Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to resume my remarks. As I was outlining to the chamber, this bill is a missed opportunity to seriously address the appalling rates of sexual assault on university campuses and in residential halls. We know from a 2021 study that every week, across the country, 275 students are reporting sexual assault on campus. This is an epidemic.

This is not the first time those horrific statistics have been highlighted. Back in 2017 the Sex Discrimination Commissioner did a whole report, the Change the course report, about the hideous rape factories that are happening on our university campuses. Sadly, it was largely ignored by the university sector. We then had the inquiry into consent laws and whether or not we should harmonise those around the nation—which is something I'd like to see—which was also an opportunity to shine a light on these appalling statistics and the lack of safety for students on campus. With all that pressure, and thanks to the tireless advocacy of End Rape on Campus, Fair Agenda and The STOP Campaign, the pressure has built such that we saw the education ministers say earlier this month that they are thinking about establishing a national independent student ombudsman. Those advocates I just mentioned have been calling for a task force to hold universities to account on sexual violence.

We hear from the government they're now considering an ombudsman. Whatever you call it, whether it's a task force or an ombudsman, it's got to have four key attributes in order to be successful, to actually improve student safety. The first attribute is that it must be independent and it must be expert led. It must have oversight of whether the universities and the residential hall policies and practices are actually meeting basic standards. Independence and expert oversight is the first facet that any ombudsman or task force must have for it to seriously tackle the real problem of rape on campus. The second attribute is that it must be transparent. We must have transparency around which institutions are providing appropriate and effective responses and prevention initiatives, and we do not have that at the moment. The third attribute that any such body must have to be a legitimate and purposeful body is an effective complaints avenue. Students need to have a complaints avenue they can have confidence in so that, when they raise issues of students or survivors or other stakeholders, those complaints are properly addressed and that the process can be trusted to lead to a justice outcome. The fourth attribute is that we need meaningful accountabilities both for universities and residential halls when basic standards are not being met.

Immediate action is needed to address the gaping hole that exists for students who have been harmed and failed, and so deeply let down, by their institutions. They currently have nowhere to even make a complaint or to have a complaint investigated by anyone with relevant expertise in the area. An expert led complaints system is a good and very necessary first step, but we also need to see a systemic response from government that delivers oversight, monitoring, transparency and accountability for both universities and university residences.

During the recent consent laws inquiry we heard horror stories not just of student trauma from the sexual assault they'd experienced on campus but of the compounding of that trauma by the universities' bungling of the treatment of those allegations. Some students said that the way they were treated by their institution caused more damage to them than the sexual assault in the first place, which was just so hard to hear and is utterly unacceptable.

We also heard during the course of that inquiry that Universities Australia had received taxpayer dollars to design—in cohort with students—a prevention campaign to tackle sexual violence. We heard that they unilaterally pulled the student-agreed version of that campaign, sanitised it such that it was going to be completely ineffective, and turned it into something completely different which replicated a resource that already existed anyway. So not only are universities bungling prevention but we heard time and time again that they are also bungling response. It is absolutely clear that universities are protecting their brand and not protecting students. It's also abundantly clear that both Universities Australia and TEQSA, which is meant to be the regulatory body, have not been up to the task of responding to sexual assault on university campuses or residential halls. We urgently need a review into TEQSA, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency. We need a review into their response to sexual violence on uni campuses. I note that that was one of the recommendations of that consent laws inquiry, which was a unanimous, consensus and much-needed recommendation.

A member of Fair Agenda has asked me to read their testimony into Hansard, and I endorse and echo their call to action. They have said:

Sexual safety for all genders at universities is paramount to learning. There's enough stress to 'achieve' without feeling preyed upon by others in that environment. Having been stalked at university in the 1970s, I know first-hand the anxiety and stress this causes. Fifty years and more is more than long enough for all universities to have eradicated such shameful predatory practices … on campus, including other students, lecturers, administration and every one associated with these institutions. Wake up! The responsibility for cleaning up campuses rests on the shoulders of the universities' Vice Chancellors. No excuses! Act now! Anyone found guilty of sexual misconduct should be immediately dismissed: it's that simple.

We heard some even more horrific testimonies in the course of the sexual consent laws inquiry, so we know that there is an incredibly damaging and enormous epidemic of sexual violence on campus. This bill could have been the opportunity to help redress that, so we are keeping the pressure up on the minister and echoing those calls from groups to please take this issue seriously. Whether it's a taskforce or an ombudsman—we don't care what you call it—it has to be an effective body to tackle these issues, which have been sidelined, ignored and swept under the carpet for far too long.

Universities have ignored sexual violence on campus for too long and they must be compelled to take meaningful action, because they're certainly not doing it voluntarily. That action has to not only address violence and support for victims-survivors but also properly prevent sexual violence on campus. We are again, in our support of this bill, urging the government not to miss yet another opportunity to keep students safe from sexual assault.

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

This bill, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill 2023, amends the Higher Education Support Act to implement the priority recommendations of the Australian Universities Accord interim report, which was released by the minister on 19 July. It is of course not the sum of the government's response to the work of the Universities Accord team. A significant amount of work will be required to be undertaken by the government, by the university sector and by the stakeholders in the university sector.

The accord process is a significant process undertaken by the government. Apart from the policy outcomes that it is designed to drive—to listen carefully to the sector and groups in the community who have an interest in the sector and to undo the damage of almost a decade of hostility to the sector from the three previous governments of Mr Abbott, Mr Turnbull and Mr Morrison—it is also designed to shift the tone and create an environment where the Commonwealth government—which has responsibilities in higher education—the state governments, the universities themselves, the relevant trade union in the sector, student organisations and others who've got a stake in the sector cooperate and don't finger-point and engage in the sort of culture war that those opposite engaged in when they were involved in government. It was all about sneering at the university sector, outrage politics—trying to find things to be outraged about and identify things in the curriculum that could be the subject of prurient interest—cutting funding and getting stuck into the sector, instead of actually finding points of agreement and a sense of common purpose, which is what the Universities Accord is about.

The outrage politics over there, which is all about getting a bit of an argument going at a Liberal Party branch meeting at Indooroopilly or the Bellarine Peninsula or whatever it is, is the opposite of what is required. Playing for the base and for approval at branch meetings is not what is required if we're going to build Australia's university sector, because of its importance, yes, for the education of our young people but also because, if we're going to tackle the big research questions that are going to drive Australian universities—in medical research, in agriculture, in the social studies that are required to build social cohesion and to understand more about the way that our societies and workplaces operate, and in the work that is required in engineering, in quantum mechanics, in robotics, in artificial intelligence, in space and in Australia's industry contribution in these areas—it requires not sneering and kicking at the universities, which Mr Morrison in particular specialised in, but building a cooperative approach.

