable senator interjecting—

No. Never. I've never seen so many people present! This bill really brings to light many different aspects of our tertiary education sector, not just its overreliance on foreign students, remembering that the minister reminded the sector only recently that their primary function is to educate Australian students and that anything else is up to them and is their responsibility. We fund the sector at record-high levels. Commonwealth expenditure is estimated to be more than $18 billion in 2020 and $19 billion next year.

Several years ago, a vice-chancellor commented to me that the consequence of so many foreign students is that our universities have lost their Australianness, and that is my personal experience as well. Still developing is a story today alleging that far too much openness is being provided in access to research by our universities. Australian national interests must come first, and universities, it seems to me, are losing popular support in Australia.

Now for the regulator. The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency is empowered to enforce the HES Act and framework so that taxpayers and students know that publicly funded universities are carrying out their core mission of educating students. But surely freedoms are an integral part of quality and standards? The question I would need to ask is: is TEQSA the problem or the solution? One TEQSA chief commissioner some years ago mentioned intellectual freedom at a Senate estimates inquiry. You, Madam Acting Deputy Speaker Bilyk, questioned them on that occasion. But there's not much evidence of commitment to holding universities to their core mission of intellectual freedom and academic freedom.

We've had the French inquiry and now we are into another inquiry. A law requiring intellectual freedom is one thing, but enforcement is everything. I remember the appalling treatment of Geoffrey Blainey in 1984 at the University of Melbourne over the Hawke government's immigration policy, which, it was alleged, could threaten the country's social cohesion unless managed properly. As Janet Albrechtsen said recently, 'He'—Blainey—'was hounded off campus as a racist.' Blainey is not a racist; he is Australia's finest historian.

When I think of Australian universities today, I don't think of them as places of learning where intellectual freedom thrives. If that were the concept that drove our universities, a student guild running stalls for new students wouldn't dream of banning a right-wing Generation Liberty stall on the basis that its brand did not align with the guild's values, regardless of the spin. If intellectual freedom were taken seriously, a vice-chancellor would not put up with this rubbish on their campus; neither would the regulator nor our government. The Queensland University of Technology student guild refused to offer the group Generation Liberty a stall in market week, which is held the week after the university's orientation week. According to the vice-chancellor, Generation Liberty was wrongly advised that its application was declined on the basis of its values. It might have been wrong, but it did occur and, if there were the culture of intellectual freedom, it would not have occurred. Professor Sheil corrected the record. 'Any assertion that I or the university have exercised bias or failed to protect free speech are factually incorrect,' she said. Professor Sheil was backed by the chief commissioner of the higher education regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, who told a Senate estimates committee hearing that after investigating QUT's actions it considered the matter closed.

And, of course, what about support for intellectual freedom in the case of Peter Ridd, an academic who was sacked by James Cook University for challenging the quality of climate science, something which is still going on to this very day? My memory is that each publicly funded university must now include reporting on their approaches to supporting intellectual and academic freedom on campus. This bill before us today is not about removing public funds. It's about cheating, which is an aspect of intellectual freedom that needs to be reinforced. But really: what about regulator? The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency is empowered to enforce the HES Act and the HES framework so taxpayers and students know publicly funded universities are carrying out their core mission to educate their students.

Perhaps the University of Queensland in particular might spend more time looking after their students rather than banning them in the way that Mr Drew Pavlou has been banned or the way that James Cook has appealed the decision against Mr Ridd, now waiting on a decision of that appeal. As one commentator said, even the university is embarrassed. An hour or so after the verdict, Chancellor Peter Varghese, a former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, stepped into the role of video umpire. Mr Varghese said he was personally concerned about aspects of the finding and the severity of the penalty. In consultation with Vice-Chancellor Peter Hoj, who played no role in the disciplinary process, the chancellor has convened an extraordinary meeting of the University of Queensland Senate next week to discuss the matter.

Frank, robust debate serves the public interest. On contentious issues, robust argument is inevitable and helpful at arriving at the truth. Judge Vasta said last year:

In the search for truth, it is an unfortunate consequence that some people may feel denigrated, offended, hurt or upset. It may not always be possible to act collegiately when diametrically opposed views clash in the search for truth.

This bill gives effect to the advice of the Higher Education Standards Panel that legislation is required to deter third-party academic cheating services. The panel found that the array of state, territory and Commonwealth laws relevant to cheating offences makes it difficult to pursue legal solutions against providers of cheating services. The panel's advice was that additional legislative backing is needed to more effectively deal with such risks. The panel advocated modelling this on New Zealand's approach outlined in section 292E of the New Zealand Education Act 1989. The panel recommended that legislation be aimed at those who provided cheating services and not at students who might use such services. Students who cheat remain subject to their institution's own academic integrity policies, processes and sanctions.

An exposure draft of the bill was publicly released on 7 April 2019 for comment. Forty-six submissions were received in response and generally supported the need for the legislation but raised concerns about some aspects of the bill. The bill, of course, was revised to take account of these issues. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to make a few comments about this bill and then a few comments about higher education more broadly. I can say that nothing illustrates more fully how lost the coalition is on these issues than the obscurantism of Senator Molan's most recent comments on this issue. Labor will support the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019. Labor will support the bill because academic cheating is a blight on the Australian university sector. We'll support the bill because of the potential damage that cheating can do to individual university institutions and the overall global reputation of Australian higher education. The government had no concern with the global reputation of Australian higher education over the course of the last six months, but we will support the bill on those bases.

