Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week on 31 August in Port Augusta I held a regional higher education forum. I was ably supported by Senator Bridget McKenzie—thank you—and an old friend of mine Professor John Halsey, Sidney Myer Chair of Rural Education and Communities at Flinders University. We had about 50 people attend. It was a high-quality conversation. The attendees were also high quality insomuch as all of them had personal interests in how rural students access tertiary education, whether they were students, prospective students, parents or educators.

It was repeated the frustration about the extra costs of getting rural students into tertiary education—it is $15,000 to $20,000 a year over and above what others pay—the need for a car and lack of family support. It is no wonder that our country participation rate lags so far behind the city's. There was great appreciation of the coalition's actions in this area in recent years, firstly, in reversing many of the changes made by the Labor government to access the independent youth allowance and, more recently, the government's announcement to remove the assets test from the family means test. There is still a long way to go. We will be working our way through many other issues raised on the day.