Press conference - Sorell, Tasmania

REBECCA WHITE: Very proud to have the Minister for Education, Jason Clare, here in Tasmania in Sorell where he’s officially opening the Sorell Study Hub. 

This is a Federal Government commitment that is about making sure no matter where you live, whether in a regional part of Tassie, like we are in Sorell, you can access higher education. 

University can sometimes be seen as something that happens in cities, and this is about making sure that you can study in your local community and access the services and supports so you can get a qualification, whether it be a VET qualification or a university qualification, so that you can have a great career. 

As someone who grew up in this community, I’m really proud of this investment because I know what a significant difference it will make. We’ve got a fantastic high school in our community, but the pathway from there means a lot of people have to travel into the city to continue if they want to have a higher education qualification. This is going to make a massive difference. And already 20 people are using the study hub with plans for 200 people to be able to use it when it’s fully up and operational by 2027. 

This is a gamechanger for students in our community to access higher education, and I’m very proud that the federal Labor government is investing in our young people and investing in people who want a second career and making it easier for them to do that. 

I’m going to pass across to the Minister to say a few more words. 

JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: Thanks very much, Bec. Well, this is all about making it easier for more people to get a crack at going to university.

In the years ahead more jobs are going to require either a TAFE qualification or a university degree, and this will make it easier for more people in Sorell and in the local area to be able to get those qualifications right here without having to go into Hobart. 

Across the country almost 50 per cent of young people have a university degree. But that’s not the case everywhere. It’s not the case in the outer suburbs of our big cities or in our regions. It’s not the case, where it’s about 28 per cent. And in the years ahead more and more jobs are going to require those sorts of skills and qualifications. We think that probably by 2050 80 per cent of the whole workforce across the country will need either a TAFE qualification or a university degree. And we don’t want any part of the country to miss out on that. And that’s why it’s important to bring university closer to where more people live. 

And that’s what this is all about. I grew up in a part of Western Sydney that was about an hour away from the CBD, and I grew up thinking that university was somewhere else for someone else, that it was in the city for kids who live near the city and it wasn’t for my local community. And a lot of my mates never went to university for just that reason – it was just too hard, it was too far away. 

If you bring university closer to where people live, it makes it easier for people to think, “Hey, hang on, I can do a degree or I can do a TAFE qualification here.” It saves you time. It can save you 40 minutes or more getting into the city there and 40 minutes getting back. It can save you money, too, because you’re spending less money on petrol. It makes it easier to get to the part-time job. It makes it easier to drop the kids off at child care or at school and then come here and use a couple of hours here to do the study that you need to get the qualifications. 

It's not just a building. This also has people in here that can help you and give you the support that you need not just to start a course but to finish a course. A bit of mentoring help, a bit of IT support. Talking with other students also makes studying easier as well, and there’ll be a bunch of other people here to help you as well so that you’re not just starting a degree.

You’re finishing it here as well. 

JOURNALIST: So, a study hub, that’s bringing university closer to people, but it’s just a study room. You say there’s the benefits. Do you think this is going to get people across the line in Sorell into courses? 

CLARE: We know it does, because this isn’t something that hasn’t existed before. We’ve got study hubs across the country already. When we came to government there were about 30-odd. We’re doubling that number across the country. They’ve existed in the regions for a long time. This is the first time that we’re setting them up in the outer suburbs of our big cities. And where these hubs exist, we see more people start a uni degree and more people finish a uni degree than they did before the hubs were there. And that’s because it makes it easier to study closer to home. 

JOURNALIST: Can you unpack for us exactly what a study hub is for our viewers that maybe, you know, haven’t heard of one before?

CLARE: The cameras will do the hard work for us in a minute when you go in and have a look around. But it’s more than just desks and computers; it’s people to help you study, to help you learn and to help you complete your degree. You’re going to see not just areas where people can sit down and work but also areas where there’s meeting rooms where you can sit down and work with other students, where there’s the capacity to dial into lectures that might be happening in Hobart or to do your exams here as well. Really, the secret sauce here is the people. It's being able to talk to the mentors, talk to the people who run the centre to help you when things get tough. 

And there’s always going to be times when you’re studying for a three or a four-year degree, or even if it’s a short course, where you think this is a bit too hard and I can’t keep going. And the people here, the students and the mentors, are there to help you through. 

JOURNALIST: The first study hub in the outer suburbs. What’s the hypothesis there? Being 20 to 30 minutes from UTAS Sandy Bay, how much of a difference does that make? 

CLARE: This is the sort of difference it can make – it can turn 25 or 30 minutes into 5 minutes. If that’s going to save you a half an hour in the morning and a half an hour in the afternoon, that makes it easier for you to get to a part-time job or to drop off the kids at school or to spend that extra hour here studying. That can sometimes be the difference in people thinking, “Hey, I could do a degree here.” And so it removes that obstacle that might be in people’s minds that university is for someone else. 

JOURNALIST: Is this kind of a guinea pig? Like, would you be thinking about more outer suburbs study hubs elsewhere? 

CLARE: What I’m hoping is that Bec says to me, “It’s too small and we need to make it bigger because there’s so many people benefitting from it.” That’s the challenge I want.

