Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Better Targeting Student Payments) Bill 2017 has now been debated in the second reading stage. I thank all members, including members opposite, for their contributions. As has been noted by the government, the bill introduces a package of measures announced in the 2017-18 budget that will better target student payments to ensure they are reflective of a student's circumstances and the original intent of the payments.

From 1 January 2018 or the first of 1 January or 1 July following royal assent, this bill will, as a first measure, restrict the relocation scholarship to students relocating and studying within Australia. Many statements were made by a number of members opposite about the nature and quality of the change that's represented with respect to the relocation scholarship. I must say that one need look no further for an effort to obscure and ignore facts to make a political point-scoring exercise enlivened than what we heard from members opposite. I will read two of those contributions. The first is from the member from Moreton, who describes the relocation scholarship this way:

This was a payment designed by Labor in 2010 to address the barriers faced by students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, particularly Indigenous students and those coming from regional and remote Australia.

He went on to say:

I wonder where the National Party are when it comes to standing up for kids from the bush? Yet again, the National Party has gone missing—missing in regional and remote Australia.

Those comments were echoed by the member for Lindsay, who said:

This bill contains changes to the eligibility requirement of the relocation scholarship … As the member for Moreton asked: where are the Nationals on this? Why aren't they in here? The bill cuts the requirements of eligibility for the relocation scholarship, which will mostly affect kids from the bush.

The very clear statement was that a change to the relocation scholarship is being made by the government, and the clear assertion is that that mostly affects kids from the bush.

This bill makes changes to the relocation scholarship to ensure that the scholarship will be available for precisely those for whom it was designed—that is, kids from the bush—and it will not be available for those it was not meant to assist; that is, those moving from overseas to Australia to study. Under the measure, students will no longer be eligible for the relocation scholarship where each of their parents' homes is overseas or where the student's usual place of residence is located overseas. Likewise, students studying a component of their Australian degree overseas will no longer be eligible for the relocation scholarship. Where a student's parents return to Australia to live or the student returns to Australia to continue studying after undertaking part of their course overseas, the eligibility for the relocation scholarship will be retested and, depending on the circumstances, the student may again become eligible for the scholarship. Youth allowance recipients with a home overseas who are receiving the relocation scholarship prior to the commencement of this measure will continue to receive the relocation scholarship after this date if on the day they started their current course their home was overseas. Students studying overseas, including students who had previously received a relocation scholarship while studying overseas, will have their qualification retested after this date, and they will not be eligible for a scholarship while studying overseas.

In effect, the measure closes a loophole. The measure better reflects the policy intent of the scholarship, which is to assist students to or from regional or remote areas to study in Australia. That's what the scholarship was meant to do. The provision of the relocation scholarship to those students reflects the fact that there are more limited and often specialised study options in regional locations. These study options mean that students are more likely to have to move to a major city or to a different regional location for particular course offerings. Again, the member for Moreton and the member for Lindsay characterising this change, this closing of the loophole, as being somehow disadvantageous to regional students is a perfect example of entering a fact-free zone to score a political point.

What's happening at the moment? Without these changes, we'd be continuing to provide the relocation scholarship to students relocating overseas or relocating from overseas. That is simply not consistent with the policy which was designed to benefit regional students. For instance, the present legislation treats all overseas campuses as regional locations for the purpose of the relocation scholarship. What that means is that, at present, a student from a major Australian city such as Sydney or Melbourne studying at a university in the same city would not be eligible for the relocation scholarship—naturally enough, because they're not from the bush. But they could become eligible for the relocation scholarship, designed to help kids from the bush, if they undertook an eligible exchange overseas from their city university, whether that were in London, Hong Kong or New York. So the accusations that this disadvantages because it makes a change that affects kids in the bush is absurd. A city student studying at a city university could get a relocation scholarship, meant to assist kids from the bush, to study in London or New York or Singapore. Likewise, a student whose parents have their main address overseas and who relocates from Singapore, London or New York to study in Australia could get the relocation scholarship. I mean, it's absurd.

So closing down this loophole is appropriate. It is completely designed to ensure that the original intent of the bill is fulfilled, and it is absolutely not the case, as has been asserted by members opposite, that, in the words of the member for Lindsay:

The bill cuts the requirements of eligibility … which will mostly affect kids from the bush.

What we're doing is closing a loophole so that the scholarship doesn't go to people who aren't from the bush, and it's totally appropriate in those circumstances.

Again, the relocation scholarship will remain absolutely available to provide additional assistance to dependent regional students studying and relocating within Australia and for whom moving away from home is often a necessity. However, the measure means that the scholarship will now be better targeted to align with the intent of the policy, which is to support regional Australian students, not city students going to city universities where there's an exchange overseas for a course inside their area of study.