Labor did have some concerns about the design of some aspects of the offences set out in the bill. A person prosecuted for publishing an advertisement for an academic cheating service operating for a commercial purpose could face a potential jail term, even if they are receiving no personal gain. We, on this side, were concerned that that could capture vulnerable students who simply forward an advertisement to their friends, even if they didn't understand the implications of the advertisement or were unaware of exactly what they were sharing. The government has made changes by way of an addendum to the explanatory memorandum that does, fundamentally, deal with that issue. Cheating services target the most vulnerable students. They often target students who are here—international students—who are at their most vulnerable and lonely and are away from family and friends and home. That is the cheating services' business model.

The reputation of Australia's education sector is absolutely crucial. Over the last few months, enormous damage has been done to the reputation of Australia's university sector. We had a good global reputation as a provider of higher education services with universities that had deep research capability and the capacity to collaborate with international researchers in areas of great benefit to this country and great benefit to the globe. The Morrison government's failure to deliver a higher education package and to support international students who have been stranded here has done not just enormous damage to the reputation of Australia's universities but great damage to the reputation of Australia itself. I was walking through Haymarket some weeks ago and there was a food queue some hundreds of students deep—a food queue of international students in one of our great capital cities. Apparently people in the Morrison government think that that's okay. These students were Thai students—destitute, hungry and unable to provide for themselves because this lot over here are more committed to the sort of obscurantist student politics that Senator Molan was going through than actually delivering for Australia's universities and looking after these kids. I shouldn't call them kids; they're young adults. But their parents and the universities—and, in fact, their parents and the country—have entered into a solemn contract. Our universities get paid an enormous amount of money by international students, and the contract we should have with their parents and their families is, 'Yes, we will educate them, but also we will look after them.' What we've done as a country is a disgrace, and it's caused enormous damage to our international reputation.

More broadly, when most Australians saw the impact that the coronavirus crisis was having upon the teaching and research capabilities of our universities, they saw it is a crisis. But what people in the far Right of the Liberal Party or in the National Party saw was an opportunity—an opportunity to square off with their student political opponents and an opportunity to denigrate people: to denigrate the capability and denigrate the hard work of tens of thousands of university lecturers and researchers. They saw an opportunity to wreck these institutions that are so vital to our national progress and our prosperity. What did we see happen? We saw an enormous effort to ensure that Australian university staff, particularly casual staff, would be unable to access the JobKeeper provisions that were offered by the government to many millions of Australian workers. Why was it that Australian universities were specifically excluded by this government? As a consequence of that decision, many thousands of casual academics are destitute and it will be harder for Australian universities to sustain their staff and to sustain their research and education capability through the crisis.

Just when we need our universities the most, the Morrison government is in there trashing the Australian university system. Beyond the JobKeeper package, you would think that a government that had the remotest care or concern for this vital set of national institutions and their research and teaching capability would deliver a package to secure the future of those universities. There is no package. In fact, there has been a determined refusal to deliver a package that can support the sector. There will be many tens of thousands of academics, casual staff and university support staff who will lose their jobs, but the damage to Australia will be well beyond the economic effect and the effect on people's families of those job losses.

I look across the state of New South Wales and see the regional universities that have already started to announce many thousands of job cuts—Southern Cross University in the North Coast electorate of Page, the University of New England in Mr Joyce's seat and Charles Sturt University, largely located in the seat of Calare, currently occupied by Mr Gee. When these universities started to work their way through hundreds of staff cuts, thousands of lost student places and deep cuts to their research capability, I was quite surprised by the response of what passes for the modern National Party. Mr Joyce supported the cuts. He thought that the cuts were a very good thing indeed, and a rational response by the universities. Most people, when a local big employer makes cuts in their electorates, are opposed to them. Mr Joyce had a short career in Armidale—that's what he tells everybody, anyway—as a bouncer at the Wicklow Hotel, and he supports cuts to the University of New England there. Mr Gee, who apparently has some ministerial responsibility for education, is against cuts to Charles Sturt University. His own government is delivering the cuts and he is against them. On the Southern Cross University, largely located in Lismore, with some campuses spread across the North Coast, nobody knows what poor old Mr Hogan, the member for Page, thinks. They rarely ever do. So there is a confused position in the National Party, which should be standing up for regional universities.

When you look at the research capability of these universities and you look at what they actually engage their capacity in, it is in issues like plant and animal breeding, water security, improvements to rural education, economics, particularly agricultural economics, and community resilience in country towns. Mr Joyce has no regard for any of these things. Cut, cut, cut—that's all Mr Joyce understands, and it is all that the coalition understand. They have truly lost their way in the way that they regard higher education institutions.

There is a sort of unrestrained dopiness about the coalition's approach to all of these issues. The idea that, instead of adopting a funding approach to universities that is all about the cost of delivery of courses, the coalition would interfere in the process of how students are billed their higher education fees in a Venezuelan-North Korean way to try to shape the choices that young school leavers make is too dopey for words. The idea that young people who want to study arts or social sciences at university when confronted with an increase in their fees will choose to be dentists or scientists is too silly for words. But it weaved its way through the cabinet and it weaved its way through the coalition party room, and what we are now left with is universities that deliver science courses suddenly having to work out how many staff they have to cut. Universities that deliver engineering courses are working out how many fewer courses in engineering they are going to deliver because the cuts on that side are going to make it harder for them to deliver the very courses that they say they're interested in more Australians studying. It is too dopey for words.

