Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Now that the new university year has well and truly got underway, there are campuses all over Australia brimming with enthusiastic young students, full of hope for their new venture into higher education. They excitedly look forward to the day that they complete their university studies and venture into the real world, to get a real job and to contribute to society. No doubt there will be students of politics entering politics 101. They will certainly learn quickly that there is a huge difference between the policies of an opposition in election mode and the reality of actually governing. What all these students will learn is that the bill before us today, the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities, and Other Measures) Bill 2009, is fundamentally flawed and will ultimately be implemented at their cost.

What we have found since the introduction of voluntary student unionism is that the services that are in demand and cater most to the needs of the students are flourishing, while those services that are unrepresentative or inefficiently managed will struggle. Students will learn that providing funding for services not in demand does not create any incentive for improvement or innovation in these services.

Finance students will realise that what the government is doing is forcing them further into debt, debt that will need to be repaid. The government seems to have missed a few too many finance 101 lectures, for it seems to lack any understanding that money does not grow on trees and will need to be paid back at some point. Finance students will recognise that they will already have a significant student debt incurred in the process of making themselves more desirable in the workplace. They will also recognise that using the SA-HELP scheme will commit them to repaying further debt.

Business students will make the most frightening realisation of all. They will realise that, when they graduate, the Rudd government’s stimulus package will not have delivered any results or sustained the job market in Australia. They will remember that the Rudd government told them that $250 is not much to pay and assured them that it can be paid off one day in the future. They will know that for the rest of their working life they will be paying inordinately large taxes to fund recent government borrowing and they will know that the student services fee they were forced to pay was not money well spent and it is money that they would rather have in their pocket. Meanwhile, more and more of their pay will be used to offset interest payments on the national debt.

Law students will also look at the legislation before us today and wonder how it could be drafted in this manner unless the legislators were intentionally leaving it open for major loopholes.

Politics students will quickly become politics sceptics when learning about Australian politics in recent history. They will quickly learn that things are not ever what they seem with the Labor Party, especially in government, and they will learn that the action never matches the rhetoric. When looking back at the election campaign, they may even giggle that the Prime Minister, the political chameleon, claimed that he was an economic conservative and yet, a short time later, committed Australia to record debt.

Accounting students will reflect on the compulsory fee that they are made to pay to their university for student services and see that this is effectively a flat rate tax on students. Inevitably they will know of some students to whom $250 is more than they can pay, and perhaps others for whom it is a meaningful impost, and question how this system can be seen as fair.

For most of these students, regardless of their academic interests, the other major facet of their life will be the need to work. More often than not students are employed in the hospitality or retail industries or other jobs that can accommodate their university commitments. We know that these industries have been most directly affected by the current economic climate and the flawed economic decisions that are being made. In real terms, this means that Australian students will face the limited opportunity to work and will find themselves under increasing financial pressure.

Giving students the choice whether or not to spend their money on student services or to save for necessities such as books or rent is surely the only sensible option. The youth of Australia, whether they be in employment or in higher education, are the future of our country. They will carry our economy and advance the legacy that we leave them. This government is treating Australian students with the greatest of disdain in seeking to enforce this compulsory student services fee. The government must remember that Australian students know better than to accept this tax on their learning. They know the scheme purports to provide student services they neither want nor need and while the government is taxing student learning, students are learning that the Labor Party means taxing.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities, and Other Measures) Bill 2009. The Minister for Education, in her second reading speech, said:

The Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities, and Other Measures) Bill 2009 outlines a robust and balanced solution that will not only help ensure the delivery of quality student services—it will also help, once and for all, to secure their future.

I concur. Regrettably, the Howard government remained committed to the past in this area. Students at university talk many times about ideas, philosophies, world views and the way of life, but those opposite seem to be fixated and obsessed about the battles that they engaged in in the 1960s, the 1970s and the 1980s. They are still committed to abolishing student unions, still committed to attacking lecturers and tutors who they do not agree with and still committed to propagandising extreme conservative positions. This is a new and balanced way forward. Those opposite remain fixated on ideologically extreme positions in this regard.

