ABC Q&A

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Panel – ABC1 Q&A with Tony Jones
30 March 2015

SUBJECTS: Mental illness; illicit drugs; higher education reform.

TONY JONES: Good evening and welcome to Q&A. I'm Tony Jones and here to answer your questions: Nobel Prize-winning Professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the Australian National University, Brian Schmidt; Education Minister Christopher Pyne; comedian Ruby Wax, whose new show Sane New World builds on her study of psychotherapy; musician, filmmaker and activist Michael Franti, who is currently touring Australia for Bluesfest; and the Shadow Minister for Trade and Investment Penny Wong. Please welcome our panel. Thank you and remember, if you've got a live Twitter question to send us, add @qanda to help us find it. Let’s go straight to our first question from in the room, it’s from Annette Guerry.

ANNETTE GUERRY: Hi. I'm curious. Is there a difference between a suicidal pilot and a suicide bomber? Whatever rationalisation they use to justify taking the lives of innocent people in their own quest to self-destruct, what's the role of mental illness in both cases?

TONY JONES: Christopher Pyne, let's start with you.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Look, it's a very serious and a very good question. I mean, I would say that in both cases both people are suffering from a mental illness. Now, unfortunately, they decide to take out a whole lot of other people, innocent people, with them and destroy their lives, their own lives and leave a wreckage behind for the families of suicide victims. I was the Parliamentary Secretary for Health many years ago and created an organisation called Headspace, the youth mental health initiative, with Pat McGorry, and so I have some understanding about mental health and how to try to treat it from a government point of view and Pat McGorry, obviously, was a fantastic person to have as the first CEO and was Australian of the Year for his work with young people with mental illness. The problem with mental illness, it’s not rational. It’s very hard, therefore, to describe how people react in these kinds of situations. Obviously we have to get help to all of them as early as possible so they don't do something terrible like what's happened recently in France and every suicide bomber, of course, is a tragedy.

TONY JONES: Now...

RUBY WAX: Can I ask a question?

TONY JONES: Go ahead, Ruby.

RUBY WAX: Sorry, how much of the Government money do you actually put to brain research? I'm just curious.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I don't know the exact number.

RUBY WAX: Yeah.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I mean we have, in Australia, some fantastic brain research institutes; one here in Sydney, the Mind and Brain Research Institute.

RUBY WAX: No, I'm talking about the Government because certainly in the UK...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, that's mostly funded by the Government, the Brain and Mind Research Institute.

RUBY WAX: Yeah, but compared to, let’s say, other illnesses. Because in England and certainly in the United States, brain research gets far, far less than every other illness put together.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, it’s a good point. Back in the...

RUBY WAX: Then we would have an answer to this question. Because if you don't put money into brain research, this is going to continue on and it isn’t a small minority, it’s one out of four people.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yeah.

RUBY WAX: So if it’s one, two, three, four, could be you.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, the answer - well, some would say it was but it's not a laughing matter.

RUBY WAX: No, I know.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I mean, mental illness is not a laughing matter.

RUBY WAX: Well, I know that.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: So we shouldn't be laughing about it. But the truth is, early in the 2000s the Federal Government didn't put a lot of money into mental health. It was seen to be a State Government responsibility. I was the Parliamentary Secretary for health to Tony Abbott, who is now the Prime Minister, as you would know, and we jumped right into mental health in a way that we hadn't done and it was mostly bipartisan. So we created Headspace for youth mental health and then we put $1.9 billion into mental health programs in 2006. One of those was to put psychologists on the Medicare schedule so you could go to the psychologist for nothing.

TONY JONES: Christopher, I'm not meaning to interrupt here but I’m actually...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I was asked the question, so I was just answering it.

TONY JONES: No. No. I know. You were asked the question by one of the panellists and I’m going to just take control back again.

RUBY WAX: I’m sorry, I don't know the rules.

TONY JONES: No. No.

RUBY WAX: I thought it’s a dinner party.

TONY JONES: I thought you might have remembered from the last time you were here.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It’s not free-flowing, no

TONY JONES: Now, Ruby, let’s stick with the audience question though. I mean I know that the chief psychiatrist - in fact Simon Wesley, who’s the President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK, is very worried there is going to be a knee jerk reaction here and backlash against any pilots who have a history of depression. You have a history of depression, what do you think?

RUBY WAX: Well, I never enrolled to be a pilot. But if it's one in four people, imagine what's going to happen now. I mean, again, we have to take some responsibility. There hasn't been a lot of research into the brain compared to - I'm not denigrating it, but breast cancer. It’s just not considered a sexy charity and I had a - there was a dean at Oxford who said that - I don't know if this is - I can say this but I’m saying it. If Bill Gates had donated the money he did for malaria, we would have had a cure for mental illness. Now, I'm not making a judgment but it's our job - and I know the Government doesn't give that much to - everything emanates from a brain disease, okay? Depression isn't because you thought "Maybe I should play golf or have depression". It’s actually a physiological disease and it has to be respected that way. Everything emanates. Everything we’re going to talk about emanates from the brain. Crime, drugs, diabetes 2, obesity, heart disease, infertility, everything comes from the mothership. You can get sympathy for any other disease on any other organ except the brain and until we wake up to that, nothing is going to change. Nothing.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yeah, it’s not a talked-about disease in the way that others are.

TONY JONES: Okay. Let's, however, talk about what the question was about and I’ll go to...

