Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to be speaking on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Student Reform) Bill 2018. As you heard from the previous speaker, this is something we have worked on for 10-plus years. When the member for Grey and I came into this place 10 years ago, even though we weren't in government at the time, something we had heard so much about from families and from young people in our electorates repeatedly was that there was a real issue with the cost of higher education for young people from rural, regional and remote areas who could not and still cannot access higher education, university and other training where they live. Unless you actually live in rural and regional Australia, and unless these are your children or your family, you don't understand this. It was something that we repeatedly saw. As the member for Grey said, the actual proof is there.

The reason we've worked so hard is to try to provide a greater equity of access for young people from rural and regional Australia to actually be able to pursue higher education. And the member for Grey is absolutely right. When Labor changed the rules around who were deemed to be inner or outer regional students in the review, when they changed the legislation and students in my electorate were totally excluded from accessing independent youth allowance, it caused massive, massive problems. The member for Grey is right. When I went to schools, there would be young people who had the dreams, the ambitions and the absolute capability of going on to university or other higher education, but they actually consciously said to their parents: 'I don't want to go. I can take that job that's available, and I will.' At the time, there were some mining jobs coming along, and a lot of them made those decisions because they knew their family simply couldn't afford to send them away to university. One of the most tragic stories I heard was about a mother who had to make a choice between which one of her children she could afford to send to university. That's why the member for Grey and other members on this side have worked so hard. We know that young people in rural and regional Australia are only half as likely to actually complete a university degree as their city counterparts. It's not because they don't have the ability—they do.

I have enormous confidence in young people who live in rural and regional Australia. We do need them back; they are our future. With the education and the opportunities that they get through higher education, they then go on to work and then come back to our regional areas, bringing their great, new, young ideas and bringing their experiences. They will help to sustain and grow our regional areas. We know this very well. We see it all the time. We've worked constantly and we've seen incremental improvements, budget after budget. I'm really proud of the work that the government has done on behalf of rural and regional students. Yes, there's always a competition in a budget for where the money is spent, but we've worked constantly so that young people in our areas have a greater opportunity to go on to higher education.

One of the other issues in this bill is the fact that we would make it much easier for young people to pursue these dreams. We reduce the periods of employment. This is something that really matters, because, prior to this, young people would often have to take two years to qualify for independent youth allowance. They had to meet a range of criteria. When it was an 18-month criteria, for practical purposes, it meant that they were out of university for two years. Some courses actually started mid-year, which meant it was even worse for them. Of course, it didn't even guarantee that their university place would be held for them, even though they were accepted in that space. This reduction from 18 months to 14 months is something that we—referred to as the rural education rump—have worked very, very hard on.

Even the assessment of the parents' income being at the time the young person actually starts their 14-month period is equally as important. It's so the young person can have confidence that when they actually qualify, when they do their 14 months of work, their parents' income is still assessed at the point that they started, so they know that, when they've done the work, they're actually going to qualify for youth allowance. It gives them certainty to know that they are going to be able to go on and afford to be away from home. But, as we know, they still have to get a job. They also have the issue of not having the social support of a family around them when they have to move away. There are a lot of challenges for our young people when they have to go away to study.

Lifting the combined parental income is another step. It's moving from $150,000 to $160,000, and then, if you have two children on the independence measure, it goes to $170,000. Yes, it's an improvement, and the evidence tells us that there are a whole lot more young people who will be able to go on to higher education as a result of this—from 3,000 to over 5,300 young people. So there's another 2,000 people, member for Grey, who are going to get the opportunity to go on to higher education as a result of this measure and the constant measures that we are taking as a government to improve young people's access to higher education.

Like the member for Grey, I'm particularly pleased with the work that Professor Halsey did. He came to my electorate as well, and he listened to parents and people from the education sector. He had a very clear understanding of the challenges facing our young people. We've accepted all of the recommendations out of his report. What you're seeing today in this legislation is part of the government's response to that.

