Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bass for her question. I know about her interest in university education, having met with various university education people in Tasmania as a result of her recommendations that I do.

This is a government that is proudly committed to phasing out full-fee-paying places for undergraduate students in Australian universities. That is because we believe that access to university should be based on merit, not capacity to pay. Of course, we are now in the last sitting week before this policy will start to be implemented. It will be implemented in the next academic year: in the 2009 academic year, the phase-out will begin. In terms of the phase-out, we have provided transition funds to universities. We have also provided extra Commonwealth supported places. We obviously want to enable Australian students to be undergraduates. We want the Commonwealth supported places to be there but we do want to make sure that all of this is done on the basis of merit, not capacity to pay. This is a great Australian value.

I have been asked whether or not there are alternative approaches on the question of paying for education. We know, of course, that the former Liberal government, after promising that there would not be $100,000 university degrees in this country, implemented just that. They introduced into this country the concept of Australian students paying for their undergraduate places. We are getting rid of that. When we look at the contributions of past education ministers on this question, the contribution of the member for Bradfield and the contribution of the current shadow Treasurer, they were people who supported Australian students paying for their undergraduate places.

My attention has been drawn to a series of statements by the shadow Treasurer on the question of education and the question of paid-for courses. My attention has been drawn to a statement she made in April 2006 where she talked about her own studies and said that she was privileged to be an international student at Harvard. Then in July 2006 she went on to describe that she was an international student at Harvard Business School in the mid-1990s, living amongst and studying with 180 senior business people from over 35 countries. She is nodding—that is right.

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