David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am going to enjoy talking on this MPI because the whole premise of it seems to be based on dodgy, overblown and exaggerated figures. I think the best way to start the discussion is to quote Vicki Thomson of the Australian Technology Network of Universities:

So let me repeat what has been said a million times: the university sector is not looking to introduce standard $100,000 degrees and deregulation won't deliver them.

Those who have brainwashed some journalists and independent senators to accept that we plan to do just that deserve to be shot down.

It is not only wrong, it is shameful for the fear such myths are creating in the community.

I now turn to the chief brainwashers, who I sometimes think have done so much brainwashing they have brainwashed themselves. The Labor Party have been running a scare campaign on education like the one they ran on pensions. Just the other day we raised pensions again, as we said we would do. And now Labor are doing exactly the same thing with this issue as they did with pensions.

What are we doing? We are expanding the demand-driven system of providing assistance to tertiary education. It means that students studying for higher education diplomas, advanced diplomas and associate degrees will get Commonwealth government support, which equates to $371 million over three years. The people who will benefit from this amount of money are those attending universities in my electorate and at the nearby Charles Sturt University and Southern Cross University. It will also help people who are attending TAFE, because we are also removing all FEE-HELP and VET FEE-HELP loan fees. These fees are currently being imposed on people who have undertaken higher education and vocational education training loans and are on average about $1,600 a year. Over 80,000 extra students will be able to get Commonwealth government support to undertake tertiary education, and 35,000 extra students will end up with a degree or bachelor course. This is going to help people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. A lot more people will get help with alternative entry courses, which is a phenomenon we see not infrequently—in fact, we see it quite often at universities in my electorate. People start off with a diploma, move to an advanced diploma and then the next thing you know they are enrolled in a bachelor degree. This system has been designed to benefit those sorts of students.

The other group who will benefit in is apprentices. We have trade support loans of $20,000. This is a great program and it will mean that apprentices will get assistance as well. Also, if they pay it all back, they will get a 20 per cent bonus. This is much better than the previous system, which was just a $5,000 grant and 'away you go'.

One of the previous speakers mentioned us having an ideological frolic. I would like to go through some of the ideological frolics that the Labor Party undertook in its last period of government. There was $6.6 billion in cuts to higher education. That was a Labor ideological frolic. Talk about a bull in a China shop; it was more like an elephant in a China shop: they cut almost $3 billion in one year alone. Because they were such bad financial managers, they had to cut money from somewhere to fund their ever-expanding debt. Not only that; Labor put a $2,000 cap on teachers, nurses and other professional people attending further education. Regulation and compliance costs for the university system, which they left in chaos, was $280 million a year. Not only that; they attacked the collaborative research infrastructure funding that was about to go off a cliff. We have reintroduced that.

I would like to finish on the words of the member for Fraser, who put it so well when he said:

A deregulated or market-based HECS will make the student contribution system fairer because the fees students pay will more closely approximate the value they receive through future earnings.

(Time expired)

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