Mr LATHAM (1:10 PM) —This is a budget that continues the decline in national investment in education. This is a budget that continues this government's regressive policies with regard to education, research and training in Australia. Indeed, it is interesting to note the full extent of the education cuts as outlined in the budget papers themselves. There is a graph at page 437 of Budget Paper No. 1 that obviously the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, Dr Kemp, was not allowed to doctor; a graph from which you can draw the following figures. When one extrapolates figures from that graph, they show a six per cent fall in total education expenditure between 1996-97 and 2001-02. They show a massive 20.6 per cent fall in higher education expenditure over the same period. They show a 3.2 per cent fall in expenditure on vocational education and training. They show a 1.3 per cent fall in schools expenditure between 1998-99 and 2001-02. They also show a 5.9 per cent decline in expenditure on student assistance between 1995-96 and 1997-98—and that is the last measurement that will be given before those assistance provisions move to the social security portfolio.

The decline in schools funding is particularly significant, given that enrolments are expected to be around 70,000 higher in 2000 than in 1996. Overall, schools are losing 1.3 per cent of their expenditure out of Canberra even though they are enrolling some 70,000 more students through the relevant period. These figures show that Dr Kemp's claims about education expenditure are totally false. For example, the claim of a 3.8 per cent increase in schools funding in 1998-99 is absolutely incorrect. Dr Kemp is a master of doctoring the figures, using absolute numbers when only real funding amounts can be applied as a relevant measure.

We hear a great deal from the government about its supposed concern for vocational education yet, with 35,000 people missing out on a TAFE place last year, Commonwealth expenditure will decrease by almost eight per cent between 1997-98 and 2001-02. Dr Kemp, on every count, whether he is talking about this government's funding of universities, vocational education or schools, is presenting a false figure. The real figures are provided in the detail of the budget papers. I would urge all educationalists, teachers and parents around Australia to refer to that chart at page 437. They will find the truth in the associated figures; the truth of this government's massive cutbacks in our greatest national asset—the skills and insights of our people.

In the time available to me today I want to talk about Labor's repair and reform job when it comes to education policy—briefly, because I only have time to refer to two government measures that Labor will abolish when it wins the next election. The first of these is the government's divisive and regressive enrolment benchmark adjustment. This is a policy which now has a rather unique status in Australian politics. It takes a particularly bad piece of public policy to unite the government and non-government school sectors in this country, yet that is what Dr Kemp and this government have achieved through their divisive enrolment benchmark adjustment scheme. Both sectors want the EBA abolished.

This is a scheme that will take $12 million away from government schools around Australia this year, even though those same schools are enrolling 8,500 extra students. What a regressive policy—to take away $12 million in schools funding from schools that are increasing their enrolments around the country by almost 9,000 students. But the very worst aspect of this policy, for so little financial gain in the Commonwealth budget, is that it has reopened the oldest and most divisive debate in the history of schools policy in Australia. It has reopened the state aid debate. This is the old point of division between school administrators and supporters in the government and non-government sectors.

This is a divisive debate for so little gain. That is why people from the non-government sector are joining with their colleagues in government schools and saying this is a policy that should be abolished. It should be abolished because it takes money away from schools that are actually enrolling more students. Even more importantly, it is a policy that should be abolished because it has set back the education debate in this country by decades, with Dr Kemp taking us back to the 1960s and the divisive debate about state aid.

Labor of course has one principle to replace this policy with, and that is the principle that schools should be funded according to need and growth. I do not particularly care whether it is a school in the government or the non-government sector. If the school is enrolling more students and it can demonstrate need in educational resources and parental capacity to assist, then it deserves more money from the Commonwealth budget. They are the principles that this parliament should be using to fund schools around Australia, the simple principles of need and growth in enrolments—and Labor does not make any particular distinction between government and non-government schools for that purpose. If it is a school in need, we will fund it more. If it is a school that is enrolling more students, we will fund it more substantially than this government does. That is the simple principle that Labor will be applying in the forthcoming campaign on schools policy.

The second aspect of repair and reform is another job of abolition—Labor's task in abolishing the regressive up-front undergraduate fees that this government has introduced for university students. It is plain unfair to have a policy for universities that establishes one rule of entry for wealthy families that can afford to pay the up-front fee and a totally different rule of entry for families that cannot afford fees that go up towards $30,000 per annum. There should not be one rule for the rich and one for the not so rich when we talk about university entry. We should be expanding the access that young Australians have to a higher education instead of embarking on this government's policy of taking 21,000 student places off the forward estimates. So Labor will abolish the up-front fees not only because they are unfair but because they have been impractical and unsuccessful in their implementation.

We had Dr Kemp, the minister, in this very parliament last November promising the parliament and the people that 90,000 new places could be generated by this policy of up-front fees. How many have been created? There have been 800 places created—less than one per cent of the minister's promise. If he were a student sitting for an exam with a success rate of less than one per cent, he would be tossed out of the institution as an absolutely gross failure. This is a policy that has failed because it is unfair. It is also a policy that has failed because its implementation has been rejected hand over fist around Australia's universities.

I turn to an issue closer to home for me as the member for Werriwa. I want to express my dissatisfaction that one of the very few institutions that is embarking on this fees policy is the University of Western Sydney, Macarthur. We have had an attempt by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, David Barr, to introduce up-front fees. This is the wrong philosophy for the University of Western Sydney. It is an elitist attempt to take the University of Western Sydney away from its core charter, which is about access and equity in the working-class suburbs of the Greater West. I would urge David Barr, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of that institution in and near my electorate, to reconsider.

