Mr STEPHEN JONES (Whitlam) (12:47): I rise to speak in favour of the motion and in favour of the amendments that have been circulated in my name, which I formally move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes the 2020–21 budget:

(1) will deliver a decade of deficits and accrue one trillion dollars of debt;

(2) spends $98 billion on unemployment, but keeps unemployment too high for too long;

(3) continues to leave too many Australians behind without support;

(4) fails to address key policy areas such as childcare, aged care and social housing;

(5) prioritises the funnelling of billions of taxpayers' dollars into funds for the Coalition Government to rort and pork barrel at the expense of hard-working Australians; and

(6) fails to outline a vision for the country".

I want to direct my remarks today to a group of Australians that our opponents used to talk about almost incessantly. Robert Menzies called them 'the forgotten people'. It was his phrase for Australia's middle class, the people who work hard to raise a family, put a roof over their heads and help build their communities. If the government's budget tells us anything, it's that today, in 2020, the Liberals have forgotten about 'the forgotten people'.

Indeed, the political amnesia was in effect well before the worst bushfires in recorded history, and an unexpected crisis brought about by a once-in-a-century pandemic. In the Liberals' seven years in power, the Australian economy never achieved trend growth. Wages stagnated across the board, from bakers to bank tellers, yet the cost of everything that's important to small business and hardworking Australian families went up. Power prices soared. The cost of child care soared, especially the parents who wanted to go back to work full time. Apprenticeships and traineeships dried up—ditto full-time work, as casualisation climbed and climbed again. Getting a university degree increasingly left young professionals saddled with spiralling debts. Business investment and new business registrations were both at historic lows. Even the Reserve Bank was pleading with the government to do more to kickstart the economy—but all for nought. On top of all of this, this government has managed to devastate the relationship with our most important trading partner.

There are none so blind as those who refuse to see, and so it is with our coalition opponents. Blinded by their obsessive self-image, they somehow saw themselves as the champions of aspiration, despite the data and the chorus of calls to change course. That economic neglect and political narcissism was always going to be exposed in a moment of crisis, and, unfortunately for millions of Australians, that is precisely what has come to pass.

As families and business owners battled during unprecedented bushfires to save the homes and livelihoods they'd worked so hard to build, the Prime Minister was on a beach in Hawaii. And while volunteers rallied with hoses and fire trucks to fight the flames, coalition MPs took pot shots at climate science and spread ridiculous conspiracy theories about arsonists. As it turned out, this was a desperately needed reality check. It shattered the Prime Minister's false vanity, and just as well.

When coronavirus hit, he was ill-equipped and needed Labor to show him the way forward. Labor saw wage subsidies as the seawall that Australians needed to protect them against the oncoming economic tsunami. We proposed it. He rejected it. And then he capitulated. But, as usual, when he did, the important details eluded him. After presiding over the greatest expansion of casualisation in the workforce this country has ever seen, the Prime Minister left casuals behind in his JobKeeper plan, and, after decades of Labor arguing that trickle-down economics was a hoax, it took a pandemic for the Prime Minister to realise the truths in our arguments.

Increasing unemployment benefits via the JobSeeker payment was a breakthrough moment for Australia. It was the moment they accepted the fact that not only is it morally the right thing to do but also it is economically responsible to build economic demand. For a precious moment, even the Treasurer argued that low-income people spent every dollar they got while high income earners tended to save it. But, as with so much, their heart was simply not in it. So, even now, as unemployment is going up, support for the unemployed is going down.

But that wasn't the only home truth the pandemic taught this government. Let's talk about child care. At the height of the pandemic, the coalition government got a rare insight into the critical role that child care plays in the Australian economy. As social restrictions were imposed, it became obvious that so many of our essential service workers could not do their jobs if they didn't have access to child care. We also got an insight into the precarious financial state of many of our childcare providers. Short-term support was provided, but, in an act of complete disdain for the workers, they cut the childcare workers off JobKeeper.

This experience should've shown the Morrison government once and for all that child care is a key plank in a modern economy where both parents have to work. The so-called party of aspiration has really only ever believed in the aspirations of half the population. We all remember Tony Abbott saying: 'Women should do all the ironing.'

The problem at the core of the coalition's approach to child care is that they see it as welfare. How else could they construct a budget that champions a $27 billion tax break for investment in businesses and see that as an economic measure, but see a $6 billion initiative to expand the availability of child care as welfare? Both measures are essential to moving the economy along, to growing aspiration and to growing participation.

When the government was scrambling for ways to help small and medium businesses to face the onslaught, again they looked back to Labor policies. Remember this: it was the former Treasurer Wayne Swan who introduced the instant asset write-off. They opposed it. They voted against it. And they dismantled it. It's our policy and we're proud of it—because we are a party of small business. Tradies, cafe owners, hairdressers and myriad other business owners know they can rely on policies to get the details of these issues right—and so can all of those frontline workers against this invisible enemy. Labor immediately saw that nurses, aged-care workers and allied health staff were in great danger as COVID-19 spread. We saw the agonising choice that they faced, especially the army of casual workers in the healthcare sector, between quarantining at home without an income and going to work and risking infection. Pandemic leave could and should have been one of the first things the government did to protect not only healthcare workers but also the vulnerable clients they serve. To this government's eternal shame, it took months before it was rolled out.

For us, there was something about the way the government handled this crisis that never completely rang true. We talk a lot about vision in this place, so much so that sometimes people forget what it really means. The government has never really had a vision to support what it did with the pandemic. The grim economic realities of this pandemic open their eyes ever so briefly, but all too soon they looked away again. An unfortunate reality is laid bare in this Treasurer's budget. I opened my remarks by reflecting on the statement of Robert Menzies and his 'forgotten Australians'. Let me now say that Australia's aspirational classes have never been forgotten by Labor. Those who strive to get their own home, get their kids into a career, build a business and get involved with their local community aren't some political theory or label. They are our neighbours, our classmates, our parents. But there is a forgotten class in Australia, there is a forgotten group of Australians: those in insecure work; those who sleep rough on our streets at night; those who don't have a home or a permanent residence; those who lives of quiet desperation in social housing or in underfunded nursing homes; middle-aged workers who find themselves on the scrapheap, with a desire and ability to give more but without the opportunity. Why is it that the Liberals don't afford these people the gift of aspiration? Why is it that they are the new forgotten generation? Why are they never counted by those opposite as a source of this country's economic recovery rather than the brake that they so patently believed to be the case? When I talk about their lack of vision, that's the blind spot that this budget reveals.

I return again to child care. Marginal tax rates can be as high as 70 and 90 cents in the dollar for working families where mum wants to work five days a week, or dad. Yet there is nothing in this budget to address that. When the economic lightning hit the proverbial dunny in March, the government saw how vital a role child care plays in sustaining the economy. But now it's only Labor's vision that sees aspiration by parents to work full time to get ahead even as they raise a family. It's only Labor that sees that tax cuts that get swallowed up by childcare fees are going to help nobody. It's only Labor that sees how middle-aged workers are some of our nation's most productive and valuable contributors and deserve a leg up as much as anybody else. It's only Labor that sees lowering power prices by rewiring the nation as the best way to get government back on its feet. These things should be no-brainers for a government of true vision. With these omissions, this government condemns the Liberals for leaving behind the very people they claim to represent. But, worse than that, it also leaves behind those that the Liberals have never really cared about, those that they dismiss as leaners.

Those opposite haven't learnt the lesson of how important a properly functioning aged-care sector is, even with the recent evidence staring them in the face. They've forgotten the dignity written on the faces of rough sleepers after just a few nights in proper accommodation and how that experience uplifted us all, and they're simply blind to the dreams of those who live in social housing and want hope for themselves and their family. Those opposite will never understand why a single mother on disability support, living in a housing commission flat, has every right to expect that her son might go to university and enter a profession, start a business and create jobs or lead a political party with a real vision for the future. They will never understand that the price of these inadequacies is measured not just in the missed opportunities but in cold, hard cash.

We look on in amazement that a government could rack up a debt which is galloping towards $1.7 trillion but leave nothing behind as a legacy for future generations, who are going to be paying off that debt. Where is the big vision? Where is the big infrastructure project? Where is the structural or the social reform? It's simply not there. It's the biggest budget deficit since World War II, in absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP, with government debt galloping towards $1.7 trillion. Australians deserve better than this. They deserve much, much more, and they'll get it at the next election.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Dr Gillespie ): I thank the member. Is the amendment seconded?

Mr Hill: I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this, the honourable member for Whitlam has moved as an amendment that all words after 'that' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I will state the question in the form that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question. I give the call to the member for Bass.

Mrs ARCHER: It certainly felt like an historic moment, watching the Treasurer hand down the budget earlier this month. As I mentioned to a room full of northern Tasmanian business owners and employees the morning after the budget, when I was elected last year I certainly didn't imagine we would be facing the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. It's an unenviable position to be in, as a nation, but it's one that we, as a government, are able to respond to because of our economic strength prior to the pandemic reaching Australia's shores. As the Treasurer said on budget night:

We could do this because we entered this crisis from a position of economic strength, brought the Budget back to balance for the first time in 11 years and maintained our AAA credit rating.

This gave us the fiscal firepower when we needed it most.

The decisions made by the Morrison government when the pandemic first hit were made quickly and decisively to protect the health of all Australians while trying to balance the devastating economic impact that this unprecedented crisis would bring.

In my electorate of Bass we are proudly an innovative and entrepreneurial city, with around 83 per cent of Launceston's workforce employed in the private sector, compared to 76 per cent in Hobart. Our government's JobKeeper payment has supported 3,100 businesses in our region, supporting them through the pandemic and keeping them connected to their employees. Businesses such as the Tailrace Centre, Seahorse World and Flinders Island Aviation and many other businesses, from local fish and chip shops to a software development company, have all relied on this critical support to see them through.

Our support for small and medium-sized businesses did not stop there. A few thousand businesses have received the cash flow boost to help them stay afloat, and, to support new investment and increase business cash flow, the government is providing a temporary tax incentive that will allow for thousands of businesses in my region to write off the full value of any eligible asset that they purchase. From tractors, trucks and cars to office equipment, this tax relief will unlock investment, expand the productive capacity of our nation and create tens of thousands of jobs.

Our government's push to revitalise our manufacturing industries across the country will see $52.8 million offered to local companies through the Manufacturing Modernisation Fund. This will be targeted in six priority areas: food and beverage manufacturing, medical products, clean energy and recycling and defence. George Town, my home town, is a proud manufacturing town with businesses like Environex, where I was pleased to take the Assistant Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management in a pre-COVID era. I'm hopeful of seeing companies like Environex, who create new products from plastics such as IV bags from hospitals and silage wrap, benefit from initiatives such as this. The focus on recycling has been welcomed by the Tasmanian Minerals, Manufacturing and Energy Council, who said the investment and focus in this key area will build on the state's manufacturing prowess and align with the culture of 'reducing our impact', further stating that the council welcomes the government's budget announcement 'as an opportunity to improve our social licence and look after the land we're on'.

Our plan will rebuild our economy and create jobs. Tasmania, like all states, has suffered economically since the pandemic began. However, as Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chief Executive Michael Bailey said after the budget was handed down, the job-creating infrastructure investment and tax cuts contained in the budget was what the state's struggling economy required. The federal budget was a win for small business in our community and the JobMaker Hiring Credit is already instilling confidence in the Northern Tasmanian business industry. Vision Hotels' Director Brendon Deeley told media that he was already discussing hiring new staff under the initiative. He said:

It will enable us to certainly bring on multiple staff, there's no question. So, if that's just us that are already, at a quick glimpse, talking about bringing more staff on because of this budget, I think there will be a whole bunch of employers.

Another hospitality owner, Karen Burbury, said that the initiative would be beneficial. She stated that she found it:

… exceptionally comforting to know that we can employ people from JobSeeker and have that subsidy in place. This is the budget we needed to have.

Australian apprenticeships will play a vital role in developing and delivering the pipeline of skilled workers that businesses and industry need to support our economic recovery. Our government's committed to supporting industries and apprentices across the country. The CEO of KEEN Partners in Georgetown, which focuses on growing people with meaningful and rewarding employment, including though apprenticeships, said:

The Federal Budget has delivered a massive opportunity for employers and apprentices.

Under the scheme, we're providing for 100,000 new apprentices in the 2021 budget to support the next generation of our skilled workers and to help jobseekers get back into work, introducing a new 50 per cent wage subsidy for all businesses that take on apprentices over the period 5 October 2020 to 30 September 2021. The $1.2 billion Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements wage subsidy will support our next generation of skilled workers through 100,000 new apprenticeships. This measure is in addition to financial support already provided under the government's $2.8 billion Supporting Apprentices and Trainees package for existing apprentices and trainees, which is now expected to support 90,000 employers to keep 180,000 apprentices and trainees in employment and training.

Unsurprisingly, our $1.2 billion apprenticeship scheme has been given the thumbs up from business groups, with the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry CEO James Pearson saying the new subsidy should go a long way to turning around the concerning long-term decline in apprenticeship numbers. 'This is the right prescription to restore the health of the apprenticeship system,' he said. Master Builders Australia CEO Denita Warn said, 'Young people and building and construction business will be big winners.'

As of 31 March this year, there were more than 9,000 young Tasmanians in apprenticeship and trainee programs, an increase of 16.1 per cent from just four years prior. Our government's continued investment in this area is working. This package announced in the budget is significant and provides an incredible opportunity to gain a job-ready skillset in a range of industries: hospitality, tourism, agriculture, aged care, arts, graphic design, hair and beauty and, of course, our tradies. These are all industries, I might add, that employ men and women, which is why I was left somewhat bemused by claims from the other side that this budget was not for women.

There were a significant number of measures in this budget which specifically support women, and here is a quick reminder for those who may need it. To start, our 2020 Women's Economic Security Statement includes a wide range of measures to provide targeted support for women to explore pathways to improve their employment opportunities, pay, participation and flexibility. The $240.4 million package over five years is a vital step in creating more opportunities and choices for women, not just for the recovery from COVID-19 but for the generations ahead. The economic support statement supports women into jobs now and helps drive economic growth into the future.

Key budget initiatives include: expanding the Master Builders Australia's Women Building Australia program to support more women into the highly male dominated building and construction industry, expanding the innovative enterprising girls program to give girls and young women across Australia the skills and opportunities to start their own businesses in the digital economy. An additional $35.9 million will be invested in the existing Boosting Female Founders Initiative, to support up to 282 additional startups and 4,300 women entrepreneurs. As part of this ongoing support, we will link female founders up with expert mentoring and advice for women entrepreneurs. As a key measure in the 2018 economic statement, this initiative is already on track to support over 100 businesses to build their potential.

Women currently make up a minority in STEM education, workplaces and senior leadership positions, at only 17 per cent of the STEM qualified population. The 2020 women's economic statement provides more opportunity for women to move into rewarding and lucrative STEM careers by investing an additional $14.5 million to expand several women in STEM programs, including the women in STEM and entrepreneurship grants program, expansion of the girls in STEM Toolkit, extending the Women in STEM Ambassador role and creating new STEM industry cadetships and advanced apprenticeships specifically for women. This $25.1 million program will specifically provide 500 women valuable career experience and a salary while they study an industry relevant qualification in STEM.

The Morrison government are providing a range of measures to support families by extending the paid parental leave work test to 20 months, offering important financial support to parents who do not meet the current work test provisions because their employment has been affected by COVID-19. Additionally, in recognition of the challenges that disadvantaged families are facing as a result of COVID-19, we're investing an additional $24.7 million in the ParentsNext program. Disadvantaged jobseeking parents who are struggling to re-enter the workforce and support their families will be able to access streamlined and extended services to get the support that they need to re-enter the workforce. This will provide assistance to approximately 235,000 parents, including those in my northern Tasmanian community.

