Libs still pushing unpopular university deregulation

Despite more than a year of insistently making his case, including via a $15 million taxpayer-funded misinformation campaign, Mr Pyne has completely failed to persuade the people of Australia that there is any merit in his plan at all – in fact, support for his policy has gone backwards.

The voters clearly haven’t accepted that there is a funding crisis in universities, as the Minister likes to pretend. They can recognise a confected crisis when they see one: the only crisis is the one Mr Pyne has contrived by his threatened 20 per cent cut.

They don’t want Australia to move towards the US model that so dazzles him, either. They know that shifting the burden of paying for higher education on to individuals can only decrease opportunity and increase inequality – among students and their families, and among universities, too.

Above all, the people of Australia know that the quality of the higher education system cannot be maintained when the Government refuses to pay its bills. They want a government that is firmly committed to maintaining properly funded public universities.

I don’t know whether those who suggest that Mr Pyne is persisting with his deregulation legislation to deliver the Government a double-dissolution trigger are right.

But I can confidently say this: Minister, if you really want to fight an election campaign on a higher education agenda that the voters of Australia comprehensively reject, bring it on.