David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Jagajaga proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The impact of the Government’s higher education policies on ordinary Australian families, with 96 full-fee undergraduate degrees costing students over $100,000 and 5 courses costing over $200,000.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If there is one thing you can rely on with this Prime Minister it is that he is always slipping and sliding away from things he might have said in the past. One thing, though, that you can particularly rely on is that he will continue to drive up the cost of a university education in this country. In fact, you could bet your house on it. Under this Prime Minister and his education policies, it is now the case that you can pay as much for a university degree as you pay for your home. We now have university degrees that basically cost as much as the average mortgage.

Let us look at the Good Universities Guide that came out today and the piece of information that tells us that we now have almost 100 university degrees that cost more than $100,000—in fact, five of them cost more than $200,000. If you want to do a medicine-arts degree at the University of New South Wales, it costs $237,000; at the University of Melbourne, $219,000; and at Bond University, $233,000. If you want to do medicine-law at Monash, I am sure the member for Chisholm would be interested to know that you could rack up a debt of $214,000.

Let us compare that with the average mortgage that people have. We know many people are paying more than this. We know that many people have very large mortgages under this government, but the average mortgage is about $220,000. That is after a number of interest rate rises, of course, as a result of this Prime Minister’s economic management. The average mortgage is $220,000, and now we have five university degrees that cost more than $200,000, even though the Prime Minister said way back in 1999 that under his government there would be no university degrees costing $100,000 and that he did not want to have an American style university system. We now have an American style university system courtesy of the Howard government, and we have nearly 100 university degrees costing more than $100,000. We know that that American style university system is driving Australians away from university.

Let us look at some of the others. I have mentioned the $200,000 degrees, but let us look at the $100,000 university degrees. It costs more than $100,000 to do optometry at the University of Melbourne and more than $100,000 to do a combined science and applied science degree at the University of Sydney—the list goes on, particularly in the very, very important areas of professional skill shortage. We know that there are serious shortages of health professionals in optometry and so on, and we know that there are very serious skill shortages in the sciences, yet it costs $100,000 for a combined degree in science and applied science at the University of Sydney. And that is after this new Minister for Education, Science and Training came out just a few weeks ago and told us that we need another 20,000 scientists and engineers in this country. The government know that we have a very serious shortage when it comes to scientists and engineers, but what are they doing to encourage people into the sciences and into engineering? All they have been responsible for is a massive hike in the cost of a university education, whether it is full-fee degrees of $100,000 or full-fee degrees of $200,000. And, of course, we have also seen the doubling of HECS under this government.

Today in question time we drew attention to the decline in the number of students who complete year 12 and go on to either a university education or to technical education. Of course the Prime Minister did not want to answer the question and so he meandered off answering some other question. Because of the massive hike in fees for university education, we have seen a decline of almost 10 percentage points in the last four years. Is it any wonder we have a serious skills crisis in this country when this government is making it more and more difficult for young people to go to university, to go to TAFE, or to get an apprenticeship? It is no wonder we cannot find plumbers and electricians; no wonder we cannot find scientists and engineers. Fees are driving our young people away from our universities and TAFEs and away from apprenticeships.

The Leader of the Opposition drew the Prime Minister’s attention to the promise he made back in 1999. He did not mention HECS in this commitment. I quote Hansard, the Prime Minister speaking:

The government will not be introducing an American style higher education system. ... There will be no $100,000 university fees under this government.

That statement is quite clear. He did not mention HECS. He did not qualify it in any way. He did not say, ‘We won’t have any $100,000 HECS degrees but there might be some $100,000 full fee degrees.’ It was a categorical statement from the Prime Minister. We are used to the weasel words that we heard in question time today—yet another broken promise from this Prime Minister. This promise is well and truly smashed. We now have not only a broken promise but 100 university degrees costing more than $100,000.

