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

If that is what you have heard, then you have heard incorrectly. If that is what I said, then I apologise. I was saying $300 million and I think I have referred to that figure on a number of occasions. The $300 million which you seek to appropriate in this chamber through a private senator’s bill is something which you would not have done if you were in government because you did not have the money. You had no plan to find the money to spend. This is not the only bill that you are doing this with. The Australian public will see through this. This is simply an attempt to try to sabotage the government’s fiscal responsibility.

This issue has been around for a long time. It is about reforms that we needed as a result of improving the equity of assistance to students across Australia. There has been an enormous take-up rate and improvements have been made resulting from the Bradley review. Consequently, the bill that was passed last year was a result of an agreement between the parties. Let me just quote what Senator Mason said at the time:

The bill currently before the Senate represents a result of negotiations undertaken between the government and the coalition. It embodies what I believe is the best deal achievable by all the parties under the circumstances.

That is what Senator Mason said—‘the best deal achievable by all the parties under the circumstances’. That is what he said at the time. Then the opposition voted for the bill and it went through. Yet, after the election, they did not say to the Australian people as part of their election platform that they would find $300 million. It was not costed. You did not cost it.