Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Of course, if you want to be dishonest or if the purpose of winning an argument is to be dishonest, knock yourself out. Anyway, we'll judge you as such.

I'll tell you what I like about this. We have to make sure that we reach out to people in regional and remote areas to give them the advantage of an education. There are so many areas where not only is it unlikely that you will get tertiary education but, especially in the drought, it is also unlikely that you will get secondary education, because the only way to access secondary school facilities is to board and that is highly expensive. We need to understand that. That's why we have to make sure that all people across our nation, no matter where they live, have capacity to access university, which of course they can't do unless they get through secondary school. Tertiary education itself is such a financial burden. For many families it's like sending the kids to boarding school. The costs are immense. There are people who have to understand that they can't go to university, not because they are not capable but because they can't pay for it.

This is what I like about this. The minister, in his diligent work in the Expenditure Review Committee and as a member of cabinet, has got $93.7 million to assist with scholarships—in fact, scholarships of $15,000 each to 4,720 people. This is so important for the people of Brewarrina, Eromanga, Birdsville, Emmaville and the towns that seem to be so often outside the remit of my colleagues on the other side of the chamber. In fact, they are very rarely mentioned.

Then there was the ridicule of the $2 million over three years to expand country education partnerships. I commend the minister for making sure that people have a greater sense of the opportunities that lie before them. It is always this side of the political spectrum—the coalition; the government—reaching out to these people to further assist them. I acknowledge that in this drought one of the saddest things is to see kids being taken out of boarding school—whether it's in country areas, such as Tamworth and Armidale, or the capital cities—and going home. There may be a whole range of reasons given, but the real reason is that there's no money. Therefore, their education has concluded. You may say that they should go to a state school, but in many areas there's not a state school—they just don't exist—or the state school does not have the capacity to deliver the curriculum to get them to university.

Honourable members interjecting—

If you believe that they should do more, you should apply to your colleagues in the state parliament to put more funds towards the schools that they are responsible for. The other thing is that other parts of the world pay vastly less per student but get vastly greater results. Why is our standard of teaching not able to provide the results that other countries can achieve for less money?

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