Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. I commend the contribution of the member for Pearce to this debate. This bill has been the subject of much debate in my electorate for many months, and I am pleased now to have this opportunity to raise the concerns of my constituents in this parliament.

Students in Australia are supported primarily through Youth Allowance and its associated benefits and payments. Youth allowance is intended not to provide luxuries for students but to assist them in paying for the very basic necessities whilst they are studying. For students from regional areas, youth allowance is particularly important because they often have the added expense of having to travel far from home to obtain a university education.

We all know that tertiary education is vital to meeting Australia’s future skill needs. As we speak, our universities are producing the next generation of doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists and teachers. Youth allowance plays a big part in allowing young people to get access to tertiary education. We should be doing everything we can to ensure that Youth Allowance is sustainable and accessible.

This legislation will make a number of changes to the system of income support for students. From 1 January 2010, all recipients of youth allowance will be eligible for a student start-up scholarship of $2,254, which will be indexed in the following years. The government estimates that 172,600 students will access the payment from 2013. The legislation also introduces a relocation scholarship to be paid to students who have to move away from home to study. This payment will be $4,000 in the first year and $1,000 for each subsequent year. The legislation also reduces the age of independence from 25 years to 22 years, which I believe is a common-sense move.

One particular change of importance is the increase in the personal income test threshold. Currently, students start to have their youth allowance reduced if they earn more than $236 in a given fortnight. That limit will be raised to $400, allowing students to work casually or part-time without losing the certainty of their regular youth allowance payment.

The legislation also increases the parental income test threshold. Currently, a student’s youth allowance begins to taper off once his parents’ annual income reaches $32,800. This assumes that parents earning more than $32,800 have spare income to support a student away at university—an assumption which is unrealistic. The new parental income threshold will be set at $44,165 per year.

Most concerning in this legislation, however, is the changes to the workplace participation criteria. Currently there are three ways a young person can establish their independence for the purposes of receiving youth allowance. The most common way is through taking a gap year after high school in which that young person must earn at least $19,532. The legislation removes that avenue to achieving independence. Under the new system, the only way to establish independence will be by working full time for at least 18 months in the two years after completing high school.

It is concerning to note that the legislation seeks to introduce these changes on 1 January 2010, which will affect those students already in a gap year. Some of these changes are welcome and will be beneficial for young people trying to access tertiary education, but I am very concerned with the changes that are being made in relation to the gap year. I recently held a forum in my electorate to speak with young people and their parents about these changes. About 70 people came to air their concerns.

Amongst the issues raised was the fact that regional students and their families are already disadvantaged in accessing tertiary or vocational education because of the need to relocate. We in Coffs Harbour are very fortunate to have the Southern Cross University at the Coffs Harbour Education Campus, which also has a high-quality TAFE and senior high school. But many courses are not offered at that university and many students from Coffs Harbour and the surrounding area still have to travel to Brisbane or Sydney to gain education. Many metropolitan students who seek to take a course at Southern Cross University in Coffs Harbour would also be disadvantaged by these changes because they likewise would have to travel to the university on the North Coast.

Some parents have raised with me the very high costs of assisting their young people to attend a university away from home. It has been quoted to me as costing about $18,000 a year. It is rather unfortunate that students who have to move away from home are being so disadvantaged by these changes.

Also I have great concern with the fact that students are required to work 30 hours a week every week during the 18 months that they are required to gain this income. This is very difficult in regional areas, where much of the employment is seasonal and where many people who are seeking full-time employment do not gain 30 hours a week. This is extremely difficult and very unrealistic. If a student earns a reasonable amount of income, they can still fail to meet the continuity test, if you like, under this legislation. It is a significant disadvantage, a significant drawback.

This part of the legislation shows that this government has not realised the special needs of people in regional areas. It has not realised the amount of seasonal work that students are normally involved in. Those are the sorts of jobs they do. It is students who are providing extra labour in the Christmas holidays when the tourist season is in full flight. It is students who are providing the extra labour at harvest time in our agricultural areas to assist with getting the harvest in. Those jobs do not last all year round. This legislation neglects that fact, and regional and rural students are worse off for that omission.

The Minister for Education and the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations should know that there are not a lot of full-time jobs in regional areas. She chose to ignore this very important point when drafting this legislation. Like so many things this government does, this is very short on detail. It is very big on rhetoric, but very short on detail.

Also, many universities only allow 12-month deferrals. If you have to defer for two years, you may well be excluded from your course. If you have to defer for two years, you may never end up setting foot inside a university at all. It may be that many young people decide not to ultimately pursue a university education because of the legislative changes that this government is going to introduce.

Where will our professionals for the future come from? Where will the many professionals that are needed in regional and rural areas come from if they are being actively deterred from taking on tertiary studies? The government should not be contradicting its rhetoric on education by introducing measures in relation to youth allowance which positively discriminate against regional students and which positively discriminate against students seeking to increase their skills by gaining a tertiary education.

It is not only the cash. There are also the associated benefits of youth allowance. A student may no longer be able to access the benefits of a health care card. There are other benefits that flow with the actual youth allowance benefits. These changes will have a substantial impact on thousands of students who may wish to study in future years, as well as on those who are currently completing their gap year. The fact that this legislation is effectively retrospective is one of the most reprehensible factors in relation to this legislation.

The opposition is steadfastly opposed to these changes to youth allowance, which would work against the best interests of people in regional and rural areas. They are absolutely in support of youth allowance. They are in support of our regional students, to encourage them to get a tertiary education or the skills of their choice; to encourage them to meet that extra expense of moving away from home if they need to to obtain the sorts of skills that are needed in regional areas.

It was interesting to note the speech the Minister for Education made on 4 March this year at the Universities Australia Conference. She said:

National participation and attainment in higher education is too low.

Later in the speech, she told the conference:

To be a stronger and fairer nation, the Australian people must be amongst the most highly educated and skilled on earth. This is a vision for all Australians not just a few Australians. Our nation will never be at its best if we ignore the skills and capacities of those who are not born into privileged positions.

This grand rhetoric sounds wonderful. It is wonderful to go into a universities conference and waffle on about a grand vision for education. But when it comes to the detail—to actually putting the policy into practice, to the rubber hitting the road—we introduce a system that is going to discriminate against the thousands upon thousands of students who have been brought up in a regional area and may have to travel a long way to get the sorts of opportunities that metropolitan students take for granted. I find it incredible that we do not hear a squeak out of the Labor regional members. We do not hear the Labor regional members standing-up for the students they represent. We do not hear them holding forums around their electorates to hear the views of the students who are being dramatically disadvantaged by these proposed changes.

The people of Cowper have spoken very loudly. They have said to me that they are concerned by these changes. They have said to me that they want to receive a tertiary education. They have said to me that they are going to put in the hard yards to get an education but they expect some assistance from this government to help them make it happen. We put a great amount of resource in this country into trying to get lower skilled people into work and yet we have a huge cohort of young people keen and eager to seek training to improve themselves and we are not maximising that benefit. We are working very hard at getting the long-term unemployed into work—and so we should—but we should be equalling that effort with making sure that we encourage every regional and rural student to achieve their best; encourage every regional and rural student to get a tertiary education or a TAFE qualification, or whatever it is they seek. We should be supporting them with independent youth allowance. We should not be deterring them in the pursuit of improving their education.

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