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

The cash for clunkers scheme! The list of government ironclad guarantees, hyperbole and over-the-top claims and announcements does not match their delivery. It never does and yet here is an opportunity for the crossbenchers to vote with the opposition to ensure that rural students are given the youth allowance that they deserve.

I know it is very intimidating when the government gathers together the Attorney-General, public servants and others and says, ‘You’re being unconstitutional.’ But the House of Representatives is supreme in this country. We are a parliamentary democracy. If the House of Representatives wants to debate a motion or a bill, we are perfectly entitled to do so. If it is passed, amended or defeated, that is the end of the matter, but it is certainly up to the government whether it is presented to the Governor-General. But that is a different distinction from whether we can consider it. If we do not consider this bill today, we will be establishing a precedent that the executive can intimidate the parliament into not debating a motion, a bill or any other matter which they deem to be an appropriation.

The President of the Senate, John Hogg, who is a Labor senator and not a member of the coalition, says the Social Security Amendment (Income Support for Regional Students) Bill 2010 [2011] is not an appropriation bill because it does not create a new appropriation but simply adds to an appropriation that is already present. The coalition has found the savings necessary to fund this change to youth allowance through the Education Investment Fund at least until a review can be properly and thoroughly conducted that establishes how to get rural students to university—how to get them into tertiary institutions. These constant bandaid measures are not sufficient or acceptable. I note that, apart from one, every one of the crossbenchers represents a rural, regional or inner regional electorate. Our constituents will be watching very closely to see whether the crossbenchers stand up for rural students or are bamboozled by the government into not doing what they are quite entitled to do in this House, which is to consider a bill and then leave it in the government’s hands to reject it by not presenting it to the Governor-General.

I have said all along that we fully accept that, under the Constitution, the executive has to present bills to the Governor-General and that we cannot do that. That is a time-honoured tradition going back to the English Civil War, and we certainly have no proposals to change the way the executive deals with the Crown; but that does not mean that the parliament cannot consider a bill. If this debate had occurred in the 17th century, it would have been regarded by the English parliament as a vital debate about what the House of Representatives—or, in that case, the House of Commons—was capable of doing. I can assure you that our forefathers in previous parliaments would never have been intimidated into not considering a bill because they were taken to a room by the Attorney-General and intimidated into saying that they could not even consider a bill in the parliament—but that is what is happening today.

Finally, the House needs to understand that even if the government gets its way and stops this bill from being considered today—and even if it implements its backdown, which it announced in the dead of night last night to the Telegraph in the hope that it would cut off this debate today—there are thousands of students across Australia who will miss out on youth allowance. But the other choice is to consider this bill, pass this bill and force the government through political pressure to change the youth allowance immediately, starting from tomorrow, so that every student who is entitled to government support for their youth allowance to enable them go to tertiary institutions has the opportunity to do so. If we do not pass this bill today, and if we do not even consider it, families across Australia will think that their parliament has let them down.

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