Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In continuation, let me say that the young people in my electorate of Murray, including those currently deferring their university studies and taking a gap year so that they can qualify for independent Youth Allowance, have worked so hard in trying to get the deputy leader and Minister for Education, Minister Gillard, to understand that the only chance they had of a university education was under the coalition’s rules. They tried and tried to access Minister Gillard. She refused to see them. She eventually said an adviser might drop in and talk to them if they came to Canberra, and clearly that just was not good enough. Finally, these students and their parents came to Canberra and Minister Gillard—no doubt sensing the despair and the mounting unrest and anxiety right across Australia—agreed to see them. They presented a very strong argument and they pleaded with the minister to reconsider the moves she had made which would mean the end to their university education dreams. I have to say that the minister did finally relent and allowed the year 2008 gap school leavers, those who had taken that gap year under the old criteria, at least to continue to be eligible for Youth Allowance under the old rules.

You can imagine how cynical it was to change the rules and make them retrospective and to have students part-way through a gap year undertaking the types of hours of work that were designated in our criteria. You can imagine how despairing those students had been. These students went back and were more satisfied than before. But they feel, and continue to feel, equally concerned about their year 12 brothers and sisters now completing their studies. These school leavers of this year have been to Centrelink staff and have asked what they can do to try to gain independent youth allowance so that they also can have professional qualifications which allow them to come back to rural and regional areas and meet the skill shortages that are present now and will be exacerbated in the future. You can imagine their horror when Centrelink staff told them they had basically three options to become eligible for youth allowance. They could defer their studies and earn the $19,000 required but it would mean having to work 30 hours a week—in other words, virtually full time—over the ensuing 18 months in a two-year period. This is virtually impossible for a rural young person, given the economy. Rural and regional Australia has been hit again and again by the Labor federal government and too often by their state counterparts. We now have a huge contraction of employment opportunities in rural and regional Australia, particularly in irrigated agriculture, where this government’s policy seems to be to take away irrigation from the food producers of Australia who used to do the heavy lifting on behalf of all of us. They looked in despair at that work option because they could not find 30 hours of work a week over a two-year period. If you do defer for two years you have also lost that deferral. Most universities and other institutions of higher learning do not allow you to defer for two years. Quite clearly, Minister Gillard had not understood that or her cynicism was such that she did not care.

The third option offered by Centrelink staff—perhaps a little more quietly with a hand up to the mouth—was that students could get married or form a de facto relationship and become pregnant and have a baby. What a sad indictment of this Rudd Labor government that their officials should be driven to pass on those three options, particularly the idea that they could confirm their independent status through at least pretending to or pursuing a de facto or marriage relationship, knowing they would condemn those young people to poverty in the long term if they were forced into an early marriage and early child bearing. This is what they were told to do, given Labor’s new independent Youth Allowance policies. I think that is disgraceful.

The Rudd Labor government does not seem to understand that for a number of years now we have had a declining number of students from rural and regional areas putting their hands up to go to university, given that we are facing in southern Australia the seventh year of drought. Parents who used to be able to put a little aside for their children—$20,000 a year—to study in cities away from home have been hit so hard by the climatic conditions that they are less able than ever before to raise those funds. Then, of course, the drought conditions have a multiplier effect on the small business people—the men and women who service those farms. They too have had sharply contracting incomes.

We in the northern Victoria area have been looking very sadly at the statistics of rural and regional students in my area from the North Central Local Learning and Employment Network. It has found that those who previously wanted to go to university are deferring at two-and-a-half times the rate of their metropolitan counterparts. From its own statistics, it knows that the longer you are away from study the more difficult it is to return and the more likely it is that you will never return to take up that offer, especially if you have been deferring for a much longer period than others. So we know that the policy of this government is not going to have a social inclusion outcome, which I presume is one of the agendas of this government, given it is in the minister’s title, but social injustice. This is creating two classes of young people in Australia—those born in cities close to tram tracks and close to universities and TAFE institutions offering a wide range of subjects and then those other young Australians living in rural and regional areas a long way from universities or TAFE institutions with a wide range of courses.

Why should it be that, if you are a rural and regional student, you cannot study the course of your choice, the course for which you have managed to gain the right scores and categories of required subjects? Why is it that rural students have to give up on their dreams, their pursuit of higher education, whilst metropolitan counterparts can live at home, take public transport, move daily to their places of study and move on to have careers of choice? This has not happened before in Australia. Previous governments have understood the differences in the costs facing rural and regional parents compared with those in metropolitan areas. That has been taken into consideration with special support, particularly the independent youth allowance criteria. Unfortunately, that has now come to an end and I am just so concerned, particularly for rural and regional communities which are facing hardship on so many fronts, because this government has turned its back on them in what is for some their greatest hour of need.

Take the dairy industry: while their counterparts in the UK, the EU and the USA, being supported with special supplementary government measures in the face of the global decline, are in credit, most of Australia’s dairy farmers in irrigated agriculture cannot survive another six to eight months with prices at below the cost of production and the high value of the dollar. This government is cynically turning away from the dairy industry and saying: ‘We do not care. Let them get out of the trouble themselves. We will support the automotive and retail sectors. We will even give them a good go in textiles, clothing and footwear. But when it comes to the dairy industry they can go whistle.’

The billions of dollars the dairy industry generates at the farm gate, the 40,000 people it employs and the multiplier impact into communities beyond the immediate employees—all of that apparently does not matter. Dairy farmers are in electorates which do not tend to vote Labor, so it really does not matter. I have to say that now their sons and daughters are paying the price for the uncaring and uncivil attitudes of this government. Their sons and daughters are now not going to go to universities in metropolitan areas, which are often the only places that offer the courses of their choice. That is grossly unfair.

I call on this government to look very closely at the amendments that are to be put up by the coalition. I beg this government to have a heart, to think about social justice in this country and to think about the skills shortages, already a mark of economies in rural and regional Australia, which will get worse when you do not have graduates who have a rural or regional background. We know exactly what we are staring down the barrel at. I have to say that this government is proceeding in a way which is absolutely sickening to those who thought that Labor represented a fair go for all. The veil has been lifted on so many fronts in recent days. This was supposed to be the government of border protection. It was supposed to be the government of a fair go on so many fronts. In fact, it is turning out to be a government in chaos. It is a government that does not care, a government that is letting strong, protective measures and policies unravel, whether they are to do with border security or rural and regional economies. For generations to come, young Australians are going to be paying the price. I absolutely condemn the federal Labor government for the moves which have taken university out of the reach of so many rural and regional students. I strongly urge the government to look at our amendments and have a heart.

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. The Rudd Labor government is committed to higher education and to the vision of a stronger and fairer nation, and this bill is an integral part of that. This bill proposes wide-ranging amendments to income support arrangements for students. The measures are designed to increase income support for students who need it the most, making higher education more accessible for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. In answer to the previous speaker, that is what I call being fair.

