Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

its left-wing student union refused for years to join the NUS because it was so far left. You can rely on the National Union of Students, but we will listen to expert after expert who is saying—

Senator Rhiannon interjecting—

Senator Rhiannon, who takes her advice from the National Union of Students and the Green Left Weekly, is shouting across the chamber and saying that there are some other voices. I have not heard the views of the Green Left Weekly. I suspect the Green Left Weeklyis against the reform. I do not know, Senator Payne, whether you are aware of the Green Left Weekly's views, but Senator Milne is speaking next and so we can look forward to hearing them.

The Business Council, ACCI, the list goes on and on. There is a good reason that you have the NUS on the one side and all these experts on the other and that is: all these experts have considered the issue. What is even more concerning about the contribution of Senator Lines in this debate is that she was saying: 'There really isn't any problem. We don't have to fix anything, because we have a perfect system and we don't need to reform it.' That is absolute rubbish, and Senator Lines knows that it is rubbish; the Labor Party knows that it is rubbish; 40 out of 41 vice chancellors know that it is rubbish; every peak body knows that it is rubbish. There is a simple reason that it is absolute rubbish. We have seen a deregulation of student numbers, so the numbers are no longer capped and we are going to see a significant growth in student numbers. That is something we can celebrate; we are going to see more people have access to higher education. Yet the former government, as well as this government, recognised that there is no blank cheque; there is not an unlimited amount of public money that can go in, as those student numbers rise.

Unless you acknowledge and unless you are going to take the Kim Carr approach and look to cap student numbers, you need to acknowledge that there will be a significant rise in people accessing our universities and that there is a limit to the amount that taxpayers can subsidise those students, and then you have to reform. You have to ask for a greater private contribution, and that is at the heart of this reform. If you deny it, as Senator Lines just did, you are putting your head in the sand and pretending that there is not a problem, when blind Freddie could see that there is. To go further than that, the likes of Senator Lines and the Labor Party are effectively calling all of these people liars. When they talk about the $100,000 degrees, they are calling the university vice chancellors liars. They are saying that the whole sector cannot be trusted, even when they announce what their fee structure is going to be. Some universities have already put out their fee structures, which makes a lie of the Labor Party's scare campaign, yet those opposite pretend either that they did not hear or that the whole sector is simply telling lies. This is a serious debate, and it deserves better contributions than what we have heard to date.—