Time running out to get higher education reform through Senate

The window available to the government to push its $2.8 billion higher education reforms through the Senate is narrowing.

Rebekha Sharkie.

Nick Xenophon Team MP Rebek­ha Sharkie has dealt a blow to government hopes of a quick deal on its $2.8 billion tertiary reforms, revealing the party cannot back the measures as they stand because they deliver a “blunt and deep cut’’ to universities.

Ms Sharkie yesterday gave a searing assessment of the ­Coalition’s third attempt at reining in tertiary sector costs. She also described the proposal to link $500 million in university funding to performance improvements as a “Hunger Games-style’’ policy that would create “winners and losers’’.

“The NXT is not convinced this bill as it stands will assist the sector to reform. We agree that reform is needed but cannot ­accept that this is the reform that is indeed needed,’’ she told the House of Representatives.

She said the changes, which impose a 2.5 per cent efficiency dividend on universities over two years and increase the cost of a degree by 7.5 per cent over four years, would be asking students to “pay more to get less’’.

The reforms, she said, were “tinkering around the edges’’ and while there were some good measures, it delivered a “blunt and deep cut that will mean job losses to the sector and higher education costs for students’’.

The NXT is also calling for a sweeping Gonski-style review into higher and vocational education. Ms Sharkie’s comments came at the tail end of a debate in the lower house, where she is the sole NXT MP.

The house, where the government has a slim majority, voted last night to pass the measures, which now head to the Senate. But Ms Sharkie’s opposition all but extinguishes the government’s hope of negotiating a quick deal in the Senate with NXT’s three senators today.

Senator Nick Xenophon has conceded he has been preoccupied with the media law changes and has not turned his full attention to the tertiary reforms.

The Senate is scheduled to rise tonight and not sit again until mid-October.

With Labor and the Greens opposed to the changes, Education Minister Simon Birmingham needs to lock in 10 of the 12 crossbench Senate votes, which makes the support of the three NXT senators crucial to the bill’s survival.

The tertiary overhaul also ties about $500m a year in university funding to performance improvements, and will require graduates to begin paying back HELP debts at 1 per cent when their income reaches $42,000.

Ms Sharkie said making funding contingent on performance improvements would “pit university against university for a share of the loser’s funds’’.

“It will, if you like, be a Hunger Games-style policy where smaller universities, in particular regional universities, will be at a disadvantage when entering the game,’’ she said.