Mr WINDSOR (4:10 PM) —I am pleased but, in a sense, disappointed to even be speaking on this particular motion, because I think most people in this place—including the members of the government and the minister—recognise the impact that the removal of this fee will have on regional universities. Various people have mentioned all sorts of words about freedom of association and unions, but the two speakers for the government were both members of the most powerful union in this nation.

Ms Macklin —That’s right: the AMA.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. IR Causley)—I do not think the member for Jagajaga has remembered the warning.

Mr WINDSOR —In fact, the minister headed up that union movement. To come in here and suggest that people have the right to choose, that this is about freedom of choice and association—and the removal of freedom of choice and association for many people, although I will not get into that debate here today—when you come from that background, indicates, to me at least, some degree of hypocrisy.

I do not believe the minister believes in what the government is attempting to do. In fact, prior to the election, towards the end of last year—and after the election, into about January—I think the minister was trying to develop a plan not all that dissimilar to what Senator Joyce and others are trying to do in the Senate at the moment. He was then run over by the bus. That was the bus that said: ‘This is the year of industrial relations. This is the year of being against unions. This has the word “union” in it. This is what we’re going to do.’

The minister is fully aware, as are the shadow minister and others in this House, of an amendment that I proposed on the second last day of parliament before the winter recess. I will be introducing that. I am pleased to see the Labor Party has a somewhat similar amendment. I think there are others of all persuasions in other places who are looking at trying to achieve the same goal. If the objective of the government is to remove the capacity to use some money from a student fee for political purposes, there are other ways of doing that. That can be done without going down this draconian track. There will be amendments before the parliament to do exactly that: to fund all the other functions of the university associations, guilds, unions and whatever you want to call them—and I think there are something like 49 at the University of New England—and not the political activities of a few. Personally, I would be quite happy to see that happen, because the Liberal Club at the University of New England has been an absolute disgrace. So I do not have a problem with that, and I do not think most people do.

I think there is a general acceptance within the parliament that there has been some use—minute as it may be—of the general fee for the political activities of a few. So the amendments that will be coming before the parliament—which I would urge the minister to consider and give the tick to—do have the capacity to remove that from the process and then to embrace all the other issues where you do need a pool of money. You never know whether your son or daughter—or grandson or granddaughter, in your case, Mr Deputy Speaker—will need some accommodation advice, some welfare advice, some sporting advice, some legal advice or some international student advice. They may well need that.

That is not to suggest that they are all going to be trundling in those doors immediately on the first day they get to university. But they may need some form of help. If those doors are not there to go through, to suggest, as the minister does, that they will go back to that piggybank of $370 that they would require for a year at the University of New England—that they will have it sitting over there for when they need a game of football or some sort of welfare advice or some assistance—and that they will be able to access that money is laughable. That will not be the case at all. The economic impact on the universities—and on international students alone—if we remove the student union activities other than the political ones is going to be incredibly significant. This change will have an impact particularly on regional universities but also on all universities. To suggest, as has been suggested by the two speakers previously, that this—the provision of sporting activities, the provision of jobs, the provision of advice and services—will not have an impact on the University of New England is an insult to those people.

I am proud to stand here today and represent the views of those people at that university. I congratulate them for the work that they have put in, in a serious effort—not a political effort—to put some sanity into this debate. I congratulate the new Senator Barnaby Joyce, another ex-student of that same university, which I attended and my son attended, for standing up for that university and for understanding what it means. He was not a political activist at university and I was not, so we can understand the government maybe even suggesting that some of those activities should not be funded. But there are other activities that do need to be funded.

Until January the minister was serious about looking at ways and means of funding those activities that would not be funded through the general fee that currently stands. That has been railroaded over the last few months. Now we have got back to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Everything goes with the bathwater. The people who will be most penalised by this will be the regional universities that do not have the choice that a lot of other urban communities have. But it will not only be the regional universities.

They have a piecemeal arrangement—and I agree with the shadow minister—where the minister can have some sort of regional partnerships process of choosing winners: where do they live, who are they, who is the member? This sort of rationale in terms of the allocation of funds is a nonsense. The process that is there at the moment works. The surveys that I have seen of the student bodies and the information that has been relayed to me over a period of time indicate that the students, their parents and their communities—the Armidale community, for instance, and the broader community of New England and the north-west—are watching this very closely, because it can have an impact on the welfare of their kids, their students, at their university and any other university they may choose to go to. It is those impacts that I am concerned about.

This is a parliament. The people who feel strongest about this have left their minds at university. They are still fighting these old trench warfare issues that they fought at university. I think it is an indictment of them as individuals that they have to take themselves back to their student days and beat up the Left or whoever else they did not particularly like then and see this as a major victory—that, 20 or 30 years on, they will be able to say, ‘We’ve had a major victory over those dreadful people who did those dreadful things at university against us when they were funded by the general fee to have their placards et cetera.’

In conclusion, I urge you, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, and others from regional communities to look at what is happening here. I urge you to support my amendment—which I still intend to introduce, even though the Labor Party has a similar one now—which supports the services that are required at all universities and removes the capacity for some of the general fee to be hived off into direct political activities. I ask the minister: rethink this. Travel back in your own mind about 12 months and think about the issues that were out there then, and listen to the Barnaby Joyces. If you, Minister, and your fellow speaker believe that people have the right to choose, those within the National Party should be at complete liberty to choose to support the people that they represent in the country and vote against the government’s move. (Time expired)

The DEPUTY SPEAKER —Order! The discussion is now concluded.