Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will take up the member at the table's objections about medicine. Medicine is a very particular area. What about those apprentices doing a trade who are subsidising a medical student to get a degree and to earn very good income for the rest of their lives? What about those tradies? What about those workers? What about those people who are never going to get degrees? They are paying twice for someone to go and get a medical degree—so you are saying they should not make a contribution to that degree; is that what you are saying? What about ordinary people? I think you have forgotten them You really need to get out of Canberra more.

What this bill and legislation is about is improving the capacity of universities to function better. You deregulated the numbers. This means as many people can go to university as universities want, but they cannot alter their fee structures. Why would you set any business or service that charges a fee to deregulate the numbers but not deregulate the fees? It is not feasible. It is not practical. It is not what the shadow Assistant Treasurer thinks. It is not what Gareth Evans thinks. It is not what John Dawkins thinks. It is not what the vice-chancellors think. It is not what the sector thinks. They know these reforms are needed. They know they are vital. They know reform in this country cannot be constantly obstructed by the Labor Party just because they are trying to win elections.

We backed your deregulation of numbers. You should back our deregulation of fees, recognising that the government is going out of its way to ameliorate any unfairness and anything that can be perceived to be unfair. I commend the minister for education on the work that he has done, in so many ways, including Australian Research Council Future Fellowships, the concessional scheme that the government is implementing, all of the indexation arrangements that the government has changed and everything else that the government is doing in this bill. It is going out of its way to show the Labor Party and the Senate that we are genuine about pursuing reform. There are no more savings left in this bill. This is not a savings measure. This is about the future of our higher education sector in Australia.

Paul Kelly has been around a bit. In The Australian, on 27 November 2014, he wrote:

If the eminently defensible university reform compromise is not passed the result, as Universities Australia says, is that higher education will face an “inevitable decline in quality, performance, competitiveness and reputation”.

Too much is at stake. This sector is vital for our nation's future. We must have ongoing reform, and this parliament must have the ability to pass good quality reforms into law.

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