Sky News Live PVO

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Interview - Sky News Live PVO NewsHour with Peter Van Onselen
Tuesday 5 May 2015

SUBJECT: Higher education reforms.

PETER VAN ONSELEN: Alright, well the Education Minister Christopher Pyne, he’s desperate to try and get his higher education reforms through the Parliament. He’s tried once. He failed. He tells us that he’s going to put them up again and that will give us a double dissolution trigger is what the Coalition are thinking but that’s not what Mr Pyne wants. He wants his reforms through. Doesn’t look likely, though. There’s a green shoot, you might say, of hope by Mr Pyne that there will be a capacity there to perhaps convince some of the crossbenchers and get the reform through but with all the speculation about the possibility of a late election this year, one of the double dissolution triggers may well be in the space of higher education. I spoke to the Minister a very short time ago and we started by talking about the Budget and, of course, higher education. Christopher Pyne, thanks very much for being there, there’s been a lot of Budget talk, obviously, unsurprisingly, it’s on next week but not so much talk in your policy area of higher education. Are we likely to see anything new?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, the Government has a reform agenda in higher education which I have been prosecuting since the last Budget and I intend to continue to prosecute into the future. So, there won’t be anything particularly new in next week’s Budget in higher education because we have the reform agenda that the sector actually supports and the only thing standing in its way is the Senate. And I would hope to represent that legislation in the fullness of time and have another go at [audio skip] the best universities in the world and the best higher education system in the world.

PETER VAN ONSELEN: Because there is a lot of speculation about the possibility about an election later this year. I realise that the Prime Minister has poured cold water on it but that said, you’re intent is to at least have a double dissolution trigger which could be part of any early election if there as one later this year.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Peter, I don’t want a double dissolution trigger, I want to see the Bill passed. I want to see the reform that the Government is committed to be carried by the Senate and implemented, only a very foolish minister would be seeking a trigger. A good minister would be seeking to have his legislation or her legislation passed through the Senate and that’s exactly what I’ll be trying to do during this year…

PETER VAN ONSELEN: Can I ask…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: …the speculation about…

PETER VAN ONSELEN: …[indistinct]…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: …an early election, quite frankly – sorry.

PETER VAN ONSELEN: Sorry, I was just going to say, if you had to pick one or two senators that you think you could get across the line to switch their votes, who are you really looking at here?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, we know that there are senators who voted against the Bill a few months ago who are actually in favour of the Government’s reform or have requested more information and are open to the Government’s reform. I’m not going to reveal them because I think that would be – set off a whole lot more speculation about this particular area. At the moment I’m just working quietly behind the scenes on higher education reform while I do a whole lot of other things in the education portfolio whether it’s establishing the draft national strategy on international education, bedding down the reform into the national curriculum, to teacher training in our universities, to school autonomy, there’s much that I’ve been up to like AIATSIS and making sure they have the funds necessary to protect the AIATSIS collection, extending the boarding school subsidies to Indigenous students from remote Australia. Education’s not just about universities, there’s much more to it than that.

PETER VAN ONSELEN: But it must be frustrating on the university reform front though when someone like Senator Lazarus refuses to even meet with you. I mean, frankly it’s the height of rudeness the way that he’s responded, yet you as a minster of the Crown are required to keep to trying, I suppose, that’s your job, but he’s acting like a schoolyard kid refusing to have a conversation, rather than an Australia senator. It’s pathetic.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, Peter, I think the crossbenchers are under a lot of pressure and they’ve only been there since last July. There’s a lot for them to get across and I will be more than happy to continue to talk to them all. I finally did meet with Glenn Lazarus on the day of the vote, the second vote and we talked about the reform Bill and I have some hope that we will be able to reach a landing with the crossbench that allows these reforms to occur but we shouldn’t let Labor off the hook.

Now, we know that the Greens are having some nostalgic throwback to the Whitlam era because of their Marxist tendencies but the Labor Party should know better because they were the ones that implemented the Higher Education Contribution Scheme in the first place in 1988 and they’re simply being opportunists and as a consequence, they’ll be marked down by the Australian electorate. They haven’t got any new ideas except more taxes on Australians and we have better ideas which is reform and change and lower taxes.

PETER VAN ONSELEN: How important are university rankings when you’re talking about your higher education reforms because I have heard it often cited by yourself and the Prime Minister and others about the need for Australian universities to move up the rankings list but when you read commentary about these rankings, there’s a lot of conjecture about how valuable they are or aren’t. I mean the German universities don’t like them, they’re – most European universities outside of the UK don’t like them, they don’t necessarily include teaching grading, they’re mostly about research rather than teaching. Are they really an adequate benchmark for us to look at?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: There are several different kinds of rankings, Peter, as I’m sure you know and there was a ranking quite recently which showed Australian universities that are less than 50 years old – I think we have 21 Australian universities in the top 100 in the world which is a remarkable achievement. I think I’ve got those figures right, I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong but I’m – we had a very high representation of our universities. The rankings are important because they are an objective test of where we rank relatively against the rest of the world and I’ve heard these arguments about how we should ignore the rankings but I remember hearing similar arguments in the 80s and 90s and the Noughties about how we shouldn’t worry about our literacy and numeracy standards amongst school students in terms of rankings in the OECD and we ignored that at our peril because while our literacy and numeracy standards fell, while government spent 40 per cent more on schools and got smaller class sizes as a result, the outcomes for students got worse measured by the objective standard of the OECD.

