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

He said:

They are logical, coherent, sustainable, equitable and inevitable.

He also said:

My guess is that the detractors of micro-economic reform in Australia's higher education industry will find themselves on the wrong side of history in resisting efficiency improvement and innovation, as they will be in opposing the redistributive measures of the package and, curiously, supporting socially regressive subsidies from general taxpayers to more advantaged segments of the community.

Mr Gallagher is absolutely right. The opposition have found themselves on the wrong side of this reform, have found themselves opposing more young Australians being given the opportunity to go to university, have found themselves on the side of subsidising middle- and upper-middle-class families to go to university rather than doing what this side of the House is doing, which is trying to get young people with low SES, first-generation university goers, into university.

The problem for this Leader of the Opposition is: he does not mind shredding Labor's economic credibility, such as it is—he does not mind shredding the economic credibility they had in the Hawke-Keating period—if it means political day-to-day tactics. We have seen it on display today. How obviously have we seen it today—question after question about rumours in this building, rather than asking questions about the budget. We are still asking questions about the budget on this side of the House, because we are pleased with what we are doing in this budget to try and change Australia for the better.

Mr Brendan O'Connor interjecting—

See this speech in context