Dr KEMP (Minister for Schools, Vocational Education and Training and Minister Assisting the Minister for Finance for Privatisation)(4.33 p.m.) —It is no wonder that the member for Werriwa (Mr Latham) suffered a 13 per cent swing against him on his primary vote in the election campaign. Listening to his colleague, the member for Batman (Mr Martin Ferguson), it is no wonder that he lost 600,000 members to the trade union movement. The rubbish, the untruths, the misrepresentation and the hypocrisy that we have just heard condemns the Labor Party, and the Australian people are well aware of that.

In making these changes to higher education, which Senator Vanstone has announced, the government is demonstrating its very deep commitment to providing young Australians—and more young Australians—with the opportunity to undertake higher education. The effect of the changes to policy that have been announced by the government will be that there will be an increase in places at universities.

Mr Sawford —In South Australia?

Dr KEMP —There will be an increase across the board in university places, there will be an improvement overall in the funding of universities and there will be an enormous improvement in the equity of higher education policy. The government responsible for squeezing the higher education system, for shutting tens of thousands of qualified students out of universities, for discriminating against Australian students and for keeping the number of university places down was none other than the previous Labor Party government.

I am very happy to detail to this House the nature of the inequities that existed in the previous policy, which this government has now redressed. The concept of equity is one which was highly ideological. It did not reflect the views of mainstream Australia. It disadvantaged young working-class people who could not get into the Commonwealth funded places under the previous government. The sort of people the member for Werriwa is referring to generally came from schools in disadvantaged areas. They were the ones who tended to have the lowest entry scores and were disproportionately represented amongst the tens of thousands who made up that statistic of unmet demand, against whom the doors of the universities were locked by the ideology of the previous government.

The hypocrisy involved in the remarks of the member for Werriwa almost beggars belief. His party, after all, introduced the HECS scheme on existing students and went to election after election promising not to increase HECS and increased it relentlessly year after year. In 1989, the thresholds were one, two and three per cent. In 1990, the Labor Party government increased the thresholds for repayment to two, three and four per cent. In 1993, they increased the thresholds to three, four and five per cent. In 1995, they added four new levels of repayment on top of the existing ones—3.5, 4.5, 5.5 and six per cent—with the support of their colleagues in the National Union of Students.

If people are averse to these sorts of charges and fees, if the member for Werriwa's battlers are averse, they would be averse to these sorts of changes. In addition to that, you forbade the universities to provide Australian students with the same opportunities to invest in their future which you were very willing to provide to overseas students. Australian students were denied the rights of entry to universities that overseas students were granted. And why? Purely for ideological reasons. When the universities wanted to increase places above their target quotas, when they wanted to offer more places, what did the previous government say to them? `No additional funding for those places. You'll be penalised if you offer additional places.' What was the unmet demand? How many students were shut out? Last year, the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee estimates that between 16,000 and 24,000 qualified students were locked out. Students probably disproportionately from the less advantaged areas of this society were simply locked out of the universities.

The government has reviewed this whole issue of equity of access to universities and has taken and announced a number of decisions which will greatly broaden access and the resourcing of Australia's universities. We fully expect that the consequence of these decisions will be that there will be more students in Australia's universities than there are today, that those universities will be better funded, that the research conditions for staff will be greatly improved, that the universities will have the freedom to address the needs of the students in a way that they did not have under the rigid, centralised, bureaucratic profiles processes that the previous government put in place. The decisions that have been announced are ones that this government is proud to stand by and which should have been introduced a long time ago.

In relation to the right of Australian students to access universities, we are giving them that right. We are giving them the same right that the previous government was prepared to give overseas students, to invest in their own future and to obtain places in Australian universities. That is fair and equitable.

We are adjusting the HECS contributions, not for existing students but for new students, so that they more realistically take into account the costs and the income prospects of students in different courses. The previous government thought it was fair that a student wanting to go into teaching should pay 25 per cent of the cost of their course, whereas a medical student, with a much better prospect of higher income in the future and a much more costly course for the taxpayer to provide, contributed only 13 per cent. What concept of equity was that?

