Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education. Will the minister explain how the government's higher education reforms are important to students in universities, both in my electorate of Page and around the country? And, Minister, what is the alternative to reform?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Page for his question, and he is absolutely right: the higher education reforms are vitally important to Australia—to universities, so that they can be internationally competitive, and to students, so that we can spread more opportunity to more students from low-socioeconomic-status backgrounds and to first-generation university goers, to ensure that they get the same opportunities to go to university that many other people in this chamber have had. This week is the vital week, member for Page and Madam Speaker; this week is the week that the government will put these bills to the Senate for a vote. And many across the university sector are calling for these reforms to be amended and passed. Universities Australia said today, in fact:

Our message to all Senators this week is not to defer decisions and ignore the unique opportunity they have to shape a new, fairer higher education package this year.

In other words, we have united the universities sector. Universities Australia represents all the universities in the country. Universities Australia is calling on the Senate not to defer consideration of this matter but to pass the bill, admittedly with amendments.

Already we have shown our preparedness to be flexible. Already we have announced that we will not impose a 10-year government bond rate on the Higher Education Contribution Scheme debt. We will accept the amendment moved by Senator Day. We have already said that we will have a HECS pause for mums and dads who leave the workforce in order to have a baby after they have graduated from university, as moved by Senator Madigan. There may well be other negotiating aspects of this reform that will bring about a fairer reform for students and for universities.

The member for Page asked me about the alternative. Unfortunately, the alternative is Labor's alternative, which is $6.6 billion of cuts over the six years that they were in government. They took $6.6 billion out of the university sector. They gave universities no opportunity to have the flexibility they needed to gain revenue from elsewhere. That has led to stagnation in the higher education sector, and continuing stagnation is the alternative under Labor.

Under Labor our students will see the quality of their education slip further and further—and we are no longer competing just within Australia for jobs. Mums and dads across Australia know that their young children need to be able to compete internationally for the best jobs in the world. They therefore need to have the best university degrees in the world. These reforms will give our universities the opportunity to be the best in the world and will give our students opportunities they need to be the best citizens of the world.