Sam Lim (Tangney, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education. What is the Albanese Labor government doing to make university more accessible and more affordable? What are the risks?

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank my friend the multi-talented member for Tangney for his question. More Aussies will start a university degree this year than ever before, and this year more Australians will also do a free university bridging course than ever before. These are these courses that get you ready to do a uni degree. I know my old mate the member for Herbert loves a story. Well, here's one for him. This is the story of Jennifer Baker. She became a mum at the age of 19. For much of the next 10 years she worked in hospitality, and then one day she saw an ad for one of these free bridging courses. Now she's got a science degree and an honours degree in chemistry and a PhD in medicinal chemistry and a Fulbright scholarship! Now she designs new drugs to stop cancers from growing. That's what these courses do, and that's what they can lead to. What this tells us is that talent is everywhere. It's opportunity that's not, and it's education that can change that.

I'm asked about affordability for university. As you know, we've cut student debt by 20 per cent, and I'm very glad to see that it got more than a few mentions in that secret Liberal Party evaluation of the election. It also, I'm glad to see, got a few references in the Young Liberals submission to that review, including this on the cost of tertiary education from Berowra Young Liberals: 'I'm not surprised young people did not vote for us, as, frankly, there was nothing on offer.' Not much has changed! I'm very happy to table the submission from the Young Liberals.

We've cut student debt by 20 per cent. Now we want to take the next step to help to make getting a university degree quicker and cheaper. I've spoken in this place before about what some universities are doing, where they'll take a year off your degree if you've got a TAFE qualification in the same area. Effectively, if you've done a fee-free TAFE course, it'll mean the first year of uni is free. I want to see more of that, and that's why I've asked the Australian Tertiary Education Commission to develop a national credit recognition framework this year. As part of that, they'll be able to allocate more funded places to universities that are prepared to do this—to cut the length of a degree if you already have a TAFE qualification in the same area—to make going to university quicker and cheaper. These are the sorts of commonsense things that we need to do to make it easier to get the skills that you need and that Australia needs.