Federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne has rejected suggestions the Abbott government will dump controversial portions of its higher education reforms in order to get a policy to deregulate university fees through the Senate.
A Fairfax report on Friday said Mr Pyne and vice-chancellors are lobbying Senate crossbenchers to support deregulated fees and were willing to dump or postpone some reforms to get a deal done.
But Mr Pyne has denied this, saying "it's all news to me".
"It's completely wrong. It looks like a grab bag of wish lists from certain people," he told Nine Network.
He said while the government had always been willing to negotiate, it's position was clear.
"That is not my plan. Our plan is to stick with the government's approach," Mr Pyne said.
"But I've said all along we'll negotiate - 80 per cent of something is better than 100 per cent of nothing."
Labor MP Anthony Albanese, who appeared with Mr Pyne on Nine, said the tough reforms were hard to sell to the Senate.
"There's no chance of these reforms getting through the Senate because they're not fair," he said.
Speculation continues that the government could dump plans to peg student loan interest rates to government bond rates and delay increased Commonwealth funding of private colleges.
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