Joe Bullock (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australians know they can trust the Australian Labor Party to deliver in the fields of health and education. These are matters of critical importance to working families. They know that their health is their most valuable asset and that a good education is the best investment they can make in their children's future.

The Australian Labor Party shares their values. The Labor Party is the party of Medicare. For 40 years, the Labor Party has stood behind families to ensure affordable health care. Opposed to us, the coalition have never missed an opportunity to attempt to dismantle our health system or to impose additional costs on workers and their children seeking medical attention. This is an objective which they will pursue until the public pressure—the public anger—forces them into tactical retreat.

This is what we saw yesterday with their pause in the push for the GP tax. Make no mistake: this was just a pause. The plan for a new tax on health lies not in the bottom drawer but in the top drawer, ready to be reintroduced at the first opportunity. Education provides a similar story. From the Whitlam reforms to tertiary education in the 1970s to the vision and commitment of our current leader, Bill Shorten, Labor sees that only through education will Australia fully develop our economic potential, our scientific potential, our artistic potential—our people's potential.

The contrast is clear. The party which won government in 2013 on the promise of no cuts to health, no cuts to education and no new taxes has been proven over and over again to be the party of broken promises. Why is it that this government is so determined to deny young Australians the education they need to face the challenges of the future—to gain the skills that lead to better employment and a better future for themselves and their families? The government that promised no cuts to education is now hoping to woo the Senate with a higher education package which provides for $1.9 billion in cuts to universities, $100,000 degrees for undergraduates, $200 million in cuts to the indexation of the grants program, $170 million in cuts to research training, fees for PhDs and $80 million in cuts to the Australian Research Council. And, revealed in the media today, the clincher: the government proposes to tax its way to a better education system with a new tax which its architect, Professor Chapman, is reported to have described—in a PR masterstroke—as similar to the Rudd government's mining super profits tax. Minister Pyne must be so proud!

Other media reports today claim:

… experts labelled the idea a “tax” by stealth on students, which could add a further $11,000 to the cost of some degrees.

This is a figure which is the same as that arrived at by the government's own adviser, Mr Andrew Norton of the Grattan Institute, who estimated a tax of more than $11,000 on top of the fees paid by a law student. The bright idea of a new tax—a tax by stealth—is simply another attack on students struggling to gain a useful qualification and establish a foundation upon which to build a better life. It builds on the burden of fee deregulation proposed by this government, and the current burden of over $30 million on student debt, to further move the cost of education onto students' shoulders—layer upon layer of additional burden—and force the cost of a decent education beyond the reach of young people from ordinary working families.

What is more, the new tax is already an idea tested and rejected by the Conservative government of the UK, as their minister for universities said in 2010:

… as soon as universities raise their fee above the threshold level, they face a rapidly rising levy which can drive their fees up even higher.