QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Mr CLARE (Blaxland—Minister for Education) (14:47): I thank the member for Fowler for her question. That university study hub at Fairfield is very important. It brings university closer to where people in our community live and makes it easier for people to go to university and get an education.

When that hub expands, in a couple of weeks time, it will mean that you will be able to study for almost any degree at almost any university across the country. It's one of about 69 university study hubs that are either established now or will be established over the next few months across the country. We've doubled or are doubling the number in the bush and in the regions, but, for the first time ever, we're establishing these hubs in the outer suburbs of our big cities.

Fairfield is an example of that, but one will be established in Liverpool, in your electorate, in the first week of December, as well. We do that for a reason. As you know, and as many members know, I grew up in your electorate—one of the best parts of the country—and went to school there.

I went to high school there. I'm the first person in my family to finish high school, to finish year 10. For a lot of the people that I went to school with and grew up with—I'm sure the same is true for you, and I know the same is true for my friend Chris Bowen, who's over here as well—university seemed like it was somewhere else, for someone else.

There was this invisible barrier that stopped a lot of people from going to university. We've got to break down that barrier, and this is all about doing that, making sure that more people can go to university, or, if they're going to university in the city, that they can study closer to home. So that's what that is about.

I'm very, very proud that we're doing that, but it's not just that. The reforms that I'll implement in the parliament next year are about making sure that we provide more funding for more people from communities like ours to get to university and to succeed when they get there. That involves investing in a demand driven system for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, because the truth is that, even though this country has changed in remarkable ways—to the point where, over my own lifetime, the number of people with a university degree has changed from barely two per cent to now almost one in two young people in their 20s and 30s—it's not true where I grew up.

It's not true in many of the communities in Western Sydney, and I want to change that. That's what the reforms that I'll introduce next year are about—a demand driven system to provide more support for more people from our communities to go to university and needs based funding to support them while they're at university to get the degree, to transform their lives, because a good education changes the lives of people in our community and a good education system can change this nation.

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