SENATOR LOUISE PRATT

SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR UNIVERSITIES

SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR EQUALITY

SENATOR FOR WESTERN AUSTRALIA

MELLISA TEEDE

LABOR CANDIDATE FOR CANNING

LABOR WILL INVEST AN EXTRA $174 MILLION TO HELP ENSURE ALL AUSTRALIANS GET THE CHANCE TO STUDY AT UNIVERSITY

Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek has today announced that Labor will invest an extra $174 million to help ensure that students in rural and regional Australia have the opportunity to attend university.

Young people living in inner Perth are around three times more likely to have a university degree than those living in Mandurah. Just 14.7% of young people aged 25 to 34 years living in Mandurah have a bachelor degree or higher – that is less than half the national average.

Nine out of ten new jobs created in the coming years will need a university or TAFE qualification. Labor wants to ensure that Australia is a country with a strong economy and secure, decently paid jobs. That’s why, unlike the Liberals, we will make investment in education a top priority

Labor’s $174 million investment comes on top of our commitment to abolish Scott Morrison’s unfair cap on uni places. Abolishing the cap will see the number of Australians getting a uni education soar by around 200,000 over 12 years.

Late last year Scott Morrison and the Liberals cut $2.2 billion from unis by introducing an unfair cap on student places, which will see hundreds of thousands of Australians miss out on a uni place.

Canning is full of bright, talented students and Labor believes that it is their ability that should determine whether they go to university, not their bank balance.

BACKGROUND

Labor uncapped student places back in 2009, which by 2016 had seen an extra 220,000 students get the opportunity of a uni education.  Many of these students were the first in their family to attend uni.

When last in government, Labor also invested hundreds of millions of dollars to boost opportunity for uni study in communities where graduation rates were low.  

And it was starting to work.

Because of Labor’s policies by 2016:

• the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds was up by 55 per cent;
• Indigenous student numbers had jumped by 89 per cent;
• enrolments by students with a disability had more than doubled; and
• enrolments by students from country areas had grown by 48 per cent.

Scott Morrison and the Liberals put all this progress at risk when late last year they cut $2.2 billion from unis by introducing an unfair cap on student places.  These terrible policies will see hundreds of thousands Australians miss out on a uni place.