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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-11-13 Daily Xml
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ROSEWORTHY AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE

Ms BETTISON (Ramsay) (15:34): I rise today to share with the house my recent visit to Roseworthy college. Roseworthy campus, which is part of the University of Adelaide and which is situated 50 kilometres from Adelaide, was Australia's first agricultural college. I have an interest in higher education, and when Mr Martyn Evans, Government and Community Relations Manager for Adelaide University, invited me for a tour, I was quite delighted to take up his offer.

The School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences is based at Roseworthy, although some of the courses are still held here in North Terrace. Four veterinary health centres are also based at Roseworthy campus. These are: the Companion Animal Health Centre, the Production Animal Health Clinic, Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratories, and the Equine Health and Performance Centre, which is in the process of being built.

As we know, in the house we have our resident vet, the member for Morphett, and they mentioned to me that he has been a great supporter of their development at Roseworthy. There is a new 5,500 metre square building which will be for teaching and clinical purposes, and what this provides is world-class training for students, enabling them to use the latest technology, and it also supports research.

In the School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, there are 650 students (130 of whom are resident on campus), and 100 staff. Students at Roseworthy are studying a Bachelor of Science (Animal Studies) or a Bachelor of Science (Veterinary Bioscience). To actually become a vet, you then need to study three years of Bachelor of Science (Veterinary Bioscience), followed by another three years of postgraduate study, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine.

One thing I found particularly interesting was that 70 per cent of students studying to be vets are female, and I thought this was a very interesting turnaround. I grew up watching James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small. It was a very male dominated profession, but that has changed now, and one of the things I asked the professors was why this has happened. Veterinary science has a very high entrance score, and they felt that, with an increased level of veterinary practices in urban areas, it seems to be a very interesting and independent way that women were very attracted to the profession.

One of the other things that Roseworthy campus provides is continuing education for veterinary professionals, which is a much-needed aspect of the industry. I toured the Companion Animal Health Centre, which provides emergency care 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and is open to the public. The centre uses the latest technology and diagnostic services and has a fully equipped pathology laboratory. It also has specialist surgeons and two fully equipped operating theatres.

The campus also has a mobile equine veterinary service, servicing the Barossa Valley, North Adelaide Plains and surrounds, and, as I said, they are in the process of building an equine hospital. The service provides equine dentistry, ultrasound, radiography, endoscopy and reproduction services, and emergency care.

One of the most interesting parts of my tour was the Production Animal Health Centre, which actually includes a mobile production animal veterinary service and also short-stay accommodation. They have a very holistic service, looking at the health, welfare, productivity, food, safety, sustainability, profit and education in relation to production animals—that is, beef cattle, sheep, goats, alpacas, llamas, pigs, poultry and fish. This centre supports people, whether they have large farming groups of animals or are hobby farmers, about the best way to care for their animals.

The University of Adelaide is seeking to market this course to interstate and overseas students, and they have developed a master plan to reinvigorate the campus at Roseworthy and encourage greater numbers of students. They aim to be the major animal and veterinary research and clinical centre for the state and for the nation. They have some challenges, and one of the issues I mentioned was the very high entrance score to get into veterinary science. This means that, at the moment, there is a lack of diversity of entrants, so the university is looking at alternative pathways for entrants, particularly to encourage those who have grown up on the land and who have an interest in staying on the land to enter.

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