Transcript - Press conference
JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: Today's an important day. This morning, I introduced legislation to establish a National Student Ombudsman, and while I introduced the bill, the real reason this is happening are the brave women that stand behind me here. The truth is, they're the driving force, they're the reason that this change is happening.
University should be, and usually is, a wonderful experience. A place where we get the skills and the qualifications that we need to succeed, to do the jobs that we're all doing now, and a place where we make new friends. A life-changing experience. Sometimes it can be a terrifying place where the worst happens.
The evidence is clear, it's been clear for a long time. Survey results show that one in 20 students at university have been sexually assaulted. One in six sexually harassed. And when the worst happens, too many of those students are let down by the system. The system has failed them. One in two students say that they weren't heard by their universities, that there was no response. That's now about to change and that's the purpose of this new National Student Ombudsman.
I'll talk to you a little bit, if you like, about the details about how it will work and how it will operate but I really want you to hear from Sharna and from Renee and from Camille and Allison and from my friend, Senator Nita Green, who has been one of the driving forces here within the building to make this day a reality. Can I hand over to the people who are really responsible for this day in Parliament House.
ALLISON HENRY: Thank you, Minister. Hi, my name is Allison Henry. I'm a research fellow at the University of NSW. With my colleagues here, we've been working on this issue for close to a decade. We've had a lot of trouble over the years trying to get traction on this issue in this building, and we're so delighted to be here today to see this bill introduced and to see the reforms that the Government is introducing.
There are many people we would like to thank. First and foremost, of course, Minister Clare and the Attorney for supporting this bill and the many very dedicated public servants in the two Departments who have brought it together. Renee will talk in a moment about the second element of the bill and the overall National Action Plan. But for us, this is a game changer, and we'd like to thank everyone who has supported us. Many people in this building over the last 12 to 18 months have really, really helped us in terms of building the momentum for today and we just wanted to say thank you to the Senators, including Senator Green, and many others in this building who have really finally taken onboard the evidence that has been in place for a very long time.
SHARNA BREMNER: My name's Sharna and I'm the founder and director of End Rape on Campus Australia and as Alli said, we've been working on this issue for a decade. But students across the country have been working to feel safe on campuses for 50 years and this is a huge game changer, as Alli mentioned. We couldn't be more grateful to Minister Clare and Senator Green and so many other people in this building that have helped us to get here today. But mostly this belongs to the student survivors who have spent years, fighting to be safe and fighting for educations that are free from violence. And without them, we wouldn't be here today. So this is a huge day, and this will mean that the world is a little bit safer for our campuses today.
RENEE CARR: Universities have been failing victim survivors of rape for too long. For years, survivors, students, and advocates have been calling for a system that will deliver transparency, oversight, and accountability for universities who put student safety at risk, and we're thrilled that the National Student Ombudsman will start to deliver that. It's the first step in a transformative plan through the action plan to finally make students safe on campus. We're thrilled about this first step in historic reform that will finally address student safety and wellbeing and support victim-survivors of sexual assault on campus.
CAMILLE SCHLOEFFEL: Hi, my name is Camille and I'm the founder of the STOP Campaign and all I really want to add is that it shouldn't have taken us to share our experiences of sexual violence for years and years and years, trying to get university leaders to do something. But I'm just so grateful that this is the first step for actual change, and this has just been a massive collective effort, so just thanks to everyone.
SENATOR NITA GREEN: Thank you. Well, this really is an historic day and historic reform, and it will make students safer on campus. I'm really pleased and proud to be standing in front of these women who are so brave and have fought for so long for something that really is a very simple idea - that when someone is sexually assaulted or sexually harassed on campus that they have somewhere to go, that they have someone to listen. And that's what this will do.
I just go back to the words that Jason shared this morning about the 2021 Student Survey which had shocking statistics in it. But the most shocking statistic, I think, that I heard was that one in two students that come forward and seek advice and seek a complaint resolution felt like they weren't heard. And that's why we need this independent, impartial Ombudsman to deal with these types of complaints.