We know why it is that the Prime Minister does not want to get into this debate. Those of us who were here in 1999 will remember why it was that he was forced into making that commitment. You might recall it was in response to a very secret leaked cabinet submission put forward by a previous minister for education, David Kemp, who wanted full deregulation of university fees. He wanted to get rid of HECS and basically say that universities should have full free market power to determine whatever university students should pay. We can imagine that the Liberal Party might see that that is the way university entry should be organised—in a free market way. David Kemp proposed to the cabinet full deregulation of fees and a voucher which could be used in public and private institutions. Also, he wanted a new loan scheme that had a real rate of interest.

Not surprisingly, when that cabinet submission was leaked, the Prime Minister did one of his backflips—we know he is very good at those—and decided that he had to back away from that very extreme agenda. Instead of that proposal, we had a change of minister. Brendan Nelson was brought onto the scene and he said, ‘No, we won’t have 100 per cent full fee payers; we’ll have 50 per cent.’ Brendan Nelson, the previous education minister, said that we should have 50 per cent of our university students paying full fees, that that is what should be allowed at our universities. He could not get that proposal through the Senate. He did a deal with some of the Independents in the Senate that we would have 35 per cent full fee payers.

This government has form when it comes to this issue. We know that their fundamental position is to go to a free market where universities can charge whatever they like and whatever the market will bear, and where there will be abolition of HECS. We know that is the true position of this Prime Minister. He has had to bow to public pressure for the time being, but we can expect to see more and more students being forced to pay higher and higher fees.

We do not know what the new Minister for Education, Science and Training thinks about this issue. She has not said whether or not she thinks that the current level of full fee payers should stay as it is or whether she agrees with David Kemp—maybe that is her position. Hopefully she will give us an answer in response to this MPI. We have heard from her today that we really should not be worried about any of this because it affects only three per cent of students. I say to the minister that you cannot have it both ways. You cannot say on the one hand that universities are going to go broke if Labor abolishes full fee university degrees and on the other hand that we should not worry about it because it is only three per cent. Which one is it? Is it that it is only three per cent and therefore Labor can certainly afford—and I would say the government can afford—to do away with these outrageous levels of fees that are being imposed on our students? Let us see which way the minister wants it. Is it just a small number or is it going to send the universities broke? The minister cannot have it both ways.

We heard the other argument from the Prime Minister which he has mounted over the years—that if foreign students are allowed to pay $200,000, why should not Australian students? I mean really! I have never heard a more ridiculous argument.

Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Aviation and Transport Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Bevis interjecting

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

University students from Australia should have the right to pay $200,000 for a university education! Only the Liberal Party could think of this ridiculous argument. The other point that the member for Brisbane rightly makes is that Australian parents pay tax in this country.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Melbourne Ports is way out of his seat.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the reasons they pay taxes is that they recognise there is a public benefit to be gained from encouraging our young people to go to university. When we hold up this graph and say that it is a terrible thing that there are a declining number of year 12 students going on to university or TAFE, the Prime Minister waves his hands in the air and says: ‘It’s nothing to do with me. What are you worried about?’ Of course the government is not worried about it. It does not think it is important for our students to get a further education, either as an apprentice or a university student. It does not think it is important. That is why the government does not mind these prices going through the ceiling. But most Australian parents do care, and they understand that their taxes go to subsidising the cost of university education for Australian students. Of course Australian students should not have to pay as much as foreign students. Of course Australian students should get subsidised places at our universities, because Australian parents know how important it is to have doctors, nurses, engineers, scientists and all of the rest of the people who benefit from a university education. We hear the most spurious arguments over and over from the federal government.

Why is it that our universities are being forced into increasing the number of degrees that cost so much? There is only one reason. On the radio this morning, the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University belled the cat—he told the truth, which is that the only reason that universities are going down this path is that the Howard government has so massively slashed the funding of our universities. Over the last 10 years, more than $5 billion has been slashed from the budgets of our universities. No wonder the quality is now being called into question. This is the only developed nation in the world to have cut public investment in higher education—the only one—and the government is proud of it.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Danby interjecting

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Melbourne Ports is warned!

