Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

That simply means that I will get a few more moments to express my anger at the legislation that is being proposed by the Minister for Education, who through every deed appears to be totally out of touch with students in rural and remote areas of Australia. There is no way that any minister for education could be serious about the welfare of rural and remote students—students from your own electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker—with this absolutely impossible legislation. When you tell an aspiring university student that, in future, they will have to work for an average of 30 hours a week for a minimum of 18 months in a two-year period to qualify for the independent Youth Allowance so as to allow them to compete with their city cousins, it is an indication that you know nothing about rural students.

When the particular minister whom we are speaking of said that she was going to open the door to a new generation of Australians, I am sure that she meant ‘Australians unless those Australian live in the bush’. Anyone who resides in rural or remote areas—Broome, Carnarvon, Port Hedland, Karratha or Kununurra; any of those centres—which do not have fine tertiary education facilities will not have a hope in hell of achieving the dictates laid down by the minister and be able to catch up with their peers in the city who are attending university the year after they leave secondary school. It is impossible.

I wonder if listeners to this debate tonight will understand for a moment the lot of a truly rural and remote student who aspires to a tertiary education. Families in the centres that I have referred to and in others like them are not going to be impressed with a change in the income threshold from $32,800 to $44,000 plus per family per year to be eligible for the allowance. It is a nonsense. If the people who work in my electorate are not earning well in excess of $100,000 a year, they cannot afford to stay there, let alone afford to raise kids.

For remotely located people, ICPA, the Isolated Children’s Parents Association, fought for and won an allowance so that their primary and secondary students could leave home to attend to their education elsewhere. Because of that allowance, a number of students are able to attend schools in metropolitan and major regional centres, and they do very well. Their parents appreciate the payment they get each year from the government that allows them to send their students away for their education.

Students who do well in their primary and secondary education can aspire to attend university. Once they achieve the TE score that they need to get into university, they are on their own. The government writes them off, except that there is the Youth Allowance program. Students who attend university can get the youth allowance as long as their parents are living in poverty in the major towns in my electorate, because their parents are now allowed to earn $44,000 plus per annum and still qualify for the allowance. That would see them on the breadline in my electorate. It proves once again that the federal Minister for Education is focused on metropolitan areas. There are other students, parents and families elsewhere in the country than just those who reside in metropolitan areas.

We need a federal policy for students attending tertiary education that makes allowances for students who happen to be born to families who live and work in rural and remote Australia. This policy is simply gutting the small opportunities that these families had in the past. Once upon a time, a student could leave their peer group behind and go to work for an average of 15 hours a week for an 18-month period. They could cram the work in between the last semester of one year and the first semester some 18 months later and qualify for the independent Youth Allowance. They cannot do that anymore. My students are not going to be able to find 30 hours a week employment for a minimum of 18 months in any two-year period. They are going to be left high and dry. They are going to be totally reliant upon the income—that is, the disposable income—of their parents. Sure, these parents are on high wages, but they are enduring exorbitant costs of living. Think of paying $1,600 a week for a three bedroom, one bathroom house in Karratha and you will understand how irrelevant an increase to $44,000 plus per annum is for these families. It is a nonsense. This minister ought to be ashamed of bringing this proposition to the parliament for us to inflict upon our constituents. It is a disgrace.

We have already shamed this minister into extending the introduction period from 1 January to 1 July next year. That is some small sop for the students who are presently engaged in their gap year. But the students of the future will have to go cap in hand with their tertiary entrance mark to a tertiary institution and beg for two years off. My understanding of the present situation is that institutions will not hold a place for two years and that many of the students concerned will have to come back as mature age students and qualify again. The whole thing is a nonsense.

I do concede that the independent Youth Allowance was never intended to fill this financial shortfall for families. The independent Youth Allowance was truly intended for those individuals who were not living at home and who were no longer dependent upon their parents. But it was the only thread of survival for aspiring students in rural and remote areas; it was the only place they could turn to because they knew that they would not qualify for the Youth Allowance.

Now we have had this federal minister determine that the independent Youth Allowance is also out of reach. I say again: it is a disgrace. It shows a shortage of commitment from the minister, it is a lack of understanding and it is an indication of being out of touch. She, of course, will say that it is a lack of resources. Quite recently, resources were found to the tune of $3.8 million to appoint an assistant director of signage and recognition, strategic communications. This position was specifically designed to enhance the reputation of the minister by the erection of plaques outside the many schools which she is supposedly pouring borrowed taxpayers’ dollars into to erect multiple monuments to her existence. I know that the families in my electorate could have done a great deal with $3.8 million to assist their children to attend tertiary institutions.

Resources seem to be able to be found when it is something for the promotion of Labor government spin, but it is difficult to find those resources when it means endeavouring to create a level playing field between children aspiring to a tertiary education in rural and remote Australia compared with those who reside in city or metropolitan areas.