The government came to office promising to reform Australia’s education system. We recognised the central role of education, and particularly higher education, in meeting the challenges this country will face in the 21st century and beyond. We instituted a review of our higher education system, headed by Denise Bradley. In this year’s budget we responded to the problems and opportunities identified by the Bradley review process. This bill is part of that response. The bill will amend the Social Security Act 1991 to implement key recommendations of the Bradley review into Australia’s higher education system. It will do that by significantly liberalising the personal and parental means-testing arrangements that apply to payments for dependent students, apprentices and unemployed young people so that more low- to middle-income families can access Youth Allowance and Abstudy. It will change the criteria upon which a youth allowance recipient is considered to be independent.

The bill provides for new entitlement based scholarships for university students receiving income support payments. That will mean an annual student start-up scholarship and a relocation scholarship for eligible students. It will exempt merit and equity based scholarships from the social security income test, up to a threshold of $6,762 per year. The bill will also amend the Social Security Act 1991 to ensure that the training supplement, which commenced from 1 July 2009, is available to all intended recipients.

The measures in this bill cannot be separated from the challenges that the Bradley higher education review put before us. The first one of those goes to the matter of participation in higher education. Right now, Australia has a lower participation rate than many of our competitor nations. Even more concerning is the fact that, despite the expansion of the higher education sector, we also have low and falling rates of access to higher education among people from rural and regional areas, those from low socioeconomic backgrounds and those in the Indigenous community. These current participation rates are not going to serve our country well in terms of either our productivity and sustaining our standard of living in a competitive world or achieving the equity this Labor government thinks should be at the heart of our society.

As an example, as noted in the final report:

There has been an increase of up to 60,000 enrolments in the number of students from—

those three—

under-represented groups participating in higher education over the last decade. These increases are not even across the groups and some groups remain seriously under-represented.

It remains the case that a student from a high socioeconomic background is about three times more likely to attend university than a student from a low socioeconomic background. The current access rate for this latter group is at about 16 per cent and has remained relatively unchanged since 2002. If students from this group were adequately represented in higher education in proportion to their share of the general population, their access rate would be around 25 per cent, so there is a lot of work to be done in that area. Despite the low access rates, the success rate of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds is 97 per cent of the pass rates of their medium and high socioeconomic status peers. High pass and retention rates show that those from low socioeconomic backgrounds do succeed in higher education when they make it through the doors of our universities.

Denise Bradley’s vision for higher education is bold. The government has been equally ambitious in its response to the review. Earlier this year, the Minister for Education outlined the targets that the government wants to see achieved in this area and pledged to work in partnership with universities to meet those targets. The first target the minister set out was for 40 per cent of the 25 to 34 age group to have a bachelor’s degree or higher by the year 2025. We also want to see 20 per cent of students at our universities coming from lower socioeconomic groups in our society by the year 2020. This bill seeks to assist us in meeting those targets. This package of measures will increase the level of assistance payable to students and families and expand eligibility to support families who need it most. This improved support will ensure that students from low-income backgrounds are able to access the support that they need to share in education and training, including higher education.

The implications of the proposed changes on rural and regional students, especially those in my electorate in Central Queensland, are sensitive. Many rural and regional youth have worked or intended to work part time over an 18-month period after leaving school in 2008 in order to qualify for youth allowance or ABSTUDY as independent recipients. This is currently possible under the criteria that are used to establish whether a young person is self-supporting and should therefore have their qualifications for youth allowance assessed independent of their parents’ income.

The Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009 includes a measure to remove the part-time work elements of the current independence criteria on the basis that this no longer provides an appropriate measure of self-support and results in poor targeting of student income support payments. However, those young people who completed secondary studies in 2008 and took a gap year in 2009 to commence university in 2010 and are required to live 90 minutes or more away from home to study will not be affected by the changes.

It was clear after the introduction of these measures that students who had graduated in 2008 felt that they had been unfairly treated. I am pleased to say that the government listened to the concerns of those students and found a way to help the 2008 graduates who opted to work through a gap year in 2009. The bill reflects the changes that were made in response to the concerns of those students.

Many rural and regional young people who may have expected that they could qualify as independent students in the future will in fact automatically qualify as dependent recipients under the more generous parental income test arrangements that will be introduced under this bill. Importantly, they will not have to rely on a working gap year to do so. As dependent students, rural and regional youth who need to move away from home to study at university will also benefit from the new demand driven Relocation Scholarship that forms part of the reform package, together with the annual Student Start-up Scholarship, which will be paid to all student income support recipients for each year of their university study.

It is clear from these measures that the parental income test changes and the new scholarships will particularly benefit students who have to move away from home to study, rural and regional students and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and that is why we made the changes. The Bradley Review of Australian Higher Education laid the challenge out before us. The analysis conducted or relied upon in the Bradley review found that student income support was poorly targeted. It found that 36 per cent of independent students living at home were from families with incomes above $100,000 per year and that many of those students were in fact living at home in metropolitan areas. The same survey estimated that 18 per cent of students in this situation came from families earning an income above $150,000 per year and 10 per cent came from families earning above $200,000 per year, yet those opposite continue to defend that very unfair system.

Under the previous system the parental income test was so low that many students sought to gain access to student income support as independent youth allowance recipients using that working gap-year method. As it turned out—and as we found out in the Bradley review—many of the young people who took that option were not actually financially independent of their parents. The government has decided to tighten the eligibility criteria for independence to ensure that support is available to those students who need it the most. The savings from this decision are able to be reinvested into increasing the parental income threshold, which will benefit over 100,000 young people and provide assistance for the families who need it the most.

Of course, under our scheme there will still be a mechanism for young people to establish their independence from their families if they wish to go down that route. Young people who have had employment of at least 30 hours a week for the past 18 months during any period of two years will still be considered independent, recognising that young people who have established this work pattern are genuinely self-supporting and no longer financially dependent on their parents.

The fact is that more rural and regional youth will qualify for student income support as dependent recipients under the changes to the age of independence and the liberalisation of the parental income test. Furthermore, many existing rural and regional youth allowance recipients will receive a higher rate of payment due to these changes. I note that the opposition continues to cloud those facts and insists on running a scare campaign and then comes in, in its contribution to the debate, and wonders why rural and regional students are telling their guidance counsellors that they are not taking up higher education options. It is not surprising when the coalition is so determined to run this misrepresentation and this scare campaign.

In order to ease the transition between the old and the new systems, up to 30 June 2010 young people who completed secondary studies in 2008—those who took a gap year in 2009, commenced university prior to 30 June 2010 and are required to live away from home to study—will continue to be able to attain independence under the second and third elements of the workforce participation criteria. I know that the young people in my electorate who contacted me with their concerns about the changes announced on budget night are very pleased to know that their plans are still on track and that they will be going off to commence their studies in 2010 having done what they needed to do under the old system to establish their independence.

Any university student who receives at least a part payment of youth allowance will also have access to a range of other assistance of particular benefit to rural and regional young people and their families. Dependent rural and regional students who have to live away from home to attend university may also be eligible for a Relocation Scholarship of $4,000 in the first year and $1,000 in subsequent years.

This package of reforms to student income support is directly in response to the recommendations and findings of the Bradley Review of Australian Higher Education. The package of reforms aims to increase access to and better target income support for students who need it most through a fairer and more equitable allocation of resources. We could not ignore the Bradley review, which found the old system to be completely inequitable and poorly targeted.

