An elected Shorten Labor Government will inject $3.75 million into the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) to assist in the delivery of quality health and biomedical sciences.

USQ’s Ipswich campus will receive $750,000 towards its Health and Wellbeing Centre to enhance the opportunity for student placements while enabling the university to extend its health services reach to the local community.

$1 million will be spent on enhanced delivery of health-related programs such as midwifery, paramedicine and sport and exercise science through a Biomedical Laboratory.

The Ipswich and Toowoomba campuses will both benefit from $2 million towards Clinical Simulation Laboratories to provide nursing and midwifery students with access to laboratories.

The Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Governments have cut millions of dollars from Queensland Universities, effectively reintroducing caps on university places and impacting school-leavers and mature-age students from Ipswich and the Somerset Region.

A Shorten Labor Government won’t rip funding from students to pay for tax cuts for multinationals and millionaires.

We can afford to invest in universities because unlike the Liberals we are not giving handouts to the top end of town.

The University of Southern Queensland is the number one university in Queensland for graduate employability.

It is paramount that young people in our region are given the best possible opportunities to enhance their education and employability, and this is achieved through funding our regional universities.