Dr LAWRENCE (9:58 PM) —While the Innovation and Education Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2001, on the face of it, seems to amount to an improvement in the capacity of Australia to conduct research and to engage in research and development, this is really a drop in the ocean compared with what is needed. We have seen from the government in recent months some attempt to fill in the potholes that they created in the first several years of their government. In that earlier period of government, we saw substantial cuts in funding to universities and to support for research and development, and the commercialisation of good Australian ideas. Unfortunately, this filling in of the potholes is literally all it is. Taking $5 billion out of this very important area of Australia's activity and putting back slightly less than $3 billion is not going to solve the problems that we confront.

We have seen wrong priorities from this government too. Some $20 billion was spent recently on a range of initiatives, very few of which go to address these problems. Indeed, in this current financial year, something less than the increase in the rate of inflation has been provided for research and development across the board—and we are asked to applaud what is here: a very modest initiative, promised earlier to Australia in the Backing Australia's Ability statement of this government. So at least this is apparently a core rather than a non-core promise.

As I go around the universities and research institutes in this country, I hear a similar story from all of them: there are huge pressures on university education, on university based research, on publicly funded research—on research and development generally. Across the university sector as a whole we see the outcomes of cuts to university funding. We see very large class sizes: tutorials that are more like lectures, with a very reduced capacity for tutors and researchers to deal with the individual tuition that is required of a quality research education. We see laboratories under pressure and, indeed, in many cases students are unable to have a laboratory based education in science and technology. We see libraries under pressure as well. Full fee paying students who are needed to make up the gap in government funded education are putting pressure, along with local students, on those library resources. In many cases we have seen what amounts to a collapse in the research base of our institutions.

I had a conversation this evening with the vice-chancellor of a university which shall remain nameless—I am sure that person would not want to be named here. In fact, that is part of the problem with this government: if you speak up publicly, you can find yourself in serious trouble. She pointed out all the problems to me—and perhaps by naming her gender I have inadvertently identified her, or at least narrowed the field somewhat. One of the problems that is confronted by universities generally is that they are required to get more and more of their funds from other sources: from the private sector or from individual student contributions—and that is what we are seeing here today. Course costs have gone up, postgraduate fees have increased, and the universities have been put under enormous pressure at a time when everywhere else in the world very substantial additional funding is being provided from the public purse. It is not that you do not have individual contributions; it is not that you do not have contributions from the corporate sector; but you do need that very substantial contribution from the public sector as well. There is a very substantial public benefit to be gained from investment in education and research.

As we indicated in a research report that was put out, An agenda for the Knowledge Nation, we are an underperforming knowledge nation. That is not to say that there has not been a significant performance from Australia in research and education and that we have not done extremely well in some respects. But, at a time when every other nation in the world is now investing substantially in this area, we are underperforming. Our investment in knowledge is now very definitely at the lower end of the countries of the OECD, with which we like to compare ourselves. Not only is it at the lower end but it is also falling. Investment in knowledge, of course, includes the universities and public research facilities, and it also includes the private sector. And we, uniquely among the OECD, are currently investing less than we should. As the Group of Eight universities have pointed out, even with the Backing Australia's Ability initiatives outlined by the government and partly incorporated into this research, it will still do nothing to take us up to the necessary levels to compete with those other nations.

That investment in knowledge in Australia collapsed very dramatically in 1996, at a time when there were substantial cuts to university funding and big increases in the amounts that came out of the private pockets of students. And, of course, business R&D collapsed as a result of cuts to R&D tax concessions. We are now 25 per cent below the weighted average of investment in knowledge of the 12 OECD countries with which we would want to compare ourselves, and 30 per cent below that of the United States. Frankly, Australia cannot afford that underperformance. That underperformance in education in particular has resulted in declining participation in schools and a slower enrolment growth in our higher education institutions than should be the case for a nation such as Australia. If you look at education funding levels you will see across the board—as the shadow minister indicated here—significant falls in Commonwealth funding for universities in particular. It has stagnated at a time when it needs to expand. We have also seen a crisis in Australia's R&D performance. It does not matter which area you look at, R&D has gone down. Very little venture capital is applied to our new ideas, and commercialisation of products is declining at a time when it should be increasing. This is a tragedy for Australia. There is a great deal of complacency on the part of the current government. They do not seem to understand that at a time when we are standing still—and, indeed, going backwards—the rest of the world is really running. If you have a look at what is happening internationally, Australia is now very much the poor cousin. Indeed, at times it looks as if we are not even part of the same family.

