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senate vote 2015-03-17#4
Edited by
Henare Degan
on
2015-03-18 09:25:17
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Title
Bills — Higher Education and Research Reform Bill 2014; Second Reading- Higher Education and Research Reform Bill 2014 - Second Reading - Agree with the bill's main idea
Description
<p class="speaker">John Madigan</p><p>I rise to speak today on the Higher Education and Research Reform Bill 2014 for the second time.</p><p>Due to the complexities of this bill, I have seen two main responses. One is highly-uninformed debate within the community about the current situation and the government's proposals. And the second is a lack of courage by senators of all political persuasions to engage with the government to evolve the higher education model to something more sustainable. I am more than happy to excuse the first point. The Australian community always has good reason to have a heightened level of cynicism when announcements are made by any Australian government. However, the second point is a little more disturbing.</p>- The majority disagreed with [the bill's](http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:legislation/billhome/r5396) main idea. This means that the Senate will not discuss the bill in more detail and it will not become law.
<p>We, as senators, are paid to do a job. Because of the makeup of the current Senate, we on the crossbench are expected to be more responsible and accountable than the opposition. Australians expect the opposition of the day to be obstructionist, but they expect minor party and Independent senators to be impartial. The Australian people have charged the crossbench with a great privilege and a great responsibility.</p><p>This bill is before us today because the government believes it is a priority. The government was elected to pursue matters which they believe are priorities. Now, the Senate by no means should act as a rubber stamp, and the Senate should provide scrutiny. But voting down a bill at the second reading before senators have even had a chance to amend a serious bill such as this is absolutely abdicating one's responsibility. Nearly every party involved in this debate agrees that the current system is unsustainable and that change is going to come. It is not a matter of 'if' but 'when'.</p><p>Today we, as the crossbench, are in the unique position to review, amend and improve this legislation. We owe it to the Australian people to do just that. In five years' time there may not be a crossbench to scrutinise potential reforms. It is on this day, in this chamber, that we have the opportunity to make positive change. If this bill is taken to an election, like some in this place have called for, then we will lose our ability to have a positive influence. The major parties will have it all their own way. No matter which party wins the next election with their policy, the Australian people and our tertiary education system will lose. I urge my fellow senators to put aside political interest and populism and to do the jobs they were elected to do.</p><p>I understand that there is little political benefit in the crossbench working with the government, but this should not be about votes. This should be about doing what is right by our students and our country. Again, I am not asking senators ultimately to support a bill they may disagree with. I am simply calling on them to give this bill a chance to be amended and improved. If, at the end of the day, my fellow crossbench senators still oppose the amended bill then I absolutely respect their right to vote it down. But at least we can say that we have tried to work with the government rather than simply being obstructionist for the sake of it. I believe that, if the Senate put politics and opportunism aside for a minute, we might actually create a fair sustainable and equitable system which would benefit all Australians, but most importantly our students.</p><p>We have an opportunity here today to make universities more equitable with the right amendments. This is particularly the case for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and those from rural and regional Australia. With the right amendments the Senate can leave a positive mark on Australia's higher education landscape. With the right amendments the Senate could create a scholarship system worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This money could be used to pay for accommodation and living expenses, or it could be used to pay for books for disadvantaged university students.</p><p>This bill may have the potential to make more seats available in university libraries right across the country at exam time. It may have the potential to fund universities to such an extent that they can purchase sufficient copies of books that are considered recommended reading for students. With the right amendments this bill might have the potential to create a better university system for all of our students. The fact of the matter is we are suffocating universities. We have spent such an enormous portion of this debate thinking about the glory days that we have not taken notice of the impact of budget cuts of successive governments, of all persuasions, to the sector.</p><p>In summary, I would like to finish off where I began. Senators have been charged with a great privilege, but with it comes great responsibility. I have serious concerns with the bill in its current form, but I also fear the consequences of doing nothing. Thank you.</p> <p class="speaker">Christine Milne</p><p>I rise today to oppose the government's legislation to deregulate higher education.</p><p>A great public purpose requires adequate public funding. That is the matter at hand here today. I reject the remarks from Senator Madigan that people 'do not have the courage of their convictions' in here and that people are 'not doing the right thing' by the university sector. Let me tell you: the Greens have consistently opposed cuts to university funding and cuts to research funding. We have done so always. We have also put forward propositions to raise the revenue in order to fund public education, public universities and research and development.</p><p>As recently as a week ago, I put forward a proposal that we stop the flat rate of 15 per cent tax on contributions to superannuation and that we do it in a progressive way, similar to income tax. That would raise $10 billion over the forward estimates. The vice-chancellors a few years ago ran a very strong campaign trying to argue to the Australian community that we needed to raise more revenue to spend on universities. I agree. The Greens were out there supporting the campaign to raise revenue to put more public money into universities.</p><p>But I have to say to you that Senator Madigan was correct in saying that over recent years—over decades actually—the level of funding to universities has been cut back. When the former Labor government in their MYEFO statement in 2012-13 announced cuts to research, we objected to that. When Labor announced, in April 2013 going into the election, cuts to university funding, we opposed it. And we went into the election opposing it. We said that after the election Labor in opposition would change its mind. It did, and I am very pleased about that, because the fundamental principle here is: if you want to change from a 'dig it up, cut it down, ship it away' economy to a 21st century economy where imagination is the key resource—not coal, not iron ore, not cutting down native forests, but actually investing in the brains base of this nation—then you have to fund public education and universities.