Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

The Tasmanian Liberals need to stand up along with the Labor Party and understand that the solemn responsibility of every government is to pass on an education system better than the one they inherited. Now the government has abrogated this responsibility and has failed this test. Labor believes if you work hard, you get good marks, that if you can do well, you deserve to go to university. Destiny should not be predetermined by your parents' wealth or the postcode for where you live. We should be opening doors to children from the bush, to children from poor families, to first generation migrants. We should be helping mature age Australians, dislocated by economic change, to get new skills and retrain for the jobs of the future. We should be supporting the opportunity of women to get access to higher education.

Labor believes that a university system that gives every Australian the chance to fulfil their potential, to strive, to seek and to reach for higher ground, is a fair system. That is the system we built from the great Gough Whitlam onwards. It is the system that is under attack from the backward looking government, from this Prime Minister of negativity and narrowness, to the partition pretender, the education minister. Look at the schemes they want to introduce, at the changes they are creating.

A nursing degree in Victoria—that is state, by the way, members of the government. We do not expect to see the Prime Minister visit before the state election, although we hope he does. Mind you, we do not expect to see him and Premier Denis Napthine does not want to see him. A nursing degree in Victoria under the government's rules is now $23,000 over eight years. Under the Abbott empire, the Minister for Education and Prime Minister model, it will cost $63,000 over 17 years. What a marvellous contribution to education this education minister is making—$40,000 more and nine years longer to pay off!

Talk about a teaching degree in Victoria: $31,000 over nine years, under the so-called Minister for Education and the Prime Minister it will cost $81,000 over 14 years—that is, courtesy of the government, $50,000 more and five years longer to pay off.

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