Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I will take up this opportunity as a right of reply to thank Senator Sheldon for his support for the workers in universities. It actually says a lot about this Liberal-National government that they can't even stand up and justify their stance on why they are not supporting university workers. That's because they do not have a justification.

But today we do have an opportunity to begin righting the wrong of higher education's exclusion from the JobKeeper program and the government's failure to support the sector, its staff and students through this crisis. It is an opportunity to staunch the wound that this government's malice for public tertiary education has inflicted on our response to this crisis and our future.

Whether or not this motion succeeds, we will continue our efforts to support every worker in this country through this crisis and beyond. We will continue to fight the myopic neoliberal corporatism that those opposite us time and again use to weaken public institutions and the communities they are part of. We will continue to offer a vision of education in this country that is accorded the value it deserves with the resources and the security of work necessary to build the socially, economically and environmentally just future this crisis has shown we so desperately need. I want every worker in universities, in education or otherwise to know that the Greens are with them in their struggle. We know and we deplore the precarity the government would have you live in. We are doing everything we can to see this end.