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

The fixer, sorry. If I were in a bind, I would not call the Minister for Education, but obviously the Prime Minister has. The Prime Minister has called up the fixer and said, 'Come and fix my problem.' He has tried. He spent $15 million on advertising his changes, which have been rejected by the parliament. We know that he was demon dialling the crossbench, who were rejecting his calls. They had had enough. They did not want him to call anymore. In fact, they deleted his number from their phone. What did he do? He said: 'They might not answer my phone call, but I am going to spend $150,000 on consultants. Maybe they will answer the phone to the consultants, if they won't answer my phone call.' Of course, the fixer cannot fix this for the Prime Minister—just like he cannot fix many things for the Prime Minister. This policy has been foisted on the Australian people. It makes severe cuts to our universities—billions and billions of dollars ripped out. It deregulates universities, forcing $100,000 degrees.

The Minister for Education and the Prime Minister often claim that they have support from the university sector. We know that they are losing friends fast. They are losing friends fast when it comes to higher education and the minister's third round of proposed changes. Even the Group of Eight have said, 'It is time to go back to the drawing board.' The fixer has not been able to fix the Group of Eight; the fixer has now been told by the Group of Eight, his biggest supporters, to go back to the drawing board. So it is time for the government and the Prime Minister to abandon this plan, because the Australian people do feel incredibly dudded. As I said, this proposal is the third time that this has been brought to the parliament. Where is legislation? Of course, the Minister for Education—

Mr Frydenberg interjecting—

I hear the member on the other side of the table say, 'Double D.' I have to say, if the Prime Minister would like to go to a double dissolution election on his proposal for $100,000 degrees, bring it on. That is because when I am out talking—and perhaps the Prime Minister should get out a little bit more and talk to the Australian people—the Australian people certainly do not support his $100,000 degrees. They certainly do not support his 20 per cent, on average, cut to our universities, his cut to equity programs or his cut to research—the list goes on.

We have got the mark 3 legislation, even though the Minister for Education said that if it got defeated in March, he would give up. He has had a new lease of life and one can only assume that new lease of life is just to prop up the budget. Why else would the minister have said, 'We will abandon this legislation. We will not go ahead with that in March.' But now he continues to push ahead with it. It is because these big cuts are in the budget and those on the other side need to continue to prop up their budget and continue to try to make their budget look respectable. But, as the members behind me have said, they have doubled the deficit and that doubled deficit counts the savings; they have already banked the savings of this failed policy.

But this side of the House will not back down when it comes to mark 3 of the legislation. No matter how much spending on consultants and no matter how much spending on demon dialling and advertising to the Australian people, we will not move our resolve to block this legislation. Why? Why we block this legislation? Because it is fundamentally bad policy. It is terrible policy that will leave so many locked out of the Australian university sector and locked out of the higher education sector. It is fundamentally bad policy we are seeing. You only have to look across the world where this is happening to see that. We see in the US that there is $1.2 trillion worth of student debt. That is what is happening in the US. What we know is that debt in the US is stopping people from being able to buy a house and to actually start a small business. It is an impost on the economic contribution that they are making to the country.

Mr Frydenberg interjecting—

Quite frankly, I find the interjections from those on the other side odd, because I have not seen them yet in the university defending this policy. They have not dared to go onto a university campus.

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