Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to specifically support the amendments to the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Election Commitments and Other Measures) Bill 2011 put forward by the member for Menzies, and I note that the issue of an inequitable youth allowance is a matter that the Labor Party desperately do not want to talk about. They want it to go away and they certainly do not like the opposition talking about it. They do not want to debate it because they know that they have been wrong. We all know that most of those who sit opposite do not really have much affinity with country people because they do not represent many country electorates. I suspect, though, that some Labor members who do reside in or have some experience with regional areas must be as frustrated as we on this side of the House are regarding the government’s total neglect of and lack of respect for regional students and the particular difficulties and challenges they face in accessing tertiary education.

We have a Prime Minister who loves nothing more than to gloat about her passion for education. She talks about education as the great equaliser and says she believes that every young person deserves the right to a quality education. If that is the case then her actions need to match her rhetoric. If you look at the Prime Minister’s position on the youth allowance, it becomes clear that her statements regarding education are nothing more than empty platitudes designed to give the impression that she genuinely cares about educational equality, but when it comes to regional students it seems she does not. Labor’s changes to the youth allowance legislation fly in the face of everything the Prime Minister supposedly stands for and they exemplify a very inequitable and hypocritical position taken against country students.

When these ridiculous, discriminatory changes were legislated, there was uproar within the rural and regional student community. Students in my electorate were absolutely gobsmacked. Having been advised of the rules that applied to youth allowance eligibility, they planned their gap years and made appropriate arrangements, only to discover that everything they had been told was about to change. Labor effectively said: ‘Well, too bad. You can’t go to university anymore; we’ve decided to change the rules.’ In fact, they have not even apologised about the distress and the disorientation they caused in regard to the academic careers of many country students. They arrogantly lectured country students that the Gillard government knew what was best for them.

Now I am somewhat encouraged that, after some 12 months of pressure and much community activity—and I commend all of those who have been involved in community rallies and who have pressured their member of parliament, particularly Labor members—the Labor Party has admitted that it got it wrong. However, its commitment to the Independents to bring forward a review of the youth allowance to report by 1 July this year does not address the problem now, and there are students now who are faced with this inequality created by the government’s legislation. Furthermore, Labor has not given any firm commitment to fixing the independent youth allowance problems.

In a media release, the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations, Senator Evans, stated:

The review will report by 1 July this year, and the Government will move to implement any new eligibility arrangements from 1 January 2012.

Senator Evans said the review will consider appropriate savings that can be made to pay for any extensions in eligibility for Youth Allowance. Any new arrangements must be offset by savings.

So, even if they do make the appropriate changes after the review, it is going to be too little too late for those classified as inner regional students who left school in 2009 and had a gap year in 2010, as they are now still required to work an average of 30 hours a week and defer their studies up to two years. Had the coalition’s bill passed, they would now be relieved of these unfair criteria. Last year’s school leavers are also left in limbo, wondering what to expect after the review, and there are clearly already cracks in Labor’s deal with the Independents and, of course, many unanswered questions.

How can regional students and their families trust Labor to deliver on this promise given this government’s dismal record on delivering on its promises? They cannot, and that is what is creating great anxiety out there in rural and regional communities. Labor has shown nothing but arrogant disregard for country students. There has been report after report and survey after survey that clearly illustrates the divide between country and city students. There are clear disadvantages that are faced by students from non-metropolitan areas. You would think that any reasonable government, particularly one that purports to place education high on its list of priorities, would make it a priority to address the imbalance between rural and city students. Yet not only has the Labor Party not sought to remedy this inequity; they have actually made it worse.

For the benefit of those who sit on the other side, it is important to put some facts on the table. I appreciate that the Labor Party has a limited understanding of some of these issues, so it is important to put them on the record. Firstly, most students from regional areas need to relocate to attend a university because there is no university in their local town, and often one that is there may not offer the appropriate courses that they wish to pursue.