As we've turned our televisions on over the last six months and as the television stations have turned to experts to explain to the community what's going on with the COVID-19 pandemic, how the search for a new vaccine works and what things they need to do to keep themselves, their families and their communities safe, who has been on the television? University academics—public health economists in our universities. The community has leant on the universities' capability at this time of crisis, but all Senator Molan can talk about—and I think Senator Molan accurately reflects the unrestrained dopiness that I talked about on these issues in the coalition party room—is a gleeful excitement that universities are somehow losing support in the Australian community. What a witless, dopey thing to say!

Our higher education system is a key national institution, but these guys are obsessed with student politics. Maybe they were denigrated while they were student politicians by other student politicians. Most of us got over it. Most of us forgot about it. But these people bear a grudge from 1969 or whenever it was that they were last on a university campus. There is no censorship. There is no censorship on Australian university campuses. The only example that poor old Senator Molan could drag out was that people were upset by what Geoffrey Blainey had to say in the 1980s, and they should have been upset because Geoffrey Blainey was campaigning against Asian migration to Australia. Does anybody seriously defend that? I think Geoffrey Blainey is a fine Australian historian, but he was dead wrong on that issue. He will always be dead wrong on that issue, and many thousands of university students demonstrated against him. That's good; it's spirited debate. But, if your conservative views have so corrupted your thinking, if your resentment over your university experiences have so damaged your thinking about this important national institution, if you can't get yourself beyond the bitterness and weird obscurantism of the approach espoused by people opposite, you are going to continue to do enormous damage to these absolutely vital institutions and enormous damage to the Australian national interest.

Stirling Griff (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Centre Alliance supports the intention of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019, which is to inhibit cheating services. These services threaten the quality and integrity of the higher education sector, which has been a source of significant employment and export earnings. The bill does this by imposing penalties for providing or promoting cheating services. These penalties can be very severe—500 penalty units worth $105,000 and up to two years imprisonment. The severity of these penalties is designed to act as a deterrent and I'm confident that they will have the desired effect.

However, we do not support the other offences created by the bill, such as that which criminalises non-commercial cheating and imposes a penalty of 500 penalty units. To be clear, non-commercial cheating refers to assistance from a friend or family member without a financial benefit where the assistance forms a substantial part of the assessment. I think we can all agree that cheating is wrong and that it is desirable for students to act honestly and complete their work. But, when a student is struggling and their mother ends up helping them with an essay, is it really appropriate to label that behaviour as unlawful and, potentially, impose a fine of as much as $100,000?

Every university in the country already has rules against cheating, and, for extreme cases, prosecutions can be brought for existing serious offences such as fraud or dishonestly obtaining an advantage. So what is to be gained by the creation of this new offence? Certainly, it does nothing to reduce commercial cheating services, which is the very point of this bill. The government may say that it has some deterrent value, but that assumes parents and siblings and neighbours and friends are aware that such an offence exists. There may be some media coverage on this measure if it passes into law, and so some people would become aware of it, but I imagine it would not be many, and so it would do little to change people's behaviour.

The government's original proposal was for a civil penalty of 1,000 penalty units—more than $200,000. In response to stakeholder feedback, they acknowledged this was excessive and reduced the penalty to 500 units. But this is still excessive. Centre Alliance will be moving an amendment to the bill which removes the non-commercial offence. We believe this is a sensible, reasonable change that will not inhibit the government's efforts to crack down on commercial cheating services.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill. Before I talk about the bill, I'd like to rebut a couple of the points made by Senator Ayres. It is worth noting that when students come to this country they have to have sufficient funds for 12 months. That is a part of the contract. So I think the idea that somehow the federal government is ignoring the contract is false. It's also worth pointing out that the federal government gives $17 billion in funding to higher education. There's a $70 billion outstanding debt on higher education, and universities happen to have a tax-free status on profits earned from higher education.

As I pointed out in my first speech, there were over 700,000 foreign students in this country who are allowed to work up to 20 hours a week, so they get very generous entitlements in this country. And that extra supply in the labour market can actually push wages down for hardworking Australians. I think the idea that the federal government doesn't look after international students is absolutely wrong, and for it to come from the party that introduced the Dawkins reforms in 1990, which absolutely trashed higher education—and the party that in 1989 brought in HECS for teachers and nurses, the same year as they introduced the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax, which gave a 15 per cent uplift on foreign multinationals investing in oil exploration in this country—is a little bit hypocritical.

As for suppression of speech, I don't think Senator Molan was talking about Geoffrey Blainey back in the sixties. He was referring to Drew Pavlou today, who has very courageously stood up to certain interests at the University of Queensland. He's been demonised. And I'm pleased to say that, despite the fact that many of us on the conservative side probably have different views to Drew, we are more than happy to stand up for freedom of speech and we'll happily back Drew. Anyway, back to the bill.

Sadly, it is becoming increasingly clear that education in Australia has been on the decline for the past 20 years—yes, think Dawkins reforms. According to the 2018 PISA report, education standards in Australia had hit an all-time low, with maths falling below the OECD average and science being the lowest it has ever been. Teacher quality has also been called into question as school test results have fallen, with some citing low ATAR requirements for teaching degrees and poor university results as the culprits. However, there could also be a more sinister factor at work here to explain falling academic standards among graduates—that is, cheating. It is becoming increasingly common for university students to hire cheating services to write their essays or sit their exams. This means that students are graduating without the necessary skills to succeed in the workplace, and cheating providers are profiting from this breach in academic integrity. The Higher Education Standards Panel has advised that legislation is needed to address this growing problem and deter third-party academic cheating services.

