Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is no argument that the youth allowance provisions needed changing. My view is that all kids who have no choice but to leave home to study their chosen pathway, be it at TAFE or university, should have access to youth allowance with a sensible asset or income test applied to it. However, that is not what we have here. We have here a Deputy Prime Minister who put together the legislation, came to the dispatch box time and time again, and defended her legislation. She said that it was right and that we were always wrong.

Then the minister realised that she had made a mistake after she got a lot of feedback and she realised that the members of the House on the opposition side were not just making this up. She then decided that she would take retrospectivity out and make some changes around the edges. Then she came back to the dispatch box and she said that she was right and we were wrong. Every time, she was right and we were wrong. We have come to the position whereby we have now argued strongly again under the leadership of the shadow minister for education, apprenticeships and training, Christopher Pyne. He has determined that we have been able to achieve more concessions from the minister, who as I said has argued at the dispatch box day after day that we are wrong and she is right and that everybody is better off under her proposal and that we are making this up.

Under the leadership and guidance of the shadow minister, the opposition has been able to get more concessions for regional students. However, we have come to a point where the concessions are for some and not for others. That is a fundamental problem. It is a fundamental problem when the minister continually comes to the dispatch box and argues that her policy is right and her legislation is right and then it continually gets changed. It was a fundamental problem when the Deputy Prime Minister stood up at the dispatch box—I took exception to this—and told everybody in Australia who was listening that families who earn up to $140,000 per annum could access youth allowance to help support their children at university.

What the Deputy Prime Minister did not say was, ‘Okay, if you’ve got two children at university, you will receive $2.80 per fortnight of the youth allowance.’ No. She led the Australian people to believe through those comments that students would get the full youth allowance if their families earned $140,000 per annum. I see that she has honed her press release and rectified her comments. She now says the parental income test will be raised so that families with two children studying away from home can earn more than $140,000 before the allowance is cut completely. In fact, the truth is that they will receive $2.80 per fortnight per child. What do you get if you have one child at university and the parents earn $140,000? If you have one dependent child at university and the parents earn more than $140,000, you get zero. That is the minister’s own calculation.

I am proud of the Nationals and I am proud of Fiona Nash and her carriage of this through her inquiry on this issue and through listening to the students of Australia telling her what the problems are. The problem that we have now is that some will get access to something that they previously did not have—they will get access to the scholarships on offer that the minister talks about and they will get access to youth allowance—but others will have access to youth allowance removed from them. That is the problem: some will get access to something they never had, but others will have taken away what they currently have.

That is the wrong part of this legislation. That is the part we would like to see changed. Inner regional areas should be included within this proposal and the minister should again agree that she has made a mistake and that the members of the opposition are standing up in earnest for the people that they represent. They are not crying wolf; they are crying the reality of living in regional Australia. They would like to see all students—(Time expired)

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