Subject: (Higher Education Reforms)
E&OE…
STUART BOCKING: Senator Simon Birmingham is a member of the Senate himself, he’s the Assistant Minister for Education and Training and he’s on the line, Senator Birmingham good morning.
SIMON BRIMINGHAM: Good morning Stuart and good morning to your listeners.
STUART BOCKING: Is this a failure, second time around for the government?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Well obviously we have to except, Stuart, that the bill has been defeated, but the government is determined to push on with this reform because it really is a benefit to students, to Australian universities and overall to our economy. So we are determined that we will work through these difficulties, it is a very challenging Senate to deal with, everybody acknowledges that, and what we would really implore cross-bench senators to do, and frankly the Labor party to do, is have a constructive discussion, it seems that nearly everybody acknowledges there is a crisis in terms of the future sustainability of funding and support for our universities, that we have to change the model that is applied in terms of how our universities are funded in the future to make sure they maintain a the world excellence and can compete with an increasingly dynamic international education environment. So let’s actually have a positive conversation of engagement over the coming few months…
STUART BOCKING: …it’s interesting you talk about our international competitiveness because to my way of thinking, we already have a deregulation of sorts of international students and we already have deregulation of sorts amongst post-graduate studies. Have we seen massive blowouts in fees charged for those courses?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Not at all, and in fact, that is a very good point to make, Stuart, that the legislation we’re putting forward mandates that domestic students could not be charged any more than an international student less the retaining level of Commonwealth subsidies, because the federal government would still be paying a significant subsidy for university courses. So that means that the idea that Labor pedalled of this $100,000 degree is complete bunkum.
STUART BOCKING: So tell me, where does that figure come from? Because again, I heard Bill Shorten talking this yesterday, $100,000 degrees, where have they got that figure from?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: It comes from the scare campaign…
STUART BOCKING: …someone made it up? I mean, has there been modelling done or has someone just made that figure up?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Well we have seen some modelling done, but that modelling ignores this provision and this proviso that there would be a cap in place that means that domestic students will always be paying less than international students and under no circumstances did that get you to $100,000 degrees for Australian students in the future.
STUART BOCKING: So what’s prompted this massive funding gap? It seems to me that we had deregulation of places a couple of years back under the previous Labor government, but the funding wasn’t necessarily there, is that basically where we’ve come to?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: In short, that is the problem, that the Gillard government lifted government caps on the number of students who could go to Australian universities…
STUART BOCKING: …and so it meant that the whole heap of people who possibly weren’t previously able, because of their TER score or something else, to get into university. Suddenly, now there are additional places created, but there wasn’t the same funding provided by the government to match those places, correct?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Well government funding per-place has continued, but that of course has put in place enormous pressure on government budgets which is just unsustainable if that growth rate continues in to the future. It also though means that universities have found the only way they can generate extra revenue is to offer extra places, and that is really not what is ideal for having excellence in the system that the universities simply say “well we’ll just cram as many people in to a lecture theatre as possible” rather than having our 41 universities actually say “we want to specialise in certain areas, we want to provide excellence in certain areas, we’re not interested in offering this course, we’d rather offer that course” it’s actually about empowering the universities to chart their own course, and what is notable about our reform package is that there is actually consensus amongst Australia’s universities, amongst Australia’s education institutions that everybody from the TAFE directors through to 40 of the 41 Vice-Chancellors are all on board supporting the case for reform.
STUART BOCKING: and given that, why have you not been able to make that case with the other cross-benchers? I mean does Jacqui Lambie, does Glen Lazerus know something more? Is there something more that they know? Do they know something that we don’t know? How is it you haven’t been able to make the case, given you’ve got the vast number of those Vice-Chancellors on board with your proposals?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Well this is why I’m urging those cross-benchers to spend the next few months engaging with the educational institutions…
STUART BOCKING: …but haven’t they done that already? I mean, this went to a vote in November of last year, it was defeated. Here we are in the middle of March, it’s been defeated again. Surely they’ve done all that in the last couple of months, haven’t they?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Well I’m worried that if they have, they’re not listening effectively enough because it concerned me last night, in listening to Senator Lambie’s contribution, that she was expressing concern for the University of Tasmania and she was arguing that there should be more Diploma and pathway courses funded in to universities like the University of Tasmania. Well the truth is that the University of Tasmania Vice-Chancellor supports the elements of this reform package. The University of Tasmania would, under our reform package, be able to offer unlimited numbers of diploma and pathway courses in to university. So, rather than lowering your ATAR score for Bachelor places, you’re actually able to say “we will give more people diplomas and pathway courses that allow them to prove that they’ve got the skills to go on and take a Bachelor degree on” So the reforms in a sense that Jacqui Lambie seemed to be asking for are actually embedded in the package that we’re taking forward and I just would hope that she will sit down calmly and quietly with the University of Tasmania, and the other cross-benchers can do likewise, and discover that what they are after is actually largely encompassed in what the government is proposing to do, and that they stop listening, it would seem, to some of the hysteria from the Labor party and focus on the nature of these reforms which will set up Australia’s universities to be able to compete on the global stage…
STUART BOCKING: …but Senators like Jacqui Lambie and Glen Lazarus, they’re almost Labor Senators by any other name now aren’t they? I mean they’re calling themselves independents but it seems to me that at heart they’re either, they’re either anti-government, they’re anti-coalition or they’re anti Abbott, what is it?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Well Stuart, look, Jacqui comes up with a colourful turn of phrase that gets the odd headline but ultimately I think they are good people who want to do the right thing. They have been thrown in to, well and truly, the deep end of Australian politics, they’ve come in having the balance of power in the Australian Senate in circumstances which we’ve never really seen before in terms of the number of cross-benchers…
STUART BOCKING: …well I think that’s right, I think some of them our out of their depth. Is it right Tony Abbott referred to them as feral the other day in the coalition party room?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Well look I didn’t hear that, Stuart, if that was the case…
STUART BOCKING: …you we’re in the room, you didn’t hear it?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: I certainly don’t recall hearing that, so look I’m not sure that would be the case. I think we recognise the cross-benchers all have their constituents they have to serve, but ultimately, we’ve appealed to them to put the national interest first and this is a package which will give more opportunities to at least 80,000 Australian students to access university in years to come. It will give opportunities for our universities to be free, to have the autonomy to specialise and develop excellence in different fields and through all of that it will give our economy a productivity lift that will position Australia to compete within Asia and around the world…
STUART BOCKING: …the difficulty is though, now having split the bills up, if you couldn’t get support for the deregulation of fees, what chance is any support of pushing through the package on funding cuts?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Well we will persevere, try, try and try again…
STUART BOCKING: …well I know but, I mean as it is now you’ve got a trigger for a double dissolution, would you pull that trigger?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Well we don’t, I believe, technically have that trigger yet because the requisite gap between the introduction of the bill and the defeat of the first one wasn’t there but, of course that could eventuate down the track. We hope it doesn’t come to that, the university sector is appealing to, not just the cross-benchers, but the Labor party to constructively engage on this. Let’s remember that former Labor Higher Education Minister John Dawkins, former Labor Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, former Labor Premier Peter Beattie, have all come out supporting these types of reforms. So it really is incumbent on the Labor party, who invented the HECS system under the Hawke government, who lifted government caps on university places under the Gillard government to recognise that this is the next logical step in reform, to engage in it constructively rather than throwing away and trashing the reputation they have for constructive engagement in government in the university sector, which they are now destroying by simply saying “no” at present.
STUART BOCKING: Alright look, I appreciate your time this morning.