Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009 introduces a number of landmark reforms to the provision of social security for current and future tertiary education students and their families. These reforms relate to issues I have been campaigning on for almost a decade now. I will come back to those shortly. I will deal with the actual content of the legislation as opposed to the inaccurate rhetoric of previous speakers in turn, including the member for Kalgoorlie just prior to me, on the other side.

The legislation will, firstly, significantly ease the personal and parental means testing arrangements that apply to payments for dependent students, apprentices and unemployed young people, to allow more families to access youth allowance and ABSTUDY. Secondly, it will change the criteria upon which a youth allowance recipient is considered independent. Thirdly, it will provide for new entitlement-based scholarships for university students receiving student income support payments. These will take the form of an annual student start-up scholarship and a relocation scholarship for eligible students. Fourthly, it will exempt merit- and equity-based scholarships from the social security income test up to a threshold of $6,762 a year.

I will spend some time going through each of these amendments because they include things I have been raising in this House for almost a decade. I invite members to refer to the Hansard from a number of occasions since 2000. They will see that I have been arguing for an overhaul of the social security system for our university students to make it fairer for regional students and their families to afford the costs associated with getting to university and, more importantly, to enable them to stick around at university and complete their studies. It was often a lonely journey, with few parliamentary supporters—among whom I do not include the member for Kalgoorlie. This was especially so among those on the other side who, when in government, had the opportunity and the resources but failed to do anything substantial about it; so, enough of the hypocritical rhetoric that I just heard from the member for Kalgoorlie. Many of those who did and said nothing on this matter are now lining up to criticise this government’s attempts to provide financial assistance to many more additional families and individuals who will be able to better access the benefits of tertiary education.

I will begin by giving just a small snapshot of how many students in my electorate of Braddon stay at school until the end of year 12 and how many residents in my electorate have completed a university degree. According to the 2006 census data, of the 4,858 20- to 24-year-olds surveyed 2,048 had completed year 12 as their highest level of education, 881 had completed year 11, 1,522 had completed year 10 and 115 had completed year 9. So you can see from these statistics that getting our kids to stay at school is no easy feat in regional Tasmania. When we look at the same census data for university education in my electorate, we see that of the 33,265 people surveyed 4,464 had a bachelor’s degree as their highest level of education, 553 had a graduate diploma and/or a graduate certificate and 478 had a postgraduate degree. So that puts it into a fair bit of perspective for you. Getting yourself to uni is not easy when you live on the north-west or west coasts of Tassie. There are many barriers: financial barriers in terms of the current set-up for youth allowance and social and cultural ones in terms of instilling in the minds of our next generation that gaining university and tertiary qualifications will be worthwhile for their future

Before speaking about the specifics of this legislation I would like to share with you a small section of a speech that I gave in this parliament, way back in 2002, on the topic of funding for higher education. I said:

Let us look at the benchmarks for youth allowance, Austudy and rental assistance. Also, let us look at this whole area of independence. Until 1997 the age of independence was effectively 22. The decision to take it to the age of 25 has had a significant impact on families in Australia … Many families receive no assistance at all to assist their young people to study and further their education. And those people in regional Australia who cannot access further education and must live away from home to do so have a double whammy.

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It is an anecdotal fact that there are many students not eligible for any financial assistance who are worse off than people who are receiving support. There are students at higher education institutions who are required to not only work part time but to also work long hours. That affects their study so many of them drop their studies because they have to work. That just compounds the issue.

As I have mentioned earlier, and again I invite anyone listening to this debate to consult the Hansard for the last decade, the plight of regional families in accessing and affording tertiary education was largely ignored by the former Howard government. In the first term of this Labor government we have set out to better target and assist families and individuals to access and afford tertiary studies, to be able to move away from home to study and to financially afford to bridge what I have referred to as the ‘geographic differential’ between those living at home in the locale of the tertiary institution—usually urban municipalities—and those who are unable to do so, usually being from regional communities. For too many regional families and individuals there has been a discriminatory factor based on geography. This legislation seeks to help more people overcome this differential. It may not be perfect but it is, on balance, a much more equitable support package—and note the word ‘package’—than the current arrangements.

I would now like to spend a minute or so talking about the changes to the provisions for claiming independence. As you heard earlier, these concern an anomaly that I have been opposed to for many years. I recall that in 1997 the former government ramped the age up to 25 years. I might add that when the Howard government increased the independence age it did make a commitment—non-core—to progressively scale it back over time. Ten years later it had still not been scaled back. Under the Rudd government the age at which a person is deemed automatically independent will change. It will be phased down from 25 in 2009 to 22 by 2012, at a rate of a one-year phase-down per year. The implications of this will of course be significant in the next few years. I have not heard one member on the other side discuss this.

What about parental income thresholds? Again, let us go to the detail of the legislation rather than to the sheer rhetoric that has been hurled at us from the other side. Under the former government, the annual parental income test threshold for dependent youth allowance recipients to get the maximum rate of youth allowance was just $32,800. So, according to those opposite, if, as parents, you earned 500-odd dollars combined each week you were classed as financially sufficient enough to fully bankroll your non-independent child’s tertiary studies. From 1 January 2010 the annual parental income test threshold for dependent youth allowance recipients to get the maximum rate of youth allowance will be increased from $32,800 to the new threshold of $44,165. Importantly, in addition to this increase there is a much more generous sliding or tapering scale as parental income increases. You do not hear about this from the other side. The parental income reduction for youth allowance will change from a taper rate of 25 per cent per person to a family taper rate of 20 per cent. This will reduce the effect of parental income on a youth allowance recipient, particularly where the same parental income applies to multiple kids in a family. For example, for a family with two children living away from home and attending university—as the member for Kalgoorlie said was his situation—the parental income cut-off point will be raised to almost $141,000 per year. This cut-off point used to be $79,000. Let us be clear about this: there is a significant increase in the cut-off point by some $62,000 in the example that I have just cited.

To put this into perspective as to how these significant changes in the income threshold will potentially affect families and individuals in my electorate of Braddon, it is worth discussing the median family incomes of families on the north-west coast. According to the 2006 census data, the median income of Braddon families is about $45,000. That is $45,000 per family per year. So you can see that these changes will see many more north-west coast and west coast families being able to access youth allowance.

Something else I am very pleased about—and we hear little about this from the other side, so it is not a debate about the legislation; it is a debate in which they are trying to score points—is the introduction of two new scholarships for students receiving youth allowance. All students receiving youth allowance or Austudy while completing an approved higher education course will receive a Student Start-Up Scholarship. In 2010 the scholarship will be $2,254 for the year and will be paid in two instalments. The Student Start-Up Scholarship will assist as to the cost of things like textbooks, specialised equipment and any of the other lump-sum expenses that always crop up. The second scholarship is particularly important to folk who must move and live away from home to study.

Debate interrupted.

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