MICHAEL FRANTI: I'm from America and I don't know everything that's going on in this country but in my country in the 80s, we saw the Reagan Administration slash funding for mental health and what it led to was an outbreak of thousands of people who became homeless because of mental illness. Veterans, people who had, you know, alcoholism, simple things that we feel like we should be able to take care of with proper mental health care ended up becoming a massive burden on all of our society. Everything from people pan-handling on the street every day of people’s lives to millions and millions of dollars having to be spent beyond what would have been spent to take care of people's needs to house them and to clothe them and to take care of the crime and all the things that came out of that. And you talked about, you know, is there a difference between a suicide bomber and a, you know, person who just does it on their own for whatever reason or because they have a mental illness? And I wrote a song years ago called Bomb the World and the lyric says “We can bomb the world to pieces but we can't bomb it into peace". And I would argue that is there also mental illness in us going around to other countries and bombing them? You know, and so I believe that all bombing is wrong and it doesn't solve the problems that we think it does, whether it's just because you are a disgruntled individual or whether it’s because you have mental illness or it’s because you’re trying to impose your will on another people in another nation.

RUBY WAX: But eventually they will have, if there was some research into this, that, yes, you could test just the way you can for cancer. You have mental illness. There is no question with Alzheimer's. I mean you wouldn't say to somebody with Alzheimer's "Come on, you can remember where you left the key". So same with mental illness. There is a moment where it might be fanatic, it might be narcissistic, it might be neurotic but if you are talking about a specific disease it’s physiological and that should be tested by this point.

TONY JONES: Penny Wong, I will bring you back to the last part of that question which was is there a difference between a suicidal pilot and suicide bomber?

PENNY WONG: Well, I don't know that I could say what the difference in causation is, if any, and I don’t think any of us really know that, do we? But, in terms of how we respond, we respond to the grief of, you know, those who’ve lost loved ones and at a policy level, I think you have to respond both on, as Ruby has said, to do what governments have started to do more of here in Australia on a bipartisan basis and, as you would know, we did put a couple of billion dollars into mental health with Mark Butler as Minister, but you also have to, you know, understand the cultural reasons why people don't discuss this as much. It's hard to navigate, isn't it, finding help for mental illness and we have improved it somewhat but we have got a long way to go.

TONY JONES: Brian, I think people are trying to get their heads around the fact that a civilian pilot in an aeroplane full of ordinary people could fly his plane quite deliberately into a mountain. So I guess that's the text of the question, there.

BRIAN SCHMIDT: Yeah, so I think the reason, maybe, why we're all so, you know, repulsed by this is it does seem, I think, even a little different than a suicide bomber because, within our culture, we have, I think, causes now. Sometimes the causes are misguided. Suicide bomber I would say is a misguided cause but this is someone who didn't have a cause except for some, I guess, their own view of wanting to make a mark, it seems, based on the beginnings. So I see both as having issues related to mental health but I do see it as being slightly different in the way, I guess, we all perceive causes because when you’re asked to, for example, go to war - for Australians the ANZACS in World War I - it was for a cause which they thought was correct and so I guess that doesn't fit into that paradigm and that's why, at least it bothers me. It was just so random that it - it's not that it's better or worse, it’s just that it’s hard to understand.

TONY JONES: Christopher, I’ll bring you back in there because there’s always pressure on Governments when things like this happen to do something and what that British psychiatrist is worried about is that pilots with a history of depression are going to be singled out. I mean, in fact the Civil Aviation Authority in Britain says there are 100 pilots flying now with a history of depression, 42 of them on medication as we speak. So the fear is there will be a backlash. What do you think?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, I think the most important thing we can do is not have a backlash that stigmatises people with a mental illness. I mean, one of the reasons why people don't talk about mental illness is the stigma that is attached to it and Australia, we are coming off a low base. I mean, Michael was talking about the Reagan Administration cutting expenditure on mental illness. I'm not even sure that, in Australia, we had reached first base. Now, we are now getting to the point where we are talking about mental illness and suicide in a way that, in Australia, we haven't culturally been good at. In the last, perhaps, ten to a dozen years, we have talked about it and, to both Labor and Liberals' credit, when we started Headspace, Labor came to power. They kept it going. They put more money into it. They opened more centres. We put $1.9 billion in, as Penny points out, when Mark Butler was the Minister for Mental Health and there wasn't a Minister for Health until the mid 2000s, late 2000s, in Australia because, as a culture, I think we have always thought, well, you’ve just got to get on with it. You know, you’ve got to get over it and get on with it. So the worst thing we could do in Australia now would be to drive people with mental illness even further underground not to talk about their problem because that's not going to solve the problem.

PENNY WONG: Or not to get treatment.

RUBY WAX: Or not to treatment.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: And not to get the treatment they desperately need.

TONY JONES: Okay. We’ll move on, because we’ve got quite a lot of questions on different subjects. Our next question is from Niki McCarthy.

NIKI MCCARTHY: Thanks Tony. In my former life as a police officer, I dealt with a lot of heroin users and I saw the devastating effects on their families, on the community and on the health service and I'd argue that our approach with heroin failed. The report that came out from the Australian Crime Commission last week paints a really scary picture of the ice epidemic and I'm interested to hear the panel's thoughts on what we could do to tackle this perhaps a little differently to the way that we tackled heroin.

TONY JONES: Michael, let's start with you.

MICHAEL FRANTI: Well, again, I don't know exactly how it's dealt with here, Niki, but, in America, we have a problem with ice and we've had a problem since the ‘80s with crack and I've seen crack in my neighbourhood, where I live in San Francisco - it’s probably a 95% black neighbourhood - and it really hit our community really hard. There was a lot of unemployment and a lot of people turned to selling crack as a means of earning a living and I've seen it take the strongest of men and completely cripple them and bring them down to their knees. And today, in Hawaii, we have a really bad problem with ice and so...

TONY JONES: Why in Hawaii, Michael?