On a personal note, I'm incredibly proud of securing $5.4 million through this budget to move the family law court in Launceston, which has become increasingly unsafe for families to access their services and to the employees who work in the building. I'd like to thank the Attorney-General for working so closely with me to listen to my concerns and working to achieve a fantastic outcome. Additionally, as someone who has continuously advocated for increased access to mental health services, I am particularly pleased to see the doubling of the number of Medicare funded psychological services from 10 to 20.

This year the government has been committed to saving lives and livelihoods and this budget paves the way to rebuild the future of our region and our country, supporting Australians when they need it now and working together to build our country back even stronger.

Mr BANDT (Melbourne—Leader of the Australian Greens) (13:13): [by video link] This is a budget that puts the millionaires ahead of the million unemployed. This budget is a trickle-down con job. Budgets are about choices and this budget has chosen to ignore the massive problems that Australia is facing at the moment and instead give $99 billion a year in handouts to big corporations and the super wealthy.

Just today we were told that we are facing a climate crisis of incredible proportions here in Australia, with the Bureau of Meteorology telling Senate estimates that on current trajectory, including this government's targets, we could see 4.4 degrees of warming in Australia during the lifetime of today's primary school students. That means creating a hell on earth in this country. We're facing a climate crisis. We're also facing an inequality crisis in this country. Inequality is at a 70-year high. You can work full time in this country but still be living in poverty, and that's because we have a third crisis in this country, which is a jobs crisis. Before the coronavirus pandemic even started, nearly one in three young people in this country either didn't have a job or didn't have enough hours of work. Of course, those numbers have gone up since the coronavirus hit.

In the face of the climate crisis, the inequality crisis and the jobs crisis, this budget could have been a green recovery, a Green New Deal, a plan of investment and action in industries that will tackle the climate crisis and make Australia a more equal and caring society—things like investing in free education, aged care, renewable energy. All of those things could have been done by the government in this budget and they would have addressed not just the economic recession we find ourselves in but the inequality crisis and the climate crisis as well. What has the government done? The government has done exactly the opposite. The government has made a choice to prolong this recession, to keep unemployment higher than it needs to be, to increase inequality in this country and to fast-track the climate crisis. In short, with this budget the government has chosen to make the problems that Australia is facing even worse. Why has it chosen to do that? Because this budget is a trickle-down con job written by the big corporations for the big corporations, who also happen to be Liberal Party and Labor Party donors. That's why the government, instead of directly investing to create jobs and provide the services people in this country need so that we can have a more equal society, are writing out huge blank cheques in this budget to their big corporate mates.

Let's look at some of the budget measures that were proposed by the government and waved through last week with the support of the Labor Party. One of them is giving big corporations a $27 billion blank cheque from taxpayers to spend as they like. The government say: 'Trust us. We'll give money to big corporations and let them make lots of purchases, and we'll hope that some of that wealth trickles down and finds its way into job creation.' The problem is that there are no strings attached to the money given out in this new tax break for the big corporations, many of whom are already profitable and in fact have increased their wealth during the course of this financial crisis. They could buy cheap computers from China. They could go out and buy office furniture from overseas. It could be something that will not create one new job, but it will give them a tax write-off. The Greens in the Senate said, 'If you're going to give this $27 billion blank cheque to big corporations, at least make sure it's Australian-made.' No, Liberal and Labor voted against that. We said, 'At least make sure it doesn't go into making the climate crisis worse.' No, Liberal and Labor voted against that. So in this budget we've got $27 billion in handouts going to the big corporations courtesy of Liberal and Labor.

We've also got from the government a scam of a scheme that is going to help McDonald's and others like it line their pockets to help subsidise wage costs. The bill we saw pass the parliament yesterday when the government wanted to bring it on and Labor said, 'You're not bringing it on quickly enough; let's pass it through,' will allow big corporations like McDonald's to employ young people at the minimum wage for 20 hours a week and get 200 bucks a week for it. Even companies that have been so profitable during the crisis that they've been able to pay dividends, even corporations that have underpaid and ripped off their workers—companies that have been engaging in wage theft—are going to get some of this $4 billion thanks to the legislation that was rushed through yesterday by the Liberals and Labor.

Then we come to the other centrepiece of this government's budget, again supported wholeheartedly by Labor—that is, giving tax cuts to millionaires. If you've managed to keep your job throughout this crisis and earn more than a million dollars a year, you don't need a tax cut. The priority should be the million people who are unemployed, not going into debt to give a tax cut to millionaires and the superwealthy, the likes of Clive Palmer. They don't need a tax cut, to be frank. We shouldn't be going into debt to give money to them. We should be looking after the million unemployed in this country not only by keeping JobSeeker where it is and making sure that they have got enough money to live on until the economy gets back on its feet again and jobs are available for everyone who wants one but also—instead of giving tax cuts to millionaires, as Liberals and Labor want—by using the money to invest directly in government services that will make Australia more equal and will create jobs directly.

In this budget, what's going to happen? Someone earning $1 million a year gets 2½ thousand bucks; someone who is among the working poor might get $250; and, if you're unemployed, you get a kick in the teeth. And what the establishment parties won't tell you about the tax cuts they fast-track through is that, if you're a middle-income earner, you only get them for one year; after that, they disappear. It's a one-year-only deal if you're on a middle income. But the millionaires keep getting the tax cuts forever, which keep getting bigger and bigger because the Liberals, with Labor's backing, have put the millionaires ahead of the million unemployed, because they are in the pockets of their corporate donors.

We know that this recession is hitting young people the hardest. It's hitting women hard and it's hitting young people hard. The jobs that young people worked in were the hardest hit by the coronavirus crisis, but the support that the government offered discriminated against young people, with a million casuals, many of whom were young, locked out of government support; and jobs in universities excluded from government support. Not only were young people in the industries that were hit the hardest; the government then deliberately turned its back on them. But it's going to get even worse, because many of those jobs that young people either had or the industries they were hoping to get into might take the longest to get back on their feet after the coronavirus recession, especially here in Victoria, when many of those jobs are in arts and entertainment, hospitality, retail and tourism, which might take a very long time to get back on their feet because the social-distancing restrictions will still be in place. Add on top of that an insecure job market, expensive higher education, unaffordable housing and the climate crisis, and you understand that we risk creating a lost generation.

The government, in this budget, has turned its back on those young people. I have heard countless stories from people in my electorate who, in the midst of this crisis, have had their JobSeeker payment cut, while the government, with Labor's backing, gives out tax cuts to millionaires. I have heard stories from people like Julie from Abbotsford. She was a chef in the cafe industry, who lost work when we all stayed at home and followed the restrictions to tackle COVID-19. For Julie, the new rate of JobSeeker after the government's cuts will not cover her rent, let alone anything like food or bills. For Jessie in Carlton North, a cut to the JobSeeker payment means not being able to afford medication, food, or psychology appointments. Jay in Princes Hill told me, 'The reduction in the rate is likely to destroy my career, my housing security and financial future.' That this government is prioritising tax cuts for those still employed but abandoning the millions of employees who have paid taxes for decades is deeply distressing. That is dead right, Jay: a tax cut doesn't help you if you don't have a job.

That is why it was wrong for the government, with Labor's backing, to prioritise tax cuts for millionaires and people who have kept their job, putting them ahead of people who have been left behind and are doing it tough. If budgets are about making choices, which they are, then this government is choosing to give $99 billion a year in subsidies to big corporations and the very wealthy and, with Labor's backing, give tax cuts to millionaires, while dropping people on JobSeeker back into poverty. I say, very simply, if there's money in this budget for a tax cut for millionaires or there's money to keep people out of poverty, the latter is where the money should be going.

Even if you don't believe in the basic fairness of keeping people out of poverty, we know that tax cuts are a terrible stimulus if you give them to people who have a lot of money, because they're likely to save it, whereas, if you increase JobSeeker, lift the minimum wage and lift minimum incomes for people who don't have a job, they are going to go and spend that money and assist in the economic recovery. So, even if all you were concerned about was the economy, you would prioritise lifting up those at the bottom over giving more to those at the top and hoping it would trickle down. Instead, this trickle-down budget, which got pushed through last sitting week with Labor's support, is just going to make the inequality crisis worse in this country—and it's going to prolong the recession.

I want to make a critical point here. The government in this budget forecasts six per cent unemployment for years to come. In fact, the Treasurer has picked six per cent unemployment as his target and said, 'As soon as we get to six per cent in a couple of years time, we'll be able to start cutting.' Six per cent unemployment means two million people in this country without a job or without enough hours of work. That's not a target where you can say mission accomplished when you hit six per cent unemployment; that is a crisis. Two million people without enough work or without a job at all is a national crisis.

I say it's a choice because, with the government going into the debt that it is, the question is: what are we going to spend it on? The government could choose, as governments did after World War II, when we had to rebuild, to spend this incredible debt on job-creating, nation-building, planet-saving projects that would bring unemployment back down to two per cent, like it was in the time between World War II and the 1970s. If the government chose, instead of going into debt to fund tax cuts for millionaires with Labor's backing, to put that into building half a million new public housing units over the next 10-15 years, it would create 40,000 job and 4,000 apprenticeships in the process. Put that money into building new public housing and into getting Australia running on 100 per cent renewables and exporting our sunlight. Put that money into expanding our aged-care sector, because, if there's one thing we've learned from the coronavirus crisis, it's that privatisation has failed. It's failed the people in aged care it's and failed the workers there. Instead of giving tax cuts to millionaires, put the money into expanding free education and free childcare across the country. Put it into healthcare because, as we know, women have loft jobs at higher rates than men during this crisis. All of those are industries where there are going to be women employed in potentially greater numbers.

We can have a recovery right now that doesn't involve giving billions to millionaires and hoping some of it trickles down but instead involves investing directly in public housing, in making schools and universities genuinely free, in making sure that everyone in this country not only has a roof but a secure, decent job if they want it, where we can offer a jobs guarantee that means everyone who wants a decent job could have it and where we could lift people out of poverty, which would not only make their lives better but help businesses and everyone trying to recover from the recession. We could do all of those things if we just stopped giving $99 billion a year in tax cuts and handouts to the superwealthy and big corporations. That is the choice that the government in this budget has failed to make.

We had the chance with this budget to invest in public housing, public schools, public education, public healthcare and expanding the jobs that are available so that we could go to every young person and say, 'we can guarantee you a decent job and an income that you can live on. Instead, this government has actively chosen six per cent unemployment. It is criminal to be giving tax cuts to millionaires, which is what Labor and Liberal have just done, while there are a million people unemployed and while people are wondering whether or not they will have JobSeeker or JobKeeper or even just any kind of a job come the end of the year. This budget is not only an opportunity squandered; riding in these tax cuts, as Labor and Liberal have done, where 80 per cent will go to the top 20 per cent of income earners, will make life harder for future governments unless we've the guts to stand up to the big corporations, make them pay their fair share of tax so in this wealthy country of hours we can all live a good life.

Mr WALLACE (Fisher) (13:28): This will be a very short speech. This year's federal budget is an economic recovery plan for the Sunshine Coast and every corner of Australia. This budget includes record funding for education, health and aged care. For a region like the Sunshine Coast, which saw unemployment double during COVID in fewer than 50 days, the budget is unashamedly about job creation. For those Sunshine Coast locals in a job, our federal government wants to keep them in a job. For those who don't have a job, we want to help them find a job. Making that a reality on the Sunshine Coast is going to depend on maintaining consumer and business confidence and their ability to spend and invest.

It's economic growth driven by small-business investment and consumer spending in my community that will ensure that together we can rebuild our economy. The Treasurer understands that, which is why the federal budget's two headline measures are targeted right to those points. The government is allowing 11 million Australians to keep more of what they earn through new tax cuts brought forward into this year. This is going to support consumer spending—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member for Fisher will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Goodenough ) (16:36): The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Whitlam has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I will state the question in the form 'That the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the original question'.

Mr WALLACE (Fisher) (16:36): As I was saying earlier, the government is allowing 11 million Australians to keep more of what they earn through new tax cuts brought forward into this year. This is going to support consumer spending for 89,600 people in the electorate of Fisher, keeping money flowing in the economy, keeping the region's businesses open and keeping locals employed. In 2021 these low- and middle-income earners in Fisher will receive tax relief of up to $2,745 for singles and up to $5,490 for dual-income families, compared with the 2017-18 settings. The majority of the benefit for 2020-21 will go to those on the Sunshine Coast with incomes below $90,000. Treasury estimates that letting working Australians keep more of their own money through this measure will boost GDP by around $3½ billion this financial year and $9 billion next year. This measure alone will help to create an additional 50,000 jobs by the end of 2021-22.

However, alongside consumer spending we need to see strong businesses on the Sunshine Coast which are incentivised to invest and grow their workforce. There are of course already many businesses on the Sunshine Coast whose fundamentals are sound and who would in normal circumstances be ready and able to drive our economic recovery. However, many of them are currently struggling with losses which, through no fault of their own, could restrict their ability to take advantage of improving circumstances to drive new job creation on the coast. The 2020 federal budget allows companies with a turnover of up to $5 billion to offset tax losses against previous profits, on which they've already paid tax, to generate a refund. Losses incurred last financial year, this year and next year can be carried back against profits made in or after 2018-19. Eligible companies can get a tax refund when they lodge their tax returns for this year. By allowing them to get a cash refund against their losses earlier, this measure will provide hardworking business owners on the Sunshine Coast to reset, keep their businesses running, retain their workers and invest with confidence in the future.

The budget also provides record incentives to make it easier for Sunshine Coast businesses to make investments and offer new or improved products and services. Growing businesses with new products and services to offer, of course, need more employees. Under the Morrison government's budget, from 6 October 2020 until 30 June 2022 as many as 30,000 businesses with a turnover of up to $5 billion in Fisher will be able to deduct the full cost of eligible assets of any value in the year they are first used or installed. Businesses are telling me right across my electorate that this is absolutely fantastic news. It includes improvements to existing assets made during this period. This will significantly reduce the cost of new equipment and new software, and businesses will be able to grow. Critically, it will encourage them to buy that equipment now, before the measure expires, at the time when the Sunshine Coast economy needs it most.

Members opposite have claimed this budget leaves the responsibility for economy-boosting investment like this solely with the private sector, but this could not be further from the truth. The budget includes a record $110 billion over the next 10 years to build new transport infrastructure, as well as a further $3.5 billion to build new water infrastructure. The 2020 federal budget's funding for new projects will support over 30,000 direct and indirect jobs, while in total our infrastructure package will support over 100,000 jobs across 10 years.

In my own electorate of Fisher, this package included funding for $95.2 million, committed for variations to the Bruce Highway upgrades currently underway between Caloundra Road and the Sunshine Motorway. This will ensure these upgrades are completed on time and in full. This project is already supporting 680 jobs on the Sunshine Coast. It's going to see locals able to move more quickly around our region and improve the experience for tourists, which will boost our local economy.

The budget invested an extra $1 billion for the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program, including more than $11 million in Fisher. This is in addition to the existing $3.6 million allocated to our council in the last round. This will deliver money to the Sunshine Coast Council to spend on smaller civil construction projects for local infrastructure at a community level. I've already been in touch with the Sunshine Coast mayor to highlight some of the projects which I believe should be local priorities for this funding in our community. I'm hoping to meet with the mayor soon to discuss with him the possibility of investing this money in upgrades to the Mooloolaba Foreshore and pathways at Bokarina Beach, as well as the opportunities provided by new rounds funded in this budget of the Building Better Regions Fund, the Stronger Communities Program, the volunteers grants program and the Safer Communities Fund. Before I move on, let us not forget that all of this is on top of the more than $3 billion the coalition government is already investing in upgrades to the Bruce Highway between the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane, and the $390 million we're contributing to the duplication of the North Coast Line railway.

