Mal Brough (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As has been pointed out, this is the second time this bill has been back to this House because it was obviously rejected by the other place. I preface my remarks by reflecting on the member for Scullin. I hope he takes the time to spend just a couple of moments with me. I do not say that in the negative sense at all. He just talked about loading people up with this massive amount of debt and how unreasonable it is. I remind the member for Scullin that today—or June 2014—all Australians state and federal had a gross debt of $497 billion which we all have to pick up. A state tax comes out of your left pocket but is your left hand, and when it comes out of the federal pocket they tell you you can have the privilege of taking it out of your right, but it is still the same bunch of taxpayers. That is going to grow to $694 billion.

In particular the member for Scullin talked about the proud record of the Labor Party, and they do have some very proud records in the area of education. I stand here saying I would love to see free education, free medical systems and higher pensions. We would all love to see that. But I would also love to see who is going to pay for it, because that is where the rubber hits the road. For the member for Scullin: whilst you have a proud record, are you also proud that, since the 2011-12 Labor budget through to the 2013-14 Labor budget, up to the year 2016-17 the measures that the Labor Party put in place whilst in government totalled a reduction in higher education support of $6.652 billion? Isn't it just a tad hypocritical to say: 'We are the righteous. We are those who are for free education. We don't want to load people up with debt'? None of us want to load people up with debt. The reality is that one of the reasons we are looking at health reform, education reform and reform in the welfare system is that the path we are on as a nation is not sustainable. I appreciate the member for Scullin having taken that couple of moments to spend time with me; thank you so much. I hope you go back to your suite and ponder as I now run through some of the many benefits that you inflicted upon the higher education system here in Australia over the last few years.

I understand why. Whilst on one hand the Labor Party says that debt is really bad to load on the individual, the former Treasurer, the member for Lilley, says debt is good. So is public debt good and private debt bad? If that is the case, I remind them it is the same private citizens of Australia who have to meet their own household debt as well as the public debt. Today, as the Treasurer has been reminding this place, we are spending $100 million that we do not have each and every day of the year. We are borrowing it. Some of that is in the area of health reform.

You would believe, if you were listening to this debate, that students at university are going to go from having absolutely free education with no requirement to make a contrition to somehow having to pay for it all. To the members of the gallery who have been listening to this, probably somewhat bemused: today the taxpayer—you sitting up there and me—pays 60 per cent of every person's education at university. And, glory be, the student, having graduated, having picked up a job that is earning more than $50,000 a year, starts to make a small contribution. If they never actually make that money, they do not actually pay it back. What is being proposed here is that it will go from a 60-40 split to one where the student—and I am not privileged to have a university education—will now pay 50 per cent and the taxpayer will pay 50 per cent. How dreadfully unfair is that!

It is not like the American system, where you pay it back the day you leave university. It is not until you are actually earning a sizeable income, knowing that you are likely to be earning at least $1 million across the course of your life as a result of that education that has been kindly contributed to by general taxpayers who have not had the privilege to go to university. We are saying, 'Let's make it sustainable and let's share equitably and equally in the cost of that education.'

Let's ask ourselves why the Labor Party felt it necessary to take $6.6 billon out of the higher education funding envelope over that period of time. It is because we are on an unsustainable trajectory. What I would like from those opposite if we are going to have a debate—if this is going to be a debating chamber rather than a slanging match and seeing who can throw the most mud—is to ask what the alternatives are.

I was in this place in 1997, which seems like eons ago now. At that time, under the Howard government, we proposed to introduce bonds for people going into high-care aged care. This was not a revolutionary policy because bonds already existed for people who were going into aged-care facilities that were low care. The Labor Party sniffed the breeze and went, 'We are on a winner here; we can kick the bejeebers out of that horrible coalition for asking people to make a contribution when they are frail and going into high levels of aged care.' They won the debate; it was the public who lost. They won the debate and we retreated from that position. So you can imagine my surprise when, having come back to this place in 2013, I turned up to a meeting on health reform—and I was still in the Dark Ages, knowing that only some people pay to go into aged care—to hear this: 'No, no. On 1 July, it is all in; high care, low care, it is all the same now. Everyone pays a bond.' I said: 'No, you've got that wrong. The Labor Party would not allow that in a pink fit.' 'Oh yes,' said Jenny Macklin, the minister in the last Labor government, with the support of the coalition. Why did we support it? Because it was responsible. Why? Because it was necessary. Why? Because it was actually equitable. We supported a Labor policy that was almost identical to that which was proposed in 1997-98 and was rejected by the Labor Party for base political reasons.

