Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted.

I thank the Minister for Social Inclusion for granting leave. I rise to continue my speech on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. Like the member for New England I have real concerns about the impact that this bill will have on students from rural Australia. I will continue where I left off last night. I found it rather ironic that this legislation has been introduced by the Minister for Social Inclusion because this bill will exclude so many rural and regional Australians from realising their dreams of attending university and completing a bachelor degree, a masters or even a PhD. That is a great tragedy for so many students and young people doing exams right now as they finish their secondary education.

What this bill will do is essentially force students who want to qualify for independent youth allowance to work some 30 hours a week, which is only 8 hours short of the maximum 38-hour working week under award conditions. Currently, a student can prove independence by fulfilling one of the three criteria: working full-time for a minimum of 30 hours a week for at least 18 months in two years, or working part-time for at least 15 hours for two years since leaving school, or earning in the 18 months since leaving school 75 per cent of the maximum wage A level, equalling some $19,532. The proposed changes push for the removal of the second and third of the three criteria I have just mentioned, a move the federal government claims will ensure that income support is available only to those who most need it while excluding approximately 27,000 prospective claimants and saving the government over $1.8 billion over four years. So in many ways this is not about the students from rural and regional Australia that the member for New England spoke about prior to my address; it is about a savings measure.

I know that we have had the Bradley review, and there are recommendations in that and some of those have been welcome in this bill, but I still have real concern for the young people of rural and regional Australia. I know that the changes have met with outrage. When the budget came down it was only a matter of a week and there was shock right across Australia. My office—and I am sure that most offices, including offices from the other side of the House, I might say—have been inundated with phone calls and emails, with stories about how this would affect students who have taken a gap year or who are in year 12 at the moment and have had the rug pulled right out from under them. They had plans about the gap year and this was really the first issue that had to be addressed.

I think the member for Lyons mentioned some of the comments on the Facebook, and I am sure that the minister, who probably has a Facebook, would have had some comments placed on hers. Young people are venting their anger, and I know that in my electorate they are. There is a group called the Bring Back the $18k Gap-Year Youth Allowance Eligibility Criteria. It was set up by the National Union of Students and has almost 11,500 members. Another group, named Keep the Old Youth Allowance, has more than 4,000 members. It is on the wall of that Facebook group that someone has perhaps best summed up this piece of legislation:

K.rudd needs a reality check, seriously.

These are young people, students, who use this technology—and what great technology it is to send a message. Young people are using these technologies and K-Rudd certainly, as it goes on, does need a reality check, because he and his education minister—and I welcome the minister in the chamber at the moment—talk about an education revolution and yet by handing down this legislation they are single-handedly destroying a future at university for many rural and regional Australians.

What message does this send to the youth of regional and rural Australia? Young people in non-metropolitan areas already are disadvantaged by the tyranny of distance. In order to undertake a degree they must move out of their home away from their family and set themselves up in a new city and a new place, buy furniture and textbooks and start paying rent. Many of these teenagers took a year off after high school to work so that they could qualify for youth allowance, which made it easier for them to move away from home and meet the high costs of setting up in a new town or city. The government’s changes to the youth allowance criteria, which are essentially retrospective, were a huge slap in the face to the some 30,000 gap year students who have taken 2009 off to make money in order to qualify for financial assistance.

After huge pressure from parents and students across Australia—and I acknowledge this—the minister made a partial backdown, which will help some of those gap year students. But there is still the criterion that applies concerning distance: as long as they live more than 90 minutes from a university by public transport. It is good news for the some 5,000 of the 30,000 students affected by these changes. Of course in my electorate of Maranoa we do not have a university. With the new boundaries it is 750,000 square kilometres in area, and I can assure you that we do not have too many public transport systems. Unlike the subsidised public transport systems in our capital cities where students can live at home and go to the sandstone or new universities and hop on subsidised public transport, we do not have those in Maranoa.

My electorate extends from Warwick, Darling Downs, and the Great Dividing Range right out to the South Australian and Northern Territory border. I was reading in today’s local paper, the Warwick Daily News: ‘Country kids’ dreams on hold’ about young people who want to return to the bush. I will share with the House one comment here from Bec, who says she believes:

… the changes may mean some students who put off further education might be lured by a steady income and unable to reinvigorate the study momentum.

She goes on:

I’m 18 years old so I want to get back into study and the workplace quickly. I don’t want to take two years off because I’ll be 20 when I start uni and about 24 by the time I finish.

