Speech to the 8th annual higher education summit

‘Visions for implementing the review and developing Australia's tertiary sector after the next election'

Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted to have the opportunity to address you this morning.

The Coalition welcomed Professor Denise Bradley's review into higher education nearly 18 months ago now.

I'd like to first start off by acknowledging the contribution the Review has made to the higher education debate.

The Bradley Review has offered us a variety of vibrant and challenging recommendations for reform.

It has thrown out challenges that will test the educational leadership of this government and universities. It will not just stimulate debate in the next few years, but for a whole generation ahead.

The key points to emerge from the recommendations made by the panel and Professor Bradley include:

• That investment in education is the key to Australia's future;
• That there should be greater emphasis on access for students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds (namely the ambitious target for 20% participation from low SES students by the year 2020).
• And that in order to meet the above target a deregulated system in necessary.

I will go into each of these points in more detail this morning, outlining the challenges each of these three recommendations pose for both the sector and government. I also wish to outline the Coalition's vision as to how we can take steps to achieve these strategic objectives.

INVESTMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

First I would like to talk about investment in education as being a key to Australia's future.

The former Coalition's investment in education over its eleven years in Government was remarkable, and made possible because of sustained growth in the economy.

Its growth reflected reforms undertaken by the Commonwealth which led to one of the most rapid increases in productivity in Australia's history.

University revenues from all sources, public and private showed growth.

In reflecting on what needs to be done in the future, it's useful to look back and remind ourselves of the lessons learnt in the past.

Working together with universities, we increased opportunities for domestic fee paying students, increased marginal funding for above load places, and enhanced participation by private sector organisations and continued support for the international student market- and the response was phenomenal.

In simple expenditure terms the Howard Government maintained its investment in public universities not just with respect to HECS but other forms of grants – but most importantly we gave universities the freedom they needed to set out to develop more diverse and sustainable funding bases.

The challenge for a new Coalition Government will in many ways be no different; we will have to once again pay off the rapidly accumulating debt being racked up by this new Labor Government.

If elected we will once again be challenged to assess whether resources are being used to greatest effect, while asking once again if universities are being provided with the expanded opportunities they need to attract revenue.

While the strategic objectives of lifting investment, participation, and responsiveness outlined in the review offer us a blueprint, a Coalition Government policy expression of these objectives would vary markedly, just has it has in the past, from the Australian Labor Party.

Take full fee paying places as an example.

It will come as no surprise to you, as I have been very clear about this having repeated it now on a number of occasions, that a Coalition government would restore full fee paying places.

By abolishing full-fee paying places for Australiana students, the Rudd Government directly undermined the capacity of universities to keep an important stream of revenue.

It contradicts the spirit of the Bradley Review, which points to the need for universities to be able to flexibly respond to demand by offering a mix of places.

Labor's ideological approach is incomprehensible – Australian students are denied the opportunity to pay for their own education, but the option is still available to overseas students.

Julia Gillard argues that full-fee paying places allow some students to buy their way into a university place, where for example a student might just fall short of the score to get into his or her chosen course. Nothing prevents such a student who just falls short of the entrance score for a HECS place from instead going overseas to study by paying full fees.

A Coalition Government would move to toward the objective of creating a sustainable solution for universities – by giving freedom back to universities to increase their revenue from private sources.

So now, let's turn our attention to Government funding.

Announced in the Howard Government's last budget, the Higher Education Endowment Fund was established as a perpetual fund for the sector with an initial contribution of $6 billion dollars, followed later by an additional $1billion.

The interest earnt from this fund was to be distributed to finance new projects on a competitive basis, without touching the capital.

Then Labor rebadged the fund and called it the ‘Education Investment Fund' in its 2008-2009 Budget. You will of course recall it was to be supplemented with additional funds of $5 billion dollars, taking the total to $11 billion.

As with all this Government's announcements, on the surface these plans sound promising, but the devil is in the detail.

Here we are, nearing the end of the Government's first term and we find out that as of February this year, no other contributions have been made as promised. Revealed at the last senate estimates the fund stood at $5.998 billion – but some $3.9 billion worth of projects have already been committed.

This leaves a grand total of approximately $2 billion left in the fund, a far cry from the Coalition's $6 billion in its last Budget.

What was intended to be a long term investment for higher education has turned out to be a political slush fund, with some projects not even higher education related.

But, there is hope. A Coalition Government will move once again, to bring back this fund to what it was intended for. We will commit to long-term investment, not merely a short-term spend until there is nothing left.

INCREASING PARTICIPATION

So now let's move on to perhaps the one of the most ambitious recommendations, arguably THE most ambitious recommendation in the Bradley review. This is that Government allow a national target to be set so that by 2020, 20 percent of higher education enrolments at undergraduate level are people from low socio-economic backgrounds.

