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

This is an incredibly important matter for the House to deal with, because the government's plan for $100,000 degrees is still on the table. No amount of sweet talking by the government or the Prime Minister and no amount of reassuring coos by the new Minister for Education and Training can change the fact that this government's disastrous $100,000 degree plan is still on the table. What we have from this minister—instead of a radical change in policy direction—is merely a one-year delay in bringing on those opposite's disastrous policy, which would cut funding to universities and foist $100,000 degrees onto university students. Of course, the question is: why is there a year's delay? Is it because the minister decided that he needed to go back and think about this? No, it is not. The reason the minister had to delay it for one year is that he could not get it through the Senate. The previous minister and this minister both knew that the numbers were against them.

I do hope that the current minister has taken advice from the former minister—that is, do not demon dial the crossbench, do not pay consultants $150,000 to try to get through the door, and do not spend $15 million on an advertising campaign to try and convince the Australian people and the crossbench that they do not have a dud deal in front of them. On our side of parliament, we know that this is a dud deal. The Australian people know that it is a dud deal. Despite the fact that everyone in Australia—apart from the government—knows that this is a dud deal, unfortunately, the government still will not abandon these plans. That is advice that the new minister should take. The new minister should take advice from the Australian people and abandon these plans, but, as of yesterday, he is still backing the plans. Yesterday, Minister Birmingham said on AM Agenda:

So what I've said to date is that we will defer the start date on the currently proposed reforms till 2017 …

That does not sound like a revolutionary change; that sounds like a mere delay. When asked by Kieran Gilbert whether deregulation could possibly make a comeback, the minister gleefully responded:

… that is absolutely what I would hope to do and that is indeed the government's intention …

Despite trying to convince the Australian people otherwise, with a bit of sweet talking and some reassuring comments, the plan for 100,000 degrees is still squarely on the table.

We do know that they have tried to change the salespeople. In the Education and Training portfolio, we have a new, more cuddly minister than the member for Sturt. One would assume that they did not want to change too much, but we do not have the member for Sturt in the House representing the new Minister for Education and Training; we have the member for Cowper. He has made a sterling contribution on the deregulation debate. In fact, he has not actually mentioned higher education in the higher education debate in this House—not once. We searched, and we searched and we searched, and we could not find. I can see why the government are very desperate to change the salesperson. The member the Sturt regularly got up here and professed the importance of these changes, so I know that the government are desperately trying to change the salesperson, but perhaps they might have appointed someone who is actually interested in higher education and has actually mentioned it in the House. Many among those opposite have indeed mentioned it, but they are trying to keep quiet the fact that they have a plan to bring back $100,000 degrees. Even though they are changing the salespeople, they cannot change the product.

In the interim, Labor have announced our plan for higher education. Our plan for higher education is a very important one. It provides a student guarantee for universities so that they have sustainable funding into the future. It boosts quality, investing $31 million for quality teaching and resources, through TEQSA. This is a really important part of ensuring that there is quality in our universities. In addition, we have set an ambitious goal of 20,000 completions by 2020. We have committed to extra completions because it is not good enough just to enrol students into higher education; universities must support them to complete their studies and to get jobs when they graduate. So this has been a very important announcement and piece of work. I must commend the minister for higher education, Senator Kim Carr, for the work that he has done in this area—the shadow minister, sorry. I would like much better for him to be minister than the ministers on the other side.

We have not stopped there. A lot of work has been done by the members for Chifley and Blaxland—indeed, by the whole team behind me—on the policy for start-up years at universities, which will ensure that students can develop their idea, get business know-how and support, and study an extra year at university with that support to innovate and take their start-up ideas to market. These are concrete real ideas. These are concrete policies. These are not just a delay of an unfair and unpopular policy that no-one supported. The minister for Sturt—sorry, the member for Sturt—

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