Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

In seats held by the Greens, the average is 32,288. That's almost 2½ times the number. This is a disgusting use of taxpayers' money to cynically try and buy votes in the city, and those opposite know it.

This gets us right back to the bill before the House today. This government wants to write blank cheques with other people's money to try to buy votes of the younger people in Australia with no regard whatsoever for the fact that somebody always has to pay for their promises.

One of the most interesting aspects of the debate before the House is that Labor takes great pride in saying that 508,000 students have taken on fee-free enrolments during their time in government. That's an impressive number. But what we've been asking of the government is: how many of those students who have taken advantage of a fee-free TAFE course have finished the course? That's a reasonable question. Is it 50 per cent, 90 per cent or 20 per cent? Because how could you decide to extend a program unless you'd measured it, reviewed it, assessed its success and decided that this is a program that is worthy of continuing or maybe we need to tweak it a bit.

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