Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Tertiary education brings invaluable benefits not only to those who pursue a degree but also to the entire nation. Our Australian universities are world class. Our top-performing institutions consistently rank in the top 50 in the world. Our Group of Eight research intensive universities are at the forefront of research and innovation. I am proud that my electorate of Ryan is home to the University of Queensland whose breakthroughs are world renowned.

Professor Ian Frazer's HPV and cervical cancer vaccination is just one of many discoveries that will undoubtedly change lives and, indeed, the world as we know it. University of Queensland students are fortunate to have this amazing mind as part of their university, to have direct access to the leaders in their fields. University of Queensland graduates will remember being taught by Professor Frazer and there are opportunities for research scholarships and thesis supervision by researchers across all fields that are breaking new ground. The 2010 Australian National University poll of public opinion has found that the feeling about the benefits of science and research is overwhelmingly positive—85 per cent feel that science has made life better for people.

I also take this opportunity to congratulate Professor Zee Upton, a scientific research in my electorate of Ryan who recently won the Queensland Life Sciences Industry Excellence Award. Science and innovation are a big part of our universities and Professor Upton has absolutely excelled in her field. Professor Upton is an internationally renowned biochemist, inventor and tissue engineer best known for her research in growth factors, extracellular matrix proteins and wound repair. Since completing her PhD in 1994, Professor Upton has attracted over $14 million in research funding, produced 65 publications with 1,100 citations and has achieved 10 patents—all working for a better future. I am also delighted that another researcher in the electorate of Ryan, Dr Cherrell Hirst AO, was also one of the three finalists, and I take this opportunity to congratulate Dr Hirst for her very impressive work. Work and research such as that conducted by Professor Upton and Dr Hirst has been greatly supported by our universities, and with our young and fertile minds being taught around the nation by academics of this calibre the future is indeed bright.

The changes to the system that we are seeing today come as part of the Bradley review's recommended aspiration of 40 per cent of 25- to 34-year-old Australians holding at least a bachelor's degree by 2025. Given the benefits of higher education, the coalition supports this goal in principle. However, a big part of any reform is to ensure that it is fiscally responsible.

We are here today to discuss the change to the maximum public funds allocated to fund Commonwealth supported places as a result of projected increases in enrolments of Commonwealth supported students in Australian universities. This comes as a result of moving to a demand-driven system for Australian university placements, which is estimated to cost up to $3.97 billion to implement. While I welcome the move to a demand-driven system, I cannot help but worry about the cost given this government's record of poor and reckless financial management. We have seen cost blow-out after cost blow-out across all projects in all sectors under this government and with the current state of the world economy Australia simply cannot afford another budget blunder in the implementation of this change to higher education.

The surplus is gone. But, on top of that, with regard to higher education this government has milked all other avenues of additional funding dry. It started with the election of the Rudd government, which abolished full-fee-paying places under which students could have chosen to pay up front in order to get their degree. Contrary to the propaganda promoted by left-wing student unionists—

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