Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Just so I'm very clear, they were additional places for those short courses. That's what I was talking about. When it comes to performance based funding, they are additional courses and so that is what I was talking about.

We're also offering additional courses through the regional university centres. As you know, we made a further announcement about those regional university centres last week—the nine new regional university centres. That takes to 25 the number of regional university centres now rolled out across the nation. Each one of those brings additional places with it. As the member knows, we're working with her community in Wangaratta to put in place a regional university centre there. Now we do know, due to the counter-cyclical nature of unemployment, that we're going to see additional demand come into the system over the coming months. I am in discussions with the university sector on this right now, seeing how we can work together with the additional demand that's going to come into the sector as a result of COVID-19 and the impact that it's had on the employment market, so that there people who want to go to higher education can go to higher education and those people who want to go to vocational education can do that. Hopefully, if we can keep the confidence in our economy, we can enable those people who want to go into the job market to go into the job market. (Time expired)

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