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They are the ones that have cut public investment in higher education while the rest of the developed world has seen a very significant increase—a 38 per cent increase on average—because all of our competitors know just how important it is to have a skilled workforce, to make sure that their young people can get a university education or a trade. That way their countries will go forward. Ours will only go backwards. (Time expired)

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women's Issues) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can always rely on Labor to scaremonger. The Labor Party would have you believe that the higher education sector is on the verge of collapse and that no student can afford to go to university. Labor would have you believe that students have to choose between a house and a university degree. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Australian education system is one of the fairest, most equitable and accessible in the world. The latest figures show us that there are almost one million students in higher education. Over 700,000 of them are Australian students and over half of them are Australian undergraduate students. One million students in universities is a 50 per cent increase since we came to office in 1996.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How much?

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women's Issues) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A 50 per cent increase, Member for Paterson. Students are reporting the highest levels of satisfaction ever. The median starting salary for graduates is $40,000. That is nearly 82 per cent of average weekly earnings. Among those graduates available for full-time work, nearly 94 per cent were in some form of employment within four months of leaving university. About 81 per cent of graduates are in full-time employment and 12 per cent are in casual part-time employment while looking for full-time work. Graduate satisfaction is at a record high of about 90 per cent.

Since the Higher Education Contribution Scheme was introduced by the Labor Party in 1989—they introduced HECS—over two million individuals have been able to access higher education through Australian government funded loans. About $17 billion has been loaned to students since 1989. Almost $7 billion has been repaid. About 830,000 people have totally repaid their HECS debt. Of those who have not, around 20 per cent of them never will—they will effectively have a free degree because they will not reach the income threshold at which repayment kicks in, at just over $38,000.

Today the average outstanding HECS debt is $10,500, yet the member for Jagajaga is out there trying to tell students that they have to pay $240,000 to do a university degree. She is suggesting they have to choose between a house and a university degree. That is ridiculous. It is scaremongering and exaggeration. She ought to be ashamed.

Kerry Bartlett (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Shame!

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Macquarie is out of his seat.

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women's Issues) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The average outstanding HECS debt is $10,500. Ninety-seven per cent of students are in Commonwealth subsidised places. The average repayment time for debts that have been fully repaid is just over seven years and, as any accountant will tell you, a HECS loan is just about the best loan you will ever get in your life. Of those who have a debt, around 88 per cent owe less than $20,000 and 72 per cent owe less than $14,000.

These students know the value of their investment in education. Average lifetime earnings for male graduates are around $622,000—less for women, about $400,000— more than for those who do not have a university degree, and the lifetime unemployment rate is one-quarter of that of a nongraduate. So, over a lifetime, a full-time worker with a degree will earn about $2.62 million and a full-time year 12 graduate can expect to earn about $2 million. Graduate doctors and lawyers earn a great deal more.

Let us turn to the government supported places—what we call HECS places. There are record numbers of HECS places available for Australian students. As the Prime Minister pointed out, 97 per cent of all Australian undergraduate students are in Commonwealth supported places. This means that, on average, this government pays three-quarters of the cost of their study.

In 2003 the Australian government committed to creating more than 39,000 places between 2003 and 2009. More than 18,000 of these places have been added to the system since that commitment was made. I announced almost 5,000 new commencing places only a few weeks ago, with a particular focus on the skills shortage industries such as nursing, teaching and engineering. As a result of this massive injection of new places—and the member for Jagajaga knows this—unmet demand has dropped by more than 61 per cent since 2004. ‘Unmet demand’ is the number of students who would have been eligible to go to university but did not get a place.

More than 90 per cent of eligible year 12 completers who applied to university in their own state received an offer from a university. That is the best result in decades. When the Leader of the Opposition was the Minister for Employment, Education and Training, what did he do about unmet demand? The number of eligible applicants who could not get a university offer reached something like 100,000 when the Leader of the Opposition was the education minister. So what did he suggest? The Sunday Telegraph of September 1993 reported:

School leavers must be prepared to miss out on university—

this is Kim Beazley—

the federal government warned.

This year in New South Wales, unmet demand fell from 5,000 to 3,000; in Victoria, from 6,000 to 4,000—and it goes on. Tasmania had unmet demand of 200, which would have been annihilated by my announcement a few weeks ago of 290 new places for Tasmania. You have to contrast this with 100,000 eligible applicants who could not get into university in 1992 when the current Leader of the Opposition was the minister for education. What was his answer? He said: ‘You’ve got to miss out on going to university,’ or ‘We’ve got too many universities in this country. We’re going to have to cap university expansion. We don’t need any more.’ He did not allocate more places, as this government has done; he said, ‘You've got to close down universities.’

