Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education. I remind the minister that staff at the University of Tasmania received two significant awards in the Australian Awards for University Teaching last year. What is the government doing to support the University of Tasmania?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bass for his question about higher education in Tasmania. I can report to him that since this government was elected we have approved $12 million in research grants to the University of Tasmania. We have approved $13 million for industrial transformation training centres. We have expanded the UTAS nursing school. We have expanded its Pathway to Success program and we have approved $26 million for the integrated marine observing system.

Ms Butler interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Griffith will remove herself under 94(a).

The member for Griffith then left the chamber.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So we have strongly supported the University of Tasmania because we believe that higher education is the kind of future sector that can strongly support a bustling, growing economy in Tasmania. By contrast, Labor imposed the $2,000 cap on tax deductibility for self-education expenses, hurting nurses and teachers and public servants and others in the process. We scrapped the cap because we saw that the opportunity for higher education is to transform people's lives and the economies in places like Tasmania.

The coalition believe that higher education represents a very bright future for Tasmania, and if on 15 March a Hodgman-led Liberal Party are elected to government in Tasmania they will share that vision for supporting transformative industries like higher education in Tasmania for the future. It is certainly time for Tasmanians to understand that there is no future in another Labor-Green alliance at Salamanca Place in Hobart. There is no future to be found in Tasmania in the vision that Labor and the Greens have of thatch-roofed houses in cosy hamlets with a blueberry led recovery of the Tasmanian economy. That is what the Greens and Labor are offering: the blueberry-led recovery. We love blueberries—they are particularly good for you as an antioxidant—but I am not sure they will replace mining and forestry and higher education in Tasmania.

So I say to the Tasmanian voters: if you want a bright future for Tasmania, vote for a party that is going to support a future economy that is real in that state. Universities can help lead that recovery, along with forestry and mining, and the future for Tasmania is not going to be found in a Greens-Labor alliance in thatched-roof houses with swirling smoke coming out of their chimneys in lovely hamlets like the shire out of The Lord of the Rings. Tasmanians need to vote for an economy that is real and that will create jobs. A Hodgman-led Liberal government will give it to them.