MICHAEL FRANTI: I don't know. I think that the main reason was they couldn't get crack cocaine there, you know, shipped out to that remote island and so they were making crystal meth in their bathtub and they were able to make ice from the crystal meth.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We’ve got the same problem in regional Australia.

MICHAEL FRANTI: Yeah.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Ice is an even bigger problem in regional Australia than it is in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, because it can be made so easily.

RUBY WAX: Can you say why?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, I think it’s because it can be made so easily by almost anybody and it’s cheap.

RUBY WAX: But why is it so needed in this particular culture?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, it’s just the newest terrible drug. I mean, but it's a horror drug because it's so addictive. Now, with lots of other drugs, like heroin, very addictive, but we’ve worked out ways of replacing heroin and trying to get people off it through morphine, et cetera. Ice is incredibly addictive and acts so fast that you’re addicted to ice virtually with the first smoke or injection or however you use it and it’s very big in regional Australia, I think because of the cheapness, and because you can make it yourself. There's a combination of factors. I don't want to take over, if you didn't want me to answer, but I was responding to Michael.

TONY JONES: No. No. No.

MICHAEL FRANTI: I think the way, Niki, that we failed in America is that we went after petty peddlers and we locked them up for long stretches of time. Five-year mandatory minimum sentencing for a first offence and we put an incredible burden on our state resources by having to lock up criminals at $60,000 a year for petty drug offences for selling a product to addicts who should be treated for an addiction and not for just a crime and I think that that's the main thing where we really failed is we didn't treat the addiction, we just went after criminalising these drugs and it bankrupted my state in California. We spend $60,000, $70,000 a year locking up first-time drug offenders and it's crippled us.

TONY JONES: Let’s go to Christopher Pyne. I mean slightly different problem here in terms of the scale of it but if ice really does take off in regional Australia in the way that the National Crime Commission is worried about, they think it is actually going to be the worst epidemic that's hit the country.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yeah, and it's not if it takes off, it's taking off. I mean we are in a crisis right now around ice and there is a combination of factors that we need to respond to that. Obviously interdicting ice before it gets on to the streets is a big start but educating people about the dangers of using ice and its addictive nature is really vitally important. It is very hard to treat ice addicts, because ice is a drug that we haven't been used to, so treatment is almost - you’ve almost lost the battle if you got to that point

TONY JONES: Is there a plan to do something though? I mean, I haven’t seen a national advertising campaign?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, we...

MICHAEL FRANTI: Can I just disagree with that point right there? I don't think there is ever a point where you’ve lost the battle with an addict and I grew up in a family of addicts. My father was an alcoholic for most of my life and, at age 55, he, after having been an alcoholic since his teens, he stopped drinking. So I don't believe it's ever too late to give up but I don't ever believe that we should get to that point where we feel like systemically we have to give up on a group on people just because it’s the newest, strongest, most powerful drug that’s out there.

RUBY WAX: But we’re just talking about almost the formula of it. The point is to find out why the individual feels the need to kind of, you know, take their life.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: So you have to address employment issues and boredom issues.

RUBY WAX: Well, again, study the brain. Figure out why there is a disgruntled society. Again, don’t blame it on, you know, economy, the global - it’s us. We are - something is sick.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yeah, why is that person susceptible.

RUBY WAX: And I mean all of us. I don't just mean them. You know, we’re living in a society where you'd rather die than just compete and where, you know, the busyness and the pressure to be successful and the whole thing culminates...

MICHAEL FRANTI: To fill that hole. To fill that empty...

RUBY WAX: ...culminates in that. So let's look again at the psychology of the individual, rather than always "Oh, it's this fault. It’s this fault. Somebody imported something". It’s because we needed it.

TONY JONES: Michael, some say that ice was actually glamorised by a television show called Breaking Bad, where you’ve got, well, the absentminded professor who starts creating the drug in his back yard and his cool dealer.

RUBY WAX: I think you’re confusing it with Jerry Lewis.

TONY JONES: No, I’m not confusing that one because...

RUBY WAX: No, I know but he wasn’t an absentminded professor. He knew exactly what the recipe was.

TONY JONES: Yes, he did.

RUBY WAX: Yep.

TONY JONES: Yeah, you’re right about that.

RUBY WAX: I defend him.

TONY JONES: But at the beginning, he’s a humorous guy and at the end he is a very evil character, so I’m just wonder whether that show had some sort of role in glamorising this particular drug.

RUBY WAX: I don't think so.

MICHAEL FRANTI: I don't know. I don’t know. Maybe it was ISIL.

TONY JONES: The questioner has got her hand up. We’ve just got to go back to Niki, thank you.

NIKI MCCARTHY: Thank you. Thank you, Tony. Minister Pyne, I take your point about education. When will we see a national, coordinated education program like we have with smoking and the drink driving campaigns?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, we have had one on ice in the past. We have to renew it. That's a job for Michael Keenan and Sussan Ley working together in Health and in Justice. We’ve run campaigns about ice. They were, at the time, quite successful, because I had responsibility for drugs for a little while - for four years, in fact - in the Howard Government. We did a good job push - but this goes to Ruby's point. We pushed down heroin use and we pushed down marijuana use and other drugs went up. At the time it was cocaine and ice that we pushed down ice and we pushed down cocaine and other drugs replaced it. So the point Ruby makes is as a society, we have to address the reasons why people feel so helpless or hopeless that they turn to drugs.

TONY JONES: Brian, do you have any thoughts on this?

BRIAN SCHMIDT: No, it really comes down to, I think, education and the systemic cause of what is causing people the need to use drugs and that comes into a very complex set of people having their lives maybe not being as good as, you know, my life which is, you know, pretty good but out in rural Australia it can be pretty tough. Education isn't as good. Jobs aren't as good. It is a place that, I guess, causes people to feel the need to turn to something else and you need to address that and that's a hard problem.

