Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I enjoy being lectured about career achievement by a man who has spent seven years in here not making a single mark! If we are the F Troop, he has got to be the Z Troop—and he is sitting amongst others there! This is a debate about a nasty government pursuing an ideological agenda. The inconsistency on their side is remarkable. We heard from the first speaker about paying down Labor's debt. And then we had the black is white story, that this is actually about equality of access, that liberating students from their money will give them greater chances in their attempt to get an education. The truth is that education is a great enabler. Like many on this side, I am proud that I am the first on my mum's side of the family to go to uni. I am not one of these chardonnay socialists. I am someone who went to university. I paid HECS in an affordable manner, indexed to the CPI, and had plenty of time to pay it back. What they are doing on that side is shutting the door on more kids from working-class backgrounds going to uni. They are shutting the door by introducing $5 billion of funding cuts. They are shutting the door by jacking up fees. They are shutting the door by applying commercial interest rates that will force working-class students to think twice about going to uni.

In my regional seat of Charlton 34 per cent of graduates are nurses, teachers or from allied health occupations. They are not lawyers, they are not doctors. They disprove the myth being peddled by the Minister for Education that all graduates will earn $1 million more than average workers. That is utter rubbish! I am proud that I have in my electorate the biggest hospital between Brisbane and Sydney. It has 120 nurse graduates entering this year. But it is going to struggle to get new nurses coming through because they are going to be turned off by this fee hike. According to research by Universities Australia a new nurse entering training now will see their fees go up—once you add the interest—from $23,000 to $98,000. How is that fair? How is it fair to ask a poor working-class kid, who wants to be a nurse to help out in our health system, to pay $98,000 instead of $23,000 over a reasonable amount of time with CPI indexation? They will be paying that money for 25 years. They will be 48 before they are able to pay off their debt—if they are lucky.

And teachers do not earn $1 million more than an average worker. I received an email from Jacqui, a year 11 student at Jesmond High in my region. She said: 'For a long time now, all I have wanted to do is study primary school teaching at Newcastle uni. I was disappointed and angry to discover that instead of my degree costing $19,000 over four years it will now cost around double that. I have worked out that, on a teacher's salary of $59,000 per year, it will take nearly 14 years to pay back my HECS debt. With interest, I would have paid a total of around $90,000. This figure will be higher if it takes me longer to get a job or I spend time out of the workforce for family reasons.'

That is the truth behind this inequitable policy. This is the truth when you look at students who go to the University of Newcastle, the best uni in Australia under 50 years of age, where 27 per cent of students come from a low-SES background. They are not the chardonnay socialists the member for Mitchell railed against; they are kids from low- and middle-income families who will be turned off by these huge fee hikes and by the deregulation of uni fees. This will place a real barrier against their entry to university. This is a great betrayal of the Australian people.

When I look at MPI debates, I like to see what those opposite said before the election. I go to that great document Our Plan: Real Solutions for All Australians, which the Prime Minister hid behind. It was his shield whenever a journalist had the temerity to ask him a question about anything before the election. 'Just look at my pamphlet. The pamphlet has got everything I stand by—and it is in writing, so you can trust what I'm saying'—it is in writing, so it must be true! If we go to page 41, we can read a firm commitment from the Prime Minister, a paragon of virtue and honesty: 'We will ensure the continuation of the current arrangements in university funding.' That is pretty direct; there are no ifs or buts. The truth is that this is an important debate because those on the other side stand for the betrayal of low- and middle-income families and their chances of getting a decent education, getting a degree in nursing or teaching, contributing to our society, advancing their family and maybe being the first in their family to go to university. That door is being shut by the heartless mob over there who are just pursuing a nasty ideological agenda. (Time expired)

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