Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, I note 17,000 people who worked within Australia's universities have lost their jobs and departed the sector in the last little while. Universities may have money put aside for other contingencies. They use their surpluses to enrol extra students. That doesn't mean you've actually assessed which universities have been impacted by the loss of staff that they haven't been able to maintain and how that impacts on their research outputs and the quality of those research outputs. To be fair, what you said to me just now—that universities have a surplus, so it's their problem if their research is affected—is absolute nonsense.