E&OE 

TOM CONNELL: Joining me now is Universities Australia CEO Luke Sheehy, thanks for your time. Student debt reduction as well and these paid placements – these are adopted from the Accord. You endorse them I’m assuming? 

LUKE SHEEHY: Yeah. This is a really fantastic day for students, Tom, because students, unions and universities have been asking for the government to consider how to address placement poverty. And we know in areas really important to the economy like nursing, teaching, social work and midwifery – the areas that the government’s announced today – lots of students have not been able to complete their degree because of the cost-of-living pressures that they’re under at the moment. So, the payment today, the first type of payments we’ve seen like this in the sector in my memory, is really, really welcome. It’s great news for students because it’s going to help them finish their degree. 

TOM CONNELL: So, is that something that’s changed just in the past few years? You’re getting people not complete. I guess the big increase has been rent. The vast majority of these people are probably renting, but this is something that’s just come up recently or massively increased? 

LUKE SHEEHY: There’s evidence to show that there’s been high dropouts in the last couple of years. And we know through the Accord review process that lots of people have been talking about how important it is to address this idea of placement poverty, which is real. So, students are struggling with the cost of living, particularly higher rent costs, but higher grocery prices and higher fuel prices. And so this is going to help them get through their… 

TOM CONNELL: Is the argument that these particular jobs entail longer hours of placements? And so, it’s harder for them to work around it because just about everyone does unpaid placements, but a lot do a few weeks over a year and it’s easier to work around. Is that why these have been cherry-picked? 

LUKE SHEEHY: The Accord made these recommendations because these placements for teaching and nursing and those other courses are compulsory and they’re a part of the degree. And also, they often are a number of weeks or months at one time. And we know that students have to move to do these placements to get those spots in different parts of Australia. So, the payment is going to help.  

TOM CONNELL: The interesting other one is the debt reduction. And from what I understand it applies across the board is that money’s precious in this budget. So, money that could go elsewhere is going to go to maybe a trained surgeon or doctor on pretty good money go to the taxpayer. Could it have been a more targeted approach? 

LUKE SHEEHY: Well, we know that making sure that universities are seen as affordable is an important thing. And so, the HECS system is great because students don’t have to pay anything upfront. But in recent years the indexation on those HECS steps has been very high thanks to inflation. And so, I think retrospectively applying a new indexation rate to make it lower is a really good thing because we want to make sure that students keep seeing that universities are a really good bet. It’s a good bet for them and for the country because we need more students, more than five out of 10 new jobs are going to require a university degree. So, we want students to think it’s a good investment and know that it’s a good investment and it’s affordable. So, I welcome these changes. 

TOM CONNELL: The job-ready graduates program, the Coalition rolled out, so this was essentially making some degrees cheaper and some more expensive. And part of it was actually saying, ‘hey, we don’t need all these people studying arts degrees’. I’m not going to demonise it better or for worse, I did that, but get graduates into jobs we need. Now the review showed it didn’t work, but in another sense, it also didn’t turn people off these degrees that many were warning about. So, should they just stay? Has it been a benefit in one sense? 

LUKE SHEEHY: Well, the first thing is that we know that when you don’t pay anything upfront, it often has a very negligible effect on choice. There are some students that continue to do arts degrees, but the fact that they went up considerably in price, I think the important thing to remember is job-ready graduates was at a point in time and it took significant amounts of money out of the university system over the longer period of time. And so that’s why we have been calling for it to be fixed. We also want it to be affordable. The government dictates how much universities can charge for Australian students, and we want to make sure it’s fair and that the whole system works for students. So, the HECS changes are good. The payment stuff today is great, but we want to work on the job-ready graduates reforms. 

TOM CONNELL: Final one. A lot of pro-Palestine encampments are being set up at Australian universities. What have you made of the approach of the unis? They seem happy to let camps stay outside and they’re going for a non-confrontational approach.  

LUKE SHEEHY: Yeah, Tom, I’ve been talking to a lot of our members. We know there are incidences of this across a number of campuses and what’s pleasing to me is it remains peaceful – that predominantly these protests are peaceful. I want to make sure that students are safe on campus. It doesn’t matter what your political belief is or your religion or background, you should be safe on a university campus and I think universities are working hard to make sure that’s happening. 

TOM CONNELL: They seem like they’re ramping up and we’ve had some Jewish students say they don’t feel safe. These are ultimately places of education. The unis need to make sure they get the balance right. And can this go forever, for months? 

LUKE SHEEHY: Well, we’ve got a legal requirement under our legislation to make sure that we adhere to freedom of speech and academic freedom as well as ensuring that students adhere to the law. So, we’ve got a balance, safety as well as freedom of speech. 

TOM CONNELL: But people camping out? If it took the next level inside buildings as we’ve seen in the US, would that be going a step too far? 

LUKE SHEEHY: Well, we want to make sure that these protests remain peaceful and they seem to be so far and universities are working hard to make sure that everyone involved is working within the procedures and policies that are in place. I don’t want to see any student feeling unsafe on campus. It’s good that it’s remained peaceful here in Australia so far. 

TOM CONNELL: But if they took over buildings, then you’re getting to a point where, hang on, we’re meant to be getting educated – would that be a step too far? 

LUKE SHEEHY: Well, that would be a matter for the individual universities and I’m pretty confident that they’ve got the procedures in place to deal with that at this stage. It’s great that hasn’t happened. 

TOM CONNELL: Luke Sheehy, I appreciate your time today. Thank you. 

LUKE SHEEHY: Thanks, Tom. 

ENDS