We set up a Senate inquiry in 2022 and we went all around the country and it was really clear through that Senate inquiry campaign that there was a question to be asked of universities and the way that they had approached this question and approached these advocates behind us and the way that they had treated students for many, many years. I'm really proud that the work that we did through that Senate inquiry led to a unanimous recommendation that we establish a National Student Ombudsman, but it would not have happened without the women standing behind me today. I'm so proud to have met them and to have worked with them and I'm really, really, you know, just indebted to the evidence that they brought forward, which was raw and painful but important to share.
The other thing I think is important to say today, and I know our advocates have said this, is I am just really indebted to Minister Clare. It's not easy to always bring these ideas forward. Ministers have a lot on their plate, but this was never something that Jason shied away from, and he has listened to the women behind me, to the women outside this building, and to the people who wanted to make sure that we had a lasting reform that would make a difference to students. So I want to say thank you to you, Minister. It's been incredible working with you on this.
The thing that struck me throughout this process, and when universities came forward, they - we gave them the statistics about what was happening on their campuses and there was a view that if those statistics were the same as what was happening outside of campus, then actually that was okay. But we want to end rape on campus. We don't think anyone should be sexually assaulted or sexually harassed on campus and what this does today is it sends a very clear message that that is the expectation from our government.
Thanks again to the women behind me. I think you're so brave. I'm not going to cry. I have already cried today but thank you very much for being here.
JOURNALIST: For Sharna, Allison, Renee, and Camille, you know, as you said, you've been fighting for this for such a long time. How does it feel today to see this introduced to the House and to have that work acknowledged?
HENRY: It’s pretty awesome. It's awesome to be here today. We were very excited in February when the Action Plan was announced. But to actually see the first piece of legislation, and we've been working our way through the various provisions today, we're really excited that many of the issues that we've been raising for the last decade are addressed in the bill and we're really looking forward to seeing the National Code, which is coming in the next couple of months.
JOURNALIST: Just a question for the Minister. Obviously you've been heavily invested in this yourself and there's still a bit more work to go on the Code. Can you tell us when we can expect to see a bit more about that and how that's taking shape?
CLARE: It's not about me. It's about a system that's failed and that we've got to fix. Universities haven't done enough, and Governments haven't done enough and that's what this is about addressing, and there's two parts to this. There's the legislation that we introduced today to establish the Ombudsman, which, subject to passing through the Parliament, will be established in February of next year. But the second part of that, as you rightly point out, is establishing a national code for universities on gender-based violence that sets standards that we expect universities to meet and to ensure that when the Ombudsman sets recommendations for universities that they're implemented. And so, we released today a summary of what that code will look like. We're still consulting with the universities as well as with the sector, in particular with organisations like STOP and End Rape on Campus and Fair Agenda to make sure that we get that right. And what I'm hoping to do is to introduce legislation to put that code into practice before the end of the year.
JOURNALIST: Can I just ask anyone who wants to share their experience in as much detail or as little detail as you would like, that they feel comfortable doing, that underpin why we need such a student ombudsman or how universities failed?
BREMNER: What students are going through is living on campus, being sexually assaulted, they're living next door to the person who raped them, they're reporting it to a staff member at the university. The university tells them there's nothing they can do about it, so they're basically living next door and going to class with the person that violated them in the worst possible way, and that is a very common experience and it's basically not good enough. So, it's not really about sharing my own personal experience, but I can absolutely attest to how traumatic and harmful that university responses are after an experience and that what a lot of people are saying is that after they report, their experience is so much worse, that they wish they never told their university in the first place.
JOURNALIST: What does recourse and justice look like for you guys?
HENRY: I think recourse and justice for the students that we support looks like being able to complete their education successfully. It looks like not dropping out of your degree because somebody sexually assaulted you, and it looks like having a university that provides you with the emotional support, but also the academic support that you need to succeed in your degree.
JOURNALIST: Minister, can you maybe speak to if there will be any consequences for the universities who have sort of been found to not respond appropriately. Obviously, I guess, the Ombudsman is the regulatory body, but will there be more consequences or punishments for universities who fail in their response?
