2023-06-19
I rise to speak to the Education Legislation Amendment (Startup Year and Other Measures) Bill 2023. The bill amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to create a fifth category of student loans, called SY-HELP, under our existing Higher Education Loan Program.
This scheme will allow up to 2,000 students, current postgraduate students and recent graduates to participate in university accelerator programs to develop their own innovative startup ideas. The bill enables students undertaking the accelerator program courses to, potentially, qualify also for certain social security payments. It also updates the Australian Research Council Act 2001 to increase annual research funding caps, to reflect indexation rates for the financial years between 2022 and 2025 and adds a research funding cap for the financial year of 2025-26. The Greens support, fully, these measures for ARC funding.
We support the intention behind this bill to encourage more students to build skills in entrepreneurship and develop their own ideas. There is definitely a need to support students to do this, to be more creative, to be entrepreneurs, for their ideas to come to life. We definitely need more entrepreneurs from already disadvantaged groups, such as First Nations people, people of colour, women and others who come from marginalised backgrounds.
We support this program but very reluctantly. I say 'reluctantly' because this program will shackle students with more debt. Students can access two loans of up to $11,800 over their lifetime to participate in these courses. It is a really sad and rather shameful reality that in a country like Australia the only way that students can access programs like this or any type of higher education is through being shackled by a burden of debt, a burden of debt that is increasing every year to obscene levels. What it tells you is that we are putting students, again and again, into a broken system. We should not be adding to that but we should be changing the entire system. That is what it's about, because there is no other way for students to access education.
Education is a public good. I don't know how many times I have said that in this chamber and out there, and I will keep saying it. The Greens will keep saying it. University and TAFE should be free and student debt should be wiped, and I will be moving a second reading amendment to that effect. We will also be moving amendments, in the committee stage, to tackle the current student debt crisis, to abolish indexation and to raise the minimum repayment income to the median wage for all study loans, including this one which is the startup.
I want to take a moment to call out the coalition's hypocrisy on student loans. The coalition is a party who, when they were in government, for the last 10 years or whatever it was, continuously attacked universities, staff and students. There's a very long list of these attacks that they have made. They tried so hard—I think it was under Prime Minister Tony Abbott at that time—to deregulate fees, which would have added an immense amount of debt to students.
There were funding cuts in their time. They vetoed ARC grant applications that didn't fit in with their far-right ideology. To top it all off, under the cover of COVID, in 2020 they created the disastrous job-ready graduates program, and it is the coalition who doubled the fees for degrees, like arts and commerce, to more than $14,000 a year. All that scheme did was to condemn generations of students to decades more of debt and push universities into strife, because it was a funding cut. So it's rich of them to stand up here and say how concerned they are about student debt. You were in government for 10 years. You could've done something about student debt. But you didn't. In fact, you did the opposite. What that particular program did was: it further entrenched gender inequality, as women, overwhelmingly, study the courses which were hit hardest by the fee hikes, incurring more and more student debt.
Also the coalition, in April, just a couple of months ago, teamed up with the government to reject my bill, which was to abolish indexation and all student loans and to raise the minimum repayment income to the median wage. Labor sat with the coalition to vote against measures that would have provided relief to students, even though they knew that there was a pretty easy opportunity to do something, to take a step forward, to deal with the student crisis. You could say, as to the coalition, 'Better late than never,' but I'm sorry—I am sceptical about their motivations and why they're doing this. Those in the coalition have an opportunity to prove that they are really serious about doing something about the student debt today. If the coalition really cares about the student debt and how students are suffering and the hardship that they are facing because of their debt plus the cost of living crisis, then they can very enthusiastically support the Greens' amendments to this bill to abolish indexation and raise the minimum repayment income to median wage so that people only start paying off their loan when they earn a decent income—otherwise, it is just opportunism on their part, and no-one will be fooled by it.
