Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, I did. You don't need to hear talking points, so I'll just use this opportunity to talk to you, if that's alright?

I've been very impressed with you as a minister. Through the election, I thought you did very well, and I thought you spoke very sincerely today in the parliament. Leaving the politics of blame that you spoke about at the end aside, the statistics you read out were highly alarming. I, too, and many of my colleagues on this side are worried about widening inequality. Economics and education matter. It matters not just for this generation but it cascades down through the decades for Australia. I'm worried that in decades to come we will say to children your fate in life will be whether your parents own your house, whether both parents are together, whether you went to a private school. All of these things add up, where we risk becoming a more divided society. I wasn't born here. My parents left Ireland. They were economic refugees, neither of whom finished high school. The thing they looked for in another country was opportunity and equality of opportunity, where it didn't matter that your parents didn't finish high school but your children might have a better future. People talk about the United States being the land of opportunity, but I always think that this place does it much better than they do. They talk about it, but we practice it. But that's a fragile thing, and it's at great risk. So I congratulate you for raising that. You'll always have my support for meaningful engagement in that area, particularly when we hear the horror stories from COVID. Teachers will tell me that some parents would sit and enforce students in Victoria, where we had more lockdowns, being in front of the laptop, but many didn't. Often that wasn't their fault—they were working, doing the Uber Eats deliveries or working in hospitals or doing the shifts were they were essential workers and there was no grandparent or someone else to do it. But those kids fell behind, and how do you make that up? So you've got our full support in that. I also want to congratulate you. I got your letter about nominating a teacher for an Order of Australia medal. It is often too easy to forget certain areas and it was disturbing to see that only one teacher was nominated. I will certainly send that out to my school principals and I hope some nominations do come from that because I have met so many who are worthy. I hope the honours and awards committee get flooded with teacher nominations.

To the substance of this bill, obviously it has bipartisan support. It was initiated by the previous government. When my parents told me, 'Make the most of my education, take it for as long as you can ride it and get the most out of it,' I sort of got on this treadmill where you try and out compete your fellow students by getting into a particular university or school. The test of that was to go to an overseas university. I did that. It was one of those curtains that I peeled back and I felt a bit silly but it made me realise how good our universities are. It was a prestigious university and it looked nice on my CV but it was no different than a prestigious watch—it was just a brand and they are very good at branding. Australian universities are excellent, but one of the things those prestigious universities overseas do is leverage their connections with industry much better than we do. That doesn't just feed into the economy but it makes those universities and all of the tech sectors and other areas around them much more useful to the national mission and the national economy.

As a Victorian, one of the greatest exports we have is education. It is a huge sector of our economy. I'm proud to say that the seat that I represent is named after Robert Menzies. His great passion, other than home and parliament, was education. He was the chancellor of Melbourne University. He could have done many things after politics but that is where he devoted his energies. It is a core value for the Liberal Party, it was a core value for Robert Menzies and it certainly is for me. It doesn't come without risk—wherever there is public money—and we are taking some risk. We should continue to monitor that, and I'm sure that will be done by the department, but there is also a role for the parliament, and we will come back to it again and see how it is going. This is a worthy bill. Thank you for pursuing it. You are welcome in the electorate of Menzies at any time, so thank you.

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