Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

To be fair to the member for New England, I can see his point that it is not a question of slashing youth allowance recipients but it is a question of the transition. I believe that reforms will provide better and more equitable support for students and families, including those in rural and regional areas. The reforms come in direct response to the findings in the Bradley review. We have improved the parental income test, meaning more students will be eligible, because a student’s parents can earn more before their child starts to lose that eligibility for student income support.

I turn to the detail of the reforms in the budget. The reforms will benefit around 100,000 students: 68,000 students will now be eligible to receive support as a result of the changes to the parental income test and 35,000 students will receive a higher payment than they have previously received. The Bradley review found that current income support arrangements were poorly targeted, with not all support going to those most in need. It found that 36 per cent of independent students living at home were from families with incomes above $100,000, 18 per cent of students in this situation came from families earning incomes above $150,000 and 10 per cent came from families earning above $200,000. The government has accepted the recommendations of the Bradley review and has decided to take this decision to ensure that student income support is received by those who need it the most. The workforce participation criteria will be tightened and the savings will be invested in increasing access to income support for students who need it the most by increasing that parental income test. This means more support for more students.

There are also specific benefits in the budget for rural students. Rural students in receipt of youth allowance still have access to the higher away-from-home rate of payment as well as rent assistance, remote area allowance, fares allowance for up to two return trips home per year and other benefits such as the low-income health care card and pharmaceutical allowance. Rural students will also be eligible for the full value of the student start-up scholarship, which is worth $2,254 per year if those students receive some amount of student income support. This is equivalent to a $43 per week increase in the rate of youth allowance for those students. To assist thousands of university students with the costs of relocating to study, the government has introduced the relocation scholarship of $4,000 in the first year and $1,000 in later years. This will be on top of the student start-up scholarship, meaning that students who receive this will receive $6,254 in the first year and $3,254 in subsequent years. These figures will be indexed. There are significant amounts of money in those scholarships alone. Those are things that I welcome as a representative of students who travel away from Central Queensland to undertake education elsewhere.

I turn away for a moment from student income support and look more broadly at the priority that this government has given to education at all levels—primary, secondary, VET and higher education. We are seeking to provide a better education system for students right across the country, at whichever stage of education and wherever they live. That includes schools and students in all of our regions. For example, hundreds of new computers are being rolled out in my electorate, along with trades training centres and a raft of new school buildings that will come thanks to our stimulus strategy. The Rudd government is investing a record $62.1 billion in Australian schools from 2009 to 2012. This is almost double the $33.5 billion invested in the last four years on funding and infrastructure. As part of the government’s education revolution, this record investment will help ensure that every Australian school is a great school and every Australian child receives a world-class education. In addition, through national partnerships agreed with state and territory governments, the government is investing $540 million to improve literacy and numeracy, with pilot projects already beginning in schools around the country; $550 million for reforms to improve teacher quality, including a $50 million investment in leadership development for principals; and $1.1 billion over five years for disadvantaged school communities.

In addition to these initiatives, the government is investing in the biggest school modernisation program the nation has ever seen, with a further $14.7 billion boost to the education revolution over the next three financial years through the Building the Education Revolution program. There are two other programs. One is the digital education revolution. Innovation will be central to securing Australia’s competitive advantage in the future. The $2 billion digital education revolution program includes funding of $807 million to school authorities to cover the associated costs of implementing the computers in schools initiative. This means that school students will experience a technology-rich learning environment which will prepare them for the technology-rich work environments of the future. There is also the Trade Training Centres in Schools program. I am pleased to say that already two of these have been approved in my electorate. We are working to raise the status— (Time expired)

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