The accord team is led by Professor Mary O'Kane AC, a very distinguished Australian and former chief scientist in New South Wales and former vice-chancellor of the University of Adelaide. It also includes Professor Barney Glover; Ms Shemara Wikramanayake, who's the Chief Executive Officer of the Macquarie Group; the Hon. Jenny Macklin AC; Professor Larissa Behrendt, who is the first First Nations Australian to graduate from Harvard Law School and is a professor of law and the director of research and academic programs at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research at the University of Technology Sydney; and the Hon. Fiona Nash, a former senator for New South Wales and also a former minister for regional development and regional communications. The government has cast the net very wide here in terms of the participation in the accord process, because our objective is to get Australians working together in the national interest and not to play the politics of this.

There are many issues that the Minister for Education, the government, the accord team and others will work on. This bill represents the first tranche of dealing with some of the priority questions that were raised by the accord group. Those go to equity of access and our objective of ensuring more Australians go to university. That is our job here: creating more university study hubs, not only in the regions but in the outer suburbs; scrapping the 50 per cent pass rule—and I've spent a little bit of time on that—extending the demand driven funding currently provided to Indigenous students from regional and remote areas; providing funding certainty during the accord process by extending the Higher Education Continuity Guarantee into 2024 and with funding arrangements that prioritise support for equity students; and working with the state and territory governments to improve university governance. The government has confirmed that it will implement each of the interim recommendations. We will do all of these things.

I was horrified when the previous government introduced the legislation that went to the 50 per cent pass rule. I was horrified because I understood what it meant in equity terms, particularly for students who come from families who have never had anybody in their previous generations experience the benefits of participation in the higher education sector. I was horrified because I know people who have become professors at university, who could not and did not pass their first year of university and who left university in no small part because they were from the regions and because they were the first people in their family's history to have gone to university. If that rule were applied to them, not only would they have been denied the opportunity to complete undergraduate and postgraduate education without upfront fees but also the community and the universities would have been denied their service, their knowledge and their contribution.

I'm reminded of a speech. I have always thought Neil Kinnock is one of my favourite British Labour leaders. He said in a very important speech:

Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Why is my wife, Glenys, the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?

Was it because all our predecessors were thick? Did they lack talent—those people who could sing, and play, and recite and write poetry; those people who could make wonderful, beautiful things with their hands; those people who could dream dreams, see visions; those people who had such a sense of perception as to know in times so brutal, so oppressive, that they could win their way out of that by coming together?

Were those people not university material? Couldn't they have knocked off all their A-levels in an afternoon?

…   …   …

Was it because they were weak? Those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up and play football?

The effect of the previous government's approach was to deny the people most likely to leave university in their first year, or to make a bit of a mess of things and not get through because they don't live at the university, they have to travel or their families don't have the experience or the resources to put them through. The previous government's approach said, 'Don't bother knocking again.' It drew up the stepladder of privilege and excluded those people from university. That's what it did. That's the message it sent. It sent the message, 'Don't bother to knock,' to young people concerned about whether they were going to make it through that first and most challenging year of the university experience.

I would have thought that, having heard the universal criticism not just from the sector but from ordinary people who saw that for what it was, there would have been a moment of self-reflection on the other side. That's what governments do when they leave office—they look at their mistakes, they reflect on them and they own up to them. That's part of a mature process that parties that want to form government ever again have to do. But no—what we've seen here is an affirmation that they believe that's the right thing to do. Well, on this side, we're going to stand with the sector. We're going to work in the national interest. This is part of the work that is in front of this government, but there is more work to do. We will make sure Australians are working together in this sector to get the university sector that Australia needs. (Time expired)

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

It's your turn now, Senator Scarr.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm happy to embrace my turn! I think it's very important that those listening to this debate understand what we're talking about when we talk about the so-called 50 per cent rule that was introduced by the previous coalition government. You're under this rule if you studied eight subjects in a bachelor's degree and failed five or more out of eight. Just reflect on that. Over the course of a year—your first year at university, say, or at the end of your second year, if you're going part time—you'd have to fail five out of eight subjects. Under that rule, the Commonwealth government was basically saying, 'We are not going to continue to provide funding for you to enter into further debt to study further subjects in that course where, to date, you have failed five out of eight subjects.'

That—which, from my perspective, is a quite reasonable policy position from the perspective of the Commonwealth government and the taxpayers who fund someone to go to university—is what Senator Ayres is outraged about. You tell me if you are really helping someone who has failed five out of eight subjects when they're undertaking a course. Are you really helping that person if you say you are going to continue to provide funding and increase their debt so they can continue studying and failing subjects? Where do you draw the line?

My father was the first person in his family to get a university education. There'd be many people here who were either the first person or whose parents were the first people in their family to get a university education. The concept that someone should be able to continue to fail, year after year after year, enter into further debt and be funded by the Commonwealth government to do so is just absurd. It could well be that they're not suited to that course. It could well be that it's in their own best interests to be doing something. But it can't be in their best interest to continue failing and continue incurring debt. That is the commonsense policy basis for the proposition that the coalition adopted in its last term of government. I fail to see provided special circumstances exemptions, which is coalition policy, for example, if someone has gone through the trauma of a sexual assault on a university campus, and Senator Waters referred to some of the horrifying evidence we received in the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee's recent inquiry into those issues. Of course there should be dispensation but, absent those special circumstances, for the life of me, I can't see how it helps anyone—the student, the taxpayer—except maybe the education institution that continues getting the fees to provide courses to students who are failing them. I can't see, for the life of me, how it is in the best interest, the bona fide best interests, of anyone to keep funding someone to keep failing subjects at university. There has to be a line put somewhere and, for the life of me, I can't see why a reasonable line is not achieving a 50 per cent pass mark in eight subjects, which means you are required to pass at least four subjects out of eight. You could have failed four of them and kept going but you have at least have to pass 50 per cent. For the life of me, I can't see how that is unreasonable. As for the faux outrage, that is ridiculous, absolutely absurd. The resources available for education, for health, for defence, for any of the things we do in this place are not limitless. There have to be boundaries and there have to be guardrails. The 50 per cent rule, from my perspective, is quite a reasonable basis upon which to proceed.

Another point my colleague Senator Henderson, who is doing a fantastic job as spokesperson in this area for the coalition, has referred to is the fact that the minister, when he introduced this policy getting rid of the 50 per cent rule, quoted all sorts of statistics as to the number of students who have been prejudiced by the coalition's 50 per cent rule. But when the committee looked at the evidence it didn't support the minister's assertions. The minister asserted 'more than 13,000 students at 27 universities have been hit by this' in the past two years, mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds. This was proven to be demonstrably false, so this act as been put forward on false premises. The evidence doesn't support the basis upon which this act has been proposed. It simply doesn't support it whatsoever.

