Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks, Senator Tyrrell. I'm glad you asked this, because this is an issue that so many younger Australians are facing when undertaking their university studies. We know that many university courses do require students to undertake a placement as part of their degree. The types of courses I'm particularly thinking about are nursing, teaching, social work and like courses.

The Universities Accord review that the government commissioned—which Minister Clare commissioned—made recommendations that we fund students to undertake those practice placements. That's exactly the recommendation we followed. I'm not aware of the accord review having recommended that the responsibility be put on universities in the way that you're suggesting. Really, in the end, the reason we have followed this recommendation is that what happens in practice is that students who, for instance, give up their part-time job or their full-time job in order to undertake that practice placement end up out of pocket. In many cases, that's deterring them from undertaking those courses. I'm sure you'll agree with us on this, Senator Tyrrell: Australia needs more people with more qualifications. We need more people with university degrees and we need more people with TAFE qualifications, because the jobs of the future, increasingly, are going to require formal qualifications like those. And we don't want to see a system going on that actually deters students from undertaking really important courses like nursing, teaching, social work et cetera simply because they can't afford to undertake that practical component.

I think this is a really great measure contained in this year's budget, and I commend Minister Clare for acting on that recommendation. I'm very confident that it will encourage more of those students to pursue those careers into the future.