Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This speech on the appropriation bills being in two parts—one in continuation later on—I'd like to use the last couple of minutes to focus on one particular item in the budget, and that's education spending. Education for the regional city of Tamworth is vitally important. Tamworth has the lowest number of people in Australia currently in tertiary education and the lowest number of people in Australia who have a tertiary degree. So it is essential that we get a university campus in Tamworth.

I want to clarify that the UNE has been incredibly happy with the Commonwealth-funded places to satisfy the New South Wales government's requirement for a $10 million funded contribution to release the state's funds of $26.6 million committed to the UNE campus proposal. I want to commend the work that's been done by the committee, including Mitch Hanlon; vice-chancellor Brigid Heywood—and I'd like to commend her absolute focus on this project; Mayor Col Murray, who has been absolutely resolved to making sure that we bring this to fruition; and local Nationals state member, the Hon. Kevin Anderson. Between this group, we hope that we can land this project, because it's not a matter of whether; it is going to be a matter of when—and we want the 'when' to be as soon as possible.

If Armidale has a university campus, Orange has one, Wagga has one, Lismore has one, Port Macquarie has one, Albury has one, Dubbo has one, Wollongong has one, Newcastle has one and Coffs Harbour has one and, if you go up the coast, Bundaberg has one and Rockhampton has one, then Tamworth, one of the fastest-growing regional cities in Australia, also deserves to be able to make sure that their sons and daughters have the capacity to go to primary school, high school and university in the city that produces the largest amount of animal protein—whether that's eggs, poultry, beef or sheep—in Australia.

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