Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Education) (14:47): I am delighted to take this question from the member from the other side. I have not done a study of the frontbench of the government to discover which universities they went to or which ones paid HECS; nor have I done so for the frontbench of the Labor caucus. But I can tell the member that, if she wants to go back and discover who it was that decided that free education was not working—and was not bringing low-SES students into universities but simply subsidising the middle classes and the upper-middle classes—she should look no further than the former Prime Minister and Treasurer Paul Keating. He said at the opening of the Victoria University of Technology, Sunbury campus: There is no such thing, of course, as 'free' education - somebody has to pay. … … … … a 'free' higher education system is one paid for by the taxes of all, the majority of whom haven't had the privilege of a university education. Ask yourself if you think that is a fair thing. That is what Paul Keating said. The member's question gives me the opportunity to point out how far the current modern Labor Party has moved from the Hawke-Keating legacy, and to repeat the point that I made in the previous answer and question: the current Labor Party has shredded their economic credibility. Most Labor figures of the past realised that so-called free education did not have any impact on bringing students into university. Mr Dreyfus interjecting— The SPEAKER: The member for Isaacs will desist. Mr PYNE: We have a modern-day example that the member for Fraser would have studied. In the United Kingdom there is free education in Scotland and there is a deregulated education market in England. As the member for Fraser knows, since deregulation in England the number of students from low-SES backgrounds is at record levels. The number of students from low-SES backgrounds has ballooned in England; in Scotland there was been no change whatsoever since free education was introduced. So we are absolutely committed to our higher education reforms, because to us it is an equity measure; it is an equity reform. It will give more young people from low-SES backgrounds the opportunity that I had, and that so many members of this House had, to go to university and get the chance to increase their earning capacity over a lifetime. I am not going to slam the door behind me after I got a great university education, and nobody in the Labor Party should either. Get off your Green-Left agenda and start standing up for students from low-SES backgrounds, like I am. Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER: There will be silence on my left.