The third of Jason Clare’s Universities Accord Bills is off to the Senate, but will get some close examination before it gets there, with 60 submissions to the Education and Employment Legislation Committee’s inquiry on the legislation and an all-day hearing today.
Witnesses include the usual university lobbies and student groups plus officials – more from the Department of Education than ATEC. Plus there are independent experts, including Andrew Norton and Mark Warburton, who have decades of deep understanding of consequences that flow from allocation of student places.
Mr Clare celebrated the Reps passing the Bill calling it, “ legislation to help more Australians get to and get through university.”
This is the Bill that gives ATEC some power over student numbers per university (local and internationals both) and the Minister way more. Insofar, that is, as anybody is across all the detail.
The Government wasn’t, at least until Thursday, when the House of Representatives passed the Bill, with 20 or so new amendments. Mr Clare apologised, saying the debate had concluded “sooner than I expected” – he had thought he had until the Reps returned next month. But, he assured the House, the amendments “would clarify the effect of certain provisions and fix minor drafting errors.”
Opposition education shadow Julian Leeser was not having it, saying they would not be giving the government a “blank cheque.” But Labor and some cross-bench MPs were not so cynical, the amendments were agreed to and the Bill was sent to the upper house.
Universities Australia is making supportive noises about Government concessions, but its warning at the beginning of the month still stands.
The Bill, “gives the minister and the ATEC greater influence over the number of places universities can offer, the conditions attached to those places and, potentially, the allocation of international students. At the same time, it leaves many of the most important decisions to future ministerial discretion and guidelines rather than Parliament.”
And this ignores one group who will ignore the Government’s central-planning approach. As
Professor Norton put it Friday, “managing students is much harder for ATEC than managing universities.”