Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) | Hansard source

I thank my friend, the brilliant member for Braddon, for her question. I've told the House many times that almost 50 per cent of young Australians in their 30s today have a university degree, but not everywhere—not in the western suburbs of Sydney where I grew up, where it's about half that, not in regional Australia and not in the bush either, where it's even lower. That's not because of a lack of talent. Talent is everywhere. It's opportunity that's not, and it's education that can change that. That's why the reforms we're implementing to fix the funding of our schools is so important, as well as tying that to reform to help more kids finish high school and then go on to TAFE or to university. That's why it's important that we change the way we fund our universities as well, and that's what the legislation I introduced today is all about.

If you're a kid from a poor background or from the regions or the bush and you get the marks or you've got what it takes to take on a university degree, then we'll guarantee a funded place for you at university. And not just that—we'll also give you extra support not just to get to but to get through university as well. That's important because we know that kids from regional Australia, kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, are about twice as likely as other kids to drop out of university in the first year at university.

Now, what does this mean in practice? If you're a kid from a disadvantaged background—you're growing up in Albury-Wodonga or Dubbo or Wagga or Burnie or Bendigo or Rockhampton or Cairns or Townsville—it means more than doubling the amount of funding to help you finish your degree, with things like extra academic support, tutoring and mentoring, from $600 a student to more than $1,500. This is the sort of thing that I'd hope my old mates in the National Party will support, but it's too late because the Liberal Party have already told us that they're against it. And not just that—we've had a National Party senator just make a speech in London, of all places, saying that she thinks we should break Australian universities. We want to open the doors of our universities to more kids from the bush and the regions. They want to stop them getting more funding to get through university and want to break universities.

What is going on here? You've got the Liberal Party, you've got the National Party and you've got One Nation all competing against each other to see who can be the most extreme, whether it's on education or multiculturalism or anything else. They're like the neapolitan ice cream of Australian politics. The problem is they all want to be vanilla!

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