Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Oh, we wouldn't want to listen to the universities about higher education reform; that'd be a very dumb thing to do! University leaders have shown in words and deeds that they repudiate the alarmist scare campaigns being run by those opposite. If there were a gold medal in running scare campaigns, those opposite would be atop the dais.

They also show that higher education will be accessible and affordable and that no student need pay a cent up front. I repeat that: no student needs to pay a cent up front, and no-one needs to repay anything until they are earning over $50,000 a year.

There has been much said about regional students, and their communities are, in my view, among the big winners in this reform package. Regional education providers will have the opportunity to offer more courses and compete to attract more students. By expanding government support to diplomas, advanced diplomas and associate degrees, regional education providers will be able to offer more courses.

One such beneficiary of this new system will be the new collaboration between the University of South Australia and the world renowned Australian jazz musician James Morrison. Those two entities have come together to create the James Morrison Academy of Music. When it begins next week, it will provide sub-bachelor degrees to 70 students in Mount Gambier. These are diplomas and associate diplomas. As an aside, James Morrison was busking out the front of my office yesterday. He is only human, given that it is my office! Returning to the more serious: these tertiary opportunities would not be funded under those opposite. These 70 students from across Australia—budding jazz musicians—in the initial stage would have to find these fees and would need to pay them up front.

If our reforms are successful, these same students will get the benefit of the Higher Education Loan Program. To repeat it for those opposite in case they might be a bit slow on the uptake: as a result of our reforms, these same students will not have to pay up-front fees. So, to those students who have come to Mount Gambier to engage with this exciting collaboration between the University of South Australia and James Morrison as the first participants in the James Morrison Academy of Music I say this: the Labor Party would have you pay your fees up front and in full before you even play a single note toward your sub-bachelor degree. Those on this side of the House, including your now local member—because you have all obviously become residents of the great city of Mount Gambier—would happily have you undertake that degree, attain your qualifications and enter the workforce, and only at the point at which you are earning $50,000 a year would you be asked to repay anything, and even then at a very slow rate.

In my view, this highlights the problem. We can come into this place and wax lyrical about theories. We can be ideologues. We can talk about the problems that besiege the tertiary education sector. But the reality is this: those of us on this side of the House want to deliver practical outcomes for students in the tertiary education space. Those on the other side of the House see a political opportunity. They are the alarmists, if you like. Instead of showing the kind of foresight that we did in opposition during the Hawke-Keating era, when we saw nation-changing reform and we backed it in, those opposite see it, they know it, they know it is in the best interests of this country, but what is more important to them is the political opportunity that presents itself every day. They cannot rise above it. It is the reason that, when the people of Australia turn to decide whether we should be entitled to continue to govern this country, they will say, 'Well, what is their plan?' To those that are in the chamber on the other side, I say: you had better get working on your plan, because you do not have one, and the people of Australia know it.

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