Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

One of the reasons they pay taxes is that they recognise there is a public benefit to be gained from encouraging our young people to go to university. When we hold up this graph and say that it is a terrible thing that there are a declining number of year 12 students going on to university or TAFE, the Prime Minister waves his hands in the air and says: ‘It’s nothing to do with me. What are you worried about?’ Of course the government is not worried about it. It does not think it is important for our students to get a further education, either as an apprentice or a university student. It does not think it is important. That is why the government does not mind these prices going through the ceiling. But most Australian parents do care, and they understand that their taxes go to subsidising the cost of university education for Australian students. Of course Australian students should not have to pay as much as foreign students. Of course Australian students should get subsidised places at our universities, because Australian parents know how important it is to have doctors, nurses, engineers, scientists and all of the rest of the people who benefit from a university education. We hear the most spurious arguments over and over from the federal government.

Why is it that our universities are being forced into increasing the number of degrees that cost so much? There is only one reason. On the radio this morning, the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University belled the cat—he told the truth, which is that the only reason that universities are going down this path is that the Howard government has so massively slashed the funding of our universities. Over the last 10 years, more than $5 billion has been slashed from the budgets of our universities. No wonder the quality is now being called into question. This is the only developed nation in the world to have cut public investment in higher education—the only one—and the government is proud of it.

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