TONY JONES: All right. Let's speak about education more broadly. You’re watching Q&A live across Australia and on iView and NewsRadio. The next question comes from Noa Hoffman.

NOA HOFFMAN: As a high school student completing Year 12 this year, I would like to ask Christopher Pyne to convince me why I can remain optimistic that all my fellow Year 12 students who are looking to enter university in the near future, will have an equal opportunity under your proposed reforms, regardless of their socio-economic circumstances and how can you guarantee that we won't be disadvantaged or advantaged by our socio-economic circumstances?

TONY JONES: Christopher Pyne?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, I think that's a great question. The truth is that there will be many, many more opportunities and places for Australians to go to university under the Government's higher education reforms through a number of means. We have a fantastic university system, one of the world's best, but it could be even better and it’s vitally important that we maintain our reputation for high-quality research and teaching. What I'm trying to do with the reforms is actually remove the caps on the pre-degree places to have the biggest scholarship scheme in Australian history so that more students get to go to university and the estimates are that about 120,000 more Australians will get to go to university under the Government's proposal than under the Labor Party's caps proposal. So the great thing about Australia, which is different to the United States, is we have the Higher Education Contribution Scheme. Nobody can be denied a place at university in Australia because of their socio-economic status because everyone can borrow from the taxpayer and pay back on very low interest when they earn over $50,000 a year. What that's meant since the Labor Party introduced it, in fact, in 1988/89 is that the number of people getting to go to university has exponentially increased, regardless of people's socio-economic status, because they can see that they can get to go to uni and they can pay it back later through the tax system.

TONY JONES: Okay.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: So we have one of the most equitable systems in the world and our reforms maintain HECS and make it even more equitable for all those young Australians who want to do a pathways degree into uni. I’ll just say one last quick thing. The Kemp Norton Report found that if a student from a lower SES background did a pathways course before they did their undergraduate degree, they had a 1% drop-out rate. If they didn't, they had a 24% drop-out rate.

TONY JONES: Okay. I’m just going to quickly go back to Noa. What is it that you’re actually worried about? Is it the amount of money you’re going to have to pay at the end on your HECS or what is it?

NOA HOFFMAN: Yeah. I just feel like when students, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds, will look at these new reforms, that they'll be scared by them and will believe they'll never be able to pay them back in the future and they'll lose confidence in themselves.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So last year we (indistinct)...

TONY JONES: All right. Well, we’re going to let a few other people to taste that pudding before you do. Brian?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I’ll hold that thought and come back to it.

TONY JONES: Can we hear from Brian Schmidt?

BRIAN SCHMIDT: So I think the HECS scheme really makes it possible for students to pay back because there is no downstream risk. The problem, I guess, is whether or not students will be getting good value for their education, which is going to be part of the equation. So if you have a scheme and universities charge lots of money because they can, then the question will be: will you be getting good value on that or will you decide that it’s just not worth it? That would be the down side and so, from my perspective, I do have a concern of the value because, right now, we do cross-subsidise research, which is what I do, from student fees. That is I think a fundamental distortion to the system that has the potential to make value poor for students if we go through and differentiate on price. On the other hand, we have the problem right now that, for example, at ANU, you do a science degree at ANU, you get taught by people like me. We have great labs. You get to do research and we get the exact same amount of money as the weakest university in the country. So, you know, it's very difficult for us to maintain that standard when, quite frankly, we don't - you know, we don’t actually get enough money back from fees as they currently are.

TONY JONES: So quick question, do you favour the deregulation plan or not?

BRIAN SCHMIDT: I favour some form of deregulation but I think there needs to be a cap to keep prices from going out of sight because we have HECS, which is essentially a subsidy and we have monopoly players like the ANU in Canberra if you want to do research and so I think you need to balance that out.

MICHAEL FRANTI: You know, in the...

TONY JONES: I want to hear from Penny Wong first.

MICHAEL FRANTI: Okay. Go, Penny.

TONY JONES: Then I’ll come to you after Penny, Michael.

PENNY WONG: Thank you. Well, let’s be clear, for all of the fine words that Christopher just gave you, his plan is for deregulation, which means no limit on what universities can charge and, as you know, there’s been a range of modelling put out which suggests degrees up to $100,000.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That’s not true.

PENNY WONG: Well, there has been, Christopher, and, unfortunately, the facts are that you are proposing a system which doesn't have accessibility and equity at its core. That's the problem.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No it's not the problem.

PENNY WONG: And that’s why so many people...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Because that's not what's happening.

RUBY WAX: Is this Australian politics?

PENNY WONG: That is what - well, that is all - yes, and that is why - that is why the Senate has soundly rejected your proposition on a number of occasions and why so many people are concerned about the capacity of either themselves or their children getting an education because, as we know, it is the great enabler. It is the great way in which we can increase opportunity in this country. 190,000 more Australians went to university when Labor was in Government because of our reforms. Now, I’m up for a discussion about reform. The Labor Party is up for a discussion about reform. We’re not up for a discussion that makes university education harder to access for people like you.

TONY JONES: Now, Michael, one of the things being said about deregulation is it will make Australian universities more like American universities, with the same flexibility? Your view?

PENNY WONG: There you go, see.

