Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

So why is it then that the government's chief tax collectors, represented by the Chief Executive Officer of Universities Australia, told the Senate committee inquiring into this bill that they cannot guarantee that money would not go to the National Union of Students? That is the evidence we were given. Your chief tax collectors cannot provide a guarantee that the money would not find its way to the National Union of Students and, of course, we all know the highly political track record of the National Union of Students. We know what the National Union of Students has done in the past. We know what the National Union of Students is likely to do in the future. Again I stress that I encourage the National Union of Students to pursue all of the causes they want, but students across Australia should not be forced to make sacrifices to fund—so financially struggling students across Australia should not be forced to fund—the political activities of the National Union of Students. Even your chief tax collectors effectively say, as Senator Mason said earlier, that you can drive a truck through the sorts of commitments that the minister has just made that no money will end up there unless it provides services. That is just not true. It brings me again to a broader question. What is wrong with voluntary student unionism? What is wrong with freedom of association? What is wrong with the principle that students should only be required to pay for the services they actually access? What is wrong with service providers on campuses being required to be responsive to the genuine needs of students? Why should services on campus have this overall blanket over them where they do not have to worry about what students want or need because they have got the guaranteed cash flow, courtesy of this latest Labor Party tax grab? What is wrong with a circumstance where we have got services on campus that are responsive to genuine student needs and students are paying for the services they want to access and are not paying for everything else—not paying for political campaigns? What is wrong with that?

I ask the minister whether she has actually assessed and reviewed the experiences in my home state of Western Australia, where in that great state we had students, for the longest period of time, being able to benefit from freedom of association and students being able to benefit from the tax cuts that were delivered to them by successive coalition governments—first, by the Court government at a state level and then by the Howard government at a federal level. Has she looked at what has happened to the provision of services on campus at the University of Western Australia and various other universities? The quality of service provision and the take-up rate dramatically improved. Instead of this sky-will-fall-in scenario that Labor senators are painting—where, supposedly, student unions and clubs collapse when there is no compulsory tax—services and unions on the campuses in Western Australia continue to thrive. Yes, they had to adjust their so-called business model. Yes, they had to start to worry about what it was that students were looking for—they could not just ignore the demand for services as they existed on campus—and be responsive to genuine student needs. That is a good thing, I would have thought. Why should we go back to the bad old days where all students across Australia were slugged with a tax to fund the idiosyncrasies of a few? That is not appropriate. Yet this is what we are getting, again, from this ideological, tax-grabbing Labor government.

Students across Australia need to understand that under a coalition government they would pay less, under a coalition government they would be more free and under a coalition government they would have freedom of association—all the things that this Labor-Green coalition government is proposing to take away from them with this legislation. I want to know from the minister—and she has not responded to this before—what this government has got against the concept of freedom of association. Why does this government want to force students to be part of causes they do not support? Why does this government want to force students to fund campaigns that they do not support? What was wrong with the campuses in Western Australia where there was a period of 13 or 14 years of freedom of association? Are you really suggesting that student services in Western Australia are inadequate or nonexistent?

I point to one particular piece of evidence from Ms Drakeford from the National Union of Students when she sought to criticise voluntary student unionism. She said, 'The Australian National University’s gym membership has gone up by 500 per cent since VSU.' That is terrible, isn't it! Because we now have voluntary student unionism, students actually choose that they want to join a gym. They are prepared to pay a fee to join a gym. Gym membership has gone up by 500 per cent. How terrible that students across Australia are no longer funding access to gym services for those who go! How terrible that students not going to the gym are no longer funding access to the gym for those who do! That is a terrible thing!

Yesterday, this government was complaining that the price of coffee has gone up, the price of drinks at the bar has gone up, the price of food has gone up—and now people have to join the gym. How terrible. The only way you can stop that is by forcing a whole bunch of students who are not going to access those services to pay for those who do! Why is that right? Why is that the way that this government wants to go? It is not as if we are talking about rich people; we are talking about students. We are talking about students who work week in and week out to make ends meet, and this government wants to slug them with another tax. It is completely inappropriate.

I say again to students across Australia who are listening to this debate: this Labor-Green government wants to take your freedom of association away, this Labor-Green government wants to slug you with another tax and this Labor-Green government is quite happy for your money to be used to fund causes and services which you do not support. We on the coalition side of the parliament think that is highly inappropriate. That is really the crux of the matter. I am interested in your answer to my various questions, Minister.