Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, another one, Senator Conroy. It is pretty hard for people to keep up on where the government is at. Minister Pyne had to make a backflip on the bullying tactics of trying to hold the scientific community as hostages to get the higher education package through. That was an obviously wonderful strategy that somebody had come up with on that side! They really backflipped. It really was not going to work for them. The crossbenchers in particular were very angry about that being held to ransom and having the 1,700 jobs of the scientists being held to ransom.

Minister Pyne had threatened funding for 1,700 research jobs unless members of this place voted through his unfair $100,000 degrees and 20 per cent cuts to university funding. The minister threatened to absolutely destroy Australia's research sector unless this place made his petty, cruel cuts to higher education. He had to backflip. Yet again, it is another backdown by the government. They go in there and they have these thought bubbles. I doubt they are discussing it with themselves, because members of the Senate backbench were very upset by this happening. We even had Senator Bernardi saying that move appeared counterproductive. I do not know who they are talking to on that side. I would suggest that they do a lot more talking to a lot more people and that they stop having these rushes of blood to the brain where they think that they can bully people and intimidate people. They had to back down on the GP tax and now they have had to back down from reducing funding.

The funding was already there; that funding was already in the forward estimates. There was 21 months' worth of funding left there when the government came to power. They should have been able to make sure that funding was continuing without having to threaten or cajole— (Time expired)