I had a conversation with Professor Alan Rix, who is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the Ipswich campus at the University of Queensland, in relation to this legislation—I thought it was important to go to someone who knows about these types of things—to see what he had to say about the reforms. I did not want to rely upon what we are told. I wanted to get someone who I respected and who is a well-known academic, so I spoke to him in relation to the guidelines, the protocols and the benchmarks. Professor Rix’s position was that they would consult the student bodies, the University of Queensland senate, in relation to these matters. His words to me were, ‘The benchmarks are fine.’ His view was that $250 is approximately what the compulsory student services charge was anyway. In an email to me, his words were:

As I said on the phone—

referring to a conversation he had with me—

my personal view is that the guidelines in the areas identified for support, including infrastructure, seem appropriate and would enable an institution to provide services accordingly.

That is the view of Professor Alan Rix, a well-known academic in Queensland, a well-respected person in the Ipswich community. He is someone who I listen to in the circumstances.

Our solution to the way forward is to introduce a national access to services benchmark relating to the provision of information on and access to services such as welfare and counselling services in line with the current requirements for overseas students, and for the first time we are going to introduce national student representation and advocacy protocols to ensure that students have an independent voice on campus. To support the kinds of services which we hope to be quality, over and above these benchmarks we are going to provide that universities have the option to set a compulsory fee, capped at a maximum of $250 per year. We will index that annually. It is up to each university to see whether they are going to charge a fee or implement the amount, but it cannot be above $250. That fee will support student services and amenities. It will support sporting clubs, the kinds of services that students need, many of them living away from home, many from rural and regional areas away from their parents, away from the kinds of support structures that they need.

So this is particularly important to students from rural and regional areas in Queensland, because they have to travel long distances. If a student comes from outback Queensland or regional Queensland and they go to university in Rockhampton, Townsville, Cairns, Ipswich or other places like that, they have to travel a long way. So getting access to information, health assistance, legal advice, physiotherapy, sporting clubs for recreation and clubs for cultural groups are important to university life and they are important to students from rural and regional areas.

It really is a great shame that in the past, under the Howard coalition government, students were forced to pay about $170 million both directly and indirectly, as the minister said in her speech. Universities were effectively forced to redirect funding out of research and teaching budgets to ensure that students, the kinds of students I was talking about, were not disadvantaged. The minister and the government have consulted with universities, and they are supportive of what we are doing. Universities Australia, the peak body representing the university sector, said it very clearly last year. They talked about the fact that universities struggled for a long time to provide the kinds of essential services that they did in the past.

Like many people in the House of Representatives I went to university—the University of Queensland at St Lucia, where I did arts and law. I found the union there to be very helpful in terms of advice and assistance, as did many other students.

Helping university students to achieve and attain educational qualifications is an important social justice goal but it is also important for the productivity levels of our economy and for profitable businesses in the future. Education is not a matter of Left or Right; it is both socially just and equitable. But, if we want to increase our prosperity and economic security, we need to invest in higher education.

Universities in Queensland certainly suffered under the Howard government’s draconian legislation in this regard. I have spoken to many academics in Queensland who were forced to comply with Work Choices, which was difficult. Work Choices even penetrated university funding: you had to comply with individual contracts and other Work Choices requirements for funding to continue. There was always that sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the universities that their funding would be cut if they did not comply. So much for the previous government’s commitment to higher education and to ensuring the future prosperity of our country. To be so ideologically obsessed that they needed to impose Work Choices on the higher education sector is a disgrace. So universities in Queensland suffered as a result of the Howard government’s so-called reforms. I have listened carefully to the speeches from those opposite, and they drip with ideological obsession on this matter.

Let us have a look at the University of Queensland as an example of what I am talking about. At the University of Queensland, there were two main organisations which were funded from the old student services charge—the university union and UQ Sport. Both organisations continued with reduced funding after the Howard government brought in its voluntary student unionism changes. Prior to that, the annual combined grant to the university union and UQ Sport was $7.5 million, and the university kept some of the student services charge to run its own student support services. This amount was reduced by 50 per cent in 2006, and now the university provides a recurrent annual grant of about $2 million to the two organisations, effectively cross-subsidising the organisations because they cannot run their services properly with such reduced funding. As part of the deal, the university union relinquished ownership of its buildings to the university. So much for those people trying to create and support jobs. Guess what happened as a direct result of the Howard government’s changes? There were extensive job losses across the board for the university union and UQ Sport, with a visible impact on students.

