Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Hansard source

Just as long as you understand, Senator Nash, what those words ‘ensure passage’ mean. You cannot go outside and say that you were not signed up to the deal, because what we have now is a set of arrangements to give effect to landmark reforms that this government has introduced—that this government has ensured will provide enormous benefit to the people of this country—which will be supported by the coalition, unless we have another event like we saw last year with Mr Turnbull when you say one thing and mean another. We are about to discover what the truth of that matter is. The member for Sturt has committed your votes, in writing, to this proposition.

We all know the difficulty of this place. Those opposite are all experts who think they can run the government from the opposition benches. We know the game. On the one hand, you say the education spending that we are engaging in is a waste; on the other hand, in another part of the chamber, they say that we need to spend far more. There is a bit of a dichotomy in perspective here. This government has almost doubled the amount of money spent on universities, so it is hard to say that we have not spent enough and it is certainly very difficult to say that money is wasted—but it is suggested across the benches that we should spend more.

We are saying that this legislation is about investment in our university system for the future of our country. We are very proud of it. We also say, though, that there is not a bottomless pit that we can just keep digging and pouring money into. We have made very strategic investments and we are—