The other point I would make is this: what we're talking about is students incurring debt to continue studying courses at universities where they have failed more than 50 per cent of eight units. What does it mean for them to incur that debt? Let me give you these statistics. During the time of the coalition government, those HECS debts were indexed on average by two per cent a year. That was the annual indexation rate if you had gone to university and passed four subjects, failed four subjects. You have taken out a loan from the Commonwealth government to undertake the study. That is a debt that you will carry for the rest of your life when you are trying to buy a house, when you are trying to get ahead.

Under the coalition government, that debt was indexed on average two per cent a year. In 2022, in the Labor government's first year, it was indexed by 3.9 per cent, nearly double the average two per cent. This year it was indexed by 7.1 per cent. In 2024, students are expected to be hit with a further indexation of six per cent. So you can see in a high inflationary environment the diabolical trouble students can get into if they continually undertake subjects which they then fail. So they don't ultimately obtain the skills, the recognition of skills through graduation et cetera to actually generate the income to pay back the debt which is indexed at higher and higher levels because of high inflation. That is the trap. It isn't the intention but that is the trap which the government is setting for university students by getting rid of the 50 per cent pass rate. That is the trap that they are setting. Just reflect on this. Under the coalition government, funding would continue provided that you pass at least four out of eight subjects. Is that too much to ask? Four out of eight subjects? Seriously? And this is going to disadvantage all those people? You've got to be kidding me. It's outrageous. I commend Senator Henderson on the work she has done in this area. Senator Ayres called upon us to reflect. I think Senator Ayres needs to reflect on the arguments he put forward. I just think they don't bear any scrutiny whatsoever.

The second point I wish to discuss is the response of the sector and the government to a very concerning issue, the rates of sexual assault on university campuses. I note that Senator Green is here and Senator Waters made a contribution to the debate. Senator Green is Deputy Chair of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee, and the report which that committee delivered on Australia's sexual consent laws was unanimous. All three of us agreed with the recommendations. One of those recommendations was that there needs to be a body with teeth—we in the coalition are calling for an ombudsman—to be able to look at issues of sexual assault on campuses in Australia. The statistics are horrifying. They truly are horrifying. Surveys indicate that the rates of complaints of sexual assaults on campuses are truly horrifying. As Senator Waters said, even more disturbing perhaps is that, when students have raised complaints with universities and with the regulator, they're saying they are actually being retraumatised by that process.

In relation to that inquiry, we received from TEQSA some answers to questions on notice which were provided to the inquiry very close to our reporting date, so we weren't able, as a committee, to incorporate the answers into our report. That was very disappointing. In those answers, TEQSA, the government regulatory body, said they had received 39 concerns in relation to sexual harm on Australian campuses for the period since September 2017. They said:

Of the 39 concerns raised since September 2017: all cases went through a preliminary and secondary assessment. One such assessment is still active. TEQSA did not undertake an investigation into any of these concerns.

So, notwithstanding the devastating results of the survey on the prevalence of sexual assault on Australian campuses, notwithstanding the fact that students and their wonderful advocates, including from End Rape on Campus, had made complaints to TEQSA, 'TEQSA did not undertake an investigation into any of these concerns.' How can that possibly be the case, when our university students are raising these sorts of material concerns on university campuses? Again I quote: 'TEQSA did not undertake an investigation into any of these concerns.' That's why we need an ombudsman in this area, an ombudsman with teeth who can look into these issues and actually investigate the students.

What impact does this have on students? I want to quote from a publication provided by End Rape on Campus Australia and Fair Agenda. This is a direct quote from a student:

In TEQSA's sense they did resolve the complaint. Yes, they did resolve it. They didn't do anything to resolve it. It took well and truly over a year for them to resolve the complaint by doing nothing.

That's how the student viewed the response of TEQSA—it took them well and truly over a year to resolve the complaint by doing nothing. What a damning indictment of TEQSA. What a damning indictment of TEQSA! I'll go on:

The original outcome of the complaint was not at all a satisfactory response. For starters when my complaint was submitted there was already a similar complaint from another person at the same university …

So in that situation, where two different university students had raised the same complaint from the same university, TEQSA still didn't engage in a proper investigation. I'll go on:

… the same assaulter, and both being handled by the help of EROC … The original outcome [from TEQSA] on the 20th of October 2020 combined both of our complaints together even though they were submitted in different years and have no relation to each other. This was very wrong on their behalf and incredibly inappropriate, and a big breach of privacy and confidentiality. The outcome was also never sent directly to me.

That's a direct quote from a student who has suffered sexual assault on campus as to the response of the regulator—absolutely outrageous.

So we do need an ombudsman in relation to this area. We do need an organisation with teeth to properly investigate these complaints on campuses. The university sector as a whole has failed, as Senator Waters said. Even when given $1.5 million in funding by the previous government to come up with an education campaign to address these issues, they came back to the government, cap in hand, and said, 'We were unable to deliver it'—unbelievable.

Certainly the coalition—and, I would hope, every senator in this place—calls upon the federal government to undertake action, introduce an ombudsman, provide some teeth for regulation in relation to the matter and address this scourge of sexual assault on our Australian university campuses.

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm really pleased to be able to make some remarks today on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill 2023, particularly because these amendments form part of the package of reforms by the Albanese Labor government in response to the Australian Universities Accord interim report. I come to this debate with two key concerns and specific issues that I wanted to raise.

First and foremost, it's the support of students that I am coming to this place concerned about, and I think that this bill will lead to students being supported more on university campuses. I'm also keen to talk about what our government is doing to support students and the action that we are taking—which has never been taken and was not taken by the previous government—when it comes to supporting students. I'm also very proud of the work that our government is doing, particularly through the work of Assistant Minister Chisholm, to support regional universities and regional students. That is some of the work that is done in this bill.

I don't think anyone in the community would ever consider that the Liberal and National parties are supporters of students, are on the side of students or have, in the very long time that they've been around, put forward policies that would lead to better student outcomes. We absolutely know that's not the case.

What we are doing here today is the methodical work that is required to support students and to build a university sector able to deliver for our country and for our economic future. The accord was commissioned by Minister Clare and led by Professor Mary O'Kane. It's the largest review of the higher education sector in 15 years, and the size of this review is for good reason. Projections suggest that the proportion of Australian workers with a university degree could jump from 36 per cent to 55 per cent by the middle of this century. We are going through a very important transition where we are going to need more university skilled people in our workforce.

That kind of pace means that we need to be intentional about the skills that we will need from future workers, and the quality of their university experience right now will lead to the quality of the workforce that we have in the next generation. What the accord report tells us is that people currently underrepresented in our universities will be central to this increase. The people that aren't getting access or don't feel supported are the exact people that we need to support through the universities to increase the number of people getting that skill qualification.

