Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I recognise the member for Canberra in this place. I think it is the first time I have spoken after her and I congratulate her on her election. In her presentation the member for Canberra spoke quite passionately about the issues relating to education—in fact, I think she used the phrase that education is a vaccine against poverty and a vaccine against social disadvantage. Without wishing to prolong the metaphor any further, I must say that regional Australia does need an injection of fairness and equity when it comes to education. So, in rising to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and the related bill, I note the proposed amendment by the member for Sturt and I give credit to him for his relentless pursuit of the government in relation to the issues of student income support.

Today this government has another chance to do the right thing, the decent thing, and live up to its hollow rhetoric about the education revolution. It has a chance to deliver a fair go for all regional students seeking to access the independent youth allowance. In this, the Gillard government’s year of decision and delivery, the Prime Minister has the opportunity to fix up the mess she has created in the area of student income support.

The amendment put forward by the member for Sturt is about fairness. It is about equity and it is about tidying up the mess that was created by the former Minister for Education and now Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. I acknowledge that the amendment put forward will not solve all the issues relating to equity of access to tertiary studies for regional students, but at least it will stop the current discrimination on the basis of random lines on a map that has heavily disadvantaged students who attended year 12 in 2009 and also disadvantaged students from regional areas who are undertaking gap years at the moment.

We need to be very clear about what we are debating in this amendment moved by the member for Sturt. It relates specifically to the independent youth allowance and the workforce criteria imposed in the aftermath of the former education minister’s failed attempts to overhaul student income support. We have this ridiculous system now of lines on a map which define areas as being either inner regional or outer regional for the purpose of accessing independent youth allowance. The students who live in those areas face different workforce criteria to achieve their independence.

The ridiculous situation is that, in my electorate, you have towns such as Yarram, Heyfield and Maffra, which are very small and service small agricultural areas around them, which are regarded as inner regional under this government’s classification. The workforce criteria of 30 hours per week over two years is almost impossible to achieve for many students in the small country towns that are in that inner regional classification. Towns like Yarram, Heyfield and Maffra are classified the same as Hobart under this system for the purpose of calculating the independent youth allowance. So we have Hobart, with a population of about 250,000, and we have a town like Yarram, with a population of about 1,750 people. So I invite members opposite to come to Yarram and explain the fairness of that system to the people in my community. This is a recognised problem with the system. The minister himself has acknowledged there is a problem with the system. We need to get on and fix the mess.

While I am talking about the Yarram community, I have a speech here that was given last year by the president of the school council at Yarram Secondary College, Mr Garry Stephens. Garry has been a great servant of that community, both in his role within the business community and in his willingness to work on behalf of the school on the school council. He has been a fierce advocate for the Yarram community. This is what Garry told people attending the speech afternoon last year:

Rural communities need to continue to get a message to all levels of Government that we are at a disadvantage in sending our year 12 students onto tertiary study and that if more rural people are going to be able to study at tertiary level we need better living away from home allowances and financial support for our students.

In this place, we often get caught up in political arguments. This is a comment from a fellow on the ground in a regional community, with strong business experience and direct experience in the Yarram Secondary College, giving a bit of free advice to the minister. I encourage the minister to start listening to people like Garry Stephens from the Yarram community.

As I said, even the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations himself has acknowledged that we have a mess. He was talking on Gippsland ABC Radio last week, trying to make a positive out of this government’s decision to bring forward the review and make changes allegedly from 1 January next year. The minister admitted on radio that the current system was ‘an inelegant solution’. He also admitted it was ‘a bit untidy’. ‘A bit untidy’ would have to be an early nomination for the understatement of the year. What we have is an absolute mess which is jeopardising young people’s careers, frustrating the hell out of teachers, making parents angry and causing Centrelink staff to run around in circles trying to figure out how to implement the system. So to say it is an inelegant solution and a bit untidy is the greatest understatement of the year so far.

The minister has put forward a pathetic solution. His solution is to bring forward the review process and make a promise about what might happen on 1 January next year. I will just have a quiet word about something that needs to be recognised by the Independents who have backed the government on this promise of action. What are the Independents actually saying to the students of 2009 and 2010 in these so-called inner regional areas and who have basically been left out in the cold by this decision? As the member for Sturt noted in his address, Senator Evans himself has already backed down on the deal; he has backed away from any promises or any undertakings to these students on the level of support and whether he will actually abolish the inner regional and outer regional boundaries.

The big issues surround uncertainty. We have students, we have parents, we have teachers who are making plans now for the rest of their lives. In about year 10 students in regional communities start working out their pathway—how they are going to possibly get to university. Many of the students in my community come from poorer socioeconomic groups, as is very typical of rural communities, with lower household incomes. I have acknowledged from day one that the changes to the income thresholds in terms of accessing the dependent youth allowance have been very positive. There is no argument on this side of the chamber with the government’s changes. The argument is about the independent youth allowance and the students who have taken a gap year. The students from 2009 in inner regional areas face a whole different classification, a whole different workforce criteria, to some other students who are actually in the same class. If I can give the example of Yarram again, if you are attending Yarram Secondary College the chances are you are going to school with a kid from Port Albert, seven kilometres down the road. The kid from Port Albert is regarded as outer regional; the students who live and attend school in the Yarram community itself are regarded as inner regional.