Despite the government's extensive support, we know that this COVID recession has been particularly hard on young people in my electorate. We need to get young people back to work as soon as possible. One of the budget's most important measures will make it much easier over the coming 12 months to give young Australians a start in the workplace. The government's $4½ billion JobMaker Hiring Credit will help to create 450,000 new jobs, including in the critical Sunshine Coast tourism and construction sectors. Almost all Sunshine Coast employers will be able to claim $200 a week for each additional eligible employee they hire aged 16- to 29-years-old and $100 a week for each additional eligible employee aged 30- to 35-years-old for 12 months. As long as the job is in addition to a business's existing payroll and the individual employed was previously on JobSeeker, then it is very likely that the role will be supported with up to $10,400 from the government. I expect this measure to make a huge difference to the rate of youth unemployment in my electorate, and to give Sunshine Coast locals the start in a fulfilling career that they need very soon.

For those young people on the coast still needing extra training to enter the world of work, the budget is delivering for them too. As part of our COVID response, the government invested $1½ billion in expanding our supporting apprenticeships and trainees wage subsidy, paying 50 per cent of the wages of around 180,000 apprentices nationwide in small and medium-size businesses. Last week's federal budget allocated a further $1.2 billion for an expanded scheme called the Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements wage subsidy. This grows coverage of our 50 per cent wage subsidies to include 100,000 new apprentices taken on between now and the end of September 2021. There is no maximum cap for the size of the company. The only requirement is that the apprentice is not already receiving any other type of government support.

For those who want to go to university instead, the budget provided an extra $550.3 million for an additional 12,000 university places and 50,000 short course places to deal with the demand created by this recession. That is on top of the budget's record base funding of $19.8 billion for universities.

To make sure that the jobs of the future are available in Fisher, the government is creating the $1.5 billion Modern Manufacturing Strategy. This is going to help grow our manufacturing industry in six key areas where Australia is already strong: food and beverages, resources technology, medical products, recycling and clean energy, defence and the space industry. I believe the Sunshine Coast has a terrific opportunity to take advantage of this investment to help grow our industry base in defence, medical products and high-tech manufacturing.

Last week's budget was a sensational budget for all Australians and great news for people on the Sunshine Coast. So many people on the Sunshine Coast have said to me that this was the best budget they have ever seen, and who could argue with that?

Ms VAMVAKINOU (Calwell) (16:47): [by video link] In my contribution to the debate on Appropriation Bill (No.1) 2020-21 and associated bills I want to speak about the failure of the government's budget to recognise and address the very serious social and economic problem of social housing and homelessness in Australia, a crisis of which we're yet to see the full extent because it's expected to get worse as the COVID-19 income protection measures and other rental support and eviction moratorium measures are scaled back.

As more and more people are pushed to the edge of or into homelessness, there has never been a more urgent time for a federal government response. The 2020 Australian Homelessness Monitor found a significant gap between the number of homeless people seeking permanent housing and the availability of permanent housing. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a situation where homelessness will continue to be a problem in the long term, but this problem will be exacerbated further because of the decline in investment, especially by the Commonwealth, in social housing. The state governments are becoming very much aware of this looming crisis, with my own state of Victoria already indicating that the Victorian government will invest in social housing. The question at hand is: why didn't last week's federal budget respond to this crisis?

Such is the gravity of the problem that the 2020 Australian Homelessness Monitor's lead researcher, Professor Hal Pawson, is calling for a revival of the social housing program and saying that the Commonwealth must play a far more active role in tackling the problem. Professor Pawson clearly states that, although the contribution of the states is encouraging, the scale of the investment needed to seriously expand Australia's social housing stock is such that it can only happen with the Commonwealth government's commitment and leadership. Professor Pawson also made the point that last week's federal budget was indeed a wasted opportunity. With the current national shortfall of social housing being more than 433,000 properties, with over a million people losing their jobs and unable to afford their rent in the private rental market, a large number of Australians will be pushed into homelessness, thereby putting more pressure on the existing stock.

The federal government has squibbed the opportunity to show leadership on this issue largely because it seems to believe, as the Prime Minister said today in question time, that it has already done the heavy lifting and it's now up to the states. Australia's homelessness and housing crisis is a complex, multifaceted, looming national crisis and the Commonwealth has a lot more to do.

I want to commend the Minister for Families AND Social Services for her announcement in the weeks prior to the budget of some money at least to build affordable houses for women fleeing violence. Women and children affected by family violence are certainly one group of people who are increasingly affected by the crisis in affordable housing in this country, and any measure to support them is welcome. However, as I have said, the housing crisis is much broader than this, and a much more concerted effort by the federal government is needed. Data shows that women over the age of 55 are the fastest-growing demographic facing homelessness. Many of them are facing homelessness as a result of the death of their partner or divorce. These are women who gave up opportunities for a career, who did not participate in the workforce, in order to raise families and to look after their household. They don't have superannuation. Alone and with their children—for those that have them—now grown, they often find themselves destitute, struggling to make ends meet and, in many cases, homeless.

Two-thirds of primary social housing tenants are women on low incomes. It's extremely disappointing that the government has not seized the opportunity in this budget to seriously tackle the housing crisis and, in particular, to invest in social housing. I recently had the opportunity to speak via Zoom—as we all do these days—with members of the Northern and Western Homelessness Networks. This group represents 28 specialist homelessness and family violence organisations managing 100 homelessness programs operating in Melbourne's northern suburbs. One of the programs, Everybody's Home, conducted research in my local constituency and found that there are over 900 people experiencing homelessness in Calwell at this moment. The number is probably much higher given that many people are sleeping on the couches and floors of friends. Not all of them contact housing services. They suffer in silence until everything in their life falls apart. Many are women from non-English backgrounds who are fearful and totally powerless to leave violent marriages because they have nowhere to go. The lack of options in the private rental market and the intense shortage of public and social housing means a shortage of some 3,000 social housing properties in my electorate alone. As a result, the housing services in my electorate are forced to place people in motels just to get them out of sleeping in their cars or in parks for a few nights. It seems that these people will have very little chance of ever securing permanent housing because of the shortfall.

The Northern and Western Homelessness Networks research supports the anecdotal evidence my electorate office is approached about constantly. We've seen and continue to speak to people who are desperate for stable, safe and functional accommodation. We get calls on a regular basis from people who have been on emergency public housing waiting lists for years. Compounding the problem of a lack of affordable social housing is also the fact that Calwell has settled the lion's share of the refugee and humanitarian program. Almost all who have come from Iraq and Syria in recent times have settled in my electorate, where there is a growing community of people who seek to belong and to prosper. Affordable housing and a job are the two most important things that enable newly arrived migrants and refugees to begin their lives in Australia. Without either, they face the real risk of being unable to move forward.

Public housing has been the great enabler of migrant settlement in this country. It's a no-brainer, then, that investment in affordable housing makes for a stronger community both socially and economically. A lack of housing goes hand-in-hand with major barriers to employment and with disruption to education for children and young people, compounding the stress of those with major physical and mental health problems. A lack of affordable housing impacts workforce participation and stifles economic growth and our health and wellbeing as a nation. If this doesn't make it a national priority, I don't know what does.

If this budget is really about jobs, jobs and more jobs, as this government has framed it to be, then why not prioritise and put some money into social housing as a national policy response to a social and economic crisis? For every dollar invested in building a house, you create $3 in the economy. If you put aside all the pertinent arguments about the need to tackle housing insecurity and homelessness, what about the importance of construction to the economy? Why wouldn't you adopt the Leader of the Opposition's plan to invest in social housing, both repairing and renovating existing stock and building new stock, to help our builders and tradies back into immediate and productive work? Every housing organisation in the country called on the government to put more money into social housing in this budget. The Master Builders Association, the Property Council and the Housing Industry Association all called for more government money for social housing. They called for it because it would mean keeping their members in work, and this 'jobs, jobs and more jobs' budget has let them down. The budget has also let the people in my electorate down. My electorate, as well as experiencing a shortage of social and affordable housing, has large numbers of residents who have lost their jobs or small businesses, particularly in the construction industry. There are tradies of all varieties, support staff and small manufacturers on the construction supply chain who are desperate for work. We need to stimulate the sector to get them back into meaningful work.

In February this year, 1.2 million people were employed in the construction industry. As a result of COVID-19, the construction industry is forecast to decline by 13 per cent during 2020, compared to a six per cent drop in GDP more generally. Surely it makes sense to directly stimulate this sector by investing in a program such as the Community Housing Industry Association has proposed. The Social Housing Acceleration and Renovation Program aims to develop 30,000 additional social housing units through not-for-profit community organisations, but using private builders. Such a program has the potential to create up to 18,000 jobs as well as much needed social housing. These homes could be built in both metropolitan and regional areas, with the potential to boost local economies, increase social revitalisation and provide housing security for many Australians.

Building affordable houses in regional areas would go a long way in addressing one of the significant impediments to encouraging people to move into regional Australia and take up jobs there. This would help revitalise regional Australia and simultaneously take pressure off the urban cities. This government has been particularly keen to revitalise and grow regional Australia and to address the demand for workers in the farming and tourism sectors. Success in encouraging Australians and new migrants to move out into the regions depends on the availability of jobs, but it also depends on affordable housing. With imagination and foresight in this critical policy area, an astute federal government should be showing leadership and leading the way in a coordinated national response, not looking away in the hope that the states will pick up the slack. Last week's budget failed to do this. Contrast this with Labor's budget in response and the difference couldn't be clearer.

Labor has a plan to address our social housing crisis, and it comes with a jobs plan. We can start with fast-tracking urgent repairs to existing social housing. Labor is calling on the Morrison government to create work for thousands of tradies in almost every suburb and town across Australia, including suburbs in the federal seat of Calwell, by investing half a billion dollars to fast-track urgent repairs to social housing. Twenty-five per cent of Australia's social housing needs repair and maintenance. That's some 100,000 homes. Some of these homes have problems such as mould, leaking roofs and water damage, while others are simply unfit for people to live in. People shouldn't have to wait for the Leader of the Opposition to draw attention to the disrepair and unlivable state of social housing before action is taken, though I'm sure that Nathan Anderson from South Australia was relieved that the Leader of the Opposition visited his mould ridden apartment recently. Action has now been taken, and the family has been given a new home.

Much needed repairs in social housing across the country could start immediately and could provide work for local plumbers, carpenters, electricians, plasterers and painters as well as companies that manufacture building supplies and materials. This would also provide opportunities for apprentices. We're already hearing of tradies losing their jobs—28,000 carpenters, 15,000 concreters and 9,000 electricians in the last year alone. They are fast becoming the middle-class poor, and many live in my electorate.

The people of my electorate, I'm certain, will welcome Labor's plan to prioritise and address social housing and homelessness. Ahead of the next election, Labor will bring forward a comprehensive plan for the repair and construction of social housing. This will involve an immediate $500 million contribution from the Commonwealth and a partnership with the states with the expectation they will contribute up to the same amount in new funding. This is what a Commonwealth government doing heavy lifting looks like. I call on the government to act immediately to address the crisis in social housing and homelessness in Australia.

Ms THWAITES (Jagajaga) (17:00): [by video link] I'm pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021, because it is so important. This has been the most difficult of years, and here in Melbourne we have done it harder than people in other states, with our community putting in the effort to see off the second wave. I know that people in my community are tired and anxious after that effort. At the same time, they want to know what comes next. They want to know that the federal government has a plan to support them and their recovery. They want to feel good about their children's future. Unfortunately, this budget does not deliver on that need. It leaves too many people out, particularly the people hardest hit by this recession, and it leaves too many people behind. It doesn't take up the opportunity to tackle climate change and put us on course to being a renewable superpower. And it certainly does not fix our broken aged-care system, which this pandemic has revealed to be too unsafe and too uncaring for our oldest community members.

Instead, the Morrison government's 2020-21 budget figures bring to an end three decades of economic growth, with a million people unemployed, with an expected 160,000 more by Christmas, and a trillion dollars worth of debt, debt which had already doubled under this government and which is now four times that which the coalition inherited when it came to office. It doesn't have to be this way. As the Leader of the Opposition outlined in his budget reply, we can and should have a recovery that delivers a stronger, fairer and more secure future for all Australians. Scott Morrison's budget leaves people behind. It does nothing for the million Australians unemployed, for the people in my community who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in vastly different circumstances than they expected to at the start of the year. They still have mortgages to pay, kids to get to school and lives to get on with. But if they have lost their job this budget reduces their support back to $40 a day.

We know that in this pandemic the first people to be laid off and to be in positions of hardship were the people with insecure work, those with low wages and few entitlements. In many cases, these are the people with little to fall back on. Yet these are not the people being targeted for support in Scott Morrison's budget. Instead, the government has put in place a wage subsidy for young workers that actually risks discouraging employers from hiring older workers, in particular women over 35. We know these are the people suffering in this recession. We know it's harder for older workers to find employment during and coming out of a recession. It is inexplicable that, instead of recognising this, the government has instead put together an ill-conceived policy that will be a further disincentive for businesses to employ mature-aged people. As the shadow Treasurer has rightly pointed out, never before has a government spent so much to achieve so little.

Since being elected to parliament last year, I've been fighting for Australia to have a childcare system that is more affordable and more accessible, providing local families with the support they need and children with the best start in life. I've had too many conversations in the playground with mums who tell me they just can't afford to go back to work for more than a couple of days a week because, after that, the cost of child care outstrips what they earn. Childcare fees in Australia are currently some of the highest in the world. During a recession where more women than men have lost jobs, it makes absolutely no sense that we would leave in place these high childcare fees as a barrier that stops women from being able to get back to work.

That's why I'm so proud that the Leader of the Opposition announced in his budget reply that a future Labor government would cut childcare fees and help support women get back to work. We've got a plan for affordable childcare that means 97 per cent of all families in the system will save between $600 and $2,900 a year. That is significant for so many families. No family will be worse off. Labor's policy has been welcomed by business, economists, business groups and the early learning sector, and, most importantly, it's been welcomed by families. That's because this childcare policy makes sense. It makes sense that we view childcare as a universal service. It has benefits for all of us, instead of being an expensive privilege that locks too many women out of the workforce and denies too many children the best start in life.

The lack of support for childcare in this budget—and during this pandemic—really highlights how the Morrison government just has not considered women in its budget. During this pandemic, despite women having to pick up the bulk of the childcare and the bulk of the housework, and despite them losing employment at a greater rate than men, we do not see a focus on women and their needs in this budget. When called on this, what did the Prime Minister's office say? They said no-one credible thought that women had been left out of this budget. I assume they didn't plan to unleash the torrent of women on social media who called them out on this—credible women, all of them—furious that, in the middle of a pandemic and a recession that have turned their lives upside down, this government couldn't find the support they needed and couldn't even comprehend that they needed targeted support in this budget.

At this crucial turning point in our history, amongst all this destruction, it's incomprehensible that the Morrison government's budget does not chart a clean energy future for our country. We all know that Australia should be a renewable energy superpower. I hear this loud and clear from the people I represent. They want a clean energy future. When they talk to me about the future they want to create for their children and their grandchildren after this pandemic, this is the No. 1 issue they bring up. I can tell you that, for me, appearing via video link like this while seven months pregnant in the middle of a pandemic, it is something I think about a lot. But, clearly, it is not something that the Morrison government is thinking about—because we risk missing our window for change. As the rest of the world transitions to a clean energy future, we risk Australian jobs.

