Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question because it gives me the opportunity to explain something that I think he would find deeply disturbing: that, under the current student financing arrangements, the participation of regional and rural Australians in universities has gone down. If the current arrangements were working to facilitate the kinds of families that he cares about, we would not have seen that result. So, in terms of the kinds of families he cares about—and I accept that he has raised this because of his personal concern about it—the statistics tell you that the current system is not working. When you talk to people about youth allowance, many can tell you a personal story about a very high income family that has a child living at home and attending university, who, through the gap year provisions, has managed to qualify for full income support. Indeed, the Bradley review pointed to the fact that in a large percentage of cases—36 per cent of cases, where people are living at home and getting the full allowance—there were these kinds of problems.

The Bradley review told us that there were families with incomes of more than $200,000 where people were getting the full student income support and living at home. That is not the circumstance of the families that you are talking about. The families that you are talking about have to send their kids away to study. They are families who earn, by Australian standards, middle incomes. That is why we have changed the parental means test so people in those kinds of income brackets will qualify for youth allowance based on their parental income. It depends, of course, on the number of children in the family but if you had two children in the family studying away from home you could be talking about parental income of up to $140,000 and still qualifying for youth allowance. And, if you do qualify for youth allowance, then you will also qualify for the relocation scholarship—$4,000 in the first year and $1,000 each year thereafter—and you will qualify for the Student Start-up Scholarship of $2,254 a year.

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