Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

They are in disarray when it comes to the higher education policy. I thought that, given the higher education theme of this speech, I would ask a multiple-choice question: which of the following statements have turned out to be true? Which of the following have turned out to be true: (a) the coalition's Real Solutions election document, which stated, 'We will ensure the continuation of the current arrangements of university funding'?

Opposition members interjecting—

What about this one: (b) the education minister's claim on Insiders on Sunday, 'Anybody who was enrolled before May 14, nothing will change in terms of their arrangements'?

Opposition members: No!

No. Or (c) the Treasurer's statement that HECS loans 'shouldn't be different to any other loan'? Is it (a), (b), (c) or (d) none of the above? The answer, of course, is that none of the above turned out to be true.

The education minister has been running around today trying to pretend that these changes will cost an extra $3 a week for students, or $5 a week, something like the middy that the Treasurer talks about so regularly. I refer him to the Universities Australia modelling which was released today, which shows that an engineering graduate's HECS debt will go from $49,000 to $119,000 and take 26 years to pay off instead of 18 years. That is the magnitude of the changes we are talking about. That is why the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Adelaide said:

… it is starting to look as if the student debt burden for many under the proposed reforms might well be worse than in the US.

The House should be aware that the United States' student debt has tripled in the last eight years. That vice-chancellor is talking about Australia dwarfing that outcome.

We did some of our own calculations. Instead of $3 to $5 a week, based on the Universities Australia report a nurse might pay an extra $15 a week—that is a very conservative estimate—and an engineering graduate who takes some time off for work might pay an extra $82 a week, so I think we can dismiss the $3 to $5 figures pretty easily. The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney said:

It's the ordinary Australians that I think aren't getting enough of a guernsey in this conversation …

He is right. So many different vice-chancellors and people who know more about the education system than the Minister for Education have expressed their alarm about this.

The reality is that this goes to the core of what kind of country we want to be in the future. How we invest in higher education is one of the most important determinants of how we will go as a nation into the future. Instead of tackling those sorts of big issues we have an education minister who goes on Insiders on Sunday and talks about student politics, still fighting the Cold War on the uni campus. He says, 'My job is to fight the Left,' and he puffs his chest up about student politics. There are all kinds of quotes that reveal that this is about settling scores from when he was at university. This should be a far more important conversation than the Minister for Education implies in those sorts of comments. It goes to the type of country we want to be. It goes to whether we have a big vision for Australia or whether we have a narrow, elitist vision for Australia. In that sense it goes to the very core of our national identity.

If we are serious about building economic growth into the future, we want more people to have the types of tools of success that you get at university, not less. We do not want to narrow or diminish the pool of success stories that we can have into the future in our economy. We want to have a more expansive higher education system, not less. We want a more inclusive economy in this country. What the government shows with the cuts to higher education in this budget and what it shows about the difference between that side and this side is that on this side of the House we want fairness and access in higher education to be part of the country's future and on that side of the House they just want it to be part of their past. (Time expired)

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