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

I table list of the $6.6 billion of cuts, so you can remind yourselves of what you thought about universities. I said yesterday, in response to an interjection from the Minister for Health, 'What are the Labor Party's alternatives? Are they closing free education? In other words, is the taxpayer paying 100 per cent?'

I thought that could not possibly be the case, but do you know what I discovered? I discovered one Labor member who says:

I have a further suggestion to lift our primary vote.

That is not very altruistic!

Get rid of HECS, now euphemistically called HELP, and re-introduce free university education and free TAFE courses.

That was the member for Wills, Kelvin Thomson. In fact, there is a secret agenda within the Labor Party to abolish the HECS scheme, so there are more billions of dollars that they will have to find at the next election when the media starts scrutinising Labor's policies.

Mr Dutton interjecting—

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