Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

I do take great pleasure in joining the debate and following my friend the member for Calwell, whose speech I would say I agreed with up until about the last 90 seconds, actually. It wasn't too bad. Of course it's worth reminding the House that the coalition actually delivered record government funding for universities of $115.1 billion in total between 2019 and 2024, so while I appreciate the member for Calwell's more substantive remarks in the debate, I do take exception to and perhaps contradict her view in relation to the former coalition government 's commitment to the university sector.

I do want to acknowledge from the outset the Minister for Education's work in this regard, and I took a great deal of interest in his presentation to the Press Club and the interim Australian Universities Accord document when it was released, because I do believe the minister has identified challenges and entrenched disadvantages which were also recognised by the previous government in relation to the participation rate for rural and regional students in tertiary education and also addressing some the entrenched disadvantage the more vulnerable sectors of our community face, in particular our Indigenous community. I do acknowledge his speech at the Press Club was very much in the frame of 'never forget where you came from' in its message. It was a reminder to us all that the work in this particular area—higher education and training for our young people, giving them every opportunity to achieve their full potential—I fear will never be completed.

The previous government made some good inroads. My friend and colleague Senator Nash, who is a part of the framework now and coming forward with good solutions for regional areas; the member for Forrest, Nola Marino; the member for Grey, Rowan Ramsey; I and many others have worked in this space, particularly around access and affordability issues for regional students, for much of the past decade, and I see a lot of progress in that regard. Notwithstanding that, I do acknowledge the job will perhaps never be fully complete. I don't think you can have this debate in relation to rural and regional communities without actually having a holistic understanding of some of the factors that contribute to our comparatively poor participation rates and our comparatively poor completion rates for regional students at tertiary level.

The member for Calwell touched on some of the challenges students in her own community face in terms of having to earn an income while also excelling in their studies and taking on some of those rights of passage of a young adult: getting their own licence, being allowed to go to a licensed venue and drink alcohol and some of the coming-of-age issues that everyone faces. If you compound that with the big challenge for regional students—moving three, four, five, six, seven, eight or 10 hours away from home and being expected to excel in a strange environment, a city environment which they've never lived in—it can be a difficult time in a young person's life.

One of the challenges we have in this place is making sure where possible we reduce some of those obstacles for rural and regional students and make sure they also have every chance to achieve their full potential, so I do like some of the measures the minister is talking about and I do like some of the broad themes in his address and the direction he's trying to take. Unless you fundamentally believe country kids are dumber than city kids, there must be other reasons why students from rural and regional areas don't achieve at the same level in terms of completion of secondary school and tertiary education, and I believe there are some entrenched obstacles we have to deal with.

Understanding this holistic issue is something that sets us apart in the National Party because we live this every day, and unfortunately for us in rural and regional communities it can start as early as three and four years old with access to child care, access to early education. The government has made quite a song and dance about its commitment to child care in this place but has failed to recognise still that actually accessing child care in rural and regional communities is the challenge, rather than this question of the amount of subsidy you're paid if your child has access to a childcare place. The places simply aren't there for our smaller regional and rural communities. Linked to that, the issue then becomes how we attract and retain a skilled workforce in a regional community if that workforce does not have access to child care. It's another complication. A more holistic understanding of some of the issues we face in our rural and regional communities plays into this conversation about how our young people go on to achieve their full potential.

We need to make our regions a more attractive place to live, to work and to raise a family. That's something I think all members who live outside of the capital cities would agree on. We need to invest in infrastructure and services. We need to invest in those communities in a way which allows them to attract and retain a workforce, which then has a flow-on benefit for things like education. I'll give an example. If you have a regional town with relatively poor education opportunities, it becomes very hard for that town to retain doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers and local government officials. Once their own children get to an age where they need to attend school, those highly employable people with very mobile skills will move to places with more opportunity.

The bill before the House today is important. It addresses some of the issues that we talk about on a regular basis, but we do need to work in a more holistic way, looking at the whole picture of rural and regional communities and the opportunities they present. I would argue that this government, in its early days, is missing opportunities to invest in rural and regional communities. We've seen the abolishment of the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure fund. We've seen the cancelling of the Roads of Strategic Importance program. We've seen a greater focus on a Canberra-knows-best approach, rather than devolving decision-making to local communities, who are best placed to make investment decisions.

In a competitive environment, keeping a skilled workforce is a challenge for rural and regional communities. As much as access to university provides a pathway to future financial security for an individual, we must also remember that achieving trade training or technical skills, without necessarily going to university in the first place, is something equally worthy. It should be equally celebrated in our nation, and I don't think that's the case today. I fear that we have an undue emphasis on university qualifications above all else, when trade and training in technical skills also offer great career opportunities for young people. I would caution the government about that. I don't think the minister and I would have any disagreement at all on this point; I think he sees the value in trade training and making sure those technical skills are recognised and supported, but I would add to the debate a caution against putting all our focus on university participation rates and not necessarily recognising the value of trade training at the same time.