That's why I'm proud that in his budget reply the Leader of the Opposition committed a future Labor government to modernising Australia's energy grid, allowing us to unlock our renewable energy potential. Australia's current energy grid is not fit for purpose. As the Leader of the Opposition said, it was designed for a time when solar panels ran pocket calculators, not the one in four households who have rooftop solar. The current network takes no account of the rise of renewables as the cheapest new energy source and it doesn't help link these new sources up to the national grid. So a Labor government will set up a new Rewiring the Nation Corporation to rebuild and modernise the grid, to drive down power prices and to give our economy a boost of up to $40 billion and create thousands of new jobs. The energy grid will be built by Australian workers using Australian suppliers, through mandating local supply and local labour. What a contrast with the Morrison government's budget. What a contrast with the Morrison government's refusal to deliver the modern energy network we need to unlock our renewable energy potential, and the investment we need to cut electricity prices and grow the jobs in our renewable energy sector and other areas. This government has had 22 energy policies in the last eight years, and all it has to show for it are high electricity prices and higher emissions. We must do so much better than this. My community is counting on us to do so much better than this when it comes to renewable energy and a clean energy future.

As we just heard from the member for Calwell, one of the big areas missed in this budget was social housing. We know that one of the things the government could do right now to create jobs and lift productivity is invest in social housing. There are 100,000 social housing dwellings around the country that are in urgent need of repair. Some of those are in my electorate of Jagajaga. They are crying out for federal government investment. We have too many people still waiting for a roof over their head. We have women in vulnerable situations trying to get away from family violence, long-term unemployed people who struggle without a roof over their head, families who are worried about where they'll bring up their kids.

Having a decent house is the foundation for a decent life. It allows for so much more to come together. It is a no-brainer that we should be investing in social housing at this time and, yet again, this is a missed opportunity from the Morrison government in this budget. There is not a mention of social housing, not the investment that could drive transformation in people's lives in my community and in other communities around the country. Again, what a contrast with Labor's plans. If we were in government right now, we'd be creating jobs for thousands of tradies in almost every suburb and town across Australia to fast-track urgent repairs to social housing. This could involve an immediate $500 million contribution from the Commonwealth and a partnership with the states—how about that, a partnership with the states instead of taking pot shots at them—with the expectation that they would contribute up to the same amount in new funding.

We know that housing construction is expected to plummet this financial year, from 170,000 to as few as 125,000 new home builds. What an opportunity to invest in the future our country. Investing in social housing would be a win-win. It would provide work for local tradies and it would fix the homes that need to be fixed. It would mean that so many more Australian families, including people in my community, have the possibility of waking up in a decent home, the possibility of feeding their kids without a leaking roof over the top of them, the possibility of knowing that they had a more secure future for the coming years of their life. What a missed opportunity.

Another area where we fail to see the government deliver in this budget is manufacturing. Through this pandemic, I've heard from people in my community about how disappointed they are about how little Australia manufactures now. We know that there's potential for us to do so much more here. We know that we could have an industry supported by federal government in this country. I have manufacturers in my community who have told me how difficult it's been for them since this government allowed the car industry to leave, that the work they used to have that flowed from that has gone. They're not getting the contracts they should in defence manufacturing because the government stitches them up for large providers. There was an opportunity here, an opportunity in all our communities, in communities like mine, for us to rebuild local manufacturing, creating jobs, creating know-how and creating innovation. But we need to see the investment and we need to see the follow-through from this government, and, unfortunately, it just was not contained in this budget.

So, for all the debt and deficit, for all the big talk in the announcements, what we're left with is a poorly targeted budget that doesn't support those people who need it most. It's left out women. It didn't have anything for child care—the one thing that could really support women getting back into work. It's left out social housing—a huge need across our country. And it's left out the chance to transition us to a renewable energy future, to make sure that we are actually securing a better country for all of us—for our children, for our grandchildren—to take this opportunity in this time of disruption to build a stronger, fairer and cleaner Australia. It's a missed opportunity. It's clear that Labor has a different plan. We've shown that we can step up, that we are ready to take the opportunity of this time and to deliver in these important areas. I think the contrast is clear. I think the Australian people will see that contrast is clear and will endorse Labor's policies for the future.

Debate adjourned.

Mr VAN MANEN (Forde—Chief Government Whip) (17:13): I declare that the following bills stand referred to the Federation Chamber for further consideration: Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-21, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2020-2021 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2020-21.

Mr HUSIC (Chifley) (17:14): Yesterday I reflected on the important work of Services Australia in various communities and thanked in particular a lot of the public servants within Services Australia for the work they do. I also reflected on the fact that Services Australia has one of the biggest IT and digital budgets, outside of Defence, in the federal government. In particular, it is home to the Digital Transformation Agency. Under the ministerial arrangements, the minister for Services Australia is the minister for the Digital Transformation Agency as well.

The concept of the DTA was supported by Labor. We saw the value in using technology to deliver better services to the public, so we've been a long-time supporter of it. But what's happening to the DTA is a tragedy. It has been slowly drained of its essence. It's been slowly drained of its vigour and its ability to deliver on what its charter was initially—even in this budget, with what we've seen with the number of staff. During a pandemic, at a time of soaring unemployment, one thing the federal government could do, as I said last night, is take on more people, talented people, to give them a job and give them a start. There are so many people out there who have digital skills and could be brought on to help deliver government services better, and that could be done within the Digital Transformation Agency. What have we seen happen? We've seen the Digital Transformation Agency lose staff in this budget. In fact, the budget shows the average staffing level has fallen from 217 in the last financial year to 182 in 2020-21, despite the agency receiving a funding boost, so they've got more money!

The Digital Transformation Agency was supposed to be home to the best and brightest tech talent within government to do the job needed to transform the way we deliver services using technology. It has not actually become home to talent; instead, it's becoming is a honey pot for consultants. In the budget they cut the number of staff but increased the funding. Who is the winner? The winner is consultancy after consultancy. We have more DTA contracts for Boston Consulting Group and KPMG. Deloitte's contract with DTA has tripled, to nearly $30 million. Boston Consulting Group gets another $300,000 pay rise from DTA. DTA consultant costs are up by five times in one year.

It's not that I have a problem with consultants; some of my best friends are consultants. But the reality is that the DTA was not meant to be a clearing house for consulting payments. It was supposed to bring in talent to work on problems with the way government was delivering services and come up with solutions. Now what we're seeing is consultant after consultant being brought in. I guess it's no surprise that the head of the DTA is a former consultant of Boston Consulting. Please don't think I'm suggesting there's anything wrong. What I am saying is that if you have an ex-consultant in and your consultants' pay-outs are increasing and the number of employees you've got is decreasing, it's a bit rich.

The other thing I find surprising is that they brought on consultants and paid nearly a million dollars to work out funding options. They brought consultants in to work out how DTA could get more money, which then eventually went to extra consultants. The only activity we're seeing is conceptualising of what could be done to bring on more consultancy work and make existing consultants better, instead of bringing in people with talent to help the Public Service deliver its service to the public more efficiently. It's just wrong!

That's the problem with the government: they don't believe in the Public Service. They think the Public Service is something to be constrained rather than celebrated. In this great city of Canberra there are so many great public servants. We have criticisms of some of the higher-ups, but there are a lot of people in this town doing great things to help the people of this nation. At a time where a pandemic has ripped through employment in this country putting people to work for the betterment of other people in this country is a noble ambition and a worthy ambition at that. But this government is all about contracting out. It's all about bringing the consultants in. They're the only ones that seem to be doing well out of this. Instead of using technology in a way that would deliver meaningful results, meaningful benefits and concrete outcomes they're just not doing it. It is an absolute disgrace.

We will have legislation like this that we're debating now. We'll talk about name changes and give effect to name changes. We don't need branding and marketing exercises. We need a serious effort, during a pandemic, to help the nation out, to help its economy, to build jobs, to build better services and to do it in a meaningful way, not just create a consultants' carousel that enriches some of these big agencies at the expense of what we believe can actually truly be done to deliver better service for the public.

Mr BANDT (Melbourne—Leader of the Australian Greens) (17:21): [by video link] This bill is meant to be about how Services Australia, the government department that administers many of the services that so many people rely on, like Centrelink, could be improved. It comes from a government in the middle of a pandemic that has done nothing but attack the public service. I've had firsthand experience of this in my electorate. When the pandemic hit it was as clear as day, certainly to us in the Greens, that it was going to result in high levels of unemployment. We knew that because the social distancing restrictions that were imposed meant that large parts of the economy were going to grind to a halt. The government didn't seem to get that message. They came out with their usual trickle-down approach and of giving huge amounts of money to business and hoping for the best.

Of course, what happened was that millions of people found themselves suddenly unemployed. That meant—and again it wouldn't take a genius to think this through—high demands on services for Centrelink. Nowhere was that being felt more than in Melbourne, and in Abbotsford in the electorate of Melbourne where one of the busiest metropolitan Centrelinks is located. So what did the government do? The same government that comes along here now and says, 'Pass the bill because it's going to improve it.' What did they do? They said, 'We are going to close it.' They came up with the flimsiest of excuses saying that the tenancy was at an end and they couldn't find anywhere else. I'll tell you what, if you can't find a vacant office block in the middle Melbourne in the middle of a pandemic then you are not looking very hard, Minister. That excuse was so flimsy that everyone could see through it. People knew that not only could the Centrelink stay but it needed to stay. The cat was belled when the landlord came out and said, 'Oh no, we haven't actually evicted the Centrelink. We want it to continue.' So all of a sudden the government was boxed into a corner. The community stood up strongly and said, 'We want our Centrelink to continue.'

It takes a particular kind of genius to close a Centrelink in the middle of one of the biggest pandemics we have seen, with images of depression-era dole queues, as it was then, snaking around the corner in an area of high need like Melbourne. That's what the government did. The community said, 'No way, not on our watch' and the government has been forced into a back down. Everyone was going to be told to go off to South Melbourne, to travel seven kilometres at a time when everyone was being told to stay close to home. With five kilometre limits and being discouraged from getting on public transport, the minister said, 'Everyone should just get on a tram and travel seven kilometres to South Melbourne,' showing he had no understanding of the area of Melbourne or the needs of the people.

That is now going to stay. That decision has been reversed by the minister under community pressure and we are going to keep our Centrelink in Abbottsford. That is a terrific thing and it's testament to the community standing up to a minister and saying, 'People need their services, especially in the middle of a pandemic.' But it comes not as a bad and strange decision to make in the middle of a pandemic but as part of a practice from this government when it comes to dealing with the Public Service and with Centrelink. The government has now embarked on a systematic practice of shutting Centrelink offices and telling everyone, 'You are no longer going to be able to have your problems resolved by coming in and talking to someone face to face.' The government has closed a number of high-demand Centrelink offices and sees the Public Service only as something to cut. That's doubly wrong in the middle of a recession.

It's wrong in the middle of a recession because so many more people will be relying on the services, as was the case in Melbourne and as has been the case around the country, but it's also wrong because the Public Sector should be key to the recovery. We are going to need a plan to get out of this recession that we're in, that gets unemployment down not to the six per cent that's the Treasurer's target but down to two per cent, which is where it was in the period between World War II and the 1970s. One of the ways that we can do that in the middle of a recession, when the private sector is suffering great uncertainty, is by growing the Public Service and investing in the services that people need. Our recovery plan needs to be not only green to deal with climate crisis but also pink to deal with the number of women who have lost their jobs, quick to be able to be put in place right now and also safe. That's one of the things that the Public Service can deliver.

So investing in the Public Service instead of cutting as this government is doing is a key to economic recovery in and of itself, and we're going to need to do it, because the government the is locking in six per cent unemployment in its budget forecasts. That means two million people in this country either without a job or without enough work, and the government thinks that's fine. The government is choosing six per cent unemployment. It could drive it down to two per cent if it wanted to, if it had the courage to do what governments did after World War II: invest. Use this period to ask the big corporations to pay their fair share of tax, borrow since money is at the cheapest it's ever been and use it to invest. At World War II, this country had its highest-ever debt levels—120 per cent of GDP—and they brought it back down to normal within a decade or so because they used it to invest. But that's not what this government is doing. This government is saying, 'Instead of investing and bringing it back down to two per cent unemployment, we'll just factor in six per cent.' That's going to mean more demands on Centrelink and more pain for the Australian people. I make the point that the government is choosing to do this. The government could choose two per cent unemployment and could choose expanding the Public Service to get us back to full employment and to provide the services that people need, but instead it is choosing high unemployment and choosing cuts to Centrelink.

But it's not just cuts to the services. It ultimately results in the government spending just as much, if not more money, because they contract out Centrelink services to consultants. That is part of the privatisation and neoliberal myth. The neoliberal myself tells us you cut back on government services and it is somehow better for the government. No; you end up spending the same amount of money, but you give it to the private sector. The problem with that is that, when it comes to essential public services that don't need to be run at a profit, because they're being run for the public good, the private sector comes along and says, 'Yeah, we'll take some of that money, but we want to take some of it as profit.'

Helping people get back to work should not be something that you make a profit out of. It certainly shouldn't be something that you become a millionaire doing. But that is what this government facilitates. The Greens have estimated that when you add up not only Centrelink but all those other areas of government services where the government helps big corporations make a massive profit off the back of public subsidies, we're talking about the equivalent of about $10 billion a year. That's $10 billion a year that should be going into jobs instead of going to profit. Especially in the middle of a recession, it should be going into jobs.

Nowhere is that more needed than in Centrelink, because the demands are high and the number of staff should be increasing in the middle of a recession. It should not be an excuse for people in the job service or call centre industry to turn a quick buck out of people's misery. Note: we should be investing in and expanding our public services at this time. That is why the Greens are pushing for a Senate inquiry into privatisation, into the last four decades of the failure of Labor and Liberal neoliberal policy, which has seen everything being privatised, deregulated and contracted out. It has failed the Australian people. It is time to unwind it. Name changes such as those being talked about in this bill aren't going to cut it. We need a mindset change. We need to say public services should be run for the public good and shouldn't be an excuse for big corporations to make a profit out of. I just want to make this point: I'm not talking about big corporations that have made their own way in the private sector; I'm talking about big corporations that make their money off the back of public subsidies. In the middle of a recession, with a million people still unemployed—and the government forecasting, banking on and being very happy with two million people either not having a job or not having enough work for the next couple of years—that $10 billion should be going into jobs and services, it shouldn't be going into profits for big corporations.

This all comes at a time when the government says we can find $99 billion in subsidies for big Corporations and the very wealthy in this budget, and we can find money for tax cuts for millionaires that Liberal and Labor both vote for. They say they can find that, but they can't find enough money to lift JobSeeker. That's not only going to put stress on Centrelink staff, which we are talking about and this bill; with a million people still unemployed, and the prospects of unemployment remaining very high for a long time because the government is baking that in, we need to keep JobSeeker at $1,100. We cannot cut it. It should stay there. We need to keep people who haven't got a job at the moment, in the middle of a recession, out of poverty. We need to make sure people can live above the poverty line.

The government's move to cut JobSeeker at a time when it is most needed will plunge thousands of Victorian families into poverty. An analysis of government data by The Guardian estimates that about 420,000 people now living in Melbourne under lockdown are going to be impacted by those cuts. My community in Melbourne will be the frontline of people impacted by these government cuts. The government brings a bill in here and says, 'Let's talk about improving Centrelink because it's about improving people's lives.' Well, one good way of improving people's lives is by not cutting JobSeeker when we are still in the middle of a lockdown.

