QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Mr CLARE (Blaxland—Minister for Education) (14:23): Can I thank my friend the cracking member for Calwell for his question. A big part of a lot of university degrees today is prac—practical on the job training—and it's all unpaid. You don't get paid for it, and, often, students have to give up their paid part-time job just to do it.
Sometimes, students have to end up paying rent in two places at once as well—paying rent where they normally live and paying rent a couple of hundred kilometres away where they've been sent to do their prac. That sometimes means students don't finish their course at all. That's why we created paid prac.
It started just over a year ago for teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students, and it's working. It's providing real cost-of-living help. I speak to a lot of students about what they use this for.
The most common answers I get are petrol and parking and something a bit more nutritious than two-minute noodles. Now, we're extending that to 10 more jobs that are on the front line of our health system—to physios, to psychologists, to occupational therapists, to speech pathologists, to pharmacists, to radiographers, to audiologists, to rehab therapists, to podiatrists and to paramedics.
These are the people who come to the rescue when we need them. These are the people who help you to learn to speak again after a stroke—people who help to get you back on your feet and get you back to work. These are the people who help to make Medicare work.
But, as we just heard from the Prime Minister, not everyone is a fan of it. The Liberal Party didn't have an education policy at the last election, but, two days before the election, they did release their costings. Guess what was buried inside that?
A plan to get rid of paid prac and, instead, just add that to your student debt. They had one education policy, and that was to increase student debt. We fundamentally disagree with that.
That's why we've cut student debt by 20 per cent. That's why we're expanding paid prac to 10 more areas on the front line of our health system to provide those people with real cost-of-living support, to make Medicare stronger and to help the Aussies that have signed up to do the jobs that help all of us. Mr Thompson interjecting— The SPEAKER: The member for Herbert is warned.