Labor has promised a $300m fund to pay for university research facilities, including laboratories and other infrastructure, and has accused the Coalition of failing to fund capital projects.

Labor’s deputy leader and education spokeswoman, Tanya Plibersek, will announce the five-year funding grant in western Sydney on Tuesday.

The party will ask the university sector for submissions on how to spend its proposed $300m future fund, but plans to spend it on small to medium infrastructure projects, investment in new or updated research equipment, labs and other important projects.

Plibersek told ABC’s AM the University of Western Sydney would get $20m from the fund to expand research for an agri-tech and protected cropping research facility at its Hawkesbury campus.

The announcement comes on top of Labor’s promise to uncap university places in response to the Coalition’s two-year unlegislated freeze in commonwealth grants.

In a statement Plibersek said: “Labor wants Australia to be a country with a strong economy, and secure, decently paid jobs. That’s why, unlike the Liberals, we will make investment in education a top priority.”

Scott Morrison responded to the announcement by arguing the fund amounted to $300m “for sandstone at universities”.

“We invested $1.9bn in research infrastructure in our universities in the last budget … we’re investing in super computers, in quantum computing … in the stuff that actually generates the knowledge,” the prime minister told reporters in Sydney.

The 2018 budget included $1.9bn over 12 years – including $393m over five years – for research infrastructure. The first round of grants in May included funding for nanotechnology, genomics and remote ocean sensors to improve the health of the Great Barrier Reef.

In the 2014 budget the Coalition government announced it intended to abandon the education investment fund set up by the previous Labor government to pay for facilities.

When the Senate blocked an attempt to axe the $3.8bn fund, the Coalition said it planned to roll it into the national disability insurance scheme savings account.

The Universities Australia chief executive, Catriona Jackson, called Labor’s announcement a “very welcome step” .



“We have long campaigned to save the $3.8bn [education investment fund] and we want to see investment start flowing again for crucial education and research infrastructure,” she said.

The education investment fund has paid for more than 200 projects, including $90m for the chemical sciences hub and $88.4m for the Magellan giant telescope project at the Australian National University.

Universities Australia has warned the federal government it must continue to invest in university infrastructure or risk “a gradual erosion of our world-class facilities”.