Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to follow the member for Fairfax, Professor Palmer. I think his speech was a ringing endorsement of the coalition's plans for deregulation of universities to bring more competition into that sector.

What has really concerned me during this debate is the shocking scaremongering we have heard from members of the opposition. We have heard these dishonest and deceitful claims about $100,000 degrees. I never thought I would see in my lifetime an opposition that actually, for political purposes, goes about discouraging young Australians from going to university. So, I would ask all members of the opposition to think very carefully when they go out into their electorates and spread this fear and this scaremongering: their false claims of $100,000 degrees, their false claims that students cannot afford to get into university. That scaremongering that they are engaged in is discouraging the young people of this country from going to university, and that is an absolute disgrace. And it is a disgrace for crass political purposes—that members of the opposition would actually dissuade our young people from going to university.

We in the coalition want to see more students at university. That is what this bill, at its heart, is all about. It is about giving more opportunities, to increase the number of students in the country who can go on to get degrees. That is the core of this bill. We need to disabuse some of those absolutely false and misleading claims by the opposition—the idea that it is now too costly to get into university. The facts are that in this country, after this bill, you can get into university without paying one single cent up-front. To any student who wants to back themselves, who thinks that they have the talent to go to university, to get a degree, we in the government are saying: we will back you. And we are saying that we will actually give you a gift of 50 per cent of the cost of your degree. The taxpayers of this nation will back any student who wants to try their hand at university with a gift of 50 per cent of that cost. They will never have to pay that 50 per cent back. It is a gift from the taxpayer. And regarding the remaining 50 per cent, you do not as a student have to pay one cent up-front. You only have to start to pay that back once you start to earn $50,000, and you pay that by way of a higher marginal rate of tax—at $50,000, a two per cent higher marginal rate.

And this is most important. As I said, the coalition wants to give more opportunities to the young people of this nation. We have many resources in this country. We have that black coal seam that runs down our eastern seaboard. We have minerals—iron ore, gold and uranium—buried in our outback. But our greatest resource is the citizens of this country. We see many countries throughout the world that have great mineral resources but do not have the wealth of this nation. The greatest resource that we have are our people, and it is our job in government to create the most opportunities so that our people can unleash their creative skills and their creative talents. That requires giving more people the opportunity to get to university and to go on to do further study. If this bill goes through, it will assist 80,000 people a year to get further education, to do further studies. That is what the opposition and the Greens and some of the crossbenchers in the Senate seek to block.

This bill is back for a second time, and some amendments were made after discussions with some of the more sensible crossbench senators. And I would like to go through those. The first one is the indexation of the debt. Initially it was planned that that would be at the 10-year government bond rate. It is interesting that since that last debate the 10-year government bond rate is now down to about 2½ per cent, so anyone who wants a loan it is basically at 2½ per cent. That is a pretty good offer. But we have actually gone better than that. We are going back, where the indexation on that loan will be nearly at CPI. Currently, I think we are looking at about 1.7 or 1.9 per cent—less than two per cent. That is the interest rate a student will have to pay on their debt.

Secondly, we are creating a five-year pause. If a parent becomes a primary carer for their young child, that indexation on their debt pauses for five years. This was a suggestion by Senator Madigan. I congratulate Senator Madigan on this sensible suggestion. I congratulate the Minister for Education on accepting this. This makes our HECS system even fairer. But if this bill gets held up or blocked in the Senate by Labor and the Greens, that will not go through. The five-year pause that is part of this bill will be held up. Most importantly we want to encourage people. We understand that when they have young children they may want to take time off work or time off study. This bill freezes the indexation on their student debt.

Thirdly, this bill will establish a structural adjustment fund to assist universities to a new deregulated market. I hear, with great amusement, members of the opposition standing up saying, 'This will Americanise our universities', as though there is something wrong with American universities—they have some of the top universities in the world. It appears those opposite would like to go back and 'Sovietise' our universities.

