Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to speak on matters of education. We in the Labor Party know just how important our education system is. It is one of the foundations of our amazing country, and that's why I am so proud to be part of a government that is fully committed to supporting our education system to provide quality, accessible education to all Australians, not just some. From early childhood education to primary, secondary and tertiary education, Labor is committed to investing—investing in the future of our children and the future of this country.

Education starts in early childhood, and already the Albanese Labor government has delivered cheaper child care and a 15 per cent pay rise for early childhood educators. Just this week, we've introduced legislation for three days of guaranteed early childhood education. This means an extra 100,000 families will have access to subsidised care, and these are the children who really need it—who need that support, that assistance and that leg-up early on in their education career.

In my wonderful home state of South Australia, we move on from early childhood education into our primary and secondary education systems. The Albanese government has, alongside the Malinauskas government, signed a historic schools funding agreement to fully and fairly fund all South Australian public schools. This is a very exciting moment, and the teachers and parents I have spoken to in South Australia are delighted that, after such a long time, we finally see the full tote odds of the Gonski reforms coming to bear. This is really great news, because quality education shouldn't be about having a price tag; it should be quality education for every child, regardless of their postcode, regardless of their circumstances and regardless of how much money their parents or their caregivers may have in their pockets.

Under Labor, access to postschool education has become so much easier as well. Fee-free TAFE, which came about in January 2023, has so far netted us 508,000 enrolments. That's an enormous number of people across this country for whom that form of education was probably not accessible before but now is, and that is something that I am deeply, deeply proud of.

But one thing that really bothers me is that the coalition have been very clear over the last year or so that they don't support it. They believe that, if you don't pay for it, you don't value it. That is absolutely not what I hear when I speak to the students who've enrolled in those courses. What we see on the other side of this chamber are people with an ideological driver that's just cemented on the idea that those without money shouldn't have the same right to be educated as those with it, and that is shameful, in my opinion. We've even heard the Liberal deputy leader, Sussan Ley, say that, if you don't pay for something, you don't value it. I just don't understand how you can come to that conclusion.

Anyway, moving away from that, we then go on to the university system. If students make the choice to undertake a university degree it can sometimes be really difficult if they have to move away because it's too far to commute. For those students it can be really difficult to leave their family and their community behind. Also, the financial impact of that can be really, really challenging. That's why Labor has developed 56 regional university study hubs all over the country. I visited a couple in the Upper Spencer Gulf and across the great seat of Grey, and they are doing spectacular things with all sorts of universities from around the country, delivering those services and supporting students right there in Port Pirie, in Whyalla, in Port Augusta and over towards Ceduna and Port Lincoln. These are great, great services.

From the early days of childhood education to reception, primary, secondary and tertiary education of all sorts—from vocational to university—Labor's got your back. We are building the foundations of decent education, proper education and accessible education across the country. (Time expired)