Karen McNamara (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No! It was when he was opposition education spokesperson. Who might I be referring to? Before everyone gets too excited, I am not talking about the infamous Craig Thomson. I will mention him later, but I am talking about Michael Lee. Famously, during an interview back in 1999, when he was opposition education spokesman, Mr Lee spoke about a topic that, unfortunately, at the time he did not quite understand. It appears that his modelling was slightly flawed. Then, in 2003, the then shadow education minister, Jenny Macklin, jumped on the untruth bandwagon and also began spouting about issues that she had little knowledge of—and guess what? It was $100,000 university degrees. Are we really surprised?

Let's get some facts straight. This government is not—I repeat: not—planning to raise the cost of university degrees. In fact, it is not the government that is responsible for even setting the cost of university degrees. This is the responsibility of the institutions themselves. So I am unsure why there is an assumption that the government is raising fees; unfortunately, the opposition is helping to spread this innuendo. However, as we know, this is a familiar tactic—it is the same game as is being played now with the issue of penalty rates. It is common knowledge that the Fair Work Commission are the ones who make any changes to penalty rates, not the government of the day.

The member for Kingston earlier mentioned a waste of government money on advertising campaigns. I need to remind her of the unions' $30 million advertising campaign and other things that they are up to to spread lies about penalty rates and ChAFTA. This is $30 million of union membership fees. Perhaps they should have got advice from the Health Services Union on using members' money before they embarked on that campaign. Why should this debate be any different at all to all the other lies? I guess at least this is a debate we have been given prior notice of, not like some other invitations we have received lately.

Let's remind the opposition of the $6.6 billion worth of cuts to higher education and research which Labor announced from 2011 to 2013. How convenient that they forgot to mention that. Weren't we are lucky that not all were legislated? Some of Labor's own cuts have themselves been blocked in the Senate, which is a perfect example of the dog chasing its own tail. These proposed cuts included the removal of the 10 per cent HECS-HELP discount and the five per cent HELP repayments bonus and a cap on tax deductibility on self-education expenses. What a great example of showing the Australian community how much you care about higher education! This is in contrast to the coalition government, who have increased higher education spending since being in government—I repeat: increased.

Five minutes is not enough time, really, to adequately talk about the ridiculous lie campaign regarding higher education that the opposition, in conjunction with their union masters, is working to maliciously spread within Australian communities—scaring students away from tertiary education. What a shame. This is an opposition that cannot even get the costings on their own education policies right, sprouting three different figures in 24 hours, which is hardly surprising when you think of my predecessor—I did say I would mention him—whose credit cards probably paid for three different figures in 24 hours as well! (Time expired)

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