Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this morning to speak on the Student Assistance Legislation Amendment Bill 2005. This bill was originally introduced in 1993 to establish a loans scheme that students could take up voluntarily. Eligible students would be able to take up a loan by trading the income support that they would otherwise have been receiving. For every $1 they traded they would be able to receive a $2 loan. Over the life of this scheme some $2.48 billion has been lent to students.

It is important to look at this policy and at the time when it was introduced to reflect on the potential for the scheme to survive and whether it was good policy or policy that was really failing taxpayers and the students themselves. It was introduced at a time of very high unemployment, particularly high youth unemployment, in this country. It was at a time of very high interest rates in Australia. You, Mr Deputy Speaker McMullan, without reflecting on you personally, would recall that at that time under the Labor administration official interest rates hit something like 17 per cent and that many people in business, particularly small business, and farmers were paying up to 25 per cent for their money. The official unemployment rate at that time was something like 11 per cent and there were some one million people on dole queues around Australia. I think that in many ways the scheme was introduced to address an unemployment situation rather than the real needs of students. In other words, the administration of the time, the Labor government, was trying to hide unemployment by offering loans through students voluntarily trading their income support; they could trade every $1 they were receiving in income support for a $2 loan.

The result is that the government has ceased this policy, a decision certainly reflected in the take-up of the scheme over time, because at the end of the day, no matter how you look at this policy, it does not remain today good policy for students or taxpayers’ dollars. As I understand it, if you look at the government actuary’s figures on the level of debt of those students that still remains, some 84 per cent of something like $2.48 billion in original loans would perhaps have to be written off or dealt with in some way as a bad debt. Advice that the government has received shows that, as of 30 June last year, some $1.36 billion is unlikely to ever be repaid. It would not be responsible for the government to continue this program that would allow students to amass and accumulate debt that they have no capacity to repay in the future. That is why the scheme should be and has been suspended.

I want to touch on another element of the bill—and the opposition spokeswoman on education, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, spoke of this—to do with some of the minor technical amendments to the Student Assistance Act 1973 that refer to the regulations that apply to non-statutory Abstudy and the Assistance for Isolated Children Scheme. The Assistance for Isolated Children Scheme has been an outstanding success. The basis and very policy of it, which has been supported by both sides of parliament since about the early 1970s, was to provide support for those students who can qualify under the scheme as being geographically isolated without the need for an income or assets test. That income support gives those students an opportunity to access education. That is the whole principle behind the assistance for geographically isolated children. It is support for those children to gain access to education at the primary and secondary level. After the 2004 election, increases in the allowances under the scheme were provided by this government, delivering on an election commitment.

It was the now Minister for Defence but at the time Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Nelson, who saw the need to ensure that we were providing that much needed assistance to young students who are geographically isolated in supporting them to gain access to education. I want to thank him for having listened so well. I represent a large part of Queensland and many people in my electorate—not just people on the land but also people who work for councils, live in small communities and working-class people—have to send their children away from the place where they reside just to gain access to basic primary and secondary level education. I know the increases that we made post the 2004 election have helped many more families financially support their children as they go away, as they have to, to gain basic access to education. I know that Minister Julie Bishop, who has been to my electorate as the Minister for Ageing and is now the minister responsible for education, understands this issue, and I am sure that she too will be a good listener on issues relating to those students who live in geographically isolated parts of Australia.

The Isolated Children’s Parents Association is a wonderful organisation that advocates on behalf of all those people who have children in a situation where they are growing up in a community which is geographically isolated from access to education. They appreciated not only that support for the assistance for isolated children but also the distance education allowance that we made available at the time, and also the funding for school term hostels. Many school term hostels are where students from geographically isolated parts of Australia go to in a town reasonably close to where they live so that they can gain access to primary and secondary education. Of course, many of those hostels have small enrolments, obviously because they are in fairly isolated parts of Australia, and the problem they have come across is the issue of viability—of being able to run the hostels in a sustainable way, given the need to make sure that the students are well looked after while they live away from home and that the facilities they are in are modern and have home tutors who live in and provide meals and support in both an educational sense and an emotional sense when those children leave home, often for the very first time.

Those areas that we increased funding for and recognised after the 2004 election are a direct result of the minister at the time, Minister Nelson, listening to the concerns of the Isolated Children’s Parents Association and people like me and others who represent large rural communities where so many people, particularly students in this case, are geographically isolated from very basic access to education and have to leave home just to gain that access to education—in other words, being able to go through the front gate into a school. Those are the very criteria that govern the very successful Assistance for Isolated Children Scheme, and the same applies to Abstudy for those children of an Indigenous background.

Whilst I am talking about the Assistance for Isolated Children Scheme, which is referred to in the bill, I just want to put on the record that I know that the Isolated Children’s Parents Association are also advocating the need for a similar scheme that will support students in gaining basic access to post-secondary education. It is a very real issue for thousands upon thousands of families who are geographically isolated from TAFEs, colleges and universities and, more recently since the 2004 election, from access to technical colleges for training in technical skills. There are many students from rural and geographically isolated parts of Australia who just do not participate in tertiary or post-secondary education. What the Isolated Children’s Parents Association have been to see me and many members on both sides of the parliament about is establishing a scheme that is similar in principle to the Assistance for Isolated Children Scheme—the AIC allowance—which will pay a basic access allowance that will support those students from geographically isolated areas of Australia in gaining access to post-secondary education. I know the youth allowance is designed to address this issue in many cases, but the problem for many families, particularly in extreme drought areas and those communities, is that for students to be able to gain access to the youth allowance they have to be independent. In other words, they have to work for 18 months after leaving secondary education before they can gain access to that support.

When they come back to parliament during their many regular visits to the House to see members on both sides I know the Isolated Children’s and Parents Association will be promoting, as will I, the idea of how we are going to address participation rates from students who live in geographically isolated parts of Australia. It is a very real issue for me and for other members who represent rural and remote parts of Australia. There are far too many young people who do not participate in post-secondary education because of the financial burden that it places on families who have to support their children when they leave home if they are going on to post-secondary education. The issue is not only the accommodation and food and living away from home allowance but also the cost of travel for those students to get access in the first place. For instance, if you are living in the very western parts of my electorate, the nearest town with a university is something like 1,800 kilometres away. For students to travel that distance, either their parents have got to drive them or they take a flight that services those communities twice a week. Families have to put the money up to that commercial operator at the beginning of the year to ensure that they have a seat on that plane so their children can leave home, go away and gain access to education. Many of these families are working people in those towns. Some of them are part of essential services: police, teachers, bank managers and so on. Of course, that is another reason we have problems attracting people into those rural communities: those families cannot afford the financial burden that will be placed on their family if they take up an essential job in their communities because they have to send their children away to gain access to affordable education.

It is a very real issue for me, as a member representing a very large rural community—there are other members of this parliament who will understand that—and I will be taking this issue up with the minister. I would hope members on the other side of the House would take a very serious look at this issue, because the participation rate in post-secondary education for students from rural and remote parts of Australia where they are geographically isolated and separated from affordable access to that education is a very real issue.

I support the bill before the parliament. I wanted to raise those issues in relation to assistance for isolated children and those students who are seeking support for post-secondary education. I know that we as a government will be looking at what more we can do. I commend the issue to the other side of the House, because it is terribly important when we talk about education and access to it that we canvass support from both sides of the House to address those who are disadvantaged by geography. It is incumbent on all of us to ensure that all Australian people have access to affordable education. I commend the bill to the House.

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