Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am proud to speak against the Higher Education and Research Reform Bill 2014, because Labor opposes the coalition's radical, right-wing deregulation agenda.

The member for Hughes provided a list of groups who purportedly support these reforms, but he failed to mention the one group in this country that that is deadset opposed to these reforms, and that is the Australian people. Every reliable poll of the Australian people has said that they are opposed to deregulation of universities, they are opposed to the inevitable rise in fees that accompanies that and they are opposed to closing the door on a generation of young Australians accessing higher education.

Another falsehood contained in the member for Hughes's contribution was that somehow this will contribute to the bottom line of the budget and that this is about sustainability. Well, the government has already given away so much in this package to get their ideological agenda through that the purported savings from this package have moved from over $4 billion to $400 million over the forward estimates, and if they have any chance of getting this through the other place they will have to give away a lot more revenue than that.

The real truth here is that this is not about savings; this is about an ideological agenda of making it harder for working-class kids and kids from middle-class families to get to uni. It is about a narrow ideological agenda of deregulating uni fees, of returning to the fifties and sixties where only kids from wealthy families could get to university. And this amended bill is an insult to the parliament and it is an insult to the Australian people. That is why this government is so on the nose with the Australia people. That is why 39 members of that party room voted against the Prime Minister on Monday, because they realise that this bill and these reforms are electoral death out there.

This bill identifies how clearly arrogant and out of touch this government is. The parliament comprehensively rejected the government's higher education reforms last year, and yet this new reform bill is basically a carbon copy of last year's bill. The Minister for Education has admitted that it is 90 per cent the same bill. In his second reading speech he stated that the bill:

… preserves essential elements of the government's higher education reforms …

…   …   …

It is much the same as the bill I introduced a few months ago which was yesterday defeated in the Senate, …

The only substantive change in the bill is the change in the indexation rates.

The Minister for Education is showing particular contempt for the Senate in this bill in pushing ahead with unfair changes that the Labor Party and the crossbench have clearly stated they do not and will not support. I do not often quote the Palmer United Party, but Senator Lazarus had a particularly colourful description of the minister's reforms, which I will not repeat. Suffice it to say that they were an accurate representation of these reforms. Last year's reform bill was unfair and was rejected by the parliament. This year's reform bill is still unfair, and for that reason must also be rejected by the parliament.

There are fundamental differences between what the Labor and Liberal parties believe relating to higher education. The Labor Party understands the powerful contribution tertiary education and research contribute to our economic and social good. The coalition is hell-bent on the Americanisation of the sector, and this has been so overwhelmingly rejected by the Australian people. The new bill is still fundamentally inequitable and still contains sweeping cuts in funding and support for the tertiary sector. The funding cuts are substantial and extensive. The bill provides almost $2 billion in cuts to Australian universities: $171 million in cuts to equity programs, $200 million in cuts to indexation of grant programs, $170 million in cuts to research training and $80 million in cuts to the Australian Research Council. There will be fees for PhD students for the first time ever and this bill will still mean that undergraduate students are paying $100,000 for degrees.

So in the reform bill mark 2 the cuts remain, the new fee position remains and the clear attack on the sector and on research is maintained by an out-of-touch government more interested in its own political survival than in a thriving tertiary sector that is fundamental for an economically prosperous and socially fair Australia.

I turn now to the impact on the regional universities. Just as the last bill did, this bill will have a devastating impact on regional universities, like the University of Newcastle in the region which I represent. Before looking at these impacts, and whilst talking about regional communities, I want to draw the attention of the House to the Nationals' policy on universities. The Nationals members in this place purport to represent regional Australia yet over and over again they vote with their Liberal friends for policies that hurt Australian families and the regions. This document is from the Nationals website. It is called Our Policies Building Stronger Regional Communities and lists 48 policies in different areas. But guess what? There is no policy on tertiary education—a minor oversight. Guess what? There is a policy on their abandoned Paid Parental Leave scheme; there is a policy on building the East West Link—so comprehensively rejected by the people of Victoria—but no policy or plan for universities.

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

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