Transcript - Q&A

JOURNALIST: Giving a second [indistinct] before I dive in. Hi everyone, I'm [indistinct] education correspondent. Thank you for your address, Minister, and for making the time to be here today, especially on a sitting day. We don't have a lot of time, so I'll jump straight in. 

One of the things you just mentioned in your speech was teaching standards, and specifically the fact that unlike schools there's no mandated accreditation for university teachers, [indistinct] tutors or [indistinct] or any of the many barriers that we see in universities. Do you see that as a problem, should there be a standard? 

CLARE: First, congratulations on the new gig.

JOURNALIST: Yeah. 

CLARE: Big congratulations. In this job I get to visit lots of universities, particularly cut ribbons, open new buildings, walk through buildings. I've got to tell you, in all of the last four years doing that, in none of those buildings have I opened a new lecture theatre. 

The way university works is changing, I'm telling you something that you already know. So that the way you teach is different. It's not someone at the front talking to a big crowd like we are today, it's more intimate, it's in classrooms, it's multi-disciplinary, it's online. It's all changing, and this was something that the Accord picked up, it had a bunch of recommendations here about how we might do this better. 

And this is not something sort of top down from a Minister saying we must do this, this is emerging out of conversations with academics themselves, with unions, with students, with universities about how we might do this better. 

And so that's why the ATEC Commission needs to do its work. I flagged that at the [indistinct] conference earlier this year, we've now got this as a report. 

What I'm hoping out of today is that everybody gets a chance to read it, and give me, give Barney and the team at the ATEC some feedback on it. I think the ATEC is going to settle the working group to work through what the report suggests and recommends. 

What I'm not going to do today is tell a group of people who live and work in the sector every single day how this should work, but to seek your advice, because Liz is a very eminent Australian, and she hasn't done this work in isolation. As I read her report, I could see that she had done this in close collaboration, working with people in this room. 

So now I think I've got an opportunity to hear from people in this room over the next few weeks and months.

JOURNALIST: So there you go. I know that you said you're not going to spell out exactly what this would look like and we're going to have those conversations, but I'm going to try to ask you anyway.  Could it be something like, you know, will university tutors have to have a degree in the future? 

CLARE: The report doesn't say that. But in my remarks I talked about some of the recommendations there. It does talk about whether there would be some type of accreditation standards or professional development models. This should be about supporting universities, not creating artificial barriers that make it harder to have the team at university to do the work that happens there. 

So the report comes out today, I'm really keen to hear what people have to say. 

JOURNALIST: So watch this space? 

CLARE: Yeah.  

JOURNALIST: Turning now to managed growth, which you also raised managed growth and [indistinct] funding from Parliament. 

CLARE: Yeah. 

JOURNALIST: And you also in your speech [indistinct] Barney Glover, the ATEC chief [indistinct] soon, but you did acknowledge in your speech that this is a universally popular bill, and you specifically mentioned the Liberal Party's comments. There's also a lot of concerns in the sector. Probably the main ones that I've seen emerge from some of the inquiries to the Senate, sorry, submissions to the Senate [indistinct], is that this approach will actually hamper the Government's aspirations to grow student enrolments. You've said multiple times that it won't be the case, and yet it does seem to be a [indistinct] in the polls, so I guess what would you say to people that [indistinct] that this is going to, I guess, send the sector backwards rather than forwards? 

CLARE: Well, this is not a new recommendation or a new idea, this is something that was recommended by the Accord two and a half years ago, so it's some time in the making, and I think as I said to you before, if you think that a kid from the western suburbs is going to design something that makes it harder for kids from the western suburbs to get a chance to go to university, then you're wrong. This is about doing the opposite. And it's based on terrific advice from people like Barney, who I'm sure will elaborate on this in the panel after this. 

The more general point I'd like to make about the legislation is this though: I've tried to make this point in my speech, which is that I don't pretend to have all the answers, and good legislation can be made better with feedback. 

We've got submissions that have just come in from the sector, there will be a hearing of the Parliamentary Committee next week, then once we get their report, then there will be debate in the Senate. 

Same process that we went through over the last 12 months with the ATEC bill, where a lot of people in this room said, "Look, like the bill. We don't like this. Don't like this. Think this should change'. We made 36 amendments to the ATEC bill based on feedback from people in this room, and I imagine that we'll do the same with this bill as well, if we get good advice about things that should change. And one of the things that colleagues in this room have said to me just in the last week is they don't like some sections of the bill that they think give too much power to the Minister. 