The debate we are having here today is going to be rejoined in the years to come. There is no doubt about that. If these measures are defeated in the Senate, the debate will come back—because it has to come back. You cannot borrow $100 million a day from the next generation, beleaguer them with debt and say, 'That's good enough; we have abdicated our responsibility.' So to the next Labor speaker: I invite you to take up the challenge and say why you felt it was necessary to have an efficiency dividend, raising $902 million, in your 2013-14 budget. Why did you think it was necessary to remove the 10 per cent HECS-HELP discount and the five per cent HELP repayment bonus from 1 January 2014, for savings of $276 million? Why did you think it was necessary in the same 2013-14 budget—we are not talking years and years ago now, we are talking about five minutes ago—to remove the conversion of Student Start-Up Scholarships and student loans at a saving of $1.182 billion? Why, in the same budget, did you put a cap on the tax deductibility of self-education expenditures, saving $514 million? I go all the way back to the removal of the HECS-HELP discount voluntary repayment bonus in 2011, for savings of $607 million. Would the members opposite like me to go through every single one of these so they can develop their arguments as to why they were necessary, equitable and reasonable, and why they were not attacks on the higher education system? Or is it just that we want to stick our heads in the sand and pretend the reality of the debt that we are lumped with as a nation is a mountain we will all have to climb?

I am not saying to the Labor Party, 'You were wrong in doing those things.' I am saying that you were wrong today not to have alternatives and proposals that you could argue and articulate. You could use your intelligence and your university educations to come in here with your research and tell us what other alternatives there are to make sure our higher education scheme is sustainable. It is essential to us.

The Sunshine Coast university is a wonderful institution. It has more direct contact with students than virtually every other university in Australia. We have more students going to university today than ever before because the Labor Party uncapped those places, meaning that the funding that was contributed from the Commonwealth was also no longer capped. If that is going to be sustainable we have to make sure it is paid for. These are the real questions of this government, this parliament and this nation as a whole. It is not for one side or the other simply to say no. We need to work together in the interests of the nation to ensure that our medical system is sustainable, our health system is sustainable, our welfare system is sustainable, our roads and our Defence Force are sustainable—all of those elements. It is just that, when we come to who pays and how that is achieved, people do not just differ; some say, 'Not me, not today.' That is not an option. It is today. Surely that is why we asked to be elected to this place—so that the generations before, who actually enjoy the freedom of the nation and the largesse of the nation, have an opportunity in the future not to be paying for what we have enjoyed.

The Treasurer said that every man, woman and child is going to have a personal debt load, if extrapolated across the whole community, of something in the order of $25,000 per person in the near future. That is a debt load, but you do not have an income if you are a baby, a preschooler, a primary school student or any student. So let's get real about this. If you do not like these reforms, fine. Articulate a clear alternative. Do not stick your heads in the sand. Do not run away and then start bringing in $6.6 billion worth of cuts to higher education and say, 'Everything is all right here. It is okay. Nothing to see,' because that is the Labor way. Labor likes to talk a really good story. It likes to pull the heartstrings of people about free education and the opportunities of the individual but it does not want to acknowledge the hard fact that this nation has to pay its way. The Treasurer, the Prime Minister, the front bench and everyone who sits on the opposite side acknowledge that challenge. We understand that higher education reform is a critical component of it. We will fight for it because equity is not only for today, it is for tomorrow. That is our duty as parliamentarians, no matter what side of the chamber we sit on.

These reforms have now been to this place twice. If they do not come back again, it will then be upon us all to find additional new reforms which can take our education system further forward and ensure the young people who aspire to a higher education have real opportunities into the future. That is the task before us.

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