Page 3023 - Week 08 - Thursday, 15 August 2019
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of football, and I look forward to catching a few games in Throsby once the works are complete.
The 2019-20 budget delivers for Canberrans, and I am pleased to support the investments within the CMTEDD portfolio.
MR BARR (Kurrajong—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Social Inclusion and Equality, Minister for Tertiary Education, Minister for Tourism and Special Events and Minister for Trade, Industry and Investment) (3.24): I will speak now on the tertiary education portfolio component of this budget item. The portfolio has recently come under my responsibilities, and I recognise the significant importance that tertiary education plays as our city continues to grow. The tertiary education portfolio encompasses higher education and research, skills and vocational education and training.
With several of the world’s top 100 universities and the highly regarded Canberra Institute of Technology delivering vocational education and training, in addition to the many registered training organisations, there is no doubt that our city’s education offering is strong, diverse, inclusive and high quality.
Service exports such as education are now a key driver of Canberra’s growth and the diversification of our economy. The tertiary education sector is a core focus for the government’s economic diversification strategy. The sector contributes $3.3 billion annually to the territory economy and there are 20,000 jobs in the ACT economy in this sector. The sector educates 64,000 students each year, and around one in six people in the ACT either work or study at a tertiary institution.
International education is Canberra’s largest export and our first export sector to reach over $1 billion in earnings, which it did in 2018. The sector is growing rapidly. It grew 15 per cent between 2017 and 2018.
Since 2013, when Study Canberra commenced, international education exports have more than doubled. Enrolments have increased by 75 per cent to now number over 19,000. The growth and transformation of Canberra’s tertiary education sector demonstrates the government’s ambition to continue to grow, diversify and build our city’s knowledge economy. The knowledge economy has become a key aspect of Canberra’s competitive advantage in developing industries of the future, like our defence, cybersecurity, space and renewable energy industries. To consolidate this tremendous success, in the 2017-18 fiscal year the government committed a further $3 million over four years to Study Canberra to continue to promote our city as a great place to study and as a leader in education and research.
In partnership with the education sector, Study Canberra markets Canberra as Australia’s study destination of choice for local, interstate and international students, and helps drive continuous improvement in the student experience here in Canberra through a range of project activities. Study Canberra plays a key role in leading the implementation of the ACT’s international education strategy, entitled “Canberra: Australia’s Education Capital,” that I launched in 2016.
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