Jason Clare’s student places capping bill appeared in the Senate several times last week, but there were no votes on substantive amendments. Parliament does not sit again until 12 October.
It is clear, however, that agreement has been reached on amendments that will secure its passage through the Senate. Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi said in the Senate on Wednesday 16 September that the Greens had ‘secured’ twelve amendments. There are twelve Greens amendments on the bill’s home page, so I will assume that this is the same twelve, although I could be mistaken.
This post summarises the proposed amendments, focusing on the Greens and the Liberals, as both have the numbers to get an amendment through if Labor agrees. The Greens, the Coalition and cross-benchers combined could also pass amendments Labor does not support.
I mostly do not discuss Senator David Pocock’s proposed amendments, because on his own he cannot sway a Senate decision. But he had a high level of intellectual engagement with the bill and proposed sensible changes. He is particularly good on something that the government is particularly bad at – putting rules scrutinised by parliament over ministerial and administrative discretion.
A floor number of places
On the bill’s introduction the explanatory memorandum indicated a floor number of Commonwealth supported places was intended, but this was not reflected in the bill itself.
In the House of Representatives a government amendment created a ‘core student load’ minimum number of places for public universities, although the amendment does not preclude year-on-year reductions in places.
But there was no corresponding requirement that the minister set a ‘total allocation pool’ of Commonwealth supported places sufficient to cover all the minimum ‘core student load’ allocations.
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Andrew Norton 