Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Keating put it through, mate. Did that discourage people from going to university? Did that discourage people from lower SES backgrounds from going to university? No, it did not, because the numbers went up and up. All the way through, the numbers have gone up. Labor cut $6½ billion from education funding over the last two governments, and numbers still went up.

We had the Leader of the Opposition standing there for 10 minutes, and he had a chance to outline how we are undermining education or what he is going to do. He quoted, of all things, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He said it was the Black Knight. I find it amazing after his Jon Faine interview where he said, 'Everybody is somebody'. Maybe he should have quoted from Monty Python's Life of Brian, because we are 'all individuals'. I would suggest that he is not the Leader of the Opposition, and he is certainly not a Prime Minister, 'he's just a very naughty boy'. So what is his plan? He does not have a plan, and he spent 10 minutes there saying absolutely nothing.

What we are doing with higher education is expanding access to TAFE to allow people with diploma skills to get diplomas and, for the first time, get the costs of those put onto a HELP loan. Once again, a very vast majority of people in this much undervalued part of our education system can access that support to go through there. We have an education system around the world which is in global flux. It is in rapid change. If we do not keep up with that change, we will be left behind. Education is a major export industry for this country. It should not be bandied about. It should be something around which our universities can be as competitive as they possibly can in a global environment, taking into account the challenges that we face today, not just here or in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Townsville, but across the world.

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