ANTHONY CHISHOLM:
Thanks, Mayor and it’s a real honour to be here today. And I wanted to thank the Mayor and your team for bringing us all probably a bit earlier than you anticipated. And we really appreciate the work that you’ve gone into to do this as well. Thanks, Duncan. Good to see you again. We often meet at various locations around. I think Cooktown was the last one we’re in. But appreciate your visit and the work that you’ve done to help the councils here get this to where it is, and also thank all the mayors that are in attendance as well. I think this is going to be something that’s significant for all those towns. I had to have the list with me to name them all, so Longreach, Barcaldine and Blackall, Winton, Boulia, Bedourie, Birdsville and Jundah.
So, this is going to be a real game changer for those communities as well. I wanted to acknowledge Peter Britton as well, who’s up the back there, who I know has been supportive through his ownership of this centre as well. So, thanks Peter for supporting this. And also to Liza as well, because I have the opportunity to visit a lot of these centres around the country and those people that are employed to help operate the centre make a tremendous difference. And I’m confident that Liza will be able to provide that service here and provide that support to students as well.
It’s hard to sort of top Duncan because he’s very evangelical when it comes to these centres, but I too, am very passionate about it. And like Duncan, I’ve had the opportunity to visit a lot of them and see the difference they’re already making in towns like Longreach. And for me, there’s the focus on that future workforce and thinking about that next nurse or that next teacher, they’re already living here, but they’re actually going to get the opportunity to stay and study here and then go on and be in that workforce. And if you think about that for all the towns across western Queensland, that’s going to be a really significant thing. And if we know that if they stay and study in town, they’re much more likely to stay here and work afterwards and that’s something that will be really important for local communities.
I think the other thing it does is it ensures that if someone’s thinking about moving to one of these towns, maybe their partner is coming to work, or it’s not a barrier if they’re already studying because they know they can come, they’re going to have a great facility here or in one of the other towns and they can continue that study that they’ve already started. And if you’re a young person in high school, and I think one of the great things that these centres do is they do that outreach into the schools in the area, you can actually be excited about studying and staying with your family and caregivers in your local community. So, I think for those people who may be moving away might be a bridge too far, that ability to stay and study here for young people, I think would be really significant.
The other thing that I love about these centres, and I was reminiscing about this on the flight out here this morning, is that you can often meet friends at university as well. And Jim and I met at day one of university in Brisbane about 29 years ago and have been friends ever since. So, it’s really special for us to think that we got that opportunity to be the first in family to study, that we’re going to expand that opportunity for people in rural and regional Queensland and out west is significant. So, it’s a real honour for me to be here, I acknowledge the work of the councils and Duncan and everyone that’s put an effort into setting up these centres. Really pleased that the federal government can provide that support. But what I’m most excited about is the opportunity it’s going to provide for people who live in this part of the world to obtain a higher education degree and then go and contribute to their local community as a result of that. So, well done everyone.
TONY RAYNER:
Thanks very much, Senator Chisholm and again, thank you for your great advocacy for regional Queensland. Senator Chisholm is the Labor Senator for Queensland. He’s been a strong advocate for the bush and this is evidence of the difference that good partnerships and relationships make. So, thank you very much. Folks, can you join with me in a big round of applause as we welcome the federal Treasurer of Australia, the Honourable Jim Chalmers MP.
JIM CHALMERS:
Thanks very much, Mayor Rayner. You’re always so kind to us when we come to town. It’s such a warm and welcoming place and so we really appreciate that. Tony picked us up from the airport this morning and we’ve been round the ABC and having a coffee and trying to work out whether Tony knows the name of every single person in this town or just 99 per cent of the people in this town that we ran into on the main street of Longreach.
We love being here and we love supporting Western Queensland and all of its wonderful towns and communities and industries and we say that as Queenslanders. We take our responsibilities to regional Queensland in particular very seriously and one of the things that makes that easier to represent you as best we can, is the wonderful relationships that we have with the mayors and the local governments in this part of the world. And here I pay tribute to Anthony for the effort that he puts into making sure that he gets around to all of these towns and interacts with all of the mayors and local governments represented here today. And I wanted to say to all the mayors and deputy mayors and representatives of the councils from the Central West and maybe further afield, just how much we appreciate you making the effort to be here as well. It really means a lot to us because it’s a very proud day.
And we’re very proud to be committing $67 million to these university hubs, about 46 of them, I think, nationwide. But this one’s going to be an absolute beauty. And one of the reasons for that is because even with all of the good work from Anthony and from Jason Clare, the Education Minister, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, even with all of that commitment and all of that investment, one of the things that makes me really confident about this one is that we’re not starting completely from scratch.
Here I want to pay tribute to Duncan Taylor for his vision and his commitment to country university centres and for the work that so many of you here have done to make sure that when the investment flows from the Albanese Labor government at a Commonwealth level, we’re working with people who know what they’re talking about, who have a record of achievement and commitment and they’ve demonstrated that over and over again. And here I wondered if you wouldn’t mind putting your hands together for Duncan for his vision and his commitment. It would be the easiest thing in the world to just knock around in that beautiful farm of his in the Monaro and not make a contribution to education in Central West Queensland and around Australia. So, Duncan, we really appreciate it. Thank you for all of your work that you’ve put into, and everyone here who’s put work into making this I’m sure going to be one of the best of the university hubs because of the work and the thinking and the commitment that you’ve already shown to it.
There’s a lot of details that we could run through, but really today is an act of investment, but it’s also an act of faith, it’s an act of belief. And what I mean by that is that we believe that if we genuinely want this country to be a land of opportunity we can’t just generate those opportunities in 2 or 3 or 4 big cities south of here and east of here. If we genuinely want our national economy to be strong, we need our regional and local communities to be strong and we need to be generating opportunities in every single part of Australia. We have no shortage of challenges, economic and otherwise, and we don’t have a person to waste. And so we want to make sure that we’re investing in local communities here in Longreach and in all of the councils represented here, because we want to be generating opportunities not just in Brisbane or Sydney or Melbourne or Adelaide or Perth, but we want to make sure that people who grow up in wonderful communities like this can access a great education, which means that they can get rewarding and well‑paid jobs. And not because we think university is for everyone, or maybe TAFE’s not for everyone, we want to make sure we’re generating opportunities for everybody, no matter what their interests are.
But we also need to recognise that over the coming decades, more and more jobs will require a tertiary qualification. That’s why we’re making TAFE free. I think 19,000 people are doing fee‑free TAFE just in agriculture right now, something like that. But also this investment in universities is recognising that more and more jobs into the future will require more and more qualifications. And so we want to make sure that those qualifications and opportunities are generated here in Longreach and in the towns represented here as well.
I finish really by just by saying thank you for the opportunity to be part of something wonderful here. We look forward to coming back again and again and again and checking on the progress that is being made here, whether in Western Queensland or Western Sydney or Western Australia people need and deserve access to a wonderful education. We want to make sure that people don’t have to leave town to get it. And that’s what today is all about. So, Tony and Duncan and all of the crew here. It is a really, really proud day and we are grateful, Anthony and I and the other Anthony, Prime Minister Albanese, are very grateful for all your work and for the opportunity to play a role in something that I’m convinced will be a really wonderful contribution here. Thanks very much.