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representatives vote 2018-08-14#2
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mackay staff
on
2023-06-16 13:02:14
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Title
Bills — Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (Student Loan Sustainability) Bill 2018; Consideration of Senate Message- Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (Student Loan Sustainability) Bill 2018 - Consideration of Senate Message - Senate amendments
Description
<p class="speaker">Tony Smith</p><p>I understand that it is the wish of the House to consider the amendments together.</p> <p class="speaker">Angus Taylor</p><p>I move:</p><p class="italic">That the amendments be agreed to.</p> <p class="speaker">Terri Butler</p><p>It's important that we acknowledge that two tranches of amendments are being considered together: the first tranche by the government is to change some of the timing in relation to the implementation of these measures, and the second tranche that had come from the crossbench relates to loans fees in respect of the HECS arrangements and the FEE-HELP arrangements for certain table 2 institutions.</p><p>Labor will oppose both sets of amendments. Obviously they're being considered together. We are very concerned about the continuation of the coalition's war on young people. This is yet another example of this government trying to make it harder for people to get a higher education and trying to make it harder for people who are on low incomes to be able to get by. This is a government that doesn't care about the housing affordability crisis facing young people in this country. They absolutely do not care about the fact that young people are finding it harder and harder to get a quality education. It's not just the $270 million that was cut from vocational education in this year's budget. There was also $2.2 billion cut out of universities in MYEFO alone last year. This is yet another example of the war on young people. The government is now seeking to decrease the point at which people make a higher education contribution. This is an attempt to make people who are worse off pay HECS, even though they are demonstrably not receiving a private benefit from their higher education.</p><p>The purpose of HECS is for people to make a contribution in recognition of the private benefit they receive. How much private benefit is someone getting from their higher education if they're on 42 grand a year? How well off is someone on $42,000 or $45,000 a year? What do you think you're doing with these changes? You are making it harder for people to get by. You're making it harder for young people, particularly, to get by. We don't know, on this side of the House, why you hate young people so much. We don't know why the Turnbull government is so, so determined to make it harder for people to get a higher education.</p><p>Since the government were elected in 2013, they have taken every opportunity to attack the higher education sector. There was the 20 per cent public funding cut that they tried to bring in in the 2014 horror budget. They failed to get that through. Then there was the 7½ per cent funding cut plus an additional funding cut on top of that last year. They failed to get that through. They finally got through their $2.2 billion cut administratively, bypassing the parliament, in MYEFO, and now they're making a further attack on our university system and on young people, reducing the threshold so that people who are earning very low amounts of money have to start making an additional contribution to the Commonwealth government because they had the temerity to get above their station and go to university.</p><p>We know how the other side feels about us and the people that we represent going to university, because the Prime Minister has told us. The Prime Minister looked over at our side and said, 'Look at you people; you all went to university, ' as if having a higher education is something that we should be ashamed of. But we are proud of the fact that so many of us on this side of the parliament are the first in our family to go to university. Our parents might have left school at 15. Our grandparents might have had to live in a tent during the Depression. Our parents and our grandparents might have come from very, very working-class stock. But our parents worked hard and they helped put us through university. We understand aspiration on this side of the House. You lot like to talk about it. We like to demonstrate it. We are the living embodiment of it. That's why we'll stand up for students. That's why we'll stand up for people who go to university.</p><p>What do you think this bill is going to do to someone who goes to work for a charity, for a community legal centre, in a low-paid occupation? Do you think there's going to be an incentive to work in the community sector? Why would people do it? They're already going to take a discount on wages. Why would you punish them further by taxing them, by making further higher education contributions required so that you can just gather a little bit more money from them, even though they're working in that lower paid occupation?</p><p>Well, we won't stand for it. We'll stand up for aspiration. We'll stand up for people who want to go to university. We'll stand up for low-paid working people, because they deserve champions, and they will have them in this place as long as Labor is here. We will stand up for working people, and that includes people who went to university. It also includes vocational education. It also includes making sure that we do something about housing affordability. This government might be waging a war on young people, but young people will always have a voice in the Labor Party. The young people of Australia, who are this nation's future, will always have a voice. That's why we'll fight so hard on climate change. That's why we'll fight so hard for funding for vocational education and we'll stand up for public TAFE. That's why we'll always fight your cuts to university funding. That's why we'll always stand up against your cuts to the pension. And that's why we will oppose these amendments and this bill, because this bill punishes young people and it punishes lower paid workers—and you should be ashamed.</p> <p class="speaker">Tanya Plibersek</p><p>We don't agree with these amendments and we don't support the Higher Education Support Legislation Amendment (Student Loan Sustainability) Bill 2018, because it is one more example of this government's vandalism when it comes to education. This is a government that, just before Christmas, cut another $2.2 billion from our universities, not by taking it through the parliament and allowing us on this side to make clear our opposition to these university cuts but by pushing it through in the midyear economic update, just before Christmas—a $2.2 billion cut. All this government has done is make it harder for young Australians to get a university education.</p><p>And what do we want? We want every young Australian to have the opportunity, if they're prepared to work hard and study hard, to get a great education—at university, at TAFE; it doesn't matter. But we know that most jobs of the future will require one of these. They will require either a university education or a TAFE education, and this government is wrecking both. It is wrecking universities, making them harder to afford and harder to attend, and it is wrecking TAFE, by ripping billions out of vocational education, apprenticeships and traineeships, including hundreds of millions in the last budget alone. We know that many Australians are already turning their backs on a university education because they just can't afford it. This week, just days ago, we heard that one in seven university students are regularly going without food, because they can't afford to study and eat.