This bill is an amendment to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 that will make it illegal to provide third-party academic cheating services to students. In academic circles, this kind of cheating is called contract cheating, which is where a student outsources or contracts their work to someone else, often in exchange for money. Contract cheating can take the form of a third party sitting a student's exam or, more commonly, the provision of bespoke essays or other academic material. Successful businesses have been set up to cater to this emerging market and are colloquially known as essay mills, referring to how they grind out essay after essay. According to Australian research from 2018, 2.2 per cent of students in Australia self-reported buying essays, representing approximately 33,000 students. This puts conservative estimates for the market for cheating services in Australia at between $10 million and $23 million. These are alarming numbers, and it's time the Australian government stepped in and did something about it.

In 2014, there was a significant cheating scandal that erupted in the major universities of New South Wales, where it was revealed that students were buying essays from the MyMaster contract cheating website. Up to 70 students were facing academic penalties or suspension, and at least two were expelled. The MyMaster website was in Chinese, targeting international students, and in 2014 had a turnover of $160,000. Anecdotal evidence surrounding the MyMaster scandal, due to its publicity, revealed that the integrity and quality of Australian higher education was brought into question in the minds of foreign regulators. It is precisely situations like this that this bill aims to prevent by providing a strong deterrent, enforced by legislation to prosecute businesses like MyMaster and prevent them from providing cheating services that erode academic standards and damage the reputation of Australian education in the process. The provision of academic cheating poses a real threat to academic integrity and the reputation of Australian higher education. Employers need to be confident that graduates of Australian universities and TAFE colleges are truly qualified for their jobs—especially when it comes to positions such as engineering or medicine, where the consequences of incompetence are extremely high. By not submitting to an appropriate level of academic discipline by doing the work themselves, students fail to master the content or achieve the necessary skills to earn their degrees and sustain a career.

Further—and this is crucial—international education is Australia's largest service based export industry, contributing $35 billion to the national economy in 2018. Should the international reputation of Australian universities take a hit, even in part, because of these cheating services, it will have a significant negative impact on Australia's economy. Passing this bill will send a message to international students and their parents and guardians, foreign governments and overseas employers that Australia takes its education standards seriously and is doing all it can do to maintain high levels of academic integrity.

Currently, there is no law directly prohibiting contract cheating in Australia, only indirect legislation by the states and territories in allied areas, which are often difficult to pursue and hard for a state or territory to justify prosecuting in terms of cost. This bill will send the message that academic cheating is not only unethical but illegal in Australia and will make the consequences clear, commensurate and easier to prosecute.

The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency will be given the power to enforce the legislation through monitoring, intelligence-gathering and investigating and prosecuting identified offenders to ensure the legislation's positive effect. Practically, TEQSA will be able to seek court injunctions to block cheating websites and their ability to be found on search engines. They will also educate students about the changes and disseminate information to universities and overseas regulatory authorities about cheating websites and their users, while safeguarding the identity of students.

The bill is designed to directly penalise third parties that operate cheating services rather than bring charges against the students themselves, who remain subject to their institution's academic integrity policies. The maximum criminal and civil penalties will be two years in jail or up to $100,000 in fines. These penalties may seem harsh, but they must be harsh to be effective as a strong and comprehensive deterrent. To this end, even advertising cheating services qualifies as an offence under the proposed legislation.

There is also the further point that some commercial cheating providers are so successful that fines may not be much more than an inconvenience. Therefore, the fines in such cases are higher and offences are subject to possible jail terms. After consulting with the sector the government has clarified the legislation to ensure that parents and friends who might edit a child's essay or provide suggestions on how to improve an assignment will not be impacted.

If academic cheating is allowed to flourish, it will damage the reputation of Australia's higher education sector by degrading our academic institutions and placing future education exports at risk. Those exports accounted for $35.1 billion and were Australia's third-largest prior to the devastating impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. Going soft on cheating will almost certainly lead to a fall in academic and professional standards and impact Australia's ability to compete in the global marketplace. The consequences of academic cheating could also put the public at risk if graduates are not thoroughly qualified for their jobs. Cheating certainly carries significant personal risk for students. If they are caught, they risk their degree and if they are not caught, they will be inadequately prepared for the workplace and will lack the necessary skills to excel fully in their careers.

The bottom line is that this kind of third-party academic cheating is bad for students, bad for our institutions and bad for the economy. It is in Australia's interests that we act now. I commend this bill to the Senate.

Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak in support of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019. Australia is home to one of the best education systems in the world. We all take pride in Australians having an equal opportunity to access quality tertiary education. The job of rebuilding our economy is now ahead of us. The Morrison government is of course working hard to ensure that we have a skilled workforce to support the ever-changing needs of the market. As the economy evolves we need to ensure that we have a skilled workforce to support the changing nature of the market. To ensure that we're providing skilled workers and quality education we must stamp out cheating services.

Traditionally academic cheating involved the simple task of students copying from one another, but in this modern world commercial cheating services have become, sadly, very common. The issue of commercial cheating services—or contract cheating, as it has become known—came to the attention of the government in 2014 in the wake of media reports regarding the widespread use by students of a commercial cheating site known as MyMaster. The Minister for Education and Training at the time referred the matter to the TEQSA for investigation.

Of course it would be remiss to suggest that all students are involved in these sorts of practices. In fact, the investigations that have been undertaken show that some students are more likely to engage in these behaviours than others. The likelihood of cheating is influenced by, surprisingly, gender—more male students self-reported cheating than female students—and age, with younger students being more prone. Linguistic background and the use of technology are two other factors that are reported to influence whether or not students conduct this behaviour.

