The federal education minister, Christopher Pyne, has set a March deadline to push the higher education deregulation package through the Senate, warning crossbench senators he would not “adulterate” the reforms until they were “meaningless”.

He issued the threat that if the crossbench senators currently negotiating with the government were not up to “microeconomic reform”, he would simply dump the bill.

“We want to get this reform through in February or March this year but we will not so adulterate the reforms that they’re now meaningless,” he said.

“And if that’s the situation in Australia today, if the crossbenchers are not up to microeconomic reform because they don’t want to be unpopular with any organisation in Australia or any particular individual, well, the government will accept the decision of the Senate.”

The prime minister, Tony Abbott, has said the higher education reforms, which remove the cap on university fees and cut undergraduate course subsidies by 20%, would be the “front and centre” of the Coalition’s agenda in 2015. The package also extends fee help to technical courses.

The impasse has caused great uncertainty for students who have just received university offers for 2015. While their fees are locked in for the current year, students will not know the fee scale for following years of their degrees. So far, only two universities have released fee estimates in the event the legislation passes the Senate.

But as Pyne scrambled to win more support from senators – including the Motoring Enthusiast party’s Ricky Muir, independent senator Nick Xenophon and the Palmer United senators – he was in danger of losing the Liberal Democrat party’s David Leyonhjelm and Family First senator Bob Day.

Leyonhjelm has said a 20% cut to subsidies was the very least necessary, arguing that taxpayers should not have to subsidise students for what is a “private benefit”.



“It appears to me that where we are heading is deregulation of university fees but no savings to the taxpayers, in fact quite possibly the opposite,” Leyonhjelm said. “It could end up costing taxpayers more. That is directly contrary to what I think is the outcome.”

Pyne said he had no qualms about taking the negotiated changes back to the Senate, notwithstanding the prospect of defeat.

“If the Senate votes against it, well, they will be voting for the status quo,” he said. “Nobody in the university sector wants the status quo. The crossbenchers say they don’t want the status quo. So it’s a high-stakes game.”

Pyne said if the Senate rejected the bill, the other elements of the reform package would fail, including the future funding of the national collaborative research infrastructure scheme with Australian future fellowships and the extension of the Commonwealth grants scheme to non-university higher education providers including Tafes.

“The crossbenchers can’t take only the benefits and vote in favour of those but vote against everything else,” he said.