There were large cuts to support for students on welfare, legal, tenancy and academic advocacy matters; large cuts to professional policy and portfolio support for student representatives; and costs for students to use UQ Sport facilities increased from 50 per cent to 90 per cent of the cost of outside providers. There was a substantial increase in prices for catering in retail outlets, making food more expensive for students. Those were direct consequences, in one university, my alma mater—where both of my daughters happen to be attending—of the Howard government’s changes. That is one perfect example.

You could look at what happened at the other universities in Queensland, and the same story could be said of Griffith University, the University of Southern Queensland and Queensland University of Technology. They all had the same experience. Because so many regional students go to the universities in Brisbane and on the coast, the universities in Queensland particularly suffered because the pattern of settlement in Queensland is very different from other states. Queensland is very decentralised, and so regional and rural students were particularly disadvantaged by the Howard government’s provisions.

The changes in this legislation are particularly important, and I am very happy to support it. It will help the University of Queensland, which has two campuses in my electorate—at Gatton and at Ipswich. I commend the bill to the House.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think it is quite interesting that I have had my name on the Notice Paper for about eight days now, waiting to get up and speak on this bill, the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities, and Other Measures) Bill 2009. It is almost as if the government have been trying to hide this legislation behind ETS and IR legislation. I thought this Main Committee chamber was about non-controversial legislation. This legislation is far from being non-controversial, as anyone who reads the speeches will note.

I note that the member for Werriwa spoke earlier in this debate. I think he is a pretty good guy, and I told him today that if I had a chance to speak on this bill I would say he is a good guy, because I think he is. He suggested that we talk about and hark back to our own university experiences. I went to university as a mature age student, starting in 1990 at Flinders University. The first thing that happened to me was that I was told that the student fee was not compulsory, which was fine, but the problem was that I could do all the work and sit the exams but I would not get the results. Their argument was that it was not compulsory but I had to pay it or I could do all that work and not receive the results. That is hardly a voluntary set-up. It is like saying that you can have a car and drive it but you are not allowed to put any petrol in it. That is how voluntary it was.

I was still running a farm when I was at university; in fact, I was involved in local government as well. I used to go to the university two days a week. I used to drive down in the morning and get there at 9 o’clock. I would go to lectures and tutorials and finish up at 6 o’clock at night. I did my economics and politics degree on two days of the week, because I could not afford to take up all the other facilities that were there. In fact, I think I went to the uni bar on the day I started and on the day I finished, and in between I did not go at all, because I did not have the time to spend at the uni bar. I went home and played sport in my local town. In what I might call my home town of Keith, we give a bit of petrol money to the uni students to come back and play football for their local team rather than playing with the university sports team. That was very good for the Keith Football Club, and I am proud to say that they won the premiership last year, and the B grade and the senior colts won it the year before, so they have done pretty well out of doing that.

Now, though, I live in Murray Bridge, which is about 80 kilometres, or nearly an hour, away from the University of Adelaide or Flinders University. Those people themselves often come back and play at their local club. So they are not getting the benefits of being involved in university clubs. In fact, a lot of those students who are now studying at either of those universities or any of the other facilities they have got are encouraged to come back and play sport in their local town, because country towns rely on sport. It is a very strong part of their culture.

So that is my experience and that is the experience of many of the students in my electorate. In fact, there is no-one in my electorate who lives within, I think, about 60 kilometres of a university and, often, in many cases, they live up to 400 kilometres away from a university. In fact, in some places it is closer to go to the University of Melbourne than it is to the University of Adelaide.

So the problem I have is that this legislation gives the Rudd Labor government the authority to slug students with a regressive tax of up to $250 each year from 1 July 2009, regardless of their income or their ability and willingness to use the services that the fees will contribute to, with no say in how that money will be used. In 2005, it was the Howard government that lifted a huge financial burden from students by making student union membership voluntary and empowering students to choose which services mattered to them. This choice makes for student unions providing better services—that is, ones popular with real students, not student union leaders.

I am reminded of a story I was told when I went to university: that you could make up your own club, get some funding, buy a keg and have a really good party. Well, I am not sure that that is really what student union fees should be going towards. And the list of different organisations you could be involved with was quite outstanding. In fact, when this legislation came up in the parliament in 2005, I listed a whole heap of these loony groups that were getting funding from the compulsory fee that they had at the time. Since then, students have exercised their freedom to not become members of student unions, and have saved on average $318 a year—in some cases, up to $600 a year.