It comes as no surprise to me that university enrolment is stratified by geography, family income and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status. Meeting our future skill needs and bridging the enrolment inequality gap are mutually assured propositions, but they are very big tasks. What we are doing through the accord is responding to the recommendations by these highly qualified experts. This bill responds to parts of those recommendations because we want to start that work right now. We know that there is a lot of work to do. We are starting the work today.

The Accord Interim Report, handed down in July, made by five recommendations. I want to go through those quickly, because they are incredibly important to the overall work that this government is doing. The recommendations were: to create more university study hubs not only in the regions but also in outer suburbs; that we scrap the 50 per cent pass rule and require better reporting on how students are progressing; that we extend the demand-driven funding currently provided to Indigenous students from regional and remote areas to cover all Indigenous students—an incredibly important step that this bill takes; that we provide funding certainty during the accord process by extending the Higher Education Continuity Guarantee; and that we work with states and territories through the National Cabinet to improve university governance. They are five really important recommendations. They are interlinked, and we are working to progress through them, particularly in scrapping the 50 per cent rule to support students and make their experience a better one and to ensure we are supporting Indigenous students from all across the country, not just remote and regional areas.

Minister Clare has confirmed that the Albanese Labor government will implement all of these recommendations, and I'm really pleased that we are starting that work today. In the case of recommendation No. 1, the Albanese Labor government will establish 20 additional regional university student hubs. This is of particular interest to me because I live in regional Queensland and I know how important it is for us to have strong universities in the region so that people can stay in the regions, study in the regions and end up working in the regions. At the moment, around 25 per cent of 20- to 30-year-olds in the regions have a uni degree. That's 20 per cent lower than the national average.

There are already 34 regional university hubs across Australia, and evidence shows that they are really worth investing in. In regions where these hubs exist, more people enrol in university and attrition rates decrease, meaning students have more success in graduating. These hubs give students a place to study but they also provide wraparound support—academic assistance, health and wellbeing services and a sense of community. I am proud that the Albanese Labor government is making record investments in our regions through these university hubs.

In places lucky enough to already have some higher education options, I see the way that this can transform communities for the better. Regional Queenslanders love where we live. The investment means that more people don't have to choose; they can live where they love and also get a university qualification. So, again, I want to commend the work of the minister but also our assistant minister, a Queenslander himself, Minister Chisholm, on the work in rolling out these regional university hubs and the commitment that our government has taken to the regions to deliver those.

In relation to governance and the work that we are doing to make sure that universities are best placed to take care of students, the accord report shows that getting people into university is just one part of the puzzle. We also need to make sure that universities are operating at their highest standard. This feeds into recommendation No. 2, which is to scrap the 50 per cent rule and require better support of students. In addition to this important recommendation, we are also working with states and territories to initiate a working group on this really important work, to make sure students are safe and to ensure that university governance is placed around making sure that students can be protected on campuses and have their complaints dealt with.

In his second reading speech to the chamber, the minister outlined three priority areas for the working group, including that universities are good employers, providing a supportive workplace; making sure that they are a workplace where staff have the confidence that they will not be underpaid for the important work that they do; and making sure that governing bodies have the right expertise, including in the business of running universities of critical importance. The third priority that he outlined—one that is very important and dear to my heart—is making sure that universities are safe for our students and staff.

The urgency, the importance and the success of the working group was highlighted earlier this year by the Senate inquiry, which I initiated, into sexual consent laws across jurisdictions. It was a broad-ranging Senate inquiry, but, naturally, we were drawn to some of the awful statistics that we have seen as to campuses around this country. In 2022, the results of the National Student Safety Survey were released. It found that one in six university students had experienced sexual assault and one in 20 had experienced a sexual assault since they started their degree. Of those students who had experienced sexual harassment, only three per cent had made a formal complaint.

Sharna Bremner, the founder and director of End Rape on Campus, gave the following evidence to the Senate inquiry on sexual consent laws about the experience of victim-survivors that EROC had supported to make complaints. She said:

A really common theme among the students we've supported over the last eight-nine years now is, 'My rape was bad, but the way my university responded was worse.' We hear very often the effects of re-traumatisation once students have reported. They feel incredibly unsupported, even if they can find where to report in the first place …

When they are reporting, we are still seeing extensive delays in responses by universities, oftentimes of up to three, four or five months, sometimes even longer.

What we heard from the inquiry was that, when complaints are made, the response from universities is wholly inadequate. The inquiry found that, even when victim-survivors did try to seek support from universities, support wasn't easy to find. Consistently, half of all students reported that they didn't even know how to access support or reporting mechanisms from their university.

As EROC explained to the committee, the data and figures are likely underestimated. The national student survey data was collected at a time when most students were learning from home during the pandemic. It is concerning to consider that the next survey, which I strongly encourage Universities Australia to follow through with, will deliver data that reflects a regular return to campus life.

The best data that we have tells us that over 14,000 students will be subject to sexual violence in a 12-month period at Australian universities. Those are horrifying numbers. And it's not because universities don't want to help. They haven't been able to. You can't fix a problem without complete information. You can't fix a problem when some people declare that they have sorted it out, but they won't tell you how. And you can't really fix a problem with inadequate repercussions.

This is what advocates in the sector are up against, and it's why action is needed. It's why we talked about it through the Senate inquiry. These issues have been raised by these advocates for years and, yes, during the term of the previous government. We know that they have not been listened to, until now.

I'm very proud that our government is listening to these advocates and is taking action. I am pleased that the minister has announced that the working group on university governance includes Ms Patty Kinnersly, the CEO of Our Watch. I note that the working group has already started to meet, and I look forward to watching their progress. They have discussed a number of potential actions, including the idea of a standalone national student ombudsman. Final recommendations of this group will come to the education ministers in November—that is very soon, and that is really good, because we need to make sure that we stay on top of this.

I also want to note that this work intersects with the Minister for Social Services and the Minister for Women on the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children. Together, all of our ministers have taken this issue seriously and are responding with action, because this is no longer a time for these victims and their stories to fall silent. They were not listened to under the previous government, and that has to change. It is changing, under our government. This plan will go a long way to the addressing causative factors that led to such adverse findings in this inquiry.

Finally, I'll say why the accord is important and why these overall reforms are really important—why this legislation is important today. It's all about supporting students and providing a better university sector. Whether it's improving governance, making sure that we can have access for Indigenous students or giving regional students the opportunity to go to university, this is what this Labor government has committed to and what we are delivering through this legislation.

It is exciting and a welcome development that more working-class, regional and Indigenous kids will have an opportunity to go to university because of these reforms. As the accord outlines, getting kids to uni is just one part of our job here. We have to make sure that universities are set up in a way that keeps students there until they've got the qualifications that they need. We also need to make sure that universities are places where academics and the other people who work there feel supported and have good working conditions.

