Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I will rephrase what I have said and say that Minister Pyne made it very clear that unless the Senate passed his deregulation he would de-fund research institutions. I think it is pretty clear to the community what sort of standover tactic that was for the Senate, and people—absolutely correctly—have rejected it. But it demonstrates no real understanding of just how important it is that research be funded, and just how important it is that universities be funded.

I think we have got to the point in Australia—and this is where I do agree with Senator Madigan's remarks—where this parliament has to decide whether it is prepared to raise the money to fund universities. I can understand why vice-chancellors are worried about this. How are they going to cope? How are they going to run a university, have permanent staff, have the variety of courses they want to offer and be able to afford it with funding cutbacks?

That is why the Greens stand here to say we want more public funding for education from early childhood, through schools and right through universities and TAFE, and we are prepared to raise the money to pay for it by securing that money from those who can afford to pay. We could remove, for example, the fossil fuel subsidy to the big miners, $2 billion a year—$2 billion, just like that. If the government decided not to give Gina Rinehart et al that $2 billion, we would have it there to put into universities. We could do the progressive taxation on contributions to superannuation. We could restore the carbon price. What about that? That would be $13 billion over the forward estimates to bring down pollution and drive the change we need in Australia. It would bring down emissions at the same time. There are so many ways of raising money.

Yet this parliament sat here last sitting week, and Labor and the Liberals got together and gave $200 million to another subsidy to the mining industry for small miners for exploration—$200 million, just like that. 'Yes,' they said to the small mining industry, 'just go off and do that.' They removed the penalty for people who supposedly inadvertently breach the cap of superannuation contributions, yet, if those people were at Centrelink, they would be down into the criminal justice system as quick as you could say Jack Robinson. I think there are many ways of raising money, but you have to get serious about raising it from the big end of town, raising it from the tax avoiders, raising it from people who are taking their money offshore to tax havens, and actually getting stuck into the trusts in Australia that hide the level of income they get.

Let us actually fund our public universities. Wouldn't that be a great contribution to the future of this country? Let us actually make sure that those people who benefited from a free education are the people who deliver to the next generation a publicly funded education. I can tell you that, whenever I go out, people say to me how annoyed they are that the very people who benefited from Gough Whitlam's free education are the ones who have gone and cut back on that free education and have insisted on the cuts, and it is wrong. That is why the Greens will be absolutely opposing this government's legislation.