My office has heard from constituents who are at present only just managing to cover their rent and are extremely worried about the prospect of losing their house or going further into debt now that the coronavirus supplement has been slashed. My office has heard from young people who are currently employed but have been told their employment is likely to come to an end as the government winds back various supports and the social distancing restrictions here remain. What's next for those people if they lose their job now, in the middle of a pandemic, when joblessness is high? After the recent changes they might have to wait up to 13 weeks before they can receive support from JobSeeker. If you've just lost your job in the middle of the pandemic, the government—as if nothing has changed in Victoria, as if, all of a sudden, all the jobs are available again—is now going to make people wait up to 13 weeks before they can receive support from JobSeeker. My office has also heard from another couple, both jobseekers, who have had to spend their savings just to make ends meet during the pandemic but may have their payments affected now that the assets tests are being reintroduced. That's one thing the government hasn't thought about. Some people, because of the uncertainty we are in at the moment, have done what they can to amass savings. And now the government is going to penalise them for that by reintroducing the assets test, so they will get even less money because they have taken steps to look after themselves.

We have moved in the Senate to keep the coronavirus supplement at $550 a fortnight. We will introduce a bill into the Senate to make that happen, and we hope that it gets support. In the Senate, the Greens also tried to stop the reintroduction of that liquid asset waiting period and that assets test that is going to impact millions of Australians, but, unfortunately, it was blocked by the government.

So, when the government comes in here and says, 'We want to improve services to Australians,' forgive us for being sceptical. In the middle of a pandemic, you are cutting the level of social security payments to people. When we've got 12 people applying for every job—and the figures in Victoria are worse than the national average—and when so many businesses are struggling to get back on their feet, because the social-distancing restrictions that come from tackling the coronavirus remain in place and are likely to remain in place for some time, don't come in here with mealy-mouthed bills about name changes and suggestions for doing things that might help. Don't cut JobSeeker, keep JobKeeper going for as long as it's needed in Victoria and invest in public services that are going to grow jobs and meet the needs that people have. Let's build more public housing. Let's have free education. Let's have free child care. Let's do that instead of giving tax cuts to millionaires. That is the way that we're going to get to full employment and deliver some legacy for young people, who stand to be a lost generation if the government continues going down this path.

Mr JOSH WILSON (Fremantle) (17:36): I'm glad for the opportunity to speak on this Services Australia Governance Amendment Bill and to support the second reading amendment moved by the member for Dobell. I would like to start by acknowledging the work done by the member for Maribyrnong. He's been a warrior for the rights and interests of vulnerable Australians for a long time.

As others have observed, this bill itself is unobjectionable. It's always good to make administrative changes and changes to governance arrangements in the interests of making the system work better. Even mild improvements of that kind are welcome in such a critical area of government policy and support, because when we talk about the Department of Human Services—or Services Australia, as it has become—we're talking about Australia's social safety net. It's there for all of us. Hardly any of us will go through our lives without at some point relying on its support. Our need for its buoyancy is always closer to us than we might think, and we've seen that in the course of the present crisis.

We're talking about the programs and resources and, especially, the public servants, whose purpose is to support people in need. Yes, that includes people who are in trouble or people who are in crisis, but it actually covers a significant portion of our community: older Australians, single parents and their kids, people with disability. Reorganising a departmental structure, modernising terminology, clarifying reporting obligations—that's all good stuff, but it would be better if the government lifted its eyes, changed its course and perhaps changed its broader perception of our world by focusing on how to protect and enhance our social safety net and on how to enable, look after and lift the morale of those who are employed within the Public Service to assist people who have lost their jobs, to assist single parents and people who are unemployed or facing homelessness and to assist older Australians and carers and people with disability. Admittedly, that would be a pretty significant turnaround by the party of robodebt and pension freezes and Public Service cuts; from the party that instinctively and repeatedly divides Australia into 'lifters' and 'leaners'; from the party that instinctively and wrongly looks to weaken our budget capacity through tax cuts for already profitable big businesses, including foreign multinationals.

While there's nothing particularly wrong with this bill, there's definitely something wrong with the approach of the government in general. How much better would it be if the appetite for administrative tinkering that we see in this bill was only the prelude to a larger shift directed at making more substantial and desperately needed improvements? How much better would it be if the government took seriously its responsibility to ensure that our social safety net was the properly resourced and properly functioning foundation of a caring and egalitarian Australia? That should always be our objective.

What we've experienced over the last 12 months, starting with our first national-scale climate disaster in the form of the largest bushfires we've ever suffered and now, of course, in the form of a global pandemic, has displayed in even sharper relief the importance of our social safety net. Take JobSeeker alone. Over 27 days, from 25 March, 1.9 million intention-to-claim forms were lodged online. In the 55 days after the launch of JobKeeper, 1.3 million JobSeeker claims were processed. That's the volume that would normally be processed in 2½ years. In less than two months, the system accommodated a volume of claims that would normally stretch over 30 months. At the peak, more than 53,000 claims were completed in a single day. Many of the applicants had never accessed Centrelink support before in their lifetime, with one in eight new applicants needing to apply for a CRN.

The torrent of urgent support work in those first months of the pandemic was stemmed by hardworking Centrelink staff whose morale and best interests are sustained in advance by the work of the mighty Community and Public Sector Union. Those Centrelink staff rose to what were enormous and extraordinary challenges, and they should be recognised and celebrated as some of our most essential workers, but they haven't, and they don't receive the respect and support they deserve from this coalition government.

There's a phrase in the way the changes in this bill are described, which I want to draw attention to, and that's the claim that these changes will be 'a more efficient and effective way of delivering government services'. Of course, that begs the question what exactly is meant by 'efficient' and 'effective'? I'm sure that at various times in the last few years, in the government's mind, robodebt would have been considered the epitome of efficient and effective: a brutal, dehumanised, badly calibrated and ultimately faulty, illegal, computerised trawl through the circumstances of hundreds of thousands of Australians. The government defended it and has continued to defend it. They have argued in defence of its effectiveness and its efficiency. It was a frightening en masse assault that wrongly and illegally attributed debt to hundreds of thousands of Australians, and yet the Attorney-General, around that time, said:

At the moment those moneys have been refunded. There will be an argument as to whether or not we undertake to try and recoup any debts using other methodologies.

No doubt he meant other efficient and effective methodologies.

In truth, even the basic order of that phrase is wrong. We should be focused on making sure that policies and programs are effective and then consider how they can work in good time and be delivered at fair cost. In the areas of health, education, welfare support and environmental protection—all the key areas of Australia's shared wellbeing—the starting point should always be the setting of high-quality standards of achievement. Set those standards and those outcomes as your lodestar and navigate towards them. That way the achievement of those standards becomes the definition of 'effective'.

It's not hard to imagine the kinds of standards or tests that we need to apply in this area. Are people who need help getting support? Are people who are facing disadvantage receiving appropriate care and assistance? Are they being enabled to participate in the social and economic life of this country to the greatest degree, to be included, to be valued and to contribute to Australian society? Is the support sufficient? What will be the reality for people on JobSeeker when it reverts to $40 a day, which is apparently what the government intend.

Over the last few months I, and all local members, have heard stories that are at the same time both positive and desperately sad. For example, single parents and pensioners who describe how the COVID-19 supplement has allowed them to purchase a heater or get their car fixed or afford a bike for their kid or pay for some dental work. It should never be the case that it takes a pandemic to lift support to a fair and reasonable level in Australia.

When we focus on an effective social safety net we should ask some questions. Can people who need it get access to advice and assistance in a way that is timely, straightforward, courteous and responsive? Can they trust the system will be fair? Can they have confidence they won't be made to jump through ridiculous hoops that will be breached on a hair-trigger, pushing them into further crisis and often further financial trouble? Are the various parts of the social safety net properly linked up together? Does the income support and the employment service side of things and the question of housing and any issues related to disability support or specific veteran support work with as much harmony and coordination as possible? And are we valuing and supporting the public servants, the women and men, who deliver on these standards, always recognising and valuing that it is their skills, their commitment and their emotional resilience, above all, that holds up our social safety net?

It's considering all these kinds of questions that the amendment moved by the member for Dobell and the work done by the member for Maribyrnong seek to help the government do a few things that are clearly needed and would make a substantial difference—things that would go a lot further and deliver a lot more than the technocratic bits and pieces contained in this bill. In truth, there isn't any great mystery about the broader issues that need to be addressed within the scope of the renamed Services Australia in order to help guarantee that it meets the needs of our community and is in keeping with our values and our ethos.

We know that the people who work within this vital part of our Public Service have been squeezed and neglected. We know that the outsourcing and privatisation of aspects of our social safety net have achieved what privatisation in this area of service always brings—namely, a lower quality and more expensive service. We know that a system with arbitrary staffing caps and differential rates of pay and differential conditions for employees undertaking the same work through different arrangements is not only unfair; it is dysfunctional.

I want to point out that in Western Australia, my home state, the impact of staff cuts has been extreme. In 2013, when this government was elected, there were 7,500 Department of Human Services staff in WA. Last year, the staff number was down to 6,500. That's a drop of 14 per cent—1,000 jobs; one in seven. Some of the cuts have been sharpest in rural and regional Western Australia. For example, in what's termed the Outback South region—the offices in Leonora, Kalgoorlie and Meekatharra—there's been a loss of 215 staff. In Outback North, which covers Port Hedland, Broome and Derby, I understand they've lost 46 staff. When you make those cuts, you're not simply reducing services and support for a local community, for people in need and especially for those facing acute disadvantage; you're weakening local economies and the vibrancy of rural and regional towns.

In the face of the many things that have gone wrong—the many things that are being done badly by this government—some of the solutions that should be under consideration are not really all that hard to arrive at. And this is precisely what the shadow minister has consistently pointed out. If you want to meet what should be the core responsibility of the Australian government and guarantee there's a high-standard and high-quality social safety net for all Australians, as the foundation of our fair and egalitarian way of life, then you have to focus on what effective care and support actually means, and you need to make sure the people who deliver that care and support are valued. That's not what is happening at the moment. That's not the path this government has chosen. But it's not really that hard. Unfortunately for this government, what we have seen is a tendency to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze again; to make the lives of people who need help most harder; to make the opportunities for people who already experience significant disadvantage fewer; to make efficiency, in the end, a euphemism for punching down, a euphemism for taking away from those who have least and for failing to support those who need help the most.

Mr GEE (Calare—Minister Assisting the Minister for Trade and Investment and Minister for Decentralisation and Regional Education) (17:48): This bill, the Services Australia Governance Amendment Bill 2020, amends various pieces of legislation as a result of Services Australia being established as an executive agency on 1 February 2020. The amendments ensure references to Services Australia and the Department of Social Services are correct. To support service delivery, the bill makes governance changes to Services Australia. The CEO of Services Australia will perform the existing statutory roles of Chief Executive Centrelink, Chief Executive Medicare and Child Support Registrar. This change will sharpen the service delivery focus of Services Australia and ensure that the CEO is fully accountable for how administrative decision-making powers are delegated within the agency.

The bill will amend the Human Services (Centrelink) Act 1997 to prohibit a person from using the name 'Services Australia'—for example, as part of a business name—if that falsely implies a connection to Services Australia or Australian government service delivery. The bill introduces a requirement for a person acting under a delegation—for example, from the Secretary of the Department of Social Services, or a subdelegation from the Chief Executive Centrelink or Chief Executive Medicare—to comply with any directions from the delegator. I commend this bill to the House.

The SPEAKER: The question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

Mr GEE (Calare—Minister Assisting the Minister for Trade and Investment and Minister for Decentralisation and Regional Education) (17:56): by leave—I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Ms PLIBERSEK (Sydney) (17:59): I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes that Australia's higher education system is failing our kids, workers and businesses, due to Coalition Government policies that:

(1) slash billions from university funding;

(2) are bad for our economy and labour market; and

(3) impose massive debts on people seeking a higher education".

We don't oppose these bills. In fact, in November last year I wrote to the minister asking him to consider making exactly these changes, to ensure that all students were subject to the same rights and protections, regardless of fee status. It's been almost a year since I wrote to the minister but, despite that, I welcome the legislation which will end the exclusion of domestic up-front, fee-paying students from the tuition protection scheme. This will have a real and practical impact, creating simpler arrangements for students and making it easier for them to make decisions about their future study. It will also simplify student placement and loan recrediting.

The simplification of the rules and equalisation of status for students brings into stark relief just how complicated and unfair the government's other university policies are. Australian universities have suffered an absolute horror year at the hands of this government. Under siege, suffering relentless pressure, Australia's fourth largest export industry has scrambled for survival. This government has deliberately stood by as one of the sectors most critical to our economy has seen thousands of workers lose their jobs, regional campuses closed, whole university departments shut down and funding dwindle. Every week there is another one of these grim announcements: another campus closure, another course ended, another round of job cuts. That's 12,000 jobs lost at last count. And I'm talking about the permanent jobs here; that doesn't take into account the sessional staff that haven't been rehired or the casuals who have fewer shifts or no shifts. It's 12,000 jobs lost so far, and it's estimated that another 10,000 will go in coming months. After a while, it seems like there is some sort of momentum to these job losses, as though they're somehow inevitable. They're coming like waves crashing onto a beach.

The sad, infuriating truth is that this is not inevitable. This is a choice that the government has made to allow these jobs to go and to allow the university sector to be smashed by the funding that it's lost. Throwing our universities into the crisis they're facing now is a policy decision of the Morrison government. No other industry of this size has been treated with contempt in the way that the university sector has. No industry that employs 260,000 Australians has been thrown under a bus as gleefully as this sector has been. Universities are our fourth largest export earner. What are the first three? Coal, gas and iron ore. Imagine if we'd seen 12,000 job losses in one of these industries already. Quite rightly, the government would be there saying, 'What can we do to help?' Imagine if any of these other industries were facing this sort of devastation. But, as the government has been stepping in to help other industries, it has deliberately excluded higher education. You know it's deliberate, because they changed JobKeeper legislation three times to make sure universities were not eligible. Public universities—that educate our workforce, that conduct life-saving research, that protect our history, that nourish our culture, that attract billions of dollars of export earnings—were carved out of JobKeeper deliberately.

The impact of this on regional universities will be devastating. Universities support 14,000 jobs in regional Australia. Take a couple hundred jobs out of the Sydney CBD, and we feel it. I can tell you we can already feel it in my seat. You see the apartments that used to be rented by international students empty. You see the restaurants where the students used to eat; they're empty. We're feeling it in Sydney. But take a couple hundred jobs out of a regional community and, oh my goodness, you feel it. We're talking about academics, tutors, admin staff, librarians, gardeners, cooks, maintenance crews—all of them with families to support. They've had their government turn its back on them.

You know, the government was so careful to make sure that Australian universities were excluded from JobKeeper, but they weren't so careful when it came to the private universities—the tiny local campus of New York University in Sydney, a private American college not even registered as a university here in Australia, was eligible for JobKeeper. Australian universities are not eligible, but universities from overseas with, I might say, large endowments—and good luck to them—were eligible. How is it right?

I tell you who was excluded from JobKeeper: workers at the University of New England in Armidale; 200 have already lost their jobs. Workers at Central Queensland University were excluded; 281 jobs have gone there and three campuses have closed: Yeppoon, Biloela and Sunshine Coast are all due to close their campuses. That is hundreds of jobs lost and campuses closing. How are these regional communities affected by the jobs that are gone and the students that won't get an education, because those opposite have turned their backs on Australian universities? What about workers at the University of Newcastle, where 150 lost jobs were announced just recently? What about workers and their families at Deakin University, where the member for Chisholm has stood by as 2,902 people have lost their jobs? That includes 386 continuing positions.

Across the country, in every state, in every region, the story is the same. Those 12,000 job losses, with thousands more still to come, have been because this government has chosen to exclude universities from JobKeeper.

