Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do not know whether the member for Gellibrand actually went to university but it is not 'bastardise', it is 'paraphrase', and I did not go to university. Anyone who goes around quoting Hot Chocolate really has to have a really hard look at themselves. Maybe you could quote some Bruce Springsteen or someone like that, 'down by the river' or something like that, so you have something really worth going to. I have sat through 15 minutes of this now and I have to ask what the actual question is here. What is actually being asked here? It seems to me that in this matter of public importance they are asking for free education. They seem to be saying that all fees are bad, there is nothing good in this. We have to go back and say, 'Where were you guys when HECS was brought in by your party?' That is okay. So some debt is okay but it is just Liberal debt that is not okay.

When you go through this you really have to sit there and look at it. It is their ability to latch on to change. We would have thought that with the last parliament they would have been right up with change, that there will be no problems with change at all. 'There will be no carbon tax on the government I lead—hey, we are for a carbon tax. Away we go. We are not going to change private health—hey, we are up for a change of private health. We can accept change, we accept change all the time.' Oh no, when it is proposed by somebody else it is all out: we cannot change anything. 'Don't change anything, because we are glass half empty people.'

I will tell you a couple of things about this. We are coming up to the World Cup. In the last World Cup we had the member for Grayndler saying we were a vuvuzela of negativity. I cannot wait to see the musical instrument that the Brazilians will be using, but can I tell you I might wax lyrical about the Brazilians! There is a complete and utter lack of any coherence in anything that they are doing at the moment other than saying it is bad. Whether they choose to believe anything that we put forward, no-one in this parliament can deny that over the last six years you guys clocked up over $190 billion worth of debt. The first thing you have to do is figure that out. So we have to look at ways of making sure that people have access. When things are broke, when there is no cash, who pays? The poorest pay. So we have to look at getting people who are the most exposed into higher education. That is what our policy does: it opens up another 80,000 places. For every $5 extra that is paid in HECS one dollar goes into the Commonwealth scholarship scheme, the greatest scholarship scheme this country will ever see. It is specifically targeting low SES people who would never otherwise get a chance. But 'No, we don't want that, we don't want that.' You blokes just talk a good game about people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

I come from Townsville where we have James Cook University. It has three campuses, in Townsville, Cairns and Singapore. They are keen for competition. They say, 'Bring on the competition because we are up for it because we have a science degree that stands alone on absolutely everything. We have people coming from all over the world for our science degree and our marine science degrees and our coral reef studies. We have people coming from all over the place, from all over the world to get into that degree. In our science degree we have our Daintree outlook, we have our cattle station and we have Orpheus Island. There is a degree that will stand alone against any form of competition for anything. James Cook University is rated number one in the world on coral reef studies and marine sciences. They say, 'Bring on the competition because we can handle the competition.' We just invested another $42 million in James Cook University for the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine. There are 3.6 billion people of middle-class by 2035 to the north of Australia in the Asian century and we are ready for it because we embrace competition. We open it up and say, 'Bring it on.' Those opposite are looking at their bellybuttons saying, 'Nothing can change, just roll on past like a tumbleweed.' You are wasting everyone's time. Just get out of the road because you guys are in the Melbourne Cup and you have not gone past the post the first time. We are coming down the straight again and you are standing there dawdling in the road. Get the fag out of your mouth, move out of the road and get yourself a job.

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