Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Like other members of the Liberal-National team, I am very strongly in favour of making sure that students from around Australia, including students from rural and regional Australia, have fair and equitable access to higher education. On the Sunshine Coast, which I am privileged to represent in this place, we have a local university—the University of the Sunshine Coast—which has been extraordinarily successful in attracting students from not only around the area but around the state, the country and, indeed, overseas. There are many students on the Sunshine Coast who live with their families, or who have lived with their families, who have to move away to undertake study disciplines not offered by the University of the Sunshine Coast. Many of those students will be disadvantaged by the provisions currently before the chamber.

I am very strongly in favour of making sure that young people—who are, of course, Australia’s future—gain the most solid, valuable and useful education that they can. To enable this to happen in an equitable and compassionate society, it really is important to make sure that there are in place support systems that encourage and assist those students to gain their desired educational qualifications. If we provide the necessary ingredients and support services for students, then, provided the students are diligent and determined, they will be successful in achieving their educational goals. Our nation is immensely richer if more of our young Australians acquire these educational goals.

Youth has benefited as a group specifically from the Youth Allowance support provisions under the Social Security Act 1991 and the Youth Allowance program provides students with financial support during their studies, enabling them to focus more effectively on achieving their educational goals rather than simply on how they are able to exist, to survive, to pay rent, to put food on the table and shoes on their feet, and maybe to pay their bus or other public transport fares.

The Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009 contains a number of provisions; however, the Liberal-National opposition proposes amendments: that the age at which students are deemed to be independent be reduced from 25 to 22 over several years, stepping down to 24 from 2010 and 23 the following year and so on; and that students will not necessarily be deemed independent if they draw wages from a part-time job. The argument is that these changes will ensure that funds from the Youth Allowance kitty money will be better directed to those students who need it. Under this arrangement, students who are currently in the system will not be affected and the bill proposes the same scenario, which in this situation the Liberal-National opposition opposes, for those who last studied in 2008 and who propose to return to study in 2010.

Unfortunately, under the current makeup of this bill, some 25,000 students will not qualify for support from Youth Allowance in 2010 and the following year because the criteria will be narrowed significantly. Students will have to satisfy income threshold requirements as an independent, satisfy age requirements or have worked for 18 months full time prior to returning to study. For those currently in their gap year, the Liberal-National opposition suggests a better way to go is to retain the workforce participation criteria as this would allow the student to access support funds regardless of their parents’ income and assets.

The honourable member for Calare in his contribution emphasised that many rural and regional parents might be asset rich but income poor. They might well have a farm property which is valued at a substantial amount of money but unfortunately the income they derive is simply not sufficient to be able to personally support and maintain students at tertiary institutions, particularly as many rural and regional students are forced to move away from the family home to access educational opportunities.

The removal of the two workforce participation criteria as a result of this bill will, as I said, disadvantage rural and regional students, some of whom who will find themselves ineligible for youth allowance. To counteract this problem, the Liberal-National opposition proposes an amendment that introduces a new funding program that will assist those students and families who do not have the financial capability and who would otherwise be unable to afford the relocation cost of moving to university. Many prospective students from farming backgrounds are precluded, under the new arrangements, from qualification for youth allowance due to the fact that the family farm is valued above the threshold at which the youth allowance cuts out. They used to instead qualify for the youth allowance through the alternative workforce participation routes, but those doors will be closed by this bill as it currently stands.

Given the fact that the government now holds a substantial number of rural and regional seats, I simply do not understand why it has not been more responsive to the pleas of those people who will be seriously disadvantaged by the legislation before the chamber. All members of parliament are supposed to listen to their constituents. I believe that most of us do, but it seems amazing that the rural and regional members of the government party have been unable to convince the Minister for Education, the Deputy Prime Minister, to vary the legislation to ensure that the inequity which this legislation introduces is removed. We have a situation where, increasingly, families who are asset rich yet cash poor might well see their children precluded from having an education if they are from rural or regional areas. As the member for Calare pointed out, we have not had very many medical graduates who originate from rural and regional areas. Over recent years this situation has been redressed to an extent, particularly with the establishment of new medical schools by the Howard government. Unfortunately, the legislation before the chamber will roll this back and it will be increasingly difficult for rural and regional students to qualify in medicine.

The bill includes a new start-up scholarship of $2,254 for new students in 2010—proposed to be indexed in future years—which is a significant cost that, alone, will add up to more than $330 million in the first year. There is obvious benefit in providing financial support for those students as they settle into university life and a new format of education. However, the Liberal-National opposition propose that this allocation be reduced to $1,000 per student, which will ensure that students get a reasonable and significant amount of financial support while also saving the community $696 million over four years. The opposition have been very careful to be financially responsible, and that is why the amendments which will be moved in the chamber will be cost neutral. We saw that what the government was introducing was grossly inequitable. We sought to vary those arrangements to bring about the equity which is not currently present and we had to make sure that the whole scheme remained revenue neutral.

The University of the Sunshine Coast, which I mentioned earlier, has been returned to the electorate of Fisher with the latest boundary redistribution. That will be gazetted, I understand, on 15 December. The University of the Sunshine Coast is an incredible institution and it bounds ahead under the leadership of Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Thomas. In fact, this university was only recognised as an independent institution, some 10 years ahead of what would otherwise have been the case, through the intervention that I made on the part of the university, accompanied by my colleague the honourable member for Fairfax. We went to see the then education minister, Dr David Kemp, who overruled the recommendations from his own department and gave the university the opportunity to convince him that the department’s recommendations were wrong. The university representatives went away, did the necessary homework and came back to see the minister. I have to say that I will eternally respect David Kemp because he was a minister who was prepared to stand up to his department. He saw that the case put forward by the university was compelling. He made administrative arrangements so that the University of the Sunshine Coast could be Australia’s newest greenfields university. It has simply not looked back.

Madam Deputy Speaker Bird, I know that in your own area you have the University of Wollongong. Professor Gerard Sutton, the vice-chancellor there, also does an amazing job. When we have vice-chancellors of institutions who go out there and take on governments and are prepared to say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done to guarantee success for their institution and success for the students they serve, then obviously those people deserve our great admiration.

As I said, there are some students from the Sunshine Coast who do have to travel to Brisbane or elsewhere to pursue courses not offered locally. These students will potentially be affected by the draconian provisions included in the legislation currently being debated in the chamber. I intend to support the amendments moved by the Liberal-National opposition, which will hopefully ameliorate the worst excesses of this bill. If the government is not prepared to be reasonable, if the government is not prepared to accept the amendments moved by the Liberal-National opposition, then the opposition will not hesitate to oppose the bill before the House.

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