Today, under this government—and thanks to our generous investment in higher education and training—unmet demand for university places is virtually negligible. Entry scores are at their lowest in decades. Universities are looking to give back thousands of unfilled places this year, and I am going to reallocate them to other providers who are still experiencing student demand. The reality of the situation is that any qualified student who wants a Commonwealth subsidised, taxpayer supported place can find one—and the member for Jagajaga knows that.

In 2003 the coalition brought to this parliament a plan to revolutionise funding for universities. Rather than get block funding, universities would receive payments for the subsidised courses they actually delivered for university students. This was accompanied by an $11 billion injection in new funding for the sector. That is new funding of $11 billion over the next decade. As part of that package, students were offered loans for full fee degrees.

The Labor Party introduced full fee degrees in postgraduate courses. This government introduced loans for full fee degrees in undergraduate courses in both private and public institutions, and this is known as FEE-HELP. We have recently lifted the amount a student can borrow from $50,000 to $80,000 in all degrees, but in medicine, veterinary science and dentistry a $100,000 cap applies. As a result, almost no student is prevented from entering a degree on the basis of up-front fees. So, like HECS students, students who access FEE-HELP only need to start repaying their loan when their income reaches the threshold, which is $38,149 this year. Also as part of that package, the coalition government directed over $400 million to create more than 43,000 scholarships for Australian undergraduates to help them recover their living costs while studying.

Turning to the facts about full fee paying students, at the latest count in 2004 there were no more than 16,299 Australian undergraduate full fee payers in the higher education system. We are talking about a student body of one million students and 6,000—or about 37 per cent—of them were in intensive summer and winter courses. The fact is that the average annual fee for a full-time, fee-paying undergraduate student is $12,112. The member for Jagajaga is out their scaremongering, saying that you have to sell your house to go to university, when the average annual fee for a full-time, fee-paying undergraduate student is $12,112, based on latest figures.

Students undertaking a three- to four-year degree with these fees would usually complete their course for less than $50,000. And yes, the Good Universities Guide lists some degrees costing more than $100,000. It is a good thing that students have these facts to inform their decisions, because HECS places are available for them. But has the member for Jagajaga actually bothered to find out how many students are enrolled in these courses? I am advised by the University of New South Wales that the medicine-arts degree that is listed at $237,000 has one enrolment. The $219,000 medicine-arts degree at Melbourne has no enrolments. And—guess what?—Melbourne proposes no intake of students into this course next year. Monash has a mere three or four takers for its medicine-law combined course. Also, Monash has a combined biomedical science and engineering course listed at $101,000 that has one student.

Labor’s position on full fee payers is full of hypocrisy. Astonishingly, in their so-called white paper—it is increasingly a brown paper—on higher education, their first commitment was to maintain the coalition’s policy of voluntary student unionism. Their second commitment was to abolish full fee paying places in only public universities. So Labor are committed to throwing 16,000 students out of their courses. By contrast, Labor have no problems with foreign students from China, Malaysia, Singapore and India coming to Australia. Under Labor, they can come here in their thousands, take up university places and pay full fees, but that opportunity is denied to Australian students. If a prospective student is determined to undertake a particular course and just misses out on it, Labor would force that student out into another course or into another institution or into another state.

Under Labor, there is no opportunity for an Australian student who has just missed out to follow their ambitions into a particular discipline at a particular university. Labor denigrates these students as being unworthy of university study, yet full fee payers have shown themselves as competent at study as their colleagues. In fact, each year around 700 full fee paying students—about eight per cent of the total fee-paying cohort—transfer into HECS places. These students are more than competent enough to undertake a degree and succeed. They do not deserve the denigration that the Labor Party heaps upon them. It is competitive to get into full-fee courses, and a quick review of the Good Universities Guide shows that full fee places are offered in the highest demand courses—with law, medicine and veterinary science chief among them.