Third-party cheating typically involves the provision of academic material that is subsequently submitted by a student for assessment, or a third party even impersonating a student in an exam or a practical test. It is disappointing that we do have people who will rort the system. Unfortunately, the provision of these services has become more widespread through targeted promotions for cheating services through on-campus advertising, emails, social media and other forms of promotion. These targeted promotions are now being used to highlight the ease of access. The minimal cost is also a feature as well as the low risk of detection. In so doing, they do, of course, downplay the ethical dishonesty and the risk to the student's future study and career prospects, not to mention the overwhelming undermining of the academic integrity of a system.

Those engaged in providing academic cheating services are ultimately exploiting students and undermining the integrity of our high-quality degrees. This bill aims to stop this. The bill amends the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act to make it an offence to advertise academic cheating services to students studying with an Australian higher education provider, whether the service is provided from within Australia or from overseas. It also serves to add preventing and minimising the use and promotion of academic cheating services to the responsibilities of Australia's higher education regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, or the TEQSA as it has been previously referred to.

The bill will see commercial cheating services sold to Australian students face civil and criminal penalties of up to two years imprisonment and fines of up to 500 penalty points, which equates to about a $100,000 fine. It does set a very high threshold. It has been set deliberately high to create a strong deterrent to those who seek to provide these services. These penalties will apply where cheating services are advertised for a commercial purpose. The bill also introduces civil penalties of up to 500 penalty units which will apply when the cheating service is provided without remuneration. The object of this is to stamp out third-party cheating that's occurred on an unpaid basis. Research has shown that a large portion of third-party cheating occurs, sadly, by family or friends, or others in the community. It's intended that strict liability will apply to the criminal offence of providing an academic cheating service, but, to be clear, mums and dads at home who help proofread or edit a son's or a daughter's essay, or give advice on to how to improve an assignment, are obviously not intended to be captured by this bill. They won't be impacted.

This decision has been made after significant consultation with the sector. It's designed to target commercial cheating services and, of course, not the students who use them. But just because the students are not covered, it doesn't mean they'll get off scot-free. Students who cheat will, of course, still be subject to their institution's own academic integrity policies and sanctions, including the consequences that flow from those. It is important to reinforce for the students who are considering using such cheating services that getting a tertiary education is a privilege, not an entitlement. Our students should take the responsibility, the opportunity and the privilege of getting a tertiary education seriously and respect the obligations that go with it. Such actions will ultimately call into question the integrity of our system and the qualifications earned. Of course, in some areas of study, such as the discipline of medicine, there is a risk that these sorts of services may irresponsibly put the lives of others at risk as a result of assumed knowledge and the possession of skills obtained during these courses.

Cheaters should never prosper under this government. These cheating services are a blight on our education system. It is currently too easy for those who provide these services to prey on students. It must be remembered, of course, that students who use the services are often away from home, under pressure, under stress and having difficulty with their studies, and the provision of these services does provide instruction that it is okay to buy an essay or have someone else take an exam for them. They're told by these service providers that no-one will find out or that there's a minimal risk of detection and there are no consequences if that happens. We know this is not the case. If it were, we wouldn't be standing in this chamber speaking to the bill which specifically targets this easy way out.

The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency will be appointed under this new law with powers to include monitoring, intelligence gathering, investigation and prosecution of identified offenders. This body will have the ability to seek injunctions and to force internet service providers and search engines to block cheating websites. They'll have additional power to collect and disseminate information about cheating websites and their users to help institutions combat cheating activities on campus—of course, with safeguards to protect the unwarranted sharing of personal information of those who purchase these services. The national regulator will be given powers to investigate and then to recommend prosecution of the providers.

The bill comes after consultation, as I said, with the sector and gives effect to the advice of the Higher Education Standards Panel that legislation was required to deter such services. While many aspects of these services and the provision of same are already subject to criminal and civil penalties—for example, the offences of fraud, misrepresentation and dishonestly dealing with documents—they can often be difficult to pursue and provide very little deterrence in certain instances, as there is often no law which explicitly outlines the provision of these services specifically.

The Higher Education Standards Panel also found that the array of state, territory and Commonwealth laws relevant to these offences makes it difficult to pursue legal solutions against the providers, and the panel's advice was that additional legislative backing is needed to more effectively deal with the risks. It's actually modelled on the New Zealand Education Act and their approach. The legislation comes with the support of Universities Australia, who have said:

Universities Australia thanks Education Minister Dan Tehan for taking a strong stance on the issue and for incorporating our feedback into the revised Bill.

The legislation now draws a distinction between commercial cheating services – which face criminal penalties – and civil penalties for people who help a student cheat without payment.

To not stamp out cheating services poses a significant threat to the integrity and the reputation of our higher education system, both in Australia and internationally, and the bill acts to ensure that our students are not taken advantage of. It also sends the message that third-party cheating is not just immoral and it doesn't just undermine the integrity of our education system and our society; it will now be illegal. For these reasons, I commend the bill.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019 raises a number of issues. It has, of course, a laudable aim: to crack down on cheating services that exploit vulnerable students. It is aimed at seeking to strengthen the integrity of our tertiary education system. While, as the Labor Party has pointed out, there are some difficulties with this and the debate has ranged very widely, I think it's fair to say that the provisions of this particular amendment to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency are welcomed.

But I want to concentrate more on the questions around our international reputation in terms of research. I want to concentrate specifically on the question of the relationship between our research sectors and international students, who are often the victims of these sorts of cheating arrangements. I'm particularly affected by the concerns that have been raised by students from China. Fees paid by international students, especially those from China, have been used to cross-subsidise the funding of research in this country, and it's the lack of a secure funding base for research which has seen so much of our university sector move into international education as a means of subsidising our research investments. With the onset of the pandemic and the consequent decline in international student numbers, we've seen this question really brought to the fore. Funding for university research is now down some $4.7 billion this year—$4.7 billion of approximately $12 billion that universities spend on research.

