Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Social Security Legislation Amendment (2007 Budget Measures for Students) Bill 2007 is primarily about financial matters that endorse budget promises that were designed to improve the fairness and administrative flexibility of certain social security assistance applicable to tertiary students. The measures total almost $130 million over a four-year period. One measure provides $86.9 million for extending rent assistance to Austudy and $43.3 million for youth allowance and Austudy for master’s degree courses. These measures are to be welcomed, and it is obvious that the opposition, in preparing some amendments, have gone down the pious amendment road once more, because, having welcomed certain aspects of the bill, they have taken the opportunity to raise issues regarding HECS payments. HECS, of course, was an invention of the Hawke Labor government and was supported at the time by the then Liberal opposition on the simple grounds that it had become patently obvious that the Whitlam free university experiment had failed. It failed because it became beyond the resources of this parliament and the Australian taxpayer to finance it. It also became patently obvious that the grand plan that every poor kid would go to university because it was free was not to materialise; in fact, the very generous scheme introduced by the Whitlam government became middle-class welfare.

One might wonder, therefore, about this pious amendment by which the opposition want to revert to their pleadings with regard to HECS. HECS is their own invention, and of course they remind us that the cost of a university degree has increased students’ HECS debts by between $7,000 and $530,000. As I recollect, since the introduction of HECS the income threshold before people have to repay HECS has gone from about $15,000 to about $37,000. Where is the creative arithmetic? It so happens that the value of a home in that period has gone up three or four times. So why bother to move an amendment that recognises the obvious and tries to lay some sort of blame on government administration?

A similar comment could apply to the 100 university degrees costing more than $100,000. Of course, we believe in payment for excellence. Excellence is a fundamental of university education, and I assume that during the same period the cost of professors, tutors and people with doctorates who work in the universities and of all the other people associated with them has also gone up, and it is not necessarily the responsibility of the government. HECS has also tripled. That might mean that there are a lot more kids going to university, and there was a period of high youth unemployment when many did. But again, those figures do not tell us exactly how much of that money anybody is responsible to repay. If, for instance, a person does not enter the workforce, goes overseas or takes other options, that money remains unpaid under the law as it is written.

This also raises another point, about which a previous minister for education was at pains to remind this House: there are very extensive benefits for people who undertake a university degree. Salaries at the lowest level can be $40,000 while people in certain other jobs and professions might never achieve that income level, even as a mature-age worker. There are those who do, but when one looks at a lot of the lower paid jobs—maybe even those associated with someone who has paid up-front fees to get a diploma at TAFE—they do not earn that sort of money. One would think it only reasonable to ask people to repay to the taxpayer—not the government—some of the assistance that the taxpayer has provided that allowed them to earn above-average incomes and sometimes very excellent incomes. Please remember that HECS relates to only 25 per cent of the total cost of delivering certain degrees.

I think that deals primarily with the complaints of the opposition in terms of their saying something that is really totally unrelated to this legislation. But it also reminds me, as I just said, that the opposition seem to have a quite limited interest in the rights of people who earn TAFE diplomas. They do not seem to care that much about what those people might get paid or what it costs them, even though those sorts of people have always been considered to be their voter base. Primarily, as the member for Perth has advised us, the provisions in the bill are related to including people who do a second master’s degree and people who have certain rights under Abstudy but have been excluded from some of the tax benefits.

They are the sorts of issues being addressed in this legislation. It is a clear attempt by the government to better address these problems. It overcomes what might seem to be a very simple issue; that is, funds being improperly or incorrectly directed to a financial institution, which I assume is where the addressee has no right of access—in other words, it is a mistake—and this empowers the relevant agencies to recover that money. That is a very workmanlike decision.

Considering the association of this legislation with university education, this gives me the opportunity to make a couple of remarks that the minister at the table, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship—whilst this is not his responsibility—might pass on to his cabinet colleagues. I have heard it said in the party room that there is still a deficiency in the financial assistance we give to people who reside outside of major cities and/or even larger regional centres where university services are available.

