John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

In reply to the Leader of the Opposition, the OECD report is based on old data and therefore is wrong. The new data shows the very healthy financial position of the university sector. I ask the Leader of the Opposition, who clearly can accumulate a few more facts about things, to bear this in mind: the OECD analysis excludes HECS and other Australian government public subsidies to students. It leaves HECS out. I would have thought that was a fairly fundamental omission, and I would have thought there would be bipartisan agreement that it was a fundamental omission—not a fundamental injustice but a fundamental omission—because HECS was introduced by a Labor government in the 1980s, with the support of the opposition. The report leaves out 75 per cent of our vocational education expenditure, it leaves out our childcare subsidies which support early childhood education, and it also leaves out all new education expenditure since 2004. These facts would have been available to the Leader of the Opposition. He either knew this when he asked the question and was nonetheless prepared to mislead the parliament and the Australian people or, alternatively, he was not adequately briefed by his staff before he raised the matter in parliament. The truth is that this government’s record of supporting both public and private education is second to none not only around the world but also in the history of this country.

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