Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to rise today and again oppose the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010. This bill is, ultimately, a breach of a 2007 election promise by the Labor Party, an occurrence which is all too common in this parliament.

We have just had a lecture from the member for Shortland about national conventions and the issue of policy decisions made by political parties outside the parliament differing from the policy decisions made by members inside the parliament. We will be fascinated to see, tomorrow morning, where the member for Shortland, the member for McEwen and the Special Minister of State end up on the member for Melbourne’s motion on gay marriage. On the one hand, the Labor Party said at their national convention that they are opposed to gay marriage. On the other hand, the vast majority of members of the Labor Party are telling Sky News on background that they support it. We know of a deal between the former Prime Minister and the left wing of the Labor Party to support the motion, so it will be fascinating tomorrow morning to see, after that lecture from the member for Shortland, exactly how many of these honourable and tough minded members support Mr Bandt’s motion in the House.

As I said at the beginning, this bill is another attempt by the Labor Party to breach yet another election promise. In 2007 the then shadow education spokesman, the member for Perth, said:

I’m not considering a compulsory HECS-style arrangement and the whole basis of the approach is one of a voluntary approach. So I am not contemplating a compulsory amenities fee.

This bill will introduce exactly what the now Minister for Defence said they would not do: a compulsory amenities fee. This is not about the constant claim by the Labor Party that there is some great hatred of unions on this side of parliament. We do not hate unions; we just hate the compulsion that the Labor Party requires. Special Minister of State, I need to talk clearly so you understand how passionately opposed we are to this bill. This is a bad bill. I know that as a good man, you would be very uncomfortable with the fact that this is another broken promise by a Labor Party which does not seem to know how to make a promise before an election and stick to it after an election.

There seems to be two main claims by the Labor Party in this debate: firstly, that there is hatred on this side of parliament for the unions, which is wrong; secondly, that the long awaited reforms of former Prime Minister John Howard somehow ripped $170 million out of university services. The latter claim is based on a false premise. What that act of parliament actually did was put $170 million back into students’ pockets so they could make decisions about which services at university they wanted to use and what services were appropriate for them to use. So it was never about ripping $170 million out of services; it was about giving the $170 million back to those students so they could make their own choices about whether they wanted to contribute or not.

What we have seen is that students have chosen to spend their money on the services that they want to spend it on, but that runs completely counter to the modern Australian Labor Party. They do not like people making decisions on their own; they want to tell people what to do. They want the students of Australia to be told which services they need. They want the students of Australia to fund services that they themselves have said, through their own choices, that they do not want or do not consider that they need.

We are opposed to this bill because it undoes important reforms. Again, this is another attempt to undo the very important and long awaited reforms introduced by the Howard government. This is a purely ideological approach from the Labor Party to again install compulsory student union membership. The member for Shortland claims somehow that this was not about student union membership but that it was a student amenity fee. But we all know that this is all about them delivering back to their training grounds, the student unions.

The claim by the Labor Party is that there is a protection in the bill against using this money for political activity. Of course, you can drive a truck through those provisions. I am thankful to Senator Scott Ryan for his work in the dissenting report before the election when the government tried to move this bill through the parliament. This bill opens the door again to use this money to support the political activities of student unions, which are the training grounds for the modern Australian Labor Party.

So many of those on the other side, including their new members, have come through this union training field and state parliaments littered across the country before entering this place. You do not have to go any further than the state of South Australia to see people, such as my good friend the member for Kingston, coming through the student union training school. The member for Adelaide was also a very longstanding contributor to student union politics in South Australia. It is part of what is known as the machine operation in South Australia. It is run by Senator Don Farrell and the shoppies use it as a training ground to build their next group of activists in the state and federal parliament. We see this now in the state parliament of South Australia, where many of these people were involved in the machinations to replace Premier Mike Rann and Treasurer Kevin Foley as they ran out of energy at the end of their careers. You only have to look at Jack Snelling—and even Tom Koutsantonis, I understand. They all come through this similar training school.

We say that claims that these provisions do not allow the money to be used for political activity are wrong. As Senator Scott Ryan’s dissenting report makes very clear, the provisions for freedom of association are absolutely put in jeopardy by this bill. This is money that will be collected and used in support of political activities. The report has all sorts of examples of how this money will be used, such as funding campaigns of a political nature by third parties to assist particular parties or candidates. We saw that in the previous bill, which the Special Minister of State moved through, where they use organisations like GetUp! and so forth to run campaigns which support the political outcomes of the Australian Labor Party.

So we say that there is a range of ways that this money can be used to do what it has always been used for—as a training ground for new Labor activists. I will quote from the Hansard of the Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations hearing, where Senator Scott Ryan said:

I recall an incident quite a while ago where students held a protest. It reached a degree of violence, the police intervened and several students were arrested and charged. The student union legal services funded their defence or contributed to the funding of their defence. There is no restriction whatever on how these legal services can be used; it is just the provision of legal services, isn’t it?

The DEEWR representative at the Senate committee hearing answered very clearly:

There is no further specification than is proposed there.

In other words, there are a range of ways in which the money that is collected compulsorily from students can be used for activities which are part of the training structure of the Australian Labor Party and the trade union movement in this country. This is what the real intent of this bill is. In 2005, when the Higher Education Support Amendment (Abolition of Compulsory Up-front Student Union Fees) Act first came in, there was a lot of noise coming from the other side of parliament because the compulsory element of the fee, which students will choose not to pay when they have a choice, had been used in part for their union training camp to produce the new group of activists.

This bill is about choice; it is about giving the $170 million that the Labor Party claim is being ripped out of services back to students so that they can put it in their pockets and spend it on what they want to spend it on, not on what the Australian Labor Party tell them they must spend it on. This is where there is a very large gulf between what we believe and what the Australian Labor Party believe. The Australian Labor Party believe that they know what is best for students. They believe they know what is best for Australians. They do not want Australians and Australian students making their own choices in life. They would prefer that they tell them what to do. They would prefer to tell them how they spend their money and, as a result, you get these claims trumped up as an argument by members in this place such as the member for Shortland, who says that this money is being ripped out of universities, when of course it is being put back into students pockets.

This is an extremely important bill and one that we hope does not pass this parliament. It would completely offend the freedom of association principles that we so rightly defend on this side of parliament. If those on the other side of parliament have their way—and it will be interesting after July next year when they do get more of an opportunity to do that with the Greens who will be in control of the Senate; we know that Labor may be in government but the Greens are in power—whether they go to other pieces of legislation to give their union friends the leg-up they so desperately need. When Australians get a choice, they choose not to pay—and that is a very important thing to understand. That is what we will defend. We will defend it on this bill. We will defend it when those opposite try to increase the reach of the workplace relations act, which I am sure will come in, to push for more friendly provisions for compulsory membership of trade unions. This is the easy, soft way for the Australian Labor Party to attempt to stay in power at federal and state levels, and it is something that we should stand very much against.

This is a bill about choice. It is a bill about the fundamental right in this country of freedom of association. We will continue to fight tooth and nail, as we have for many years, for this right. There have been many fighters on this side of parliament for this cause. The member for Higgins, Senator Scott Ryan, whom I have mentioned, Senator Mitch Fifield, the member for Casey and the member for Indi are people who have fought against this injustice, this decision by the Australian Labor Party, to compulsorily take money from students to fund their activities, to fund their training camps in order to produce the next level of activists in this country. We oppose the bill, and we will continue to oppose it. It is a bad bill. It is nothing more than a political device used by the Australian Labor Party at the expense of Australian students.

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