Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Perhaps the shadow minister for education might want to contemplate this: as of today, every vice-chancellor in this country is calling on the Senate to pass the bill; every state and territory education minister in this country is calling on the Senate to pass the bill; the Australian Greens want the bill passed; Senator Xenophon wants the bill passed; the National Union of Students wants the bill passed; and every Independent member in the House of Representatives wants the bill passed. In their caterwauling and arrogance they reveal how out of touch they are. I ask members of the Liberal Party to contemplate this: in taking the stance that they are taking they are saying, in their arrogance, that they know better than every Australian vice-chancellor, that they know better than struggling students, that they know better than the Liberal minister for education in Western Australia, and that they know better than the working families who need this support.

I ask the Leader of the Opposition, who is known to feign concern about cost-of-living questions for working families: how can he justify his senators’ refusal to pass a bill which would allow a middle-income family in the bush who earn $70,000 a year and have two kids, one who is already at university and one who is about to go there, to receive $13,300 in the first year for the student starting university and $10,300 for the student already at university? Under the current scheme they would receive next to nothing. How can he say to that family, in that income range, that they should not get those benefits? I am asking the Leader of the Opposition—who is now making a catastrophic error by seeking advice from the shadow minister for education—to have the courage to think this through for himself and to ask himself: can he credibly ever again raise cost-of-living issues if he does not pass this bill?

If he truly believes that people in income ranges like $70,000 a year deserve support, he should instruct his senators to pass this bill. If he does not, then he is standing by the scheme the Howard government stood by for its term in office, where a family earning $44,000 a year does not get full youth allowance whilst a family earning $300,000 a year, with a student at home, does get full youth allowance. It would amaze me that anybody, even members of the Liberal Party, could walk out and credibly say to the Australian people, ‘That’s fair.’ A kid who lives at home in a family earning $300,000 a year gets full youth allowance, even if they live in Carlton or central Sydney, 10 steps from the university, while a kid who needs to move away from home, who is from a family that earns $40,000-odd a year, does not qualify for full youth allowance. I ask the Leader of the Opposition to seriously contemplate this himself and to think it through. It is an important question for students who are trying to go to university right now.

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