It is not as if Australians do not recognise what is going on. I undertook a survey of my own electors recently and asked them in a very open way to simply tell me what they thought were the most important issues that should be confronted by a future government, whatever its colour. It was entirely an apolitical document that went out. I asked them to talk about things that were local and regional and national. A very interesting set of results came back. Health was number one—I was not surprised at that. Health and aged care were way out in front. But coming behind health and aged care, importantly, was education, along with the environment. People came back with a range of options, some of which related to schools and preschools and TAFE, but a number of people commented on tertiary education and particularly their ability, and their children's ability, to have access to it.

What we are talking about here tonight is the affordability of postgraduate education particularly, though not exclusively. This is what came back to me from Andrea in Hilton. Hilton is a suburb in my electorate which has modest incomes and people who are not particularly well-heeled. There are a lot of people who will be wanting to go through education themselves. Andrea said:

She was talking about HECS fees.

Twenty-five per cent is equal to $200 in her case. On top of that, if she wants to do postgraduate education, those costs will be very substantial. William of South Fremantle told me that the TAFE courses were similarly too expensive, and Robert in Beaconsfield said

Helen of Palmyra—which is, again, an area where people do not have very high incomes—said:

Graham of South Fremantle pointed out:

He understands the problem. He goes on:

He clearly does not see that happening with the current government. And Enid of Hamilton Hill, one of the more struggling areas of my electorate, said this:

These are ordinary citizens in my electorate who understand the importance of education and can see that for many of them and for their families education is becoming increasingly beyond their reach.

As one of its first actions this government doubled HECS. The cost of many courses is now extraordinary by international standards, as was pointed out by the shadow minister for education. The government also lowered the repayment threshold, so a lot of families are now really struggling with their HECS debts. They are starting to repay their HECS debts when they are really below the poverty line. That big increase recently in the HECS liability was felt by a lot of people. I am sure many of us received emails, letters and notes from our constituents saying they were really offended by the fact that, while many other people had the impact of the GST removed, in their case it simply stays there in perpetuity until eventually they repay that debt.

The fees, too, have increased very substantially for postgraduate courses. As universities have struggled, it has been one of the sources of income for them, and they have had to increase the fees for those postgraduate courses. As the shadow minister has indicated, we are very worried that this loan repayment scheme will provide a temptation that many universities will be unable to resist without improvement in public funding for our universities. Those increases in postgraduate course costs and HECS debts fall particularly hard on women's participation rates in education. One of the areas where we have seen a substantial outcome already, after only five years of government, is in declining rates of participation of women, particularly in postgraduate programs, at a time when we would have hoped that we were way beyond that sort of discrimination.

I want to take up some of the issues that flow from this. It was interesting that the previous speaker, the member for Curtin, mentioned the University of Western Australia having some extra places—there were fewer added than were taken away. It is of some interest to me that the University of Western Australia, my alma mater, made a submission to the recent Senate inquiry on the capacity of public universities to meet Australia's higher education needs. In a media statement they put out accompanying the document they presented to the Senate committee, the University of Western Australia— which is by Australian standards a wealthy university, part of the Group of Eight—had this to say:

He went on to say in the same press release:

I underline that point because I think the government is complacent about this Backing Australia's Ability package. It falls far short of what is required, and the University of Western Australia clearly recognised that. They go on to say:

I was at ANU today, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl)— Not acting.