Let us take an example: say a student from the member for Jagajaga’s electorate gets 95 for their tertiary entrance ranking score. That student desperately wants to do law. They have a choice: they can go to ANU, one of Australia’s top universities, in a Commonwealth supported place, or they can go to the University of Melbourne in a full fee paying place. They got 95 but Melbourne university’s HECS cut-off is higher. Just because that student chooses the University of Melbourne, which is closer to home, Labor would have you think this student is unworthy of that course.

A review of the Labor policy shows the extent of Labor’s hypocrisy. Labor wants full fee payers out of public universities, but Labor has no problem with full fee payers in private universities—nor, it would seem, any problem with HECS places in private universities. So it is okay under Labor for a full fee payer to sit next to a HECS student in a private university but it is not okay for a full fee payer to sit next to a HECS student in a public university. Where is the logic in that?

Do you know what Labor’s ideological hatred of full fee payers in public universities will cost universities? They would throw out 16,000 students, and more than $520 million over the next four years would be lost to universities. If you add that to the $1.5 billion that universities would lose under Labor’s mooted reductions to HECS, the $400 million more it would cost in scholarships, the more than $600 million it would cost to pay for student clubs and activities, and the $850 million it would cost to change the parental income test which applies to youth allowance—all options in Labor’s paper—it can be seen that you would have a very, very expensive education policy under Labor.

I ask the Deputy Leader of the Opposition—and it is a question that I know her backbench colleagues are asking her: where is the money coming from? And there is division in the Labor ranks. An article in the Age on 7 April 2006 reported:

Opposition Leader Kim Beazley will face pressure from his own party to abandon Labor’s long-standing opposition to full-fee-paying places for Australian undergraduate students.

…     …         …

But the Age has learned of a behind-the-scenes push within the party to review the policy, which universities claim would cost them millions of dollars. (Time expired)

Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the end of each sitting week, when members leave the ivory tower that is this parliament building and return to their electorates, some of us see a huge difference between the fairytale world that members of the government speak about and the real world. If you listen to the answers given by government ministers at question time, you have to wonder if they live in the same country. The rosy picture painted by the government seems like a Hollywood film set that hides the reality of life in areas like Western Sydney and many other areas throughout Australia.

That reality does not show itself in the endless list of statistics that the government trots out. It is not obvious in the outward appearances of areas like Western Sydney. The result is not the glaring inequality that can be seen in developing nations. The signs do not show up on the radar of those who measure prosperity in terms of GDP. What must be noted from those figures is the falling share of national income going to wages and salaries.

It is clear that the results of our nation’s prosperity have not trickled down to all Australians. The rising tide has not lifted all the boats, and a good many Australians, especially in electorates like Fowler, are being forced to tread water. Things might look calm on the surface, but underneath there is frantic activity to keep afloat. And to keep their heads above water, families have a limited number of responses.

We know that Australians are working longer hours now than at any time in the last 50 years, and we know that more and more mothers are re-entering the workforce earlier than they did a generation ago. We certainly know that Australian families are borrowing much more than they did a generation ago. We know that Australian families spend more on home mortgage repayments now than they did a generation ago. We know that high interest credit card debt has gone through the roof. On top of that, we have record high petrol prices, at a time when families are more dependent on car travel than ever before. As well, we are beginning to see the full impact of increased prices at the supermarket and higher costs for electricity, water and other services. It is a slow process, but the signs are there for all to see.

In a local supermarket last week, I overheard a remark that will ring true with many people who do the household shopping. One age pensioner remarked to another that ‘the specials don’t seem to be as good as they were’. It is a small sign but an important one of inflation feeding through to everyday goods. So to keep their heads above water, families in Fowler and many other electorates throughout this nation are treading water as hard as they can. They are working longer hours, they have extended their mortgage and they have maxed out their credit cards. The effect of this is not obvious to any observer. That is because the stress felt by families does not register on the national accounts. But it is being felt by a growing number of families, and it will take a toll as heavy as any social upheaval that we have felt as a nation.

