Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

The cuts to higher education in this budget are breathtaking in their scope, in their spitefulness, in their short-sightedness and in their stupidity. What rubs salt into the wound for students right around the country is that the Minister for Education, who does not like students very much, went on the Insiders program on Sunday and said:

… students will always be the winners …

But what he forgot to mention was that, when he said students will be the winners, he did not mean students from low-SES backgrounds; he did not mean women; he did not mean students from regional areas; he did not mean students who do not have the limitless funds that are required now to pay for his university degrees; he did not mean the types of kids that we want in our university system, who now might balk at the extraordinary cost that it takes—

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