Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth) Share this | Hansard source

2011–I beg your pardon. It will be tabled in both houses within 10 sitting days. Members should be aware that Professor Lee Dow has conducted a number of consultations around Australia. Of the 21 roundtables scheduled, two-thirds of those have been held in regional areas. So organisations, students and families, including those from regional areas, have had a good opportunity to contribute to the review either by attending the consultations themselves or by making a written submission.

Following the review, I can advise that the government will bring legislation to the parliament this year to implement new eligibility arrangements for youth allowance, removing the regional eligibility distinctions with effect from 1 January 2012. We always said we would review the most appropriate mechanism for determining the eligibility. In fact, we did legislate for that.

I can also advise the member that we have seen significantly improved financial assistance to students from low socio-economic backgrounds, including regional students, as a consequence of the government's reforms. We know that the latest statistics show that there has already been a 29 per cent increase in higher education in dependent youth allowance recipients from rural and regional areas, and that the government's reforms have benefited more than 85,000 young people who now receive the maximum rate of youth allowance, a higher rate of youth allowance or a payment of youth allowance for the first time. For the member's benefit, this includes almost 29,000 young people from rural and regional areas.

I will make an additional point here to the member that there are a number of initiatives underway. You know what some of them are, including the additional students who are receiving scholarships. There are about 190,000 or so of those, with around 44,000 from rural and regional areas. We have additional initiatives which operate for regional students for improving their university participation: removing the cap in the number of students who can enrol in undergraduate degrees, which means that more students from rural and regional backgrounds will have the opportunity to attend university; establishing a new regional priorities round of the Education Investment Fund; and completing the Structural Adjustment Fund to assist universities, particularly in those regional and outer metropolitan areas, to adapt to the reforms in the demand driven funding system that we have in place. It needs to be clearly stated that the government has also established the $20 million Rural Tertiary Hardship Fund which will provide additional financial assistance to country kids from disadvantaged backgrounds—the first round to be distributed.

The point here is that not only are we conducting significant reform through the tertiary sector to provide greater opportunities for students right around Australia to take up the benefits of a university education but also those reforms significantly provide opportunities for rural and regional students.

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