This bill is a broken promise by Labor. Prior to and following the election the Labor Party promised they would not be restoring compulsory fees, whether they be paid upfront or as part of a deferred payment scheme. That promise has been broken. It is a myth that student services have been decimated since the introduction of voluntary student unionism. Services popular with students remain in operation and are available to students. This legislation removes that choice, forcing students to pay $250 for services they may not want or be able to afford. The $250 tax will remove the incentive for student unions to provide the services real students demand. It will increase student debt, the last thing they need amidst this financial crisis.

Recently in this place I spoke about the real costs for students from rural and remote Australia in my electorate who wish to attend university. Their nearest university could be Adelaide or Melbourne, hundreds of kilometres away from the family home. These are students who have excelled in year 12 results but for whom research reports the annual cost of studying at university is between $15,000 and $20,000 per year on top of the $6,000 start-up costs. These are not university fees; they are just the annual costs of keeping a young student in Adelaide or Melbourne to study at university. They are costs which students whose parents live in metropolitan cities do not face. The fees imposed by this bill actually force students to pay for services they might not use. Many students will actually go to university without wanting or needing to use a lot of the services that these fees allegedly provide, as in my case. The compulsory $250 fee is a major blow to young students in Australia already living on shoestring budgets. The fee might mean the difference between one of the students in my electorate being able to afford to travel hundreds of kilometres home for Easter, for example.

In a website poll which I looked at today, in response to the question: ‘Do you oppose the reintroduction of compulsory student unionism?’ 80 per cent voted yes. Let me quote a young university student who recently said of the fee which was abolished: ‘Complete waste of money. I wanted to be no part of them but I wasn’t allowed to go to university unless I became a member.’ Another said: ‘Forced into joining a union to be able to educate myself,’ in disgust.

Labor’s fee will increase inequity amongst university students because it will be levied regardless of a student’s income. It is a regressive tax that will not accommodate low-income students or those from Indigenous or disadvantaged backgrounds, of which I have quite a few in my electorate. The tax will be levied regardless of whether students have the ability to use the services provided by the fee, meaning that students who study by distance education will get absolutely no bang for their buck. They cannot use the services because they are not anywhere near the university. The $250 fee introduced by this legislation is simply a return to the bad old days of compulsory unionism—the Rudd Labor government’s new plan to channel money to student unions.

Labor might well say that this will not end up in the hands of the student unions but I noticed the student union leaders licking their lips with glee at the prospect of this amenities charge. They clearly believe that they will end up with it. When this tax was announced last year, the then National Union of Students President Angus McFarland said he was delighted with the change and further stated that the student organisations are well placed to provide these services. My colleagues and I simply do not trust the Rudd Labor government when it says the money will not end up in the hands of unions or political groups. It is the height of arrogance for Labor to ask us to vote on the legislation without giving us the full details of how it will work.

I understand the power to decide where the universities can allocate the funds will lie with the Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, herself a long-time pro-compulsory union fees campaigner and advocate. The minister’s discretion to decide how the money can be spent with no reference to parliament is extremely worrying, especially with her militant union background. Whilst Labor might say they rule out a return to compulsory student unionism, this bill is clearly a return to compulsory student unionism under the guise of an amenities charge. There is no guarantee that money will not simply be funnelled back to the student unions or into political activities. It is clearly about restoring the union power base on campus; not about restoring important services.

So while the Rudd government might run the line that students will not have to join a union, they will still have to pay fees that end up in union fees. Frankly, I do not see the difference. History shows what happens when student unions get hold of the money—it is spent on political campaigns and other activities of no benefit to students. At Melbourne University in 2008 the student union ripped $2,000 from the limited activities budget to fund a show called ‘From beards to badges: a history of the University of Melbourne Student Union’. In 2003 the Monash Student Association produced stickers that read ‘Bomb the White House’ and in 2007 that same union contributed $1,500 towards the defence of convicted and jailed G20 rioter Akin Sari. More recently the Melbourne Student Union funded the legal costs of a man accused of assaulting police officers and damaging a police station during a riot on Palm Island in Queensland. In 2008 the University of Melbourne Student Union slashed the budget of the clubs and societies in order to fund a $15,000 donation to the extreme left National Union of Students—an increase of 30 per cent. Even without amenities fees they are already channelling that money into political activities.