The problem with the up-front fees—a problem particularly acute in western Sydney—is that they add to the perception that higher education is now outside the finances of a working family. The changes to HECS have deterred a whole generation of young students from wanting to go on to higher education. The half billion dollar cuts to Austudy have had a damaging impact on the affordability of a university education. So the last thing—the dumbest thing—that any institution can do when it wants to create equity and access is add to that perception by talking about the introduction of up-front undergraduate fees for domestic students.

Indeed, the University of Western Sydney conducted an extensive survey—it spent its own money—in 1997 to survey school leavers. This showed that, because of this perception of a lack of affordability, the HECS changes, the Austudy changes and the up-front fees, between 10 and 20 per cent of school leavers are being deterred from going on to a university education. They think, as do their parents, that it is just too expensive for them. They cannot afford the HECS debt at an early age at a low threshold, they are worried about the Austudy changes, while the prospect of up-front fees just scares them witless. That is why the University of Western Sydney's own survey showed that between 10 and 20 per cent of school leavers, particularly from low income backgrounds, are turning their backs on a university education. They are effectively turning their backs on the best chance they had, prior to the Howard government, of holding down a good education and thereby a good job and a good working career.

Why would a vice-chancellor at the UWS Macarthur campus then want to rub salt into the wound, want to aggravate the inequity and want to make it much worse by moving down the path of up-front fees? I am heartened, indeed thankful, that the new vice-chancellor at the University of Western Sydney—Vice-Chancellor Reid—has publicly opposed the Macarthur recommendation. She has rebuked David Barr's foolhardy scheme, and I wish more power to her arm in making sure that when it goes to the central decision making body at the University of Western Sydney her view prevails, because she knows that this is not good for the central mission of UWS.

Indeed, it makes me rethink the whole question of educational access and opportunity in a working-class area. It is true that in the mid-1980s the Labor government did one of the great things for western Sydney by building and funding that university. But I suppose it is one thing to build an institution with the potential for educational access and opportunity; it can be a different thing in the management of the institution for that potential to be realised. It is a good thing to build it, but we also need to follow through and make sure that the management philosophy is not elitist. We need to make sure that the management practices of promoting policies are consistent with the university's core goals for equal access and opportunity.

I bring to the attention of the House some of the figures that have been presented in a recent edition of People and Place published by Monash University in Melbourne. They have produced statistics highlighting the percentage of commencing undergraduate students drawn from low socioeconomic areas in 1996. The low socioeconomic areas are those that relate to the lowest 25 per cent according to postcode. The figures are interesting. The Victoria University of Technology draws 31.4 per cent of its students from the bottom 25 per cent group of socioeconomic status areas—a great equity achievement; overachieving in terms of equity goals. In the western suburbs of Melbourne, going through VUT, a higher proportion of students from those lower socioeconomic backgrounds are going through the university than at the upper level of income groups. The VUT is to be congratulated on having such a high penetration—31 per cent of its students coming from the bottom 25 per cent on the socioeconomic ladder.

Let us look at some of the institutions otherwise known as the great eight—some of the oldest and most reputable universities around Australia. The proportion of students coming out of the bottom quarter of suburbs reveal the following results: University of Queensland, 14.5 per cent; University of Melbourne, 14.3 per cent; University of Adelaide, 13.1 per cent; University of Western Australia, 11.6 per cent; and Monash University itself, 11.2 per cent. Then we come down to the University of Western Sydney, which has an equity and access charter, and just 10.7 per cent of its students are coming out of the bottom 25 per cent of socioeconomic areas in the greater western Sydney region—a third of what is being achieved at the comparable institution serving the western suburbs of Melbourne, the Victoria University of Technology. That sort of performance by the University of Western Sydney needs to be enhanced. It needs to be performing up near the standards of VUT to fulfil the basic charter of access and opportunity out of working-class areas—students, no matter their family background, having an equal opportunity to go through to a higher education.

I would urge people such as David Barr at the Macarthur campus of UWS to learn from the experience of the Victoria University of Technology—learn how they have moved from passive management systems to a more active approach, of reaching out into communities to let them know that a university education is within their life horizons, within their educational capacity. The policies of VUT reflect a guaranteed place, the student compact and the guaranteed pathways. What VUT can say to each and every student coming out of the western suburbs of Melbourne is this: `Even if you have not done as well as you had hoped at school leaving, we can guarantee you a path that will take you through to your higher education goal.' They can do that. VUT can do it because they are a dual sector institution. They have both university and TAFE sectors working in unison, so they can take someone who wants to be an accountant with a higher education qualification, start them out with a TAFE certificate and move them through the various stages—a guaranteed place and a guaranteed pathway because they have the breadth of a dual sector institution to achieve those particular equity goals.

I have had cause to suggest that this same model might be relevant for western Sydney. We should not leave the dual sector model as solely a Victorian phenomenon. We need a national policy statement about the dual sector model for post-secondary education in Australia. Let us not just leave these efficiency and equity advantages to the Victorians. I have suggested that this may be a useful reform—a useful way of considering the means by which the University of Western Sydney can achieve greater and improved equity goals.

Who was the first person to jump into print condemning the possibilities of this particular reform? David Barr from the University of Western Sydney, Macarthur. He is wrong on the up-front fees and he is ignorant indeed to ignore the equity possibilities that come out of consideration of a dual sector model for the University of Western Sydney.