Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to share some very good news with the House. I was recently able to announce, alongside the education minister, Minister Clare, that Western Sydney University will be having a presence in Fairfield. This is excellent news—something I've been hoping for and working for for years—and this is really important.

Western Sydney University does a great job—they have been the home to many who are the first in their families to go to university—but I have long thought it was a problem that Western Sydney University is well represented in other parts of Western Sydney but has no presence in my electorate. The fact that Western Sydney University will open in Fairfield means that young people in Fairfield will have a daily reminder that they too can go to university. In my electorate we actually do very well on year 12 attainment. In fact, students in my electorate finish year 12 at five per cent higher than the average but 10 per cent under the average on going to university. Our results in McMahon mean that young people who are clearly qualified to go to university and follow their dreams just simply aren't going.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with not going to university, and we are expanding TAFE, having free TAFE places and doing everything necessary to give people pathways to TAFE, but university has a very important role to play. In fact, if my electorate had the same university completion rates as the rest of the country, our country would have 17,000 more university graduates, skills to call on and things to harness for our country. This means not only that people in my electorate have been missing out but also that the country has been missing out on the skills of the people in my electorate.

The presence in Fairfield will be a high-profile thing. It'll be in the Fairfield Central Shopping Centre, right on the corner of several of our main streets. So it's not just about ease of access and travel for those young people going to university. Spending more than an hour on the train to get to the University of Sydney or even longer to try and get to the University of New South Wales or Macquarie University is difficult from my electorate. Indeed, some of the campuses of Western Sydney University are hard to get to. Having a presence in Fairfield would make it easier, but, more importantly than that, those kids—I'm thinking of 5-, 6- or 7-year-olds and 10- or 11-year-olds—going shopping with their mum and dad and seeing Western Sydney University be so high profile will mean that they will be reminded that there is a pathway to university for them should they choose to go down that road. You can't be what you can't see. Kids in Western Sydney will now be able to more clearly see a pathway to university.

I want to thank the chancellor, Jennifer Westacott, and the vice-chancellor, Barney Glover, for their engagement. I want to thank Minister Clare. I want to thank the state member, David Saliba, and Mayor Frank Carbone for their support. It's a really great day for Fairfield.