As much as there are economic barriers that we need to deal with in this place, through things like the tertiary access allowance and supporting disadvantaged students to give them the opportunity to go to university, there is also a challenge, for those of us who live in rural and regional communities, to make sure we're doing everything we can to build aspiration amongst young people. The minister himself reflected on this in his National Press Club address. I think he was the first in his family to finish year 10 and 12. I had a similar experience in my family. Not completing year 12 wasn't that big a deal in rural and regional Victoria at the time I was going to school. One of our challenges, as leaders in our own communities, is to encourage that aspiration amongst our young people and ensure they understand the opportunities that are there for them, whether it's to finish year 12 and go to university or to finish year 10 and get a trade. Whether it's an apprenticeship in hairdressing, building, plumbing or electrical work, they're all skills that can hold a person in good stead for the rest of their lives. As we move amongst our school communities, as we talk to young people, we need to encourage them to aspire to go on and achieve additional qualifications.

The bill before the House is important in the sense that it recognises those regional challenges, but I have some concerns about where the government is heading. I think there's a fine line here, with the proposed change to the 50 per cent pass rate. I do believe we have to set expectations for our students—that passing their course matters when they get to university, and that there are consequences if they don't achieve significant progress.

When I say there's a fine line, I also mentioned earlier that there are additional challenges for a regional student relocating, in particular. They may not necessarily excel in the early days of their career. I can understand where the minister is attempting to go in this regard, but I am concerned that removing the 50 per cent pass rate from the expectation of the student may set them on a trajectory where they could incur more HECS debt and accumulate it with no real prospect of obtaining a degree and no prospect of any monetary benefit from achieving a tertiary qualification. With the HECS debt increasing in the order of seven per cent this year, thanks to inflation, accumulating more debt is not in the best interests of the young people involved, so there is a fine line to draw with young people, particularly from regional areas. If they are failing at university, accumulating more debt is not necessarily in their best interests.

The other point I have some hesitancy about—and we need to reflect on exactly what this means and its practical application—is uncapping the allocations for Indigenous students, regardless of their background. I still need to be convinced by the minister that there is an actual disadvantage we are addressing here. You could sustain an argument that an Indigenous student living in a metropolitan area, say, Melbourne, actually experiences less disadvantage than a rural and remote student living some distance from a university centre. So I remain to be convinced by the minister that this is a good idea. The previous government focused this particular measure on Indigenous students from regional communities, but I remain to be convinced that uncapping this particular feature is in the interests of all students.

There is an intellectual inconsistency in the debate right now. We had the minister at the dispatch box today saying: 'We must implement a Voice to Parliament. It must be enshrined in the Constitution before we can make any changes to education.' But we are debating a bill tonight which makes quite significant changes to address an issue of disadvantage in our Indigenous communities. So there is a bit of an intellectual inconsistency. I say to the minister: when you identify these challenges and opportunities, don't wait for a referendum about the Voice to make those decisions. I encourage him to go ahead and make those decisions now and not wait on a vote in several months time.

There is another issue that I want to raise briefly. While I welcome the government's commitment to double the 34 study hubs which were delivered by the coalition government—our model, the Regional University Centres model, was a proven and highly effective way to provide greater access for regional and remote students—I am concerned about the government's decision to provide 14 of those hubs in metropolitan suburbs and only 20 in regional areas. Given the disadvantage the minister talked about in his National Press Club address and the access issues that we all experience in rural, regional and remote communities, I would have thought those additional 34 study hubs could all have been easily allocated to regional communities. I question whether saving a metropolitan student a train ride into town is quite the same as saving a regional student from relocating three or four hours, setting up accommodation somewhere in the order of $20,000 per year and then having to work part time to offset some of those costs for their family. I'd question whether the priorities are quite right in that regard. I think having 14 hubs in metropolitan suburbs is questionable at best. We could easily have used those full resources to increase the number of study hubs right across rural and regional Australia and deliver more benefits to those regional students.

As I said at the outset, I commend the minister. I think the minister has correctly identified some of the real challenges we face in terms of access to tertiary studies. I certainly offer him my support and feedback in good faith, and will very willingly work with him to achieve great outcomes on behalf of regional students not just in my seat of Gippsland but right across rural and regional Australia. This is an area of work where I think governments should be able to find a bipartisan approach which is in the interests of making sure every young Australian has every opportunity to achieve their full potential. I thank the House.

See this speech in context