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POLICY & REFORM government needs to pay its bills, recognising that education is a public benefit and should be appropriately funded.
“ The government must also consult the university community before proposing any future changes.
“ Above all, it should treasure the national asset that is Australia’ s university system, and the equitable access and participation that the system guarantees.”
‘ FUNDAMENTALLY THE SAME’ BILL Senator Lee Rhiannon, Greens higher education spokesperson“ Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne’ s so-called‘ new higher education bill’ is fundamentally the same as the bill defeated in the Senate last December. It still slashes higher education funding by 20 per cent and puts the funding burden on students by deregulating student fees.
“ These regressive changes, which will lead to the cost of degrees rising to $ 100,000, demonstrate that the Coalition Government is not committed to a well-funded, accessible, high-quality public university system. While public education is slashed, half a billion dollars of public money will be poured into the coffers of private, for-profit higher education providers.
“ The bill’ s defeat in 2014 was off the back of a very strong and sustained campaign by tens of thousands of students, their families and unions. The Greens are proud to have always supported a high-quality public higher education system and we stood with the campaigners right from the moment these cuts were announced in the May budget.
“ It is crucial that this campaign continues over the next few weeks as Parliament prepares to vote on the re-introduced legislation.
“ Vice-chancellors of the elite sandstone universities, with the exception of the University of Canberra’ s Stephen Parker, will be out in full force again, lobbying to increase student fees – despite the opposition of the students and staff they should be representing.
“ The unwillingness of the VCs, with the exception of Mr Parker, to challenge funding cuts and increased student fees is telling of whose interests they represent, certainly not their students or those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
“ Public education is about the future of this country. Education is about increasing opportunity for all.
“ The Greens want to see a future in which every single Australian has an equal opportunity to obtain a higher education, regardless of their parents’ bank balance.
“ Last year, we were able to defeat the Abbott Government’ s
regressive and elitist higher education bill and we can do it again.“ Together, let’ s fight for public education.”
‘ STILL CHANGES THAT NEED TO BE MADE’ Anne-Marie Lansdown, deputy chief executive at Universities Australia“ Universities Australia has been working closely with the higher education sector, the government, and particularly the cross-benchers, on the higher education reform since the May budget.
“ We’ re very happy about the revised bill minister Pyne released in December. It adopts a number of the changes the UA had been talking to the cross-benchers about, but we believe there are still changes that need to be made for the bill to be acceptable to the higher education sector, students and the community.
“ We’ re very pleased that the changes to HELP now include going back to CPI and that will put downward pressure on the fees of the students.
“ But we still have a number of concerns and they include moderating the 20 per cent cut to universities. That amounts to about $ 1.9 billion, which is really important in a system that we consider to be underfunded.
“ There are a number of other things we would still like to see happen. There is a structural adjustment fund in the new bill. At this stage, it’ s not the scale that we think is going to be required while we implement these complex changes. The suggested package is about $ 150 million. We think, given the complexity of these changes, we’ re looking at a package more in the order of $ 500 million.
“ The other thing that we think is necessary is some sort of oversight body. Discussions with the cross-benchers have led to a concern about who will be monitoring the changes over time. The cross-benchers felt that some form of independent expert panel would be helpful.
“ They would be able to see what was happening. We’ d see movements in students, what might be happening in particular occupational areas and courses, and just see what might need to change if the implementation was not delivering the sort of outcomes for the economy that we needed.
“ In the next short period, the next month or so, we will be talking, of course, to the cross-benchers … and making ourselves available to give them any information they will need to help them as they go into the period of their consideration of the bill.” ■
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