The National Tertiary Education has kick-started the campaign against Dan Tehan’s new course costs with the slogan, “education for all – stop fee hikes.” Inspiring it isn’t

At least not compared with the “$100 000 degrees” union-led message which was the single most important thing that stopped Chris Pyne’s 2014 fee deregulation plan.

This time is harder, because Mr Tehan appears to understand, how dangerous is a slogan that encapsulates arguments against a complex policy. As he told the National Press Club on Friday, “this does not mean fee deregulation. This does not mean one hundred thousand dollar degrees.”  And so, there is no single aspect of his large plan that will variously alarm or appal just about everybody.

Mr Tehan also has things to sell. Lower course costs for nursing and teaching will work with conservative voters who see nothing wrong with universities being “vocationalised,” (thank you Larkins and Marshman). People appalled at the huge hike in the price of law and humanities degrees are not a Morrison Government core constituency and the increase in such course costs will play to the coalition backbench and perhaps some on the Senate crossbench.  The Regional Universities Network is in favour and other university groups are cautious in their criticism. The Group of Eight, hopeful of a research funding package in the budget, says it “disagrees strongly” with student fee hikes but in these hard times, recognises the need for, “a level of pragmatism for the long-term national good.”

Even so, the no case is not lost. The way opponents knocked-off the second set of coalition changes in the last ten years shows the way.  When Simon Birmingham produced a package including increased course costs for student, a lower funding base for universities, with two years of 2.5 per cent cuts and performance funding, the higher education community slugged it out with the government on policy as much as politics. In the end, even without a campaign winning slogan, cross-bench senators were unsettled enough for the package to be knocked back. The state of the Senate now is such that for Mr Tehan’s package to pass it could come come down to one vote, (CMM, yesterday).