Cory Bernardi (SA, Australian Conservatives) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, Senator Hanson-Young. You can tune in actually.

Senator Di Natale interjecting—

Yes, you can. You can go to iTunes—I'll just make that point—and look for the Weekly Dose of Common Sense. It's entirely free and commercial free. The Greens do cop a bagging on it every single week. Senator McKim features a lot. Senator Hanson-Young, of course, is very unpopular with my listeners, so we mention her quite a lot. But I digress.

We have a circumstance where places like Curtin University—it was reported to me today—are penalising students for using gender-specific pronouns. They're not bringing those sorts of things in. It is like an indoctrination of children. I think parents and all students need to be able to have a choice about where they want to go in that respect.

In the end, I welcome the opportunity that every Australian has to enter into a competitive decision with respect to the university that they choose to attend. I also welcome the fact that they may choose not to attend university. But what I will be proposing—and I will be moving this amendment in the committee stage and I will look for the support of the chamber—is to remove that impediment, that barrier, that tariff, if you like, for those children who do choose to attend a private institution who then seek to avail themselves of what many in this place celebrate as the opportunity that should be provided to every student, and that is accessing funds in order to finance their degree in an advantageous manner. We've accepted, rightly or wrongly, that a very low-interest rate loan, effectively a market-neutral loan, repaid out of future earnings is the way forward and is an equitable measure for people to finance their tertiary education and studies. Applying a 25 per cent loading on top of that, plus the interest, I do not think is in anyone's best interest.

More specifically about this bill, I do agree that lowering the threshold at which repayments are meant to be made is very important. If it were left to me, I would suggest that one per cent of income is probably not enough. I would prefer, of course, to lower taxes across the board for everyone and then expect people to make a higher repayment schedule as they get into the earnings market. I make the point that, in New Zealand, about 10 per cent of income is quarantined to pay for university education, from the very first dollar earned or thereabouts. It's much the same in many other places around the world. We are not reinventing the wheel here. I'm just trying to make it fairer and more reasonable and balanced, mindful of the new university environment that is springing up around the country. I think competition in this space and options for people are very important, and government should facilitate that freedom of choice, without imposing an arbitrary penalty on people, which has, from my research, very little justification for being.