Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

In continuation, let me say that the young people in my electorate of Murray, including those currently deferring their university studies and taking a gap year so that they can qualify for independent Youth Allowance, have worked so hard in trying to get the deputy leader and Minister for Education, Minister Gillard, to understand that the only chance they had of a university education was under the coalition’s rules. They tried and tried to access Minister Gillard. She refused to see them. She eventually said an adviser might drop in and talk to them if they came to Canberra, and clearly that just was not good enough. Finally, these students and their parents came to Canberra and Minister Gillard—no doubt sensing the despair and the mounting unrest and anxiety right across Australia—agreed to see them. They presented a very strong argument and they pleaded with the minister to reconsider the moves she had made which would mean the end to their university education dreams. I have to say that the minister did finally relent and allowed the year 2008 gap school leavers, those who had taken that gap year under the old criteria, at least to continue to be eligible for Youth Allowance under the old rules.

You can imagine how cynical it was to change the rules and make them retrospective and to have students part-way through a gap year undertaking the types of hours of work that were designated in our criteria. You can imagine how despairing those students had been. These students went back and were more satisfied than before. But they feel, and continue to feel, equally concerned about their year 12 brothers and sisters now completing their studies. These school leavers of this year have been to Centrelink staff and have asked what they can do to try to gain independent youth allowance so that they also can have professional qualifications which allow them to come back to rural and regional areas and meet the skill shortages that are present now and will be exacerbated in the future. You can imagine their horror when Centrelink staff told them they had basically three options to become eligible for youth allowance. They could defer their studies and earn the $19,000 required but it would mean having to work 30 hours a week—in other words, virtually full time—over the ensuing 18 months in a two-year period. This is virtually impossible for a rural young person, given the economy. Rural and regional Australia has been hit again and again by the Labor federal government and too often by their state counterparts. We now have a huge contraction of employment opportunities in rural and regional Australia, particularly in irrigated agriculture, where this government’s policy seems to be to take away irrigation from the food producers of Australia who used to do the heavy lifting on behalf of all of us. They looked in despair at that work option because they could not find 30 hours of work a week over a two-year period. If you do defer for two years you have also lost that deferral. Most universities and other institutions of higher learning do not allow you to defer for two years. Quite clearly, Minister Gillard had not understood that or her cynicism was such that she did not care.

The third option offered by Centrelink staff—perhaps a little more quietly with a hand up to the mouth—was that students could get married or form a de facto relationship and become pregnant and have a baby. What a sad indictment of this Rudd Labor government that their officials should be driven to pass on those three options, particularly the idea that they could confirm their independent status through at least pretending to or pursuing a de facto or marriage relationship, knowing they would condemn those young people to poverty in the long term if they were forced into an early marriage and early child bearing. This is what they were told to do, given Labor’s new independent Youth Allowance policies. I think that is disgraceful.

The Rudd Labor government does not seem to understand that for a number of years now we have had a declining number of students from rural and regional areas putting their hands up to go to university, given that we are facing in southern Australia the seventh year of drought. Parents who used to be able to put a little aside for their children—$20,000 a year—to study in cities away from home have been hit so hard by the climatic conditions that they are less able than ever before to raise those funds. Then, of course, the drought conditions have a multiplier effect on the small business people—the men and women who service those farms. They too have had sharply contracting incomes.

We in the northern Victoria area have been looking very sadly at the statistics of rural and regional students in my area from the North Central Local Learning and Employment Network. It has found that those who previously wanted to go to university are deferring at two-and-a-half times the rate of their metropolitan counterparts. From its own statistics, it knows that the longer you are away from study the more difficult it is to return and the more likely it is that you will never return to take up that offer, especially if you have been deferring for a much longer period than others. So we know that the policy of this government is not going to have a social inclusion outcome, which I presume is one of the agendas of this government, given it is in the minister’s title, but social injustice. This is creating two classes of young people in Australia—those born in cities close to tram tracks and close to universities and TAFE institutions offering a wide range of subjects and then those other young Australians living in rural and regional areas a long way from universities or TAFE institutions with a wide range of courses.

Why should it be that, if you are a rural and regional student, you cannot study the course of your choice, the course for which you have managed to gain the right scores and categories of required subjects? Why is it that rural students have to give up on their dreams, their pursuit of higher education, whilst metropolitan counterparts can live at home, take public transport, move daily to their places of study and move on to have careers of choice? This has not happened before in Australia. Previous governments have understood the differences in the costs facing rural and regional parents compared with those in metropolitan areas. That has been taken into consideration with special support, particularly the independent youth allowance criteria. Unfortunately, that has now come to an end and I am just so concerned, particularly for rural and regional communities which are facing hardship on so many fronts, because this government has turned its back on them in what is for some their greatest hour of need.

Take the dairy industry: while their counterparts in the UK, the EU and the USA, being supported with special supplementary government measures in the face of the global decline, are in credit, most of Australia’s dairy farmers in irrigated agriculture cannot survive another six to eight months with prices at below the cost of production and the high value of the dollar. This government is cynically turning away from the dairy industry and saying: ‘We do not care. Let them get out of the trouble themselves. We will support the automotive and retail sectors. We will even give them a good go in textiles, clothing and footwear. But when it comes to the dairy industry they can go whistle.’

The billions of dollars the dairy industry generates at the farm gate, the 40,000 people it employs and the multiplier impact into communities beyond the immediate employees—all of that apparently does not matter. Dairy farmers are in electorates which do not tend to vote Labor, so it really does not matter. I have to say that now their sons and daughters are paying the price for the uncaring and uncivil attitudes of this government. Their sons and daughters are now not going to go to universities in metropolitan areas, which are often the only places that offer the courses of their choice. That is grossly unfair.

I call on this government to look very closely at the amendments that are to be put up by the coalition. I beg this government to have a heart, to think about social justice in this country and to think about the skills shortages, already a mark of economies in rural and regional Australia, which will get worse when you do not have graduates who have a rural or regional background. We know exactly what we are staring down the barrel at. I have to say that this government is proceeding in a way which is absolutely sickening to those who thought that Labor represented a fair go for all. The veil has been lifted on so many fronts in recent days. This was supposed to be the government of border protection. It was supposed to be the government of a fair go on so many fronts. In fact, it is turning out to be a government in chaos. It is a government that does not care, a government that is letting strong, protective measures and policies unravel, whether they are to do with border security or rural and regional economies. For generations to come, young Australians are going to be paying the price. I absolutely condemn the federal Labor government for the moves which have taken university out of the reach of so many rural and regional students. I strongly urge the government to look at our amendments and have a heart.

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