Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today we have seen another desperate attempt by the Minister for Education to revive or somehow get his higher education bill through the House. Of course, what the minister needs to do is to scrap his plans to Americanise our universities and go back to the drawing board and stop his unfair changes that will see $100,000 degrees being foisted upon students doing higher education. We have seen the minister's attitude, though, in his ideological attack on universities. He thinks the solution will be a new multimillion dollar political advertising campaign. Of course, what the minister needs to do is listen to the hundreds of thousands of Australians who have said: 'This is unfair. This is not right. This is not what we want in Australia. We do not want to see the Americanisation of our universities and we do not want to see billions and billions of dollars ripped out of our higher education system.' It is time the minister stopped talking, stopped trying to think of other political ways he can get around this and stopped his ideological attack on our universities. Go back to the drawing board and ensure that there is fairness in our higher education system. This is what people in Australia demand and this is what this minister should do.