Nationals' revolt grows over Coalition's university funding overhaul

The Morrison government faces a growing revolt from the Nationals over the university funding overhaul, with the junior Coalition partner warning on Tuesday that it would fight for changes to the proposed package.

Just hours after the government released its draft legislation, the Nationals publicly demanded three key changes – including sparing people studying social work, behavioural science and mental health from the 113% fee increases in the humanities.

Andrew Gee, who is the minister for regional education and a Nationals MP, said his party had heard feedback about the “glaring and potentially detrimental design flaw” in the package, which could hurt country areas and affect women and mature students.

While Gee has previously raised concerns about the impact of the proposal on regional students and universities, the push from the Nationals now carries greater weight because the party decided to formally push for changes at a party room meeting yesterday.

Related: Australian university fees to double for some arts courses, but fall for Stem subjects

“Country people deserve the same access to mental health support as those in the cities – it’s a fundamental issue of equality,” Gee said in a statement issued under his ministerial letterhead on Tuesday.

“That is why the Nationals believe that social work, behavioural science and mental health disciplines should be removed from the humanities funding cluster and be realigned with allied health studies.

“The Nationals will be seeking a change to the current ‘job-ready graduates package’ funding clusters. We intend to fix this design deficiency.”

The Nationals are also calling for an extension of the phasing-in of the fee increases to ensure that part-time and online students will not be disadvantaged if they take more than three years to complete their studies.

Finally, the party is seeking changes to the design of the tertiary access payment – which is not part of the initial draft bill – to ensure it doesn’t discourage country children from studying at country universities.

Labor’s education spokesperson, Tanya Plibersek, seized on the split in government ranks, saying it showed “Scott Morrison’s plan to make it harder and more expensive to go to uni is so bad even his National party education minister has slammed it”.

“Instead of fighting each other, the Liberals and the Nationals should be focused on giving Australians the training they need to get jobs,” she said.

The Nationals issued the statement shortly after the education minister, Dan Tehan, who is a Liberal from a regional seat in south-west Victoria, released an exposure draft of the government’s proposed legislation.

Tehan responded to the demands by promising that the government would “consider all feedback.”

The dispute spilled over into a session of Senate’s Covid-19 committee on Tuesday.

The head of the education department, Michele Bruniges, was asked whether there was any precedent for a minister to issue a media statement complaining of a glaring design flaw in legislation for which that minister was partly responsible.

Bruniges replied that she could not recall any other instance during her career. She revealed that the education department had briefed Gee on the university package at least five times and had also provided one written briefing on the legislation.

Rob Heferen, a deputy secretary of the education department, said some of the issues raised by Gee had come up in the regional university roundtable meetings that the department had helped organise.

Heferen said Gee had raised some of the concerns previously, but not “with the intensity” of the latest media statement.

Heferen said the government had allocated only six days for public consultation on the draft legislation because Tehan was “very keen to get that into the parliament and have it passed to make sure it can take effect for the next calendar year”.

The draft bill ensures students who are enrolled in a course of study before 1 January 2021 would be spared the proposed fee hikes, according to the government’s consultation paper.

Australia’s post-Covid recovery required an educated and highly skilled workforce, Tehan said, so the package would create an additional 100,000 university places for Australian students.

Related: Australian government has no modelling on effect of university fee hikes, official reveals

Tehan argued the adjustments were focused on “teaching students the skills they need to succeed in the jobs of the future”.

“Our reforms will make it cheaper for students to study qualifications in areas like teaching, health, IT, science, engineering and agriculture,” he said.

But doubts have been raised about how the changes will play out in practice, given that the student loan scheme may soften the price signals caused by the fee hikes, and cuts to government funding in some priority study areas may act as a disincentive to universities taking on more students in those areas.

Last month, education department officials revealed that the government had no modelling about whether the university funding changes would incentivise students to study science instead of humanities, the rationale for fee hikes provided by Tehan.

The draft legislation also expands integrity measures to prohibit unscrupulous marketing practices and require providers to “assess the academic suitability of a student to undertake a unit of study prior to receiving commonwealth assistance for that unit”.

All providers would be required to cooperate with investigators from the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency and keep relevant records.