Mr CLARE (Blaxland—Minister for Education) (14:54): Can I thank my friend the legend that is the member for Tangney. Two and a half years ago, we were confronted with a mess in education. Childcare costs had skyrocketed by a massive 49 per cent under the Liberals, and parents felt it. Public schools had billions of dollars ripped out of them by the Liberals. We've seen the impact of that over the last decade, with the drop in the number of kids finishing high school. The Liberals also jacked up the cost of university degrees and ripped billions out of TAFE and universities. You see the impact of that today in the drop in the number of young people from poor families at university. Over the last 2½ years, we've started the work of turning this around. We've cut the cost of child care for more than a million Australian families, and now we're capping fees to keep prices down for parents. We're also making sure that, finally, we pay the people who care for and educate our youngest children properly. That 15 per cent pay rise starts to roll out from next week. We're also fixing the funding of our public schools. We're putting billions back in after the Liberals ripped billions of dollars out, and we're tying that funding to real and practical reforms, like phonics and numeracy checks to identify kids who are falling behind, and evidence based teaching and catch-up tutoring to help kids catch up. We're also making free TAFE permanent, and we're opening the doors of our universities wider, to help more young people from poor families, from our outer suburbs and from the bush to get a crack. To do that, we're doubling the number of university study hubs in the regions and the outer suburbs. We've passed laws this week to massively expand those free bridging courses that help people to get ready for university. We've also passed laws this week that provide, for the first time, financial help for teaching, nursing and social work students while they do their practical training. We're cutting the HECS debt of three million Australians. This week, we cut $3 billion of that debt, and if we win the next election we'll cut it even more. The truth is this is what only Labor governments do, and it's what Liberal governments undo. And it's just the start. There's more to do to build a better and fairer education system; to build the sorts of skills in the workforce that we're going to need in the years and the decades ahead; to build the sort of country where your chances in life don't depend on who your mum and dad are, where you live or the colour of your skin; and to build Australia's future.