Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am now getting an indication from the opposition’s deputy whip that she is here to support him. Strangely enough, though, I do not see your name on the speakers list—and I know that as deputy whip you actually have to be in the chamber right now. So I am not quite sure that I am convinced, Senator, of your overwhelming support for Senator Mason in this regard. Nonetheless, I suppose as we go down the path we will find many more different and frequent variations of the opposition’s Work Choices policy.

We have consistently and publicly said that these conditional arrangements were wrong and went against the concept of good university governance. In abolishing the HEWRRs and the NGPs, the government is fulfilling some of our most important commitments to the higher education sector, which we indicated in our white paper on higher education, Australia’s universities: building our future in the world, in July 2006. We will be removing only the conditions on CGS funding while retaining the full funding. Of course, funding is something that is crucial to this sector. Universities rely, on the whole, on a substantial amount of Commonwealth funding. They do, and it is not good enough for the previous government to apply those conditions that I have already talked about. And it is not good enough for them to try to apply them from opposition. It is not good enough for them to try to maintain their Work Choices agenda from opposition.

The government has a clear mandate on all of these issues, yet this opposition, as they are trying to wreck the budget—and, if I get an opportunity, I might talk about that for a moment too—also want to try and govern from opposition and maintain policies which they took to the last election and were defeated upon. That is what they want to do.