Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to present a petition approved by the Standing Committee on Petitions. This petition is in direct response to the Rudd government’s flawed decision to change the eligibility criteria for students seeking to access the independent rate of youth allowance. I join with the petitioners in highlighting the simple fact that these changes to the youth allowance place another barrier to university participation for students in regional areas. They unfairly discriminate against students currently undertaking a gap year and they contradict other efforts to increase university participation by rural and regional students.

The petition contains 4,530 signatures and is in addition to the 206 signatures already collected in Gippsland and presented to the House on the same issue. Indeed, as a member of the petitions committee, I can report that there are several other petitions circulating throughout regional communities on this topic and the total number of signatures which have been formally approved by the standing committee on petitions is now approaching 15,000—that is, 15,000 Australian students, parents and teachers who are angry and frustrated with the proposed changes put forward by the Rudd government. I believe that there will be many more petitions tabled in the weeks ahead, with thousands of additional signatures to come. There have also been several community meetings and rallies throughout the nation where people have expressed their anger with the government’s decision.

In addition, my office has forwarded 50 emails and letters to the Deputy Prime Minister’s office from Gippslanders who are expressing their concerns about these proposals. The minister has actually accused the opposition of scaremongering. She also said it was a very silly question when I asked her to guarantee that students currently on their gap year would not be financially penalised under the government’s changes. There are 15,000 Australians who have already made it clear to me that they do not think we are scaremongering and that the only one who is being silly is the minister, who simply will not listen to these concerns.

The most insidious part of these proposed changes is the way in which they penalise students who are currently on their gap year. I have met with many of these students in Gippsland and they are bitterly disappointed. They are unsure of what their future holds and they do not understand why the Labor Party would act in this manner. Do we really want these students’ first experience of our great democracy to be one of being disenfranchised and having the rug pulled out from under their feet when they did the right thing and followed the rules as they applied at the end of year 12? These proposed changes to the criteria for achieving independent status are a real kick in the guts to country kids who have done the right thing. They followed those rules, they took the advice of their parents, teachers, principals and, in some cases, even Centrelink officers, and now the government is acting without consultation and without warning to compromise their chances of achieving independent status and receiving the full income support that was previously available to them.

That $370 per fortnight for many rural and regional students is the difference between going to university and pursuing their dreams or being locked out of tertiary studies. For these rural and regional students, who face the huge additional costs of relocation and establishing a new home, the independent youth allowance and the criteria that previously existed were a lifeline for them that enabled them to support their parents at a very difficult time in their lives.

This petition is not silly. It is not scaremongering. It is about country people standing up for a fair go, and I urge the minister to reconsider this decision.

The petition read as follows—

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives

This petition of members from the Gippsland community recognises the importance of providing affordable access to university for students from rural and regional areas.

Members of the Gippsland community draw the attention of the House to changes announced in the Federal Budget on May 12, 2009 which states that students will no longer be able to achieve financial independence for Youth Allowance and ABSTUDY by meeting the 2nd and 3rd elements of the workforce criterion.

The petitioners believe that the Youth Allowance changes proposed in the Federal Budget place another barrier to university participation for students in regional areas; unfairly discriminate against students currently undertaking a ‘gap’ year; and contradict other efforts to increase university participation by students from rural and regional Australia.

We therefore ask the House to retain the 2nd and 3rd elements of the workforce criterion so that a tertiary education is accessible to regional students.

from 2,686 citizens

Petition received.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Gippsland, has the petition been presented to the Standing Committee on Petitions already?

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, it has.