CLARE: The first part of that is what the Ombudsman can do. Number one, is to investigate what's happened. Two, to be able to bring the universities to the table to work out how universities should respond, and so Sharna mentioned the support that's needed for students to complete their education, whether that's the academic or wraparound support that a student needs to be able to complete their education. I won't pre-empt what the Ombudsman can recommend, but they could recommend a suite of things to make sure that, for example, the perpetrator of the rape isn't living in the same dormitory as the person that they raped, or in the same tute or in the same classroom or same lecture theatre. But also one of the things that the university can and should provide to support the victim of sexual assault, or sexual harassment, at their university to not have to leave, to not have to give up on their education. So there's - that's the first part of it.
It's that constructive work between the Ombudsman and the university and the victim to try to be able to – set things right is the wrong word, but to be able to address the situation that the victim of this horrible crime finds themselves in at university. And then the second point to Claudia's question was about a national code that sets standards for universities. And that will include penalties if universities don't implement the recommendations of the Ombudsman. We’ll set what those penalties will be in that legislation when we introduce it hopefully later this year.
JOURNALIST: Minister, I can see the emotion on your face. This is obviously massive for you. Can you tell me how important it was for you to get this in place, not just putting in place but also to get it right?
CLARE: I don't want to be the focus of this story. I can introduce the legislation but it's not about political grandstanding. Please don't make it about that. I know you're not doing that. I want students to be safe at university. I want more students to be able to go to university. I want people to feel like this is their place.
JOURNALIST: Maybe I can ask the wonderful students how important is it that this legislation is implemented properly on the first go rather than some pretend and half-baked and have to be continuously reformed by whichever education minister comes in the future?
SCHLOEFFEL: I think the Action Plan that has been agreed to by every Education Minister is going to be transformative for student safety outcomes, both making sure that we have higher standards through the national code that education providers can be held to, and that students will know what they should be able to expect from their provider. And then critically through the National Student Ombudsman, being able to make sure that that code is being enforced and met and, critically, that students have somewhere to complain to if they're being failed by their provider.
Right now, there's nowhere with for students to get a meaningful response and ensure that their complaint will actually be investigated and addressed. So I think the key outcome today is that students will be safer and that's to the credit of the countless victim-survivors who have bravely spoken up and called for better over decades.
HENRY: Can I just add that two provisions that are in this bill, two sets of provisions in this bill are around reporting and reprisals and we're really welcoming those particular provisions. Up until now, it's been incredibly difficult to track what is going on in universities. They tend, as institutions, to be reputational sensitive and not really want to actually put forward what their reporting rates are. It's changed a little bit in the last couple of years, but it has been a real struggle for over the last decade. And we’ve really struggled to find out what sort of complaints data has been going through TEQSA, the higher education regulator. So there's some provisions in this bill that actually require the National Student Ombudsman to regularly report on the complaints that it's receiving and the recommendations that they've made and how universities are actually implementing those recommendations, and we really welcome those provisions.
The other set of provisions that we are really pleased to see are some provisions around protection from reprisal. Too often we've heard from students who have attempted to report what's happened to them, whether that be sexual assault or sexual harassment on their university campus, and they've suffered reprisals. They've had difficulties in terms of their marking or in terms of their educational system. And we're really pleased to see those reprisal provisions in this act because that's a really major step forward.
BREMNER: Can I just quickly add – just to go to your question about what this means for students to get this right the first time. Universities have had a really long time to get this right and we will all say that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and this will bring this issue out into the sun properly for the first time ever. So for students to get this right the first time, to make sure the legislation is as tight as it can be, is absolutely critical and, I said to the Minister before, this is the kind of thing that changes the world. So getting it right the first time is really, really important.
JOURNALIST: Can we ask about separate topics on universities, is that okay?
