Mr BROUGH —My question is addressed to the Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Education is an issue of key concern to my constituents in Longman. Would the minister please inform the House how the government's policies in this area have increased the quality of education and opportunities for young people? Is the minister aware of any alternative policies in this area?

Dr KEMP (Education, Training and Youth Affairs; Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) —I thank the member for Longman for his question; I know how proud he is of the performance of his local high school Birriwa in the National Training Awards this year. The focus of the government's policies this year on education and training has been on widening access to quality education and training for all young Australians and improving thereby their job prospects. At the very top of the government's agenda has been making sure that every young person in Australia has got the opportunity to read and write to an adequate standard. This year, the National Literacy Plan has been rolled out across the nation, and in every state and territory young people have been assessed against the national standard. These results will be published within the next few months, early next year.

This year, new national goals for schooling were set in place which recognised—and the Labor Party have never recognised this; they still have not caught up with the debate—that an effective addressing of disadvantage requires a strong focus on improving educational outcomes. The historic change to the funding system for non-government schools announced in the budget will, as some in the sector said, `for the first time give working-class families real choice in education'. These reforms will be putting a powerful new incentive within the school systems to improve quality and raise standards. Government school funding will increase this year by 25 per cent over the 1996 figure.

One of the government's great achievements has been putting in place the new apprenticeship system. After the Labor Party virtually ripped the heart out of apprenticeships in Australia, the government has put in place a system which has been enthusiastically adopted by employers. The employers of this country have shown their support for this reform by recruiting a record number of young apprentices and putting into place opportunities that have never before existed for young Australians.

School based apprenticeships and quality vocational education and training in schools are giving new hope to the 70 per cent of school leavers who do not go directly from school to university—a group of young people neglected year after year by the Labor Party; and that is admitted by many Labor Party ministers and other commentators on the frontbench. Over 30,000 businesses are now involved directly with schools in providing young Australians with enterprise education and workplace know-how. Under the new national agreements on TAFE, TAFE places are growing to record levels, with over 160,000 new places in TAFE projected under the current ANTA arrangements.

It is important to emphasise that the government has acted very strongly to address educational disadvantage in regional and rural Australia. Special incentives have been provided to help solve skills shortages through the rural and regional new apprenticeships initiative. The number of new apprenticeship sites in regional Australia has risen from 118 to 200 as a result of the recent tender round. Assistance for isolated children, the basic boarding allowance, has been raised and indexed for the first time. The emphasis in our capital expenditures has been on regional universities, and indeed $133 million has been put into regional universities over the three years of this government.

It is very encouraging to see rural and regional educational participation rates now rising. The number of students at regional universities has gone up from 74,700 in 1996 to 82,500 this year. Total university undergraduate places are up and total university revenues are at an all-time high. The government has provided $259 million to assist the universities to get the flexibilities into their staffing arrangements that are now possible under the Australian workplace agreements.

Contrast this very full Christmas stocking in education and training with what is not offered on the other side of the House. I was asked whether I was aware of alternative policies. The Christmas stocking is very thin on the other side of the House. It has a little note on the top of it from Kim Beazley asking Santa to give him a policy. It says, `One policy will do, any policy, but please give us a policy because we have not been able to generate them and the Australian Education Union has not sent them as yet.' They keep looking in the mailbox and they are not there. So they are now relying on Santa. They will not be getting any policies from the Leader of the Opposition or from his frontbench so they had better try something else.

Mr SPEAKER —Before I recognise the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, could I say that the member for the Northern Territory is quite welcome to confer, but I would prefer that he did it seated.