Fighting for Higher Education
The government says we need this legislation, the Education Services for Overseas Students (Registration Charges) Amendment Bill 2021 and associated bills, to fix issues with fees for higher education, when we all know that the actual problem in higher education right now is cuts. When it comes to the fees question, we've seen that this government's only solution to higher education is to increase fees for thousands of students across Australia.
I think about the young people in university, seeing their entire university world changing over the course of their degree—course cuts, fee increases. Who is left to explain this government policy to them? We know the Prime Minister refuses to meet with chancellors. We know the Prime Minister refuses to meet even with a delegation led by a former Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. So, instead, these changes are left to academics to explain. Academics are fabulous at transferring knowledge from one generation to the next. I'm joined by two fabulous academics: Dr Anne Aly, who had a fabulous career in academia at Edith Cowan University before joining us in this place; and Dr Andrew Leigh, a former professor of economics at the Australian National University. But, wherever you are working as an academic, it shouldn't be your job to explain why the government is making higher education more expensive and less accessible for people. But that's what this government has left the academics who work today to do. They are explaining to their students why they're paying more than they have, why they're getting less face-to-face teaching than they've ever received. Indeed, some of these academics, these sessional tutors, weren't able to get JobKeeper and have lost hours and time in research. This government has treated academics with absolute disdain over the last 18 months. Clearly they are the people it thought about least when it thought about who it could support through this pandemic.
We know the opportunity to attend university is both a privilege and a right for generations of Australians. When I went to university it didn't matter how much money my parents had, and it didn't matter if I had saved up tens of thousands of dollars; all that mattered was that I had the academic requirements and the passion to go and study. It really upsets me that a generation of young Australians won't feel the same and will have to make an economic choice. The government, when it pushed through changes last year under the cover of a global pandemic, said it wanted to put more market forces and more economic choice into the decisions students make.
Young Australians know that 'if you have a go, you get a go' is a hollow slogan when it comes to higher education. It's fair to say that young Australians today probably think they have been dealt a very harsh hand. For a year and a half they have faced challenge after challenge. Right now they need support from the federal government like never before, but instead this government has hit them with a knowledge tax; that's the only thing it has done to support students over the course of the pandemic.
The government thought it was appropriate last year to increase the costs of some degrees by 113 per cent. If students choose to do a humanities degree they will face as much as $14,500 in fees in their first year, and it will go up every single year after that. By the completion of their degree, they could be facing a debt of some $60,000. A debt of $60,000 will take those students some 15 to 20 years to repay.
We see a lot of debate about what should happen with superannuation and what should happen with housing policy. But the government never acknowledges that the gift it is giving hundreds of thousands of young Australians is a $60,000 debt that they will walk into the workforce with on day one. For some students that's bumping up to US-style debts of some $100,000 or more. And, while students are paying even more than they ever have for their education, the government's saying, 'The students are now paying for it, so we're going to pull money out.'
We've seen in this year's budget the government locked in a real funding cut of some 10 per cent for higher education. While students are having these 40 per cent increases in their fees, the government's pulling out 10 per cent of their funding. This is a government that defends its trillion dollars of debt as 'careful fiscal management'—that's a quote of those opposite—but doesn't seem to be able to find any money to invest in the next generation. Young people and students across Australia must be thinking: 'Who is going to stand on our side? Who is on our side when it comes to higher education?'
If you look at the history of what Labor has done when we have been in office, there is no doubt that we have invested in education and invested in opportunity for young Australians. We saw university funding increase from some $8 billion in 2007 to some $14 billion in 2013. When you compare that to the $3 billion cut out of the TAFE sector under this government, you know that there is a difference in the way that people see our role in this place in providing opportunity for our future workforce. They're the numbers, but, if you think about the actual lives changed, an extra 220,000 students got an opportunity to go to university because of those changes by the Labor government. Under then education minister and then Prime Minister Julia Gillard we saw an increase in opportunity for young Australians. That's what we should be focusing on when we're doing our work in this place.
If you look at the sorts of students that started to go to university, we saw financially disadvantaged student enrolments increase by 66 per cent and we saw Indigenous undergraduate enrolments increase by 105 per cent—a doubling of the Indigenous undergraduate cohort over the course of that six years. That changes people's lives. Even more encouraging, students with a disability increased by 123 per cent over that period of time. That's how you give people opportunity. That's how you expand access to higher education for all—not with the sort of legislation that we've seen put before us today and in recent years from this government.
Think about what we've learnt out of this pandemic and what we've learnt out of our need for a highly skilled and trained workforce: we might be forced, with closed international borders, to rely on the capacity of our own people. This government saw all that happening and decided it would instead whack nursing students with an eight per cent fee increase, whack agriculture students with a 10 per cent fee increase and whack clinical psychology students with a 15 per cent fee increase. Engineering students are seeing their fees increase by 16 per cent, maths students are seeing their fees increase by 17 per cent, law students are seeing their fees increase by 28 per cent, and medical students are seeing their fees increase by 32 per cent. That's this government's response to the need to skill our own people.
