Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2026-2027

Ms TEESDALE (Bass) (17:15): In 14 years of teaching, I never once met a child who dreamed of failing. I never met a student who wanted to struggle with reading or a young person who genuinely aspired to be unemployed. I met students with enormous potential, and here is the truth I witnessed in every classroom I've ever stood in: talent is universal, but opportunity is not.

I've always believed that education is one of the most powerful things the government can invest in but, for too long, governments have treated education as a collection of separate systems—child care over there, schools over here, TAFE somewhere else if it's being supported at all and universities somewhere else again. What I'm proud of is that this government has taken a different approach.

We've recognised that education is not something that happens for a few years at the beginning of a person's life. Education is a lifelong journey. For perhaps the first time in Australia's history, we're investing right across that journey, and that's a big reform agenda.

It is ambitious. We know that some of the most important learning a child will ever do happens in the first five years. They are absolutely integral.

That's why we're building a universal early education system. Through our three-day guarantee, every child can access three days of subsidised early childhood education and care every week. A local Bass family recently told me that this policy has saved them hundreds of dollars a week.

That is the difference that affordable childcare can make. We've also invested in the workforce through a 15 per cent pay rise for early childhood educators, and we're strengthening safety and accountability across the sector. But that opportunity cannot stop when that kid leaves child care and first walks through the school gates, so we're delivering the biggest new investment in Australian public education ever.

For too long public schools were left short of the funding they needed. I remember working in Ramingining, a remote community in Arnhem Land, during a period when remote public schools were losing funding dramatically. I bought puzzles.

I bought learning resources to help fill the classroom. But it was not just those hands-on manipulatives and resources that teachers desperately needed. It was the assistant teachers who spoke Yolngu Matha and helped us to better support our students and understand them.

It was access to psychologists, speech and occupational therapists so we could actually meet those needs. It was funding for breakfast, recess and lunch. It was staff to prepare those meals.

It was being able to fly in an electrician and a plumber when things broke down, because, even though our principal tried her very best, you can't solve every infrastructure problem in a remote community with a wrench and a determined attitude. None of these are luxuries. They're the basic building blocks of a quality education, and that's what this money is actually for.

It's not just a line in a budget. It's the assistant teacher who can speak a child's language, the therapist who can support a child who's falling behind and that meal that can help a kid focus in class. This is why our Better and Fairer Schools Agreement matters.

Nationally, it's an additional $20 billion for public schools over the next decade. The same principle will be applied beyond school. We know that too many Australians have often been told that university was available to them but they graduated carrying a debt that continued to grow year after year.

We've taken action on that. More than 20 per cent has been taken off our debt, which has benefited 10,500 people in Bass, which is huge. We've made the repayments fairer and we're supporting students undertaking placements in teaching nursing, midwifery and social work through the prac placement.

I had people actually choosing between completing their study and paying the bills, and that's not OK. We have not forgotten regional Australia. We've not forgotten regional students.

Challenge has never been the problem for them; it's been access, distance and cost. That's why the study hubs are being bringing tertiary education closer to where people live. We're investing in those regional pathways.

This semester our government has started end-to-end medical training right in the heart of Launceston for the first time ever, and I've met some of the students undertaking this course. One conversation has stayed with me. A student told me that if this opportunity did not exist in Launceston, they never would have applied to study medicine.

They didn't lack the ambition, they didn't lack the ability, it was simply that they couldn't afford to leave home. So think about that. That's a future doctor, a talented young person with skills and determination who will serve our community long term who we could have lost due to geography and cost.

Instead, they're studying medicine in Northern Tasmania, and they want to stay there. We are making sure an individual's future is determined by their potential and not their postcode. A person's ambition should not be limited by cost or by lack of educational opportunities, because when we invest in education we invest in people.

And when we invest in people, we're investing in Australia's future.