China is Australia's biggest source of international students. In 2018, the services export market to China was about $11.7 billion. Our economy is hugely dependent on our relationship with China. In some quarters, particularly sections of the media, the university sector is singled out as the villain for cultivating this relationship. They've called for a radical decoupling from China. Of course, the criticism is not extended when it comes to other sections of Australian society, particularly agriculture or mining, forestry or fisheries. You don't hear the suggestion that we should immediately cut off our relationships with the People's Republic of China. We hear nothing, for instance, of the $63 billion from the iron ore trade that is tied directly to China. For instance, in the period from 2016-17 to 2018-19 the value of Australian merchandised trade with China increased by 40 per cent. Iron ore was the most valuable part of those exports.

So what some call excessive dependence on China is not only a higher education characteristic, yet the university sector is attacked for that dependence while other sectors of the economy are not, and the reputations of highly regarded academics and university administrators are smeared because they have promoted engagement with China. There are suggestions that somehow there is some disloyalty to Australia if these academics engage in research collaboration with China or if they encourage more Chinese students to come here.

The former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Queensland, Professor Peter Hoj, has been referred to in The Australian as a 'China-friendly' vice-chancellor, as if there's some offence in that. He's been attacked by Senator Paterson because of the University of Queensland's decision to award him a performance payment. This is irony upon irony, because not only is Professor Hoj a highly decorated, internationally recognised scholar; he in fact played a leading role in the establishment of the new University Foreign Interference Taskforce, which is to be set up within TEQSA. He, of course, was criticised by Senator Paterson on the basis of 16 KPIs awarding Professor Hoj payment concerning research collaboration with China, increasing the university's share of the Chinese student market.

Professor Hoj was awarded his Companion of the Order of Australia in 2019 in the Australia Day honours list, which specifically referred to the fact that he had presided over the establishment of the Confucius Institute for the study of Chinese languages and culture at the University of Queensland. When that award was granted, it was presented amongst his achievements. The citation includes his role as a senior council executive member of the Hanban, the Office of Chinese Language Council International, since 2013. Are Professor Hoj's critics suggesting that somehow or other the Governor-General made a mistake in awarding him the nation's highest honour?

Professor Hoj was defended by the university's chancellor, Mr Peter Varghese. Mr Varghese is a former director-general of the Office of National Assessments. He's keenly aware of what constitutes a security risk and what does not. He's found nothing inappropriate in Professor Hoj's actions. He said that under Professor Hoj's leadership the University of Queensland has risen from a global ranking of 90, when he became vice-chancellor in 2012, to a ranking of 54. That's why he received his performance payment. I understand that Professor Hoj has been linked to the possibility of taking a vice-chancellor position in the city of Adelaide. I understand that that's actually welcomed by senior Liberals even if it is rejected by some of the fringe players within the Liberal Party. Managing the relationship with China has to be a primary concern of whoever is the vice-chancellor, whether it be at Adelaide or the University of Queensland.

Sixty-three per cent of the University of Queensland's international students actually come from China. They in fact provide some 20 per cent of the university's revenue. Mr Varghese said that the way to reduce that level of dependence is actually to seek greater diversity in students who come here. The wrong way would be to launch a sudden and disastrous decoupling from China. International student fees fund research at Australian universities, but the people who complain about the reliance on these fees have so far done nothing to provide a more secure basis of funding by the Australian government, where the funding should actually come from.

The education minister recently announced that he wanted to convene a group of vice-chancellors to look for a solution to this crisis of funding within our research sector. Let's hope he finds one, because what was missing from his announcement was any suggestion that there should actually be an increase in funding.

The inconsistency we see in these proposed changes to domestic student fees can't inspire any confidence—certainly not from me. Mr Tehan has made suggestions about making students more job ready by reducing funding for science, at the same time, of course, suggesting that teaching humanities somehow or another is improper. The proposition is farcical.

This is a government that does very little thinking about the implications of its higher education policies, but it seems quite happy to acquiesce to having our university scholars—our scientists, our researchers—pilloried by its own backbenches, because it's easier to get a headline by inciting fear about security breaches. It is fear without substance.

It's the same tactic that is used against academics who engage in science collaboration with Chinese colleagues. A notable example of that is in today's Australian. A report by Sharri Markson and Kylar Loussikian names several Australian Chinese academics who have had or currently have appointments at Australian universities. They are also said to be beneficiaries of China's Thousand Talents Program, which provides financial incentives for researchers abroad and encourages them to do work in China. The journalists cite the FBI investigations into the program, and it's been alleged that there's been a transfer of intellectual property to China without the knowledge or permission of the universities employing these people. But, after insinuating that that's the case in Australia, Ms Markson and Mr Loussikian hastened to say they're not actually suggesting that there'd been any wrongdoing by academics here. You might be surprised to note that. You've got to read the articles carefully. On a number of occasions The Australian this morning said that there's no suggestion of wrongdoing, inappropriate action or a failure to meet disclosure requirements. In fact, The Australian goes on to suggest that in fact what we've got here is lax regulation. Australia, which of course has stronger and tougher regulations than the United States, has allowed something to go wrong—the smear, of course, to be suggested.

We could find no evidence. No-one has declared any evidence of any breach of the Defence Trade Controls Act, so what's the basis of The Australian's story?

