Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

Like other speakers on this side, I am stunned that cabinet ministers have not been bothered to turn up for the consideration in detail debate. The member for Forrest and I have been here for a year or two, and I don't think she could ever recall an occasion where cabinet ministers were so arrogant and so full of hubris that they could not be bothered turning up for consideration in detail debates. I do thank the outer minister for attending—it's important she is here as well, with her childcare responsibilities—but it is extraordinary that cabinet ministers think they're too cool for school to come to an education debate where they might actually learn something from the other side.

We have a government, an opposition and a contest of ideas, and not all good ideas rest on one side of the chamber. It takes enormous arrogance and enormous hubris for one cabinet minister after another to decide they're too good to come to Federation Chamber and respond to a single question on issues like infrastructure or communications or education. Heaven forbid they might actually learn something from members on the other side, particular those with a lived experience in rural, regional and remote Australia, where the Labor Party is particularly weak. You have to acknowledge that, geographically, the domination of the Labor Party is in urban areas and some large provincial centres, but in terms of rural, regional and remote Australia, the Labor Party is spectacularly weak in terms of representation. For people like me, the member for Forrest and the member for Flynn, our lived experience in rural and regional and remote communities, particularly in relation to education, is something we would like to share with the minister and on which we would like to ask questions of the minister.

I want to ask questions of the minister, particularly in relation to the question of tertiary access for rural and regional students. It is an area where the member for Forrest and I have worked over our time in this place, with some degree of success and some improvements in terms of accessibility payments—tertiary access allowance and things like that. With the increased cost of living, and with the housing shortage particularly pronounced in many metropolitan areas, we are very concerned that the disproportionate number of regional students unable to attend university in our metropolitan areas will grow into the future. I want to know: has the minister got any measures, has he asked for any new measures, or has he explored any new measures in relation to addressing that imbalance in university participation rates? My electorate of Gippsland is one of the worst-performing areas in Victoria in terms of university participation rates, and part of the challenge is obviously aspirational. We, as local leaders in our community, have to build the aspiration in our kids, and keep working with them at a very early age to ensure they have that ambition, but there is also a challenge about accessibility and the costs of relocating to Melbourne when there's no other opportunity to attend those courses. I want to know if the minister has been meeting with the industry, or if he has asked his department to look at any other new measures that may assist with university participation rates for regional and rural students. Rural and regional students by any measure are underachieving when it comes to tertiary participation.

I acknowledge the minister responsible for early childhood education and child care is at the table. The focus taken by this side—and I think it's a good focus, particularly from a regional perspective—is around fairness, choice and flexibility. The accessibility argument is one the minister is well aware of—she is well aware of childcare deserts, like everyone in this place. From talking with young families in my community, my experience is they are looking for more flexibility to manage sometimes complex life challenges—they'll have a mixture of grandparent care, caring themselves and formal child care. The formal child care part of the equation is very important in rural and regional areas, and I'm sure the minister is aware of that. The government announced $18 million for communities to build new centres to address this issue; how many centres can be built with that $18 million, and how many of the families that I have been talking to in rural and regional areas around this issue are likely to benefit in the term of this government? Are we looking at a longer-term challenge here or are you thinking that there are going to be some improvements in the next couple of years? We have seen childcare centres forced to close their doors because they don't have the workforce—and I acknowledge the minister's comments earlier in relation to improving workforce training. But I'm very interested to know, from a rural and regional perspective, whether the minister genuinely believes we're going to see any change during this term of government on this challenge or whether there is going to be more focus on urban and peri-urban areas.

Again I must acknowledge that it is incredibly disappointing that we do not have cabinet ministers participating in this process. It's not unreasonable for them to put aside half an hour or an hour of their day, as the case may be, to respond to questions and be in this place to listen to the concerns of the opposition.

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