MICHAEL FRANTI: Yeah, ouch. In America, the state schools where I live in California, the University of California system costs $35,000 a year for students to go to. If you go to a private school in America, like a Stanford or a Harvard, it’s over $50,000 a year and what happened in America, again during the ‘80s and the Reagan Administration, is there was all kinds of Federal cuts for grants and for loans for students, low interest loans and those loans were given out to the private sector and so now students are going to school and coming out with an undergraduate degree having to pay off $200,000 in loans and so students are not going into the things that they love, they’re going into the things that they think are going to make them money. Another thing that's happened with the universities is that the science of these private institutions has become, rather than doing things to solve world problems or to solve real diseases that are taking place, mental illness, things under-funded, these universities become research laboratories for private corporations who, rather than trying to figure out those things, they’re looking for a bigger, better, cheaper Viagra pill, you know, that can sell a lot which I'm sure a lot of politicians would probably like that type of pill but...

TONY JONES: Do you want to jump in there, Christopher, by any chance?

MICHAEL FRANTI: The point is...

PENNY WONG: Tony, that was mean! Really.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But I expect it.

BRIAN SCHMIDT: So I think what we can agree on is that we have a system right now, which - we have a good university system here and we have managed, through the HECS system, to avoid many of the problems that the US has and I am wedded to the HECS system beyond anything you can imagine. But I do think that you two would both agree that we want our education system to be excellent. We want it to be equitable and we want it to be fair value and the current system does not provide that. We need to change it and we need - this is a 20-year problem. We can’t - we don’t - you know, the higher education reforms from 1988/89, those are 25, 26 years old. I met John Dawkins last week and he says they need to be changed. It needs to be changed.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: He agrees with these reforms.

BRIAN SCHMIDT: So we need to change but we need to come up with the framework for change. It doesn't mean it to be what you have on the table. I doesn’t what you have on the table. We need to find a framework you guys can agree on so that we can move the system along.

TONY JONES: Okay. That's a very good point for me to bring in our next question. It’s from Joseph Lloyd and it’s about the whole question of agreement.

JOSEPH LLOYD: Senator Wong, you and the crossbenchers have blocked Minister Pyne's education bill after two attempts.

PENNY WONG: Yep.

JOSEPH LLOYD: Sorry. So what specific changes do you need in his current bill to get it through the Senate and how would you reform the education system for a 21st century Australia?

PENNY WONG: Well, we have blocked it and I don't think there’s any prospect, from the Labor Party's perspective, of supporting a deregulated system. I mean, Brian makes the good point about HECS and that that system of deferred payment essentially has managed to enable some equity in the system but it can only go so far and I don't think it can offset a system which is entirely deregulated and sees the sorts of fees that we have seen NATSEM and other stakeholders produce when they look at these reforms produce.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: (Indistinct)

PENNY WONG: Well, Christopher, if your argument is so good, why is it nobody believe you?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Because people are worried by the Senate.

PENNY WONG: I mean, that’s the...

TONY JONES: Penny Wong, can I just interrupt there?

PENNY WONG: No, no. It’s a good question.

TONY JONES: What would you do?

PENNY WONG: Well, yes, and what Kim Carr has said is we’re up for a discussion about what it should include. We haven't released a policy yet, that's true. We are working with the sector. The principles that I outline: equity and access, I think, will be front and centre and we do understand what Brian said, that you need to look over the next 20 years and you need also...

TONY JONES: But do you acknowledge that in 2012, when in Government, you cut $2.3 billion from the higher education budget. Now, I mean...

PENNY WONG: I'm very happy to answer that question.

TONY JONES: It was Kim Carr himself, actually, who said, in fact, when you looked at it, it was actually more like $3.8 billion cut from higher education.

PENNY WONG: I'm very happy to answer that. I’m very happy to answer that question because higher education grant funding grew under us over the period of Government, quite substantially. I think it was just under 7 billion, $6.8 billion to just under $9 billion. Per student funding grew under us. What we did do is we said we want to invest in the Gonski reforms - remember the reforms that Christopher said there was a unity ticket on - to get more kids from disadvantaged schools able to get to the position where they could go on to higher educations. Yes, we did say to universities you will grow more slowly in the context of continued and rising funding from a government that continued to increase university funding. We said we are going to ask you to grow more slowly and we were going to put that money into some of Australia's most disadvantaged schools. Now, I think the argument for that, from an educational and economic and equity perspective is sound.

TONY JONES: Okay, I just want to hear Brian on that. I mean, did the Labor Party fund you better than previous governments? I mean, what is the picture? You have been looking at this for some time.

BRIAN SCHMIDT: I would say the sector has had some problems across both sides of government and I think we have, by making universities more - you know, making the access larger, that is uncapped entries, we caused this new problem where the more children you teach or kids you teach at a fixed price, sort of the more money you make and so it's driving quality down and it's sort of - it’s a distorted system we need to fix now and so there are ways of dealing with, essentially, making a free market but withheld by, for example, restricting the amount of government subsidies as you charge more and more, so you sort of put a soft cap in place so you get some competition within the sector, which I think would probably - and some differentiation within the sector, while not allowing prices to blow out to, you know, $30,000 a year, which is what I think could happen.

I agree with Brian. Hard to disagree with a Nobel Laureate.

TONY JONES: Well, I’m glad to hear you say that. Let’s hear from another questioner, though, and see if you agree with him. Tim Naden has a question

TIM NADEN: Thanks, me old China. This question is primarily for Mr Pyne and also for everyone. Mr Pyne, you stated that university students earn more as a result of their education.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: They do.

TIM NADEN: You said they have less than 1% unemployment, they live longer and have healthier lives.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That's true.

TIM NADEN: So if university students earn more, have low unemployment, live longer and have healthier lives, wouldn't it be better to make it easier and cheaper to attend university?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, that's exactly what we're doing.

TIM NADEN: And, also...

PENNY WONG: Oh, come on.

