Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to take this question from the member from the other side. I have not done a study of the frontbench of the government to discover which universities they went to or which ones paid HECS; nor have I done so for the frontbench of the Labor Caucus.

But I can tell the member that, if she wants to go back and discover who it was that decided that free education was not working—and was not bringing low-SES students into universities but simply subsidising the middle classes and the upper-middle classes—she should look no further than the former Prime Minister and Treasurer Paul Keating. He said at the opening of the Victoria University of Technology, Sunbury campus:

There is no such thing, of course, as 'free' education - somebody has to pay.

… … …

… a 'free' higher education system is one paid for by the taxes of all, the majority of whom haven't had the privilege of a university education. Ask yourself if you think that is a fair thing.

That is what Paul Keating said.

The member's question gives me the opportunity to point out how far the current modern Labor Party has moved from the Hawke-Keating legacy, and to repeat the point that I made in the previous answer and question: the current Labor Party has shredded their economic credibility. Most Labor figures of the past realised that so-called free education did not have any impact on bringing students into university.

Mr Dreyfus interjecting—

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