E&OE…
Thank you Robert. Because Simon and I come from the Senate – which we’re all very well-behaved in, as you all know – it’s a bit more predictable. On a more serious note, thank you for being here today.
The fact that you’ve all been able to spend a day here, away from your very busy schedules, from the organisations you run right around the country in all those different sectors, is a sign of your focus and commitment to this agenda. After all, Simon and Christopher and I actually have to be here. So you’ve come here, and it’s not often that you get such a significant sector of the Australian economy, socially, economically, that is able to pull such leadership together and spend a day on developing a strategy like this.
I’ll focus mainly on the schools side, if Christopher can make it, focusing on, of course, the higher education side. But I’ll take a couple of the points and respond to them as I think they relate on the way through. I take the point around greater inclusivity that a number of people have raised. The public perception of our successful international education strategy for many years was focused on higher education. And in recent years, it has focused on the vocational education space, which Simon will be speaking about at more length.
We have a huge opportunity in regard to schools, because it’s not something even in my day-to-day work assisting the Minister with schools that we focus on to the same extent. We have under 20,000 students here – an enormous growth opportunity.
Just like we’ve seen in higher education, I can see how exposing us more to new cultures, exposing us more to new consumers, new customers, is actually not only good for Australia and schools and the others that can effectively export that key service, it’s actually good for our own service. It actually provides a dynamic feedback loop that improves our own schools.
I think again this is where higher education has actually been such a leader. Because if I had stood here in this building when it opened in 1988 – I was only 15 – but if I stood here and said that education would be such a significant sector, and would be the unsung hero in many ways of our services sector in our economy. Where it would be one of the highlights of the agreement signed by Andrew Robb yesterday, with the Australia-China Free Trade Agreement, I don’t think anyone would have quite believed me, even those in the sector.
That provides an enormous example. We know it can be done. And I might add, it was actually successfully done by institutions, unlike some other industries, which we’ve had to subsidise or try and provide huge kick-alongs too, this has actually been done by the sector itself.
Unexpected in some quarters, VET has followed and I think schools can actually follow down that path as well. I think the important thing to remember, is that the education of my children and Simon’s children is going to be profoundly different from the one we experienced. The economic challenges we are going to undergo, both in terms of the number of jobs we’re going to have and who our markets are to. We will ensure that our students get a better education, if they’re exposed to that, through actually exporting our education services more.
I do take the point it’s not just about economics. We do tend to focus on that. We can talk about the social educational economic sort of triangle. It is in our interests to have a more highly educated middle class set of countries to the north, both in a geo-political sense as well as in an economic sense. The explosion of Chinese economic growth has been of incredible benefit to Australia, just as the explosion of education will be. It is a social good, but we also need to keep in mind how strong an economic good it can be.
I will say, with both Simon and Christopher as very proud South Australians in this portfolio, as Minister and Cabinet Minister that I’m going to make a little comment about Victoria, as a proud Victorian. We’re not quite as parochial, as a Victorian, Victoria hasn’t been the focus of the mining industry and other explosions of growth in recent years, and South Australia is a similarly large exporter. We have been a bit more exposed on the traditional manufacturing front. And this is critical to those areas where we still have massive populations. Where we’re not going to have the same manufacturing jobs that my Dad got into when he left school at 14. And I think this is a story we can tell, because the international education has changed the face of our nation.
I have a friend, who I went to university with, who went overseas 15 years ago and came back only last year. And he simply said Melbourne is not the same city. He pointed out what was different, and it was all the things we value. So it wasn’t just about the jobs, it wasn’t just about the greater cultural diversity; it was all the things we value in our cities. And I think when it comes to schools; we can actually do a similar thing.
The strength of this sector has actually, in some ways, been akin to the resources sector. 15 years ago, they were still writing pages. I wrote some of them myself, for Ministers in this place. Mining was going to be dead; we had to get out of those dying industries. This, like resources, has actually been an incredible, unexpected success, due to hard work – unacknowledged in the same public way maybe as resources – by many, many people. And many, many institutions.
And your commitment here today is a sign. With your support, the support of the Government – which is very strongly committed to this agenda – we can continue to grow and we can expand into new areas of education.
So thank you once again for your time today.
(ENDS)