KELLY: Senator Wong, welcome back to Breakfast.
WONG: Good to be with you again, Fran.
KELLY: Now, the Minister says great reform takes time, and this Bill is not dead and buried thats for sure, it will come back into the Senate in February for another vote. What will Labor do then?
WONG: If he wants some great reform passed, then perhaps he should put forward some great reform. But hes not doing that, hes putting forward in this next Bill, a Bill that contains on his own assessment, nine out of ten of the elements of the Bill thats just been comprehensively rejected by the Senate. And not only by the Senate, I think by the community. And people dont support what this Government is seeking to do on higher education. Thats why the Senate comprehensively voted down that legislation.
And perhaps instead of trying to pretend hes Churchill, Christopher Pyne might actually try to go back to the drawing board, and come up with a package that is more fair, and doesnt involve, at its heart, a cut to university funding per student place.
KELLY: Well what he has said is I mean he will come back with a Bill thats more fair, because hes agreeing to write into it some of the concessions that were made in the final hours of the debate. Those HECS student debts, the interest rate will remain linked to CPI, so they wont be lifted to the bond rate. Therell be a five-year repayment pause on HECS debts for new parents. Therell be a university transition fund. Therell be a role for the ACCC to make sure theres no price gouging. So, thats making it more fair.
WONG: I think the heart of this Bill is the reduction in funding to universities, and at the heart of this Bill is deregulation, which will lead to higher costs, $100,000 degrees. And at the heart of this Bill is a set of values Australians dont share, and that is to make higher education less accessible and less affordable.
I dont think this is a policy that Australians support, and I think Christopher Pyne really is pressing forward with an agenda, which at its heart is about unfairness. I dont think education should be treated in the way this Government is treating it.
KELLY: As designed, youre right in one sense that this Bill was designed to save, or would have saved, the Government a significant amount of money from the budget bottom line. If they do away with that cut, if they give if they take away that twenty per cent cut to university funding, would Labor support the bill? Even if it had deregulation?
WONG: Bill Shorten has made very clear, we dont support $100,000 degrees. We dont. And I think nor do most Australians. I think most Australians understand the importance of education. Australians understand that they dont want their children saddled with crippling debts. They want people to be able to aspire to a higher education degree. Theyre not values that Christopher Pyne and Tony Abbott apparently share.
KELLY: How would Labor address the structural problems facing the sector? All the university vice-chancellors almost all, bar one have been coming out and saying we have a problem. Labor introduced a demand-driven model with uncapped university places. So, many more students at university which is a good thing, everyone agrees but the funding doesnt match it. Thats a recipe, they say, for declining education standards.
WONG: Well, Labor
KELLY: What are you going to do about that mismatch?
WONG: Were not in Government. But what I would say is this, Labors reforms ensured more Australians could get to university. And, very importantly, more young people from families where they were the first person to go to university. Thats what our reforms meant.
Now, Im sure youll see our approach to higher education well before the next election. But were not going to be signing up to the Abbott Governments agenda, which is all about making higher education less accessible for so many Australians. Thats at the heart of Christopher Pynes policies. And no amount of tinkering around the edges and knocking off some of the most egregious aspects of this legislation will make it fair.
KELLY: Well in terms of what we might see from Labor before the next election, Im sure you will have to have a policy. But if this does get through the Senate in February, if it is passed and is operating, itll be impossible to unwind this reform, wouldnt it? Deregulation?
WONG: My focus as Leader of the Senate will be just as it was yesterday, which is to oppose these reforms, and to work very hard with the crossbench to ensure they dont pass.
The Government didnt go to the election telling Australians they were going to massively increase the cost of degrees. The Government didnt go to the election telling people that they would saddle our young Australians with crippling debts. The Government didnt say to people that they were going to make higher education less accessible.
Yesterday, the Senate voted against these reforms. And Id have to say remember, this was on the second reading of the Bill and youd have to say a couple of the crossbenchers who voted with the Government on that articulated that they were voting to continue debate, not that they were supporting the legislation. So I think Christopher Pyne needs to recognise the opposition in the Senate, which is grounded in a very deep opposition within the Australian community.
KELLY: Can I talk to you about working with the crossbench? Because, earlier we heard from Glenn Lazarus, he was critical of the Governments negotiating style. He talked yesterday about Christopher Pyne inundating him, harassing him, with SMS messages. Whats your approach to dealing with the crossbenchers?
WONG: I think you have to approach the crossbenchers respectfully. You have to also recognise the constraints under which theyre working. I mean, they dont have departments advising them, they dont have a large number of staff. Theyre trying to assess legislation as it comes forward.
And its not helped by the fact and I think Senator Lazarus referenced this its not helped by the fact that the Government keeps changing its mind about what it wants to bring on. The chaos that is in the Senate lies at the feet of the Government. We even had the most bizarre spectacle yesterday of the Government filibustering that is, adding speakers to extend the debate on the higher education legislation after they had told us they wanted it to come to a vote. We moved a motion to get the vote on, and they voted it down.
I mean, this is just a chaotic approach to Senate management, not helped by the way the crossbenchers feel theyve been treated, in, frankly, a high-handed manner by some of the Government Senators.
KELLY: Its sixteen to eight on Breakfast. Our guest is the Opposition Leader in the Senate and Shadow Minister for Trade and Investment, Penny Wong. Penny Wong, by voting this Bill down, it punches another $5 billion hole in the short term in the Governments budget. All up theres still about $28 billion worth of budget measures yet to be legislated. The Government is also facing the revenue shortfalls, the same sort of pattern of revenue writedowns that Labor in government dealt with. Do you have some sympathy for them? How would the budget outlook be any different now, do you think, if Labor was in Government?
WONG: Do you remember, Fran, how Joe Hockey used to say to everybody every time that there was a revenue downgrade under the Labor Government that it was all the Treasurer and the Finance Ministers fault? It was all our fault? Well if he applies the same standard, then any revenue downgrade, any change to his figures when he releases his mini-budget, thats on his head. That is on his head, by the own standards that he has set.
What I would say is that we have passed a great many Government savings. What we are not going to do is agree to savings which hurt Australians, and which are predicated on broken promises.
KELLY: But, just to finish on this, there was a report this week from Deloitte Access Economics forecasting another $35 billion would be wiped off the budget bottom line over four years. The outgoing Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson, who was Labor appointed, is warning of 10 years of budget deficits. Hes calling for urgent reforms to productivity, and for the Senate to allow the Government to get on with things. Is Labor the only player that doesnt recognise this budgets in trouble?
WONG: We do understand the importance of ensuring you make structural saves to the budget. I mean, for example, the Private Health Insurance Rebate. Our reforms to that program ensured we saw savings out of one of the fastest-growing items of expenditure in the federal budget.
But I dont think the need for budget savings justifies broken promises from a Prime Minister who told people very clearly no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no changes to the pension, no cuts to the ABC, as we well know. And nor should the Senate, and nor should Labor stand nor will we countenance broken promises being passed through the Senate.
KELLY: Alright Senator
WONG: And I dont think your listeners would expect us to, Fran. I mean, I think your listeners would expect us to hold the Government to account and to stand up for the values we believe in. And thats what were doing.
KELLY: Senator Wong, thank you very much for joining us.
WONG: Good to speak with you.
 
ENDS