It is a myth that this bill will prevent student unions from spending money on political activity. They do now, even with their limited funds, and this will give them greater capacity to fund those political activities. The practical effect of the funding protocols for student services and representation is that money will be delivered to student organisations, leaving it open for unions to run rampant with student money. Student unions will still have the ability to waste compulsorily acquired student funds on extreme and non-representative political campaigns, just as they have in the past. The bill essentially is the Rudd Labor government taxing every student $250, regardless of whether they can afford to pay it. Two hundred and fifty dollars might not seem like a lot of money to Labor Party members, who received $37.6 million from unions in campaign funding during 2007-08. However, $250 to a rural student in my electorate—who has done well in year 12, who wants to study at university, and to do so is obliged to pay thousands of dollars a year to board in Adelaide or Melbourne or hundreds of dollars to spend Easter with their family—it is a lot. There is no legitimate argument as to why students should be forced to pay for services when they may not be able to afford to make use of it, or not wish to make use of it.

This is the same minister, in her so-called education revolution, who has decided that Sunrise Christian School, despite having five separate campuses across South Australia hundreds of kilometres apart—in fact one of them, Naracoorte, is in my electorate—will receive only one education revolution grant. So if a hall or gym is built on one of the campuses in Adelaide, it is hardly likely that the Naracoorte students will travel 300 kilometres to use that hall or gym. I challenge the Deputy Prime Minister, even with her limited geography skills and not knowing where Millicent North Primary School is, calling it ‘Milton North’, to explain how children at the Naracoorte campus will be able to use the facilities at Fullarton, for example, in Adelaide, more than 300 kilometres away.

Many parents of Sunrise Christian School have contacted me, rightly outraged at this inexplicable decision of the Rudd Labor government. Children attending the Naracoorte campus of Sunrise should not have to be disadvantaged because they will not be able to share in the so-called education revolution grants readily offered to other schools in the district. The maths is not difficult, Minister: five separate schools, five separate campuses, five separate SES ratings equal five separate grants. Unfortunately, because they are under the one name, they only get one.

Back to the bill before us. There is no legitimate argument as to why students should be forced to pay for services they may not be able to afford or make use of, doubly so for rural students who have distances to travel and might want to go back home and support their local sporting clubs where their families are rather than play for the university club. This is a regressive and unfair tax. It does not matter whether you earn $10 million a year or whether you earn $10 a year, you are still going to pay a $250 tax. Despite the government’s spin, their plan is mutton dressed up as lamb, and anyone in the country would know exactly what that means. Compulsory student unionism is coming back.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just in response to the previous speaker, the member for Barker, it is a fact of life that we go through our adult life paying for services that we do not always use. I paid for private health insurance from about 1998 to the present day because I was compelled to by a $500 tax passed by the Howard government. It was a levy. That is the way they talked about it; the Medicare surcharge levy. I cannot remember using that private health insurance—

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But you might have.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I might have, but equally a student might also use the services provided on campus. You cannot test a proposition by whether or not you may or may not use services. But I do rise to support the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Student Services and Amenities, and Other Measures) Bill 2009 and take this opportunity to reflect on my university life, as so many other members have, and reflect a bit on this matter, which is a bit of an ideological battle between the two parties.

When I look back to my time at university—I went to the Salisbury campus of the University of South Australia—it was a very working-class campus, actually. There were many young adults from the northern suburbs and a lot of country kids from towns like Kapunda, where I grew up, who travelled in. It was an accessible campus for people who wanted to travel from the mid-north. There were a lot of REC students and, in particular, a lot of them came from the Iron Triangle, from places like Port Pirie, Whyalla and Port Augusta. So it was a very accessible campus. It was a campus where I made a lot of really good friends, like Gavin Rudge, Sondra Mettner, now Lyons, and Lee Odenwalder, who is now a Labor Party candidate for the state parliament of South Australia for the seat of Little Para. So it produced hopefully a few Labor politicians.

In this campus, the student union really was central to campus life. It ran the cafeteria. Most importantly, it ran the bar, which was an important area for social engagement. It ran O week, which was always a lot of fun, but it also ran a lot of important student services—small loans, child care, support services and the like. I knew a lot of people who probably would not have made it through university, or their lives at university would have been much more difficult, had they not had access to those services.

