Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

If the member for McEwen had cared to wait and hear the answer, I was actually talking about theatre students from non-mainstream schooling who have been hurt by trauma and abuse and are finding their way back into higher education through the arts, in the member for Indi's electorate. If he had cared to be a little bit better mannered, he would have heard that that is what I was talking about. But unfortunately I expect very little from the member for McEwen.

To answer the member for Indi's question, I know that she cares very deeply about education, as the transformative nature of it can help kids like the ones from Highwater Theatre, but also young people across Australia, particularly in rural and regional areas, lift their qualifications and their opportunity to get better jobs and earn more income. In terms of the deregulation of fees, the tremendous opportunity presented by our reforms is to let universities make their own decisions about what they value the most in their institutions and what they believe they can charge higher fees for and also, in regional and rural areas, how to price their courses in order to compete with the institutions in the city.

The great thing about the Commonwealth scholarships fund is that each university will get the opportunity to make its own decisions about how to attract students through scholarships. So in a rural and regional area—as many of the coalition members who represent rural and regional areas would also be interested to know—they will be able to tailor their scholarships to what they think will most attract students, whether they are from the local area or whether they are from the city, to regional areas. They might decide to forgo tuition fees for those students. They might decide to help them with living expenses in order to move to rural and regional areas. They might decide to pay them relocation expenses. The reason why each institution will make its own decisions about fees and how to spend its Commonwealth scholarships, within the guidelines that the Commonwealth will develop through our working groups, is so that they can compete with suburban institutions. I see great opportunities for rural and regional institutions in our reforms.

I would also point out to the member that there have been some excellent articles written about this by rural and regional vice-chancellors or former vice-chancellors like Jim Barber, from the member for New England's electorate. He was the former Vice-Chancellor at UNE. In the Australian Financial Review just after the budget, he pointed out the opportunities that deregulation presented to rural and regional areas, and I would recommend it to her.

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