Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I listened carefully to the member for Adelaide's latest contribution. I must say, I find it hard to believe that she can reconcile a statement that we are cutting higher education with the facts that are found in the budget papers that clearly indicate that far from cutting higher education, we are increasing spending on higher education by $900 million over the forward estimates. And then I realised that it is possible that the member for Adelaide thinks that an incoming government simply spends on top of what the previous government did. It is possible that the member for Adelaide thinks—and she gave a litany of particular programs—that the new government keeps all the previous government's programs and then just adds its own on top of that, which would obviously be pretty costly.

In 2007, I think she will find that when Labor last, unhappily, won office for six years, they did not just leave the previous Howard government's policies in place and then just add their own on top. They removed many of the Howard government programs. The one in education that leaps to mind was the vouchers for literacy and numeracy. That was an extremely successful program for young people learning how to read and how to count.

Putting that to one side, it can only be reconcilable with her complete lack of understanding of how government works in Australia. I will not get personal because the member for Adelaide has tried to avoid being personal, but I would point out that she probably needs a bit of a refresher course in how government works. She also said that we were cutting the HECS scheme. I remind her that it is now called the HELP scheme. Putting that to one side, the Higher Education Loan Program is not a program that can be cut because it is a loan program.

Whoever turns up to ask for a loan from the taxpayer to go to university, and is given an undergraduate course, is able to access the loan program. That is why, while the current HELP debt for the Commonwealth is about $30.1 billion, it will rise to $51 billion or $52 billion over the coming years. It is not a program that can be cut; it is a program that can be paid back at a fairer interest rate—for example, at the 10-year government bond rate rather than CPI, which is an indexation rather than an interest rate. It is not a program that can be cut, so whichever staff member gave the member for Adelaide that advice before she came into the chamber to contribute should probably be dealt with by her.

The member for Adelaide also talked about modelling. There is a lot of speculation around the fee rises or fee falls after deregulation of the higher education system. There is a lot of speculation; much of it is based on hysteria and scaremongering. I refer the member for Adelaide to the excellent statement by Fred Hilmer, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of New South Wales. He says:

It is up to universities, not Canberra, to decide what fees should apply to which courses.

He said about the very modelling the member for Adelaide cited:

The modelling released today by Universities Australia on the impact on fees of changes to cluster funding rates is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the system works …

The University of New South Wales is a member of Universities Australia, so it must have taken Professor Hilmer quite a lot of courage to publicly point out the massive failure in the Universities Australia modelling.

I refer the member for Adelaide to some excellent modelling that has been done, and which was in The Australian higher education supplement, which is at the back of the paper. In case the member for Adelaide does not know where it is in The Australian newspaper, it is after the business section. She will find it in that part of the newspaper. Andrew Trounson has written an excellent piece, in which he has suggested that fee rises could be as low as $2,163 a year in those courses where fees do rise. So, before the member for Adelaide quotes the speculative modelling or returns to the National Tertiary Education Union's modelling, she might like to go and have a look at the higher education supplement of The Australian. She will find there, that very good piece by Andrew Trounson.

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