What's so sad about this is that the Prime Minister hasn't tried to stop the job losses; he's actually been cheering them on. He's been cheering them on. The treatment of universities by this government only makes sense if you see it as part of their broader project to discredit and undermine higher education in this country. It's a project that came before COVID-19, but it's using COVID-19 as its cover now. Why else would the Prime Minister watch on as tens of thousands of Australians lose their jobs without making any effort to help them? Why else would the Prime Minister make no effort as he stands by and watches hundreds of jobs lost in regional towns like Armidale and Rockhampton? He would know how devastating these hundreds of job losses are in those regional communities. If he doesn't know, he should know. Why would he allow the reputation of these world-class institutions to crumble in front of prospective new students?

Now, to add insult to injury, the government has this so-called 'job-ready graduates' legislation. Again, that cuts about $1 billion a year from our universities. Legislation just passed through this parliament makes it more expensive for people to get an education at a time when one in three young people is looking for a job or more hours of work. I cannot understand why this government would rather see young Australians on the dole queue than getting an education. This government is trying to price people out of the degrees that they don't like. It's this bizarre effort to engineer what students are interested in, what they're competent at, what they decide to study. It's so ironic, isn't it, coming from those opposite, who bang on about academic freedom? You don't have the academic freedom to study what you're interested in, the career that you want to pursue.

This government has called our university researchers heroes during the COVID-19 crisis but is standing by watching as those researchers walk out of the lab door for the last time because they don't have the funding to continue their life-saving research. The government's talking about support for high-tech manufacturing and yet it's watching the institutions that drive that high-tech manufacturing—the discovery, the innovation—bleed to death. The government talk about boosting advanced manufacturing by a billion and a half dollars while they're cutting a billion dollars a year from universities. And, of course, until very recently, they were doing their very best to cut $1.8 billion from research and development tax concessions as well. Those opposite have also taken this slapdash process to try and interfere with the sort of international collaboration that helped Australia discover the Gardasil vaccine, the sort of international collaboration that has helped Australia sequence the COVID-19 genome. At the same time as we are facing unprecedented challenges, those opposite are more than doubling the cost of a university degree for thousands of students.

Just for a minute, I want to speak directly to year 11 and 12 students, particularly the year 12 students—they have had the year from hell this year. They've had their education disrupted, they've had remote learning and they've been uncertain about their exams. I say to them: You have done so well. We are so proud of you. And, on this side, we are doing our very best to make sure you have choices next year and for the rest of your life—the choice to go to TAFE, the choice to go to university, the choice to study something that will help you get the job of your dreams. That's what we're fighting for. And we'll keep fighting for you, and for your parents, too, because all your parents and your teachers and your carers and supporters want for you is that you have opportunities and choices in life. That's why we want you to have an affordable education—so that you can have a real choice in your life. The last thing the government should be doing is making it harder and more expensive for you to go to university.

On average, Australian students will end up paying seven per cent more for their university education. But, as I have said, some will pay more than double. Their fees will increase by up to 113 per cent, going up to $14½ thousand a year. I did a four-year degree. That would be $58,000. They will be taking on a $58,000 debt at a time when unemployment will be high for years—the government's own figures show that it will be years until we're back at pre-COVID level unemployment rates. They will be leaving university to go into, at best, an unpredictable labour market. They will be coming into adulthood at the same time that they're trying to save a deposit for a home of their own, maybe start a family, get married. I know what my parents would have said to me if I'd been a high school student and said: 'Mum and Dad, I want to study communications and do an honours year. The good news is it's only going to cost $58,000.' They would have had palpitations. I would have been helping them off the floor if I'd gone home and said that. Working class kids don't take on $58,000 worth of debt, with the uncertain job prospects, to be repaid at a time when their families are saying to them, 'We want you to get a place of your own and start a family of your own,' and all the rest of it.

We are in the deepest recession since the Great Depression, and we're telling these kids to take on a debt that will take decades to repay. We on this side will always oppose American-sized university debts that take a lifetime to repay. When you look at the sorts of jobs created today—nine out of every ten require either a university or a TAFE qualification. We say that young Australians should be able to choose what they study not based on what their parents can afford but on what drives them—the work they want to do, the passion they have, what they're good at.

There's a false dichotomy being set up by those opposite. They say, 'Labor is all for universities, but we're on the side of TAFE.' This is not a competition. We want strong and excellent universities and a strong and excellent TAFE system. Those opposite have cut both. They're trying to say, 'Don't look at the cuts to universities, because we're all about TAFE,' but they've cut both. We have 140,000 fewer apprentices and trainees today than when the Liberals came to office. We have skills shortages. Before COVID-19, we had three-quarters of employers saying they couldn't find the skilled staff they needed; we were relying more heavily on temporary skilled migrants from overseas than at any other time in Australia's history. Right now, one in three young people are unemployed or wanting more hours. We've got shocking unemployment figures. More than a million people are unemployed, and, according to the government's own calculations, another 160,000 are due to be unemployed by Christmas. Why on God's earth are we making it harder and more expensive to get an education? It is honestly like those opposite would rather see people on the dole queue than getting an education. It's like those opposite think it's somehow wrong to aspire to go to university, that it's somehow elitist. It's like they think it's all about vague academics wandering around campus having Marxist culture wars, selling the International Socialist newspaper and engaging in student politics, like the member for Mitchell did for so many years.

What is actually wrong is not the aspiration to go to university. It was good enough for all those Liberal frontbenchers, and plenty of them have two or three degrees. Incidentally, plenty of them are humanities degrees, which they're trying to price other students out of. The education minister has three—Mr Three Arts Degrees himself! The government is desperate to make people embarrassed about aspiring to go to university. I think that is just so dishonest coming from a group of people who all had the opportunity themselves and who all took up that opportunity themselves, sometimes on multiple occasions, doing multiple degrees. What is wrong isn't aspiring to go to university or parents aspiring for their kids to go to university; that's not wrong. What is wrong—100 per cent wrong—is being prepared to deny that opportunity to others when you've had that opportunity yourself. That's wrong, and that's what those opposite are doing.

The cuts made by those opposite—the refusal to help universities at this phenomenally difficult time—and the changes to the cost of university education are of course unfair. They attack school leavers after they've had the year from hell, when they need support. But they're not only unfair; they're also illogical. The Prime Minister and the Minister for Education have said they want more students to study STEM subjects. That's the whole point of the legislation and the package as they have presented it. I don't know how they could have designed the package this way. They say they want more students studying STEM subjects, but the package actually reduces funding to universities for the teaching of those subjects. So—here I scratch my head—we want more people studying these subjects, so we're going to cut the funding to universities for these places. Every extra student they take is actually going to cost them money. What will happen when universities receive 30 per cent less—32 per cent less, in fact—to teach medical scientists, 17 per cent less to teach maths students, 16 per cent less to teach engineers, 10 per cent less to teach agricultural students, eight per cent less to teach nurses? We know what will happen. The tutes will get bigger; there'll be less face-to-face teaching; there will be fewer pracs and a degraded quality of education. The alternative is that universities will simply offer fewer places in these subject areas because they can't afford to keep teaching them. That's what will happen.

The CEO of the Grattan Institute, Danielle Wood, said:

I honestly think it's one of the worst-designed policies that I have ever seen. Even if you accept its stated rationale, it doesn't go anywhere near achieving it.

So the Prime Minister's being either dishonest about the rationale for the legislation or incompetent in designing the legislation, or he simply doesn't understand that you do not promote science and engineering by starving science and engineering departments at universities. You don't promote growth in manufacturing and infrastructure jobs by slashing the funding to train and teach engineers and others who will work in those sectors. You don't support critical medical research in the midst of a pandemic if your world-class researchers are lying awake at night wondering whether they'll have a job the next week or next month.

When Labor were last in government we saw massive increases in the number of students going to university. An additional 200,000 students got the chance to go to university because we uncapped student places. We decided that, in an increasingly complex economy, one of the best investments we could make was in the education of our people. We saw 200,000 additional people get an education because we uncapped university places. We nearly doubled university funding, from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013. Under Labor we saw huge numbers of Australians who were the first in their families ever to go to university finally get the chance. The number of students from poorer backgrounds went up by 55 per cent. Indigenous student numbers jumped by 89 per cent. Enrolments of students with a disability more than doubled, and enrolments of students from country areas grew by 48 per cent. These are the goals that have always driven Labor's policy. We want more people to get the chance to go to university. Our record over the decade speaks for itself. The suggestion that the government believes that the Job-ready Graduates Package, that has passed this parliament recently, will somehow make our university system more efficient and more effective—none of that stacks up. This is a disguise for a billion dollar cut to universities that comes on top of the billions of dollars lost because international students can't come to Australia at the moment.

My message to the hundreds of thousands of workers, just over a quarter of a million workers, who work in the university sector; to our researchers, to our best and brightest working on the innovations and discoveries that will help us out of this recession; and to the young people and their parents who have had this shocker of a year, have got through year 12 in the toughest of circumstances and now face a government that's determined to make it harder for them to get a TAFE or university education, is: we share your disappointment. Labor shares your outrage. We will work every day in this parliament to stop, to reverse, the damage done by this government, the government that is damaging our once proud education system.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Vasta ): Is the amendment seconded?

Ms Swanson: I second the amendment.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The original question was the bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member of Sydney has moved as amendment that all words after 'that' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I'll state the question in the form that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

Ms HAMMOND (Curtin) (18:27): I'm pleased to have the opportunity to speak in favour of these bills: the Education Legislation Amendment (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection) Bill 2020 and the Higher Education (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection Levy) Bill 2020. I want to start by saying we are not talking about the job-ready graduates legislation. I also want to correct the record: universities were not excluded from JobKeeper. If universities satisfied the turnover tests at 30 per cent or 50 per cent they could qualify for JobSeeker. In one sense it's actually really good that they didn't qualify for JobSeeker, because that meant that they didn't suffer the 30 per cent or 50 per cent downturn. I accept that universities are doing it hard, a lot of Australia is doing it hard. But those tests of 30 per cent and 50 per cent were in place for all other businesses and all other organisations.

I note the member for Sydney did point out that a small provider that isn't a university did manage to access JobKeeper. Yes, that's correct. It was a not-for-profit, charitable organisation that doesn't receive government funding. There is a distinction. They obviously satisfied the drop in turnover.

I am going to speak about these two bills because these two bills are about higher education, but they're not specifically about universities. These bills are designed to further strengthen the quality and integrity of our higher education system here in Australia, and to ensure that the diversity and choice which has been an increasing feature since of this system since the 1980s continues. Having a system where there is real choice for students, and choice that is not clouded by questions about quality, viability or reliability of the provider, is of utmost importance. Students need to know that if they start studying something they will be able to finish it. Students need to know that the money that they invest in their education is not lost if the provider ceases to exist midway through studies.

This sort of protection has been in place for quite some time for international students studying in Australia through the Tuition Protection Service. The Tuition Protection Service for international students is industry funded through an annual provider levy. It provides assurance and assistance to international students who may be affected by the closure of an education provider or course termination. The TPS helps international students either by placing them into a similar course with another institution or by providing a refund of tuition fees paid in advance for parts of the course that were not provided to the student.

The TPS has played a very important role in ensuring the international recognition of the quality and safety of studying here in Australia, and that has been wonderful and it has made Australia an attractive destination for international students, but the situation for domestic students has always been a little bit different. Ninety per cent of higher education students in Australia study at table A universities, sometimes referred to as public universities. Now, it's been a long-time policy of governments of both varieties that, given the low risk of these institutions, no additional levels of protection are required for domestic students enrolled in them. But alongside the public university sector sits a vibrant and diverse range of registered and recognised private higher education providers, and close to 10 per cent of Australian higher education students study at these providers. These providers include two Australian universities, a university of specialisation, an overseas university and, as at June 2020, 135 non-university higher education providers.

In 2019, the last time for which statistics are available, there were 127,000 full-time-equivalent students studying at these independent, private, non-university higher education providers. These providers educate students in a range of disciplines, including law, engineering, agricultural science, architecture, business, accounting, tourism and hospitality, education, health sciences, theology, creative arts, information technology and social sciences. And they teach across all AQF qualification levels, from diplomas through to doctorates. While they range in size, and some are very small, there are some that enrol over 10,000 full-time-equivalent students across multiple disciplines, and quite a broad variety of students, both domestic and international.

The overwhelming majority of these providers are highly reputable, with solid financial underpinnings and with sound academic oversight. All of these are things that TEQSA regularly examines these organisations on. I would also add here that many of these non-university higher education providers excel on student satisfaction and student outcome measures. However, given that they're not underwritten by a government guarantee and given that there is always a danger of such an organisation or such a provider ending or collapsing, it has been a long-time policy position that these providers do need to have extra protection for students who enrol at them. These requirements, both tuition and financial safeguards, are included within the Higher Education Standards Framework (Threshold Standards) and are mandatory for non-table-A providers to register as higher education providers. Given the practical problems that providers had with the arrangements which were in place until last year, the government undertook to tidy up the system, ensuring that it works as it was supposed to for domestic students while simultaneously not putting an overtly costly and cumbersome obligation on these providers.

Earlier this year, the government extended the TPS to cover domestic students receiving income contingent loans through the VET Student Loans program or the Higher Education Loan Program for students studying with independent education providers. This particular bill that we are discussing today will take that further. As of January next year, it will extend the tuition protection arrangements to apply to domestic students who pay their tuition fees upfront at a private, registered higher education provider under the TEQSA Act. This is intended to ensure that those students receive the same high-quality tuition protection as students who access FEE-HELP or HECS-HELP.

Just for clarity, these protections are for the benefit of students, not providers. These arrangements offer support through a suitable replacement unit or suitable replacement course for students to continue their studies, or through a refund of the upfront payment for incomplete units of study if a provider fails to deliver them.

It should also be noted that this bill amends the TEQSA Act to provide for the requirement that a defaulting provider has initial responsibility to take action to provide a remedy to their affected students. Only when the defaulting provider is unable to provide a remedy to their affected students will the tuition protection director step in to assist in providing that assistance and assurance to the affected students. These amendments ensure that the tuition protection process is consistent for both affected HELP students and upfront-fee-paying students in the higher education sector. It provides certainty for those students who might consider studying other than at a table A university, and there are students who choose this. Ten per cent of higher education students enrolled in Australia are enrolled at non-table-A institutions.

Having this tuition and course assurance embedded in the system is an essential part of ensuring that there is real diversity in our higher education offerings and real choice. It is on this point that I actually want to highlight that both the government and the opposition have supported diversity and choice in our education offerings, both at school level and at higher education level, for decades. Despite rhetoric at various times, both parties have long recognised that the existence of both public educational offerings and private educational offerings sitting side by side is a significant benefit to the provision of education in this country and ultimately to our country as a whole. While playing a much smaller part in the higher education sector than occurs at school level, the private independent higher education providers make a vital contribution to the entirety of the sector, and so students who choose to attend to study at them should be protected. I note here that those students who do choose to study at them rate them very highly. So it is my pleasure to support this bill, given that it is helping to embed the diversity and choice in our higher education system which has become a hallmark, and long may it be so.

Mr PERRETT (Moreton) (18:37): I rise to speak on the Education Legislation Amendment (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection) Bill 2020 and the Higher Education (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection Levy) Bill 2020. These two bills expand the tuition protection scheme arrangements to include protection arrangements for domestic upfront-fee-paying students. Labor supported bills last year to expand the scheme to cover students accessing VET student loans, FEE-HELP and HECS-HELP assistance at private education providers. Labor was concerned when those bills were introduced that domestic upfront-fee-paying students were excluded from the scheme. The shadow minister for education and training wrote to the Minister for Education requesting that he consider expanding the system to all domestic fee-paying students. I am pleased that, although it took 10 months, the government finally tied up the loose ends in this scheme. These bills will see that domestic upfront-fee-paying students are included in the scheme and so Labor won't oppose these bills.

