Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

One of the first bills introduced by the Gillard government was to get rid of student choice, to get rid of voluntary student unionism. It seems that the greatest moral challenge of our time, climate change, could take second place in relation to this vitally important issue of forcing students back into compulsion! This bill seeks to reimpose compulsory student unionism. They say that a rose by any other name smells just as sweet. Compulsory student unionism by any other name still stinks.

There is no doubt that there has been and there will be a huge financial impost for students in relation to this compulsory student unionism. The reason I can say that is that the government, in lockstep with introducing compulsion, has introduced a loan program so that students can actually borrow money to pay this compulsory fee and then pay it off once they are working. Guess who advocates for this besides the financial beneficiaries of the Greens and the Labor Party? Surprisingly, it is the Australasian Campus Union Managers' Association! What Ms Ellis did in a consultation period was consult all sorts of people other than individual students. They are the ones who will be affected by this but, no, the government consulted the managers because they are the ones who will grow their empires and as a result be able to command higher wages.

The simple fact is that, once it was made voluntary, students were the masters of their own destinies. Students determined that which was saleable on campus and that which was not. It was a pretty simple proposition. If it was a value-for-money product, students joined. If it was not, they did not join and they withdrew.

As I said, Ms Ellis undertook a review in 2008. Here we are some three years later. It is interesting that we will not have the opportunity of a three-year review in relation to the carbon tax. But the review allegedly found fewer services and—horror!—forced rationalisation. How on earth could we allow rationalisation of student amenities and services and ensuring that there was some cost benefit in relation to those services?

But also in this review, with respect to Senator Xenophon and other commentators in this area, we have this arrogant and patronising approach which unfortunately gives expression to the collectivist dogma—'We are talking about the lessening vibrancy and diversity and attractiveness of university life.'