The reforms to student income support recognise the importance of ensuring that financial barriers to participation in education and training by students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, including those from rural and regional backgrounds and those who are Indigenous, are removed. This will play a great part in meeting the government’s targets, as I have already said, of 40 per cent of all 25- to 34-year-olds having a bachelor’s qualification by 2025 and really emphasising the participation of people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in our higher education institutions.

I will give some examples of what this will mean, assuming these measures are passed by the Senate. A family with two children aged 17 and 19 living at home will receive a part rate of income support up to a total family income of just over $100,900, compared with the previous cut-off of around $60,000. That is a significant jump in income threshold. A family with two children aged 19 and 23 who have had to move to study at university will now be able to receive some support up to a parental income of almost $140,000. This is up from the current parental income cut-out point of around $79,000. In addition, if both students are renting privately and receiving rent assistance, under the reforms they may still get some rent assistance up to a maximum family income of around $168,000. Interestingly, none of those figures highlighting the massive increase in support for students is featuring in the coalition’s very irresponsible scare campaign.

The fact is that these changes will allow around 68,000 more young people to gain access to youth allowance and other student income support payments in 2010. A further 35,000 will receive a higher rate of payment. Those opposite, if they continue to oppose these measures, are standing in the way of those more than 100,000 students receiving what they need in order to pursue their academic careers.

Importantly, in this bill the government will also progressively lower the age of independence from the current 25 years to 22 years, which, again, will enable significantly more students to access income support over time. There will also be an increase to the personal income test threshold—that is, the amount of money that students are able to earn while they are receiving youth allowance—from the current $236 to $400 per fortnight, commencing on 1 July 2012. That measure is about enabling students to earn more from part-time work during their time as a student.

Other important elements of the package of reforms include the introduction of a new annual student start-up scholarship of $2,254 each year for all university students receiving student income support and not already receiving a Commonwealth education costs scholarship. This is to assist with the high up-front costs of textbooks and specialised equipment. On top of that, especially for rural and regional students, there is the introduction of a relocation scholarship of $4,000 in the first year at university and $1,000 in each subsequent year to provide assistance with the costs of relocating for study for dependent university students who have to move away from the family home for study and independent students disadvantaged by personal circumstances. That scholarship is available to those people who are not already receiving a commonwealth accommodation costs scholarship. All students who receive a relocation scholarship will also receive that annual student start-up scholarship. Unlike the previous system, where the numbers of scholarships were limited and, as a result, many eligible students missed out, under the new system scholarships will be administered by Centrelink and all eligible students will be able to receive a scholarship.

Regardless of the scare campaign that the coalition insists on running, to the great detriment of young people, particularly in rural and regional areas—discouraging them yet again from aspiring to higher education—these assistance measures are all about better targeting, making sure that those students who need this kind of financial assistance in order to achieve their educational dreams will be able to get it, with a much more generous parental income test, with the age of independence reduced from 25 to 22, and with higher amounts of assistance. I support these measures because they are fair and they are part of greatly improving the access of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and rural and regional backgrounds. They are going to be a key part of meeting our goals for equity and productivity into the future.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Capricornia talks about the educational dreams of young Australians, but her government has just trashed the educational dreams of so many rural and regional students. I am bitterly disappointed on behalf of the electorate of Farrer and in fact all rural families who have contacted the Liberal and National parties in such distress after learning of the Deputy Prime Minister’s plans for Youth Allowance from 2010.

I would like to start by reading a letter regarding these changes that comes to me from the Finley High School P&C Association in Finley in western New South Wales. Finley is a small town which is very badly affected by the drought. If you are a young person looking to study, there is no local rural or regional university. You pretty much have to travel and live away from home in order to study anywhere. What the minister is saying to the students of the Finley High School is: ‘You will have to demonstrate your independence prior to age 22 by working 30 hours a week for a period of 18 months within a two-year period. Unless you can do that you will not qualify for youth allowance, and if your family is not on a low income, you will receive no help from the government.’ It is absolutely impossible for somebody from one of the small towns in western New South Wales to find a job in any of their local areas for 30 hours a week for a period of 18 months within a two-year period. In order to get over the first hurdle to qualify for youth allowance, you have to leave home, because you will not find a job for those hours while you are living at home. Your chances are cruelled before you even begin. To support yourself after leaving home means you cannot put money aside and, by the time you have demonstrated your independence, your dreams of going to university are probably over, because you have moved into a different sphere of life and your circumstances have changed.

I come back to the letter from the P&C Association of Finley High School because I think that they spell out the concerns of my constituents very well. This was a letter to the minister. I am not sure if she has responded.

I write on behalf of the parents and guardians of students within the Finley, Berrigan, Jerilderie and Tocumwal communities in southern NSW to express our concern regarding the recent announced changes to the Youth Allowance.

Students from country areas must live away from home to attend tertiary education. This comes at a significant cost of families and the students. In many, many cases the student has to raise the funds to meet the living away from home costs. These costs include accommodation, living and travel to and from home and to and from sporting or other extra curricular activities.

The independent Youth Allowance has been a critical component of the financial resources to enable country students to complete their tertiary education. It costs a minimum of $350 per week to live while at University. On campus college fees that cover basic living costs for 5 days start at around $250/week.

Historically country students have undertaken part time work after leaving school, worked during semester breaks while at university and during term and during the summer breaks to raise the initial funds to qualify for the Independent Youth Allowance. They then work tirelessly during subsequent university holidays to raise the next year’s living expenses to supplement the Youth Allowance. This is done while their city counterparts study during term and holiday during their tertiary study years.

Country students will now be forced to take two years away from study. The recent drought conditions in much of rural Australia and particularly in the southern Riverina in NSW combined with the economic downturn has severely limited the employment opportunities for these young people. The reality is they will be forced to move away from home to find a job and hence will have to meet all their living away from home expenses while earning thus limiting their capacity to raise the funds needed to live while doing their tertiary training.

The need to take a gap between study and school of two years will not suit many students. Some will never return to study.

This is what careers counsellors are telling us the country over. Once the gap between ending school and starting study stretches out beyond one year, students simply do not return to study. The letter continues:

There is also some doubt as to whether universities will allow students to defer courses for more than one year.

In fact, I understand that at some universities you have to reapply after one year, so for the very first year that you take off as a gap year it is problematic. The letter continues:

Research in Victoria has shown that only 55% of students who defer for a year take up their University place within four years.

The changes to the Youth Allowance are, in reality meaning that tertiary education will not be available to all those students capable of completing a course. It will be primarily limited to those who can live at home while studying, those with wealthy parents and those who can access employment during a gap year from their family home.

As students need to qualify for the Youth Allowance to be eligible for the Commonwealth learning scholarship, restricting eligibility to the youth allowance has a significant flow on effect for rural students. These scholarships are an important encouragement for students to further their education an are critical for funding accommodation and learning aids such as textbooks.

The proposed changes are undermining the confidence of the region’s community In the Federal Government to govern for all Australians. These changes do nothing to enhance the educational opportunities for rural students.

I do not think I could put it better than the Finley High School P&C have. They are not a political organisation. They are willing to take this government at its word; they are willing to weigh up on merit the policies it puts in place. But they are just absolutely disgusted and beside themselves over this proposal to change Youth Allowance.

