of a free education (If only that were true: I have 4 very expensive children). Don’t you think your changes, which will on average increase a students HECS cost, will be offputting to students from lower Socio economic backgrounds? Don’t you think staring at that figure at the start of university and this enor mous figure at the end: don’t you think that will be off putting to those who don’t have a lot in life? No I think the opposite is the case. All the experience since the introduction of HECS has been that the opposite has occurred. That the charging of fees has led to universities being able to offer vastly more places at university, better quality degrees, that has lead to a massive expansion in people from low SES background going to university. You’ve failed to pass the bill through the senate. So it is not currently law, so you’re spending I imagine millions of dollars on a vast campaign. Does that not seem particularly fair to the taxpayer, that you’re advertising what is essentially party policy? Well the infor mation campaign is not about the government’s policy, it’s about the continuation of the HECS and to assure people who are planning to go to university or who are currently there and for that reason it is entirely justifiable. How would you respond to the criticism that your Higher Ed package disproportionately disadvantages women? Well, I can’t see that women will be disadvantaged by these refor ms because Vice Chancellors will take into account a capacity of people to repay their HECS debt and for that reason some courses will be more expensive than others. And now that we have changed the 10 year government bond rate to CPI rather than the 10 year government bond rate there will be no compounding interest. And finally of course as part of the 2nd round of this refor m if a person leaves the workforce in order to have a child the HECS debt will be “suspended” if you like for that period of time with a maximum of 5 years so that in fact there will be no interest levied on the HECS debt at all during that period. Minister, given that the bill has already failed to pass the Senate once, what do you think the chances are of it successfully passing?
Well I think a lot of people are very surprised that I managed to get four votes out of the six that I needed from the crossbenchers. I am working with all the cross benchers and I have reason to believe that with each of the crossbenchers I think there is a prospect of success depending on how the various balls in the air that we have to jug gle and end up falling. Minister are there any parts of the package that you would consider revising in light of the gover nments failure to pass the bill once? Well I want to see refor m of the universities pass the senate. It’s vitally important for the future of our universities. If we don’t refor m universities we will eventually fall behind all of our competitors. So if we don’t do anything, as Universities Australia have said, it is a recipe for mediocrity. As Sandra Harding the VC of James Cook has said, “the status quo is not an option”. Our refor ms are vital. So there will not be further Americanization, if you will, of our university system? Well the American system is not comparable with the Australian system because they don’t have a higher education contribution scheme. That’s number one. So they can’t borrow every dollar from the Australian taxpayer and pay it pack at the lowest interest rates they will ever have to pay on a loan in their lives. There’s also not the billions of dollars of philanthropy that is commonplace in top US universities where for example at Stanford I think every single student at Stanford is on a scholarship. All the so called “Ivy league” universities have a huge percentage of students that are on scholarships paid for out of philanthropic bequests that we don’t have in Australia. We have the fantastic HECS and there’s nothing of its like in the US so comparing the US to Australian universities is simply a nonsense. And so you’re looking to increase scholarships available to student from lower SES backgrounds as part of your package? Of course! The third element of our refor ms is the massive expansion of Commonwealth scholarships. The big gest Commonwealth scholarship scheme in Australian history which will be skewed to low SES students, rural and regional students.
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