Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to reflect on some of the Rudd Labor government’s achievements in the first six months in implementing a number of education policies that underpin Labor’s philosophies. First, we have committed through the course of last year to implementing skills training centres, and this is a very significant and important step in addressing some of the poor public policy decision making that has taken place over the last 10 years.

I was one of those fortunate students who had the opportunity to go to a technical school and, through that experience, I was successful in picking up some quite practical skills. Then, rather than going into a trade at that point in time, I chose to go to university. During that period of time a very unfortunate initiative of the previous government was introduced into universities, and that was that selection based on merit was no longer the only basis by which people could enter university. People were able to buy their way into university through full-fee paying places, and I think that certainly disadvantaged working families who put a lot of time and effort into trying to get themselves educated.

On top of that, a very significant piece of policy has been put in place by the Deputy Prime Minister, and that is to recognise that we have not been training our mathematicians and scientists of the future. The bill that was introduced into the House earlier this week—or it might have been the previous sitting—gives students who wish to pursue maths and science at university the opportunity to have a reduced HECS debt. I think this is a very significant piece of reform and certainly will allow us to train our mathematicians and scientists into the future. These are both very important university qualifications to help our industry innovate and evolve, particularly in areas like the broader Geelong community.

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