Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Minister for Education's political career started in student politics and this year we have seen it go full circle, returning to the kinds of pathetic word games and stubborn ideology that you would ordinarily expect from an over-excited university undergraduate. A Liberal Party that promised 'adult government' before the last election is currently being served by an education minister who is playing childish games with the future of Australian students. Yesterday, the Minister for Education waggishly told the House in question time that 'you have to be nimble' in politics. Let's review how this minister has been nimble.

Before the election, he promised that there would be no changes to university funding under a Liberal government. After the election, he promised that there would be no increases in student fees under the Liberal government. Then, at the budget, he announced a 20 per cent cut in higher education funding and a policy that would Americanise our universities and lead to the introduction of $100,000 degrees. He then claimed that we must have been imagining it all along because in fact the Liberal Party had never even announced a higher education policy at the last election. I must have imagined that 'Real solutions' policy pamphlet coming through my letterbox.

He then told us that the government's university funding plans were 'inextricably linked' to the deregulation plans of the government, holding the jobs of 1,700 Australian scientists to ransom, for 24 hours, before he separated these measures. He certainly is nimble. He has shown us backflips upon backflips and now he is dancing on the grave of his own credibility. We have seen enough surprises from this minister. It is time this nimble minister danced off the Australian political stage and took his extreme and unfair ideas with him.