Dr LAWRENCE —Mr Deputy Speaker, I apologise. There are so many people who occupy that chair and so many titles that go with it. The ANU pointed out to me that while they get some funds—although they struggle—from industry for their particular technology, engineering and science research projects in the commercialisation side, they are finding it increasingly difficult to do the basic research. Hence, the ideas that they are now living off in developing these new technologies are starting to be depleted. In the particular section I looked at, there are only two full-time staff. The rest are on casual appointments and they live from research project to research project.

That is not the way to build a science base in Australia. The University of Western Australia is saying in its press release—and I visited the science faculty there again recently to illustrate this—that they cannot conduct anything remotely resembling the necessary level of research and development commercialisation that Australia requires without funding of that basic research, and that means postgraduate research and postgraduate programs as much as it does the science, research and infrastructure. I think that the government does not understand that this is fundamental. This is not some optional extra; it is not a little flurry that we should engage in in the lead-up to an election or a year out from an election. The government was put under enormous pressure by the universities, the science communities and the business community to put back some of the money that was there and to engage in this international debate of Australia as a knowledge based society.

I think that because Labor had come out and in a sense claimed the territory of the knowledge nation the government decided they would only make a passing reference to it, and that is really all that they have done. It is a pastiche, it is a hodgepodge, and there is no commitment from this government. You do not hear anyone in this government talking about the importance of Australia investing in educational research and development, except at the periphery and under pressure. I know public servants are very frustrated by that, the universities are very frustrated by that, the CSIRO is very frustrated by that and the business community is very frustrated by that, because they see us slipping behind. We as a nation can do a great deal better than that, and that is what my constituents understand. They know that the underfunding of education at whatever level you are talking about—preschool, primary, secondary, university, TAFE, research, research and development—is criminal, because that is what we have to offer the world and our citizens.

If we do not invest in education and research at all levels and if we do not understand the importance of education for citizenship, economic growth and our wealth then we clearly are not paying attention to Australia as a nation. If we get deflected into advertising and problems with migrants coming to our shores, and if we use that to excite people rather than to focus their attention on what we need to do as this nation, then we are selling this nation short. Frankly, that is what I accuse the government of. I spend a lot of time talking to people in our university sector, in our schools and in the community generally. They understand that Australians can generate good ideas, given half a chance. They understand that we can be more than a farm and a quarry, and that in those areas too we need to develop the technological spin-offs that improve productivity. It is not just about growing the resources and exporting the resources we have but adding value to them. You cannot do that without a significant investment in technology.

Neither can you have a citizenship worthy of that name if you do not have decent funding of the ABC or of our public institutions generally. It is not just about the technology, it is not just about the science based work; it is also about scholarship—whether it is in the arts, the classics, or the creative arts generally. This government does not give a damn about the quality of intellectual life in this country. It seems to think that it is unimportant or that it is elitist. But without our young people enjoying music, dance and drama, and without them understanding science, this nation is impoverished. At a time when every other nation with whom we would like to compare ourselves understands the importance of creativity, innovation and investment in education, this government is paying scant attention—and only after significant pressure has been applied to it.

I know that in many respects this parliament, this void that we speak into, is not taken very seriously by the wider community. That is a tragedy, because this should be the place for us to articulate these issues and discuss them. I would like to hear from the government about why, for example, they think education is so unimportant that they can make a game of it, toss figures across this chamber, and deny the evidence of their senses. How can they look at declining enrolment rates in our schools, declining research efforts in our universities and declining research and development at a time when everyone else is investing in these things, and feel comfortable about the sort of government they preside over? I would like to hear the arguments they have to make, instead of the truisms that we hear tossed around in here at question time and at other times—and I know that the people of Australia would like to hear some of those arguments too. Frankly, the people of Australia are sick and tired of the point scoring. We are Australians first and foremost, and they want to hear Australians in this place arguing for the future of this country in a way that ensures that our children and grandchildren will have a quality of life that is as good as, or better than, the one that we have been privileged to enjoy. Frankly, I am not sure I could make that guarantee to my son and to any of his offspring, if he has any, or to my nieces and nephews. I do not believe that I could say to him with a good conscience, `We put in the necessary efforts in this parliament and in public debate to ensure that your life was going to be improved.'