Yet again, it contains nothing but smears and insinuations directed at people who, I repeat, the journalists themselves say have done nothing wrong. It has become an all too familiar pattern for Ms Markson in reporting Australian research collaborations with China. The bigger picture is ignored.

The fact is: China is seeking to develop technological capabilities so that it can be a global leader in advanced manufacturing. It simply doesn't want to accept the old division of labour that has been assigned to it. China, in its Made in China 2025 plan, which was announced in 2015, set about restructuring its economy. There have been investment increases in R&D in China of some 400 per cent. China is rapidly moving away from being chiefly a producer of low-cost, mass-market goods. According to the highly reputable Leiden science index, 10 years ago China had only one institution in the world's top 25 leading universities. Today it has 13—in 10 years. It has a series of measures to attract talent, as does this country, as does the United States, as do the English, as do the Germans. It's a common feature of higher education around the world.

We shouldn't be naive. No-one pretends that there is no such thing as industrial espionage, but people who wish to make allegations of industrial espionage need to produce proof, not smears. There is nothing resembling proof in today's reports in The Australian. More important than these confected fears is the question of what role Australia chooses to play in the historic transformation that is actually occurring in China. The continuing conflict between the United States and China is only intermittently a trade war. It has enormous capacity to do immeasurable damage to Australia's national interest. It is an underlying clash in a contest for technological supremacy. We have an opportunity here to actually participate for the benefit of Australia— (Time expired)

Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is quite a lot to unpack in this debate tonight, and I note that it has been quite wide-ranging in considering some broader issues facing our higher education sector and, particularly following Senator Carr's contribution, the relationship that some of our universities have with China.

I disagree with Senator Carr's characterisation that people who question the relationship that our higher education institutions have with the Chinese Communist Party are fearmongering. The number of students on our university campuses who have spoken to me and other colleagues about their concerns about free academic inquiry on campus, as well as the influence of the CCP on university campuses, completely flies in the face of that characterisation. On an evening when we are meant to be talking about a quite straightforward piece of legislation, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2010, I find it regrettable that we are engaging in a debate about the relationship that our higher education institutions have with China and that people who question that relationship and just want some transparency in the relationship are characterised as fearmongers. Quite frankly, I find it really disappointing.

I will get to the legislation that we have at hand now—the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019. I think it's safe to say that cheating has changed a little since I was at university. Ten years ago, when I was studying at university, you always heard these stories of some of the more creative ways students had found to try to work their way around the system: writing the answers to exam questions on pieces of clothing, which they would then remove during the exam; eating notes once they were caught with them in the exam; or copying the text directly from Wikipedia, which, when the hyperlinks showed up in the essay, was a bit of a giveaway.

But the advent of the internet and enhanced communications means the art of cheating is now smarter and in many cases more commercial. Back in the day, in terms of proving an offence of cheating, universities would have academic misconduct policies in place and disciplinary processes in place and it was often contingent on finding the evidence and simply building a case that impropriety had occurred. But we know from the reviews that have been discussed in the debate tonight, undertaken by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, that these policies and procedures are perhaps not enough. Indeed, that is why we are having this debate tonight, talking about this piece of legislation.

I think it's interesting to note the history of how we've come to this position, because it is important to consider that universities are primarily responsible for maintaining the integrity of their academic services, so to speak. Commercial cheating came to the attention of this government through the MyMaster scandal back in 2015. That was, as we've heard tonight, a website through which students could obtain a prewritten essay. After this came to the government's attention the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency investigated this issue on the recommendation of the government. They came up with a report that suggested, as I alluded to earlier, that a stronger response from the government was required in order to regulate the higher education sector to strengthen it so that this new commercialised form of cheating service couldn't occur.

The minister then requested that the Higher Education Standards Panel advise on options to deter commercial cheating based on those recommendations from the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, which I'm going to refer to as TEQSA for ease of pronunciation—and otherwise we're going to be here all night! I would like to read from the report on student academic integrity and allegations of contract cheating by university students undertaken by TEQSA—just a short paragraph—because it really does go to where this issue has come from and why it's necessary for us to have this legislation in front of us tonight. The report says:

Contract cheating – the purchase of another person's work to present as your own – has a long history. Recently, the ready availability of sophisticated communication technology and the rise of social media have increased the opportunity to access and/or repurpose another's work to present as your own. Availability of essay writing services is pervasive with both local and international websites advertising their services. A number of assessment strategies have been devised to minimise the opportunity for such fraudulent activity by students and to detect it when it occurs. However it should be noted that the efficacy of such strategies has not been established and the favoured way to combat such behavior is by the promotion of academic integrity in the student body.

I mean, this report fundamentally explains how universities had these policies and processes in place, yet it wasn't actually preventing this cheating from occurring, as we saw with the MyMaster scandal back in 2015. So, the natural question was asked: what more can be done? The legislation we are discussing here tonight is what could be done.

We know that cheating services are a blight on our education system. These are people who are exploiting vulnerable students and undermining the integrity of our high-quality degrees. A lot of the government speakers I have listened to tonight have talked about the importance of maintaining the integrity of our degrees, because having a degree should be a worthwhile exercise and a degree should be a worthwhile commodity that should be preparing our students for the workplace.

This bill that we're debating here this evening is aimed at commercial cheating services, not the students who use them. Students who cheat will still be subject to their institution's own academic integrity policies and sanctions, including any consequences that flow from those, like the ones I discussed earlier. The national regulator, TEQSA, will be given new powers to investigate and recommend prosecution of cheating service providers. TEQSA will also be empowered to seek court injunctions to force internet service providers and search engines to block cheating websites.

