Nothing makes us more accountable than the internet. As so many have rudely discovered, it's an everlasting repository of anything we ever said or did while we were young.

A candidate profile of a young and poorly Xeroxed Christopher Pyne has resurfaced on website Junkee, extracted from the April 1985 issue of University of Adelaide's student magazine On Dit. It was a reminder that while a student, Mr Pyne opposed university fees, contesting an election on the platform of resisting the federal government's attempt to reintroduce them.

Education Minister Christopher Pyne during the debate on the higher education amendment bill. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

"I feel it my duty to stand for election and do everything possible to forestall the introduction of fees and indeed to end any movements by the Federal Government to introduce fees," Mr Pyne wrote as a first year student.

He was contesting a spot on the Education Standing Committee of the university's students' association. Throughout the 1980s, students were resisting gradual moves by the federal government to reintroduce university fees, after Labor's Gough Whitlam removed them in 1974. Bob Hawke's Labor government brought fees back for most students in 1989.