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

Ensuring that we have the skills base in regional Australia is vital for our economic prosperity. It is vital for the prosperity of this nation because education is the key to meeting the future skills needs in regional areas. But there is, in this country, great inequality in access to education. The ability to live at home and study your course of choice is an option available to all too few regional students. That is why the Deputy Prime Minister’s decision to eliminate the gap year pathway to independent youth allowance was so short-sighted. Educational costs for regional people are so much more when they have to live away from home because they have no choice.

Many regional students are not just choosing between one education institution and another. They have to leave their home towns to study their course of choice, which provides the skills needed in their home towns. It is kids from regional areas that are the most likely to return and provide the future accountants, doctors, lawyers and highly skilled trades professionals that those regional areas need. Many courses are not offered in regional centres, even the larger ones.

Fortunately, under the pressure from the Nationals and our coalition partners, the Liberals, the minister has done a welcome backflip indeed. We have a long way to go to deliver equity for regional students, but the minister’s backdown certainly has addressed the very worst elements of her original legislation. Getting rid of the retrospective elements in the legislation was an important, positive step. I think retrospective legislation in any form is always a problem. When people have made plans based on the situation that existed at the time and then they have the rug pulled out from under their feet, it is just unacceptable. This original legislation was definitely unacceptable.

The government has, to its credit, agreed to retain the original gap-year pathway for people living within certain boundaries but, unfortunately, drawing lines on a map has meant that the devil is in the detail of this proposal. We welcome the youth allowance pathway being retained in centres in my electorate such as Bellingen, Bowraville, Dorrigo, Macksville, Nambucca Heads, South West Rocks and Wooli. Those centres retain access to the youth allowance gap-year pathway. However, people living in centres such as Coffs Harbour, Urunga, Arrawarra, Kempsey, Port Macquarie and, in Madam Deputy Speaker Saffin’s electorate, Grafton will miss out. There are winners and there are losers under these changes and, unfortunately, there are many losers.

The minister claimed that there was great equity in the new income test. As the member for Riverina has rightly pointed out, a family on $140,000 a year with two young people at university will get the princely sum of $2.80 a fortnight each. I have to say that, from talking to university students in my electorate, $2.80 a fortnight is not going to go very far toward ensuring their continued participation in further education. If the family has one child at uni they get zero. We have to encourage regional youth to go to university. It is good economic policy and it is good social policy, and these measures, whilst an improvement on what was originally put forward by the minister, fall far short of what is required to reform the system to support youth in further study.

We see billions of dollars wasted on a home insulation program. We see the shonkies ripping off the government. We see the charlatans entering the industry. They are everywhere. Much of $2½ billion has been wasted. We see billions being wasted under the Building the Education Revolution program because we are paying far too much for our school buildings—in many cases, 100 per cent over what should have been paid. The waste from these two programs alone would have financed a high-quality youth support system at university for years into the future.

This bill has been improved, but this country has a long way to go before we will have a system of support for our youth at university that is a 21st-century outcome. I certainly welcome the improvements and will undertake as a member of a coalition government to put in place the changes that will be needed to support our youth in going on to further education.

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