Let me now come to the party of the government, the Labor Party, and the lack of any action from this government to address the unjust, unfair and ever-increasing burden of student debt. For months and months, almost every day, we have heard stories about how student debt is harming people. It is beyond clear that it is a deep crisis. People are anxious about their debts, for good reason. Student debt is locking young people out of the housing market, stopping them from getting married or starting a family. Student debt is crushing their dreams of further study and taking longer and longer to pay off. I have heard heart-wrenching stories—and a lot of them were coming from women, who said that they would never have gone to uni if they'd known that they would end up with such a huge amount of debt. That debt will, under Labor, come next June, go up by about 15 per cent. Student debt is actually stopping young people from having a carefree life and having a bit of fun, at a time in their lives when they should be doing that. Students who are doing two to three jobs still cannot afford to pay rent; they still cannot afford to make ends meet. It is stopping them from pursuing hobbies, from socialising with their friends and from just being young people and enjoying their lives. Student debt, as I said earlier, is further entrenching gender inequality, with women having larger debts. And of course we know the gender pay gap is still a reality, where women earn much less.
Millions of people became worse off on 1 June when student debt was indexed by an astonishing 7.1 per cent. Now, for people with a debt, their debt is rising faster than it can be paid off.
Despite the problem being so acute and getting much worse, the government is sitting on its hands. The only thing it can tell you is: 'The university accords process—everything will go into this magic pot, this magic pudding, and let's see what it comes out with.' But the government has the jurisdiction to do something about a pressing higher education issue right now. They don't have to wait for a process which will take a year, and then years more to implement, if it comes up with some good recommendations. We're debating this bill here; you brought this bill here. This bill is not more important than actually dealing with the student debt crisis, so while the process is going on you can still bring on education bills and get them debated. Why not do something useful and actually help the students, rather than saying, 'Sorry, we can't do anything until the university accord is over'? Our higher education system, the way it currently stands, is setting up students to struggle. But we're not debating that. You stopped—you gagged—debate on our bill on that, but we're sitting here debating a bill about a start-up program. It will be useful for students, but it just adds to their burden.
The government can do so many more things right now than doing this. Like I said, get rid of indexation. There are students who are doing mandatory placements for weeks as they do their uni degrees—for months in some cases—which they're not paid for. They might actually have to give up their jobs to do that. Or they finish their placements at 5.00 and run off to another job at 5.30. The government can actually pay those students for doing the mandatory placements. The government can raise stipends for PhD students to at least the minimum wage. The government can extend paid parental leave to PhD students. The government can lower the age of independence from 22 to18, and raise students' social security payments above the poverty line to at least $88 per day. That's what we need to do. But, instead, while they can't afford all of that, the government have chosen to commit $368 billion for dangerous nuclear submarines and are gifting, on a platter, $313 billion to the wealthiest in stage 3 tax cuts.
Students do deserve a system which allows them to thrive and survive. Students deserve free education, whether they're leaving school, changing careers, retraining later on in life or looking to gain new skills and knowledge. Education is a right—that should be the basic tenet of this country. It is a public good, it is not a privilege! It is not reserved for those who can afford to pay. Like I said: ultimately, university and TAFE should be free and all student debt wiped. No-one—no-one!—deserves to be shackled with tens of thousands of dollars of debt which in many cases will take a lifetime to pay off in order to pursue higher education. I will be moving a second reading amendment to that effect.
Labor's lack of will to act on student debt and their weird kind of overprotective justification by saying, 'Oh, the current student loan system works,' are so out of touch with the reality of what people with student debt are facing. Labor needs to admit that this system is broken and that millions are suffering because of that broken system. Remember—you probably won't—that you were the party of the Whitlam government, which introduced free education and that our Prime Minister benefited from that. It is pretty shameful that the Prime Minister and this government aren't willing to allow the same benefit to people today. You can afford to act on student debt. The only question is whether you care enough to or not.
I move:
At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate notes that this bill does nothing to mitigate the student debt crisis at a time when student debts are increasing at an out-of-control pace, and calls on the Government to:
(a) recognise that education is a public good which should be free and universal;
(b) make university and TAFE fee-free; and
(c) wipe all student debt".