The government has spruiked that its reforms are aimed at meeting its objectives of 40 per cent of all 25- to 34-year-olds obtaining a qualification at bachelor level or above by 2025—the Bradley review recommended that this be attained by 2020—and, by 2020, 20 per cent of higher education enrolments at undergraduate level being people from lower socioeconomic status, SES, backgrounds. I am all in support of people from low SES backgrounds having access and equity when it comes to university, but you can see that in the government’s statement nothing was said about rural and regional students. If they in fact achieve this aim it will be at the expense of rural and regional students, because they are not included. We only have to look at the evidence so far about what proportions of our university students—graduate and postgraduate—come from rural and regional areas. What we find is that not many of them do.

I now refer to a submission from the Victorian branch of the National Union of Students to the Senate committee review of Australian higher education. They made this very clear:

People from regional and remote parts of Australia remain seriously under-represented in higher education and the participation rates for both have worsened in the last five years.

The submission stated that access and participation rates for these students over the last six years are getting lower every year. The union stated:

Retention of the regional group has also been decreasing relative to urban students and retention rates are now 3 per cent below the rates of the remainder of the student population. The success and retention patterns for remote students are of much greater concern. The indicator levels are very low compared with their non-remote peers. For example, success rates are currently 9 per cent below and retention is 13 per cent below the rates of other students.

They also went on to give to the Senate committee some examples coming, so to speak, directly from students from country areas who are studying. They made the point, and I make the point, that most country kids have to defer for a year because they do not qualify for assistance from Centrelink—their parents earn too much even though they do not earn enough to support their child by paying the costs incurred in going to university. These changes are only going to exacerbate that trend.

Other comments indicate that many students did not take up study at the end of the gap year due to financial considerations. As one student said:

Originally from country Victoria, in order to study and support myself in Melbourne I had to take a gap year to work and save enough money as my parents are unable to financially support me away from home. Also, to receive Centrelink benefits ‘independence’ must be proven and 18 months (from conclusion of school) must elapse. While my motivation to study remained during this time many of my peers (of all academic abilities) found that the attraction of maintaining regular employment and income is greater than the desire to resume studying.

These changes are only going to exacerbate this trend. As I said, people from regional and remote parts of Australia are underrepresented in our universities. We can already see that trend. We are already hearing from the students who are struggling to make the transition from, in this case, homes in rural Victoria and New South Wales to Melbourne and Sydney. What the minister is proposing is just going to make that transition more and more impossible.

If the government wants to do something about correcting the underrepresentation of rural, regional and remote students in our universities and by extension in our professions, and enable them to contribute as we know they can to the life and work of Australia in all of its forms, then it really does need to have a second look at this legislation. Under the current work participation requirements for independence a person must have worked full-time for at least 18 months in the previous two years, or worked part-time at least 15 hours a week for at least two years since leaving school, or have been out of school for at least 18 months and earned at least 75 per cent of the maximum rate of pay under wage level A of the Australian pay and classification scale—that is, $19,532. Currently, we have gap year students who are going through amazing feats in order to earn that sum of money in an 18-month period—it is not easy—to qualify for youth allowance by the time they are halfway through the year in 2010.

We need to understand that the hoops that people are required to jump through in order to qualify for youth allowance now are not easy. This is not something that the government is handing to students, be they rural or city, on a plate. I do recognise that there were problems in the existing Youth Allowance scheme and that there were students with comparatively well-off parents living at home and receiving youth allowance. That is not in the spirit of the scheme and I understand that the Bradley review made some recommendations that this should be corrected. We support that; we are not advocating a return to the system as it currently stands. But in making those changes and addressing the mischief that certainly was being done in a small percentage of instances, why has the government created such a two-tier system? Why has it decided that rural students are simply going to be excluded from the opportunity to attend tertiary institutions before they turn 22, the new age for independence, or if they have not worked for 30 hours a week for an 18-month period in two years?

It does not matter how good the labour market is in Sydney or Melbourne or even in some of our larger regional centres; the labour market in a small rural town will never support even two or three students working 30 hours a week and earning the amount that they would need. They are simply in a position where they have nowhere to turn. They say to me, ‘We won’t go to university because we can’t afford to.’ Students are very conscious of the income levels of their parents. Parents make sacrifices and they are to be commended for that, but a lot of students have said to me, ‘I don’t want Mum and Dad to make these sacrifices,’ particularly if they are in a drought affected area and if they have experienced many years of lower than average income. They say: ‘I don’t want them to make these sacrifices. I will just put off my tertiary study. It will be fine. I will get to it later in life.’ As we know, that very often does not happen. If you put off the time when you go to university, you also delay your career, your experiences and the contribution that you make. I am not suggesting that everybody needs to go to university when they finish school, but those who are ready to and those who choose to should have the opportunity.

The government is saying that the opposition is running a scare campaign. They have pulled various numbers out of a hat and given us the information that people will not in fact be excluded from youth allowance, that the parental income threshold will be raised to $42,000, that there will still be opportunities to get payments beyond that, et cetera. In the minister’s correspondence to my constituent, she has referred them to Centrelink. People have rung Centrelink only to be told there is no way that anybody is going to give them information over the phone about what they may or may not be entitled to. However, to the extent that they have been able to determine it, they have seen that at $42,000 of combined parental income youth allowance is available to young people, but after that the taper rate is so fast and so sudden that many parents on middle incomes are really going to find that the students in their families are not going to be entitled to very much, if any, youth allowance.

If you simply crunch the numbers in some real life cases, as I encourage the Deputy Prime Minister to do instead of just listening to the prattle that comes out of her department, which talks about having more students than we have had before and talks about it in macro terms instead of individual case studies, then we will find that parents on middle incomes are not going to be able to afford for their children to go to university if it involves moving away from home. If they live close to a university all parents with adult children let them live at home, save money and carry on their normal activities after leaving school. But children from rural and regional areas have got no choice. In order to attend university at all they need to travel.

I do not for a moment mean to criticise our rural and regional universities and I am not doing so, but I particularly mentioned the towns of Finley, Berrigan and Jerilderie—all of my electorate feels very strongly about this, and I am sure the member for Moncrieff’s electorate does too—because there is no local regional university in that area. In Albury and Wodonga we have Charles Sturt University and Latrobe University, and they are fantastic local regional campuses. I have attended both myself and I cannot speak highly enough of them. But they do not have every single course that a young person might want to do upon finishing school. They simply do not. In order to do the course that you choose, you need access to other universities, whether they be in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Newcastle, Wollongong, the Gold Coast or wherever. That choice should be just as available to rural and regional students as it is to city students. To suggest, as the government is, that we are going to have two classes of students and two classes of graduates in the future is appalling and it needs to be changed.

The minister has felt some heat on this and so has grandfathered the current gap-year students—the students who left school at the end of last year and who are currently working during a gap year. Many of the representations we have had to our offices have concerned those students. I thank the minister for making those amendments to the legislation. It is good for those students. But it makes no difference at all to those who will be in exactly the same circumstances the following year and every single year after that. So, in what I believe was quite a political response, the minister has quietened down some of those who were rightly making a lot of noise about this because they felt it was enormously unfair—and it was—that those students had embarked on their gap year only to find the goalposts had been moved halfway through.