Another part of the package is our rural and regional enterprise scholarships. Twelve hundred regional, rural and remote students will each be provided with an $18,000 scholarship as part of the program. These scholarships will help young people undertake science, technology, engineering and maths studies, including in ag and health fields, for up to four years full time. Applications are due to open in another couple of weeks, and I would encourage our young people in regional areas to apply for these scholarships and take advantage of this opportunity, because those skills are actually so many of the skills that our young people need in rural and regional areas.

Look at the diversity in my electorate: my electorate has everything from mining to resource manufacturing through to agriculture, forestry, fisheries, retail construction—you name it. But we could do value-adding. We produce some of the world's best products in my south-west of Western Australia, and we can value-add to those wonderful products. Of course, it is the manufacturing side, and the science and the engineering, that will be important in all of those future options. With our free trade agreements, we are concentrating on those more niche, high-value markets. So we need skilled people to take up these pursuits.

We also need young people who will be prepared to actually start their own business. It could be a home based business. It could be in an existing business or a new one altogether. But these are the young people who need to leave places in my electorate like Harvey, Brunswick, Bunbury, Australind, Busselton, Margaret River, Augusta—this is the catchment area of the young people who really have no choice but to leave home. The courses that may be offered locally at regional universities are not the ones that they need in this space. So they have no choice but to go away to study. So having access to independent youth allowance is critical. We also know just what it costs to go away—because it's not just the cost of the education. For young people, there's the cost of accommodation, which is significant. We've also got additional costs. One is the cost of having to get to and from home. Parents also worry about their children travelling backwards and forwards when they've gone away to university, because sometimes young people make a decision to travel home late in the day or in the evening and often when they're tired. This is a real worry for many parents in rural and regional areas. So the more support that we're able to provide for young people, the better. In my electorate, young people frequently have to move—they don't have a choice—to Perth, or, sometimes, even further, to pursue the career of their choice.

I want to reassure all those young people that, since we got into government—and even before we got into government: it was my private member's motion that brought to account the then Rudd government when the then Minister for Education Julia Gillard made changes to youth allowance that disqualified all my young people from actually accessing independent youth allowance—we've worked on this consistently. I would say to the young people and their families in rural, regional and remote Australia: our work will continue in this space for you. Yes, we've made quite a number of changes, and we're making improvements all the time to your access to education. In the view of the member for Grey and of a range of my colleagues, and in my own view, we want to see equitable access for young people to education. I've been very passionate about this, since before coming into politics. This is something, still, that families will come and talk to me about—they talk to me about it constantly.

Previously, I had a mum with five children, and all five wanted to become GPs. We know that, in rural and regional areas, often, we struggle to get GPs who are prepared to live and work there, particularly in small communities. I would see that these young people are the ones who are likely to come back. Through the rural clinical schools that the government has put in place, they actually get experience in regional areas as well and are much more likely to come back.

The young people who are born and raised in the south-west understand how great it is to live and work there and what the opportunities are ahead for them in life through bringing their skills back to our part of the world. I don't have to convince them what sort of opportunities they will have in the south-west of Western Australia. They already know. So we need them to be able to afford to go away. The mum with five kids used to have to choose which of those children she could afford to send away to university. What sort of a choice is that for a family? That's why we've worked so hard for every incremental improvement that we as a government have repeatedly made for far more equitable access for young people from rural and regional Australia. I want to see the percentages change. I want to see that more than half have actually completed a university degree, as their city counterparts do. I want to know they are able to come back to the regional areas and use all of those skills and all of their experiences in their own communities.

As the member for Grey said, Professor Halsey did a very good job on this report. But I also want to recognise and thank my colleagues. When I put together the very first meeting of ministers around this very important issue, over 33 of my colleagues came along and supported us. We've repeatedly worked across the portfolios to make sure that all of the parts of this, whether in the education space or the social security space, come together as a package around the education and training opportunities for young people who live in our electorates. I'm particularly proud of this. I want to thank every one of my colleagues and the ministers and the government for actually understanding just how important this is and for the fact that the government, through its management of the budget, has been able to support the initiatives we see in this bill.

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