I believe that most Australians who reflect on the changes we are making to the structure of HECS to take into account the costs and the income prospects of students will realise the changes we have made are fair and equitable. They are fair and equitable for, and advantageous to, students who, for one reason or another, perhaps unwisely, are avoiding the higher cost courses.

One of the things we must recognise is that the previous government, in introducing HECS, did introduce a mechanism which enables everyone who wants to access universities the chance to do so in a way which ought not to deter them, regardless of their present income and present financial situation, because they pay back nothing until they are in a financial position to make that repayment. We maintain that system. We supported it at the time, it had bipartisan support, and we continue to support it.

In addition, we are going a very important step beyond what the previous government was prepared to do. We are getting rid of the ideological restriction imposed on the right of universities to create additional places. Under the policies we have announced, a university which has met its full Commonwealth funded quota of HECS supported places can create additional HECS supported places. We will pay the universities the HECS attributable to those places. That means universities which have unused resources, which have staff available to teach courses, can expand the number of places available and funded through the HECS scheme. The government has fully factored in the cost of that in its calculations for the funding of the system.

From 1998, universities will be able to offer additional fee paying places to Australian students, who will be allowed for the first time to invest in their higher education. Those additional places will be particularly advanta geous to women, who very often want to re-enter the higher education stream to provide themselves with qualifications. The opportunities will be there, if they cannot get into the HECS funded places, to access those additional places.

The opposition affects some ideological objection to this. The former Labor government constantly opposed this on ideological grounds. It supported fees at the school level, it supported overseas students being allowed to access these places, but it does not like the thought of Australian students being able to access these places. The fact is that as a result of these decisions the resourcing of the university system will improve significantly over the coming years.

Under the decisions announced by Senator Vanstone on behalf of the government, the operational and research funding—the total Commonwealth provided funding for Australia's universities—will increase next year by some $51 million. This gives the lie to the claims made by the opposition that the government is going around slashing funding to universities. The government's efficiency savings are being imposed across the public sector. The opposition, when in government, put in place the Hoare management review of universities, indicating that it had concerns over the efficiency of university management, and now it complains when the government imposes an efficiency dividend on universities—an efficiency dividend which will not prevent the resourcing of universities improving. In addition to the operational funding that the Commonwealth will provide—when you take research funding into account, the total Commonwealth contribution to universities will fall in the following year, in 1998, by about $8 million—they will have access to these additional HECS funded places and the fee paying places that they will be able to create.

Under the decisions announced by the government, from 1998—I may have given the impression in an answer earlier that access to those additional fee paying places will be from next year; they will not be from next year, they will be from 1998—there will be a fall in the total Commonwealth contribution. Because we are properly rebalancing the public and the private contributions to universities there is a very strong private benefit, and we are recognising that. That has been embodied in our decisions, and that is fair. It is fair that the private benefit is recognised by shifting the balance between the Commonwealth supported effort in the universities and the privately supported effort. The benefit of that change will flow to Australian families and, as the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) has said, that will be very evident in the budget tonight. Not only will the universities have for the first time the strategic flexibility that the former government was never prepared to give them; they will also be able to provide additional places over and above those which are currently in the system, and they will have more resources with which to do so.

Under the decisions of the previous government, only about 55 per cent of total university income in Australia is now provided by the Commonwealth. We are taking decisions which will allow the universities that further flexibility so that they can design their courses and their places to meet the demand which exists out there in the community. These decisions have been taken to reflect a full commitment by the government to a world-class university system.

The notion that university resources will be slashed is nonsense and the notion that places will be reduced is nonsense. It is time for the opposition to wake up to the fact that it is trying to mislead people. It is trying to distort the situation and create anxiety where there is absolutely no ground for it to exist. (Time expired)