Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the CWA in Western Australia, who recently marched on state parliament to protest against the $41 million of sweeping cuts to regional education. One of the most blatant and ill-conceived cuts is the cash grab of taking 20 per cent of funds from the Agricultural Education Farm Provisions Trust. Every year, year upon year, Labor is taking funding away from our agricultural colleges and the Esperance farm training school. These AEFPT funds are earned and generated by the colleges themselves from selling their own produce. The Harvey ag school in my electorate will lose at least $50,000 every single year, and these are the funds that the ag schools use for farm machinery, for developing the farms, for repairs and replacement of fences, the constant recurrent costs, as well as constant improvements in innovation that they need to provide quality education. Labor is cutting hundreds of thousands of dollars from these regional agricultural schools. There is no doubt that agriculture is critical to the WA economy, worth over $8.2 billion last year to the WA economy alone. Our future great young farmers need the best possible education with the most current innovation and training technologies, machinery, tools and trades equipment.