But remember that what the minister has not done is address the concerns of rural and regional youth into the future. As a rural and regional representative, that is my very great concern, because we are going to find that the statistics I have included in these remarks about the lack of rural graduates from universities are only going to get worse in the future. The financial impact on rural and regional students who want to attend metropolitan universities is such that they will not be able to afford to go. Countless parents have given me the intimate details of their household budgets. They have modest means and live with no extravagances, saving to do the very best for their children. But the cost of supporting a student in Sydney or Melbourne, even though they may do their best to get a part-time job, is absolutely astronomical. Anybody who checks that out will certainly find that is the case.

The ramifications of this piece of legislation have not been thought through in relation to rural and regional families. It completely unfairly discriminates against our rural and regional students. Some sort of means test is fine, we do not want the system to be abused, but, please, Deputy Prime Minister, give our rural and regional kids a chance to enter and excel at the professions which match their passions.

Part of that last paragraph is a quote from Juliet Cullen, a farmer and working mother in Tumbarumba, New South Wales. Juliet Cullen put in a submission to the inquiry into the proposed changes to Youth Allowance and wrote very passionately, I have to say, explaining how much she and her family had done in order to give their children the best possible opportunities, only to conclude that it would not be possible to send their son to university in 2011. He wants to study engineering, and there is a national shortage of engineers, so her conclusion was that this seems to be an extremely short-sighted move on the part of the government. I urge the government, in the time that it has left to consider this legislation, to look seriously at the opposition’s amendments and not disadvantage regional students. (Time expired)

James Bidgood (Dawson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. This bill is about providing fairness in a system that supports thousands of young people in this country through their university education. The package of measures contained in this bill will increase the level of assistance payable to students and families, and expand the eligibility for support to families that need it most. This increased support will ensure that students from low-income backgrounds are able to access the support they need to participate in education and training, including in higher education at university level.

This bill will enable an additional 67,800 young people who do not currently qualify for assistance to access youth allowance or ABSTUDY as dependent recipients under more generous parental income test arrangements. The parental income test changes will also assist a further 34,600 existing recipients, who will receive an increase in their payment, often to the full payment rate. This is great news. That has got to be good news.

We made a change for the sake of equity. Things could not stay as they were. The government agreed with the Bradley review finding that student income support was poorly targeted. The review found that 36 per cent of independent students living at home were from families with incomes above $100,000. The same survey estimated that 18 per cent of students in this situation came from families earning income above $150,000 and 10 per cent came from families earning above $200,000. The package of reforms in this bill aims to increase access to, and better target, income support for students through a fairer and more equitable allocation of the existing resources. Also, in a step forward for students in postgraduate study, there is an extension of student income support to all masters by coursework programs commencing in 2012.

These reforms align with the government’s education outcome objectives of 40 per cent of all 25- to 34-year-olds attaining a qualification at bachelor level or above by 2025, and 20 per cent of higher education enrolments at undergraduate level being people from low socioeconomic backgrounds by 2020.

These reforms will be funded by tightening the workforce participation criteria for independence under Youth Allowance and ABSTUDY rules. The new criterion will only allow those who have demonstrated their independence by working at least 30 hours per week for at least 18 months during any period over two years to achieve independence. However, many rural and regional young people who might have expected to qualify as independent students in the future will instead automatically qualify as dependent recipients under the more generous parental income test arrangements that will be introduced under this bill. Furthermore, young people who completed secondary studies in 2008, took a gap year in 2009, commence university in 2010 and are required to live 90 minutes or more away from home to study will not be affected by the changes. It is very important to point out that out in this debate. There will be many who will greatly benefit.

The bill also lowers the age of independence, for the purpose of receiving study assistance payments, from 25 years to 24 years in 2010, 23 years in 2011 and 22 years in 2012. In addition to the payments in 2010, it is estimated that around 146,600 student income support recipients will gain an entitlement to the new annual $2,254 Student Start-up Scholarship aimed to help low-income students who find it difficult to meet their study costs. This is a new funding measure for our students.

From 1 January 2010, students receiving youth allowance while undertaking an approved higher education course who need to move away from the family home in order to study will also receive a new Relocation Scholarship, except for those receiving a Commonwealth Accommodation Scholarship. This will be available to dependent students who need to live away from home and certain disadvantaged independent students who cannot live in the parental home. In 2010 the scholarship will be paid in one annual instalment of $1,000, or $4,000 for the student’s initial relocation. This will assist students with the costs of establishing new accommodation in order to attend university.

Also, this bill will increase the personal income-free area for student and apprentice recipients of youth allowance and Austudy from $236 to $400 per fortnight, with effect from 1 July 2012. Students and apprentices will, therefore, be able to earn up to $400 in a fortnight, without having their payments increased annually with the CPI. Under the previous system, the parental income test was so low that many students sought to gain access to student income support as independent recipients. This new system is comprehensive, fairer and more equitable and will benefit more young people.

The member for Farrer, the previous speaker, commented on rural universities and metro universities. I am pleased to say that, in the seat of Dawson, students and scholars have access to two fantastic university campuses. One is in Mackay—the Central Queensland University, which is expanding at a rate of knots with special trades-training emphasis, linking schools and a transition into apprenticeships, and then going on to degree level engineering, with a special emphasis on looking after the mining services for the Bowen Basin region. That exciting development is currently being developed and heavily invested in. It bodes well for our region.

Also, Townsville has James Cook University. As a lot of members would know, just recently the boundaries for the seat of Dawson were redrawn. I welcome the suburbs of Annandale, Wulguru, Stuart, Idalia and Oonoonba. James Cook University in Townsville and its campus in Mackay are doing fantastic work. I give credit where credit is due: the previous government did expand the number of junior doctor training places in Townsville in the belief that students who train to be doctors or medical specialists in a rural area will carry on living in that vicinity. I believe that to be true. I look forward to the new Mackay Base Hospital, which will be built by the Queensland government, being assisted by this federal government in helping doctors to be trained there as well. I know that JCU are currently in discussions with the Queensland government to make that a reality.

These are exciting times for the seat of Dawson. These are exciting times for students who aspire, out of school, to trade training with the possibility of then going on to develop degrees in engineering, technology, science and all these things. All these things will be available not just in traditional metro universities down south, as we say in Queensland, but in the great tropical north in the booming areas of Mackay, Bowen, Ayr, Townsville and Cairns. There is great work going on there as well. I know the member for Leichhardt is passionate about the way the university is developing there. It is all very good indeed.

I believe these are exciting times, because new technologies enable new means of learning and even rural remote students, who perhaps cannot leave the family farm, do not have to rely on short-wave radio or something like that. They can now get onto the internet via Austar or satellite and they can access information on the World Wide Web—the global library—and the open learning centres and open university courses, which enable correspondence degrees to be carried out. These are fantastic new developments.

When I did my correspondence degree with the open university we did not have the Internet, unfortunately. I had to fax all of my essays—all 2,000 words every month—for six years, until I achieved my Bachelor of Science with honours in social science. I enjoyed that experience. But I think it is so stimulating, and so radical, the way there is nowhere across this great continent that does not have access to top-quality global information and this government is committed to the broadband network, which is one of the fastest speeds in the world. Not only will that help learning; it will also help business do better business in its transition of information from anywhere on the globe into this country, to any rural area as well as metropolitan areas. So new technology brings new methods of learning. These are indeed exciting times.

