George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

As someone who received their tertiary education from a regional university in Queensland, I cannot support the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010. I attended Central Queensland University in Rockhampton in the bad old days of compulsory student unionism and I am afraid that this bill is just compulsory unionism by another name. In my first speech I said that, with some government help, I funded my own way through university, so I know what it is like to be struggling to pay for living away from home and then to be slugged with student union fees that are paid to groups that at that point in time I was morally opposed to, and still am. They are political organisations—most of these outfits.

Back then, there were only two up-front fees at universities and these fees had most students out of pocket and behind on rent for weeks. They were the textbook fees and the student union fees. In fact, in 2004, the final year of this great student rip-off, student unions pocketed more than $160 million dollars out of the bank accounts of students around the nation. Back then it was a matter of ‘pay up your union dues or you do not receive your results’. It was basically blackmail. All of that was supposed to change with the abolition of compulsory student union fees, and it did.

I have nothing against unions. In fact, I have been a member of two unions in the past. I have no problem with the fact that student unions have been the traditional training ground for so many Labor members of parliament, and even some Liberal MPs for that matter, but I do have a problem with students being forced to pay to belong. My problem with this bill is that it compels students to pay a fee to a university for a service they do not necessarily use or do not want. That to me sounds like compulsory student unionism and it sounds like the compulsory student union fees that I was forced to pay when I was at university. It sounds to me awfully like the compulsory student union fees that the Howard government abolished in 2005.

Isn’t it fairer if all students pay for the services and amenities they actually use at these universities? But it is not so to this Labor government. It is intent on saddling Australian students with an even greater debt, when they finish their studies, by whacking on a ‘services and amenities charge’ to pay for services they do not actually use and some of them do not actually want. So on top of having a HECS debt, thanks to the Gillard Labor government Australian university students will now have a services and amenities HELP debt. It is typical of this government to bring in this compulsory service and amenities charge for their left-wing student union mates and then hide it from young people by putting it on the government credit card, only so they can be stung with the bill years down the track. This is the wrong way, but it is typically the Labor way.

And wouldn’t you think that if there were such huge support for this fee—that it is something students would actually want and would have loved to have paid up-front—

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