Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

Yes! He could go for a job in the circus, because he has become quite the acrobat!

We know that before the last election that Tony Abbott, as Leader of the Opposition, went to the Australian people, giving a commitment that there would be no new taxes. Of course, what happened when they got into government? We had new taxes, and here we are now with a super profit tax being proposed on university students.

We know that the fuel tax was introduced by the government, which said there would be no new taxes. This is also the government that said quite categorically to the Australian people in the election that there would be no changes to the pension. There have been changes to the pension; the indexation will mean that pensioners will get less money. The Prime Minister also said that there would be no cuts to education—quite frankly, another broken promise. And here we have the higher education of this country being based on whether or not your family has a big enough credit card to ensure that the kids can go to university. That is not the sort of fair Australia that we want.

Senator Abetz and I come from the state of Tasmania. Senator Bushby is also from Tasmania. I do not hear any of them speaking up in the interests of Tasmania. What we do know from the University of Tasmania is that they have been trying to do backdoor deals with the University of Tasmania. I support an extra $400 million going into the Tasmanian university, but be up-front about it. Tell us what it entails. Give us the details. I know, as the Tasmanian community and the broader Australian community know, these changes and these cuts to the university are not in the best interest of the students and not in the best interest of the productivity of this country or the economy.

But, no, those opposite will do whatever it takes, as they have demonstrated previously, to get the crossbench's support. I urge the crossbench to stay firm on this, because it is an important fundamental in this country that every Australian child should aspire to go on to tertiary education, whether that is at university or TAFE, and it should never come down to whether or not you can afford to go.

It also is a disadvantage for those people with disabilities to be able to go on to university. It is also a disadvantage for mature age students to go on to university. But we know that those opposite will only ever do what is in their interest. They are trying to mislead the Australian community by saying that all Australian universities across this country are in support of their proposal, and that is blatantly untrue.

We have seen the disgraceful way that they have been trying to take our university and our education system down the American track. Over and over again the country has rejected that. The Australian people have rejected that. Labor rejects that. It is not a good system, and we should not be trying to emulate the American system. And what do we have now? We have another new idea: let's just grab this idea. This is another failed policy that even the Conservatives in England rejected. Why don't you just come up with a policy, after consulting the wider community, that we are able to support? Why is it that you are so opposed to everyday Australians being able to aspire to go on to university?

If you, like my colleagues and I, visit university campuses on a regular basis and engage with them, you would know that again in my home state of Tasmania it is astounding the amount of young people currently going through university, as they have over the last 30 or 40 years, as the first of their family to go on to university. We should be encouraging our young people to aspire to achieve the best that they can, not to base their future on whether or not their parents can afford to send them on to university.