Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was fortunate to study law at the University of Western Australia, and more recently I've worked in a number of roles at UWA for more than a decade. I'm not from a wealthy family, I didn't attend a private school and I know the opportunity to go to university changed my life. That opportunity isn't available to many kids like me from places like Rockingham. We have to fight hard to get to university. A spot at uni and the money needed to get you through don't fall into the laps of kids from the outer suburbs and the regions—not like this born-to-rule mob on the other side of the House. Every one of the Prime Minister's Liberal Party cabinet ministers went to university, and it's the present crop of privileged Liberals that is responsible for the worst attacks we have ever seen on Australian universities. They want to pull up the drawbridge and keep the outer suburbs less educated.

Two great WA unis, Curtin Uni and Murdoch Uni, have just announced COVID restrictions, and government cuts mean hundreds of uni staff will be out of a job. That's hundreds of Western Australians thrown on the unemployment scrap heap in the middle of a public health and economic crisis—in the middle of a recession—and this government does not care. How do we know they don't care? Because they deliberately excluded the university sector from the JobKeeper scheme. They want to make it harder for young Australians to go to university because they don't care about young Australians. Well, young Australians are watching you, and they are not going to take this rubbish anymore from this rubbish Liberal government.