Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The debate on this motion comes against the background of the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University saying that universities have been left to bleed to death. He said:

Harder to understand is why the university sector has been left to bleed, given what most might expect to be its pivotal role in the future growth of the … economy.

Quite bizarrely, the current settings under this Morrison government mean that the worst affected degrees are science and engineering, according to someone who you'd think would know a bit about science and engineering and degrees: the Vice-Chancellor of the ANU. So you can imagine the surprise of those of us who know what's going on at universities when we saw a motion on the Notice Paper congratulating the Morrison government for supporting Australian universities through the pandemic. It's like being in cloud-cuckoo-land. It's like being Alice in Wonderland.

Monash University, which has a campus in my electorate, the Peninsula Campus, had its revenue slashed by about $350 million as a result of this government deliberately and repeatedly—not once, not twice but three times—amending legislation to prevent public universities from having JobKeeper when foreign students couldn't come here. Private universities are fine, as are, apparently, incredibly rich megacompanies and private all-men's clubs, but, as to public universities, this government did everything that you could do to make sure that they didn't get JobKeeper.

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