Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a government well and truly on the nose with the Australian public. One of the key reasons it is on the nose is that it is an unfair government. It is a government, through its budget attacks on people in this country, that is seen as unfair in who it is targeting. How is it fair to burden Australian uni students with $100,000 degrees? The answer is that it is not fair. It is condemning a future generation to debt. It is condemning a future generation to less education than the current generation. It is condemning a future generation to not being able to fulfil their true economic potential.

No region will see this impact more greatly than my region of the Hunter. We have a great university, the University of Newcastle, 50 per cent of whose students are not non-school-leavers. These are the students who are typically more deterred by debt and higher fees than students coming straight out of high school. The example of the UK showed that, when they increased fees significantly, they saw a 40 per cent drop in part-time students. In my own electorate of Charlton, four out of the five top degrees are in nursing and teaching—classic gateway degrees for working-class families. They will not earn $1 million more than non-university-degree holders. They are vital public servants who will be deterred from going to university because of this unfair government. We saw from Minister Pyne's train crash of an interview yesterday that it is time to junk this policy. It is time to junk a minister who is more embarrassing than any other minister we have seen in this government.