Consider for a moment another difference. For children living in suburban Perth whose family have an income in excess of $44,000 per annum, the student may not qualify for Youth Allowance, so what are their options? They simply continue to live at home, catch public transport to the institution of their choice and go on with their course among their peers. The rural or remote student is confronted with the necessity to leave their home, to leave their peer group, to find accommodation within cooee of their institution of choice, to become accustomed to city metropolitan life and then to compete with the students attending that metropolitan institution to gain their grades, their education and their degree. That is a huge difference. It may be fobbed off as being simply a choice to live in rural and remote Australia, as opposed to living in cities. But without the people living in rural and remote Australia the powerhouses which support this nation financially do not exist. To suggest that we should have only people who are non-child bearing living in these remote areas is an absolute nonsense, but it is in league with the proposition put up by this federal minister.

Maybe we should have only barren people living in remote Australia. Maybe we should do such a thing to prevent the federal minister ever being confronted with this enormous problem of how to level the playing field for regional and remote students equivalent to those of metropolitan and city students. I suggest it is about time this government got serious about recognising students wherever they may be in Australia and, for those who do not have the luxury of living in cities and metropolitan areas, created special funding. And I am not talking about the paltry couple of thousand dollars start-up bonus to get them to the city. I am sure that the bureaucrats who developed this policy have no understanding of the costs of moving from the country to the city. I know when I moved my own son to the city it was a cost of tens of thousands of dollars. You need to either purchase accommodation or pay board. It is not an easy task. It is certainly not a task that is rewarded satisfactorily with the paltry sums being paid in a bonus to these students under this new legislation.

My students deserve a fair go. Their parents deserve a fair go. I have so many families choosing to leave regional and remote Australian towns and move to the city simply so that they can provide accommodation for their students to attend tertiary education. Yet we collectively understand that one of the great problems in regional and remote Australia is to get professionals. We lack the doctors; we lack the accountants; we lack financial advisers; we lack health professionals of every description. These days they are being obtained from agencies and they fly in and fly out because we cannot get them to reside. Yet the very people who are brought up in regional Australia, who are accustomed to the lifestyle of regional Australia and love it, are the ones who are financially prevented from attending tertiary institutions, getting professional qualifications and returning to their town, to their family and to the area they are familiar with and where they so desperately want to provide the professional services that we go through all manner of hurdles to achieve through other means.

We bring in overseas doctors ad nauseam under modified regulations, often depriving countries which have a lower ratio of medical doctors to population than we do, but we do it with a clear conscience because we say that it is the one way we are going to solve the lack of doctors in our remote areas. Why does this government not understand? If we want to have professionals back in the bush, including GPs, why is there not some creation of financial assistance to level the playing field between the city and the bush?

It is a constant complaint that is brought to me by constituents. It is a very real issue and it is an issue that this minister is telling us all she has addressed. She has come up with this wonderful box of tricks that is perfect for a metropolitan-residing student but that totally ignores the reality of rural Australia. It totally ignores the plight of regional parents who have to leave important, well-paid positions to move to the city so as to create that level playing field themselves. There is no justice in that.

This government spins constantly about creating a more just Australia. It is spin, and nothing but spin. It was glorious to see this minister dragged some way, albeit kicking and screaming, towards conceding that the introduction of this legislation from 1 January next year would have been diabolical. Even she had the consciousness to realise that. So, she gave us a paltry six-month extension, and with that wave of her discretion she has decided that she has created a level playing field. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This government must consider a tertiary access allowance. It must consider a fund that will recognise the difficulty that country students endure in attending tertiary institutions; a fund that will provide support—such as that for primary and secondary students who leave home to attend education—for families to allow their sons and daughters to get a tertiary education, to get qualifications, and to go back and happily live in proximity to their family and friends. They can then provide the vital professional services to those areas that we now spend so much additional money on providing from other sources. I take no pleasure in taking medical doctors from overseas nations that enjoy a smaller ratio of doctors per head of population than we have in remote Australia. But it is the only way because we penalise our country students so severely that few go back to their grassroots to provide those acquired professional skills.

We have heard a number of speakers. A number of points have been put that highlight on one hand the sycophantic adherence to the policies that are promoted in this bill and on the other, such as in the illuminations of the member for Parkes, all of the difficulties experienced by rural students. Listeners to this debate will understand that a huge gulf exists between the theory and the practice. I say again, it is time that this minister, who tells us she is opening the doors to a new generation of Australians, actually went out into regional and remote Australia, heard about the difficulties being endured by those remote students, developed a policy such as a tertiary access allowance, and went back to her cabinet and fought for the funds necessary to level the tertiary education playing field. It is about time.

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