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

I am glad that the member for Ryan finally got her chance to ask a question in spite of the interference being run by the member for Adelaide. The member for Adelaide knows that members of the government can ask any question they like during the 1½ hours of consideration in detail for education. She is welcome to divide up the time for higher education, schools and child care. She may well ask a question on child care, next, to the excellent assistant minister. But I would point out that she used most of that first hour asking about universities and then ran out of time for schools.

I am not the time manager for the member for Adelaide—that is a matter for her—but she does not get the chance, also, to tell the members of the government what they can ask questions about. If she casts her mind back to 7 September last year, she might notice that Labor did not win the election. That is why members of her party are sitting on that side of the House. So she gets to ask the questions that she wants to ask, and members of the government get to ask the questions that they want to ask. If she does not like the process she should not take part in the process, because there are lots of members of the government who would like to ask questions and would like to hear the answers.

The member for Ryan asked about the University of Queensland, an excellent university in both research and teaching. I can tell her that in the budget, research funding over four years, including for ARC and AIATSIS, is $11 billion. So we are massively investing in research in this budget. I have spoken earlier in the consideration in detail about how we faced funding cliffs for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy and the Future Fellowships program. I found money for both of those programs, in spite of Labor only funding them for 12 months. Those were more of the landmines that Labor left for the incoming government, because even they had worked out that the public had lost faith in them as a government. They left two funding cliffs in NCRIS and the Future Fellowships, and I found the money and funded it.

So we are actually investing more money in research over the next four years, and universities like the University of Queensland will benefit from that, because they have an excellent reputation in research. That is why I can tell the member for Ryan that Michael Gallagher, the Executive Director of the Group of Eight, gave an excellent speech at the EduTECH Higher Education Leaders Congress in Brisbane on 4 June 2014. I recommend it to the member for Moreton because it was in his city. And I recommend it to the member for Adelaide, who might not have had the opportunity to read it. Right at the end of that speech—if she only wants to read one paragraph—on page 17 of 17, Michael Gallagher said:

The 2014 Higher Education Budget reforms are necessary. They are logical, coherent, sustainable, equitable and inevitable … My guess is that the detractors of micro-economic reform in Australia’s higher education industry will find themselves on the wrong side of history in resisting efficiency improvement and innovation, as they will be in opposing the redistributive measures of the package and, curiously, supporting socially regressive subsidies from general taxpayers to more advantaged segments of the community.

Unfortunately, I can tell the member for Ryan, that is exactly where Labor has found themselves in this debate. They have found themselves on the wrong side of history. They have found themselves supporting socially regressive subsidies from general taxpayers to more advantaged segments of the community. They have found themselves opposing the redistributive measures of the package, like the expansion of the demand driven system to the sub-bachelor courses, and the expansion of the Commonwealth Grant Scheme to non-university higher education providers and the Commonwealth scholarships fund. This is the biggest Commonwealth scholarships fund in Australia's history and will give many, many more students in both regional and rural Australia, as well as the cities, the chance to go to university.

Research universities like UQ will benefit substantially from what their own Group of Eight describes as a 'logical, coherent, sustainable, equitable and inevitable' package of higher education reform. It will allow them to put more effort and their own money into research and to determine the areas of research that they are best at and the courses that they offer that are their highest quality courses and fund and support those, rather than simply have every offering in order to be able to chase the revenue, which is how the previous government had established the university system. That is why these higher education reforms will make a substantial difference to young people from low socioeconomic status backgrounds in particular and allow universities like UQ to compete with their Asian counterparts.

See this speech in context