It's not just the students of today that we must act urgently to protect—it's the kids that will be there tomorrow and for generations to come. That is why I support these reforms and why I commend the minister on the work he is doing. I support this legislation, and I commend it to the Senate.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In our nation, higher education is transformative for individuals and for our communities. It brings countless social and economic benefits—research, and social and community participation. It embeds progressive change in our communities as they learn to adapt and transform for our communities' and our national needs.

Higher education is one of our most crucial economic exports around the world. We have many thousands of students come to Australia to participate in our higher education sector because of its quality and because of the experience it brings. It underscores the need for our own domestic students, but also for international students, to have a well funded and robust university sector. There's no way of getting around the fact that high-quality and equitable higher education is essential for Australians and essential for our nation.

Quality research shows that, by the year 2050, some 55 per cent of all jobs will require some form of higher education. It is why almost universally in the sector and many around the country were absolutely dismayed at the actions of the last government who capped the number of places in Australia's universities. This made them harder to get into, including for courses where there was growing industry demand, made it harder to succeed in progressing through your course and made it more expensive.

What we are doing today in this bill, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill, is implementing the outcomes from the review into higher education, in which stakeholders from right across the higher education sector and the broader tertiary sector participated. We saw governments, business, community, professional groups, universities, students and industry groups all participate in bringing together the reforms that are with us today.

The review process had some 300 submissions. It engaged with experts, including Emeritus Professor Bruce Chapman, who was indeed the Higher Education Contribution Scheme architect. I must confess I was someone who protested against HECS increases, way back in the 1990s, when I organised a rally outside then minister for higher education Kim Beazley's office. We rallied outside his office, and Minister Beasley disarmed us all, quite charmingly, by inviting all of the students that were there inside his office for a robust discussion about higher education policy. He pretty much said to us, 'Half of you students, who are protesting outside today, would not be here at all if it wasn't for our capacity to expand the number of university places because of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme.'

But I have to say that under the last government the HECS and its new iterations became completely unfair and out of control in the way it targeted different cohorts of students for student debt. The work of the review from Professor Bruce Chapman and others who are clear experts in income equity, education and tax has really helped drive the reforms in this bill to bring balance and equity back into the system.

One of the unfair policy changes that the last coalition government introduced was indeed the Higher Education Loan Program. For example, it saw a dramatic increase in fees for humanities students, communications students and a whole range of arts and culture, including things like anthropology. Students were being charged by the university and being charged fees that they had to pay back through HELP at a higher rate than it actually cost to deliver that particular course. This was despite the fact that these courses continued to have strong employment outcomes and led to graduate pathways into other streams of education. This is why I am particularly pleased that this bill has, as one of its aims, addressed some of those unfair policy changes introduced by the last government. I'm also pleased to see the expansion of access to Commonwealth supported places for First Nations students.

I outlined previously in relation to HELP that the Job-ready Graduates Package, which saw massive fee increases, had a particular impact on regional students and First Nations students in our country, as well as many people going to university for the first time. This is because they are, in fact, more likely to be doing some of those humanities-type subjects in their pathway to university. The coalition government was warned that their Job-ready Graduates program would rip billions out of public universities while burdening students with excessive and even lifelong debt. They were warned that the changes they made would be unsustainable and would create strain on the sector. Even prior to the damaging impact of the pandemic, the university sector was indeed at breaking point.

The expert panel's undertakings and review are in fact the first meaningful review of higher education in more than 15 years. That review was scathing of the impact of the last government's legacy on universities and of the impact of the Job-ready Graduates program on our nation, universities, students and the higher education sector as a whole, including on our reputation and standing with international students and the sustainability of the courses they participate in.

One of the harmful and unnecessary changes under the Job-ready Graduates program was the decision to implement a condition that required students to pass more than 50 per cent of their total attempted units to remain eligible for access to the HECS-HELP scheme or a Commonwealth supported place. Students who failed to meet this condition—despite having succeeded in all the other years of their study, or despite having had a particularly bad year, picked the wrong subjects or had other life challenges—were faced with the choice of paying for the course upfront so they could keep going, transferring to another cause, or withdrawing from their studies.

The justification the last government gave for the policy was that it would prevent students who were not academically suited to their studies from continuing to accrue large student debts. It appeared more as a stick to force higher completion rates and/or to weed out early students that the former government arbitrarily deemed to be unsuited to academic study, saving government expenditure. I have to say it wouldn't be unlikely that some universities would have worked with students to find a way to bypass this, giving them a conditional pass and those kinds of things. I see it as an unhelpful policy if universities have to find a bureaucratic way around it. Meanwhile, students withdrew from university entirely, perhaps unnecessarily, fearing they were going to be locked out because they'd had a hard semester. There was no requirement under the 50 per cent rule for institutions to take action to assist students at risk of failing more than half their course load or to address issues around the quality of the education, which might have been part of the reason students were failing.

As we have seen, the previous government's policy of maintaining pass rates disproportionally affected people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Students without support systems to lean on to get through university experience additional pressures, which affects their studies. Under the last government, we saw HECS-HELP targeting of humanities, arts and social sciences—disciplines with higher rates of enrolment of student equity groups, First Nations students and women—with tuition fees increased to over 110 per cent for most courses, making it more expensive to get a degree in social work or journalism than in medicine. This is despite the fact that medicine is a vastly more costly course to deliver. It is despite the fact that, in the long term, medical graduates are likely to earn significantly higher wages. And it is despite the fact that, because of the way the scheme capped government contributions for medicine degrees, these perverse disincentives also made it harder for universities to deliver courses like engineering and medicine.

Today I welcome the legislation before us in the Senate. This bill vastly enhances our ability to support First Nations students in our universities, including in regional and remote areas across Australia. It improves education pedagogy and it introduces a wide range of equity supports so that our students are set up for success and have accessible pathways to education.

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

The Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill 2023 is the response to the Universities Accord interim report. There are five recommendations, and, specifically, this bill will respond to two of them. We established the Australian Universities Accord to conduct a review of Australia's higher education system because the last time we had one was 2008, and we needed to look at how we develop and enhance the quality, accessibility and affordability of our higher education.

I remember the last review, in 2008, really well because I worked at the University of South Australia and worked on the university's response to that report. One of the things that has struck me is there are two similarities between the situation we were in in 2008-09, responding to that report, and the situation we find ourselves in today in 2023. The first one is that one of the first critical acts of a new Labor government was to look deeply at our education system. The second one is that we were coming off the back of a long period of time with a coalition government gutting our education system and ensuring it was focused heavily on providing for those who have as opposed to those who can.