TIM NADEN: And, also make it a priority for which we pay our taxes.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yeah. Well, can I just respond to a few things on that front? Number one, the proof of the pudding that I would come back to is that the enrolments this year are up. So if Labor's scare campaign was working, why are more young Australians enrolling this year than last year. That’s the first thing?

PENNY WONG: You didn't get your changes through the Senate. How can that be a proof of anything?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Number two, Labor tried to scare people with $100,000 scare campaign. Students knew better because of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme.

PENNY WONG: Right. Okay.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We don’t have a - America doesn't have a higher education contribution scheme so comparing the United States system to our system is not a true comparison, because we let anybody go to university and charge them zero up-front but you have to pay it back at low interest rates, like 1.5% if that's the inflation rate, and only when you start earning over $50,000 a year. In terms of your question, we are trying to get more students into university and that’s what our reforms will deliver. At least 80,000 more students in pathways programs and non-university higher education providers on their way to university doing university-level degrees. 37,000 more young Australians will get to go to university without caps and Labor's only policy they've announced is to put the caps back on. So, ironically, the Liberal Party is actually proposing to expand opportunity to all the kids in non-university higher education providers, all the TAFEs, all the institutions that offer pathways programs so that, in fact, hundreds of thousands more Australians over the next few years will get the chance to have better health outcomes, low unemployment, 75% on average higher incomes. Now, what Brian has pointed out is we can't just keep doing what we're doing. Labor cut $6.6 billion in three years...

TONY JONES: Okay, Christopher...

RUBY WAX: Can I ask a question? If this...

TONY JONES: Whilst we may appreciate that about 10 hands went up while you were talking.

RUBY WAX: Sorry.

TONY JONES: And, Ruby, make your point.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, I’ve sat here quietly...

RUBY WAX: Well, I just want to...

TONY JONES: And I will just ask our microphones to look for the people with their hands up. In the meantime, Ruby, what do you want to say?

RUBY WAX: I just want to know if - you sound so convincing to me - how come...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It's true.

RUBY WAX: Well, no, how come people are still sceptical?

TONY JONES: Well, Ruby, let's find out. Let’s find out, because there’s quite a few people...

RUBY WAX: And, I mean, somebody must be lying.

TONY JONES: Ruby, hang on. Just, there’s a gentleman up there. Let's hear quick comments from the audience. I want to get your comments. I’ll start with you. Yes, you with your hand up there. Go ahead, yes. Sorry, you’ve moved away from him. He’s right there. Go ahead.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: They are all great words, Christopher, but I think there’s a really massive equity issue here missing - that you’re missing the point on.

PENNY WONG: Hear, hear! Hear, hear!

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You’re asking a generation to pay $100,000 for a university...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Not true.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: ...or thereabouts...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, not even thereabouts.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: ...but members of your own Cabinet were basically given free education. So you are basically asking one generation to pay a certain amount for a university degree but then other generations who are ahead of them, who have gone through the education system for free or for much less...

TONY JONES: Okay.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Really quickly...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Can I answer that question?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Really quickly.

TONY JONES: Yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Really quickly. There’s a great concept which you...

TONY JONES: Well, it's not a question, it is a comment so far and we want to hear from other people.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: There was the concept of intergenerational debt. Aren’t you basically creating - and this is what you prosecuted Labor with, intergenerational debt - aren't you yourself hypocritically creating intergenerational debt...

TONY JONES: Okay. All right.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: ...and inequity between generations.

TONY JONES: I’m going to take that as a comment.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you.

TONY JONES: We’ll come back to that point. Keep it in mind, Christopher. You’ll get to respond. I want to hear from a couple of other people. Go ahead.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Senator Wong, Labor's $100,000 degrees, the modelling was based on unsubsidised international student fees, an interest rate requiring economic growth to be three times its current level and to stay that way for 40 years straight and they didn't deflate for inflation, which they somehow predicted for 40 years. So isn't the truth you’re being the wrecker in contrast to the Coalition's fixer.

PENNY WONG: Well...

TONY JONES: Okay. And we’ll - one more gentleman up the back. Go ahead. Go ahead.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: He gets a gold star, that fellow.

TONY JONES: Yes, you at the back.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: How did he get into the audience? How did he get into this audience.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, my question’s for the Education Minister. At the start you prefaced it by saying Australia has a world class education system.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You then went on to say that it would be unwise to head in the direction of, say, the United States.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Correct.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: The Treasurer, at the release of the Budget, said that's what Australia should essentially strive for. We lack...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, he didn't.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, he did. We lack - we lack - we lack what those universities have. It seems illogical to me to chase universities like that, which are highly privatised, highly reliant on funding or support from the elite essentially. Do you not see the logical flaw in that?

TONY JONES: All right. Let's hear from both of our politicians very briefly, if we can, Christopher. Pick up a few of those points. Go ahead.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: To this man's point first, the absolute truth is that in 1974, when Gough Whitlam introduced so-called free education, which meant that everybody else paid for people to go to university, the demographic was a certain percentage. In 1989, ‘88/89, when Labor re-introduced fees, the exact same demographic of people from low SES background were going to uni. In other words, poor Australians had paid for rich Australians to go to university. That was the only outcome of free education. It was because of HECS that the university doors were opened to hundreds of thousands of university students to get to university because they didn't have to pay up-front. That's the first thing. In terms of your point, the Treasurer has never said we could have American universities because why would we want to? We have the HECS scheme. But, very importantly, China five years ago had no universities in the top 200 in the world. They now have six universities in the top 200 in the world and Australia has eight. If we don't keep being competitive and getting better in our research and our teaching, our international education market, which is our third biggest export after iron ore and coal, will dry up. So there is a vital economic imperative...

