Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I can assure you, Mr Acting Deputy President, I had nothing to do with those demonstrators.

An honourable senator: Anything to get on TV!

No. I do not think that that intervention from the gallery was in any way helpful. As I have said, this legislation makes significant, essentially irreversible, changes to the sector. It is not consistent with the government's election commitments and it is not something that has been taken to the people as part of an election campaign. The reason I referred to Hugh Mackay, the social researcher, is that there is a great deal of disillusionment in the community. People are worried about a whole range of measures. Let us start with the Gillard government. Prime Minister Gillard promised on the eve of the 2010 election that there would not be a carbon tax under any government she led and then introduced one. I suspect that if she had said anything different at that time she would not have won the election in 2010. I also wonder how the coalition would have fared at the last election if it had said that there would be significant changes to higher education, that the submarines would not be built in Australia and that the ABC would be cut—that applies to a whole range of other measures. I think that is a real issue that we cannot and must not ignore.

I am concerned about policies that seek to shift public debt to private debt. There are some burdens that governments must carry, and I believe that higher education funding is one of them—again, providing the spending is wise, prudent and targeted. During my many meetings with representatives from universities and higher education providers one thing that kept coming up was the lack of certainty faced by the sector. It has been faced with cuts from both sides of politics and many institutions have reached the point where they simply feel there is no alternative than to go down the path of deregulation.

There has been a significant failing on the part of the opposition in this debate to date. The ALP has said many times that it would not support the government's legislation—fair enough—but it has not put forward a credible alternative policy of its own. It has said it is committed to public funding but it has made no announcement as to how much it would or would not commit to in government. That has made this debate far more difficult than it should be. If the higher education sector is really in financial trouble, and I believe it is, then things need to change, but the only clear policy we have on the table is the one put forward by the government, with some significant amendments by my crossbench colleagues. If we do not like the scheme put up by the government then what other solution can we put forward? There needs to be a viable alternative in this debate. I think we also need to put on the table, and have a debate about, the demand driven system and whether that system is sustainable and viable in the long term.

Australia has an excellent history of making higher education widely available, beginning with the reforms of John Dawkins under the Hawke-Keating government. The introduction of HECS, a world renowned scheme, and the consolidation of higher education providers meant that more Australians than ever could have access to affordable high quality education. I should note that I went through law school in the late 1970s, courtesy of the Whitlam government's free tertiary education, for which I am very grateful. In the mid-2000s, then Prime Minister John Howard introduced some deregulation into the sector by allowing universities to increase their fees by up to 25 per cent. Full-fee-paying student places for international students were also introduced, which allowed universities to enrol students beyond the government mandated caps. The next major change was introduced by the Gillard government, which uncapped university places and opened up the sector to greater numbers of students. Given the time, I seek leave to conclude my remarks.