This bill gives effect to the advice of the Higher Education Standards Panel that I referenced earlier—that legislation is required to deter third-party academic cheating services. Like I said, when universities have policies and procedures in place and have embedded these policies and procedures in their teaching processes and yet this sort of cheating is still occurring, we know that more needs to be done. The Higher Education Standards Panel found that the array of state, territory and Commonwealth laws relevant to cheating offences made it difficult to pursue legal solutions against providers of these cheating services. The panel's advice was that additional legislative backing is needed to more effectively deal with such risks. The panel advocated modelling this on New Zealand's approach, which is outlined in section 292E of the Education Act 1989, which is a piece of New Zealand legislation. The panel recommended that this legislation should be aimed at those who provide cheating services and not at students who might use such services. Like I said, students who cheat will remain subject to their institutions' own policies, processes and sanctions if that is deemed appropriate in the individual situation.

We have consulted broadly on this bill. An exposure draft was issued for comment in early 2019. A number of submissions were received in response which generally supported the need for the legislation and raised some small concerns around the bill. The bill that we have in front of us this evening has been revised to take account of these.

This bill will amend the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 to make it an offence to provide or advertise academic cheating services to students or arrange academic cheating services for students studying with Australian higher education providers, whether the services are provided from within Australia or overseas. Criminal and civil penalties of up to two years jail and fines of up to 500 penalty units will apply where the cheating service or advertising is for a commercial purpose. Civil penalties of up to 500 penalty units will apply where the cheating service is provided without remuneration. Strict liability will apply to the criminal offence of providing an academic cheating service in order to undermine services' tactics of disingenuous disclaimers regarding the purpose and use of their products.

As I alluded to earlier, TEQSA will be appointed to enforce the new law, with its powers to include monitoring, intelligence gathering, investigation and prosecution of identified offenders. TEQSA will have additional power to collect and disseminate information about cheating websites and their users to help institutions combat cheating activity on campus but with safeguards to protect the unwarranted sharing of personal information of those who purchase cheating materials. TEQSA will have the ability to seek court injunctions to force internet service providers and search engines to block cheating websites, as I previously alluded to.

I think that last point around disseminating cheating websites is a really important one. Like I said, back in the day when I was at university, cheating was still—let's call it—paper based. It was very much around borrowing a student's notes and using another student's work to complete your essay or writing your own notes and taking them into an exam and relying upon them when you were completing an exam question. The way that students can access information now has completely changed not only their educational landscape generally but, of course, the ways in which they can be preyed upon and the access, potentially, that they might have to services such as these that can provide essays online.

I think the bill that we are discussing here tonight is an important one. It is important that we maintain the integrity of our higher education system, because the qualifications that result from it are only ever as valuable as the integrity of the broader sector. So I certainly commend the bill to the Senate, and I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate around this bill, which, as I mentioned in my opening statements, has been somewhat wideranging.

Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to rise and speak on the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019. Whether it's safeguarding against foreign interference and foreign influence, whether it's ensuring the integrity of university research, whether it's providing consistent academic standards, including for non-English-speaking international students, or whether it's combating cheating in university exams, the integrity of our university sector is critical to the reputation of our graduates, the success of our businesses for which these graduates will go on to work and the prosperity of our country.

I don't think I can remember a time when the integrity of some universities has been so in the spotlight as now, and that is principally the reason that this bill is so important. We just heard a very good contribution from Senator Chandler in relation to the importance of the bill. I just briefly want to touch on the bill, and I want to make a couple of comments about Senator Carr's contribution.

The bill amends the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011, the TEQSA Act, to make it an offence to provide or advertise academic cheating services for students studying with Australian higher education providers, whether the service is provided from within Australia or overseas. There are serious penalties in this bill for the provision of a cheating service. We are not talking about incidental help or students getting a bit of assistance here and there. We are not talking about parents or siblings giving some helpful advice. We are talking about professional, commercial cheating services which seek to undermine the very integrity of our universities. That's why there are criminal and civil penalties provided for in this bill of up to two years jail and fines of up to 500 penalty units, around $100,000. That is how seriously our government is treating this issue. Strict liability will apply to the criminal offence of providing an academic cheating service in order to undermine the service's tactics of disingenuous disclaimers regarding the purpose and the use of the products. TEQSA will be appointed to enforce the new law, with its new powers to include monitoring, intelligence gathering, investigation and the prosecution of identified offenders.

I want to quickly refer to Senator Carr's contribution. I am concerned about his characterisations of the work of our government in ensuring the integrity of our university and research sector. I commend the journalist who wrote the report in today's Australian newspaper, because it shines a spotlight on what is a very serious issue and one that our government takes very seriously—and that is foreign interference and foreign influence in our universities. We saw the disgraceful, appalling conduct of the University of Queensland in the way that it treated Drew Pavlou when he dared to criticise the Chinese Communist Party. Of course, that was very much influenced by the university's very close links with the CCP through the Confucius Institute. But again today we have seen more concerning reports about the many dozens of academics in Australian universities who have been involved in a program called the Thousand Talents Program. The report includes information that the names of these academics have been included in Chinese patent applications in a manner that may not only compromise the intellectual property of our universities—of course, universities are reported to have said they didn't even know about this in some cases—but also compromise our national security.

These are issues we take very seriously. We must at all stages protect the integrity of our universities. We are doing that, whether it's through the espionage and foreign interference act, through the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, through new electoral funding and disclosure reforms or, of course, through this bill. I commend the bill to the Senate.