Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bradfield for his sudden interest in the universities sector, because it was wanting for the time they were in government. Let us take a trip down memory lane to when we had COVID and those opposite introduced JobKeeper to help keep the economy afloat. Which was the sector they ignored during that entire period? It was the universities sector. They changed the rules for JobKeeper not once, not twice but three times to deny JobKeeper to the universities sector. What did that mean? It meant that that sector suffered the biggest job loss it had ever seen—estimates of about 12,000 jobs lost in that sector because those opposite refused to provide support. They provided support to Harvey Norman, yes, but not to the universities sector. And now they have truly just discovered the importance of the universities sector. I do welcome this new discovery, because the only way they ever discover the universities sector is when they want to interfere with research grants. That's the only time they show any interest. So, I welcome the fact that they are showing interest today.

The universities sector is something that all of us on this side of the House are very interested in. I know that the Minister for Education is very interested in it, and I got to visit the Australian Catholic University's Strathfield campus in my electorate with the Minister for Education and the Assistant Minister for Health, Ged Kearney. We got to meet with some fantastic students who are studying teaching, nursing, midwifery, and social work. When I got to sit around the table and have chats with them, so many of them had incredible stories about why there were studying these degrees.

One student who was studying social work told me the reason she wanted to study social work was that she and her mother had experienced really difficult forms of domestic violence and there was a social worker who came into their lives and helped make it better, and she wanted to do that for others. I met a mother of three kids who was retraining to become a nurse because she had had such great care when she had a really awful miscarriage. She wanted to be able to go on and give other people that type of care. I spoke to a young man who had an affinity with Indigenous Australians, and he wanted to work with young Indigenous Australians so that they could reach their full potential. They all had amazing stories about why they had chosen these career paths.

One thing none of these students spoke about was money. None of them spoke about having high-flying, high-paying jobs. They did it for the love of it. What they did talk to me about was how challenging it was trying to complete their mandatory prac placements. Many of them were having to complete 1,000 hours, sometimes up to 1,600 hours, of mandatory prac placement, along with their part-time work and their study. Some of them were at breaking point. One young student who was studying teaching told me about how he worked on the weekends in his local butcher and when he was doing his mandatory prac placement at a school there was a period when he had to work seven days a week for seven weeks, and he was exhausted. By the end of it he almost thought of just giving it all up. He told me some of his friends did just give up their teaching degrees. We don't want them to do this. We want these people who are committed, who want to make a difference, who want to help future generations to continue with these degrees.

So I'm so proud of this government's commitment to helping provide income support to these students during their mandatory prac placements so that they can concentrate on learning those valuable skills when they're out in the classroom or in the hospital and that they can complete their degrees and go on to become the great nurses, teachers, midwives and social workers that we desperately need in this country. This is a change that is going to make a difference to those people's lives and to the lives of so many in this country.

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