John Cobb (Calare, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I rise with pleasure to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (More Generous Means Testing for Youth Payments) Bill 2015. I welcome the introduction of this bill to the House as it will, as it says, mean a more generous and consistent system of assessment for families with dependent young people who qualify for a variety of youth income support payments.

As my responsibility is primarily to regional and rural farming families, I would like to focus on the benefits of this bill for them. The reform will remove the family assets test and the family actual means test from the youth allowance parental means test arrangements. It will align parental income test exemptions for youth allowance with existing arrangements for family tax benefit part A and it will remove maintenance income from the youth allowance parental income test. It is extraordinarily important.

The changes will come into effect from the beginning of next year—in other words, at the beginning of the next education year. At the start of 2017, a separate maintenance support income test for the treatment of child support like that currently applying to family tax benefit part A will be brought in. From July 2016, where a family has a dependent child who receives an individual youth payment that is parentally income tested and younger siblings who qualify for the family tax benefit, the family pool for the youth parental income test will include all FTB-eligible children.

Access to higher education is one of those obvious areas wherein the further away you live from everyone else the more disadvantaged who are. I am the first person to put my hand up and say, 'If you want everything you can get in a city then do not come out and live where we are.' But, where possible, we do have to give an opportunity to those who are in isolated areas to have an education. While I accept that we have a far better lifestyle in regional Australia and an awful lot of advantages, obviously education and health can be—and I stress 'can be'—somewhat disadvantaged. While that will always be the case and cannot be avoided, I think we have a duty, as much as is reasonable and possible, to improve that access and make it less onerous.

The bill will particularly benefit our rural and regional families whose children are looking to continue studying beyond year 12. At the moment, some young people coming from farming families are missing out on youth allowance due to the asset testing currently in place. It makes the decision to go to university a tough one for many young people as in almost all cases they would have to move away from home. It can be very expensive and it can be very difficult to find a job quickly, especially in some university towns where there are obviously a lot of students competing for jobs.

Removing the family assets test youth allowance will allow around 4,100 additional payments. This will be the first time these young people will qualify for annual payments of around $7,000. As somebody who was involved in the education of seven children, I can tell you that they can do a lot with $7,000. Young people in the bush deserve a fair go. I hesitate to say we deserve the same access to education as our metropolitan counterparts, but we do need the encouragement and, as much as possible, the assistance of government and the taxpayer to get that access. This bill ensures that, in large part, that access can become available.

Around 1,200 more young people will be receiving youth allowance for the first time. As well, we will be increasing payments for around 5,000 existing students by about $2,000 a year. These changes mean rural and regional farming families will not have their assets counted towards the means test of their dependent children. This is a practical measure as the assets of farming families and others are not always a good representation of their income. As somebody who has depended upon agriculture my whole life and who probably will for the rest of it, I can tell you that farming families are capital bound and income poor.

There are already of a lot of pressures in rural and regional areas. Things like drought and isolation prove huge hurdles. The bill will at least help remove one of those challenges by allowing a younger regional person to choose if higher education is what they need or want. These young people should not be prevented from achieving their potential on account of the privilege of being born in the bush. They have a huge amount to contribute to our nation, and they do. If there is one thing that people in remote areas do it is contribute to the nation way above their weight. There are not many of them, but they produce a heck of a lot.

This is an investment in Australia's future, and it is particularly an investment in Australia's future for those in our society who do populate rural, remote and regional Australia and who we want to keep doing that. Let them go and get educated, learn their skills and then go back out to where we need them. Let then use that extra knowledge and experience to be even greater contributors to Australia than they currently are.

I am very proud to represent those people. My original electorate has some of the most remote places in Australia attached to it. It looks like the member for Parkes, Mark Coulton, is going to pinch all that country soon. If he does, I know he will be just as proud of that part of the world as I have always been. It is just magnificent to be out at Tibooburra and go and see the School of the Air situated in the most remote town in New South Wales. It has got 150 people—it has got two pubs, though. We do need people from that part of the world to go to Sydney to get an education and go back out there and make Tibooburra an even better place.

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