I support a complete overhaul of the system. The holding pattern from 1 July this year should be to abolish the current arrangement of inner regional and outer regional, and the changes from 1 January next year should include a tertiary access allowance which addresses this fundamental inequity and the fundamental differences which exist between country students who are forced to move away from home to attend university and their city counterparts who can stay at home while pursuing their academic dreams.

Members opposite like to talk a lot about the so-called transformational powers of education. I have heard it many times; it must be in the key messages sheet that was sent out at one stage by the minister for education. Instead of talking about the transformational powers of education, now it is time to deliver—to start working to reduce the economic barriers for regional students who are forced to leave home to attend university. I acknowledge that governments are not the complete solution to this problem. We have problems with aspiration in many of our regional communities. We need to encourage young people in regional areas to remain at school and to achieve their full potential. I believe we need to make sure that we value education more highly in our regional communities. We need to work with the parents and we need to work with the students themselves, particularly in regional areas.

The problem is, if students see some form of roadblock in front of them, whether it be a fight in this place about the whole issue of student income support or any other issue, and they realise that university is perhaps beyond their reach, their aspirations are killed off. That is a critical issue we need to consider in this place in our debate about student income support. Gippsland has one of the worst year 12 retention rates in Victoria. About 65 per cent of students in my community finish year 12, compared to a metropolitan average in excess of 80 per cent. There is a key issue here in terms of the importance to regional communities of training our own young people to take on roles in areas like health, engineering and other tertiary-qualified professions—these students are the ones who are more likely to return in the future.

The other important point to note is that we can send a very strong message to mature age professionals that if you move to a regional area, if you bring your highly valued skills that we need in our community, your child is likely to receive some support when they have to leave to attend university down the track. We will actually help you out with the additional costs. Right now it is a barrier to getting health professionals and other professionals to move to regional communities because they see this big bill looming in the future in terms of sending their child off to university. We need to understand these costs and why they are different for regional areas. It is at least $12,000 to $15,000 more than if your child can stay at home with you while they are attending university. That is after-tax income, it must be noted. We are sucking wealth out of regional communities, as it is often to pay a city based landlord who receives a tax advantage from negatively gearing the property the students are living in.

I believe these are fundamental issues we have to address in terms of student income support, and so far the government has talked about an education revolution but has really just tinkered around the edges. I believe we may need to be creative in the future as well. If you accept my premise that all students who are forced to move away from home to further their studies should receive some form of tertiary access allowance, we may need to look at the actual tax deductibility status of the accommodation cost to their parents.

I believe this review should go ahead. I support the government in that regard. But it should be broad enough to consider a whole range of student income support measures. I believe there is a potential for a tertiary access allowance at a specified amount for all students who are required to live away from home, who have no option other than to live away from home, and an extra component that is income-tested to assist lower and middle income earners. There may be something more we can do, as I said, in terms of more innovative tax treatment of the accommodation costs. It is very difficult for us to attract the high income earning professionals in many regional areas and the education opportunities must be at least part of the problem that we need to address.

The scope of the problem is referred to in a recent report into deferral rates put forward under the title Deferring a university offer in regional Victoria. Among the findings of the report was that the actual rate of deferral amongst regional people has been consistently higher than that of their Melbourne metropolitan counterparts. Over the last seven years in regional Victoria this rate rose from 9.9 per cent in 2004 to 15.2 per cent in 2010, with the rate reaching as high as 21.6 per cent in 2009. That is an interesting statistic in many regards because there was a peak in deferrals in 2009, when there was a sharp rise from 15.9 to 21.6 per cent in rural areas. While the data itself does not support a firm conclusion, you have to speculate that some of the changes that were announced to youth allowance and the confusion that was created in the May 2009 budget added to the deferral rate. So it is a very real issue. When we started legislating and changing the system, the reaction straightaway was a six per cent increase in deferrals from rural areas.

The other point I want to make from this report is that the factors that have been studied all combine to present evidence of what they call cumulative and enduring disadvantage among non-metropolitan school completers in terms of university entry. I believe that the uncertainty we have created over the past two years in relation to this whole debate about student income support is making it more difficult for students as they plan for the next five years. The submission by Deakin University to the inquiry into the extent of and nature of disadvantage in rural and regional Victoria dealt with issues directly relating to access to education. Amongst its conclusions, Deakin University said:

Increasing participation in higher education in regional Victoria is crucial to addressing disadvantage and inequality. If participation rates in regional Victoria are to be increased to achieve attainment goals there is much work to be done to change attitudes and culture. Appropriate financial incentives and access strategies must be identified and implemented.

Improving access to higher education for rural and regional students requires a range of responses … from Government in terms of incentives for rural and regional students and funding incentives for regional University Campuses and delivery.

Time prevents me from going into all the other recommendations and conclusions from Deakin University. But it just reinforces my overall point, that if the government is genuine in its attempts to give regional students a fair go it will put some real substance into its so-called education revolution.

Senator Fiona Nash, along with the member for Sturt, the member for Forrest and others, has been at the forefront of this debate and there have been many other coalition members and senators who have fought the good fight. We must continue to highlight this issue in the interests of fairness and equity for regional Australians.

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