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

I would like to thank Senator Tyrrell for raising this issue, an issue that is deeply important in the context of the skills crisis that we are facing in this country, particularly given that this is an issue that, along with so many other issues, was ignored by the previous government for nine very long years. Let's not forget that, as well as ignoring this particular aspect of people's education and the development of skills in this country, they also doubled the cost of numerous degrees, making it so much harder for students. Then, of course, there were the changes to HECS. All of these things have created an environment where our higher education system is in need of extreme amounts of repair.

We have many students, in courses like nursing, teaching, early education and social work, who are required to undertake a set number of hours of placement in their area to be able to graduate appropriately from their degree. These placements are frequently unpaid, and they can be for significant periods of time. Notably, studying nursing requires up to 800 hours of placement, teaching requires 80 full days of placement, and social work requires up to 1,000 hours of placement. We find that the careers where placements are required are significantly female-dominated industries. For example, 92 per cent of workers across early childhood education and care are female and are required to undertake placement. Eighty-six per cent of workers across residential aged care are female, as is 76 per cent of the school workforce and 68 per cent of the disability workforce. This is overwhelmingly focused on females building their career and having to deal with the challenges that they have on placement.

We also know that placements have a disproportionate effect on people on low SES backgrounds. As is always the case, those with less get impacted more and struggle more, and we need to be looking at structures to change that. So the Labor government, having a deep and abiding respect and commitment to higher education, to TAFE education, to vocational education of all sorts, and to addressing our skills crisis, has undertaken a range of steps to start trying to address this challenge.

The universities accord panel has handed down its interim report and it's great to see that there are some good strategies proposed in that interim report. The interim report is just the essential things for now. The final report will be in December. It has had spectacular engagement and is coming up with excellent strategies to address some of these issues that we have seen festering and getting worse over the last 10 years. The placement issue was specifically referenced in the accord, so I, like Senator Tyrrell, are quite excited about what the future might look like in addressing some of these deeply challenging and concerning issues.

In addition, the government is working with education ministers across the country to consider the findings from the teacher education expert panel. Obviously, teaching is just one area where placement is an issue but it is a significant one. The impact of unpaid placements on those students is something that those education ministers are looking very, very seriously at and have already come to in-principle supports. One of those is a national practical teaching guideline by the end of 2023—only a couple of months away—establishing a system wide coordination of practical experience and undertaking work to increase the systemic investment in this area. We are making progress. It is a critical area. We have a great deal of positivity about how this may play out, but let's not forget that this is off the back of 10 years of abject ignorance of the issue and of the needs of this country to develop the skills we need into the future and that is at the foot of the coalition and their time in government.

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

Thank you, Senator Tyrrell, for putting up this MPI. This is something close to my heart as well because placement poverty is a pressing issue and it has become even more urgent in the cost-of-living crisis. A big shout-out to Students Against Placement Poverty, who are running a national grassroots campaign for placements to be paid. Unpaid placements form part of a really cooked system of education that exploits student labour. We can't keep turning away when we know that students are forced do thousands of hours of unpaid placement work. These placements are often required for those studying and training to become essential workers, those who showed us during COVID lockdowns that it is only with their labour that we can have a functioning society with the most vulnerable among us being looked after. We are training these people and then forcing them during that education to work for free. Hundreds of thousands of students across the country are required to complete unpaid mandatory work placements as part of their study.

Placement poverty is gendered. Placements are especially common in feminised fields of study—teachers, nurses and social workers. Social work students have to undertake a thousand hours of compulsory placement and teaching requires more than 500 hours. On top of forgoing their income and not being paid for their work, students often have to fork out cash for travel, for parking and sometimes for professional clothing, leaving them out of pocket yet again. It's particularly tough for students with parenting responsibilities or those who are already marginalised in society, including First Nations people and migrants.

According to a survey by the Australian Council of Heads of Social Work Education, students are feeling exploited. They're being used to fill labour shortages in organisations and provide free labour. One student reported, 'I spent the majority of my time cleaning out homes and transporting clients.' This is harmful. This is just plain wrong. Students are being burnt out before they even begin their careers and are left with absolutely no time to have a life outside of work, and they end up being shackled with massive student debts. How is this fair? How is this equitable? Students should not be forced to provide their labour for free.

The immense financial, physical and emotional toll of student debt and unpaid placements is forcing people to drop out of university. This not only crushes their dreams of studying but also means we have fewer teachers, fewer nurses, fewer engineers, fewer social workers and fewer people in other professions we desperately need. There is a pretty straightforward solution: pay students for these placements. Students should be able to study for free and be paid for mandatory placements—no ifs, no buts.

Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

During the cost-of-living crisis, it is exploitation to push students into doing unpaid practical placements. We should be setting up students to succeed, but instead we force them to live in poverty and to balance their work, placement and study commitments. To work in many of our sectors with the most extensive workforce shortages right now, like teaching, students are required to engage in weeks upon weeks—sometimes even months—of unpaid work whilst barely subsisting on poverty stipends.

Decades of neoliberal policies have reshaped universities away from being a public good into operating as corporations in a market. When we shape universities in this way, they are no longer about ensuring students are educationally enriched. It just becomes about numbers and incomes on screens—about shifting blocks of students for revenue.

A decades-long bipartisan commitment to the privatisation of education has also driven thousands of passionate, experienced teachers out of the public education system. With the teacher workforce crisis deepening, we desperately need teachers to stay in the profession, but we also need university students to want to finish their teaching degrees and to join the teacher workforce. But, if their first taste of the profession whilst on prac is months of poverty and a teacher's excessive workload, it's no wonder they don't stick around.

Like my colleague Senator Faruqi, I too would like to express my solidarity with Students Against Placement Poverty, who have been fighting for fairer conditions. Despite the hardship these students are facing, they're still rallying and organising for change.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Tyrrell for bringing this matter of public importance to the Senate, and I support it wholeheartedly. Clinical or practical placements for undergraduate students are integral to consolidating the skills and lessons taught in a formal classroom, but they come at a cost to our students, and that is something that we need to think through, particularly when we're looking across Australia and seeing people with jobs facing the cost-of-living crisis and doing it tough.

It's very rare to see a placement that's a funded position, and quite often the universities can set their minimum hours with only broad guidance from professional bodies. According to the Department of Health and Aged Care, registered nurses require a minimum of 800 hours unpaid clinical placement. The AMA says medical students require 2,760 hours. Trainee physiotherapists require between 700 and 1,000 hours. For teachers it's 600 hours, and for social workers it's 1,000 hours. A thousand hours is about 25 work weeks, essentially half a year of unpaid work. At the minimum wage, that equates to around $22,000 of free labour. Some may and probably will argue that that's just the cost of learning, but I would remind people that students already pay to attend placements through their university fees and other mandatory requirements such as background checks and booster vaccinations. Placements can extend to up to four to eight weeks at a time, and all the while, a student still has to fund their usual cost of living. Some placements can include the requirement to travel vast distances or to live away from home. Many students must live in a location where they don't have access to their regular employer or employers. It's a great deal of stress that we are putting on our future clinicians at a time when they should be focused on their studies.

It has been put to me that clinical placements are already stressful enough and that with these additional strains we are launching our junior clinicians into their careers in states of mental and financial stress. We hear stories of people not actually finishing their studies, due to the financial stress. I reached out to one clinician today to understand their experience. Here is what they had to say: 'During my placement, we were explicitly told not to work. This was because our placements were 40 hours a week for up to eight weeks, so it wouldn't be safe to work outside this. People do, though, and some worked as nursing assistants or enrolled nurses, where they have a duty of care, which I think is dangerous. But you need money to live, so there's no real escaping it. There just aren't enough hours in the day to do eight hours of placement then paid work and then uni work. And we were often used as paid staff, even though we should have been supervised with everything we did. An understaffed unit is of course going to use the extra hands to their advantage rather than focus on the education and development of those students.' That is just one experience, but I'm sure it will ring familiar with many clinicians across the country who have had to weigh their studies with placements with the regular pressures of life and family.

In a cost-of-living crisis, where young people, particularly students, often feel the pinch most acutely, it is time that we looked at this area. Again, I thank Senator Tyrrell for bringing this to the Senate today, and I hope we can continue this conversation on behalf of the future clinicians that we so desperately need in our health and social services systems.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One Nation supports the general principle that this MPI proposes, that students should not have to go broke to finish their studies. The medical colleges currently rely on huge numbers of students paying their own out-of-pocket costs and even making thousands of hours of unpaid placements in addition to their studies. The real conversation we need to have, though, is about the artificial monopoly the medical colleges hold over students in this country.

Australia is crying out for health professionals, and the fees to see them are too high for some people. While this is happening, the medical colleges putatively restrict the amount of places available to students, denying Australians a proper supply of trained professionals and ensuring students have nowhere else to turn. We need to have a second look at the medical colleges. And we need to have a look at the universities, who are punishing some people who have completed their academic studies and just need to do their practical courses. The universities are forcing them out because of mandates for COVID injections. That's inhuman—three to four years work and a contract broken.

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time for the discussion has now expired.