Ken Ticehurst (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, I am not. The highlight of the education spending was the establishment of a new Higher Education Endowment Fund with the initial investment of $5 billion funded from the 2006-07 budget surplus. This announcement will boost capital infrastructure in our universities. It will allow our universities to be more flexible and responsive to the needs of students, employers and the economy. Importantly, it will ensure that any eligible student who can benefit from a university education will have access to a place.

Recently I visited our local Ourimbah campus of the University of Newcastle to announce an additional $2 million of funding for new facilities under the Capital Development Pool of 2009. The Ourimbah campus is a fantastic initiative in this and it contains a university, TAFE, community college and local businesses all on the one site. It is truly a model for universities across the country. The campus is providing a future for many of the Central Coast’s young people; therefore, it is vital that the Australian government supports them. The Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the Ourimbah campus, Stephen Crump, was ecstatic about the creation of the Higher Education Endowment Fund. It will assist universities, including our local Ourimbah campus, in the provision of new and improved facilities to give our young people a head start in their futures. Also, $475 million over four years for the national literacy and numeracy vouchers program is a welcome initiative. This will provide direct assistance to parents of students who have not achieved minimum standards in reading, writing and mathematics in years 3, 5, 7 and 9; they will get extra help for their children.

The budget also includes provision to improve the quality of teaching in our schools. Last week I participated in Public Education Week in my electorate. I attended the Tuggerah Lakes Learning Community Values Forum, which involved 10 local schools. I must say that it was great to see firsthand the values that these school communities aspire to, and I congratulate the teachers on a job well done. I know that many parents in Dobell have also welcomed additional funding under the Investing in Our Schools Program, which provides money directly to school communities for important projects identified by the schools. Sixty grants have already been made under the Investing in Our Schools Program to the 52 schools in my electorate, totalling $7.3 million, for practical projects like air conditioning, new carpeting and computer equipment. I am also delighted that $159.9 million over two years has been allocated in this budget to extend the highly successful initiative. In contrast, in his budget reply speech, the opposition leader failed to mention any new funding or initiatives for our universities or for higher standards or quality in our schools. In fact, there is no commitment to schools, literacy and numeracy or universities.

This budget also offers support to apprentices and small businesses. Funding of $58.5 million will enable apprentices to complete their training sooner. This funding will contribute to the costs of negotiating new flexible wages structures as well as to the redevelopment of training materials to support the accelerated training. This program is a fantastic boost for the young apprentices in Dobell and will allow them to complete their training more quickly in an effective culmination of on- and off-job training. The introduction of a new tax exempt payment of $1,000 available to eligible first- and second-year apprentices in trades where there is a skills shortage is a great incentive for young people to take up an apprenticeship. The Howard government is committed to encouraging our youth to gain a technical education, helping to ensure their future. Unfortunately, for many of our young people on the Central Coast, their future is not a priority for our Labor state government, because the building of the Australian technical college on the Central Coast is not expected to begin until next year. It should have been opened and teaching our youth in January this year. Labor’s copycat proposal is for a one-off funding of $1 million per school to fund skills centres in our schools and will do nothing to raise the status of technical training. We need to get young people to see technical education as more than a high school elective.

The announcement of tax cuts for small businesses and the reduction in compliance costs aims to reduce paperwork and red tape for small businesses. This will enable them to boost productivity and further their business by allowing them to employ more workers. As a previous small business owner myself, I enjoy meeting and talking to small business owners in my electorate. Electricians, plumbers, mechanics and builders have all said that they support the continued flexibility the Howard government is offering them to employ more staff and efficiently run their business.

A final budget measure I would like to mention is water. Ensuring a sustainable water supply for the Central Coast is one of the biggest issues facing our region and our country. This budget includes an extra $201 million over six years to support the installation of water tanks and other water-saving devices by schools and community groups. There are 31 local community groups and schools in Dobell electorate that have already shared in $1.1 million worth of the government’s community water grants, and I look forward to securing even more funding for the Central Coast.

Locally, I have been working for some time with the councils to find a solution for the Central Coast water crisis. The Australian government contributed $6.6 million to the Hunter water pipeline, which is increasing our daily water supply by about 25 megalitres. We are being proactive in working with the Central Coast. Of course, this pipeline is only needed when our dams are not full. Currently, water is actually going back through that link because the so-called missing link between the Mardi and Mangrove Creek dams has not yet been constructed. A bipartisan approach to such a serious issue was really important but, unfortunately, local and state Labor members could not even be bothered to show up to an urgent meeting that I called on the issue last week. As a result of the meeting, my colleague the member for Robertson and I will lead a delegation to the federal Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Mr Malcolm Turnbull, in the near future, with both Gosford and Wyong councils involved.

I welcome any change in state Labor’s policy to secure Central Coast water supply and I take this opportunity to call on the New South Wales Labor state government to get on board with the interests of the Central Coast residents and to realise that their proposal for the Tillegra dam, which has been promoted since 50 years ago, may not even happen for 15 years, if at all. I think this issue in particular highlights the fact that the Howard government is the only government that is in tune with the needs of the Australian community. The opposition leader’s only response to our current water crisis was to give $250 million over four years to address leaks in 175,000 kilometres of urban water pipelines. On the other hand, the Howard government is investing billions of dollars to ensure our water security nationally. This year’s budget further demonstrates the coalition government’s commitment to ensuring a secure future for all Australians. I will continue to work with the Central Coast community over the coming months to secure our future locally.

On the issue of dental health, we also provided funding to the Ourimbah campus on the Central Coast to provide 90 places for oral health courses, and I was very pleased to call in and see this in operation last week. Here we have oral health practitioners being trained to a university degree level, and they are now providing oral health services to local people, pensioners and the general public. This has been a great initiative, and a very successful one at that. We are providing training to people from 18 to 50 years of age; they are doing a wonderful job. On the subject of technical colleges, we have the New South Wales state government refusing to give an education licence to the Australian manufacturers who are actually providing the Australian technical college.

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