Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

We do not agree to these amendments. We do not agree to these amendments, and the reason is this: a few moments ago, the Prime Minister and his entire frontbench got up and walked out of the chamber, turning their back on this debate just as they are turning their back on the young people of Australia. They are turning their back on the young people of Australia. Make no mistake about it. From a government which has lectured Australians and the Australian Labor Party on the need for tax cuts, what this policy represents is a tax increase on young people at a time in their lives when they can least afford it.

They are making it harder for students to get into university by increasing the tuition fees that they pay and by reducing the funding that is available to universities to support new students. They are making it harder for students to stay at university through a whole mix of policies, which the member for Cunningham has now just gone through. The fact is that it is harder for a young person to keep a job and to ensure that they're earning enough from that job, because of penalty rate cuts and because the jobs are not paying enough to keep pace with the cost of living increases. They are making it harder for them to get into university and stay in university, and they are making it harder for them to pay their debts once they have left university. That is why young people around the country are asking, 'What has this government got against us? They are loading us up with debt and making it harder and harder for us to meet those expenses when we leave university.' They have got nothing in their policy swag for the young people of Australia.

This is just part of the suite of education policies which are having a pernicious impact on young Australians. It goes hand in hand with the $17 billion worth of cuts to school education. These people over here think it is more important that we give big banks a $17 billion tax cut than it is to give a struggling public school or independent school assistance with their teaching, assistance with their school facilities and some additional funding to help struggling students meet their education needs now and into the future. It also comes hand in hand with their cuts to TAFE. I'm reliably informed that there are in excess of $3 billion worth of cuts to the TAFE system. So it's harder to go to school and harder to go to university. What are your options? Vocational education, generally. But this mob over here, with their born-to-rule attitude, are making it harder to get into TAFE as well by ensuring that they are cutting funding for TAFE and ripping the guts out of the vocational education system, with $2.2 billion worth of cuts across the vocational and higher education system.

The people of Australia deserve better than what is on offer from this government. There used to be a time when the Prime Minister used to lecture Australians about the importance of being a smarter country. He used to tell us about how all Australians had an obligation to ensure that we pulled together and became a smarter country. You can't become a smarter country if you're ripping the guts out of the school education system, if you are ripping the guts out of the university system and if you are ripping the guts out of the vocational education system.

he message to the Prime Minister, the message to all of those backbenchers who are feeling very, very nervous indeed after the last round of by-elections, is to come back to this place and reject these amendments. They have a choice. They can stand by their Prime Minister and go down the gurgler with their Prime Minister or they can stand up for their electorates. They can stand up for the young people in their electorates and reject these amendments, reject the cuts to the vocational education system and the school education system, and say quite clearly to their Prime Minister, 'We do not support the tax cuts to big business or the $17 billion giveaway to big banks. Let's invest that money into schools, universities and the vocational education system. Let's put our priorities where they should be.' It's in the young people of this country. Not the big banks, not the big corporations. Let's get our priorities right. We can't become a smarter country if we're doing dumb things like this.

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