CLARE: Can I just, before we leave that, I do want to use this opportunity, again, just to thank you, Claudia. I know it's unusual. Sharna, you talked about sunlight and Claudia, you've been part of that sunlight. The media plays a really important role in this country in shining a light on sometimes the darkest corners of or country and terrible things that have happened and putting the acid on people like me to make sure that we do the right thing. Didn't take much for me to understand how important this is and the need to act, but you're our proof and reminder to all of us here of the power of journalism to change things for the good and to change people's lives for the better. So I just wanted to put that on the record for us today, on behalf of all of us.
JOURNALIST: There's more questions to come, so don't worry.
CLARE: No, no, and they need to keep coming. But we just need to stop sometimes to remember why this is happening today and who have helped to make it happen.
JOURNALIST: Minister, we're expecting a pretty strong speech today from the head of the Universities Australia, what's your response to that? Do you think universities are overreacting to the caps you put in place on international students?
CLARE: I haven't heard the speech yet. I've got nothing but respect for David Lloyd. I think he's an outstanding Vice-Chancellor and a great leader of Universities Australia. What we're doing with the caps, though, is returning international student numbers for universities back to last year's numbers. That's all. And I've made the point on a number of occasions, that as a Government we're committed to returning migration levels in Australia to pre-pandemic levels. If we're going to do that, part of that is returning international student numbers to pre-pandemic levels. That's what these settings do. But they help to manage the system in a better and a fairer way.
Our universities don't run the migration system in Australia, a government should. This will help us to do that. But also to make sure that we're managing what is a really important asset for Australia. International education that makes us money, makes us friends, makes sure that we do it in a way that protects it's integrity, and I will underline that point because there is so much evidence of people exploiting that system that needs to be stamped out. It also protects community support for it. And that's what this legislation is about.
JOURNALIST: Do you see these caps for international students as now part of the permanent infrastructure of Australia’s education system or is it temporary measure while we have high migration? [Indistinct].
CLARE: My intent is for it to be permanent, but I have flagged in debate in the Parliament and in conversations most recently at the AFR conference, that when we establish an Australian Tertiary Education Commission, that will act as a steward for long-term reform of higher education over the next decade and beyond, that I see them as the steward of this system, to help to set in place, not just numbers for Australian students, but numbers for international students as well. That may be just a point where we've just got to keep reminding ourselves what the chief mission and purpose of our universities is - to educate more Australians, to make sure that we hit those targets that the Universities Accord talks about.
This Ombudsman is one of those recommendations. Another is that by the middle of this century we have a workforce where 80 per cent of Australians have a uni degree or a TAFE qualification. And if we're going to do that, that means more young Australians getting a crack at going to uni. Particularly from our outer suburbs, particularly from the bush and from the regions, and there are some universities that are educating about the same number of Aussies today as they were a decade ago, but many more international students.
So, the reforms that we're introducing to the Parliament – we've got a bit on at the moment: wiping HECS debt, introducing paid prac, uncapping those FEE-FREE Uni Ready courses to give the people the skills they need to do a degree. But there's more to come: the Tertiary Education Commission, a managed growth system to grow the number of students at university, and a needs-based system to provide the wraparound support for students from poor backgrounds, from the bush, to succeed when they get to university. That's all about the chief mission of what our universities should be and must be about: helping to make sure that we educate the next generation of Australians.
SPEAKER: Sorry, that first question is about the response. So I just wanted to [indistinct] from Universities Australia that accused the government of wilfully weakening [indistinct] over migration.
CLARE: It's the same answer. I've been pretty clear about why we're doing this, which is about returning migration to those pre-pandemic levels. I haven't hidden that point, and this is a big part of that. And that the Australian Government runs the migration system, not the universities.
JOURNALIST: So, Minister, most of the attention has been on the universities, but there is also a very large vocational sector which has been given a much smaller quota of numbers. Among those, I understand a lot of the nefarious activity has been in the VET sector but there are very high quality providers. A listed ASX company called NextEd just put out a release this morning saying that its quota of students is half of what they were last year, and I'm just watching the share price dive at the moment on the live ASX. So what do you say to companies like NextEd and other private providers that have potential of going out of business as a result of these caps?