Under schedules 2 and 3 of the bill, from 1 January 2018, or from the first 1 January or 1 July following royal assent, the bill will also align the education entry payment and pensioner education supplement payment rates with study loads undertaken by eligible students, with four payment tiers introduced for each payment. Additionally, the pensioner education supplement will be paid only during the period a student is studying. This is the time, of course, when the ongoing costs associated with study are incurred. Irrespective of the base income support payments, eligible students will be paid a pensioner education supplement of $62.40 per fortnight if they are undertaking a study load that is at least 76 per cent of the normal amount of full time study. The rate of payment will reduce incrementally to $46.80 and then $31.20 and $15.60 each fortnight, to align with minimum reduced and part-time study loads of 51 per cent, 26 per cent and 25 per cent respectively. These same levels of study will also be applied to the education entry payment. The current payment of $208 a year will continue for students studying at least 76 per cent of the normal amount of full-time study. The lump sum payment will reduce incrementally to $156, $104 and $52, to align with reduced and part-time study loads of at least 51 per cent, 26 per cent and 25 per cent respectively. As it presently stands, someone who is paid the education entry payment or supplement is paid the same amount if they're studying full-time or if they're studying 25 per cent of full-time. And it seems like a completely reasonable approach to try to align the payment of the supplement to the actual amount of study being undertaken by the recipient in question. And the new rates of the pensioner education supplement and education entry payment, in that sense, are quite fair and quite equitable. Students undertaking part-time study loads do not incur the same study costs as those studying full time, as many of the costs associated, of course, are proportionate to the study load. That includes things that members opposite have mentioned, such as textbooks, transport to and from the education institution, and any equipment required for each course. So having the greater level of payment to the student with the greater study load seems perfectly reasonable.

Importantly, these are both supplementary payments made in addition to income support payments, and these measures do not have any impact on the amounts of income support a person receives from the base payments. It is also notable to add that the recipients of the age pension are not paid these supplementary payments, so these recipients will not be affected by these changes.

These supplementary payments were introduced to increase participation in the labour market for payment recipients. The very purpose of them was to increase the employment levels of the people who are receiving the supplements. Unfortunately, and this is sometimes the case with even the best-meaning of measures, these payments have not resulted in particularly improved employment outcomes for the recipients. The facts on this speak for themselves. Of the 34,383 income support recipients who stopped receiving the pensioner education supplement in the 2015 calendar year because their studies had finished, 96 per cent were still receiving income support six months after they had stopped receiving the supplement. After 12 months, 93 per cent of recipients were still in receipt of an income support payment. So, in effect, only seven per cent of the people who received the supplement, which is meant to increase employment through study, actually moved off the base welfare payments and into employment within the 12 months after they finished receiving the supplement.

Obviously the policy was well motivated and was designed to produce an outcome, but I imagine that everyone who designed it would have expected a far better outcome than that. The government intend to ensure that policies actually deliver outcomes and that we actually support people into employment, including making sure that measures targeted at recipients of the pensioner education supplement and education entry payment are assessed to see if those measures work.

What you have here is a policy designed to increase employment. It's reasonable to attach limits to that expenditure and it's reasonable to spend money on other policies that may have a better chance of actually succeeding and that produce a better than seven per cent increase in the employability of the people to whom the payment is made. That is why the government has committed $263 million to the expansion of the ParentsNext scheme. That was announced in the 2017-18 budget. Here is a $263 million program designed to better assist parents to develop the skills to find employment. Obviously, as a way of allocating funds, it's different to the pensioner education supplement, but it's designed to produce the same outcome, and the pensioner education supplement simply has not been particularly effective in producing that outcome, which is greater levels of employment. The purpose of spending the money is not merely to spend the money; it is to produce an outcome, which is greater employment.

The government has also committed $97 million to the Try, Test and Learn Fund to trial innovative policy options that can achieve positive outcomes for individuals in terms of increased employment. The initial focus will be on three specific cohorts, two of which are young carers and young parents. It's also notable that we have allocated $30 million to social impact investment. The 2017-18 budget also announced reforms to Disability Employment Services to help more people with disability find and keep jobs. The reform will provide more choice for jobseekers and better reward for providers for placing vulnerable jobseekers into sustainable work. So the idea of restricting, on a fair and equitable basis by measurement of the actual study load, an education supplement which has not proven very effective in generating increased employment and instead spending very considerable amounts of money in other areas to try something different, new and innovative to increase employment levels seems completely and utterly reasonable. By better targeting student payments to ensure that they are reflective of students' circumstances and of the intent of the payments, the government will improve the long-term sustainability of Australia's welfare system so that it remains available for those who need it long into the future.

I will close by making one final comment with respect to the relocation scholarship. At the moment, the number of students who move overseas from Australia to study is very small—about 150. The number of students whose parents' primary place of residence is overseas and who come from overseas to Australia to study is small—about 300—but it is not appropriate for those people to receive taxpayer money designed to assist students from regional and remote Australia. I've heard some pretty interesting definitions over the years of regional and remote Australia, but the member for Moreton and the member for Lindsay want to extend that definition of regional and remote to include Singapore, London and New York. That is utterly absurd, and they should be called out for it. This is a fair and reasonable piece of legislation that's commended to the House.

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