Joanna Gash (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to speak to the amendments to the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Election Commitments and Other Measures) Bill 2011 relating to families with teenage children. I agree with the member for Bass that every child should have the opportunity to reach their full potential, but that is where my agreement ends.

First of all, I want to thank the hundreds of students who attended the public meetings in our electorate with their parents and told me about their concerns with regard to the youth allowance. The Prime Minister and her Labor Party clearly do not understand or care about our regional students. They do not understand the huge financial hurdles regional students are facing to even get to a university. The train line in my electorate of Gilmore does not even make it to Nowra. The electric track stops at Kiama and an infrequent diesel service only goes to Bomaderry. Students in the southern part of Gilmore have almost no option but to take the costly option of moving away from home to attend university—not by choice.

Students in Gilmore are doing it hard. The Labor Party is simply out of touch on this issue. The Shoalhaven youth unemployment rate is higher than 20 per cent, yet the government still demands that students from this area find an average of 30 hours work every week for 1½ years before it will give them given adequate help to get to university. Is this opportunity? Is this choice? I think it is particularly relevant to point out the fact that it was the Prime Minister herself who personally changed the rules.

Employment of young people in the Shoalhaven is overwhelmingly seasonal. Employment comes and goes with the tourist season. Some weeks ago, the coalition introduced the Social Security Amendment (Income Support for Regional Students) Bill 2010 into this place to change the independent youth allowance rules back to what they were under the Howard government. If the government had passed our bill, instead of having to work 30 hours every week for 1½ years, students would be automatically eligible to receive independent youth allowance as soon as they earned $26,000, regardless of their working hours, within those same 18 months. The government were too afraid to debate their mistake. They hid behind pomp and procedure to avoid even talking about the real issues. I know the coalition’s change does not seem like much to those opposite, but the truth is that regional students are doing it tough, and this would be one small change that would have allowed tens of thousands of regional students a real chance at university education.

Many families from Gilmore have two or three children going to university and it is very difficult to explain that students in adjoining areas are eligible, yet in Gilmore they are not. The families should not have to choose which child they can afford to send to university. It is time for the government to put aside their pride and admit that they have made a mistake. On behalf of the hundreds of students in Gilmore that have been cheated by this government, I am begging the Prime Minister to put aside her pride and change back the rules. I have heard all the horror stories and I am sure that she has too. We do not need another inquiry. We do not need another review. We need real action from this government. If the Labor Party truly cared about our regional students, they would stand up, show some courage and pass the coalition’s amendments.

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