Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Labor has shut off opportunity for students to go to university—whether it be the 80,000 new places that were going to be created because of the government's reforms; whether it be the 130,000 students who are with the non-university higher education providers, who were going to benefit from the taking away of the premium on VET FEE-HELP and FEE-HELP; or whether it be the university students who were going to gain scholarships in the biggest scholarships scheme in the history of Australia. That scheme led Michael Spence, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, to say that they would go from 700 scholarships a year to 9,000. He also said that because of the freedom that this deregulated market would create he would be able to skew those scholarships to disadvantaged students, low-SES students, students from rural and regional Australia, disadvantaged and first-generation university students so that they would be able to increase the demographic breakdown of their university from six per cent of low-SES students to 30 per cent. The Labor Party likes to pretend, to wring its hands about free education. The Labor Party likes to wring its hands about apparently standing up for students from disadvantaged backgrounds— (Time expired)

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