The student union was not party political. It was not part of the National Union of Students. It was a dissenting campus and existed on its own in splendid isolation, unconcerned with international politics, unconcerned with extreme ideologies. I cannot remember anybody ever discussing foreign affairs at the bar of the student union. I cannot remember anybody really discussing politics. I do not know what was going on at other campuses, but evidently we were missing out. But there was no sign of extremist ideologies at Salisbury, and perhaps that is because it was a bit of a working-class campus. We were much more concerned with bread-and-butter issues. We were concerned with HECS fees, and I remember protesting out the front of Trades Hall, of all places. This was before I was a member of the Labor Party, but I remember protesting there about some of the HECS rises. I remember being very concerned about the levels of Austudy, so I think things do not change so much. A lot of students find it very tough to get by with the level of HECS fees charged by the previous government. Often they have to work. They find it very difficult indeed.

Towards the end of my time at university most of the student activism was aimed at saving the campus itself, because unfortunately the management of the University of South Australia decided to close the Salisbury campus. It was a great tragedy, in my opinion. It is just adjacent to my electorate, on the very edge of the electorate of Makin. The campus is now closed. The sports oval was turned into a retirement village—a very nice retirement village, but it fills me full of sadness whenever I go there. Its old buildings are now a very good private school, Tyndale college. I went for a tour there recently, and I must say I got a bit misty eyed when we went up to what is now the teachers lounge but was the old bar. The decision to close that campus was, in my opinion, a tragically short-sighted decision. It undermined the ability of so many of my constituents to attend a local campus. Given the fact that the northern suburbs is the growing area of Adelaide, we now find that students often have to travel very long distances—one or two hours, sometimes one way—to Flinders University or the University of Adelaide. It places great burdens on their studies, their work and their families, and often rural families face having to send their kids to Adelaide.

That is not new; it has gone on for a long time. My first girlfriend, Annette, was from Mildura. She was staying in the accommodation down at Flinders University around the same time that the member for Barker was there. I made good use of the university bars even if he did not. My point is that Adelaide universities need to take some account of the prominence of the northern suburbs and, hopefully, take the opportunity to boost the Mawson Lakes campus of the University of South Australia and the Roseworthy campus of the University of Adelaide. Roseworthy has a tremendous history. It is one of the oldest agricultural colleges in the country and has just had a significant boost with the opening of Adelaide’s first vet school. I think they have taken their first students this year and a terrific new building will open in early 2010. There is a very keen group of students and lecturers there so it is a really positive thing.

In the main, my experience with student unions was that they did their job, that they were not particularly overly political and they existed to help students no matter what their status. This bill really does ensure basic student support services of a non-academic nature—bookshops, counselling, sports establishments, clubs and food. Frankly, I am staggered that people could oppose student representation and advocacy—it is hardly controversial. Yes, there is a small compulsory fee but, as I have said before, fees are just part of life. It is part of adulthood and I think most students learn that. There is a loan facility to help pay for the fee. The fee cannot be used to support political parties or political candidates. That last point is very important.

When I looked through some of the contributions made by members opposite, I was particularly concerned when I read the member for Mayo’s contribution. He spent a great deal of time talking about what he called ‘Labor Inc.’ which, in his fevered imagination, is the link between student unions and the state Labor Party. He made a number of references to my time in this House and at university. I ran for student union office only twice, losing miserably both times. He also reflected on the member for Adelaide, the member for Kingston, Senator Don Farrell, the state member for West Torrens, Tom Koutsantonis, and my good friend Peter Malinauskas and his brother Rob Malinauskas. He suggested that we were all from some student union training ground.

Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A conspiracy theory.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, a conspiracy theory. Adelaide’s main paper, the Advertiser, has a confidential page, a very successful social page. There was recently a spread on my friend Peter Malinauskas at the races with his new girlfriend. Even more bizarrely, the member for Mayo claimed:

Yesterday, there was a great spread in the Advertiser about the secretary of the SDA, the key union in the Right faction, with his love life posted all over the Advertiserall part of the management of the faction, of course.

I find this an absolutely bizarre claim. When you reflect on it, there is probably a bit of personal jealousy in the attack on the part of the member for Mayo. He is probably desperate to get into the confidential pages of the Adelaide Advertiser, desperate to be part of Adelaide’s A list. I do not think he is likely to get there. It is pretty hard to get into the gossip pages if you are short, portly and boring.