I want people like Bec but people who represent the suburban study hubs that we’re setting up in Western Sydney and in the northern suburbs of Melbourne in the western suburbs of Brisbane to tell me the same thing – that these things are working, that they’re helping people in the local community to start a degree and they are also helping them to finish a degree and that we need more of them. 

JOURNALIST: This particular hub here I know has been in the works for a long time for the community of Sorell. How much input has the Federal Government had along the way, because I know it’s been, you know, quite a process to get it up and running. 

CLARE: I might get Bec to add to this, but really this is a team effort. Council has done a great job and been a champion for education and raising aspiration in the local community. 

BEST organisation are running the centre and put in the bid to help make the case for why a hub should be here at Sorell. And then there’s the investment that the Commonwealth government is making – millions of dollars to help operate the centre and employ the people that are here. So it’s a team effort. You’ve got local government, federal government, you’ve got non-government organisations as well. Ultimately what this is about, though, is the people who live here. If we bring university closer, if we bring TAFE closer, if we make it easier to study then it’s going to help more people in the local community. That’s what education does. It’s the greatest cause for good in this world. 

JOURNALIST: Any other study hubs – 

CLARE: Hang on a sec. Bec, did you want to add to that? 

WHITE: You covered that very well. 

JOURNALIST: Any other study hubs earmarked across Australia at the moment or this is kind of leading the way? 

CLARE: So, we’re doubling the number from 34 to 69. Most of them are now open but not all of them, and a couple more will open over the next few months. 

JOURNALIST: And would you like to speak on the new study places, government-sponsored places in Tasmania? 

CLARE: Yeah, just to make the point I made a moment ago that in the years ahead more jobs are going to require more skills. That means we need to help more people get to university and get to TAFE. 

We’re going to hit that target of 80 per cent of the workforce with a uni degree or a TAFE qualification. And that means funding more places at university so people can start the degree that they want and the profession that they asprie to have. And that’s why we’re allocating an extra 261 places to the University of Tasmania next year. It’s part of about nine and a half thousand extra places that we’re allocating across the country next year, and we’ll allocate even more places the year after that. There’ll be 16,000 extra places in 2027 and then another 16,000 places in 2028 and 2029. 

We’re planning to allocate an extra 200,000 places over the course of the next 10 years. And that’s all about making sure that we’ve got the funding and the support and the places at university so more people wherever they live can get the sort of skills that we’re going to need in the decades ahead. 

JOURNALIST: Is it targeting any specific fields, or it’s just general? 

CLARE: It’s general. Universities can allocate that to the areas of greatest need. But what’s been really exciting to see over the course of the last 12 months is the jump in the number of people enrolling in school teaching – about 10 per cent last year, and I’m hoping that we’ll see another jump next year as well. We’ve got a shortage of school teachers. We need more school teachers. There’s no more important job in this world than being a teacher. And so, I’m hoping that with these extra positions we’ll also see more people enrolling in school teaching next year. 

JOURNALIST: The teachers union here says the state government is low-balling them, they’re some of the lowest paid in the country. Do you think the state government should be doing more to support teachers? 

CLARE: Well, the general point about what teachers are paid, I’ll leave that to the state government, as I do in other parts of the country. But obviously we want to see teachers paid as well as we possibly can because, as I just said, this is the most important job in the world. 

What our teachers do changes our lives. I think we can all remember a teacher when we were little, when we were 5 or when we were 6. We don’t remember much from when we were little, but we do remember the names of our teachers. 

First thing I did when I got this job was go back to my old primary school and give my first grade teacher a hug. I did that for a reason – to demonstrate what I think is important and who I think are important. And investing in our teachers reaps the dividends of making sure that we’ve got more people finishing school and then going on to TAFE or to university and getting the skills that they need for the jobs that are being created right now and in the future. 

JOURNALIST: I’ve got another question for Bec, if that’s all right. 

WHITE: Sure. 

JOURNALIST: Lyons is a big electorate. How do you feel about a study hub in Sorell, and would you like to see a few more deeper into your electorate, for people who find it even harder to access Hobart? 

WHITE: The good news there is there is another one in my electorate – in St Helens. Sorell – this Sorell study hub isn’t just for people in Sorell; it’s for the wider region. There are people who travel from the peninsula, the east coast, the southern midlands, who will come here to access this service because it’s convenient. You’ll see in this precinct we not only have the study hub; it’s the jobs hub. We have a Centrelink, Services Tasmania, child care, a park ‘n ride facility. Here we have all of the services that support people to be able to access those things that government provides, whether it’s education or care or access to employment. And that is why this is such a critical important investment – because it’s about benefitting the region, not just Sorell. 

And in St Helens I know it’s the same. We’ve got a facility there which we haven’t officially opened, but it’s already accepting students. It’s performing really well. It’s, again, co-located with the jobs hub and is servicing a region that is two hours from Launceston and it’s providing opportunities for students to continue their education and do that in an environment that’s very well supported. 

JOURNALIST: And I’m assuming there’s employment opportunities here as well in this particular study hub. Have they gone to locals? 

WHITE: There are two jobs here and you can meet them inside. 

JOURNALIST: And are they Sorell locals or – 

WHITE: I actually don’t know. Yes, they would be, but I don’t know their addresses. 

CLARE: Well, let’s go in. Do you want to come in? 

JOURNALIST: Thank you.