Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

It is an important issue, he says. He must be still supporting Work Choices. He made a statement which I found a little bit at odds with what actually happens on the ground—that university students can decide how best to spend their own money. In a lot of cases it is not their own money. But the alcohol industry does quite well out of quite a lot of them, I think, and in some cases we should have services there because quite often they will perhaps not have the money left over at the end of the week to access the services that they may not have thought that they would need. I think that is part of a caring society—to make sure that we look after the provision of services to those kids who may not have that capacity after a big weekend.

The other issue that I would like to raise briefly is the issue that the member for Cowper raised in relation to the guidelines in this legislation. I think he used the term: ‘You could drive a horse and cart through them.’ It reminded me of the Regional Partnerships arrangements that the member for Cowper was part of in this particular parliament. It was quite obvious that the guidelines that had been designed under that arrangement were designed to have a horse and cart driven through them. Members of the recent inquiry, and the minister for regional services, who is with us today, would be well aware of the issues in the Financial Management and Accountability Act—the breaches that actually took place and are recognised by the Audit Office. A coalition member starts criticising guidelines, when some of the breaches—of their own guidelines—occurred on their watch! Competitive and neutrality issues, a whole range of issues in terms of accountability, were breached. As I said earlier, even if there was some leakage into student activities of a political nature—and I do not think this legislation will actually allow it; maybe I am wrong—I would have thought that is something that we should actually encourage at university and make people think about the structures that are out there.

Yesterday I was with the vice-chancellor of the Ballarat university and members of the National Tertiary Education Union from all over Australia, who were representing some of the specific regional issues as they saw them. I should not let this opportunity go by without raising a couple of the issues that were raised. It is obvious that in country areas a much smaller percentage of country children go to university. The other figure that was quite revealing was that those who do come from the country and go to a country university tend to work in the country. From time to time we have heard the debate from those who have been educated in country areas about medical schools and the retention rate of doctors et cetera. There is more than enough evidence to suggest that, even though there are cost disadvantages not only to the students and the parents of children at country universities but to the administration, we must make sure that we maintain proper expenditure in those areas so that those young people will learn their skills in the country and return to the country with those skills in the future. I talked about the arrangements for doctors. We are very pleased that the University of New England has a medical school where you can see those very things happening as I speak.

One of the other issues raised—and I am pleased to see that the minister responsible for a lot of the training activities is here as well—which really does need to be looked at in terms of the future of young people at university is the youth allowance. Young people often do not go to university the year after school because their parents cannot afford it, in some sense, so they go out to work and then meet all the guidelines to be able to access the youth allowance. I am not suggesting that everybody should go to university straight after school but I think we are developing a framework that now makes that almost the norm rather than the exception. We have to have a close look at the way in which those guidelines are put together. One of the other things that were mentioned at yesterday’s conference was that to encourage people to go to country universities there may well be a need to reduce the HECS debts that are repaid on the conclusion of the degree.

I bring those few points to the debate and in conclusion say again that I support this legislation. I think what occurred in 2005 was unfortunate for student activities, particularly those in the country, and it was driven by an ideological perspective in that a lot of people who are still in this place were reliving their university days and settling old scores. That was unfortunate because they overlooked the very valuable services that were being provided. As I said then, and say again now, we all hope that some of these services are not needed by our children, but if those services are not there they cannot be accessed. I am more than happy to make a contribution for those people who may need those services into the future, particularly for those in regional universities where they may be many hundreds of kilometres from their families.

Debate (on motion by Mr Gray) adjourned.

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