Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

You are getting close! When you get down to the bottom you have a choice of two Conroys; it is a bit of a toss which way you go.

What we have heard so far from the Labor Party is simply not true. What the Labor Party is supposed to stand for is taking from the rich and giving to the poor. What they are actually standing for here now, is taking from the poor and giving to the rich. There was a famous statement a few months ago from Cate Blanchett about free university education. There is no such thing as free education; we have a redirection of taxpayer funds. But the Labor Party would like to take from people who are paying their taxes—people who are not attending university, people who have left school and have gone into a trade, who are working in the mines, in the local councils or on the farms—so that they can subsidise people from the leafy suburbs of the capitals to go to university at their expense, at the sweat of their brows. The Labor Party would like those taxpayers to be handing their money over to the privileged few so that they could get a university education scot-free and earn up to three times the salary of those other workers.

At the moment, students, through the HEC Scheme, are paying about 60 per cent of their contribution, and what is being asked is that they pay 50 per cent. Those hard workers that are paying their taxes are still going to pay 50 per cent of the contribution of their fees, and the rest of it will be paid back when they earn over $50,000 per year. I might say that many of the people I represent would only dream about earning $50,000 a year. We need to get this into perspective.

These reforms were to bring our education system, our university system, through to the 21st century so our grandchildren and children will not be going to the university of Shanghai, the university of Jakarta or the university of Port Moresby to get a better education than they would in Australia—because our system was not keeping up with the rest of the world. And do you think the Labor Party, who pride themselves on being the party for education, would get on board with these reforms and say, 'Yes, we need to do this; I know that when we were in government we ripped $6 billion out of the sector, but we'll now work with you to build these reforms'? What the Labor Party did was remove the possibility of country students getting an education, with their isolated child allowance going, so I now have parents in my electorate who have to decide which of their children get an education and which do not.

The Labor Party should be backing these reforms, with the Commonwealth scholarships, so that all people can get an education, not just the privileged few who get to earn the big dollars and work in the white-collar sector, having been subsidised by the hard work of the blue-collar sector. I am terribly disappointed about the tone of the debate we have seen here today. No-one from the Labor Party is talking about the reforms, better education for their children and grandchildren or bringing the sector back on track. (Time expired)

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