Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government recently announced a new policy on the funding of university education, so I want to take this opportunity to talk about my region in terms of university education so that we can have a debate about this really important matter, based on where we are right now. When I was first elected back in 2004, I was pretty shocked to learn that our university attainment rate in western Sydney was just over half the rest of Greater Sydney as our kids enrolled at just half the rate of the rest. That's not good enough. The Rudd government funded a number of programs that allowed the university to reach out and those programs have continued to be funded under this government. Our attainment rate is now about two-thirds of Greater Sydney, so it has improved, but it's still nowhere near good enough. We have a long way to go.

So I want to give the government a bit of a heads up on what my community is going to say if that continual improvement is not allowed to continue. There is a lot of detail in the policy, so we will be working through it in the months ahead. I want to give them a heads up that attainment rates in Western Sydney are nowhere near good enough. The 22 per cent Western Sydney wide is really good compared to some other areas. In the electorate of Fowler, around Cabramatta, it is 12.7 per cent, compared to 37 per cent in Greater Sydney. In Lindsay, around Penrith, it's 13.5 per cent. In Macarthur—Campbelltown and Camden—it's 14.4 per cent. In McMahon, around Prospect, it's 14.5 per cent. In Werriwa, around Liverpool, it's 15.2 per cent, compared to 37.4 per cent in the Greater Sydney region.

These are appalling numbers. They are improving, but we have a long way to go. Population growth in Western Sydney is one of the highest in the country. We are expected to grow about 25 per cent in the next 15 to 25 years—enormous growth. Yet the areas where our campuses are based are considered to be low growth, so we get a lower indexation than Western Sydney as a whole because of where our campuses are positioned. But when you realise that the University of Western Sydney is still a young university, of course it's building its campuses in the Parramatta CBD and the Bankstown CBD, where the train lines are. If it was 100 years old, it would probably be building them in different places. But let's not let the sensible decisions of the university impact on its funding levels in the way we expect that it will.

There is also the demographics. The University of Western Sydney has one of the highest levels of low-SES enrolments in the country: 28.6 per cent compared to 1.5 per cent low-SES in the rest of Sydney. We have 1.6 per cent refugees, compared to 0.5 per cent of the rest of Sydney. We have one of the highest first-in-family enrolment rates in the country. We all know how important it is to get that first person enrolled. I urge the government to have a really good look when they make their final decisions on this policy at how Western Sydney is faring. We have a long way to go.