</p><p>I was speaking today to one of our major universities that says that a large proportion of the homeless young people in their city are university students who haven't got a place to live. We saw an article this week in The Conversation about young women in particular trading sex for accommodation, including students who were doing this. What are we doing to our young Australians that we are making it so impossible to make ends meet to invest their time and their energy in a university education that gives them hope for the future?</p><p>It is incredible that we are asking young people on lower and lower incomes to pay a larger share of their income, repaying their debt sooner. We know who this hits hardest. It hits people in lower paid jobs harder, because they will be spending a disproportionate amount of their income, that should be covering necessities, on repaying their education sooner. We know that most of these people will be women. These measures disproportionately affect women, and Labor has said so all along. Sixty per cent of all Australians with a HELP debt are women and two-thirds of the Australians impacted by these changes will be women.</p><p>Of course our investment in education as a nation benefits the people who get the education. But those students, when they graduate, we hope go on throughout their professional lives to earn well and repay their debt—not just their HECS debt but their broader debt to society. Through their increased taxation as their wages increase they are supporting other young Australians to get a university education. Investment in education doesn't just benefit the individuals who receive the education; it benefits our nation. We know that Australia cannot be a wealthy and successful nation when we continue to cut university funding, as those opposite have done, and cut access to university education, as those opposite have done, by freezing university funding.</p><p>Our investment in university education has a substantial economic return. Just today, we saw another report, commissioned by the Group of Eight universities—I think done by London Economics—saying that in 2016 $12 billion was spent on their universities and $66 billion was returned in economic growth through that investment. Research, discovery, innovation and learning—the economic activity of the people who are working to supply the universities, particularly in our regional communities—makes a huge difference.</p> <p class="speaker">Karen Andrews</p><p>I rise to speak on these amendments. There are two points in particular that I would like to make. Firstly, I support the amendments that will be before us, and potentially discussed in a little bit more detail shortly.</p><p>What I would like to say is that I am particularly keen to support the amendment that deals with the removal of the loan fees from students of the table B providers. In particular, that affects one of the universities in my electorate of McPherson on the Gold Coast—that is, Bond University. For some time I have worked with Bond University, with the Vice Chancellor, Professor Tim Brailsford, and with students at the university for the removal of the loan fees. It has been a contentious issue. I have fought long and hard to have those fees removed, so I'm absolutely delighted to support that amendment today.</p><p>The other point that I would particularly like to make is in respect of vocational education. Let me start by saying that we are most definitely the party that is going to produce the results in the vocational education field. When Labor were in government, they absolutely decimated the sector. I've said before and I will say again—and I will continue to say it—that Labor, when in government, brought vocational education in this country to its knees. They did that by significantly reducing employer incentives in the vocational education space, and apprenticeships in particular. Under the former Labor government, the number of apprentices that we had in training dropped dramatically. When I speak of apprentices, I am, of course, speaking of Australian apprenticeships, which include apprentices and trainees. This government has put $1.5 billion on the table to increase the number of apprentices that we have in training.</p><p>There are clearly some strong target areas that we need to look at, and we're working with a number of states. There are five states and territories that have signed on to the national partnership agreement: New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory. We are continuing to work with them on the projects that they will be implementing to improve the number of apprentices that we have in training, not just in the coming year but for four years in total under the national partnership agreement, because this government recognises how important apprentices are to the future of Australia. So we'll be working with the states and territories in some targeted areas. We're certainly going to be looking at health, at ageing and at the disability sector. We'll also be looking at manufacturing, and we'll be looking at agriculture. We will work with every single state and territory to make sure that we are addressing the skills shortages that currently exist in this country and will continue to exist unless urgent action is taken.</p><p>So, when I say that we are the party that will stand up for vocational education, I can assure you that we have got the runs on the board, and we will continue to do that. It was just recently—maybe six weeks ago or maybe eight weeks ago—that one of the key stakeholders in the vocational education sector said to me that, for the first time, they can see the green shoots in vocational education, because, after such a long time in the darkness under Labor, we are now seeing some significant gains being made in that space. There is clearly more work to be done, but we have done a lot already to clean up the nightmare that we were left with when we took government.</p><p>Apprentices are and will continue to be our target into the future, but we will continue to look holistically at education. I've said before in this place that we see education as a highway where you can start with early childhood and you can go through schools, you can go into vocational education and you can go into higher education. We will continue to strongly support education in this country to make sure that everyone has the opportunity for a quality education.</p><p>When we talk about education, one of the things that we must be mindful of at all times is ensuring that the education that we are providing to our young people, not just at school but through vocational education and in higher education, is of a high quality and that those coming through higher education or vocational education are, in fact, job ready and have the skills that industry is crying out for. This is what this government stands for: high-quality education at universities, at schools, in vocational training and in our early childhood centres. So what we will do is continue to take up the fight to make sure that our children in Australia have the opportunity for an ongoing high-quality education.</p> <p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>-
- The majority voted in favour of a [motion](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debates/?id=2018-08-14.94.2) to agree with the Senate [amendments](https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:legislation/billhome/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fsched%2Fr6051_sched_cf0fe1cc-71b9-4ac3-99d5-c2e884faafe7%22;rec=0).
- According to Griffith MP [Terri Butler](https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/representatives/griffith/terri_butler) (Labor), the [amendments have two tranches](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2018-08-14.99.1):
- > *the first tranche by the government is to change some of the timing in relation to the implementation of these measures, and the second tranche that had come from the crossbench relates to loans fees in respect of the HECS arrangements and the FEE-HELP arrangements for certain table 2 institutions.*
- For more, see the [discussion during the debate](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debates/?id=2018-08-14.94.2).
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