Thank you very much Monsignor Rayner, Your Eminence, Professor Tannock, Dr Nelson, ladies and gentlemen. Today is a very important day in the ongoing contribution of the Catholic Church to education in Australia. It is appropriate that this announcement and this gathering takes place on the site of St Benedict's on Broadway because in so doing, we link the future of the Church in education at the tertiary level, with its past in primary school education.
It is an historic parish. It has very strong links with the early days of the Catholic Church's contribution to primary and secondary school education in Australia, and I'm delighted that I'm able to be part of a very important announcement and that is the establishment of a Sydney campus of the University of Notre Dame, which was established in Western Australia. And in that context, I'm delighted to acknowledge the presence of Professor Peter Tannock, the Vice Chancellor of Notre Dame University, a person who has given much in all the involvement, not least his chairmanship of the National Catholic Education Commission, to the role and contribution of the Catholic Church through the education of Australians at all levels.
The new campus is being established in association with the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney. It will begin enrolling students from 2006 and it will provide an opportunity for students on east coast of Australia to experience the quality of Catholic higher education services currently being delivered by the University of Notre Dame from the campuses in Fremantle, Western Australia. The new campus will offer courses in law, medicine, business, nursing and education. The medical school appropriately will operate in association with St Vincent's Hospital and other Catholic and public healthcare providers in Melbourne, Brisbane and importantly, in country areas of New South Wales and Victoria. This will ensure that UNDA medical students will have the benefit of accessing clinical training places in regional and metropolitan areas from North Queensland to Victoria. The medical school will enhance teaching hospital capacity and the delivery of health and medical services in south eastern Australia.
As part of its support, the Commonwealth Government will allocate new Commonwealth funded priority places to the new campus, and they will include 60 nursing places and 80 teaching places in 2006, 60 places in medicine in 2007, and these new priority places reflect the Government's commitment to quality healthcare and education services, both now and into the future. In addition, the Government will provide a capital contribution of $4 million to assist the University of Notre Dame to develop the campus, which will be located here where we speak. Can I say in welcoming this new development and in pledging the support of the Commonwealth Government, both through its capital contribution and also the allocation of the priority places, how much I acknowledge the ongoing role of the Catholic Church in all levels of education in Australia.
The Church has had a distinguished and expanding role in primary and secondary education for many years, and in acknowledging that role and also acknowledging this new development with the opening of a Sydney campus of the University of Notre Dame, we see a new expansion of the Church into tertiary level education. It has been a fundamental principle and tenet of all of the policies that my Government has brought to education, to endorse the principle of diversity and freedom of choice. We do not want a state or government or secular monopoly of education at any level - be it primary, secondary and tertiary. It is the role of any responsible Commonwealth Government to provide to both the parents of Australia the means to exercise the freedom of choice in the education of their children, and also to provide to the young at a tertiary level in Australia, and also to their parents, the opportunity of exercising that same freedom of choice. The association between the Church and teaching is of course as long as the Church's history, and this represents a very new and important and exciting chapter in the contribution of the Catholic Church in Australia to tertiary education.
I do in closing want to acknowledge the special personal dedication of Professor Tannock, the person who in the leadership he gave to the formation of the University of Notre Dame, overcame many barriers and responded to many challenges, and I am personally very delighted to welcome him here to Sydney, to say how very pleased I am that the Government has been able to support this project. I wish it well. It will be a fine example of the ongoing contribution of the Church to education in Australia, to provide further diversity and a further practical injection of places in very important disciplines, and I wish good fortune and good studies and future professional success to all who have the opportunity of studying here.
Thank you.
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