I would just like to remind the member for Farrer of that, as she made reference to rural people having to go to metro universities. Obviously, it is a great learning experience to have a change of scenery and change of environment and sometimes the high levels of specialisation can only be found in certain parts of the country. But fortunately we have new technologies which enable greater communication and that is why I am so proud that this Rudd Labor government truly does believe in education.

I have just put out the latest copy of the Bidgood News—it is a great publication members should get one. I am proud that this government has invested $103,996,931 into the seat of Dawson on 554 local projects, truly delivering in a way that we have never delivered before, for schools—including primary schools—and also for social housing, for campuses, and for the Mining Technology Innovation Centre for Australia, based in Mackay, servicing the mining industry across Australia. Again, these are more great opportunities for learning and innovation.

I am proud of what we are doing. It is absolutely fantastic. And it is good to know that 70 per cent of the stimulus is in hard core infrastructure. With everything that is going on, we are enabling everyone in our society a fairer, more equal chance to learn—wherever they are—whether it is through new technologies, or new investments in schools, university campuses or innovation centres. We, the Rudd Labor government, are making it happen. I say this is a great bill and I commend it wholeheartedly to the House.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I rise to speak this afternoon on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009 and particularly to support the amendments being proposed by the shadow minister for education, the member for Sturt. I follow the written speech delivered by the member for Dawson, who is one of the few Labor members from outside metropolitan areas of our country, and it is a shame he did not address the great inequity of this bill and its attack on regional students that live in his seat. Obviously he will need to go back to the hollow men who draft the speeches over there and, next time, get some of that inserted into the speech.

It is important that we deal with the two major issues in this bill, as many members from our side of the parliament have so far in their contributions to this debate. The two most significant issues we deal with in this bill are the retrospective nature of the changes made—which we oppose and we seek to amend—and the changes to the structure of the youth allowance and the independent arrangements, which we think discriminate very much against those who come from regional and rural areas of Australia. They particularly discriminate against those who come from farming families and regional small business families, benefiting those people who live in inner city Labor seats. That is very much always the modus operandi of the Labor Party—to make changes that benefit the Labor Party constituency against those of us who sit on this side. The Labor party does not have many members in outer metropolitan and regional seats. They have representatives such as the member for Dawson who obviously are unable to articulate the issues well enough for the minister to understand.

The youth allowance was introduced in 1998 by the previous Howard government as a means to replace what were then five or six different allowances. We recognised—through the Bradley review—that there were some issues about how the youth allowance was being accessed by different groups in the community. The shadow minister for education has articulated very well how we support some of the changes suggested in the Bradley review and proposed in the budget. However, we do not support two aspects of the change. The first one—and probably the most contentious, publicly, thus far—is the retrospective nature of the changes to the youth allowance. That was a particularly nasty aspect of this bill, which would have initially impacted on the 30,000-odd young Australians who were undertaking their gap year this year.

The minister has since made some changes to that provision. She had a press conference a couple of months ago where she had a group of students around. She acted like she was listening to their concerns and made a slight change which benefited some students but not all. So in this bill we seek to make the additional change, to catch up, to ensure there is not a retrospective element to this bill.

The second and more important issue, which is an ongoing issue about how the Youth Allowance will be structured, relates to the number of hours a young person will need to work to qualify for the independent youth allowance compared to the dependent youth allowance, as the government have changed the structure of the wage levels and so forth. This will particularly impact on regional areas such as in some parts of my electorate like Kangaroo Island, which is further from the city and has the water gap so you could not live at home and travel daily to a city university. You would need to up your life and move to Adelaide or, indeed, whichever capital city you wish to attend university. That has the kids at the Kangaroo Island school extraordinarily concerned. I saw them a couple of months ago. We had a meeting with year 12s and a lot of them had been planning on their gap year to raise funds to give them the opportunity to go to Adelaide, attend university and make a start to their career. Many of them hope to return to the island and undertake employment in the area that they had studied.

The students are deeply worried about the changes the Deputy Prime Minister is seeking to make. Those changes very much funnel assistance to those that the Deputy Prime Minister likes in society as against those that she does not like, and that is the obnoxious bit of this bill. I am thankful to the Parliamentary Library as per usual in their Bills Digest for encapsulating what this change will do. It says:

Under the current work participation requirements for independence, a person must have:

• worked full-time (at least 30 hours a week) for at least 18 months in the previous two years, or
• worked part-time (at least 15 hours a week) for at least two years since leaving school, or
• have been out of school for at least 18 months and earned at least 75 per cent of the maximum rate of pay under Wage Level A of the Australian Pay and Classification Scale (that is, $19 532 in 2009) in an 18 month period.

Under the change announced in the budget all but the first criteria, ‘worked full-time (at least 30 hours a week) for at least 18 months in the previous two years’ will apply. It is, of course, extraordinarily difficult in regional areas to find that sort of work in that period to qualify for the allowance. It is going to make things very tough for young Australians in regional areas, particularly those from farming backgrounds and others as well.

I have a constituent, Sarah Hemming who comes from Echunga, which is a beautiful part of my electorate, who has written to me about just how concerned and upset she is at the treatment being dished out by the Deputy Prime Minister. I forwarded this letter to the Deputy Prime Minister some weeks ago now and I am still eagerly awaiting a reply. I am sure it is on the way to my office as we speak. I will quote some of Sarah’s letter because I think it is very important to understand:

Are you aware that the government recently has decided against increasing the earning threshold for youth allowance students. This is absurd. I work a 6 hour shift a week, which is 12 hours a fortnight at a wage of 19.40 for a Saturday. This amounts to $232.80 per fortnight in my independent earnings and the threshold for income per fortnight for Youth Allowance Students is $230 a fortnight. So for working this I am already over the income threshold and my payment is reduced.

Sarah goes on and explains how difficult it is to live independently on those sorts of amounts. I have great sympathy for what she is saying about the changes being made. She is very clearly saying that the changes being made by this government impact more on regional students and regional people than on those who live in inner city, Labor held seats. What this Deputy Prime Minister will seek to do again on most occasions is to use the politics of envy, the politics of Medicare gold and the politics of the school hit list, focusing on who the government believe will benefit the most in their constituencies against those who live in areas that do not generally vote for the Australian Labor Party.

This bill has elements which we will seek to amend. The Manager of Opposition Business, the shadow spokesman on education, will be seeking several amendments. They are amendments which will make the bill a better bill and will make the system a better system going forward. They are cost neutral amendments to ensure that the Deputy Prime Minister cannot allege that we are trying to spend more money. They make a lot of sense and they will reduce the heartache which exists at the moment in regional communities.

As I said at the start, we are not opposed, per se, to changes to the Youth Allowance that have been suggested by this government, however we are opposed to the changes which particularly impact on regional kids. Again, I think the Bills Digest sums up exactly what the Deputy Prime Minister has sought to do in this legislation. On page 12, under the description of the measures, it says:

However changes to the parental income test and the introduction of new scholarship payments will mean that many more dependent students qualify for a higher rate of assistance than they would have received under the current arrangements.