Similarly for universities, I hear these calls from people to ignore the rankings. They’re usually the same people who said we shouldn’t worry about our literacy and numeracy standards falling and the objective tests of the OECD. The reality is they are an objective test. If we fall, relative to other countries, it puts at risk our reputation for a high quality education system and that puts at risk our international education exports which are our third largest income earner for Australia because of international education in universities. So, they are important and I for one am unabashed in referring to rankings.

PETER VAN ONSELEN: Is there any truth to the suggestion that you may be cutting funding for The Conversation?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, The Conversation was initiated by the previous Labor government. It had a shelf life of three years by which time The Conversation is meant to be self-sustaining. They were given $3.5 million. In that time they’ve expanded to Africa, the United States and the UK and I expect that they are in a position where they’ll be self-sustaining otherwise they wouldn’t be able to expand overseas in the way that they have. They do a great job and the contract they signed with the Commonwealth was to be self-sustaining in three years and they received $3.5 million to do just that.

PETER VAN ONSELEN: But I think they’re hoping that they’ll get another contract for a further period. Is that off the table as far as the Government’s concerned in these lean economic times?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, they are lean budgetary times, Peter, and we do believe The Conversation does a great job. Universities support it as well, universities put their own money in. It is a forum for academics to have their research papers published and I believe that is a useful service. Whether the Australian taxpayer should be requested to fund that is another matter and you will be – you will find out in the Budget on Tuesday, the outcomes of spending measure – particular spending measures…

PETER VAN ONSELEN: But it sounds like they’re not…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: …and I’m not going to speculate…

PETER VAN ONSELEN: …sounds like they’re not getting any more…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: …about decisions that we’ve made.

PETER VAN ONSELEN: …money though, that’d be a fair assumption, wouldn’t it?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well no, Peter, all I’m saying is they did – they have a contract signed with the Commonwealth to be self-sustaining in three years. They were given $3.5 million to do so. The universities support The Conversation as well and they have – they are an online portal for academics to have their research papers published and articles published. Whether that is justifiable use of taxpayer’s money into the future is something that I’m considering right now and obviously I’ve been lobbied by many people and by The Conversation themselves and now obviously being lobbied by you on national television…

PETER VAN ONSELEN: [Laughs]

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: …I’d be surprised if your viewers thought this was the most important issue facing the Australian Government on Tuesday in the Budget.

PETER VAN ONSELEN: I’m not lobbying you, I don’t write for them. If anything, I write for a rival publication but I want to ask you about something where I do have a [indistinct]…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It seems a rather esoteric subject to be discussing on SKY but nevertheless.

PETER VAN ONSELEN: Well, let me ask you about another higher education matter which has been covered in the papers, particularly Fairfax was focusing in on it, I have to give the disclaimer that I do have a position at UWA but the Bjorn Lomborg grant that has received controversy by Fairfax - I’ve written about it and said I don’t see what the fuss is all about. A lot of my colleagues at UWA seem to be getting their knickers in a twist about this particular issue, are you surprised – and I suppose disappointed, that academics seem to be so keen not to have one of the very few – it has to be said, you know, organisations that is at least questioning the economics of climate change? It’s not even questioning climate change itself, yet there seems to be such a backlash amongst the rank and file within the university.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, it never surprises me, Peter, to discover that the left wing believes that academic freedom only extends to the left and anybody with a different view has to be shut down. Bjorn Lomborg is not a climate denier, he’s not heading up a climate institute, he’s heading up the Australian Consensus Centre which will be discussing mostly economics and the future of Australia and the world from an economic point of view. Those people who are getting themselves into such a lather about this subject really need to take a cold shower and recognise that the Government funds many centres across Australia with different views to those academics, potentially, to other academics, that’s all part of supposedly academic freedom and I find it really remarkable that academics at the University of Western Australia would want to shut down another voice in the academic world when I don’t hear them saying that about things like the so-called Sydney Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies who are the doyens of the Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions campaign but what’s good for the goose is good for the gander and they should allow academic freedom to ring right across the academic world.

PETER VAN ONSELEN: Mr Pyne, we end on something that we are in total agreement about. I appreciate your time on the program. Thanks very much.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It’s always a pleasure Peter.

PETER VAN ONSELEN: Alright, that was the Education Minister Christopher Pyne.

[ends]