Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I will not go over the ground that I covered before question time with respect to the important changes that the coalition has wrought from the government and which have allowed us to finally pass the youth allowance bills. I made the points regarding the Minister for Education saying that these changes and amendments were once impossible and suddenly a week later are doable. I was making the point that the Labor members of parliament from rural and regional Australia and, unfortunately, the three Independent members from rural seats in this place can take absolutely no credit at all for extending to thousands of new rural and regional students the old workforce participation criteria enabling them to keep their pathway to higher education. They can take no credit at all for removing all the retrospectivity from this legislation, which was a very important principle. (Extension of time granted)

I appreciate the opportunity just to finish my remarks. The members for Lingiari, Leichhardt, Dawson, Capricornia, Flynn, Richmond, Page, Hunter, Macquarie, Eden-Monaro, Corangamite, Lyons, Braddon, Bass and Franklin all need to explain to their constituents why they signed up to a youth allowance reform which cut out so many thousands of their constituents right across Australia and why it was left to the coalition to stand firm and be tough with the government.

Certainly, the minister eventually recognised the need to back down and support the coalition’s amendments. That has happened in the Senate today and we welcome her flexibility. I would not be so bold as to suggest it may be part of her campaign to be the next leader of the Labor Party. I am not sure whether she wanted to be the person who can deliver—the person who can get something through the Senate—unlike the Prime Minister, who is all talk and no action. That is certainly sticking.

Clearly the Deputy Prime Minister wanted to be able to be the minister who said, ‘Well, nobody else on our side of the House can get anything done, but we can get something through the Senate. We can negotiate with the opposition.’ That is her win, I suppose. She will be able to go out and tell her caucus colleagues that she was the person who could get something done—get something through the Senate—unlike the Prime Minister, who has manifestly failed to deliver on any of his promises from the last election.

A number of my colleagues from rural and regional seats and from the National Party wish to comment on how much more could have been done if the government had been prepared to bend even further. Then more rural and regional students, particularly from inner regional areas, would have been able to access the old workforce participation criteria for the independent youth allowance. That is the one disappointment I have with regard to the coalition allowing this bill to pass. If the government had been prepared to even bend a little bit more, more students would have been able to keep their pathway to higher education. But those students only have one party to blame, and that is the Labor Party.

It is the Labor Party that introduced this legislation and it is the Labor Party that refused to bend any further, but we were not going to stand in the way any longer of 100,000 students across Australia being able to access Commonwealth scholarships and of improving youth allowance. We got a better deal for thousands of rural and regional Australians and their families. When we are elected to government at the end of this year we will review the entire youth allowance from the ground up and we will make sure that there is a genuine pathway to higher education for a group that is already recognised as being a disadvantaged group, to give them the opportunity to have the same start and the same opportunities as people who live in the city and who can stay home with mum and dad—or with mum, or with dad or with whomever—go to university and get the kind of education that we want everybody in Australia to have the opportunity of receiving.

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