Fairfax Media has reported the average Victorian youth unemployment rate hit a 15-year high for the year to July 2014. Christopher Pyne told Q&A: 'I'm not going to get into an argument with the audience.' Credit:Andrew Meares Q&A host Tony Jones asked whether the Coalition should place youth unemployment on a "crisis agenda to try and fix this". "There isn't a crisis. There certainly is an emphasis from the Coalition on young people either learning or earning so when they leave school – and happily more people are finishing year 12, which gives them a better chance of getting a job – more people are going on to higher education than ever before," Mr Pyne replied. Actor Tony Barry noted that many of the audience members were young, saying: "I wonder whether they consider this a crisis in the education system?"

A number shouted out "Yes." "I'm not going to get into an argument with the audience," Mr Pyne joked. The Coalition plans to remove government caps on university fees from 2016, which critics have said could lead to a rise in the cost of degrees, discouraging lower-income students from entering university. Mr Pyne defended university fee systems, saying Australia had one of the most "generous" student loan systems in the world. The number of students going to university had "exponentially increased" since fees were reintroduced by the Hawke-Keating Labor government, he said.

He called the Whitlam government's free education model a "disaster", saying more people of a low socio-economic status were attending university now than ever before. "The Whitlam free education model meant that the poorest people in Australia paid for middle-class and high income Australians to go to university who would've gone otherwise. And the rate of low [socio-economic status] people going to university did not change at all because of free education." A public high school teacher in the audience challenged Mr Pyne's comments, saying that she had students who were choosing different electives because they could not afford the course fees. Loading "My year 12 students this year, because of the huge rise in tertiary education fees, are making different choices now. They come from families where to take on a HECS debt of that size is something the family and the student do not feel comfortable about."