Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

As I make my contribution to the debate on the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill 2014 I am very pleased to see students from Griffith East Public School present in the gallery. This legislation is going to affect them. It is going to give them a more sustainable higher education system that they will benefit from. Griffith has a special place in my heart. My daughter, Georgina, teaches at Griffith High School. She is certainly helping to churn out some very good students who hopefully will go on to tertiary degrees. If they choose to get a trade certificate, they will also benefit from some of the reforms that this government is bringing in to help kids who choose not to go on to higher education but to go a different pathway and into a trade.

Certainly as far as higher education is concerned and certainly for the kids from Griffith East Public School, I am sure that the reforms we are hoping to get through the parliament will make a significant change to their lives, for the better. I am pleased that the member for Hunter has also taken the time and trouble to join me in the chamber, as he promised earlier, because he is a good man and he keeps his word I am sure on most things. I would like to tell the member for Hunter that by placing university funding on a sustainable footing, expanding opportunities for more students and freeing universities to compete, the government is securing the future of higher education in Australia. Labor cut more than $3 billion from higher education in just their last year of office, including Labor cuts to higher education—

Ms Kate Ellis interjecting—

I hear the member for Adelaide. She will agree with me that they are now blocking in the Senate and now they are vowing to stand in the way of higher education reforms which higher education leaders overwhelmingly believe are necessary. The Leader of the Opposition and member for Maribyrnong, Labor and the unions are not only hypocrites but they are blocking supported access to higher education for 80,000 more Australians, but they have no plan for tertiary education. Meanwhile the government, this side, is getting on with the job of giving Australia the very best higher education system in the world. We have to because it is one of our highest export earners.

This bill will deliver the fundamental and historical reforms to change the higher education sector for the better. This is the biggest reform in higher education for well over 40 years and it is reform called for by the tertiary education sector. There are many elements within this reform bill which will bring significant benefits to universities and to students right across the country, including to Griffith East Public School. However, I would like to contribute to this debate by discussing the impact of this bill, particularly in rural and regional communities such as those in my electorate of the Riverina. Arguably, rural and regional Australians have the most to gain from the government's higher education reforms. Under this government, funding for higher education is increasing, including the total Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding for student places and regional loadings.

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