Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education. On Friday, the minister will address the Press Club on the crucial role of universities in producing job-ready graduates in the COVID-19 recovery. Tertiary admissions centres have reported a surge in applications, but some universities do not have places available to meet this demand. Will the minister consider funding more places for domestic students in areas with skills shortages, such as nursing and allied health, for instance, at the regional campuses of the La Trobe and Charles Sturt universities?

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for her question. The government is already providing additional places for regional and rural universities through our performance based funding. It's providing 1.3 per cent additional places across the board. We are also providing additional places through our short courses which have been taken up by regional and rural universities. As a matter of fact, I want to commend all regional and rural universities that have taken up the government's challenge to adopt the short courses. At the moment, we have 49 providers that are offering 321 courses in those priority areas that the member was talking about. Those priority areas are where we have skills shortages. So, when it comes to IT, when it comes to nursing, when it comes to counselling—something which has been incredibly important when it comes to the bushfires and we saw that we had a shortage of counsellors—when it comes to teachers, in all these areas we have been offering these short courses. The universities have offered them and students have taken them up.

Our hope, when they were announced on Easter Sunday, was that we would see 20,000 additional students take up these short courses, and we think we're on track to reach that number. So it shows that the demand is there. We want to keep working with the sector to make sure, especially in those areas where we know there are skills shortages, we will be able to provide those additional—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister will resume his seat for a second. The member for Indi on a point of order?

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's on relevance, Mr Speaker. I have asked: will the minister consider funding more places?

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Whilst the question did have a preamble, there was a specific element to it and I invite the minister to address himself to the question.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just so I'm very clear, they were additional places for those short courses. That's what I was talking about. When it comes to performance based funding, they are additional courses and so that is what I was talking about.

We're also offering additional courses through the regional university centres. As you know, we made a further announcement about those regional university centres last week—the nine new regional university centres. That takes to 25 the number of regional university centres now rolled out across the nation. Each one of those brings additional places with it. As the member knows, we're working with her community in Wangaratta to put in place a regional university centre there. Now we do know, due to the counter-cyclical nature of unemployment, that we're going to see additional demand come into the system over the coming months. I am in discussions with the university sector on this right now, seeing how we can work together with the additional demand that's going to come into the sector as a result of COVID-19 and the impact that it's had on the employment market, so that there people who want to go to higher education can go to higher education and those people who want to go to vocational education can do that. Hopefully, if we can keep the confidence in our economy, we can enable those people who want to go into the job market to go into the job market. (Time expired)