This is not me speaking; this is a student from a country town in my electorate—no public transport there, no university within 90 minutes. It is more like a three-hour or four-hour drive. This is a young, bright person wanting to further her education.

Another young student, Hannah—and this is a very important point as well—says that the changes mean she will have to work 30 hours a week for 18 months or 15 hours for two years to be classed as independent from her parents so she can claim the payment. She says:

It just doesn’t make sense to make it harder, especially when there’s a shortage of doctors and pharmacists in rural areas …

Some city students turn up their noses at rural placements, rural kids will return to the country.

This is Hannah, who wants to study pharmacy. She is from a rural area and she would like to go back with her degree behind her into a country town and be a pharmacist. We have a great problem in my electorate in attracting people out into rural communities. It has been a great challenge getting professional people into my electorate. We have many workers on 457 visas, which is a visa classification allowing people to come into Australia and work in a geographic area in a particular profession or even in a blue-collar area.

I hope the minister is listening. This is a young person from a rural community who wants to go away and study pharmacy. She is from a rural area and she said:

Some city students turn up their noses at rural placements, rural kids will return to the country.

I hear that all the time. Minister, I am sure you have heard those sorts of comments. This is not the member for Maranoa speaking. These are people who know that these changes will disadvantage this family and might see this student deferring her education indefinitely—as the other young student said, she might not get the momentum to go back into study—and not going back into study. As I said, people like Hannah and Bec will return home. They will come back with their degrees in hand and they will bring those skills that we are short of at the moment. It is about training your own to come home. They will fill positions of accountants, lawyers, doctors and dentists—people we are short of in those professions out there. The member for Kennedy has just joined me.

Census data from 2006—only three years ago—shows us that the rate of students between the ages of 17 and 22 from Maranoa undertaking some form of higher education is 16.9 per cent or about 1,558 students. Not quite 17 per cent of young people from the electorate of Maranoa go on to further education post their secondary education. It is an issue that I think the member for New England raised. It is about how we are going to address the post-secondary education participation rate for students from rural and remote Australia—that is, for people who do not have a university within 90 minutes of where they live. They have to leave home. Their parents cannot afford to subsidise them to go to university without some financial support from the Commonwealth government. The ICPA have repeatedly raised with me the issue of a post-secondary access allowance. This is an issue that I acknowledge I championed when we were in government, and I will continue to champion it for the reasons that Hannah and Bec outlined as reported in the Warwick daily paper today. The issue is the fact that they have to leave home to gain access to a post-secondary education. There is not a university within an hour-and-a-half’s drive, except on the very fringe of my electorate near Toowoomba. They have to leave home to gain access to that education.

This bill will make some improvements. I acknowledge that, and I acknowledge that the minister has addressed the issue for those on a gap year currently—but it will not help those who want to do it in the future. Minister, I urge you to listen to the recommendations that may come from the Senate inquiry into this issue. If there is one thing that we in this place should be ensuring it is that we support students who want to go on and who should be encouraged to go on to post-secondary education. Too few from rural Australia do go on, but if we continue down this path—and it has been there for far too long—fewer and fewer people will bring the professional skills that we so desperately need in rural Australia.

We support students with a basic allowance if they have to leave home to gain access to a basic primary and secondary education. But once they have completed that secondary education there is not a basic allowance without an income or asset test. There is one in secondary and primary education, which I know previous governments supported and which this government continues to support and must continue to support, for those geographically isolated students. It is an issue that we must look at, Minister, for those who have finished their formal secondary education and are geographically isolated. To ask them to do two years work in the workforce to qualify for a youth allowance is nonsensical. As the local paper reported, Bec said she will get out of the habit of studying in those two years. She may remain in the community, put off that education and never return to further education.

As I said, there are some good elements in this bill but I know that the overriding negatives will have disastrous consequences for so many young people in rural and regional Australia. I do encourage the minister to listen to the recommendations of the Senate inquiry. I also urge the minister to support the amendments that have been put forward by the coalition. I certainly encourage the minister to rethink the changes that will save $1.8 billion. When you put a price on education for young people who are going to be denied it because of this legislation and these changes, $1.8 billion is not a lot to put towards supporting young people, particularly young people from rural and regional Australia who want to go on to further education and gain professional qualifications in order to return to our rural and regional areas, where we are so short of professional people. We are in desperate need of them. I would urge the minister to rethink the proposed changes.

See this speech in context