For young families, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. We now have 50-year mortgages. Take out a mortgage today and it will be paid off out of your estate when you die. But that mortgage is only for the home. With 96 full fee undergraduate courses costing over $100,000 and five courses costing over $200,000, the debt burden on young Australians seems certain to rise and place even greater pressure on families.

We already see the higher levels of HECS debt, thanks to changes by this government, eating into the incomes of thousands of Australian families. For a teacher or a nurse to see $100 a fortnight taken out of their pay in HECS repayments is a huge slug. But just imagine paying over $2,000 a month in repayment of loans to cover full fee payment courses.

For parents in ordinary families wishing to help their children, the cost of those degrees puts them way beyond anything they could afford. How could any average family afford to pay $100,000 for even one child, let alone two or three, as the Treasurer suggests we should have? While this government boasts about repaying government debt, we can see who is shouldering that debt burden. It is the young families who are forced to take out outrageously high mortgages to pay for inflated house prices and, on top of that, to pay higher HECS fees if they have been lucky enough to gain entry to a HECS course. But just imagine the debt burden for those students undertaking a full-fee course with fees over $200,000. Those fee levels will exclude young people from electorates like Fowler and other electorates from undertaking those courses.

And what will be the result of limiting access to courses to those rich enough to afford such high fees? Just as we have seen with the government’s cuts to technical training, we will face skills shortages in many vital professions. If we look at a list of the full fee paying degrees costing over $100,000, we see courses such as medicine, science and social work—all areas where we definitely have a skill shortage in this country. But, instead of funding those places, this government is placing the burden on individual students—and then the government complains that Australian graduates take their skills overseas, as we have heard in a number of speeches over the last couple of weeks and in this House today. The government’s approach to higher education is as short-sighted as its approach to trade training, and we will pay a heavy price in the coming years as we seek to make up for the shortfall in a competitive world market for highly skilled professionals.

Australia is already at the bottom of the list of OECD countries in terms of government spending on higher education. This government’s growing reliance on individual students to fund the full cost of their education is a policy failure of dire proportions. While we might enjoy the economic sunshine that comes from digging up our minerals and shipping them off at record prices, these times will not last forever. For Australians to retain our standard of living, we will need to rely more on the use of our skills, but this government has set back our advances as a highly skilled nation, and we risk falling well behind other developed nations. By then it will be too late to make a quick recovery. Our best brains will have left for overseas, and we will lack the critical mass to lift our knowledge and skills base to anywhere near that of our international competitors.

I began by speaking about the electorate of Fowler and the impact of stress on families. What we see there today is a taste of the future for all Australia. When mineral and commodity prices return to normal and we have to look to other ways of generating our national income, we will come to regret the folly of cutting spending on higher education. The Treasurer’s chickens will have come home to roost.

What keeps those struggling families going is the hope that there will be some light at the end of the tunnel, that some day they will be able to get on top of the mortgage and be a little bit more relaxed and comfortable. But, for young families of the future, paying off the house will be the least of their worries. The ever-increasing burden of higher education loans for themselves and their children will keep them in debt well into retirement, and few families in Western Sydney can afford that.

We are fast going down the path of an American-style system of higher education. Once again, higher education will be the privilege of the rich, not an opportunity for all Australians. For the past 30 years, affordable higher education has been the ticket out of Struggle Street for thousands of young Australians, including those who came here as children of refugees, found Australia a land of equal opportunity and have gone on to contribute greatly to Australia’s growth. In 1999, John Howard promised there would not be $100,000 degrees under his government. Today we have degrees costing more than $200,000. Another broken promise by this Prime Minister and this government. (Time expired)

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A very interesting speech there—highly impassioned, but unfortunately, typically, a little short on facts and logic. The simple fact is that Labor in general unfortunately have little understanding of what data actually means, the implications that arise and certainly the associated subtleties. Simply, the opposition decide to have a quick scramble through the newspaper in the morning: ‘What can we have for the MPI of the day?’

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You’re joking!

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are right; I am joking. Have a look at your opposition leader. He does not look through the newspaper too well, does he? He is not even aware of who the Reserve Bank governor is. The opposition go through the newspaper, sometimes not even realising that a person of one name is actually someone other than who they think, and, ‘Oh, eureka! We’ve got an issue for the day.’ Then they say, ‘We can turn this into an attack on the government. Let’s come up with an MPI.’

