That was a very impressive performance by Pyne, and I didn't...

That was a very impressive performance by Pyne, and I didn't think he had it in him. His grasp of the portfolio is superb.

Alberici is a good interviewer but she couldn't score any points off him.

His strong points imho were:

OECD figures showing government expenditure ignore the private contribution.

As far as he knew, we are not a socialist state where only governments pay for degrees.

People with a degree represent 40% of the population - why should the other 60% pay for it?

People with a degree earn on average a million dollars more than non -degree holders over their working life.

Anybody can borrow the costs from the government and only pay it back when their income reaches a certain level and in any event they do not pay the full cost of the degree.

He always stated that this government would only meet Gonski level funding for the first four years and that he had to cover WA, Qld and NT which had not been included in Labor budget as they had not signed on. He argued that under this government funding would increase (not sure how he worked that)

He pointed out that China had no universities in world top 200 ten years ago and now they have 5 (from memory). Australian universities could not compete unless they were given the ability to raise finance.

It was a classic conservative vs a classic left leaning interviewer (let's face it, she is)

I gave him 10/10.