ABC 774

E&OE TRANSCRIPT Interview – ABC 774 Melbourne with Jon Faine Wednesday 12 November 2014 SUBJECT:    Higher education reform. JON FAINE:   Christopher Pyne, Education Minister is addressing a university and higher education reform summit organised by the Australian Financial Review here in Melbourne today, Christopher Pyne, good morning to you. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Good morning Jon. JON FAINE:   I understand that enrolments for 2015 have slightly increased, two per cent is the claimed figure, that suggests to me that there are many people who are rushing to the 2015 year to try and get back to university before the fees go up. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well I don’t think that means that actually, just to correct something you said in your introduction, there was never a plan to introduce the reforms in 2015, it was always due to start in 2016 so it’s only a minor thing, but just so your listeners don’t think that somehow they have been delayed they were always planned to begin in 2016. In terms of enrolments, the good news is that enrolments are continuing to be about the same as they were last year and the year before, there is often quite a large upsurge of enrolments towards the end of the year and a lot of students enrolled these days online so that information is harder to come by so what we are seeing is that students when they discover that the Higher Education Contribution Scheme is remaining in place, contrary to Labor’s scare campaign, are quite comfortable knowing that when they go to university with all the opportunity that brings of both private benefit and public benefit and they can borrow that money from the taxpayer and they are quite happy to continue to enrol. JON FAINE:   The amount they will have to borrow when the rate at which, it will accumulate interest, is undoubtedly though a factor– both will be going up and this is a phenomenally unpopular set of reforms, Minister.  Nobody in the voting public, nobody is expressing great support for your plan. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well that doesn’t seem to fit with your first question, which was that enrolments are in fact going up… JON FAINE:   In 2015 because people want to go back to uni before the reforms bite. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        But if you enrol in 2015, Jon, you don’t finish your degree in one year, so you would still be paying higher fees… JON FAINE:   Minster, there are many universities saying that if you start in 2015, you can continue your university qualification to completion under the old rules. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        No they are not.  Now it is important for you to get your facts right, Jon. JON FAINE:   No, I’m sorry, there are.  You should get your facts right because I am personally involved in trying to sort one of those at the moment. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        There are some universities who have done that, not many. JON FAINE:   Plenty. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        No, there are not but nevertheless the point is since HECS was reintroduced by the Hawke Government in 1988 there has been an exponential increase in students over that entire period regardless of the cost of higher education. And that will continue under our reforms because students know that they are getting a major private benefit from being at university. In fact our reforms are equitable reforms, they are going to increase equity because we are expanding the Commonwealth Grant Scheme to the pathways programmes, that people from low-SES and first-generation university goers use to get to uni. JON FAINE:   There will be some scholarships but Minister from trying to correct me… CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        No, that’s not scholarships, that’s… JON FAINE:   …and then having to admit that in fact my point was correct and then going from there are none to there are some to there are many.. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        No, there are not many. JON FAINE:   Well there are. There are… CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        You are being caught up on that point, Jon, you are quite welcome to but in fact you need to look at the facts. There are some universities that they have said they will enrol students at their 2014 fee levels, eight universities. There are many universities that have said they will not change their fees for 2015, but they certainly will for 2016. There are other universities like Sydney that have said their scholarships will increase from 700 to 9,000. JON FAINE:   Well having tried to bluff your way through, we have now got to the reality which is that it is a completely unpredictable and unsettled environment that you personally have created where some universities can’t even tell students what regime will be applied by the time they are expected to finish. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Which you have admitted it is still leading to increasing enrolments… JON FAINE:   In 2015, but I predict to you, Minister, that 2016 could be quite catastrophic. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        No I think you are quite wrong about that and I think the facts are you have to admit that even in what you are describing as so called chaos, that students are enrolling in record numbers. And of course that was the experience in England when they reintroduced fees. In fact the demographic of low-SES students in England increased rather than decreased and the number of students enrolling increased rather than decreased because students know that the benefit they get from going to university, that’s number one, number two they know they can borrow from the taxpayer under the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, and because students are working out that Labor’s scare campaign is false, they are enrolling in record numbers and they know that potentially their fees will rise. You also incorrectly suggest that there will be an increase in low-SES students because of the scholarships. There will be but the point I was making was that the pathways programmes that we are going to extend the Commonwealth Grant Scheme to, under the Demand-Driven System, will lead to more low-SES students at uni and the Commonwealth scholarships is on top of that. JON FAINE:   As we prepare for the end of this scholastic year Minister, you are looking at the 2016 budgets that will be framed in 2015, and the universities, like the Federal Government, are no closer to knowing what they have to deal with. It is, I mean it is November, Minister, no one knows what is going to apply and you are framing… together with Joe Hockey you are framing next year’s budget without having to successfully negotiate this years. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well that is a good reason why the Senate should pass these reforms. JON FAINE:   Well you can keep saying that but they are showing no appetite for so doing. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well that is not quite correct but nevertheless Labor when they were in power were still passing budget measures two years after they had announced them in budgets. In fact when they had lost office, in September last year, there was most of the budget that had not been passed yet through the Senate and in fact we had come along and tried to pass their savings measures which they are now voting against so it is not all the budget reforms are always past in the same calendar year as they are introduced and you know that Jon. JON FAINE:   So what circuit breaker is looming, what is on the horizon, what sweeteners or other negotiating points are going to emerge? Why not get on with it in order to try and deliver some certainty to this vital sector? The Melbourne economy is as much as anything dependent on higher education students and overseas students and the higher education sector, this is disastrous. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well it certainly isn’t.  The point is, that’s why these reforms need to pass because they will secure Victoria’s education economy decades into the future.  They will attract more international students because they will improve the reputation of our universities into the future against their competition in Asia, they will give more students in Victoria an opportunity to go to university and get the benefit that university brings and all we are asking students to do is pay 50/50 on average break with the Commonwealth taxpayer, at the moment they are paying 40 on average, we are paying 60. We are asking them to pay 50/50. Now the universities know that this begins in 2016, that is well over a year away, that is fourteen months away and they are not in the least bit concerned about the fact that it has not passed the Senate. They are planning for them if they pass the Senate and if they don’t we will continue to negotiate with the cross-benchers. But there is no point in some kind of crazy brave demand at the Senate to debate this and if it is lost we have to start all over again. I would much rather continue the very constructive negotiations that I am having, as you said I am always very optimistic, and I intend to continue to be Jon because I believe these reforms are vital. JON FAINE:   Your colleague, the Environment Minister Greg Hunt, has shown that you can in fact negotiate an outcome using various carrots and sticks with the Palmer United Party, so what is the equivalent for higher education reform, what are you going to put on the table to try and get them across the line? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well I won’t be sharing that with you, Jon. I will be talking… JON FAINE:   No you share it with the listeners. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        I will be talking to the cross-benchers about that. JON FAINE:   Because they vote, Minister, and they are already looking at the ballot box in just what, less than two years. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        And they are not part of the negotiations with the cross-benchers, that is my job and that is the cross-benchers’ job and the negotiations will be held just as they were over Direct Action, behind the closed doors in Canberra while we work out how to pass these reforms and once the decision has been made, an announcement will be made, exactly the same way as you point out that my very good colleague Greg Hunt did, and that is the job of Cabinet, it is not the job of the Cabinet to discuss negotiations with the cross-benchers in the public domain. JON FAINE:   Alright, my final proposition to you is that if the polls are accurate and correct, I am sure you will tell us they are not, then the State Liberal Government, the Bailleu then Napthine Government is staring at a defeat and being a one term Government. If indeed that turns out to happen, it will be because people get elected and then don’t keep the promises they have made.  Is that lesson in any way being taken on board in Canberra by you and your colleagues in Tony Abbott’s Government? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well I think it will be very unfortunate if the Napthine Government is not re-elected because it means the CFMEU will be back running Victoria again through Daniel Andrews. JON FAINE:   On the other hand it might mean politicians take promises a little more seriously when they are elected or otherwise they will only be there one term. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well I think that the worst thing that could possibly happen for Victoria was if the CFMEU was back running industrial relations in this great State again. JON FAINE:   Would it be a good thing if politicians learnt the lessons that if they get elected on a set of promises, they have to keep them? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well Julia Gillard learnt her cost of course, that when you say that you won’t introduce a carbon tax and then seven days later you are announcing you are introducing a carbon tax, you do… the public does take a dim view about that. JON FAINE:   Do you want to talk about the future or do you want to talk about the past? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well Jon, if you don’t like the answers I am sorry about that. JON FAINE:   No, no, no I am happy with the answers. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        You don’t get to ask the questions and also do the answers as much as you might like to. JON FAINE:   It is occasionally tempting, Mr Pyne, there is absolutely no doubt.  But I think there are some serious and genuine issues well beyond just your portfolio here that are at stake and in some ways Victorian election may be a litmus test for integrity and credibility and the political system that is in some disarray and undergoing a crisis of confidence with the population. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well I don’t think everything is a catastrophe, a disaster or a crisis of confidence as you paint it this morning. In fact I think that the Victorian public is a very optimistic and very upbeat group of people because they know that they are living in one of the greatest States in one of the greatest countries in the world.  And, the reason why it is hard for me to answer your question is because I am not aware of which particular promises you are accusing the Napthine-Bailleu Government of breaking… JON FAINE:   No, no, no… CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        …I am not an expert of Victorian politics. JON FAINE:   There is enormous disillusion, you can’t have escaped that. People are more, I nearly said a bad word, they are more annoyed about politics at the moment then I have ever known them to be. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well I have heard that said many times over the twenty years that I have been in politics, Jon and I find that the public that I deal with in my electorate of Sturt is a very positive and upbeat group of people and they know that the Government has faced challenges every day and they know we have to make the books balance and they have to pay for the essential services that Governments, both State and Federal, provide and they expect… they know that this is a tough job, especially when they get left with $123 billion deficits and $667 billion of debt. Now the Liberal Party is very good at getting the economy right, fixing the books, doing the things that needs to be done, Labor is the opposite and I think that the Victorian public when they come to vote, won’t want the CFMEU running the State again and they won’t want to put back in exactly the same people that gave them the years under Kirner and Brumby and Cain etc. where Victoria suffered economically, and that affected the entire society. JON FAINE:   I am making you late for your conference, which is an unforgivable sin. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        You are but that is because my staff told you how long I had so you are making sure that I am late but don’t worry I am sure they will be very understanding. JON FAINE:   I am grateful to you for the time you have given us and thank you. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        It’s a pleasure.   [ends]