Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Hansard source

I rise—and this probably will not surprise the House—to speak against the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill 2014. The previous speaker, the member for Mallee, said that he is concerned that people are being frightened by the sort of money that is being talked about by the opposition and that they have no reason to be. I would very much caution him about going out to his electorate and making assurances that people will not be facing the potential costs of university in those sorts of figures, because the very point of deregulating is that you cannot make those guarantees, you cannot make those commitments to the electorate, and that is exactly the concern that the opposition has.

The bill seeks to implement the government's unfair budget changes to higher education. There are two aspects that are particularly a problem for the opposition in dealing with the proposal put in the budget. The first was that yes, this is massive change and reform in the higher education sector, and there has been no lead-up to it whatsoever. There was nothing about these proposals before the election. There was no conversation with the community more broadly about what the government was proposing to do in the university sector. For a government that in opposition regularly scaremongered about what reforms meant and how they should appropriately be introduced, this government is completely contradicting every benchmark it has set for any government in this place. It did not put the reforms before the population before the election. It did not engage in an extended and detailed conversation with the community about them.

One year ago, before the election, the Prime Minister—the then opposition leader—actually promised the Australian people that there would be no cuts to education. He said:

I want to give people this absolute assurance, no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to pensions and no changes to the GST.

I acknowledge that the last point might be a contentious one for those opposite today. The Liberal Party policy document was Real Solutions. What did it say? It said:

We will ensure the continuation of the current arrangements of university funding.

After the election, in November last year, Minister Pyne further reinforced the government's promise from before the election. He said:

We want university students to make their contribution but we're not going to raise fees.

When asked at the time, 'Why not?' he replied 'because we promised we wouldn't before the election'.

And then, in the Liberal government's first budget, they broke these promises. It was a triple whammy of higher education changes. Course funding was cut, fees were deregulated and, to add the final hit, compounding interest was introduced. These changes reflect the government's twisted priorities. We need to be investing in education—exactly the point that the previous speaker, the member for Mallee, raised—and in particular in regional and rural Australia. We need to be investing to create a future workforce where we can ensure that the demands of our modern economy will be met and, most importantly, that our children are able to receive the education, skills and training that they need in order to start a pathway to their lifetime career. This bill seeks to deregulate university fees. So, as I said, the previous speaker and many of those on the other side cannot, despite their claims to the contrary, make any guarantees about what will happen with university fees. In fact, universities holding O weeks for students across the country at the moment cannot make guarantees to students as they seek to get them to enrol for the beginning of next year on what their fee structure will be before they finish their courses.

See this speech in context