Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I rise on this incredibly important matter of public importance—that is, the Prime Minister's continued love affair with $100,000 degrees. It is so unfortunate that, despite this legislation being rejected by the this parliament on two occasions, the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education seem obsessed with bringing it back a third time. I have a message for the Prime Minister and for the Minister for Education: this is a dud of a policy. It is a policy that will not have support from this parliament, and it is time they gave up.

The Prime Minister has said this week:

… a lot of people who voted for us were going to feel dudded.

They certainly felt dudded by the 2014 budget, in which the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education brought the Australian people a proposal that they had no notice of. In fact, before the last election, the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education said that there would be no cuts to education. Indeed, they said that there would be no changes to university funding. The Minister for Education said this after the election in November. He said, 'No, we're not going to change the fees that we charge at universities.' It is understandable that the Australian people were shocked on budget night. Now, this bad piece of legislation—which would affect thousands of students, which would be a barrier to students choosing to take up a higher education degree and which would lead to so much debt for students—continues to be pursued by this Prime Minister. One must question whether or not it is a captain's pick.

The captain has got 'Mr Fix-it' onto the job.

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