I want to trip through, as a starting point, the list of people who are on the accord and who have delivered this interim report, and who will continue to work to deliver the final report at the end of the year. I think it is important to understand the depth of expertise and the spread of what these people have seen over their lifetimes, what they have experienced and what they bring to this job they have been given to do on behalf of our country to develop our education system. We have Professor Mary O'Kane, who is the former vice-chancellor of the University of Adelaide and the first woman to become the dean of engineering at any university in Australia. We have Professor Barney Glover, vice-chancellor of Western Sydney University. We have Ms Shemara Wikramanayake, the first female managing director and chief executive officer of the Macquarie Group. We have the Hon. Jenny Macklin, a former minister for families, community services and Indigenous affairs. We have Professor Larissa Behrendt, the first Indigenous Australian to graduate from Harvard Law School and who is a professor of law and director of research and academic programs at the Jumbunna Institute of Indigenous Education and Research at the University of Technology in Sydney. Finally, we have the Hon. Fiona Nash, a former senator for New South Wales, a former minister for regional development, regional communications, local government and territories, and now Australia's first Regional Education Commissioner. It's quite a spread of impressive people providing us with this advice on the back of their deep experience and the professional roles they have played out over many years. While we are looking at these recommendations, we should remember that.

The Universities Accord interim report makes very clear that over the next few decades we're going to need more jobs with university qualifications. In fact we know we are in a skills crisis and we are going to need more qualifications at the TAFE end of the market all the way through to higher education degrees within the university sector. We have to meet the skills challenge of the future. That is why this piece of work is so vitally important and why this bill is so vitally important. We know—and the accord team has totally entrenched this—that we must considerably increase the number of students we have that are currently underrepresented in our system. Students from outer suburbs, students from the regions, students from poorer backgrounds, students with disabilities and students who are Indigenous: these are the students that are really lacking in our system. These are the students who are there and who we can embrace, bring forward and provide with structures for them to succeed.

The interim report made five recommendations. This bill responds specifically to two of them. Let's be clear what those five elements are so that we're not looking at this in isolation. One is creating more university study hubs. They have proven so beneficial in our regional areas. In South Australia we've seen them grow from strength to strength. I thank Senator Chisholm for visiting the South Australian university hubs just a few weeks ago to show our commitment and talk about the future for those vital hubs. Another element that is actually included in this bill is the 50 per cent pass rule, and I will come to that more in a moment. Then there is extending to all Indigenous students the demand driven funding currently provided to Indigenous students from remote and regional areas—and I'll talk a little more about that as well; providing funding certainty during the accord process by extending the Higher Education Continuity Guarantee into 2024 and 2025; and working with the state and territory governments to improve university governance.

It is our intent to act on all of these, but this bill in front of us responds to two of them. The first is ending the punitive 50 per cent pass rule, given its poor equity impacts that we heard about extensively through the inquiry on this bill, and increasing support and reporting for students. It's support for students who are struggling, as opposed to cutting them off at the knees and throwing them out of university. It's providing support to develop their skills and to support them with the challenges they are facing so that they can succeed. The other part of the bill is ensuring that all First Nations students are eligible for a funded place at university, by extending that demand driven funding to metropolitan First Nations students.

The first of these actions is in response to the disastrous rule brought about by the previous government. Currently students must maintain a pass rate in at least 50 per cent of the units that they are studying in their course to remain eligible for Commonwealth assistance. I go to the points Senator Scarr made earlier. I think he missed one critical point. He stepped out that everyone should be able to pass in 50 per cent and it should not be a burden, but just the norm. That does not recognise the challenges that students may face, particularly early on in their courses. If they have come from a regional or a remote area, if they have come from a disadvantaged background and if they are not experienced in writing academic essays by nature of the education they've been exposed to, they need support and assistance and they need us to help them build those skills. If they're dealing with problems, they need to be supported. These are areas where we reach out and help. We don't just kick them out of university.

I myself failed a semester of university at one point because my father died and I was past the cut-off point. This may be an exemption in the current system, but there were all sorts of knock-ons. I was left in a situation where I had a lot of stuff to tidy up after we had got past the grief and I had a lot of support to provide to my family. This meant that I wasn't in a position to indulge all of my attention onto my studies. I'm not the only person who has been through drama, stress, grief or challenges. There are many, many things that students face but the current situation, where students who fail have to pay the cost of their course up-front, immediately cuts out so many people. Or they have to transfer to another course, or withdraw from their study altogether. We have to support students, not punish them. We have to encourage them, not isolate them.

We know from the submissions the Senate inquiry into this bill that more than 13,000 students at 27 universities have already been hit, have already been impacted by this punitive rule. The removal of the rule has been called for by universities right across the country. We heard from universities like the University of Adelaide, Monash University, the University of Technology Sydney, the University of the Sunshine Coast, the University of New England, the University of Queensland and Western Sydney University. That is quite a spread. It is not isolated that people think this is a terrible, terrible rule, so we intend to get rid of it. We need to look at how we identify students, we need to look at how we support them and that is what we will be doing as part of our process going forward.

The second priority action in this legislation is to extend access to demand-driven university places for metropolitan Indigenous students. Currently, if you are an Indigenous student from a regional area you have access but, if you are in the metro area, you do not. This goes against the entire push to have more Indigenous students in the university system. We know that often the pathway is different. The pathway and the advantages are not shared equally in our society and opening this up will genuinely make a difference. If you meet the requirements of the course then you will go to that course on a demand-driven place.

By following through on the recommended actions of the accord, I am very proud to say that we are improving the accessibility of Australian universities. We are ensuring that where you live does not affect your ability to get a degree. We are putting in place measures that will build our workforce, that deal with the skills shortages that we know we have right across our economy and right across our country. Dealing with those things, planning for the future, getting past the lack of planning for our future in skills and qualifications because that is where we stand right now.

We have been ill-prepared over the last almost 10 years of coalition government not looking to the future, not looking to see what skills would be needed into that future and not building for it, not making those provisions. The Albanese Labor government will plan for the future, provide the structures we need, the regulation we need, the environment we need to be able to fill those jobs of the future, to train and embrace the people of this country regardless of their background.

The interim report is an important first step. We are now taking the next steps. We are looking forward to the final report. The final university accord report will be out towards the end of the year and will address the other areas of concern. We look forward to those recommendations so we can truly see how we can build our future, truly do all the things that we need to do.

The measures in front of us today deal with two critical elements that are essential for us to build our university sector, to embrace everyone from across our beautiful country to fill the skills shortages to make us a stronger, smarter country that has a baseline of solid equity and inclusion.

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

I rise to speak to the Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill 2023. I'm all for higher education. I think it's great that people should try to improve themselves and their lot in life and possibly go on to have professions. It is good for their families, good for the country and better for productivity. So, by all means, yes, I do, but I do question this bill and what's in the bill.

I want to talk about the proposal to extend the eligibility for demand-driven higher education courses to all Indigenous students rather than only Indigenous students living in regional and remote areas. Why are we again having a race-based policy with regards to this? I think that we should give a helping hand to all people in regional and rural areas who don't have the opportunity to go to university. There are a lot of Australians living in those areas who can't afford it, including a lot in the farming sector who have bad years and can't afford to send their kids to universities. If you're Indigenous, you can pick and choose which university you want to go to—some of the most expensive universities—and that is all paid for by the government. But we don't look after other Australians; it's based on race.