We have seen on numerous occasions that Labor simply do not understand the issues. With great excitement, they rush joyously, only to discover that they have all this energy but there is nothing really to show for it. It is a little bit like a can of fizzy drink that is accidentally shaken: a bit of excitement, a slight fizz, then just a mess and a clean-up. Then it is all forgotten. No indelible mark remains.

On this issue, sadly, they think they are onto a winner and that they are going to embarrass the government for having the audacity, of all things, to offer young Australians choice, a choice allowing even more students to undertake courses than are offered under HECS. They have clearly missed the fact that the Howard government has massively increased the number of university places offered under HECS and, in addition, for full fee paying students, and that our government has delivered far more choice to students.

The Labor Party really is opposed to choice. Let’s just have a look at some of the issues. The Labor Party hated the issue of choice in voluntary student unionism. The Labor Party has as its central theme a ‘c’ word which is certainly not associated with the government. The Howard government also has a ‘c’ word at the centre of its policy—that word is ‘choice’. The word most often associated with Labor is ‘compulsion’: compulsion in student unionism, compulsion in unionism generally, compulsion in having to accept wages and conditions under centralised wage-fixing arrangements, and so on.

For Labor, anything not expressly allowed is forbidden. Now, they want to compel Australian students—our future doctors, scientists, lawyers and eventually, in some cases, politicians—to have access only to Commonwealth funded university places. If Australian students want to undertake a certain course at a certain university, even if it means a financial cost, the opposition’s view is that students clearly should not be accorded that option. I repeat: Australian students should not be accorded the option. However, if a student is from foreign shores, it is no holds barred: yep, we’ll have them then. In the view of the opposition we should discriminate against Australian citizens in favour of foreign students.

Perhaps an Australian wanting to do a full-fee course should move overseas. (Quorum formed) Obviously the truth hurts, and as the truth obviously hurts let me reiterate that point: in the view of the opposition they would prefer that we discriminate against Australian citizens in favour of foreign students. Let’s have a look at the logic of their position: an Australian citizen wants to undertake a university degree as a full fee paying student. Under Labor the way they should go about it is go overseas and get foreign citizenship, and, then, hey, we will take the student, but we will not take them while they are an Australian citizen. I am sorry but that does not make any sense at all; that is the undeniable result of Labor’s so-called logic.

Labor’s hypocrisy here knows no bounds. Let’s have a look at a bit of history as far as full fee paying students are concerned. In 1986 under the Hawke government full fee paying foreign students were allowed in. In 1989 Labor allowed in full fee paying postgraduate students. This is clearly a ridiculous position to take. Once again this is an issue of saying, ‘Yep, if they’re a foreign student, it’s acceptable.’ If they are an overseas full fee paying student we will take them but we will not take an Australian citizen.

Let us just think for a second about some of the people who might be disadvantaged by the Labor view. When a certain person by the name of Isaac Newton was 18 years old, he had no ability to do mathematics. They had a plague in England at that time. He retired to the country and taught himself mathematics, and at the age of 22 he invented calculus. Under Labor’s policy, because he would have had inadequate marks to get into a HECS course, Newton would not have been accepted for a full fee paying course; therefore, sorry, folks, Isaac Newton and the whole point of gravity, laws of motion and calculus—gone! Albert Einstein was a low achiever at school. In fact he was referred to by his supervisor as a ‘lazy dog’. Let’s have a look at where Einstein went: photoelectric effects, special relativity and general relativity, at the age of 26. Einstein is another person who would not have been accepted in Australia as a full fee paying student. This is clearly a ludicrous position to take.

The Howard government has introduced a lot of different opportunities for students. In fact our whole attitude is about choice and opportunity. Unfortunately, Labor’s is about compulsion and exclusion—the exclusion, unfortunately, of Australian citizens. Let’s just get that one correct again. Let’s have a look at some of the opportunities afforded to Australian students under the government’s policy. The government has provided more affordable opportunities to students than ever before.

Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

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