Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lindsay for her contribution. I can remind her that it was not very long ago that I was out in Western Sydney opening the University of Western Sydney College. Peter Shergold, who is the Chancellor of the University of Western Sydney, is the chairman of one of the working groups that is advising the government on the legislative framework for the reforms that we handed down in the budget. He is doing an excellent job, as are all the vice-chancellors and educators who are assisting the government to bring about very far-reaching higher education reform. I can tell her that Greater Western Sydney will be one of the biggest winners from the government's higher education reforms.

One of the points that the member for Adelaide made before was that she tried to suggest that somehow we would be stopping young people from being able to access university through these reforms. What she failed to mention, but I know that the community understand already, is that every single student, whether in Greater Western Sydney or in Walkerville in her electorate, will be able to borrow every single dollar up-front for the fees that they will pay to go to university. No student will be denied the opportunity to go to university because of cost—not one—because every single dollar can be borrowed from the taxpayer under the Higher Education Loan Program, which used to be the Higher Education Contribution Scheme introduced by Labor—by Minister Dawkins in the Keating and Hawke years—when they had some policy consistency and some policy responsibility. That means that no matter how wealthy you are or how poor you are, you will have exactly the same opportunity to go to university in this country. That is why our system is so very different from the system in the United States. To compare the two is a very false comparison and is extremely misleading.

It does shock me that, in the electorate of the member for Lindsay, Glenmore Park has 11.1 per cent and North St Marys has 5.1 per cent of people enrolled in tertiary education. The University of Western Sydney is an extremely important part of the economic and social fabric of Greater Western Sydney, with its six campuses and it is very determined vision of spreading the benefits of university education to the demographic in that part of Sydney, which is a low-socioeconomic status demographic. Our reforms will mean that people in North St Marys who might not be as well prepared for university education as others and who typically use pathway courses into university will be able to do so because we are lifting the cap on those pathways courses, those diplomas and associate degrees. They will now be under the same demand-driven system as undergraduate degrees. It is costing the Australian taxpayer to bring that about.

We know that the people in Western Sydney typically use diplomas and associate degrees that might be offered at places like the UWSCollege at the University of Western Sydney to train themselves to get the skills that are necessary to then go on and earn an undergraduate degree. The Kemp-Norton report that I commissioned earlier this year and that was handed down a couple of months ago said that students who had done those kinds of pathway courses were much less likely to drop out in the first year of an undergraduate degree and that 24 per cent of students who had not done those courses dropped out in the first year of an undergraduate degree.

When I sat down to think about reform of higher education I decided that I wanted to establish an equitable higher education system that gave those people who were less likely to go to university a greater chance to go to university. When I was at school I assumed that I would go to university, and I did go to university because I went to an academic school and I had every single advantage that a young person could have. So when I sat down I did not decide to have a higher education system that advantaged people like me; I decided that I wanted a higher education system that advantaged people from low-SES backgrounds. That is why we are expanding the Commonwealth Grant Scheme to non-university higher education providers. That will help TAFEs educate more young people to get the same opportunities that I have had in life, to get the start that they need. That is the answer to the member for Perth's questions.

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