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POLICY & REFORM amendments that may be likely to convince PUP to support the legislation has remained largely unclear throughout the process.
Amid initial upper house debate on the bill last month, PUP leader Clive Palmer told reporters his senators would be voting against the reforms and reiterated his party’ s position in favour of free education. However, there has been some indication in reports that Palmer may agree to support the reforms if they were to result in more offers of full university scholarships – a possibility University of Sydney VC Michael Spence recently touted.
But as Parliament prepared for its November recess, Pyne told reporters there had been“ no compromises or negotiated outcomes announced”.
“ We’ ll continue to talk,” Pyne said. " Obviously, the 10-year government bond rate applying to that HECS debt is one of the areas where we have been talking and there has been speculation, but there have been no official announcements and no negotiated settlement yet, and I think we’ re some weeks away from that.
" We’ ll probably deal with this when we come back."
The PUP senators themselves remained virtually silent during a second debate on the bill as Labor and the Greens continued to voice their strong opposition to the reforms, which they argue would saddle students with vast debts.
Labor Senator Susan Lines also accused the Coalition of hypocrisy, saying it had broken its own promises to consult the higher-education sector before attempting to enact significant legislation changes rather than“ impose it unilaterally and argue about it afterwards”.
Unsurprisingly, in dissenting statements included in the Senate committee report, both Labor and the Greens called for the government’ s legislation to be rejected outright.
In their co-authored dissenting report, Lines and fellow Labor Senator Kim Carr went as far as to suggest that deregulation would also lead to ministerial meddling in the setting of university fees if the decisions institutions made became“ politically inconvenient to the government of the day”.
“ It is a recipe for more conflict between universities and the Liberal-National government, rather than less,” they wrote.“ This legislation is clearly not in the national interest. It would change the Australian higher education landscape profoundly for the worse.
“ The altered landscape would be one characterised by substantial and growing inequality of access and outcomes for students.
“ Australia’ s international reputation for a high-quality higher education system would be threatened, risking a multibilliondollar export industry. Australia’ s economic prosperity would be undermined, along with our capacity to meet the high-skill workforce needs for the future.”
Even so, the government remains hopeful it can pass its reforms during the final two weeks of parliamentary sitting – scheduled to commence from November 24. Pyne himself has vowed to have the legislation made law before the end of the year.
In what seems a clear indication of a sweetener that his government is prepared to offer in order to do so, Coalition senators have recommended the development of a structural adjustment package to assist some institutions in transitioning to a fully deregulated system. These would be matched with greater measures to address the financial barriers students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds face.
The committee’ s report also included recommendations that were something of an aside to the broader debate on structural reform. These included calls to explore enabling the recovery of HECS debt from Australians living overseas – a move Chapman advocated during hearings.
In his presentation to the Senate committee – which at times came across as more of an educational economics lecture for a panel that asked very few questions – Chapman pointed out that the government was losing about $ 40 million- $ 45 million each year due to HECS debtors choosing to travel and live overseas.
“ We do not collect it,” Chapman said.“[ Higgins ] and I worked on some data a couple of years ago. He did a fantastic job with pretty poor data to calculate what it was actually costing the Australian taxpayer, and it is about $ 40 million. Over 25 years … we are talking about $ 800 million. We are talking maybe up to a billion dollars [ and if university ] fees go up by important amounts then the lost money overseas must go up as well.”
In a response to questions following the Senate hearings, the Department of Education noted that whilst the revenue lost this way annually equated to less than 1 percent of total loans made, the amount remained significant.
Chapman argued that such a mechanism should place an obligation on the debtor to make repayments of at least $ 2000 a year rather than making it“ a function of the government to chase people”, which he cautioned would lead to great administrative expense.
Meanwhile, it remains to be seen what influence, if any, the recently formed National Alliance for Public Universities – a group representing more than 1000 staff and academics from seemingly every one of Australia’ s universities – is likely to have on the all-powerful cross-benchers.
The alliance( see“ Fight to define higher education”, p17), which has the backing of University of Canberra VC professor Stephen Parker, has argued that the bulk of VCs – who have openly supported the push for deregulation – are neither representing the views and concerns of their staff nor acting in their best interests.
“ VCs and Universities Australia [ UA ] have failed their duty of representation,” NAPU spokesman Dr Ben Etherington recently said.“ They shouldn’ t be negotiating with a government that can understand education only as a private good. Any form of further deregulation is the wrong direction for our universities.”
A national survey commissioned by UA showed, however, that the majority of Australians would support the government’ s deregulation reform, provided amendments were made to reduce the magnitude of university funding cuts, maintain CPI interest rates for HECS loans and provide transition packages to assist smaller universities in adapting to the new arrangements.
Etherington’ s response:“ UA should be asking staff and the public what kind of university system they want, not what they might swallow short of total catastrophe.” So as the Coalition’ s deadline edges ever closer and stakeholders on either side refuse to give any ground, the future of higher education in Australia is now subject to whatever deal the Coalition is able to wrangle with those holding the balance of power in the upper house.
In the meantime, all eyes are now keenly focused on the decision-making of a handful of quite junior senators representing a party that has, in its short political life, proven a perplexing and unpredictable animal.
One thing is certain though, whatever they decide, the next few weeks will probably shape the course of higher education in Australia – perhaps irreversibly – for many years to come. ■
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