</p><p>Where the last government went wrong was the announcement that they would cut the funding to universities in order to spend it on the Gonski reforms. I totally support the Gonski reforms—they should have gone ahead and we should be funding that—but you do not take money out of universities to fund public schools; you need to fund education at every level, from early childhood right through the school system through to universities and TAFEs. That is the way of the future in Australia.</p><p>I am one of those people who was at university before Gough Whitlam brought in free education in Australia. I come from a relatively poor farming family in the north-west of Tasmania. My parents were dairy farmers. My mother was a teacher. In order for me to get through school I got scholarships, and I had to get scholarships to get to university. I had the choice between a Commonwealth scholarship and a teacher studentship, and I took the teacher studentship because it paid more than a Commonwealth scholarship at that time.</p><p>So I can tell you that I know what it is like to be fronting the fact that you may not be able to go to university because you cannot afford it. That is precisely the case for so many people and that is why deregulation is so wrong. It is wrong to say to young people: 'The parliament of Australia refuses to raise the revenue to put into schools and public education'. The result is that we are going to cut public funding to universities and we are going to tell the universities they have to raise fees in order to cover the gap. And raising those fees of course means hurting a lot of people and making people think twice about the course they go into. They will not have the same choices that they otherwise would.</p><p>In a speech he made on this very issue, Professor Glyn Davies said:</p><p class="italic">Australia spends proportionally less public money on universities than most OECD countries, yet few outside the sector argue for international standards of investment.</p><p>He said that he was one of the people who supported more public funding to universities so that we would not be in this bind of raising fees to make up the difference.</p><p>The real issue here is: how are we going to fund our universities? Do we agree, first and foremost, that education is the most important investment we can make in the country in order not only to survive in the face of global warming but to reduce to gap between the rich and the poor—that inequality in wealth that we have in this country? I would argue that it is the most important thing we can do. That is why we should be raising the money from those who can afford to pay it and investing it in 21st century national infrastructure—and by infrastructure I mean brains, in the human capacity base of this country. Of course, we also need to invest in other infrastructure, but that is where we need to be fundamentally going.</p><p>I am concerned that, with this deregulation proposal, a teacher would graduate with a HECS debt of around $90,000, and it would take them decades—up to 40 years and more—to pay it off. Women are going to be disadvantaged in this context, because they are the ones who often end up taking time out in part-time work or no work, ultimately resuming full-time work once the children go to school. They would then spend years paying this debt back.</p><p>The University of Tasmania is in a unique position because we have only one university for the whole state. That does not apply anywhere else. The University of Tasmania is the key to improving educational opportunities for all Tasmanians. The university has a campus in Launceston and opened a campus on the north-west coast. The north-west coast is an area of Tasmania with one of the poorest retention rates to senior secondary education, let alone university. The provision of the north-west campus has enabled people who left school at an early age to go back and finish their education. It has been a great contribution to Tasmania, but with the cuts that were being proposed we could have seen the University of Tasmania lose out by $113 million. Not only that, but we could have seen many students not being given the opportunity to go on to further education. Since we have only one university, fee competition would not work in Tasmania. You would be saying to students: 'You can go to the mainland to try to get cheaper fees,' but the reality is that you have to pay to get there, you have to pay the rents when you get there, and you have to pay the costs of accommodation and living expenses. It just would not work out to be any cheaper. So the reality is that you are condemning Tasmanians to no competition in the scheme of things, and to having to pay whatever the fees actually result in.</p><p>We need to have a situation where we have full-time, permanent teaching staff and research staff in universities. I do not want to go down the path of seeing some universities declared universities but having no research capacity. A public university has to have teaching and research, it has to have permanent staff, it has to have opportunities for young people to achieve to their highest potential. And it has to assist this country to get where it needs to be in a world that is moving rapidly to a low carbon economy and in having to be part of developing a service sector and a global economy that is not based on the consumption of the natural resources of the planet. This week we had the International Energy Agency saying that for the first time we have global emissions flatlining from the energy sector, we have economic growth globally at three per cent and no economic downturn. That demonstrates that decoupling global greenhouse gas emissions from growth is possible, but it means that in Australia we have to have a rapid shift in the way we live, in the way that we earn, and in the way society operates. That means massive opportunity, but only if you invest in that opportunity.</p><p>I wanted to make a remark about the cutback that was proposed—the blackmail, effectively. In order for the government to try to get deregulation over the line, there was the proposal to cut research funding. That would have had a mega-negative impact on the Integrated Marine Observing System, in Tasmania, which was going to run out of funding by June. It is essential to a whole range of research not only in Tasmania but right around the world. It would have been a disaster if the government had pursued that, and for Minister Pyne to try to blackmail the parliament by saying: 'Either you pass my deregulation—</p> <p class="speaker">Barry O'Sullivan</p><p>I rise on a point of order. The reference suggesting that Minister Pyne has committed the act of blackmail has been raised here three times. Three chairs have made the people withdraw those references and I ask that you ask the senator to withdraw this assertion.</p> <p class="speaker">John Williams</p><p>I will ask you, Senator Milne, to reflect on what you have said and, if you think it is appropriate, you can withdraw.</p> <p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>
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