Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Cormann, I am not going to call you till I think other people are ready to listen. Senator CORMANN: Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. I totally agree with you. It is very important that other people listen, in particular Senator Conroy. I read in the media at the weekend that he is very influential with this government and maybe he can convince the Prime Minister that this is a really bad idea. Maybe he can do some work on the Prime Minister-in-waiting, Mr Bill Shorten. Isn't he your friend, the Prime Minister in waiting? Anyway, this is a very bad tax. This is a tax which will reduce student freedom of association and force students to pay for services they will not access. What is the problem that you are trying to fix?

In my home state of Western Australia, we have a great tradition when it comes to voluntary student unionism. There was a great government in Western Australia—the Court government—and in 1993 the education minister at the time, Norman Moore, introduced voluntary student unionism. So, university campuses in Western Australia have a longer tradition when it comes to voluntary student unionism, which means that university campuses in Western Australia were able to play under voluntary student unionism arrangements introduced by the Howard government. After voluntary student unionism was introduced in Western Australia the student unions had to restructure and change their focus. They actually had to provide services that people wanted. That is a novel thing—provide services that people want. They had to be responsive to genuine student needs. That is a pretty novel thing, isn't it, Senator Conroy.

Let us be clear. Not only is this a high taxing government which looks at students as just another target for its high-taxing ways, it is also a government that wants to do the bidding of its left-wing mates on student campuses. Its left-wing mates on student campuses are not able to raise their own money from students voluntarily. Unless you force people to pay to join one of these left-wing outfits, people will not join and will not pay. What do we do? 'We in government just happen to have a Labor-Green alliance in the Senate so let's use the opportunity to force students to pay this compulsory levy and that way we don't have to go through this pesky effort of trying to convince people that what we are doing is legitimate, that we are responding to a genuine need.'

Here was another one: some Labor senator during the debate said that voluntary student unionism was all about 'snuffing out student representation which was opposed to the conservative agenda of the Howard government'. It is nothing of the sort. I do not care what agenda the students pursue when they are on a university campus, and I am sure that Senator Conroy would have been very active in the Labor movement on campus. Great, that is fantastic. But I do not think that every other student who does not agree with his views should be forced to pay for it. Our government should not force students who do not agree with the views of students like the Senator Conroys of today, whether it is on the Australian National University campus or the University of Western Australia campus. I do not think that the Australian government should force students who do not agree with the Senator Conroys of today to pay a compulsory levy to fund his activities. They should not.

The government says there are all these safeguards and no, this cannot be used for political activity. The only thing for which student unions will be stopped from using this money is direct political campaigning for candidates to elections. You do not have to be Einstein to know that this is a gate that is so large that every single left-wing union representative and every single left-wing student will be able to walk through that in five seconds. You do not have to have a PhD in physics to know how you get through a gate that is that large. Everybody knows that there are different ways to skin a cat. You do not have to campaign for a candidate directly to pursue a political campaign.

Let me stress here again: students are entitled to pursue their political views, students are entitled to associate and organise themselves and campaign. Quite frankly, student associations are entitled in my view to campaign against sitting members of parliament, for somebody, against somebody, for a government, against a government—there is nothing wrong with that. But the Australian government should not be forcing others to pay for the activities of those students if others do not agree with them.

Senator Carol Brown interjecting—