Australia news live: Jason Clare flags ‘paid practice’ for university students as Labor reveals higher education blueprint

Key events

Report says HECS needs to be ‘simpler and fairer’: Clare

Clare says the report includes recommendations about student allowances and proposals around indexation and how to reduce HECS payments He says it makes clear that “HECS has to be simpler and fairer”.

Bruce Chapman, the architect of HECS, has helped the panel with a recommendation which says there are ways to reduce upfront payments for people on lower incomes. For example, if we were to go down this path, it says that someone on an income of $75,000 a year would pay every year about $1,000 less. That is something that could provide people with an immediate cost-of-living benefit once they finish uni and are in the workforce, on top of the tax cuts that we’ve introduced and will hopefully go through the Senate this week.

The minister said the government won’t be responding to the report today with what they will and won’t do, and cautions that the government “can’t do all of this right away”.

This is bigger than one budget, but we do need to get started now to build the foundations for long-term reform.

Email link

Updated at 17.51 EST

Universities would benefit from diversity in size and subjects: Clare

Clare on funding:

Different models are suggested. The report also recommends that if we go down this path, we set up an implementation advisory committee to look at the detailed structure of it and make sure we get the legislation that underpins it right.

The report is that all universities look the same at the moment, roughly the same number of students teaching the same sort of subjects and says we would benefit from a bit more diversity – different universities doing different things. Some bigger, some smaller. Making sure they have got what is immediately needed.

When I grew up, there was no university near me. It meant for a lot of kids in my classroom, uni meant it was for someone else, somewhere else. I want to make sure that kids in the regions get a crack at the university education.

Email link

Updated at 17.45 EST

Morrison university reforms have failed, says Clare

Clare says reforms introduced under the previous Morrison Coalition government, which made some degrees cheaper and others, like arts and law, more expensive, have failed.

More people studied arts degrees after this change came into place than before it. I guess a classic example that people pick the subjects that they do at university based on what they love, what they want to do, the profession they want to go in rather than the deferred HECS payment.

The minister says getting the pay structure right is important, with the Accord representing a blueprint “not just for the next couple of years, but over the next two decades”.

Over that time there will be plenty of different ideas, plenty of different governments and even different vice-chancellor. We want to drive and sustain higher education reform over the next two decades.

Email link

Updated at 17.40 EST

‘We have a teaching crisis’: Clare says report makes clear areas of focus

Clare, however, says the government won’t be responding to the report on Sunday, but says “it strikes me the areas where the government needs to work together on this because it means the difference of finishing a degree or not.”

In teaching, for example, only 24% who start a teaching degree finish it. We have a teaching crisis. We would go part of the way to tackling that crisis.

Email link

Updated at 17.38 EST

Labor to consider ‘jobs broker’ to help tertiary students find placements: Jason Clare

Clare says the report makes clear that more financial support is required to assist students in high education.

The report says if we are going to do this, and we’ve got to do it otherwise we have an economy with the handbrake on, you have to make it easier for people to move between the two, and we have to get rid of that invisible barrier that stops a lot of young people from poor families from the regions and from the outer suburbs of our big cities from getting a crack at university in the first place.

Clare claims that, in last year’s budget, Youth Allowance and Austudy were increased in pursuit of this and will consider a “jobs broker” that will help students find placements in the fields in which they are studying.

I spent a fair amount of time while I was at university cooking cheese toast at Sizzler, rather than working in the area I was studying, which was a law degree. That’s an area where can you help people with the cost of living.

On paid practice, it makes the point, if you are a nursing student you are spending 800 hours working in a hospital where are you not paid, if you are a teaching student, 300 hours in the classroom where you are not paid.

Clare says he’s also particularly concerned about students, such as in nursing and teaching jobs, who have completed the theory portion of their degree, but who cannot afford to do the practical component which requires them to work for free.

They’ve done the theory, but they drop out because they can’t afford the practice, or they end up sleeping in a car because they can’t afford the bills.

Email link

Updated at 17.31 EST

All young people should ‘get a crack at university”, says education minister

Federal education minister Jason Clare has told Insiders the government’s priority for university reform is improving access, saying young people from working class and disadvantage backgrounds can “get a crack at university”.

At the moment about one in two kids in their 20s and 30s have a university degree, but not in my neck of the woods, not where I grew up, and not in the regions.

Clare said Prime Ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating boosted the number of young people finishing high school from 40% to almost 80% – but the University’s Accord final report found the next step now needs to be taken.

That includes you and me and a lot of people watching the program. That’s nation-changing stuff. What this report says is by the middle of the century, we need a workforce where 80% of people haven’t just finished high school, but they’ve gone to TAFE or university as well. That’s no easy task.

Email link

Updated at 17.34 EST

Lowering cost of higher education critical to meeting Australia’s skills shortage, report warns

Access to higher education among disadvantaged Australians must be dramatically scaled up and the financial burden of studying eased if the country is to meet acute skills shortages, a major report has found.

The highly anticipated universities accord final report, being released by the education minister, Jason Clare, on Sunday, was expected to lay out the blueprint for the tertiary sector over the coming decades.

The report contains 47 recommendations, including compensating students for hundreds of hours of mandatory placements and tweaking Help loans to reduce ballooning student debt.

Help is an indispensable part of the higher education funding system, but it requires reform to retain its social licence.

Australians should not be deterred from higher education because of the increased burden of student loans.

For more on this story, read the full report by Guardian Australia’s higher education reporter Caitlin Cassidy:

Email link

The education minister Jason Clare will be speaking with ABC Insiders host David Speers shortly about the government’s plans to reform the university sector and expand access.

Meanwhile, the deputy prime minister Richard Marles has appeared on Sky News this morning to discuss Border Force funding levels.

We will bring you all the latest as it happens.

Email link

Updated at 16.52 EST

Police pick up search for missing couple’s bodies

A search for the bodies of the former Ten reporter Jesse Baird, 26, and the Qantas flight attendant Luke Davies, 29, will continue on Sunday.

The couple’s disappearance was considered suspicious when possessions belonging to both of them were found in a skip bin in the southern Sydney suburb of Cronulla on Wednesday.

The discovery led police to Baird’s blood-smeared share house, about 30km away in inner-city Paddington.

On Saturday, mourners laid floral tributes outside the Paddington terrace where police allege the murders took place.

Baird’s former Network Ten colleagues took to social media to pay their respects while the AFL, who he was recently acting as an umpire for, issued a statement.

The independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwhich called for a review of police training when it comes to matters concerning the LGBTQI community.

The police urgently need to do more to make sure the LGBTQI community is safe in NSW and confident in reporting crime.

We need a review of police training when it comes to LGBTQI issues (and) that needs to be delivered in a co-designed way with LGBTQI communities.

Beau Lamarre, a 28-year-old serving police officer, has been charged with two counts of murder over the couple’s disappearance.

– AAP

Email link

Updated at 16.51 EST

Good Morning

And welcome to this Sunday’s Guardian live blog.

Access to education among disadvantaged Australians must be dramatically scaled up, according to a major review of university funding and operations. The universities accord final report has been released by education Minister Jason Clare on Sunday, laying out the blueprint for the tertiary sector over the coming decades.

The search for the bodies of TV host Jesse Baird and his partner Luke Davies continues. Police found bloody possessions belonging to both men in a skip bin in Cronulla on Wednesday, which in turn led them Baird’s blood-stained sharehouse 30km away in Paddington. Mourners have laid floral tributes to the couple outside their Sydney home, where police believer their murders took place.

I’m Royce Kurmelovs and I’ll be taking the blog through the day.

With that, let’s get started …

Email link