TONY JONES: Okay. Thank you, Christopher.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: ...because those international students subsidise Brian's research and all research across universities.

TONY JONES: Okay, Penny Wong and bear in mind that you’ve essentially been accused of making up the figures of $100,000 degrees.

PENNY WONG: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The first gentleman over there, I think I agreed with pretty much everything you said, so I’m not going to respond to it. To the gentleman in the middle, I'm sorry, I don't think he is a fixer and whatever criticisms you might have of the NATSEM research, I just make this point: I haven't seen government modelling which tells me what the fees will be and - that’s the first point. I’m might be the case I'm the Trade Shadow, so I’m not the Education Shadow, so it might be the case that he’s put something out but I ask this philosophical point: what is the merit in having no sky, no limit, on how much a university can charge? What is the public policy merit in doing that? I don't see any. End of story. And the last...

TONY JONES: And...

PENNY WONG: The gentleman at the end...

TONY JONES: Yep, sorry, go.

PENNY WONG: I can't recall what was actually said in the Budget speech but I don't think there’s any doubt in some of the way in which this is talked about that the Americanisation of our higher education system is, in part, the Government's agenda but that's an opinion.

TONY JONES: Yeah, Brian, brief response, I mean, because I think you said that it should be capped, right?

BRIAN SCHMIDT: Well, I think...

AUDIENCE MEMBER: It’s better to be fixer than a faker.

BRIAN SCHMIDT: So I think that the issue comes down to - I was just talking to Bruce Chapman today, who has done modelling as best he can, and he does believe the prices will rise, not instantly but the price of degrees would rise, under a pure, uncapped system, quite substantially and I think and then students would not be getting good value. That's why I think we do need to have some way of limiting that rise if we’re going to have (indistinct)...

MULTIPLE SPEAKERS TALK AT ONCE

PENNY WONG: But can I just make a point...

TONY JONES: Well, hang on.

PENNY WONG: Can I just make a...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Bruce Chapman's proposal is to introduce fees so that, like the pension, the more a university takes in private income, it gets less public income. Like with the pension, the more you have in private income, the less pension you get. Now, that is an idea that the Coalition has said we are open to but not one cross bencher said it would change their vote and Labor and the Greens have just said no all the way through so...

TONY JONES: All right. We’re going to draw a line...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But we’re happy to keep talking to Bruce about it.

TONY JONES: We are going to draw a line under this discussion, but, Penny Wong, you have one more point to make.

PENNY WONG: I just make one point. I don't think there is anywhere that we could point to, anywhere in the world, where full deregulation has actually led to lower fee outcomes for students, right? So it seems to me once you get that point, you understand the nub of the reform.

TONY JONES: Okay, we’re going to change subjects. A very different subject, in fact. Our next question is from Esosa Edmonds.

ESOSA EDMONDS: At the end of the day, celebrities are human beings just like everybody else. There is no excuse for any celebrity feeling that they are above anyone else. Bullying and violently acting against another human being as did Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson against a work colleague, going in and literally abusing - verbally abusing and physically attacking another work colleague. Have you - any of you ever experienced bullying from your own colleagues and how do you handle that?

TONY JONES: Ruby Wax? Can we start - actually, we’ll start by asking you...

RUBY WAX: Jeremy Clarkson? Well, no, no.

TONY JONES: No, actually, I was actually going to say you could start by telling us what you think about the sacking of Jeremy Clarkson?

RUBY WAX: Well, I think it's correct. We don't see what goes on behind the doors of any other business but I'm not - you know, I’m not backing him up. I just - because they’re role models, so there is no question. You don’t want to say - but there is TV shows with wrestlers and boxers. What kind of message are they sending? I don't want to confuse the issue. No, it wasn't right. But, you know, in the scheme of things, you are talking about education, you are talking about survival, who cares, really? I mean, it's Jeremy Clarkson. What’s - why should we even discuss it? Do you know what I’m saying?

TONY JONES: Well, because a question has been asked about it. It’s in the public arena and we are discussing it.

RUBY WAX: You know...

TONY JONES: You can choose not to answer, if you’d like.

RUBY WAX: No, I don’t mind but it seems like a...

TONY JONES: But let's hear from someone who does want to answer it.

ESOSA EDMONDS: It’s about bullying. I am talking about anxiety. I’m talking about stress. I’m talking about bullying. Not just with...

RUBY WAX: Oh bullying.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Bullying in generally.

ESOSA EDMONDS: Yeah, I’m talking about...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: In show business.

ESOSA EDMONDS: Yeah, in show business?

RUBY WAX: But why in show business? You know how rampant bullying is in schools? Nobody is doing - you know, I mean, it’s still - let's talk about young kids. This is out of hand.

ESOSA EDMONDS: Yeah, well, that’s what I wanted to ask. I wanted to ask about young kids. What messages do you have for young people who are experiencing...

RUBY WAX: Well, it doesn’t have to do - again, I'm going back to it, you know, if there was more counselling or there was more - the teachers were trained a little bit to see the difference between who is just having a bad hair day and who is really ill, you know, and get a little bit more in there instead of whipping them academically, a little built of, you know, psychological intelligence wouldn’t hurt but, again, we’re talking about extraneous things, Jeremy Clarkson. You know, again, let’s get to the meat of the matter. You got a problem about bullying? Get Jeremy out of it. Start worrying about bullying and get teachers educated to deal with it instead of just spewing out some more academics.

ESOSA EDMONDS: Well, why do you think the issue, the core issue of anxiety and depression is not being - because you talk about anxiety and depression a lot.

RUBY WAX: Yeah.

ESOSA EDMONDS: And you’re always talking about getting to the core issue.

RUBY WAX: Yeah.