Fourthly, this will introduce a dedicated scholarship fund for universities with a high proportion of low SES students who will be funded directly by the Commonwealth on top of the existing university-based scholarships. This will be the biggest scholarship scheme in our nation's history. Yet again, it will enable more students to study and create more opportunities.

Fifthly, it will amend the legislative guidelines to ensure that domestic fees are lower than international fees. And, also, the government will direct the ACCC to monitor university fees so there can be no collusion between them and there will be effective competition. And we have great diversity in universities around this country. There are enough universities, enough players in the market, to ensure that competition will keep university fees down and low.

While the opposition have actually failed to say what they want to do, the alternative appears to be to just continue to spend more and more money and get our nation further and further into debt. What they want to do is continue on the current fiscal deterioration that we have seen over the past six years. You have to remember the overspend in this country at the moment is $100 million every single day. We are spending more than we are raising in revenue. Now of that $100 million, $40 million is the interest on Labor's debt. We cannot go on for all time in this country continuing to overspend and borrow $100 million a day. This simply cannot continue. So if we want to put more funds into university and to get more students into university, the fairest way is to have the students who are getting the benefit of that university degree—a degree that we know will allow them to earn, on average, 75 per cent higher incomes over their life than someone who has not got a degree, the equivalent of $1 million over lifetime in additional wages and salaries over someone who does not have a university degree—to pay for it. The opposition are asking those people who do not have a university degree not only to pay the 50 per cent gift that they give to a student who goes to a university but also to fund the rest. That is inequitable and unfair.

We simply cannot continue on the way we are going, spending $100 million a day more than we raise in revenue. We are living today at the expense of people too young to vote and for those yet unborn. That is why we need to wind that back. We have to make the hard decisions, and those hard decisions mean a slight rebalance on the costs of a university degree in what is paid by government and what is paid by the student. Currently it is around 60 per cent free gift from the taxpayer, 40 per cent paid by the student. This brings it back to a 50-50 split. I do not see how anyone could say this is not fair, especially when it creates 80,000 more opportunities for our young students.

There has been overwhelming support for this legislation from those who actually think about this and are not engaged in some type of cheap political stunt for votes. The people who think about what is best for our nation going forward support this. I will go through the list. All the higher education peak bodies support the reforms. Universities Australia, the Regional Universities Network, the Australian Technology Network, the Innovative Research Universities, the Group of Eight, TAFE Directors Australia, the Australian Council of Private Education and Training and the Council for Private Education are all supporting these reforms. And the list goes on. Distinguished commentators such as David Gonski, Paul Kelly and Stephen Matchett all say these reforms are absolutely essential. So do the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Even prominent Labor figures support this. Gareth Evans, John Dawkins and Maxine McKew have urged the members of the opposition to stop the scaremongering and to engage positively to work out how we can make our universities stronger and better. Belinda Robinson of Universities Australia has said—and the member for Charlton might take interest in this:

It is simply not possible to maintain the standards that students expect or the international reputation that Australia's university system enjoys without full fee deregulation.

So the opposition has a choice. They can be obstructionist. They can continue with their scare campaign—this disgraceful, misleading scare campaign that they are engaged in—scaremongering students, discouraging them from going to university. I say that will be on their heads. If one student is discouraged from going to university by this scaremongering campaign with the falsehoods and false claims about $100,000 degrees, the false claims that you have to put money up front to go in, they stand condemned. They will stand condemned for every one of the 80,000 students who will miss out on Commonwealth support if this legislation is held up. They will stand condemned for those students who become primary carers for their children, who will not have their indexation frozen for five years should this legislation not pass.

This is important legislation. We would hope that the opposition, instead of being obstructionist, instead of trying to sabotage this government's attempts to repair the fiscal mess they left in almost every portfolio, would take the chance to come on board, to show that they can be constructive, to show that they can work with the government and to get this legislation through. I commend it to the House.

See this speech in context