Where that's actually happening is in the courses that are lucky enough to continue, because the other thing that we've seen is this huge cut in the number of courses, as universities struggle with cuts in their funding and cuts in international student numbers and are not receiving a single cent of JobKeeper. Some 17,000 university staff have lost their jobs over the last year and a half—that's 13 per cent of the university workforce gone, kicked out. Some 14,000 jobs in regional Australia are supported by our university sector, and they are under threat as well. I note that to the members of the National Party who are in the House right now. Last month we saw some 200 workers lose their jobs at La Trobe University. In Western Australia, we are seeing universities having to make incredibly difficult decisions because of the choices of this government.
The University of Western Australia is planning to gut its social science courses: research positions gone; entire disciplines removed; sociology, anthropology and others gone; and those are just the start of the cuts. Some $40 million will be cut from the UWA budget because the university is not getting enough support to continue to run the programs it has run in the past. It's Western Australia's oldest university, and some of these disciplines have been taught for nearly a century. We know that up to 300 jobs will be cut from UWA. Indeed, the vice-chancellor acknowledged that these cuts will impact everybody at the university. It's not the only university that's been forced to cut staff. Murdoch University has opened voluntary redundancies across the campus to facilitate a $25 million cut in funding. Yet we hear nothing from the Prime Minister about this. I want to thank the students currently at UWA who are campaigning against these cuts and campaigning to save their courses. They're campaigning not for themselves, because they will probably be able to continue their courses until they graduate, but because they know that these disciplines are so important. I want to say to these students, 'Thank you for the work you're doing and for standing up against these mean cuts.' I particularly thank Katherine Ong, with whom I've been fortunate to speak. She's leading some of these student campaigns. I thank Linc Murray, to whom I spoke on Friday. They just can't understand why these courses are being cut. I also thank Nicole McEwen and some of the other student activists who have been making sure that students really know what's happening in their courses.
Sarah Ison, a reporter from the West Australian newspaper, spoke to Dr Tauel Harper, a lecturer in media and communications at UWA. The article said:
Media and communications lecturer Tauel Harper said his research informed his teaching and the proposal to move him to "teaching only" was devastating. "My research is my life's work," he said.
He's done work that's been relied on by the WA parliament, the Victorian police and the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet about how we counter violent extremism and how we prevent it from having a home here in Australia. These are the sorts of things that will no longer be researched because of these cuts. The government had a choice last year. They chose three times not to give JobKeeper to our universities—not once, not twice, but three times they actively came in here and said, 'No, universities will make do with what they've got,' despite the fact that they were so hard hit by international students being unable to return to study. It's estimated that universities have lost $3 billion from border closures alone. When JobKeeper passed through the parliament, the Treasurer described it as, 'One of the most important days in the parliament's history.' For universities it was one of the most devastating, a clear sign that this government did not see supporting universities as part of its job. The government proudly declared that JobKeeper was worth $130 billion as part of a $251 billion package of unprecedented economic support. But not a cent of JobKeeper went to Australian universities. The Treasurer said of the global pandemic that Australia stood 'on the edge of the economic abyss'. But this government left those universities standing there alone.
We know that higher education is important. It's been important to my life. My parents were fortunate enough to attend Claremont Teachers College as a result of former Prime Minister Whitlam opening up higher education to people with backgrounds that were less fortunate than those who'd studied there in previous decades. I was fortunate to attend Curtin University, a university I have incredibly fond memories of. It gave me a world-class education, and I want to say thank you to every one of my lecturers and the academics at Curtin University. When you can attend university in person, you have the joy of making friends, and some of them become lifelong friends. At Curtin University I met Zaneta Mascarenhas. Curtin University is located in the federal electorate of Swan. Curtin University is WA's largest university, and since we met some 20 years ago Zaneta and I have stayed in touch. My son Leo and her son Lincoln now have play dates and they are very good friends. Every day that I have known Zaneta Mascarenhas she has been passionate about access education, ensuring that every Australian can fulfil their potential whatever their background, whatever the income of their parents. She is exactly the sort of person we need in this chamber. I'm very excited that she has chosen to put herself forward for federal parliament as a candidate for the seat of Swan. She was born in Kalgoorlie and grew up in regional WA. She is currently the manager at a local WA energy consultancy. She has had a long career working as an engineer—none of this cosplay stuff that we see from those opposite. She has actually worked as an engineer in mining and engineering, making sure we keep the Australian economy going, and she serves on the South Metropolitan TAFE council—a true commitment to tertiary education, both TAFE and university.
I think putting an engineer in the parliament is the right sort of thing to do right now. It's getting those skills that you get from a fabulous university, like Curtin University, and applying that very rational thinking to the policy challenges we face. It's having someone who is grounded in the practical application of realities and of science—someone who understands that science is fact as opposed to an optional extra in your policy formulation. And Swan desperately needs someone who will stand up for them, for the working families in Vic Park, for the pensioners in South Perth and for the students in Bentley. (Time expired)