MOTIONS

Mr BOYCE (Flynn) (16:52): While I support the Commonwealth prac payment and its intent, the reality is that there are students in my electorate of Flynn who will not be able to access it. These are the students who are choosing the vocations that Flynn desperately needs our young people to study and succeed in. We need nurses and teachers.

We need midwives to help return birthing clinics and maternity services to our regions. We need allied health professionals who want to live in our regional areas, become part of our communities and raise their families there. There is something special about a student who grows up in a regional community.

They understand it, and they know what it means to live hours from a major hospital. They know what it means when a local service cannot find the professional that it needs. And they know that their communities support their education and they want to see them succeed.

Many of them want to come home. They want to bring their skills back to the towns that raised them. That doesn't just fill a vacancy; it strengthens the same community.

It gives the next generation someone to look up to and say, 'I can do that too, and I will do it here.' I heard about this issue from Grace, who is studying nursing and wants to go on to become a midwife. Grace is training for a profession our regional communities desperately need. But, when she undertakes her compulsory placements, the cost of everyday life does not stop.

She still needs to pay her rent, she still needs to put fuel in her car and she still needs to buy her food. She will need to travel significant distances to complete each placement and potentially pay for accommodation away from home. Like many students, she may need to continue working wherever she can just to support herself.

This is where the reality of regional education matters. For many students from Flynn, a placement is not just a trip across town. It means hours on the road, time away from home, additional accommodation costs and loss of income from paid employment.

The Commonwealth prac payment recognises that these mandatory places can often create a financial barrier to these students completing their studies. We need to make sure that these students facing that barrier are not the ones who fall through the cracks, because a regional student should not have to choose between completing a qualification their community needs and being able to pay their bills.

I welcome the government's recent expansion of Commonwealth prac payments to additional allied health professions. That is a positive step. But for regional Australia the question is: have we gone far enough—and we should go further—and why does this expansion not include GPs?

Our regional GPs are already struggling with a lack of support as they age. The pipeline of medical doctors does not reach the regions, and our more senior GPs have been raising this issue for decades. This is not a new issue.

There are many GPs in their 70s who are still serving their communities long past what most people would consider a reasonable retirement age. The Commonwealth prac payment must help support the next generation of GPs. It should include specialists like optometrists and even veterinary students.

These are services that regions like Flynn are desperate for, and this Labor government needs to recognise this by supporting their inclusion. Practical hands-on placements are an essential component of these occupations. It gives students real-time exposure to the role and the opportunity to work with mentors and form relationships and networks in these industries before they graduate.

We need policies that recognise the additional costs that regional students will face, particularly when their compulsory places take them away from home. This is about more than just a payment. If a young person has the ambition to study, the determination to work and the commitment to return home to a regional community, government policy should be helping them across the finish line and not putting other hurdles in their way.

We need to make sure our young people can finish their training, return to the regions and help build the future of the communities they already call home. We should not have to import these skills. We should be growing our own skills here in the regions.

We should be bringing these qualifications home, and we need to put Australians first. We need to support our regional students to achieve tertiary education outcomes and, in turn, bring a better and brighter future to regional Australia.