ESOSA EDMONDS: Which we kind of seem to skim over. What do you think it is? Why do you think that we are not - the Australian Government or the Australian economy is not putting enough money into really finding out the sources of what anxiety and depression were?

RUBY WAX: Yeah, because these things are a fear. You know, you can't get your hand on it. Cancer you can see. You know, any other disease you can see but for some reason we’re - 2015, people still think this is an act of imagination. Again, nobody understands. The word 'depression' is not great because it infers that you’re having a bad day.

ESOSA EDMONDS: Bad day.

RUBY WAX: It means that you’re in a coma. You can't wake up. You know, it's insulting to have people ask, “Are comedians depressed?” I'm saying one in four. There are not that many funny people. Again, just concentrate on the issue. You know...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Is this what your book is about, saying?

RUBY WAX: Yes, and my show, which is on in Melbourne now. Thank you for - thanks for asking.

PENNY WONG: Tony, can I just...

TONY JONES: Yeah, okay. All right. We’ll just...

RUBY WAX: But, I mean, again, keep your eye on the button.

TONY JONES: Since you’re doing an advertisement, we might just pause you there for a minute to hear from someone else.

PENNY WONG: Sorry. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt your ad.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Happy to help you out.

RUBY WAX: No, I was still talking about me.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: She like - she does things like that.

PENNY WONG: I was about to say something nice about you, Christopher!

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Oh, great.

PENNY WONG: Yes, just relax.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Again!

PENNY WONG: No, I was going to say I have been interviewed a number of times by people about the bullying I have talked about occasionally that I experienced when I came to Australia and I have always thought it was really interesting how much people wanted to ask me about it, because they use - they will use it as part of, I suppose, an engagement with young people. Different people who had been bullied in different ways or experienced some form of bully and, as part of an outreach to young people who are experiencing it and I wanted to say one of the things Chris has continued - I hope you have continued this, was something we funded, which was to roll out the Safe Schools Program through the Foundation of Young Australians.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yeah, we have.

PENNY WONG: So that was something I was very passionate about, which was the - no, which was about trying to counter particularly homophobic bullying in our schools. And, as you know, kids who are gay/lesbian are more likely to self-harm or likely to suffer periods of depression and mental illness. So I will say, well done, Christopher, for continuing that.

TONY JONES: Michael?

MICHAEL FRANTI: Yeah. Esosa, I want to pick up on what you originally asked, which is about does, you know, celebrity, does it excuse someone from being a bully? And, you know, he played a bully on that TV show. The network was making a lot of money off of him being a bully and we see this in all aspects of culture. When you read a story on the Internet, there is a whole bunch of bullies below writing stuff. You know, and I have people write stuff about me on my Facebook page, you know, just mean-spirited stuff all the time and I can tell you, as somebody who was bullied as a kid, I was one of the only brown kids in my whole school. I was the tallest, skinniest kid there, and I was an easy target for bullies and I grew up with it so I am very sensitive to seeing it in all aspects of society, or the way that we bully outsiders, the way that we bully gay people, the way that we bully refugees, the way that we push people out and marginalise people.

RUBY WAX: The way that politicians bully each other.

MICHAEL FRANTI: Yeah, yeah. We see it.

RUBY WAX: I mean, we’re watching it here.

MICHAEL FRANTI: It’s all a part of our - it’s all a part of our - of our society.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: This is friendly banter! We have known each other since university days.

MICHAEL FRANTI: Yeah, when we go to the bar afterwards, I’m going to (indistinct)...

PENNY WONG: It could be a lot worse. It could be a lot worse.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We’ve been friends for decades.

RUBY WAX: So you’re just acting like Jeremy is.

MICHAEL FRANTI: Yeah. Yeah.

PENNY WONG: We disagree.

TONY JONES: Hey, Michael, one of the questions that was asked...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We’re allowed to disagree but we’re not bullying.

MICHAEL FRANTI: I just wanted to say that it’s a part...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We love each other.

MICHAEL FRANTI: ... it is a part of all of our society and it’s a part of all of us. Whatever it is that is lacking in us, we try to push it out at somebody else and try to belittle somebody else to big up that part of who we are. You know, and, you know, people talk about homophobia. Well, I don't think homophobia is being afraid of gay people. It’s just being an a-hole. There's a difference, you know.

TONY JONES: Okay, we’ve just got a hand go up in the audience there. Go ahead, Sir. Yes, you’re right. Go on.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I bet there is a lot of bullying in the party rooms!

TONY JONES: I suspect you are probably right about that.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It’s an interesting point. Is there more intra-party than fighting than between parties? And I think it’s a very interesting point. I have been around Parliament for 22 years, Penny not quite as long as that but at least 15 or more. Intra-party fighting can be just as intense, if not more intense, than party fighting.

TONY JONES: Brian, I would like to hear you on this subject because it’s something we don’t necessarily go to an astrophysicist to talk about?

BRIAN SCHMIDT: Well, yeah, so it’s quite interesting. Having got to - get to meet a lot of people who are in the public spotlight, you do get treated differently than when you're not in the public spotlight and some people turn and they become, I would say, vicious, evil people; become completely detached from reality. So, you know, when I look back to my childhood of being bullied, probably even the couple of times I did bullying myself, because I think a lot of us do that, it almost always, when I look at it, comes from insecurity of the bullier more than the person who is bullied, is just the target. So, I think that, you know, one of the things to do is to essentially send messages it's not good. So in the case of Jeremy Clarkson, I think it is important. He is someone that kids around the world like, partially because he is a bully and but he stepped out of line and I think he ought to say, "That's just not cool" and I think it probably does a lot to the 100 million people who watch him every week that, actually, you can’t do it.