Harry Jenkins (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition's misappropriation of Ben Chifley's 'light on the hill' speech was a most audacious action, even by the Leader of the Opposition's standards. When we think about the rich history of the Australian Labor Party, we have nothing but pride. In looking at Chifley's speech, given at the ALP conference in 1949, it is instructive to read the following:

No Labour Minister or leader ever has an easy job. The urgency that rests behind the Labour movement, pushing it on to do things, to create new conditions, to reorganise the economy of the country, always means that the people who work within the Labour movement, people who lead, can never have an easy job. The job of the evangelist is never easy.

Tonight I want to reflect on Labor's proud record on tertiary education. I am of a generation that benefited from the decision of the Whitlam government to dispense with tertiary education fees. As it transpired, it would not have affected me because I was lucky enough to earn a Commonwealth scholarship. But for many of my peers, in our final years of secondary education the thought of whether or not we could afford university was paramount, so the Whitlam government's actions were enabling for very many people to make a transition. As things developed, there was still concern about the inadequacy of the way in which people from low socioeconomic backgrounds could attain a tertiary place.

Moving forward to the Hawke era and the creation of HECS, I was from a tradition within the Labor Party and the Labor movement that opposed HECS. I had the problem, though, that the minister for tertiary education at the time, John Dawkins, had a strong belief that introducing a HECS program would inject more money into tertiary education. It was electorates like Scullin that would see the benefit, because we had low participation rates. The outcomes are a bit chequered, I think, as a result of HECS payments.

Move forward to 2009 and a new Labor government: a Labor government driven by the same values, that wants to see kids from low socioeconomic backgrounds able to have access to tertiary education. If we look at La Trobe University in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, we see a 35 per cent increase in students from low SES backgrounds—from 1,200 to 1,700—in the 2009 final figures of enrolments to the third round in 2012. Those sorts of figures make me very proud. If we look at the university that serves the western suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria University, we see a similar increase: 28 per cent, from 1,000 to 1,300. These are the things that we should dwell upon. These are the things that, in all the mire of perception, bad things and chaos, this government has been able to achieve. These are things that are truly Labor in their values, that come from the vision of Chifley and continue through the Whitlam era, through the Hawke era and now, in the Rudd-Gillard era. We have stayed true to trying to make opportunities for the people that we are entrusted with serving. In conclusion, I thank the member for Gippsland for yielding to me in this adjournment debate.