David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Education Legislation Amendment (Provider Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2017. I ask: what is the difference between a public university and a leech? It's not a joke; I'd actually like to know the answer.

The government continually serves up cash and customers to public universities, and the public universities keep on asking for more. For starters, the government gives public universities $7 billion a year through the Commonwealth Grant Scheme. No private university or vocational education and training provider gets a drop of funding from the Commonwealth Grant Scheme. This enables public universities to impose charges on prospective students that are well below cost. This draws customers away from private universities and vocational education and training providers. Some could call this predatory pricing. The government further lures customers into public universities by hitting students at private universities and vocational education and training providers with a fee on their government provided student loans. No such fee is applied to the already heavily subsidised courses at public universities.

With the bill before the Senate today, the government plans to extend red tape that is already strangling vocational education and training providers to the rest of the higher education sector, with an exception for public universities. There is no justification for piling red tape on everyone other than public universities. Public universities lure students into courses through slick marketing. They offer shonky courses that not only will never lead to a job but actually leave the students dumber at the end of the course than when they started. Public universities have terrible completion rates. They pay their vice-chancellors and senior staff extravagant salaries that they could never attract in the private sector. More to the point, the massive subsidies for public universities and their students mean that, more than any other students, public university students don't bear the financial costs of their decisions, so they are less wary about committing to a course than someone who has money in the game.

These are all reasons to cut the subsidies to public universities, and, if they are not cut, public universities should face the heaviest regulation. For these reasons, I oppose the Education Legislation Amendment (Provider Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2017, which singles out public universities for special treatment. But I will be the only senator to do so. Only the Liberal Democrats stand up for students in private universities and in vocational education and training; the other parties are all captured by the leeches.