Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Research, development and implementation are key to the future of Australia, and you would be hard pressed in this House to find anyone who doesn't agree with that statement. I am passionate about higher education and I'm passionate about supporting a strong research community in this country. As a PhD myself, I've spent my fair share of time at university and I understand the value that academic research has in our society at large. The bill currently before the House is underwriting the strength of our research community, and that's why I support this bill. The Education Legislation Amendment (2021 Measures No. 1) Bill 2021 amends the Australian Research Council Act 2001 to ensure that the Australian Research Council, ARC, can continue to support and serve Australia's vibrant research community.

As with many parts of the economy, we know that universities and other higher education providers are facing extreme difficulties due to the outbreak of COVID-19. That's why it's so important to support higher education providers to increase their offerings and protect students at this difficult time. A highly educated, well-trained and skilful population is a key element of Australia's strength as a democratic nation and will be instrumental to our economic recovery on the other side of the coronavirus pandemic. We need highly educated minds to build, restore, innovate and grow. The delivery of priority infrastructure projects announced in this year's budget, the Technology Investment Roadmap in the energy sector and the implementation of the Modern Manufacturing Strategy will deliver enormous economic benefits to our country. This is why it's so important that the government, through measures such as those contained in bills, support the higher education sector and the invaluable research that is conducted at university.

In regional areas such as my electorate of Mallee, there is also an ever-growing need for healthcare professionals, and the current crisis has laid bare the extent of this need. Delivering sufficient healthcare service provision for Mallee is a key priority for me. In Mallee, we face shortages of general practitioners, nurses and primary and allied healthcare professionals. In 2017, work was completed by the Victorian Skills Commissioner in the northern half of my electorate to identify the future workforce demands of the region. The Mallee Regional Skills Demand Profile estimated that, between 2017 and 2020, up to 4,400 new workers would be needed to support growth in the region. The report identified that almost one-quarter of these workers would be needed in the healthcare sector.

It's been incredibly encouraging that La Trobe University has been investing in regional health qualifications through a number of initiatives to meet the expected demand. Since being elected, I've been working closely with the vice-chancellor of La Trobe University, Professor John Dewar, to support La Trobe's Mildura campus and build on their offerings for regional students. La Trobe is doing a fantastic job with their Rural Medical Pathway program in partnership with the University of Melbourne. This program is the first to commence as part of the Murray-Darling Medical Schools Network, an initiative announced in the 2018 Commonwealth budget. Under this program, 15 students from regional and rural areas begin their studies at either of La Trobe's Bendigo or Albury-Wodonga campuses and undertake a three-year Bachelor of Biomedical Science degree before going on to study a four-year Doctor of Medicine at the University of Melbourne's Shepparton campus.

The Murray-Darling Medical Schools Network is one part of the $95 million investment to set up the Train in the Regions, Stay in the Regions program. The guiding logic behind this program is to train local to stay local. We know that people from a regional city or town who learn in a regional place have the best possible chance of graduating and staying in the regions to work. There are seven Mallee students undertaking this program in 2020: Alfred, Isabella, Abdo, Abigail, Kunind, Madeline and Oscar. When I met these students virtually, all indicated that they aspire to work in regional and rural areas after completing their study. Alfred, who was born in India, says he wants to travel Australia, work in remote communities and ultimately return to Mildura to work locally. Kunind wants to pursue a career in craniofacial surgery and hopes to bring this area of medicine to areas of rural Victoria.

I have asked La Trobe to go further with this program, and they have now developed a proposal to extend their highly successful Rural Medical Pathway to Mildura, giving students more options to train regionally. This proposal will bring the Bachelor of Biomedical Science to Mildura, which is incredibly exciting. La Trobe is seeking funding to establish this degree and to construct a wet lab at its Mildura campus. The La Trobe Rural Medical Pathway is end-to-end and maximises opportunities for people with rural backgrounds interested in practising medicine in rural and regional areas. It flips the current city-centric medical training model, with the majority of medical training undertaken in the regions. It's a brilliant proposal, and Professor Dewar and I have taken it to Minister Tudge for his support.

Over the past 30 years, La Trobe has become integral to the Mallee community. Eighty-seven per cent of students that graduate from the Mildura campus stay and work locally, and there are around 1,600 La Trobe graduates working in the region. The importance of this university to our region cannot be underestimated.