To return to the contrived attack that we are all part of some machine that is linked to student unions, I think it is just a falsehood, it is a fantasy, but it is also chapter 2 out of the conservative dirty tricks handbook. It is all about making us part of some privileged elite that seeks to use the state, student unions and other things for our own benefit. It is an unfair attack. Just for the record, there is no link between any of us from our uni days. We went to different campuses at different times, and we had different results. I think the member for Mayo misleads the public and abuses privilege in what is a pretty despicable partisan attack. I am not so much fussed about the attacks on me, the member for Adelaide or the member for Kingston, but I do take exception on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves in this House, in particular, Peter Malinauskas and Rob Malinauskas.

The member for Mayo ignores the real link between us as individuals, which is, firstly, our commitment to the cause of Labor and, secondly, the fact that we had real jobs. University was not the defining time in my life. The defining times in my life were when I was a fruit picker or a station hand or when I worked as a cleaner or a trolley collector. I know that the defining time in the life of the member for Adelaide was when she worked for seven years as a checkout operator in Arrow supermarkets in Edwardstown. One of the critical times in the member for Kingston’s life was when she worked for Toys’R’Us and was offered an ‘individual contract’—it was a sort of take it or leave it deal. And, just for the record, Peter Malinauskas worked for years doing night-fill at Woolies at Mitcham. Rob Malinauskas was a cadet reporter for the Advertisera job that prepared him for his new role as press secretary to the Deputy Premier, which the member for Mayo referred to in his contribution. Tom Koutsantonis worked as a taxi driver. Senator Don Farrell worked at a kiosk in Cleland Wildlife Park and also as a waiter in Darwin.

That is the link: we all had real jobs, working for real employers in the real world. We know from experience what it is like for working people. I would have been inclined to let some of the comments stand if they had come from the member for Hume, who was an ex-meatworker. If someone like that had made an attack on us because we all came from student unions, I would have been inclined not to reply. But the member for Mayo went straight from university to Business SA.

Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s the fast lane.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, that is the fast lane. Business SA also employed Liberal Senator Mary Jo Fisher. Maybe we should call business SA ‘Liberal Inc’ in future. The member for Mayo has never had a real job in his life. He went from Business SA to work for Rob Lucas—no-one would know him here but he is the leader of the Liberals in the Legislative Council in South Australia. It should be noted that Mr Lucas has also never had a real job in his life. He went from university to Liberal Party HQ and then to the Legislative Council. You cannot find a more sheltered life than that. You cannot find a more sheltered workshop than the Legislative Council of South Australia—a body that should be abolished as soon as possible. That was not enough for the member for Mayo. He progressed into cloud city, into the federal parliament, to work for Kevin Andrews, the former minister for industrial relations, and he finally finished up working in the office of the former Prime Minister. In his biography on his website, the member for Mayo claims to have been ‘the youngest person ever to hold the title of senior adviser’, which is an extraordinary thing to brag about.

Finally, after that you would have thought that the election defeat of the Howard government and the defeat of Work Choices, with which the member for Mayo was so intimately involved, might have brought him back to earth or seen him make sure he went into the private sector and make a million dollars in business or something like that. But, no, what happened was that the conservative machine in South Australia shoehorned him into a vacancy deliberately created by Mr Downer. The conservative machine shoehorned him into Mayo over the wishes of local candidates in a preselection that Liberal stalwart Bob Day, the former Liberal candidate for Makin, rightly observed was designed just to benefit one candidate, Mr Briggs. So he went from university to Business SA to a ministerial office and then into Mayo. One can conclude that the member for Mayo has never worked a day in his life outside his work for the Liberal Party and outside his work in professional politics. If anybody has been so part of a political machine, if anybody has had the benefit of some self-serving political machine, it is the member for Mayo. His attacks, in his speech on this bill, on the member for Adelaide, the member for Kingston, Tom Koutsantonis, Senator Farrell, and Peter and Rob Malinauskas are just rank hypocrisy. They are insincere and driven by a rather divisive partisanship. His contribution sought to invent this powerful Labor machine as some mechanism to explain away the South Australian Liberals’ inability to establish support in the community.

We know they lose elections because of unpopular policies like Work Choices and their rampant and divisive internal factionalism. Mr Briggs is involved in both those things. My advice to him is this: give up your myopic focus on the South Australian Labor Party, give up your myopic focus on trying to invent this fantastic Labor machine which supposedly exists out there, get out into the real world and try to do a real job and get in touch with reality and you might find that Work Choices is not so popular, nor are partisan and unnecessary attacks on your opponents. I commend the bill to the House.

Debate (on motion by Ms Grierson) adjourned.