Cameron Thompson (Blair, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Would the Prime Minister update the House on the reaction to this week’s budget announcements on education. What is the government’s response, and are there alternative views?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Blair for his question. I can inform the member that the budget provision for education has had a wonderfully positive response from the university sector—and I am not surprised. In many ways the changes announced by the government are quite historic. One has to go back almost to the time of the Murray report commissioned by the Menzies government in the 1950s to find changes of such lasting significance to the university sector in this country. I can report to the House, and specifically to the member for Blair, that there has been a strong, consistent and positive reaction from the vice-chancellors and other spokesmen for the universities around Australia.

I cannot report that there has been the same strong, consistent and positive reaction from the Australian Labor Party regarding one element of the announced policy on tertiary education—that is, the question of full fee paying degree courses at Australian universities for Australian students. It was my understanding, reinforced by very strong statements made by the former shadow minister and member for Jagajaga, that it was implacable, unalterable Labor Party policy that the full fee paying courses would not be allowed by a Labor government. In other words, they would be abolished, and the universities would be reimbursed the $500 million, over a period of four years, that would be required to put them in the same financial position.

That was my understanding until yesterday morning when the Leader of the Opposition did a very revealing interview on Sky News. During that interview, he was asked whether it was Labor’s policy to get rid of full fee places. I expected him to say immediately, ‘Yes, it is. It has been our policy for a long time.’ But he did not. He said:

Let’s have a look at what’s in the detail of the Budget papers on that.

This was a very strange answer because the budget really did not have anything to say about Labor policy; it actually had something to say about government policy. So the budget papers would be an odd place to look if you wanted to find out about Labor policy.

That was fascinating. It was obvious after he had given that interview that the Leader of the Opposition was manoeuvring for a change in policy. The confirmation came in this morning’s Australian with the banner headline: ‘Rudd shifts on fee degrees’, which was obviously an article written after close consultation with the Leader of the Opposition’s office. The article said, inter alia:

Last night, Mr Rudd’s office confirmed the Labor leader was now leaving the door open to a change of policy, allowing some full-fee degrees for the first time.

There is no way that respected journalists like Samantha Maiden or Steve Lewis would have written that without getting it right. They are journalists of impeccable ability and their integrity should never be questioned. It is quite obvious that they went to the leader’s office and the leader’s office said, ‘Just give him a couple of days. He’s got to manoeuvre around the troglodytes, but he’ll get it through and it will be all right.’

Sure enough, this morning, faithfully, the member for Perth and the member for Jagajaga kept the door open for a change of policy—although there is a bit of a sting in the tail from the member for Perth; he reminded the Leader of the Opposition of Labor’s longstanding policy. Both of them said, ‘Don’t worry, there will be a detailed statement before the election.’ Little did they know that there would be a detailed statement before morning tea.

Not very long after, the Leader of the Opposition went on to say, amongst a whole lot of other things, on Sky News again—they are doing very well out of this, Leader of the Opposition—‘So our view is consistent with the policy we’ve laid down over quite a period of time now that we will phase out full fee paying degrees.’ In the space of less than 24 hours he has gone from deliberately leaving the door open—either because he wanted to change the policy and ultimately got rolled or because he did not know what the policy was when he was first asked; it was a toss up, because he is not very strong on detail this Leader of the Opposition—to where Labor’s policy has always been. There may be a $500 million hole in that already shonky list of savings that the member for Melbourne has produced.

I thought to myself, ‘What has brought about this change?’ I searched the bits and pieces of scraps of paper I had of transcripts, and I saw in the flesh one of the two people I am talking about: Dr Allport who, I think, runs the Tertiary Education Union. She effectively said that the world would come to an end if Labor altered its policy on full fee paying degrees. I thought that was obviously a factor, but then I got the answer—I saw Senator Brown. Senator Brown was saying to the Leader of the Opposition, ‘Hold the line. Don’t retreat. Don’t become an imitation of the coalition. Don’t betray your true principles. Reject Howard’s outrageous policy.’ That is what Senator Brown was, more or less, saying—but not as eloquently as that.

In the end, the bottom line of all of this is that in the space of 24 hours the Leader of the Opposition, in my view, wanted to change the policy because he knows that the present policy is unsustainable, it is expensive and, what is more, it discriminates against Australians. The worst thing about this policy is that it discriminates against Australians. It is all right to charge foreigners and give them a chance to come into our universities and buy a place, but it is wrong to let Australians do that. Let me simply say to the Leader of the Opposition: if that is the way the the opposition makes policy in relation to a crucial area like this, heaven help the country if they ever get a crack at government.