Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the motion from the member for Holt. The member understands, like so many on this side of the chamber, the transformational nature of education and the importance of improving access to university study. That's why the Albanese government is putting in place a range of reforms in response to the Australian Universities Accord to provide cost-of-living relief and make higher education better and fairer for students, including those from low socioeconomic status or disadvantaged backgrounds, particularly in regional and suburban areas. We're making good progress on priority actions from the accord interim report recommendations. This is really important in outer suburban and regional electorates like mine, where the percentage of the population with university qualifications is quite low.

Firstly, the Albanese government is helping the HELP system to be fairer by improving the way HELP indexation is calculated, wiping around $3 billion in student debt for more than three million Australians, including 22,000 people in my electorate. Secondly, we're introducing a Commonwealth prac payment system to support teaching, nursing—including midwifery—and social work students complete their university placements. The government is fully funding fee-free TAFE university-ready courses to help more students prepare for university and giving them the skills they need to get into the courses they want. We've guaranteed funding for student led organisations and committed to establishing an independent national student ombudsman to investigate student complaints and resolve disputes with universities. We've announced the first 10 regional university study hubs, and we've opened 14 applications for new suburban university study hubs. They build on the 34 existing regional university study hubs across the country, which supported almost 4,000 students last year.

Too often someone's postcode is a brick wall that's stopping them going to university, with the cost of moving close to a campus a major disincentive to study. The postcode you live in shouldn't be a barrier to getting a degree. The opportunity is life-changing for outer suburban communities like mine in Ipswich. Today almost one in two young people in their 20s and 30s have university degrees, but not in my electorate. This has to change because, in the decade ahead, more and more jobs will require TAFE or university qualifications. That means we're going to need more people to get those qualifications—more people getting degrees, more people completing TAFE and more people in the workforce upskilling and reskilling. These community driven spaces located in outer metropolitan and periurban areas with low tertiary education participation need help. We provide convenient wraparound support targeted at underrepresented and educationally disadvantaged students who face barriers to accessing tertiary education and who would otherwise need to travel long distances to get to and from an inner-city campus. The evidence is that, where university study hubs are, university participation goes up.

I was the first person in my family to attend university. I want young people in Ipswich and the Somerset Region to get the same opportunities that I did. This is one way to do that—by providing higher education closer to students. I'm excited the Albanese government is doing this, and I'm very keen to see one or more suburban university study hubs established in my electorate to make it easier for young people in our community to get a degree. To that end, I've been engaging with a range of local community organisations to gauge their interest in hosting a hub. Last Friday I attended a round table at the Ipswich campus of the University of Southern Queensland attended by representatives not just from that university but from Griffith University and councils across the southern part of South-East Queensland and a number of other stakeholders looking to establish a network coordinating hub sites in Ipswich, Logan and south-west Brisbane.

I'm hopeful that we see a strong proposal coming out of these discussions for a South-East Queensland south-west study hub. This hub could raise awareness and improve and advance student engagement, including preparedness, participation and engagement with academic pursuits. The government has an ambitious and big agenda when it comes to higher education reform, and we've set an overall tertiary education attainment target of 80 per cent of working-age people by 2050. We've estimated that, if the broader accord targets are achieved, $240 billion will be added to the economy over the period to 2050. This is about building a better and fairer education system for every Australian. It's about social justice, equality of opportunity and a fair go for young people and people who want to reskill in my electorate.

See this speech in context