Now we're saying that we're going to open it up to those in metropolitan areas as well—and it's not on a need basis. If the Commonwealth is going to help pay for university course, let's do it on a need basis. Get away from the issue of race. The whole thing is that, if it's not means tested, then people, even senators in this place, can actually send their kids to universities and won't have pay for it because they're Indigenous. People like Marcia Langton or Noel Pearson—who is reported to be worth about $35 million—because they are Indigenous, will be eligible to have their kids' university education paid for. People here in this chamber who are Indigenous will be entitled to have it paid for.

In South Australia, 18 per cent of children in the schools there are living in poverty, and their parents are flat out paying for them to even go on school excursions et cetera. It's estimated that 30 per cent of people in this country are living in poverty, and they are flat out paying their bills. They would love to have the same benefits afforded to them for their children. How can you sit here and say, 'Just because you're Indigenous, there's no means test whatsoever,' when they might sit beside another child who is non-Indigenous who doesn't get that benefit? So one gets the benefits and the other child doesn't. That's causing division. It really is causing division. That is our problem. I've got no problem with supporting people, but, if you're going to do it for one, do it for all Australians; don't be selective. There are a lot of kids out there who would like a higher education if the government would pay for it.

As touched on by Senator Grogan and Senator Scarr, under this bill, the government wants to remove the 50 per cent pass rule, which, as stated in the Bills Digest:

.. requires students to successfully complete at least 50% of their units of study to continue to access Commonwealth assistance for their course.

If you want to remove that, give me a figure? What will the pass rule be—30 per cent, 40 per cent, 20 per cent? What will the pass rule be? I know people have their problems, and I know Senator Grogan talked about problems with the family. Her father died. That wasn't over the extent of her year or two years. For a short period of time, that may have an effect. But that's not over the full term of doing the course.

The fact is that you are going to dumb down these students. That's what you're doing. You're going to dumb them down. They won't have to put in the efforts to pass their courses. That's what it tells me. What you're actually saying is they're not going to put the effort in, because, if they don't put the effort in, what matters? 'Oh, we're going to prop you up, then, and we'll make sure that you get the assistance.' But you're not making them put in the effort in first place to ensure that they get the pass. What you're doing, then, is pushing people through an educational system to get a degree that they are not up to the standard of getting, so you have diluted that degree. What is happening is that these people are getting these degrees, leaving the universities and going to apply for jobs, but guess what? They're not up to standard for doing the job. We find that a lot with professional people these days. They're not up to the standard of the degree they have.

That is what's happened in our educational system, because you've pushed even teachers that aren't up to standard through the whole system. You're giving them the highest qualification—well, they don't actually have to have a very high qualification to get into university to study teaching, and they don't have to have very high pass marks to end up in our schoolrooms, teaching our kids. That's why a lot of these teachers have no idea. Even their spelling is atrocious. Their maths is hopeless. This is the new generation coming through. They don't know much about history, and they don't know much about how to teach kids. This is the new breed coming through. This is why the older teachers are fed up with the whole system and are leaving it. Our kids are being pushed through a system where we have real problems in educational levels.

I'll tell you another thing that's happening. Australia used to have a high standard for our education and universities compared to the rest of the world. Well, hasn't that dropped? It has bottomed right out. Now more foreign students are applying to go to other universities around the world because our standards in this country have bombed out. It's because of government policies. I've got to say—you want to sit there and criticise the Liberal Party of the last government? They did an excellent job, and so did Dan Tehan. He did an excellent job on education because One Nation worked with him. The Liberal Party had some good policies that they put through to address it. Don't talk to me about the courses and the skills and labour that we need. When I was in this parliament in 1996, I knew there would be a shortage of nurses. We all knew it. One of the Labor ministers was talking about it at the time and did absolutely nothing about it. That's why we've got these skills shortages. It's because you've never done anything about it.

You complained about the Liberal Party when they were in government. Where were the private members' bills from the Labor Party addressing this when you were in opposition? There was not one. You—through you, Chair—whinge and complain about what the former government did, but, when I sat in this chamber, I put up more private members' bills than the Labor Party ever did when they were in opposition. Where was your answer to all this? It was absolutely nothing. You have the audacity to sit back and complain and whinge, and you're bringing in this bill like you have brought in the family law bill. It hasn't been thought out. You're not thinking things through. You're rushing bills through this parliament when you don't even understand the grassroots. You don't understand the problems that we're having.

You want to get rid of the 50 per cent pass rule. As I said to you: what is the pass rule now? What responsibilities are you going to put on the students who continue in the universities?

Commonwealth supported places have half the cost paid for by the Commonwealth and the other half is a debt, and the debts that have been run up in this country over HELP and HECS are over $60 billion. That's what's owing to the taxpayers—over $60 billion! I'd like to know what you have done, really done, to try and recover that, because I can assure you that taxpayers are quite happy to help other Australians to actually further themselves to get the better education—it helps the country in the end and it gets people in jobs, hopefully—but, in the system we have at the moment, a lot of people are being pushed through to get their university degrees and then become professional students. They stay at university, but then, finally, when they do get a job, a lot of them that I speak to now are actually driving taxis or working at McDonalds or other retail shops. They've got these degrees, but it gets them nowhere because they don't really have the qualifications because they failed at university. They're pushed through a system where they just give you a pass. We don't have the standards. So what you've done is devalue the standards in this country for people who have these university degrees.

I'll go back to the $60 billion debt that's there. Senator Faruqi has put up an amendment where, basically, she wants to wipe the debt. It's her bill here to actually wipe all student debt. Who do you think is going to pay for this?

Go and tell the workers out there. Go and tell the tradies—they're the kids who leave school and start by getting a job and becoming tradies. They're paying their taxes and all the rest of it. But to the mate next door that they went to school with, you say: 'Listen, mate, you go to university. You have this way of life, and I'll pay for it for you. Go and do what you want to do. Become a professional student. You don't have to pay it back. We're going to prop you up.' Do you think the Australian people are going to accept that? Do you really believe they are?

You've got to put something in from your own pocket to make it worthwhile, and, if they don't pay for it and put some skin into the game, it means absolutely nothing. That's the problem. With these handouts all the time, you don't get results. When you've got skin in the game, you'll get results. So this is a stupid amendment, as far as I'm concerned.

Then, you have here: 'ensure university staff are in secure jobs and paid fair wages'. My god! Has anyone really looked at what these university people get paid? They get paid an enormous amount. Some of these chancellors are on $900,000 to over $1 million. They're paid fantastic wages. Even the staff there are not on poor wages, I can assure you. To ask that they're paid fair wages—I think they're on a fair wage system already. Again, it's a cost to the taxpayer.

