Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education. I refer to a media release still on the minister's website, Pyne Online, titled 'Coalition will not cap places or raise HECS', which is dated 26 August 2012. Why is the minister continuing to flaunt his broken promise not to increase university fees?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kingston for her question. What she does not seem to understand is that the government is not increasing fees in universities.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What we are doing is a major microeconomic reform that will protect our international education export industry, which is worth $15 billion a year. Admittedly, it was $19 billion a year under the Howard government, and Labor managed to shrink it to $15 billion. I see you have gone very quiet again. So you cut higher education spending by $6.6 billion, you shrunk our international export industry in education to $15 billion, which we are now rebuilding, and you have run a scare campaign in the last few months about nonsensical $100,000 degrees, which has been exploded by the University of Western Australia.

What we are doing is a major deregulation of higher education which will free our universities to be the best education system in the world with some of the best universities in the world. It will give more students the opportunity to get a higher education qualification and go on to earn 75 per cent more over a lifetime than the more than 60 per cent of Australians who do not have a higher education degree. Do not just take my word for it, Member for Kingston. You have asked more questions than the member for Adelaide ever did on education. You have given me the opportunity—and I am grateful for it—to say that one member of this House very sensibly wrote:

I clearly remember being among a distinct minority of university students who supported paying for our degrees through HECS. I supported it because I could see the inherent logic. Our incomes would be higher because we had been to university.

Mr Champion interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Wakefield can leave under 94(a).

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Who said that? It is not the absent shadow Assistant Treasurer; it is the now shadow Treasurer. No wonder he has been so quiet. No wonder the member for McMahon is so quiet, because he, along with Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and the shadow Assistant Treasurer all know about the inherent logic of the government's deregulation of the higher education system. I suspect that even the Leader of the Opposition understands the inherent logic of deregulation but cannot control Kim Carr and the left in his own party. I suspect that if he was in government, he would be moving in a very similar direction. I ask the Labor Party to join Universities Australia, the Regional Universities Network, the Australian Technical Network of Universities and all the universities across Australia that have united to call on this Senate to pass this reform. Get into the national conversation, Labor. Let's bring about some reform in this country. Do not just stand in the way.