For those who don’t know him, Education Minister Christopher Pyne can get a bit crazy. Has to get his way, yep, 24 hours a day ’cause he’s dogged like that.
Everyone, everywhere is giving him mad attention today now he’s under inspection after the Senate overnight voted down his bill to deregulate universities 33 votes to 31. It seems nothing however can dissuade the tenacious Minister Pyne, who has just now landed on the front foot by introducing a new bill aiming to implement his higher education plan.
At a positively chipper press conference that has just wrapped this morning, Pyne has introduced a “clean”, entirely new bill as opposed to amending his previous submission, one that will go to a vote early in the new year.
The new bill – which will reportedly still include the core reforms like deregulating fees, expanding commonwealth support and cutting the level of per-student funding – will now also include a provision that requires domestic fees to be lower than international students’ fees. Commonwealth scholarships too will be skewed towards rural and regional students, as well as those students of a low socioeconomic status.
“I am not a quitter and I am not prepared to give up on this reform. I have been flexible, not quite Houdini, but I’ve been as flexible as I can be,” concluded Pyne, searing onto the retinae of your third eye the image of our education minister engaged in his favourite tantric pastimes.
Despite widespread condemnation from every one pressed for comment on the issue thus far, it’s to Adam Bandt that we turn for an apt comment: “[Pyne] is not a very quick learner. Less than 24 hours after the parliament and the public rapped Christopher Pyne over the knuckles, he’s back trying to do it again.”
You’d think that by now we’d all know, Pyne can’t be tamed.
Photo by Stefan Postles/Getty Images
