Pyne tries again on uni reforms
Christopher Pyne’s plan B for his university reforms is remarkably similar to his plan A, just with more time to negotiate its passage through parliament.
“This is good reform, it’s inevitable reform,” he said on Wednesday, the day after the Senate rejected his first legislative attempt.
Pyne is making a second attempt by introducing a revamped bill that includes the amendments he promised Senate crossbenchers.
The biggest change is to one of his most contentious measures – hiking the interest rates on student debts.
The new bill will establish government-funded scholarships specifically for poorer and rural students, a support package for regional universities, freeze interest on debts for new parents and explicitly rule that domestic fees can’t exceed what international students are charged.
All those concessions were offered to the Senate before it rejected Pyne’s initial legislation.
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But Universities Australia doesn’t believe it’s enough to convince the sector or key crossbenchers.
Universities have given conditional support to deregulation but they hate the plans to cut per-student funding by 20 per cent.
That hasn’t changed in the new legislation.
Palmer United Party senator Glenn Lazarus, who blasted Pyne on Tuesday for inundating him with text messages, said PUP still opposed the changes especially if funding was cut to universities and fees were deregulated.
Independent senator Nick Xenophon still wants more time to consider the government’s concessions.
He opposed the initial bill but believes the current higher education system isn’t sustainable in the long term.
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“But this is a radical change that was never put to the people,” he told reporters in Canberra.
“Once you’ve brought about these changes there’s no going back.”
Pyne invoked Winston Churchill, telling a Universities Australia function this was not the beginning of the end but the end of the beginning.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten mocked him at a special caucus meeting on Wednesday called to discuss higher education.
“We shall fight them in the parliament, we shall fight them in the community, we shall fight for opportunity, we shall fight for a fair university system and we shall never surrender,” he told Labor MPs.
He said the Labor didn’t need weeks to review “these rotten offerings”.
Pyne conceded the Senate’s rejection was a setback.
“But does that mean the government gives up and calls an election? Absolutely not,” he said.
“I’ve never been against a battle.”
