Russell Matheson (Macarthur, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education. How will universities benefit from the red tape repeal day, which will reduce the burden of regulation and red tape in the higher education system?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to get a question from the member for Macarthur about red tape repeal day, because the higher education sector—the university sector—are the big winners from red tape repeal day, from deregulation and from the cutting of reporting requirements and red tape that surrounds the university sector.

Red tape repeal day next week will have a major impact on the cost base of universities in terms of their interface with government. For example, red tape repeal day, and other decisions that we have already taken in the tertiary education sector in relation to the Australian Research Council or the tertiary education regulator, will see the elimination of unnecessary red tape and reporting requirements that have required universities to tell the government detail about the size, condition, rooms and utilisation of their buildings. We trust universities to know where their buildings are and that they have them and how to utilise them. It will end the duplication of reporting of the same information in different formats for different purposes. Now the government will do that sifting of data themselves rather than requiring universities to report sometimes to six or seven different regulatory agencies exactly the same information but in different formats. There will be a single national database for university reporting, so government departments will coordinate with each other, rather than putting that burden of coordination on the university sector.

We will abolish the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission. This is a whole new level of regulation and red tape on the university sector, which the university sector themselves said in their submission to the Commission of Audit. They said:

The Australian Charities and Not-For-Profits Commission (ACNC) has imposed a new, inefficient and unnecessary layer of regulatory and reporting burden on universities.

They went on to say:

Universities are now required to provide detailed annual financial reports to the ACNC, notwithstanding universities are already required to supply such information to at least 6 other Government Departments.

We are going to abolish that level of regulation and red tape.

The Australian Research Council has streamlined their guidelines for application, and the tertiary education regulator, TEQSA, has been directed to return to its core business of registering providers and accrediting courses, rather than its thematic, sector-wide investigations into quality, which was never its core business. So it is getting on with its core business and letting universities use their resources to get on with their core business. We are unambiguously students first, unlike the Labor party which has always been for regulation and administration.