Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education and Training. Will the Minister update the House on the implications, should the parliament fail to pass the government's higher education reforms?

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We will have some silence before I call the minister.

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

I would like to thank the member for Capricornia for her question. Before I answer in terms of higher education reform, I would like to say that I think she has done a marvellous job representing her constituents following the Rockhampton cyclone. And I am very pleased, on behalf of the government, to have been able to provide $50,000 for two industrial diesel generators for the University of Central Queensland—

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Griffith is warned!

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

so that they could start opening for business this week, for orientation week, for their students. It is good to have been able to support the university.

She asks a very important question: what are the implications if the reform bill does not pass? The first implication is that the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme—that Labor de-funded and we want to re-fund—will end this year, costing 1,500 jobs. These 1,500 jobs will go from a program that we want to keep going. If the reform bill fails these jobs will not be able to be kept going. The same goes for the Future Fellowships Program—another program that Labor de-funded and that we want to keep going to support mid-career researchers—which will end if Labor defeats this bill in the Senate.

Eighty thousand low-SES students will not get a chance to go to university because they will not be expanding the demand-driven system to pathways programs—as we would under the reform bill—and they will not be able to expand the Commonwealth Grants Scheme to non-university higher education providers. So, 80,000 low-SES or first-generation students will not get the chance to go to university. There will be no extra scholarships. Sydney University will not be able to go from 700 to 9,000 scholarships, as they have promised—as just one example.

Under Labor, under the alternative of the shadow minister, it is Armageddon for some universities, because what he wants to do is put back the cap. He wants to end the demand-driven system. He said the demand-driven system was for a finite period until the targets were met. The targets have largely been met.

What does that mean? It means that fewer low-SES and first-generation university students will get the chance to go to university. It means less revenue for universities because of the abolition of the demand-driven system, just when universities are recovering from the $6.6 billion of Labor cuts when Labor were in government. It means command and control from Canberra. It means the potential closure of those universities with a high percentage of low-SES and first-generation university students who have those enabling pathways which get mature-age students and others to reskill for the workforce. Some universities will close if the shadow minister for education gets his way. I would ask Labor to rethink their opposition and support a reform which will expand opportunity.