I've also been speaking with Professor Geoffrey Lord, the head of Federation University's Wimmera campus in Horsham. Professor Lord, together with the Wimmera Health Care Group, has a proposal that aims to reintroduce a Bachelor of Nursing to the Wimmera campus. Although the campus provides a Diploma of Nursing to around 75 students per year, Professor Lord and the community see the need and the demand for higher levels of nursing training through a bachelor program. Federation University is seeking funding to accelerate its plans for a state-of-the-art bachelor and graduate education and training facility in Horsham to house the Bachelor of Nursing. A program such as this would support the health workforce needs of the area and support the economic and population stability in the Wimmera Southern Mallee.

To support ideas such as these proposed by Federation University and La Trobe University, we need to allocate more Commonwealth support places for degrees based in regional areas. The government has made recent changes to give universities greater flexibility to use their Commonwealth support places for postgraduate courses, but new places need to be allocated to allow for the expansion of higher education in the regions. I have been advocating strongly for this.

There are many more reasons why higher education is so important for Mallee. Recently I also spoke about the need to improve access to vocational education and training opportunities to meet the rising need for skilled local jobs in Mallee due to a number of emerging industries with massive growth potential. In Mallee, we have seen extensive investment and growth in solar energy. We are becoming increasingly reliant on new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics in agriculture and horticulture, and we are pushing for more value-driven innovation and value-adding manufacturing. I believe Mallee can be a leader for 21st century innovation, but bright minds will be required to lead these developments into the future. Again, the 'train local, stay local' approach will be crucial to supporting this growth and development. I am eager to see increased opportunities to be offered in STEM degrees in regional areas, similar to what we've seen with the Murray-Darling Medical Schools Network and the Rural Medical Pathway program by La Trobe University and the University of Melbourne. Supporting higher education providers to increase their offerings and making it easier for students to take up these opportunities will improve outcomes for regional areas and will help regions like Mallee meet and make their full potential.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to speak to another bill introduced by the government which is aimed at providing stronger protections for academic freedom and freedom of speech in Australia. The Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020 is important for fairness and equality at our academic institutions. The issue of free speech is essential in an educational context. I believe that robust debate is critical in the academic experience. Presenting ideas and being open to challenges on those ideas are essential to teaching and learning. Freedom of speech is crucial to our democracy, which is why it must be protected.

Clearly, there are circumstances where freedom of speech must be limited in order to prevent harm. Recently I've spoken about such situations in the context of social media platforms. Social media is an incredible tool for global communication, but it can also be used as a tool to abuse, harass, bully and defame. We need to develop certain limitations in the social media context to deal with these negative aspects of the platforms. The Parliamentary Friends of Making Social Media Safe, chaired by myself and the member for Newcastle, Sharon Claydon, aims to consider these ideas and continue this important discussion.

Limiting free speech in any context will always be a challenge, and this is especially true for universities. I believe that students need to feel comfortable expressing themselves, regardless of their opinions. Other students should also feel confident challenging these ideas with respectful debate. This is the best way for students to learn from each other, formulate their opinions on certain topics and learn how to convince other people of their perspectives. I fear that we have arrived at a point where students are no longer comfortable expressing themselves for fear of recrimination. Discourse has become binary with an us-and-them, left-and-right, black-and-white mentality, where the grey sits uncomfortably. This fissure is not helpful for either side and only serves to further entrench biases. Recently I read that the Australian National University published a gender inclusive handbook which recommends that staff replace the terms 'mother' and 'father' with 'gestational' parent and 'nongestational' parent. This type of recommendation leads to a culture of fear of saying the wrong thing. If a student or teacher is to be worried about saying something so simple as the word 'mother', one can only imagine what else a student might be worried about expressing. I believe that if academics are constantly worried about saying the wrong thing robust debate cannot take place, diminishing the overall learning experience for all involved.

Through several measures, including those outlined in the bill before the House, the Commonwealth government is supporting the quality and sustainability of higher education in Australia. Whether it's through ongoing support to Australia's vibrant research community or through measures to protect freedom of speech on campuses across the country, the Morrison-McCormack government is delivering for students and universities.

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