It is a change in the bucket of money. Basically it is a change to how it is accessed at the moment by people in regional areas, who need some additional assistance, to those who largely live in lower-income areas in our major cities. What the Deputy Prime Minister does not understand is that living in regional centres makes university that much more difficult to access. I agree in part with what the member for Dawson said about regional universities. There has been an increased presence in regional universities in the last 20 years. In fact, when I grew up in a regional area 400 kilometres from the nearest major centre, we had the beginnings of some university education through the TAFE and, as it grew, through Latrobe University. However, inevitably for most kids in regional areas to get the skills required to go on and do whatever occupation they want to undertake, either in the city or in their regional communities, requires attendance at a city based university.

The fact is that young people from regional areas who go away and study are more likely to return to their rural and regional areas to undertake the important jobs of trained professionals like doctors, teachers, accountants and so forth. It is therefore important for the very survival and health of regional communities that we make it as easy as possible for those young people to have the opportunity of an education, whether through city based or regional universities. Unfortunately this bill does the exact opposite—it changes the way that youth allowance is paid. We are seeking to amend the bill to make it a much fairer system. This issue has driven quite a deal of community outrage. I have had quite a bit of correspondence through my electorate office and I know other members further out in the state, the member for Barker and the member for Grey, have had quite a deal of correspondence on this issue. It is a policy mistake by the Deputy Prime Minister. We just hope that she is not too stubborn to recognise that she has made a significant error by trying to implement what would be better for the Labor Party than for regional kids and their opportunities going forward.

I do not think the minister understands that the value of many farm are at such levels as to render those students ineligible although the available income is inadequate to support them. There is an old saying that farmers are asset rich but cash poor, particularly in the last few years of significant droughts. I understand that someone coming from Unley High School might not necessarily know what it is like for a kid from Murray Bridge, Mount Barker, Victor Harbor or Kangaroo Island.

It is unfortunate that the Deputy Prime Minister does not understand the very nature of regional Australia and the challenges that we face. My seat is a mixed outer suburb-regional seat. It is a vast seat with large areas. My constituents are not as affected as those of many other members in this place; however, this is a bad policy change. The Deputy Prime Minister will have an opportunity to vote for appropriate changes to the retrospectivity of this bill. It is a disgraceful policy move in any parliament to apply a policy retrospectively. She has done a half backflip. She is halfway round the full backflip. We hope that the full backflip happens soon. She particularly needs to address how youth allowance is paid and how it is structured in order to address the concerns of so many young Australians, particularly those in regional areas. On that note, I conclude.

Danna Vale (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I call the member for Lindsay.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am the member for ‘paradise’, Madam Deputy Speaker, otherwise known as Herbert.

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

The member for Herbert, I beg your pardon.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I come from Australia’s largest tropical city, of which I am very proud, and where the lifestyle is fantastic. I also represent James Cook University and its many thousands of students. James Cook University is the most significant tropical university in the world today. It certainly leads the world, particularly in research in marine science and collaborations with the Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and so on. A number of very interested students in my electorate are looking at this legislation. Many students have been badly affected by the government’s retrospective legislation, which I think shocked the whole university sector and particularly those on youth allowance when it was announced in the budget.

Last week the Minister for Education was trying to shift the onus of the youth allowance changes onto me and other regional MPs who stood up for Australia’s university students in trying to block these very unreasonable changes that were proposed by the Labor government. The minister’s student support legislation will make it almost impossible for thousands of rural students to gain youth allowance and to achieve their dreams in higher education, and that is unfair.

Outside the metropolitan cities we are fed up with being second-class citizens. We are entitled to a university education, as are students in the city. The changes that the minister is putting forward affect rural and regional students very significantly, and that is not fair. I reject the minister’s claims that, under the coalition’s plan to reduce the rate of the new start-up scholarship, 1,215 families in my electorate will be worse off. The minister’s proposed changes are in blatant disregard of Australia’s rural and regional students.

Ms Gillard’s attention to detail on this issue has been lacklustre at best. The Labor government does not seem to care that students made decisions to defer study for a year, relying on advice from their schools’ course advisers, Centrelink officials and other information from the government. These are sources of information that students rely on. It was these sources of information that gave these students the understanding that they would be able to defer study for a gap year without being adversely affected. They were wrong, because the government retrospectively changed the legislation. Retrospective legislation in any form is always something that this parliament must be extraordinarily careful about because of the unfair aspects that it introduces into people’s lives.

Students from rural and regional Australia do not have the option of living at home while pursuing their studies. That is self-evident. Up until now, students have been able to gain access to youth allowance through the workforce participation or gap year route. This is the route that the government is seeking to abolish. The coalition will move amendments to remove the retrospective aspect of the legislation and we have already announced a policy to provide scholarships to students from rural and regional areas who are ineligible for youth allowance but whose financial circumstances are preventing them from accessing higher education.

We, the coalition, strongly urge the government to support these sensible, fair policies. After all, we are engaged now in some sensible and fair negotiation in relation to the issue of climate change, so why can’t we do it in relation to the issue of higher education? The Deputy Prime Minister has all but admitted her short-sightedness on this issue of retrospectivity by backflipping on her original plan and delaying the implementation of the changes. But now it is crunch time. It is crunch time for the parliament, and she has simply tried to shift the blame back to those who are looking out for the youth of Australia and helping them realise their ambitions.

Stories have flooded into the coalition’s website, and I urge the minister and other interested Australians to have a look at this web site—it is www.educationforAustralia.com.au. The Minister for Education should have a read; she may learn something about what is being said. I recently met Keegan Sard, who is a typical student concerned about the changes to youth allowance. Keegan expressed his concern, and he confirmed that there is no doubt that Youth Allowance reform is needed. Keegan, thanks for expressing that concern. Thousands of other students have also expressed this to the coalition, and I assume to the government.

The Rudd government announced many of the changes contained in the present bill in the May budget, based on some of the recommendations from the Bradley review. However, the Labor government have been unable to get it right. Under this legislation, thousands of students remain uncertain about their higher education future. Regional and rural students in particular have been disadvantaged, and that is why the coalition is proposing significant amendments to this bill. Before considering these, I would like to note the four main changes that this legislation is actually trying to make to Youth Allowance. Firstly, it proposes to change the criteria of independence for the purposes of eligibility by lowering the age of independence from 25 to 22 and removing part-time work as criteria for establishing it. Secondly, it seeks to increase the parental income threshold for non-independent recipients from $32,800 to $44,165. The personal income-free level for youth allowance recipients will also be increased from $236 to $400 per fortnight. Thirdly, the legislation introduces a new start-up scholarship for all youth allowance or Austudy recipients, and this scholarship will be given to an estimated 146,000 students next year. Finally, the bill would exempt all merit and equity based scholarships from the income test, and that is reasonable.

It is important to make sure that students have the support they need when they are studying. I think everybody would accept that. However, the government’s proposed legislation is just not the answer. Labor’s Youth Allowance changes do not address all of the issues currently facing students, nor will they provide support for all of those students who need it. The coalition therefore proposes several amendments to this legislation to ensure that support is there for all students who need it, and that no-one will be unfairly disadvantaged because of the changes.