These bills will expand the scheme to give all students confidence they will not be left in debt and without a qualification if their training facility fails before they have finished their course. Sadly, both in my time as a politician and in a former job I have seen that happen and how it wrecks young peoples' lives. Australia has seen it happen too often. Dodgy providers overloaded with students, merely for a quick profit, go belly up, leaving those students out of pocket and without the qualification they need to get a job.

While I welcome this tweak of the tuition protection scheme so that all students are covered, I am still concerned about this government's treatment of the university sector more generally. Unfortunately, the Morrison government has done nothing but attack the higher education system in Australia. I don't know what happened to the Prime Minister when he was at university, but it must have been a traumatic experience—whether he was rejected by his peers, attacked by a tutor or snubbed by a professor. I am not sure what happened, but he really needs to go and see a therapist rather than roll out his rage on the universities of Australia.

It's as if those opposite fundamentally don't care about or don't understand higher education. I know that there are members there that have a strong history of being involved in universities, but, sadly, we've got some people in charge of portfolios who must be losing battles in the cabinet room. Some of the decisions that they're making are reckless and short-sighted. They say they care about jobs, but universities support an enormous range of jobs, not just academics and tutors, but the admin staff, the library staff, the catering staff, the ground staff, the cleaners and the security staff. These jobs have been disappearing under this government. What have we seen? More than 12,000 jobs lost across the country already and, sadly, thousands more are predicted to go before the end of the year.

In particular, it will have ramifications for regional areas as we come up to Christmas. The Morrison government went out of their way to exclude public universities from JobKeeper. They changed the rules three times to ensure that our public universities didn't qualify. This government could have stopped the job losses but they deliberately chose not to. They chose not to in a sector that is Australia's fourth largest export industry. It is the regional universities, as I said, that are going to be hit the hardest—universities that support 14,000 jobs in regional Australia, in places like the Sunshine Coast. And this is at a time when we are relying on universities to support our brilliant researchers who are working on a vaccine for COVID-19, yet the government are doing this. Could this luddite government's priorities be any more skewed?

Recovering from this pernicious Morrison recession will take vision and it will take planning, neither of which has been evident in this government. We know that by 2025 Australia will require an additional 3.8 million university qualifications. We need our universities to be skilling up students for the jobs of the future. They need support, not constant cuts. The Morrison government's job-ready graduates legislation cuts funds from universities and makes it harder and more expensive to go to university. Basically, overall, Australian universities will receive less funding to teach students. Imagine that: in 2020, being a government that will provide less funding to universities to teach students. The university sector faces a funding cut of around $1 billion a year. That cut is on top of the $16 billion projected revenue drop from international students being locked out and the $2.2 billion in cuts already made to university funding by the Liberal and National Party government.

This coalition government is nothing if not consistent in its betrayal of higher education, making short-term political decisions that are betraying our nation's future. Not only are universities like Griffith University in Moreton or the universities that I attended such as QUT and the University of Queensland being attacked but students will individually be paying more for their degrees—on average, seven per cent more. Forty per cent of students will be paying more than double for the same qualification before the Morrison government touched the process. Fees will be increasing to $14,500 per year, and we're not talking about medical degrees here. The degrees that will double in cost are degrees in the humanities, commerce and communications. These are degrees that this government thinks produce graduates that are less employable. But there is no evidence that this is true.

I am pretty sure there are a few graduates of those disciplines occupying the government benches in this parliament. In fact, the job prospects of humanities graduates are very healthy. Recent research suggests that people with humanities degrees have higher employment rates than science or maths graduates. So this Morrison government is cutting billions from the university sector, while doing nothing to help young people get into the high-priority courses and jobs. The Morrison government wants to encourage enrolment in maths, science and engineering—and I say up-front that these are noble and strategic aims—but what the government's legislation actually does is reduce the money that universities will receive to provide those courses.

Consequently, there will be a disincentive for universities to provide more places in these courses, or perhaps even to provide those courses at all. Thus, the government is shooting itself in the foot—or shooting the nation's future in the foot, if I could mangle metaphors. Under the government's plan, universities will receive 32 per cent less to teach medical scientists.

They will receive 17 per cent less to teach maths students, 15 per cent less to teach clinical psychology, 10 per cent less to teach agricultural students and eight per cent less to teach nurses—this at a time when their budgets are being hammered. How short-sighted is this? This is a bad policy from those opposite. When you cut funding support for engineering and science courses, there can only be two possible outcomes: you will get courses of a lesser standard or you will get fewer scientists and fewer engineers.

The Morrison government claims that its policy will create 39,000 places over three years, but, even if it does, that would be woefully inadequate when it comes to meeting demand. There is nothing in the Morrison government policy to account for the expected increased demand due to the recession or for the increased enrolments due to the so-called Costello babies now reaching university age.

So this is a disaster for young Australians that is being rolled out by those opposite while we're in the depths of a deepening Morrison recession. We see youth unemployment that has risen by more than 90,000 in recent months. With thousands of young people out of work, getting them into study rather than on the dole queue should be a priority for the Morrison government, but obviously it is not. The poor students who are in year 12 right now are the ones who will be most disadvantaged by this policy, and that's after they have had the year from hell. The seniors of 2020 have had such a tough, uncertain year already. Arguably no other year 12 cohort has had to endure a final year of schooling quite like they have: online classes, less face-to-face time with their mates, curtailed sports and cultural activities, no schoolies and now the Prime Minister making it harder and more expensive for them to go to university—the cherry on top of a rancid cake.

I want the class of 2020 to feel the excitement that I did when I completed school: the promise of learning in an environment that fostered ideas and promised a future paved with opportunity. I don't want to see them worrying about debt before they have even walked on campus. I understand the importance of education, as so many on this side do, both as a student and as a former teacher of English. Labor has always valued education. It is the great transformational social policy, where lives are changed, lives are saved, lives are improved.

When in government Labor ensured that a university education was never out of reach for our best and brightest. This nation needs them. Labor invested in universities, boosting university investment from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013. From 2012 we opened up the system with demand-driven funding. An additional 190,000 smart Australians were able to go to university, and we ensured that structural disadvantage did not preclude a university education, something of particular benefit to those electorates represented by National Party people in this parliament. An extra 220,000 Australians were given the opportunity of a university education under Labor's policies, and I'm proud of that. That included financially disadvantaged students, whose enrolments increased by 66 per cent; Indigenous undergraduate students, whose enrolments increased by 105 per cent; undergraduate students with a disability, whose enrolments increased by 123 per cent; and students from the bush, from the regional and remote areas, whose enrolments increased by 50 per cent. Labor knows that, if you lock kids out of an education, you lock them out of employment. This government fundamentally doesn't understand that or is ignoring that fact.

Investing in Australian universities is good for all of us. Labor will not oppose the bills currently before the house, but I urge the Minister for Education and Training to give universities the support they need now and to rethink his legislative agenda that perhaps was motivated by some cruel things that happened to the member for Cook. He needs to rethink his legislative agenda and all of those things that make it harder and more expensive for students to obtain a degree.

Mr LEESER (Berowra) (18:49): I always enjoy following my friend the member for Moreton in debate. He is the parliament's foremost author of creative fiction, and it was wonderful to hear over the last roughly quarter hour of debate his latest work of fiction! So thank you to the member for Moreton.

When someone pays for a higher education experience, they need to be sure they'll get what they paid for. Over the last couple of decades there's been a rapid expansion of the private higher education and vocational education providers in the sector. Many of these providers are of outstanding quality, but, sadly, some of them have proved dodgy, and about a decade ago a number of them went bust, leaving students in the lurch. As a result of this, the Gillard government created the Tuition Protection Service. The Tuition Protection Service has assisted international students affected by the closure of an education provider on course determination. It's an industry funded through an annual provider levy. It is internationally recognised as a mark of the quality and surety of studying in Australia. From 2012 to 2019 the TPS assisted approximately 12½ thousand international students with over 4½ thousand calls on funds from 47 providers that didn't meet their obligations to their students.

The TPS was a good idea but it never covered the whole sector. Earlier this year we saw the domestic expansion of the TPS. From 1 January the Morrison government expanded the TPS to cover domestic students receiving income contingent loans through the VET Student Loans Program or the Higher Education Loans Program for students studying with independent education providers. This means there are now around 60,000 domestic students with similar protections to international students in case a provider closes unexpectedly. The TPS helps students by placing them into a similar course with an alternative institution, by providing a refund of tuition fees paid in advance for parts of the course that were not provided to the student, or by requesting a student's HELP balance.

When the scheme was expanded to take into account domestic students, there was a Senate inquiry at which a number of the higher education providers, or HEPs, called for the scheme to be further expanded to include all domestic students, not just those on a HELP loan. When you look at the submissions to that Senate committee, it is interesting that many of the providers who provide submissions were actually small theological colleges. One of those providers is Broken Bay Institute-The Australian Institute of Theological Education, located in Pennant Hills in my electorate. In fact, it is located just across the plaza from my electorate office. The BBI is an accredited higher education provider. Most of its courses are online. Most of them are postgraduate theological courses with students from all over Australia, including regional areas. Most of the students are primary and secondary teachers who are primarily subsidised by the employer, and many of them are teachers in the Catholic education system who want to ensure that they have appropriate theological qualifications and understanding in order to teach in that sector. They are a small HEP, and, at the time of the Senate inquiry, they had 465 active students and up to 350 unit enrolments each trimester. I thought it worth sharing with the House some of the words of the CEO, Gerard Moore, from his submission to the Senate committee, on this particular point and on why the bill before the House is so important to an institution like the Broken Bay Institute. He said:

BBI-TAITE supports expansion of the TPS to include domestic students with student loans. However, we believe this expansion should go further to also include domestic self-funded (fee for service) students.

Having to plan for and administer TPS levies and separate protection arrangements (and costs) for domestic self-funded students is not only a red-tape and reporting burden, but also a cause for confusion where there are different protection arrangements for different students. It is important for BBI-TAITE, as an independent HEP, to have equity in protections, and it is important for our students to realise this equity.

Furthermore, as a small HEP, the rising costs of TAS insurance has certainly been realised, with a 25% increase in premiums from 2018 to 2019. These rising market costs puts pressure on student fees as we strive to remain competitive in the market while also managing increasing operating costs.

Equal coverage of all students under a government managed TPS will not only provide the best protections for students, it will remove the high costs of private insurance and ensure TEQSA protection requirements are met without the need for us and other institutions to report their individual protection arrangements. If this does not occur, private insurance for self-funded students will be expensive, premiums will no doubt continue to increase, and these costs will end up being passed on to our students through increased student fees.

BBI-TAITE strongly advocate for universal student protections provided by the proposed domestic TPS.

The Minister for Education, Dan Tehan, has listened and delivered for the sector and, more importantly, for those students in the sector. Last year, Minister Tehan committed to explore options to expand the TPS to include students from the higher education sector who pay their tuition fees up-front and do not, or are not able to, access a HELP loan. The bills that are before us today give effect to this commitment, enabling the highly regarded and effective Tuition Protection Scheme to be extended to domestic up-front fee-paying students and to have an annual levy payable by providers that contributes to the Higher Education Tuition Protection Fund. These new arrangements will ensure that all higher education students—regardless of whether they're domestic or international, regardless of whether they pay their fees upfront or through a loan scheme—receive the same protections and assistance against providers defaulting on their course of study. Under the expanded TPS, if a provider goes bust, all students will either be placed into a similar course or with an alternative institution, or receive a refund of tuition fees paid in advance for parts of the course that were not provided to the student, or have their HELP balance recredited.

As before, the new arrangements will be funded by the sector and not by the students. They'll be funded by a framework developed by the Australian Government Actuary which will cover the long-term costs of tuition assurance by requiring all private higher education providers to contribute annual levies commensurate with their size and risk.

This bill is about completing the TPS and bolstering the higher education sector as a whole. Registered higher education providers are required to have adequately resourced financial and tuition safeguards to mitigate disadvantage to students who are unable to progress their course of study due to unexpected changes in the provider's operations. At the end of last year, the last commercial tuition protection insurance provider closed its doors, and it's been a challenging time for providers like the BBI and others to meet their tuition protection obligations for domestic upfront students.

These bills place a requirement on all private higher education providers to be a party to the TPS as a condition of registration with TEQSA, and that's a very sensible condition. This expansion of the TPS provides certainty to those students and ensures that private higher education providers will no longer have to source and secure their own tuition protection policies, which, as we've heard from the submission from the BBI, can become onerous to maintain.

This bill is good for students. This bill is good for providers. This bill is good for the higher education sector. I commend the bill to the House.

Dr ALY (Cowan) (18:56): I rise to speak on these two bills, the Education Legislation Amendment (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection) Bill 2020 and the Higher Education (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection Levy) Bill 2020, which we aren't opposing. And why would we oppose them, when the shadow minister actually wrote to the Minister for Education asking for these very changes? As members before me have noted, these bills basically mean that domestic students would not be excluded from the tuition protection scheme. It's taken about a year since the shadow minister first raised this issue with the minister, but it's good to see that these changes are finally being adopted.

Labor will always put quality education at the core of what we do in giving opportunities to young people, and, indeed, to anybody who is seeking to further themselves through higher education. If you have a look at Labor's record, particularly on universities and higher education, the last Labor government opened up universities. We had almost 200,000 additional people in higher education. We boosted investment from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion in 2013. It was during those years, as well, that I was employed in the higher education sector at various universities throughout that time.

Under these policies, we saw a new kind of diversity enter into our universities. Because of Labor's policies, because of our investment in higher education and in universities, we saw the number of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds go up by 55 per cent, we saw Indigenous student numbers jump by 89 per cent, we saw enrolments by students with a disability more than double and we saw enrolments by students in country and rural areas grow by 48 per cent. These are the kinds of goals that Labor strives for when we're in government. This is the kind of investment that we believe creates a better country and a better future for our young people.

But, Deputy Speaker, who am I to speak? I stand before you, a mere woman with four humanities degrees. Yes, Deputy Speaker, I am a humanities graduate. I suppose that as a humanities graduate I should be grateful that I have a job. I suppose that as a woman and a humanities graduate I should be grateful that I'm allowed to drive on the roads that all those non-humanities graduate people designed and built for me to drive on. I suppose that as a woman and a humanities graduate I should be grateful that my husband let me go to university and let me complete my PhD in between baking cookies and changing nappies. I suppose that as a humanities graduate I should be grateful for the sheer luck that has allowed me to be employed ever since I graduated from university. Blessed be! I should just be grateful for a whole lot of stuff as a humanities graduate, because this government would have you believe that a humanities degree is worthless. That's what this government would have you believe, yet many members of the government have benefited from access to university to pursue whatever it was they wanted—to pursue a humanities degree or a degree in any area they wanted—unencumbered by any kind of government policy, by any kind of ideological war on what they wanted to study.

I, like many members in this House, engage quite regularly with the high-school students in the electorate of Cowan and, indeed, beyond the electorate of Cowan as well. It's one of the joys of this vocation that we get to go and meet with young people, that we get invited to different schools to address the year 11s, the year 12s and the year 10s. It's certainly the part of this role that I enjoy the most. When I'm sitting with these young people and I'm talking to them about their futures and their careers, I ask them: 'What do you want to do?' Inevitably there are some who say, 'I don't know.' They might be in year 11 or even in year 12—some are in year 10—saying they've no idea what it is they want to do. I know that they advice that I give them is not much different to the advice that anybody else in here gives them. That is: do what you love and do what you're good at. That's what I did. I started out studying economics, discovered how boring that was and ended up studying my first degree in the arts, in English and comparative literature. I followed that up with a degree in linguistics, then a master of education and then, of course, a PhD. So it makes sense to me that if you pursue your passion, if you do what you love and you do what you're good at, you're going to succeed. That's probably the best bit of advice that I can give to any young person.

