Fiona Scott (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

My electorate of Lindsay is in the outskirts of Sydney. Being in the outskirts of Sydney one of the biggest challenges we have is that two-thirds of our working population have to commute every single day for jobs—one-third all the way into the city and one-third into greater Western Sydney. The Abbott government is already contributing a lot of resources and a lot of funding to assist the north-west and the south-west growth sector—$3.5 billion in fact to actually build some major construction work that will be in the south-west of Sydney.

I also have within the electorate of Lindsay one of the colleges of TAFE New South Wales, Western Sydney Institute. The Western Sydney Institute of TAFE has some 94,000 students in it that they provide every year qualifications to within Australian frameworks. They all also offer open training and distance learning opportunities for people there as well. So as Western Sydney grows there is a growing demand on workplace jobs, actual jobs, that are going to provide solutions for people to be ready to go—vocational jobs. But the Western Sydney Institute of TAFE is also really wonderful in the way it works with the University of Western Sydney providing is crucial gateway courses. So people who are not necessarily got the best UAI can gateway from TAFE into university, which I think is really fabulous initiative that these two training organisations do together—to provide vocational outcomes for people right across Western Sydney. When we look at all this together, my question to the minister is: why is the government extending Commonwealth subsidies to private universities and the non-university higher education institutions?

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