Secondly, public transport is severely limited or nonexistent for towns that are close to large regional centres with tertiary institutions. In most cases, students actually have to drive or get their parents to drive them. Take, for example, a couple of local young women in my electorate, Stephanie Butler and Eliza Flanagan. They drive more than 150 kilometres from Wangaratta to Charles Sturt University over the border in Thurgoona because they cannot afford to live out of home. If Labor had not inflicted these discriminatory rules on the youth allowance, Stephanie and Eliza would have been able to move closer to Thurgoona and commit considerably more time to their studies. They would not have to spend about two hours a day on the road and hundreds of dollars a week on petrol. But Stephanie and Eliza are the lucky ones; fortunately for them, their courses are offered at a university relatively close to home. What about students who want to study courses that are only on offer in city universities? Does this government expect them to drive more than three hours each way to attend classes?

The reality is that the 30-hour workplace rule that Labor has inflicted upon country students is so strict that most students from areas classified as inner regional areas will be unable to qualify for the higher, of course, independent rate of youth allowance, and many of them will not get the opportunity to go to university at all as a consequence. The requirement to average either 120 hours in each of the 19 periods of four weeks or 390 hours in each of the six periods of 13 weeks is quite simply unworkable and unreasonable.

What the Labor Party does not understand is that much of the work that is available in country Australia is actually seasonal. People work very long hours during the busy times of sowing, picking, mustering and harvesting, but the work is not available on an even scale throughout the year. It makes life extremely difficult for students attempting to meet these ridiculous criteria. Manufacturing and factories in regional areas also have seasonal work available: it is not always an option to have the same hours available for part-time, casual or even permanent staff. Let us be very clear from the outset: if these rules introduced by the Labor Party remain in place, fewer country students will actually attend university.

This point goes beyond the realms of education; it goes to the sustainability of regional economies. Country Australia faces many challenges, and labour shortages are one of the biggest challenges impacting on growth in regional and remote Australia. Countless studies have shown that people who are most likely to live and to work in the bush and those who are most likely to take career steps away from the urban environment are those who have spent time in regional Australia. Whilst there may be a percentage of workers in the areas of health, education and public administration who come from the city to work in country Australia, most serve their obligatory two or three years and return to the cities. But the ones who tend to stay on and serve country communities for greater periods of time, often in a more meaningful way, are those who originally came from country Australia themselves. They are the ones who are our long-term workers and community leaders.

If we place university participation hurdles in front of those who come from regional areas classified as inner regional areas, we will actually shrink the pool of people who serve and work in country Australia. Our higher education students who come from inner regional areas are exactly the same people who often want to stay longer in regional and remote Australia when they commence and continue their careers. By denying them an opportunity to gain a higher education—which is effectively what is happening to many of them through these changed eligibility rules on the youth allowance—we are in the long term denying rural Australia the ability to attract and retain the much-needed workers.

With all of this in mind, I do respectfully ask the regional Independent members of the House to consider the impact of the Labor Party’s legislation on their own communities. I am sure that there are plenty of students in the electorates of New England and Lyne who are just like Stephanie and Eliza from Wangaratta. I am sure that there are aspiring students in those electorates who want nothing more than to pursue their dreams of tertiary education to find meaningful roles for themselves in their communities and to contribute to them in a meaningful way. I am also sure that those communities face the very same challenges that communities in my electorate in north-east Victoria face.

If we are serious about maintaining the viability and facilitating the prosperity of communities outside major cities then we need to lay the appropriate social infrastructure and foundations for future growth. That necessarily demands fair access to support during tertiary education studies. If we want to maintain first-class services and retain skilled workers in country Australia, we cannot continue to place hurdles in front of aspiring students.

I understand the difficult position that this puts the member for New England and the member for Lyne in, because both have previously sided with the Labor government in relation to youth allowance, but I ask them to please consider the pleas of students not only in their own electorates but in electorates across Australia. They have an opportunity to fix in a constructive way a mess that has been created by this government—an opportunity that often does not happen in this place in the term of the same government. It is an opportunity to right a wrong and an opportunity to help create a better life for regional communities.

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