Let me also say that the government funds university to the tunes of tens of billions of dollars, and these universities are classified as charities. So, they get government funding and they get funding from the foreign students, but they don't pay tax because they're charities. They're on a pretty good wicket, aren't they? And you want the taxpayers to fund them more, to keep funding and funding and funding.

One Nation will not be supporting this bill. I think it hasn't been properly thought through. You're not considering the taxpayers out there, the hardworking taxpayers who want to see a return for their money. I think that we need to rein in the $60-plus billion debt we have out there. You need to have a responsibility. And get rid of the race based policies. If you want to fund kids in this country, do it right across the board for everyone who would dearly love to go to university. Stop picking and choosing and playing your race based policies in this country, because people have had a gutful of it. That was proven last weekend with the referendum. You will come unstuck with these policies, Labor, because I'll tell you what, the people have had enough. They'll start voting for the ones that are standing up for all Australians and are standing up for equality for all Australians, not this race based stuff that you keep throwing up in this parliament.

Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unfortunately, the 1.30 cut-off is going to prevent me from correcting a lot of the misinformation we just heard from Senator Hanson. One thing that is important to talk about is the number of Indigenous students at our universities. The accord interim report makes clear why this recommendation has been made.

The starting point for this was what the previous government introduced, which was demand driven funding for regional and remote Indigenous students, which we supported and is important. What we know about the Indigenous populations of Australia is that the fastest-growing Indigenous populations are actually in the greater cities—for example, greater Brisbane and greater Sydney—where there is significant population growth amongst Indigenous Australians. The accord interim report makes clear why this recommendation was necessary, because Australia isn't on track to achieving the Closing the Gap target that, by 2031, 70 per cent of First Nations people have a tertiary qualification. At the moment, 47 per cent of First Nations people aged 25 to 34 have completed a tertiary qualification. The interim report says that addressing these targets is crucial and recommends that the current demand driven funding arrangement, which is already operating in regional and remote Australia, is expanded to all Indigenous Australians. That's why we're doing it—because that is where a significant percentage of the Indigenous population of Australia lives.

The other important thing to correct from Senator Hanson in the time I have is that a Commonwealth supported place is exactly what the name suggests—the Commonwealth helping make a university place available by making paying part of the cost of making a place available to a student. The student remains responsible for their student contribution amount, which they will usually cover through a HELP loan, just like every other Australian had to do and I had to do when I went to uni when it was called HECS. That is what is proposed here. The government will guarantee the Commonwealth funding to Indigenous students who meet the academic requirements for entry, but the student will remain responsible for paying their share, most likely through a HELP loan like everyone else has. That is why we think that it is significant. That is why I hope it gets the support of the chamber. We are confident that it will enable more Indigenous students in this country to obtain a degree, and that will be a great outcome for the country.

The other thing that is clear that Senator Hanson didn't understand the full breadth of the bill is what we're doing in relation to regional university study hubs. Not everything the previous government did was a negative. The one thing that they did get right, even though it was done in an ad hoc way, was with regard to regional university study hubs. The interim report said that we would establish 20 additional regional university study hubs across the country. The first 10 of those are open. I've been to a number of them that have already opened around the country. I think we're up to 34 that are open. I've seen firsthand the opportunity that that's providing people in regional and remote Australia.

We know there's a shortage of teachers and nurses across the country, but that is felt acutely in many regional and rural locations. My hope from these study centres is that the next teacher or the next nurse is already living in those communities but that the establishment of these centres gives those people the opportunity to study and stay in their local communities. That's important for a number of reasons. One is the cost of moving away or moving to a capital city in the current environment would be quite daunting for many Australians. The ability to stay and study at home in your local area is fantastic.

The other significant part is that, if you are able to study in your remote or regional location, you're much more likely afterwards to stay and work there. When you think about those challenges that we're facing in health, in education and in other care industries across the country, having the ability for those people to study and stay in their local community means they're actually going to help meet that workforce challenge of the future. So you can see, from the interim report and the trajectory of the government in regard to higher education, the direction that the government are going. We're doing what we can to tackle disadvantage and give people an opportunity. We're giving more opportunity to those students in regional and remote locations. We know that the final report, when it comes down, will be focused on how we can make it more affordable as well. So there is a clear government direction. I really encourage people to support this bill.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind senators that we have a guillotine, so the time for consideration of the bill has expired. After I have put the question before the chair, I will put the questions on the remaining stages of the bill and the other bills listed in the order agreed to yesterday. The question is that the second reading amendment on sheet 2122, moved by Senator Faruqi, be agreed to.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the bill be now read a second time.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will now deal with the Committee of the Whole amendments, beginning with the amendment circulated by Senator David Pocock. The question is that the amendment on sheet 2134 in the name of Senator David Pocock be agreed to.

Senator David Pocock's circulated amendment—

(1) Clause 2, page 2 (table), omit the table, substitute:

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will now deal with the requests circulated by the Australian Greens. In accordance with the usual practice, the statements accompanying the requests will be incorporated in Hansard. The question is that the requests for amendment on sheet 2119 be agreed to.

Australian Greens' circulated requests for amendments—

That the House of Representatives be requested to make the following amendments:

(1) Schedule 1, page 3 (after line 3), before item 1, insert:

1A Paragraph 36-30( 1)( aa)

After "*undergraduate course of study", insert "or a *demand driven higher education course".

(2) Schedule 1, page 3 (after line 7), after item 1, insert:

2A Clause 1 of Schedule 1 (paragraph (b) of the definition of demand driven higher education course )

Repeal the paragraph, substitute:

(b) either:

(i) is leading to a *higher education award that is a bachelor degree or bachelor honours degree; or

(ii) is a non-research*postgraduate course of study; and

2119-EM

Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill 2023

_____

Statement pursuant to the order of the Senate of 26 June 2000

Amendments (1) and (2)

Amendments (1) and (2) are framed as requests because they amend the bill to expand the scope of demand driven Commonwealth supported places for Indigenous students to include non-research postgraduate courses of study.

The amendments would expand the categories of courses of study that are demand driven higher education courses and expand the circumstances in which Table A higher education providers must enrol students as Commonwealth supported students. This will have the effect of increasing the amounts payable to Table A providers for grants in relation to Commonwealth supported places under Part 2-2 of the Higher Education Act 2003 and increase the number of students who are Commonwealth supported students eligible for HECS-HELP under that Act.

The effect of the amendments would increase the amount of expenditure under the standing appropriation in section 238-12 of the Higher Education Act 2003.

Statement by the Clerk of the Senate pursuant to the order of the Senate of 26 June 2000

Amendments (1) and (2)

If the effect of the amendment is to increase expenditure under the standing appropriation in section 238-12 of the Higher Education Act 2003 then it is in accordance with the precedents of the Senate that the amendment be moved as a request.