Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Ruston for her question—and for her congratulations—and her particular interest in higher education, and especially for regional universities and regional students and their roles in the higher education sector.

Our government is committed to delivering reforms that position Australia well for the future, reforms that ensure Australia is in a position to compete on the world stage, reforms that ensure all parts of the Australian economy are able to succeed, and that includes, importantly, our higher education sector. That is why, as senators will know, the government has introduced a new higher education reform bill which includes a number of important reforms that we have adopted and included from the members of the crossbench following our consultations last year. Of course, the core essentials of our reform bill remain intact, because it is so important to position our university sector as being as competitive as possible into the future. But the new reform bill does adopt a number of important aspects.

The new reform bill accepts Senator Day's proposal to keep the indexation of HECS at the CPI. It accepts Senator Madigan's proposal, which I understand Senator Dio Wang also supported, commending for HECS indexation to be paused for the primary caregiver of newborns. As advocated by Senator Muir, the government will fund more scholarships for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, on top of the Commonwealth scholarships which the reforms will create. The new reform bill guarantees that domestic fees, combined with the Commonwealth contribution, must always be lower than any applied to international student fees. The government, under the new bill, will also direct the ACCC to monitor higher education fees— (Time expired)