The Coalition recognises that we need to ensure that there is continuing development in the opportunities for people to realise their potential, by taking their education to the highest possible level.

We need to ensure that universities can realise these goals and are able to be responsive to meeting student needs.

Achieving national objectives in relation to access requires a range of responses from universities themselves and from government.

While the Coalition agrees with the Government's goal of increasing participation by students from lower socio-economic backgrounds in higher education, we believe the way they are attempting to achieve this is flawed.

The evidence suggests that at present every Australian who wants to obtain higher education and meets all the academic prerequisites is able to find a place at university.

So SUPPLY is not the problem, and attempts to increase the participation by encouraging universities to increase their supply of places is flawed policy and likely to disappoint the proponents of the current approach.

The Coalition believes that we should focus our efforts on increasing the demand for higher education places among students from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

And we have to start early – in our primary and secondary schools. By the time young people finish grade 12 it is often too late, at least in the short term, to convince them of the merits of pursuing further education if their whole schooling experience thus far has not prepared them for that option.

What has been indicated from overseas experience and research is that if you want to increase the participation of people in higher education, we need to improve educational attainment beginning from primary school.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development assessment of student performance in schools reveals that countries that attract more students to higher education from low socio economic backgrounds have substantially greater principal autonomy and local independence at the school level. They have the capacity to adapt and implement educational content and/or allocating and managing resources.

The more independent the school, the more the school is focussed on the school community, the more parents are engaged, the more autonomy the principal has to determine the direction of the school, the better the outcome for the school.

Many schools are shackled by bureaucracy and red-tape. A Coalition Government will cut the shackles and allow principals and school governing councils the independence they need to take direct action in their communities. We believe that this will result in a better education for students.

I note with interest that this year the Rudd Government has entered into interim agreements with each of the universities before entering into full “mission-based compact agreements” that include performance targets for 2011.

In particular, I note that the compacts aim to set performance targets for each institution in relation to participation by students from under-represented groups.

My primary concern is that with ‘compacts' there may be the potential for the Commonwealth to hold back funding because of failure to meet so-called ‘performance targets' including targets for low SES students. This move seems to shackle the sector to the policy objectives of centralised Canberra bureaucrats and politicians.

As the very spirit of Bradley encompasses deregulating the current system, I do have my reservations about these compacts.

But I look forward to engaging with all of you in the coming months on this issue, to hear your feedback on how the interim compacts have fared – and your thoughts about the performance indicators in the future compacts.

I recognise that the diversity of the sector inevitably produces a wide range of views, and I do hope that the process of trying to reach consensus on the nature and direction of these ‘compacts' is done constructively and fruitfully.

So while the Coalition agrees with the aim of the government to increase participation, I believe the priority is to commit ourselves as a nation to inspire each child to believe they can make the successful transition from school to post-school life, and this not only be required of universities.

FUTURE CHALLENGES – DERULGULATION

Let me finish by talking about deregulation of the higher education system.

The Bradley review explicitly recognised the need for a framework for higher education which challenges universities to meet the needs of students and the wider business sector; to be responsive, with movement towards a student-demand driven system being a centrepiece.

As the Government responds to the challenge of moving toward a student-demand driven system, it is critical the universities themselves remain, as they have always been, the key custodians of academic activity.

While we recognise that Labor have taken the first step towards ending the overly prescriptive method of government dictating the number of places a university can offer in the future, this is only the first step towards a true student-demand driven system.

As many higher education experts and commentators have noted, there are plenty more options to be considered to deregulate the system even further. One idea suggested by the Group of Eight is to not only uncap places, but to relax price caps as well.

So the review in one sense is just the beginning, and now is the time to plan the next steps for the complex reform needed to truly transform the system.

Governments can and should facilitate change, and provide what it judges an appropriate level of public resources, but it will continue to be the universities themselves who will make the critical judgements about their discipline mixes and priorities to meet demand.

CONCLUSION

So to return to my earlier comments, the Bradley review presents many challenges – and these challenges amount to meeting and implementing even further change.

The Coalition will rise to the challenge of returning to universities the freedom they need to set out to develop diverse and sustainable funding sources.

We understand the short term and long term challenges facing Australia's higher education system. That is why the Coalition is committed to long-term, ongoing reform of the sector aimed at giving students more choice and universities more freedom and flexibility to compete with the rest of the world and take advantage of new opportunities

The Coalition is also committed to providing the higher education sector with a stable, long term source of infrastructure funding.

We will provide students with greater assistance in order to increase participation and equity in higher education, but we know that change needs to occur right from the primary school level to facilitate more participation from children from low socio-economic backgrounds to entering higher education. We can't solely hold universities to account – it's a continuum and with that I leave you with our commitment that improving education at all levels continues to be our vision.

Thank you.