Mr EWEN JONES (Herbert) (15:39): I think that this is a great discussion to have—not so much the topic of the MPI, but I think that the discussion around higher education is a great one to have. I go back to a previous MPI that we had on this. The member for Pearce gave a great speech where he outlined why he thought this was a great discussion to have. Under the Menzies system, there were Commonwealth scholarships. So it was not as if everyone had to pay to go to university. John Howard went to Canterbury Boys’ High School, a state high school. He was the first Prime Minister ever to go to a state high school. He won a Commonwealth scholarship because he was one of the best and brightest. Lots of people went through that system. The question asked by Gough Whitlam in the early 1970s was: could you get more people from lower SES backgrounds to go to university if you removed all the costs? I think that was a great question to ask. They took away all the costs. I notice the member for Chisholm is in the chamber. She did not pay for her first degree, and I remember that story. By the time that 1988 came around and Labor brought in HECS, the answer was: no, it would not. Free education would not necessarily raise the number of low-SES students, because the fact was that the numbers had not changed substantially. So Labor brought in HECS. On this issue, you always hear the Labor Party say that we did not take this to an election and that it is a budget bill not an education bill. I point out that every bill is a budget bill, because everything passes—including HECS. I quote from a speech that I gave earlier in relation to higher education: Liberal Senator Bill Teague led our response to the package of bills, which included HECS, in a major change to higher education, which, incidentally, in 1989 was not taken to an election. This is what then Senator Teague said: We in the Opposition are opposed to the graduate tax, but we will be supporting the higher education contribution scheme in this legislation, for several reasons. First, it is a Budget Bill and we respect the ability of an elected government in the House of Representatives to determine a Budget and its financial provision for higher education. That is what a responsible opposition does. It respects the government's right to set a budget. This debate gets down to the argument that a degree should cost the same in every context. My university in Townsville is James Cook University, and it is a Menzies university. We have a science degree which includes access to Orpheus Island, to a working cattle station and to the Great Barrier Reef; it offers all of these things. Why should that degree cost the same as a degree in the concrete jungle in Melbourne? Surely, there should be some differentiation. HECS was brought in, and the number of students from lower SES backgrounds did not drop; in fact, it rose. Towards the end of the Keating government and into the first Howard government, we actually had increases of up to 800 per cent in HECS. Ms Chesters: Yes, Howard in 1996. Mr EWEN JONES: Keating put it through, mate. Did that discourage people from going to university? Did that discourage people from lower SES backgrounds from going to university? No, it did not, because the numbers went up and up. All the way through, the numbers have gone up. Labor cut $6½ billion from education funding over the last two governments, and numbers still went up. We had the Leader of the Opposition standing there for 10 minutes, and he had a chance to outline how we are undermining education or what he is going to do. He quoted, of all things, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He said it was the Black Knight. I find it amazing after his Jon Faine interview where he said, 'Everybody is somebody'. Maybe he should have quoted from Monty Python's Life of Brian, because we are 'all individuals'. I would suggest that he is not the Leader of the Opposition, and he is certainly not a Prime Minister, 'he's just a very naughty boy'. So what is his plan? He does not have a plan, and he spent 10 minutes there saying absolutely nothing. What we are doing with higher education is expanding access to TAFE to allow people with diploma skills to get diplomas and, for the first time, get the costs of those put onto a HELP loan. Once again, a very vast majority of people in this much undervalued part of our education system can access that support to go through there. We have an education system around the world which is in global flux. It is in rapid change. If we do not keep up with that change, we will be left behind. Education is a major export industry for this country. It should not be bandied about. It should be something around which our universities can be as competitive as they possibly can in a global environment, taking into account the challenges that we face today, not just here or in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Townsville, but across the world.