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

The Prime Minister made a number of promises to the Australian people, and the overarching promise was to get the budget back into shape. A budget situation that the Australian people understand included the borrowing, each and every month, of $1,000 million just to pay the interest on existing borrowings. I think most Australian people accept that that is unsustainable. Therefore, it was vitally important that we look at different sectors to ascertain how we could assist them and grow them without putting a further demand on either borrowings or the Australian taxpayer.

In the space of higher education, what Mr Pyne, in a very masterful way, has been able to craft is a policy that will see an extra 80,000 places for young, or mainly young, Australians to go to tertiary education. Surely, that is a huge win for the Australian population, especially those 80,000 that would have previously been unable to get into higher education but for our policy in this area.

What is very interesting is that, overwhelmingly, the tertiary sector are now coming on board as they understand more and more of our policy positioning in this area. Be it from regional universities, be it from the more established universities, be it from the commentators—they see the benefits of our changes, which will see a growth in the university sector, a sector that needs to remain internationally competitive as it is either our third or our fourth largest export earner.