Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a shame, Member for Murray. Unfortunately Labor, the Greens and the Independent MPs, with the exception of the member for Kalgoorlie, voted against this motion. This is very disappointing for the students in the electorates of those members on the other side that are missing out on receiving support to help them reach their full potential. The coalition has been continuously calling on the government to make the criteria fairer for inner regional students. The maps currently used are ridiculous and do not accurately reflect the difficulty students from some areas have in getting to university. In fact, they make it very difficult for some students to actually get to university.

To help members on the other side understand this, in South Australia we have the perfect example in Mt Gambier, which is about 450 kilometres away from Melbourne or Adelaide universities. It is a long way and, unlike their city cousins, there is no way Mt Gambier residents can go from home to university every day. But if you live in Mt Gambier you are treated just like a student in Adelaide or Melbourne. However, if you live outside the town boundaries, you are treated as you were under the old Howard government conditions. This decision makes no sense. It is based not on any educational criteria but on medical criteria relating to the availability of doctors. It has nothing whatsoever to do with education. As a result of this decision, people living in a reasonably sized city like Mt Gambier, which has 23,000 or 24,000 people, are treated differently from those living outside the town boundaries, even if that boundary lies just across the road.

What we are trying to do is point out to the government, for the fifth time, that they do not understand that people in Mt Gambier are very angry about being treated differently from those who live outside the city itself. If you understood Mt Gambier at all, you would know that outside the town boundaries is still part of the urban area which is in the district council of Grant. There are perhaps up to 20,000 other examples of this ridiculous government decision, but Mt Gambier is easier to understand as it is so clearly a long way from the nearest universities. This government has inadvertently drawn random lines on a map and changed the lives of students across Australia.

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