Last week, the government introduced legislation into this House that's going to make it a lot harder for young people. Already I've had several young people in my electorate contact me, young people who had their hopes pinned on studying a degree in communication, in law, in social work or in sociology, who have said that now they're going to have to revisit their plans, the dreams that they had hoped they could achieve, because it is simply untenable for them to attend university and pay the fees that are now going to be charged under this government's legislation. Even if you accept the rationale for this, the fact is that under this legislation the government's aim of pushing young people to do degrees that they have no passion in and probably aren't even interested in or are good at is not going to work. Time and time again, we've heard the experts tell us that it's not going to work, because, under this legislation, students are going to pay seven per cent more, on average, for their degree. Forty per cent of students will have their fees increased to $14½ thousand a year, doubling the cost for thousands of people. That is in areas such as the humanities, commerce and communications. People studying those degrees are going to pay more for their degree than somebody studying medicine or dentistry. I just don't think that's fair. It's not that I don't think that's fair because I happen to have degrees in those areas. I don't think it's fair because I hear members on the government side talk a lot about choice—individual choice and opportunity and aspiration, and these are noble things. These are noble values to have. When you come into this place you want to contribute to a society and to a country where your kids and your grandkids have it better than you. That's what everybody wants. They want their kids to have more choice than them. They want their kids to have better choices than they did. So I find it incredibly unfathomable that this government would introduce legislation that increases the cost of some degrees, thereby decreasing choice for young people, particularly because many members on that side had that choice, had that opportunity—it was given to them.

Why would you want to take away something from the next generation that was given to you? Do we not come to this place to make it better for the next generation? Correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm confused. That's why I came here. I came here to make Australia better for the next generation. I came here to make sure that the next generation had more choices than I did or that my parents did. I came here to make sure that, when I leave this place, I will know that I've done everything that I can to ensure that the young people that I face in my electorate every day have it easier. So I just cannot for the life of me fathom why a government would make it more difficult, harder, and more expensive for young people to get an education, to go to university, and then stand here and talk about choice, opportunity and aspiration. If you truly believe in choice, opportunity and aspiration, then you don't cut university places, you don't make it harder for people to pursue their dreams and you don't break down dreams. That's what you're doing.

The shadow minister spoke at length about young people taking on a $58,000 debt for a university degree. She's absolutely right when she says that a $58,000 university degree is a disincentive for a lot of young people to go to university. But I also want to talk about mature age students and what a disincentive it is for them as well, because I was one of those mature age students. I want to talk about women returning to work. Perhaps they have taken a break from work because they've been rearing children. Perhaps, like me, they never had an opportunity, because they got married young, because they had children young, because they spent their 20s rearing children and it wasn't until they were in their late 20s or 30s that they decided there was an opportunity for them to go back to university and study something and make something of themselves in that regard.

I want to talk about men and women who want to retrain. Perhaps COVID has forced them to look at their lives and see that they've been in a job that they haven't really enjoyed. Perhaps it's given them pause to think and perhaps it's given them the courage to finally pursue a passion by going back to university. When I went back to university, many of my classmates were mature age students. Many of them were women returning to the workforce or seeking to return to the workforce. Many of them were men and women who were seeking to retrain. When I taught counterterrorism, intelligence and security at university, many of my students were mature-age students. Many of them were former service men and women who came to do a degree to retrain and get back out there into the workforce. Why would you take that opportunity away from them? Why would you do that?

University isn't just about getting a job. Education isn't just about getting a job. Yes, you do it and you hope that it leads you to the vocation you want. You hope that, if you study something you love, with the passion that you have for it, it's going to be your career and that's where you're going to work, because you love it so much. But university doesn't always lead to a job, and the purpose of university is not always to get a job. There are a whole range of other benefits that come with a university degree. There's personal development. There's critical thinking skills and teamwork skills. There's discipline. There's self-learning and self-paced learning. There are a whole range of other skills that are applicable in any workforce and in any workplace.

If we continue to see university only as a means of getting a job, and if we continue to value university only as a means of getting a job, then we are never going to come to a position in this country where we value knowledge for its own sake. We are never going to come to a position where we can go back to a proud tradition of having some of the best universities in the world and the best education system in the world. So, while I support this bill, I reiterate that we have to see this in the context of this government's persistent battle against the universities.

Dr WEBSTER (Mallee) (19:11): I rise today to support these bills, which are part of a package of legislation to expand the Australian government's tuition assurance arrangements to protect domestic upfront fee paying students at private higher education providers. This will ensure these students receive the same protection as students who access FEE-HELP or HECS-HELP assistance at private higher education providers. These amendments are about protecting students and, in so doing, supporting the viability of the higher education sector at this incredibly challenging time.

Delivering opportunities for higher education is important to me. I was fortunate to complete two degrees concurrently, in arts and social work, at the La Trobe University campus in Mildura, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy degree at the Australian National University. My experiences at university were some of the most rewarding of my life, and I want other people to have the opportunity to discover and explore their passions, as I have. I also believe that the intrinsic value of higher education, regardless of career or financial outcomes, is often understated. The pursuit of knowledge in and of itself is something to be encouraged and celebrated. To have a well-informed mind is a great asset, regardless of the career you undertake.

The first bill, the Education Legislation Amendment (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection) Bill 2020, amends the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 and the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to implement the expansion of the Australian government's Tuition Protection Service to include domestic upfront fee paying higher education students. Tuition protection aims to ensure that students are protected and supported in the event that their provider either fails to start to provide a unit to the student on the day on which the unit was scheduled to start or ceases to provide a unit to the student on the day after the unit starts but before it's completed. The second bill, the Higher Education (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection Levy) Bill 2020, imposes the upfront payment tuition protection levy, specifies the amounts that are payable by providers and prescribes the levy components and the manner in which they will be determined each year. These changes are about protecting students, and they demonstrate the government's commitment to the higher education sector. They reduce administrative burdens for providers and ensure that higher education remains affordable and accessible even during difficult times.

I support these changes as well as the Morrison-McCormack government's higher education reforms and Job-ready Graduates Package. The government responded to calls from the higher education sector by guaranteeing Commonwealth funding for universities even if there is a fall in domestic student numbers. This guarantee totals $18 billion in funding across the sector this year, which amounts to around 50 per cent of total revenue across the sector. Providers will also benefit from regulatory fee relief so they can focus on their operations and on supporting their domestic and international students.

We are also working with the sector to help Australians upskill or retrain by rolling out short online courses for new students in fields of national priority such as teaching, health and agriculture. I spoke recently to the Vice-Chancellor of La Trobe University, Professor John Dewar, and he told me how well these courses had been taken up by students in Mildura. These short courses are heavily subsidised by the government to increase uptake, reduce costs for students and generate stimulus for education providers. I was very pleased to learn about the $251.8 million announced in the 2020 Commonwealth budget for an additional 50,000 short-course places in 2021.

We know that, as with many parts of the economy, universities and other higher education providers are facing extreme difficulties due to the outbreak of COVID-19. That's why it's so important to support higher education providers to increase their offerings and protect students at this difficult time. A highly educated, well-trained and skilful population is a key element of Australia's strength as a democratic nation and will be instrumental in our economic recovery on the other side of the coronavirus pandemic. We need highly educated minds to build, restore, innovate and grow. The delivery of priority infrastructure projects announced in this year's budget, the Technology Investment Roadmap in the energy sector and the implementation of the Modern Manufacturing Strategy will deliver enormous economic benefits to the country. That is why it is so important that the government, through measures such as those contained in these bills, supports the higher education sector to provide more opportunities for students and make it easier for students to take up these opportunities.

There is also an ever-growing need for healthcare professionals, especially in regional areas such as the electorate of Mallee, and the current crisis has laid bare the extent of that need. Delivering sufficient healthcare service provision for Mallee is a key priority for me. In Mallee we face shortages of general practitioners, nurses, and primary and allied health professionals. In 2017, the Victorian Skills Commissioner completed work in the northern half of my electorate to identify the future workforce demands of the region. The Mallee regional skills demand profile estimated that between 2017 and 2020 up to 4,400 new workers would be needed to support growth in the region. The report identified that almost one-quarter of these workers would be needed in the healthcare sector. Work has commenced to refresh this skills profile for 2020. I hope the new report shows that we have met this identified need, as I expect the future demand for the next five, 10 and 15 years will be just as great, if not greater, than in the preceding few years.

It's been incredibly encouraging that La Trobe University has been investing in regional health qualifications through a number of initiatives to meet the expected demand. Over the past 30 years La Trobe has become integral to the Mallee community. Eighty-seven per cent of the students who graduate from the Mildura campus stay and work locally, and there are around 1,600 La Trobe graduates working in the region. The importance of this university to our region cannot be understated. The changes made by the Commonwealth government to give greater flexibility to the use of Commonwealth supported places for postgraduate courses were welcomed by Professor Dewar and La Trobe University. These changes meant that La Trobe University was able to offer a number of online postgraduate health courses to regional areas, with Commonwealth supported places attached, resulting in extensively subsidised costs. The following month Rebecca Crossling from the La Trobe Mildura campus told me that eight staff at the Mildura Base Hospital had applied for a Master of Mental Health Nursing, with a further four applying for a Masters of Mental Health. Simple initiatives like these show how the government has supported universities to provide more opportunities, making life easier for students at the same time, thereby improving outcomes for the local community.

La Trobe is also doing fantastic work with their rural medical pathway program in partnership with the University of Melbourne. This program is the first to commence as part of the Murray-Darling Medical Schools Network, an initiative announced in the 2018 Commonwealth budget. Under this program 15 students from regional and rural areas begin their studies at La Trobe's Bendigo or Albury-Wodonga campuses, and undertake a three-year Bachelor of Biomedical Science degree before going on to study a four-year Doctor of Medicine at the University of Melbourne's Shepparton campus.

The Murray-Darling Medical Schools Network is one part of a $95 million investment to set up the 'train in the regions, stay in the regions' program. The guiding logic behind this program is to train locally to stay locally. We know that people from a regional city or town who learn in a regional place have the best possible chance of graduating and staying in the regions to work. There are seven Mallee students undertaking this program in 2020. They are: Alfred, Isabella, Abdo, Abigail, Kunind, Madeline and Oscar. When I met these students virtually, they all indicated they aspire to work in regional and rural areas after completing their studies. Alfred, who was born in India, says he wants to travel Australia, working in remote communities, ultimately returning to Mildura to work locally. Kunind wants to pursue a career in craniofacial surgery and hopes to bring this area of medicine to areas such as rural Victoria. This is a fantastic example of what can happen when we support higher education providers to increase their offerings and make it easier for students to take up these opportunities. There are more reasons why higher education is important for Mallee.

Recently I spoke about the need to improve access to vocational education and training opportunities to meet the rising need for skilled local jobs in Mallee due to a number of emerging industries with massive growth potential. In Mallee we have seen extensive investment and growth in solar energy. We are becoming increasingly reliant on new technologies, like artificial intelligence and robotics in agriculture and horticulture, and we are pushing for more value driven invasion and value-adding manufacturing.

There is no reason why Mallee can't be a leader for 21st century innovation, but bright minds will be required to lead these developments into the future. Again, the train local, stay local approach will be crucial to support this growth and development. I'm eager to see increased opportunities to be offered in STEM degrees in regional areas, similar to what we have seen with the Murray-Darling Medical Schools Network and the rural medical pathway program by La Trobe and the University of Melbourne. Supporting higher education providers to increase their offerings and make it easier for students to take up opportunities will improve outcomes for regional areas and will help places like Mallee meet their full potential. That's what the government aims to do with the changes outlined in these bills, and that's why I support their passage. I hope that we will continue to see further developments in higher education policy that work towards these regional goals.

Mr GEORGANAS (Adelaide) (19:23): I rise to talk about the Education Legislation Amendment (Up-Front Payments Tuition Protection) Bill 2020 and Higher Education (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection Levy) Bill 2020 and amendments. Labor won't oppose these bills, as we heard earlier. The member for Sydney, in her speech to the chamber, was saying that in November last year she wrote to the education minister to ask him to consider exactly these changes. She voiced her concerns and outlined what the changes were and I suppose we are pleased that this particular tinkering with the education policies happened, ensuring that it will streamline some of the things that we've been talking about here tonight. It may have taken about 10 months, but we're pleased that the government has come around to legislating to tie up these loose ends and we welcome the practical effect. These changes will create simpler arrangements for students and processes for decision-making, student placements and loan recrediting.

More broadly, while we welcome these tweaks to the tuition protection scheme, we also have to consider this in light of this government's policies that have been put through—last week we saw a particular bill go through—and the detriment that this will have on Australia's higher education system. For months now we've been urging the federal government to step in and help universities save some of their jobs. I heard one of the members opposite saying that they didn't meet the benchmarks for assistance. Well, since this pandemic started, 12,000 jobs have been lost across the country in this sector, with thousands more predicted to go before Christmas. When you have an industry or an area where 12,000 jobs have gone and there are more to go before Christmas, if it were any other sector, whether it be mining, resources or manufacturing, there would be an outcry and the government would step in. So we cannot see the reasons why the higher education sector is not receiving the support that it deserves from this government. We want to make that point, and I want to urge the government to perhaps think about stepping in and doing something for universities to try to assist them. They are the fourth-largest exporter of this nation. They bring millions into the country. They educate the youth of this country and they're building a better Australia for the next generation.

With the COVID-19 pandemic we've seen universities working brilliantly to try to come up with a vaccine. We're relying on our brilliant universities and their researchers to find a vaccine for COVID-19. Unfortunately, they can't rely on this government for a bit of assistance to save their sector. We know that Australia's going to require an additional approximately 3.8 million university qualifications by 2025, yet, when it comes to higher education and the education system, this government's priority is always to cut.

What we saw in the bill that went through this place last week was that this government wants to make it more expensive for students to get a degree or to achieve their higher education aspirations. The job-ready graduates bill makes students pay more for their degrees, and thousands of students around the country will pay more than double for the same qualifications. It cuts billions from the sector while doing nothing to help young people get into higher-priority courses and jobs. What we're doing is the Americanisation of our education system, where how deep your pocket is determines the degree you get and what sort of education you're going to receive. We're going down that track, and that is wrong.

Education should be for everyone regardless of your background, regardless of which side of the tracks you come from, where your neighbourhood is or what your post code is. Education is one of the magic levers that governments have to encourage people to go to universities and to turn their lives around. If you want to make someone's life better, if you want to get someone out of poverty, the best way to do it is through education, and we have a duty as legislators and members of parliament—and the government has a duty—to try to better the lives of Australians that perhaps aren't as fortunate as the many in this place who went to university. I must add the majority went for free when that was introduced by Gough Whitlam.

We have to give the opportunities to the next generations of Australians, those that perhaps are doing it tough because of their family circumstances or for whatever reason. We have to try to encourage and assist those people, and we know that one of the best levers that exists to change someone's life is education. Governments should be making it easier and encouraging people to attend universities, not making it harder by increasing fees, by not supporting the system or by having continuous cuts to the sector. It is really important that we encourage people to get a university degree or to aspire to higher education. We know that, the higher your education, the more likely you are not to be unemployed.

Debate interrupted.