I'm not doing this to create power for somebody who holds this position. I'm very keen to make sure that this legislation is protected against any potential future or One Nation government. We do need to future‑proof this legislation against a One Nation ovgernment that might want to use some of the powers in this bill for the wrong reasons. 

And so over the course of the next few weeks, I'm imagining that the Parliamentary Committee will provide us with advice on what ways to make this bill better as well. 

JOURNALIST: Absolutely. And moving forward, you speak often about the fact that we need to increase the accessibility of universities, you did it just then. So given that focus [indistinct] and not to ask about Job Ready Graduates, it has pushed the cost of some degrees beyond $50,000, it's not particularly accessible in many instances [indistinct]. The policy [indistinct] organisations I have is almost universally unpopular, you yourself have said it's failed, and that, you know, hasn't worked. You've been in this job for more than four years now. Why is this policy still in place? 

CLARE: I hate it, it's fundamentally flawed, it's failed students, and I have described this as unfinished business. This is a part of the sector that needs to be fixed. It's complicated and it's expensive. That's the frank and honest answer here. 

But I mentioned the work that Stephen and people in this room are doing on the cost of teaching and everything, and that's a fundamental input into fixing this, and so that work is important, and when we get that information back in the second half of this year, that will help us in the essential task of fixing this. 

JOURNALIST: You describe it as unfinished business. Will it still be in place by the time of the next election? 

CLARE: I can't set a date for it, only because if I did that, I'd probably be sacked before I got to Canberra. But what I can tell you is that I think it needs to be fixed, and I need the inputs and the advice on how to do it. 

JOURNALIST: We're quickly running out of time. I'll just turn to questions from the floor. A question from Robert, "The Minister announced a couple of big sticks this morning. Where are the carrots? Will there be structural adjustment funding to deal with the extra compliance costs?" 

CLARE: On carrots, in the comments I made about TEQSA, I hope that you picked up that it's not just about giving TEQSA more power, it's also about trying to reduce some aspects of what TEQSA does that makes your job harder in a lot of areas but also makes TEQSA better at what it does. Now that's easy to say, it's harder to do, but I deliberately made that comment this morning because the legislation that we're introducing in the Parliament needs to do two things; better equip TEQSA so that we get universities off the front page for the wrong reasons, and give it something in between deregistering a university in [indistinct], but also making sure that it's focused on the big systemic challenges, not the sort of things that delay you in the work that you want to do. 

So I hope that you see in the remarks I made about TEQSA, it's not just about sticks, it's about carrots as well. 

JOURNALIST: And finally, international students, migration is the political topic of the day, the week, maybe the year. Labor's trying to bring down migration to 245,000 people that have since migrated, 245,000 people this financial year. International students make up a larger share of temporary migrants, and we've seen these rejection rates skyrocket. Is this the Government's way of bringing down international student numbers without putting it in policy? 

CLARE: I made the point a number of times that the top priority for universities is educating Australian students, and there's more Australian students at university this year than ever before. Barney will talk about this I'm sure, but the number of CSPs will go up over the years ahead. 

With international students, even though some people might like to say otherwise, it's important, and everyone in the room knows this, the number of young people starting a higher education course in Australia this year, coming here from overseas, is lower this year than it was before the pandemic, it's about 13 per cent lower. 

You know that you see that because it's affecting your financials as well. The other point ‑ your point about rejection [indistinct], that's about the integrity measures in the system we run are unfair, so it's not about anything other than making sure that when people come to Australia to be able to study that they can look after themselves. 

The other point which I've made from time to time, which is sometimes missed in this debate, is we have increased the visa charge for international students, not very popular it's had some impact on reducing the number of applications. That fee has tripled from about 700 bucks to now about $2,500, that is a lot of money, and I know that it's not terribly popular amongst some people in this room.  

But I also have to tell you, how do you think we're funding the Accord? Whilst we don't strictly hypothecate the money, when you make the argument to colleagues about funding with the system, you've got to find ways to do it, and whether it's extra CSPs to meet the growing demand, or whether it's paying prac, or whether it's the billion dollars that we're putting into extra bridging courses to help young people that aren't ready to start a degree they've started, all of those things are helped by that set of investment. 

JOURNALIST: Thank you so much. We have so many follow‑up questions but we're sadly out of time. 

CLARE: No worries. 

JOURNALIST: Thank you for making the time to be here and speak to us. 

CLARE: Thank you.