‘What year are you living in?’: Plibersek’s quip over university fees
Tanya Plibersek says the move is like something out of a dictatorship. Photo: AAP Photo: ABC
Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce went toe-to-toe over university fees on Monday night’s Q&A.
Mr Joyce claimed the Coalition’s proposed changes to lower the threshold at which students start repaying their HELP debt and increasing fees was “to get us off the trajectory of debt the Labor Party put us on”.
Ms Plibersek responded: “What year are you living in, Barnaby?”
The pair battled in what Veep creator Armando Iannucci called the “clash of the deputy titans”, with Mr Joyce stating the HECS loans must be paid back earlier to help remove the $52 billion student loans have created.
But he made sure he didn’t miss an opportunity to once again attack the Labor Party.
“Remember HECS started under a bloke called Bob Hawke in 1988, when Tanya would have been at university,” Mr Joyce said.
“What we’ve had to do here to straighten out the budget … This is about a $2.6 billion saving, remember the Labor party posed a $6 billion saving in this area.
“We wish we never had to go down this path but we had to because when we got back into government, we were hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.”
Ms Plibersek interjected to say the Labor government increased university funding from $8 billion to $14 billion a year in its last time in office and planned to increase funding at the last election.
“Weren’t you proposing $6 billion in savings for Gonski?” Mr Joyce quizzed.
Baffled by the statement, an exasperated Ms Plibersek questioned what year he was living in, before host Tony Jones ended the conversation.
“Barnaby, you realised what’s happened here is the audience have been deluged with figures and it’s very difficult to make head or tail at what either of you are arguing about,” Mr Jones said.
Joyce’s attack on ABC, Abdel-Magied
Mr Joyce also continued his scathing attack on the ABC and part-time presenter Yassmin Abdel-Magied, claiming the broadcaster hid from confrontation.
A week after calling for Ms Abdel-Magied to be sacked, Mr Joyce again picked out the publicly-funded broadcaster for not criticising her comments made on Facebook on Anzac Day.
The original post as it appeared on Facebook.
“The ABC buried themselves under a rock under it,” he said.
“You didn’t come out and say that this is our views on it. You let her deal with it and the media.
“You were nowhere to be seen. The ABC management was nowhere to be seen. We were waiting for them to come out and give their opinion on it. We didn’t see them.”
Mr Jones attempted to defend the ABC’s position, saying it had issued a statement and that Ms Abdel-Magied had withdrawn the post and apologised for it.
However, Mr Joyce said Anzac Day was a sacred day in Australia and pushing “political stepping stones” was out of order.
“I do believe that it was way beyond the pale of what was expected. I can tell you now, Tony, people are furious about it. They were furious,” he said.
Other panel members were Nobel Prize laureate and Vice-Chancellor at Australian National University Brian Schmidt, social researcher and director of Ipsos Laura Demasi and comedy writer and the brains behind political satire Veep, Armando Iannucci.