CLARE: I haven't seen that story, so I hesitate to comment until I've seen more details on that. It's the same answer, which is that international education is important, we've got to protect its integrity, we've got to protect community support for it. As part of returning migration to pre-pandemic levels, it involves returning international education to those pre-pandemic levels as well. You rightly point out that for universities it will be higher than pre-pandemic levels and in the VET sector it will be lower.
What the bill in the Parliament does is provide us with the mechanism to set those levels and then the Department has put in place a methodology for how that will work. But, as we talked about at that conference, the AFR conference recently, Julie, it's not right to say that it's a free-for-all at the moment. There is a de facto cap setting that's in place at the moment, which is throttling the system right now, which is restricting visas or slowing the visa process. It's helping some universities significantly and hurting other providers significantly as well.
The origins of this are universities coming to me early this year saying “can you put in place a better system, a fairer system?” And you see from the information that the Department released last Friday, that this does provide a fairer way of allocating these places across the sector.
JOURNALIST: Is it really fair? Can you actually stand behind that bizarre calculation that we've all seen and say that it is fair and that some universities are - regional universities are getting 700 places where they only had 236 last year? I mean, that doesn't sound fair. That sounds like some sort of engineering?
CLARE: Have a look at the methodology that the Department has put in place. Some of those universities had many more than that pre-pandemic. Some of the universities are saying we would have liked more, and that you're saying have got too much. These are universities that might have had a couple of thousand in 2019 and then over the course of the pandemic, and then as recently as this year, are in the hundreds. And then this builds that back.
I don't accept this argument that we are artificially telling students to go from a Group of Eight university to a regional university. These regional universities had many more international students pre-pandemic, but the pandemic has had an impact on them, the way Ministerial Direction 107 has had an impact on them as well. And if they don't fill that total number, then the reallocation process will even that out.
The key thing here is there's already a system in place that is throttling that, that is hurting those universities. If the bill passes the Senate, then Ministerial Direction 107 will go, once it's assented to by the Governor-General, and then that will provide the opportunity for the Department of Home Affairs to process those visas quickly up to that level.
JOURNALIST: But the regional unis enrol their students in city campuses, so that doesn't have any impact particularly on reducing the, you know, housing demand.
CLARE: What it does, in first instance, is help us to meet that net overseas migration number. The legislation also allows us to set caps for individual locations, and we foreshadowed that we intend to do that when we set levels for the year 2026.
JOURNALIST: Just one quick one. There's some universities that have already sent out offers to international students ahead of the cap. Do you think that that was particularly responsible, and what's the message to students who are now worried that they could be getting a retraction?
JOURNALIST: Or have had it cancelled, their offer.
CLARE: By who?
JOURNALIST: Their university -
CLARE: By which university?
JOURNALIST: I haven't got a specific university, I'm just saying those students, as the caps have changed, to particular universities and a student has had their offer withdrawn. What do you say to those students who have had their studies cancelled?
CLARE: Many universities have been through that process of putting out offers and now they're accepting applications. Key thing is to be able to let them process those enrolments as quickly as possible. That's why certainty is necessary. I hope that we get the bill passed by the Senate sooner rather than later. Then we can take Ministerial Direction 107 off. That's important for universities as well.
Some universities have expressed concern to me that the definition of enrolment in the legislation might mean that they will enrol students up to that level, but perhaps 10 per cent won't turn up for one reason or another, and how do we make sure that they can continue to enrol up to that cap. So there are concerns that universities have expressed to me that are the reverse of that, not that they might have to reject somebody but that they might have somebody reject their application, and they don't get to enrol people up to the number that they've got. So there's a couple of different things that we're looking at right now to make sure that the legislation enables universities to enrol right up to that number.
JOURNALIST: Do you think it was responsible, though, to send out those offers knowing that this cap was coming but not knowing what it was?
CLARE: Universities put out offers as early as the start of this year and I understand that. Universities have asked for certainty. They want to know what their levels are as soon as possible, that's why I brought that forward from August instead of September. But it was important to put together a process inside the Department to identify the methodology for how we set that up.