It is an interesting aspect of the education system that, in the urban environment, the more wealthy you are, the closer you are likely to live to a university, and so it is pretty easy for your kids to get to the university on foot or by pushbike—that is, if they have not already insisted that you buy them a motorcar. The reality is that, when one resides in many parts of my electorate or, more particularly, the electorate of Kalgoorlie or, in fact, your electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, the difficulty in attending a tertiary institution, a university, increases hugely because you have to relocate yourself. That has always been a major problem in rural and regional communities. People in employment, valued employees—even those in the teaching profession—in these rural and regional communities plan their life to be back in a city and as close as possible to a university as their children complete secondary education. Those people are valued in these small communities and they literally pack up and leave.

If they have business, rural farming or pastoral commitments, that opportunity is not so easily available, and then the question comes to them: what do we do? Do they buy a house, a flat or something in the capital city at some considerable expense—which they might not be able to afford? Does one of the partners leave the family business or where they live and go down to look after the young person, or do they just buy a flat and take a risk on the young person’s future by leaving them there on their own? Whatever the choice, there is a very significant expense involved that simply does not apply to people who live in the vicinity of a tertiary institution—and I will talk a bit more about that in a minute.

What I am saying is that it has nothing to do with your wealth; it is just unfair by comparison because, as I pointed out, in the urban environment, the richer you are, the closer you live to a university—and I think there is still an opportunity for the government to take closer notice of the representations that have been made to most members of parliament by the highly regarded ICPA—Isolated Children’s Parents Association. I thought I had got my letters in the wrong order there, but that is not as bad as not being able to quote the tax scale, is it, Mr Deputy Speaker? From the point of equity, this bill provides a wonderful improvement in access assistance. We give rent assistance and other things, but access has been denied to so many young people who reside a fair distance from a tertiary institution.

In that regard, I can be very proud of my own efforts, as I claim a very significant amount of credit and responsibility for gaining a university for the town of Geraldton—a town, which at the time, had a population of about 25,000 people and had no localised university services whatsoever. The reason for that was that the universities to whom our government provided the recurrent training places were of the view that they did not want to extend a subcampus to Geraldton. I am very grateful to a minister who has now left the parliament, David Kemp, whom I approached, asking that at the next recurrent round of grants he not just give the regional places to the universities to pick and choose from—as they would—but instead identify some geographic locations, particularly Geraldton, where he might allocate some places. As I say, I record my gratitude many years later that he did that. Suddenly the university club of Perth saw 20 recurrent places sitting up in a town that had no facilities whatsoever and they became obliged to go to Geraldton and service them.

Since then the attendance has grown and a building primarily funded by this government—I think $3 million was funded—now operates as the centre. It was a very emotional day for me when I celebrated with nine mature-age women—mothers; family people—who were the first nursing graduates, and actually the first graduates, from that facility. While looking at all of them I realised that none of them could have got that degree had there not been a facility in their town. They had family responsibilities. They wanted to improve themselves—and they were obviously contributing to that community by being resident in that community—but they could not say to their husband and children, ‘I want to go to university; I am off to Perth and you look after yourselves.’ So I was pleased to see the extension of those sorts of facilities into regional communities.

The University of Western Australia already had a campus in Albany, and they have extended the recurrent places for that campus by another five. That is also giving the services that I mentioned. It is very good to have that service provided, but there are still people who are well outside that area or who reside in very small communities. It even gets very difficult when one looks at the various costs involved and the thresholds and the caps we put on the availability of this assistance, because it virtually comes to a point where, if you have enough money to be able to afford to relocate your children to the city, you are deemed too wealthy to get any of this rent assistance or other things referred to in this legislation.

This debate has been a good opportunity to make those points. The fundamentals are that this is good legislation. I think the opposition’s amendment is creative arithmetic and serves little purpose in this debate. But they have said it and, as they did the other day, they are criticising their own initiatives. They were the ones who criticised their discontinuance of dental assistance from the Australian parliament’s budget, yet it was their legislation that started it and their legislation that finished it and the only outcome at that time was that the states who received that money withdrew their own money in roughly an equivalent amount. They did not hire the extra staff they should have and the waiting lists declined only marginally. This frequently occurs. It is interesting that individuals get the money from the Medicare proposal that has now been passed in the parliament and not state agencies, which have a wonderful capacity to spend money. I am more than happy to conclude my remarks at this stage.

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