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

It in no way withdraws the reality that Senator Carr and those opposite have, for a continuous period of time, been running a scare campaign, a campaign involving fearmongering, a campaign involving mistruths and misinformation spread right throughout the Australian community.

Let us just be very clear about this. First and foremost, the reforms proposed by this government maintain at their heart very significant reforms adopted by a previous Labor government, the Keating government, and that is that there are no up-front fees for Australian students. Let us be very clear about that. There is nothing that Australian students or their families need fear. The fact that stands alongside that is that, ever since the HECS system was introduced, under the Hawke Labor government, we have seen university enrolments continue to rise. As the scale of fees has increased at numerous junctures in the life of HECS, university enrolments have continued to grow. Fees under HECS have not deterred student enrolments one iota. They have kept growing at every step, including each time those fees have increased.

Let us also be very clear that we are also trying to preserve another fundamental achievement of the Labor Party, and that is the uncapping of places for undergraduate students, the ability of universities to accept all those who are capable—and who qualify and who they choose to admit—to undergraduate degrees. We want to preserve that reform that Julia Gillard is so proud of. We want to preserve that reform, but to preserve it you have to make the funding system sustainable. You have to find a way to make sure our universities can continue to be the best in the world.

Another fantasy we just heard from Senator Carr is this notion of a tax. Professor Chapman, like anybody else, is free to put a submission to a Senate inquiry. We welcome everybody having a contribution in this debate, particularly everybody who is willing to have a thoughtful, considered and sensible contribution. We only wish that Senator Carr, Mr Shorten and the Labor Party might consider having a thoughtful, considered and sensible contribution and might actually present an alternative policy scenario to address the funding crisis that universities face over the long term.

Professor Chapman has put his forward. The Labor Party, of course, are desperate to run another scare campaign around that. We keep hearing them talk about this as a tax measure. The truth is that Professor Chapman's model—and it is for him to explain when he appears before the Senate inquiry—proposes that, as universities choose to increase fees on the one hand, the level of Commonwealth subsidy, Commonwealth payment, to the university against that place may decrease on the other hand. There would still be a Commonwealth subsidy—a significant Commonwealth subsidy in many instances. There would still be the right of a student to put all of those fees onto their HECS debt and only ever have to repay them if their income reaches the HECS threshold. So there would still be enormous Commonwealth support for that place at university. There would be no tax. That is not a tax under any definition of the word. We often in this place have debates about whether somebody is calling something a levy or a fee or a duty or a charge to try to get away from the use of the word 'tax'.