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

I thank the member for Ryan for her question. She will be pleased to know that the government 's higher education reform s are necessary to enable our universities to reach their full potential and compete with our Asian competitors. The recent Shanghai Jiao Tong index, which was released in the last two weeks, shows eight Australian universities in the top 200—the G8 universities. But it also shows six Chinese universities in the top 200, when five years ago there were no Chinese universities in the top 200. It exposes the fact that reform is vitally necessary if our universities are going to be able to compete with their Asian competitors.

The second aspect of the reforms are to spread opportunity by having the largest Commonwealth scholarships fund in Australian history; by allowing the demand-driven system to be expanded to students doing diplomas—typically, low-SES students and first generation university goers; and by expanding the Commonwealth Grant Scheme to non-university higher education providers—all expanding opportunity, all things that I would have thought the Labor Party would support.

We are asking students to lift their contribution to the cost of their education from the current 40 per cent to 50 per cent. That is all we are asking: to lift their current contribution from 40 per cent of the cost of their education to 50 per cent of the cost of their education, so that taxpayers are not paying the current 60 per cent, knowing that university students will go on to earn 75 per cent more on average than people without a university degree. The HECS-HELP scheme is available to every one of those students, which means that none of them will pay it up-front. That is not an insufferable debt burden; that is the best loan an Australian will ever get.

To respond to the second part of the member for Ryan's question, the reforms will also build a strong economy by helping to salvage our third-largest export industry. After iron ore and coal, education is our third-largest export. It recently surpassed gold. If we do not protect the international student market we will lose that $15-billion-a-year industry—already reduced from $19 billion to $15 billion by Labor. We need to repair it, salvage it and grow it. We need to match the skills of the graduates to the skills needed in the workforce, and we need to promote research that can be commercialised by giving more revenue to universities. The G8 universities and Warren Bebbington get this. They are putting out statements, they are visiting the parliament, urging the passage of the reform bill. I would ask the crossbenchers, Labor and the Greens to listen to them.

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