Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I passionately believe that your postcode shouldn't determine your potential, and there's no more important area in my electorate of Monash than higher education skills and improving higher education outcomes for my community. In 2011 I had the privilege of serving on the Gippsland Tertiary Education Council, and that followed on from some very important work that was initiated through the Gippsland Tertiary Education Plan, which was chaired and undertaken by Kwong Lee Dow, former vice-chancellor of Monash University. I reflect on that time to now, and some of those findings and imperatives remain just as true today as they were in 2011.

There are barriers to education and higher education outcomes in my electorate that existed back then and still exist today, and they centre around a lack of access. Public transport, particularly for those communities in South Gippsland and the Bass Coast, which are not on the train line, acts is a real barrier to university and TAFE in the Gippsland region. Lack of access to child care for a lot of young people trying to further their education and skills outcomes is something that we still desperately need to address. For small businesses that want to give young people a go through apprenticeships, those cost barriers are still prohibitive. Those things, today, are areas which this federal government need to better address in my region just as they need to address them in regional communities right across Australia.

I do want to give a shout-out to local organisations that are really putting their best foot forward in supporting young people. I've met with TAFE Gippsland a number of times. They are doing really important work to help drive jobs and skills outcomes that benefit our whole region across a number of areas. They're working very well with local employers to support that. I also want to give a shout-out to local LENs—the Baw Baw LLEN and the South Gippsland Bass Coast LLEN. They will go along to local skills and job fairs from Leongatha to Lardner Park. I attended one in Leongatha last year. Those local LENs do a great job of supporting job applicants with CV-checking and with their skills forums, and I want to encourage them to continue to do that.

There are a number of other barriers that people in my electorate face. I want to read out an email from a constituent that I received recently:

Hi, my name is Brett, I am a 30 year old plumber studying a Diploma of Building in construction to enable my career progression and provide better for my family.

My issue I want to discuss is the lack of access to Critical study materials for students, Apprentices, Trades and other industry professionals.

Brett goes on to say that, while there's been a focus on access to TAFE, the cost-prohibitive areas actually relate to Brett's study materials—critical information, books and other areas. He cites some examples: masonry and small buildings, $261; concrete structures, $387; and residential slabs and footing, $347. I could go on, but Brett's point is very well made.

The other issue that I want to draw to this as an example is an email that I got recently from Trudy, who is a mum in my electorate who wrote to me about the impact that her kids are experiencing. Trudy wrote to me: 'As parents of three young adults who are all wishing to move to Melbourne for university, the financial stress is immense. I've looked at the details for both youth allowance and relocation allowance. We had zero financial assistance for our now 22-year-old, who is now living in Melbourne, hand to mouth, in a rental. Our 19-year-old deferred and so won't be eligible for the relocation allowance, and our youngest may be eligible for $3,000, being from inner regional Inverloch the means testing of our combined incomes needs to be under $62½ thousand dollars to qualify for youth allowance as a dependent, and I believe it's completely unfair that the same rule applies for Melbourne young people as it does for regional young people.' And so Trudy provides a really good example where, unfortunately, your postcode is determining your potential for higher education outcomes and skills access under this federal government, who don't support people from regional communities and who don't recognise the additional burdens and challenges of young people who want to get ahead and want to get skills and education attainment. They're not getting a fair go under this federal government.

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