Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Hansard source

I rise, as I have on several other occasions, to oppose the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities) Bill 2010 and similar measures that in effect introduce compulsory student unionism by stealth. It would be remiss of me not to make some remarks about the comments just put into the Hansard record by the member for Melbourne. All I can say, as a summary, is once a Trot, always a Trot—you can put a suit on, you can wear a nice, trendy silk tie, but once a Trot, always a Trot. My colleague the member for Melbourne Ports is smiling away because he knows that is the truth. They tried to do him over in the seat of Melbourne Ports and he was very fortunate with the recent redistribution to have kept all his good supporters—some would call them stacks—and to have kept all the Trots out of Melbourne Ports. That is another seat that the Greens will not be able to make headway in. I am sure we will see the member for Melbourne Ports challenged at the next election and probably be returned, unless there is a very good Liberal candidate who can give him a run for his money.

The member for Melbourne used some very Orwellian language, which is no surprise coming from a Trot, when he was talking about the democratic culture at university. We would all like to think that there was a democratic culture at university; that there was an opportunity for people to speak freely about their political beliefs. But talk to any student in a politics class, in a politics tutorial, and see how they are intimidated and not given the opportunity to debate political philosophy or ideas freely. It is not, as the member for Melbourne says, an environment of free inquiry and debate—and that does extend to the student political world which has benefited over many decades through the compulsory acquirement of student money to fund political activities and campaigns and salaries that the students themselves would not have chosen to fund if they had had the choice.

The member for Melbourne said students should be able to ‘control and direct their activities’. I would not disagree with that. That is why we on this side of the House want students, who by and large are adults, to be able to control and direct not just their activities but their money. The tricky and cunning language that the Greens use under the auspices of democracy always means the opposite. They know that to make their message easily consumable and perhaps attractive to the mainstream they must couch it in very cunning language.

The member for Melbourne said that universities should be about more than turning up for lectures and that time at university should be a time for reflection and a time for engagement. That is fine. That is his opinion. Why should he impose on all university students his opinion about what the university experience should be? If they just want to turn up and go to lectures and then go off to the footy club that they are a member of in their own community or go off and get a job or go off and engage in another social activity elsewhere, who is he to tell them what they should and should not be doing as part of their university experience? We now have the social police, the political police, saying that, if you are a university student, to be a complete human being you must be engaged in these activities. He can do it, and he did it—and so did I. So did my good friend the member for Casey. That was our choice. Why should we impose the way we ran our lives and our time at university on everyone else? We on this side of the House believe that tertiary students are adults who are intelligent enough to decide how their money should be allocated. That is why we strongly oppose this bill; that is why the Howard government treated students with respect and as adults and gave them the choice of how to allocate their hard-earned dollars.

We see in this bill, as we have seen before, a backdoor way of funding political activities. The guidelines in the bill do underpin the legislation. They effectively force a university to provide for representation and advocacy of students’ interests. In other words, universities will be forced to ensure that there is a political voice on campus—and you can bet your bottom dollar that that political voice is going to be the political voice of the Left. This provision really extends compulsory unionism beyond what it was before the 2005 legislation. It extends the obligations to formalise student politics.

We have seen provisions in this bill and in previous bills that purportedly are there to allay the concerns that money cannot be spent on political parties and candidates, but that in no way should fool us into thinking that money is not going to be spent on political campaigns, because money can still be directed to oppose certain political parties and candidates, as it has been in the past, and if I were a betting woman I would bet it will happen again in the future. It will go to fund issues campaigns, as has been outlined by previous speakers on this side of the House. Of course there is going to be political activity. That is why the member for Melbourne, self-confessed ‘Trot’, who is now wearing his comfortable green cloak—

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