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

It's one for Stan the Statistician from The Coodabeen Champions. The two members in the Labor Party shadow ministry now both barrack for Richmond. There's only two of them, but they now both barrack for Richmond, and that's wonderful to see!

I thank the member for Bass for her question, and I know she's passionate when it comes to regional higher education. I know she supported the $400 million that we put into regional higher education. It means that we're providing more university places—30,000 next year—and the highest growth rate goes to those universities from regional Australia. There are $5,000 scholarships for students from outer regional and remote areas to help pay relocation costs—that's $5,000 to enable students to afford to go to university. There's $500 million, including for universities to fund programs that support regional Indigenous and low-SES students. We want to make sure that all students, especially those from regional and rural areas, can go to university. There's $21 million for an additional eight regional university centres. As we know, these have been incredibly popular. Twenty-five centres have already been announced and are either up and running or in planning, and now we've got an additional eight which will be put in place. There's $48.8 million to fund research collaboration between regional universities, industry and other higher education partners. So we're providing specific research funding for regional universities so that they can make sure that they get that investment that those universities in the capital cities get.

So we are delivering for regional higher education. We've also established the Regional Education Commissioner, who will make sure that, over time, the policies that we're putting in place will benefit those regional students and those regional universities. And we did all this supported by every single member on this side of the House.

Now, what did those opposite do? They opposed our $400 million investment into regional higher education. They opposed it. They didn't stand with those regional members on this side.

Ms Plibersek interjecting—

See this speech in context