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The government is seeking to remove caps on the fees universities can charge. Photograph: Alamy
The government is seeking to remove caps on the fees universities can charge. Photograph: Alamy

PUP vows to do ‘everything possible’ to block higher education changes

This article is more than 9 years old

Senate leader Glenn Lazarus says party will oppose changes to the fee structure and any increases to the cost of Hecs

The Palmer United party (PUP) has vowed to do “everything possible” to block the Abbott government’s higher education changes, pointing to the deregulation of fees and increases to student loan costs as elements it cannot support.

The education minister, Christopher Pyne, has previously signalled his willingness to consider walking away from increases to Hecs loan interest rates in a bid to negotiate a compromise.

But the removal of caps on the fees universities can charge from 2016 is a core part of the government’s legislation, which also includes an average 20% cut to course subsidies.

Labor and the Greens remain firmly opposed to the bill, staring down calls from the university sector for a compromise deal.

The legislation cannot pass if the three PUP senators combine with Labor and the Greens to vote against it. Clive Palmer’s previous deals on financial advice regulations and the mining tax repeal have given the government hope the PUP can be persuaded to shift its position.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the PUP Senate leader, Glenn Lazarus, appeared to harden the party’s previously stated opposition to the higher education reforms.

“While the higher education reforms have passed the parliament’s lower house due to the government’s majority numbers, the Palmer United party will be doing everything possible to ensure the reforms do not pass the Senate,” Lazarus said.

He said education should be a fundamental right in Australia, not a privilege, and students should not be financially penalised for seeking to advance their learning.

The reforms threatened to turn Australia into the “dumb country”, Lazarus said, and were not part of the Coalition’s 2013 election platform.

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“Australians are fed up with the Abbott government wheeling out ‘bad ideas’ simply to fix an ‘imaginary debt problem’,” Lazarus said.

“Palmer United will block the higher education reforms in the Senate. We will oppose any changes to the higher education system fee structure and we will oppose any increases to the cost of Hecs.”

Universities Australia, a peak body, has been lobbying Senate crossbenchers over the reforms, pushing the message that the status quo was not an option for the sector. The body supports fee deregulation but wants the interest rate changes to be axed and for the government to scale back the proposed 20% cut to course subsidies.

The Greens senator Lee Rhiannon said Universities Australia should return to campaigning for increases to public funding to universities, rather than “putting pressure on senators to support the Coalition’s regressive and discriminatory changes to higher education”.

“Universities Australia should be asking the Coalition government to go back to the drawing board and start the discussion on how we can build up higher education in Australia, not dismantle it,” Rhiannon said on Tuesday.

Labor’s higher education spokesman, Kim Carr, said a joint call by the Group of Eight and Regional Universities Network for targeted support for regional universities and low-income students was “an admission of the inequality at the heart of the higher education package”.

“The compromises that the various parties are now seeking risk creating a patchwork system of university support – a hodgepodge of funding mechanisms that lacks policy coherence. No amount of sugar-coating by the Abbott government will make this unfair and ill-considered package more palatable,” Carr said.

Pyne, who has left Australia on a five-day education-focused trip to China and Laos, on Monday acknowledged the sector’s request for “extra support for regional universities and particularly a potential transition phase”.

“I’m open to any suggestion from the crossbenchers and the Labor party or the Greens for that matter in the Senate because I think these reforms are vital for students and for our universities and I will consider any proposal put to me by the crossbenchers and by the universities,” Pyne said.

“But fundamentally, the universities are united in supporting and believing these reforms should be passed and I agree with them.”

The Senate’s education and employment legislation committee is due to complete its inquiry into the government’s bill by 28 October. It is accepting submissions until 22 September.

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