The minister’s reform package has resulted in a great deal of controversy and debate. This has centred on the categories of eligibility for youth allowance. When Minister Gillard first announced Labor’s proposed reforms, there were going to be two changes made to the criteria of independence. Firstly, the age of independence would be progressively lowered from 25 to 22 years old by 2012 and, secondly, a more controversial measure was to immediately remove part-time employment as criteria for establishing independence. We all know this. The problem with this ill-thought-out second measure is that it was also to apply from 1 January next year, therefore applying retrospectively to 2009 gap year students. They were just appalled, and their complaints flooded into the government and of course flooded into the opposition—and quite reasonably so. So although the changes would come into effect in 2010, they would apply to students starting their studies that year—that is, students who may have graduated high school in 2008 and worked the required hours in 2009. These students, when they began working this year, had no idea of the government’s intention to do this. They had their study plans placed into jeopardy following the minister’s announcement.

We have now seen a partial backflip from the Rudd government and Julia Gillard on this measure when they finally realised it would leave thousands of students in a very precarious position indeed. Their backflip solution is to allow students currently on a gap year to qualify for the youth allowance under the workforce criteria, provided they live more than 90 minutes from their university via public transport. While this change will mean 5,000 students who took a gap year this year thinking that they would be eligible to again qualify for youth allowance, a further massive 25,000 students will not.

The coalition opposes the retrospective operation of the changes in this legislation. We propose that all students currently on a gap year be eligible for youth allowance through the previously existing workforce participation criteria. This will cost an additional $573 million over four years to the figure announced in the May budget. Savings can be found to fund this to ensure the 2009 gap year students are not disadvantaged. For example, Minister Gillard has already announced that $150 million will be saved through the delayed start to changes to the personal income threshold. The coalition will also propose further savings measures.

The current system allows students to be eligible for youth allowance irrespective of their parents’ income if they earn $19,532 in 18 months after finishing school, if they work 15 hours per week for two years after finishing school or if they work full-time for 18 months after finishing school. Under Labor’s changes, only full-time work would remain as a category for proving independence. By removing the option of workforce participation, regional and rural Australian students will find it more difficult to study at university. It is really surprising that the Labor government would put students in that particular situation. These young Australians must make the often difficult decision to move to the city to study. In many situations they may not be able to rely on financial support from their parents, nor be able to qualify for youth allowance under the parental income test. It is certainly a heartless decision by the Labor government to do this to these many thousands of students.

For a young regional Australian, moving to the city to study for several years will cost tens of thousands of dollars. While many farming families may be above the parental income test, they may still be unable to afford the high costs associated with this move, such as accommodation and living expenses, plus all the study costs such as textbooks and equipment. Under the current system, the solution for many of these young Australians has been to take a gap year after school and earn $19,532 in 18 months—thus becoming eligible as an independent recipient of youth allowance. The government’s reasoning behind abolishing this is that it was being exploited by some wealthy families and students who live and study in the city. However, in abolishing it the government has left rural and regional Australian students in a very uncomfortable, very difficult and very uncertain position. Many feel that without the income support of youth allowance they would be unable to move to the city to study, and that is the great unfairness of what the government is proposing in this bill.

The Labor government claim to be interested in promoting higher education for everyone, yet they are actively ignoring the very real concerns of rural and regional Australian students. It is not just coalition members who realise the disadvantage that regional students would suffer under the Rudd government’s changes. The Victorian parliament’s Education and Training Committee, which is chaired by a Labor member and has an effective Labor majority, noted unanimously—unanimously—that removing part-time workforce participation would have a ‘disastrous effect on young people in rural and regional areas.’ I say, ‘Good on the Victorian parliament’s Education and Training Committee.’ They can see what the federal Minister for Education apparently cannot.

The coalition therefore proposes an amendment to the bill to ensure that these students are still able to move to the city and undertake tertiary education. We will introduce a measure that creates a new rural and regional scholarship program, which will be worth $120 million. This scholarship will provide real financial support to rural and regional Australian students who move to continue their education. Without this measure, and under the government’s plan, the only option for many of these students would be to work 30 hours per week for 18 months in order to be eligible for youth allowance.

For regional Australian students, making the move to study, often hundreds of kilometres away from family and friends, is a big undertaking. We must make sure that these students do not suffer undue financial stress and are supported in their higher education. James Cook University, in my electorate, has a large proportion of students from regional areas right across the northern part of Queensland, stretching out to the border and Mount Isa, up into the Gulf Country, down through the coalfields and so on. It is a big undertaking for those students to get to university. We must make sure that the students do not suffer undue financial stress and are supported in their higher education.

In some fields of study at James Cook, an overwhelming majority of students come from rural and regional areas. For example, 80 per cent of the students who are studying medicine at James Cook, arguably the best medical school in the country and which has a really fabulous undergraduate degree, come from rural or regional Australia. That is because when the medical school was established one of the criteria was that they would admit students from rural and regional Australia who, when they did their degree in a regional university, would tend to stay in the regional area as doctors. This was a very specific policy decision by the Howard government to offer a medical degree in a regional area so that we would encourage students to become doctors and then stay, serving the people of regional Australia.

What must students like that think about the government when it says, ‘We are going to make it much more difficult for you to go to university.’ That is what this bill is about. Are we really in the business of punishing medical students who come from places such as Hughenden, Julia Creek, Winton, Boulia, Bedourie, Birdsville, who knows? Are we really going to put something through the parliament that makes it almost impossible for these students to attend university? We graduate really great doctors from James Cook. With the association of the Townsville Hospital, which is right next door to James Cook’s medical school, we also provide positions for Indigenous students, all of whom graduate. They make magnificent doctors—really terrific doctors—which is very significant indeed. But this legislation is going to make it very difficult for all of those students to go to James Cook from regional areas. Under the coalition’s rural and regional scholarship program, which is in the amendments to the bill, students from remote areas who wish to come and study in Townsville would be given the financial support to do so. I strongly support that. I want to make sure that these students can get to JCU.

As we reform the system, it is vital that we do not forget the students who most need our support. I have heard many stories from regional students who are very concerned about their ability to move to a city to study. The Rudd government’s changes will leave them without any support and will have many questioning whether they can now afford to study. The government must show that it cares about rural and regional Australian students by supporting the coalition’s amendment. The government’s legislation proposes to introduce new scholarships for students who receive youth allowance or Austudy. The new Student Start-up Scholarship will be introduced in 2010 and, under the government’s proposal, would be worth $2,254 per year.

It is important that the final changes to the youth allowance system be cost neutral. To ensure this, the coalition proposes to set the rate of the Start-up Scholarship at $1,000 per year. This will mean that a greater number of students can receive some form of income support. The coalition’s amendments are designed to make sure all students are better off. Contrary to the government’s spin, the coalition’s budget neutrality amendments do not leave students with a single dollar less than they currently receive in their youth allowance payments. I urge the government to support our amendments and do the right thing by the students of rural and regional Australia.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is certainly a pleasure—an almost unkind pleasure—to be speaking on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. I can remember going to university. I did my university course as a mature age student at 32 and did not get one bit of help from the government. I struggled. I have always lived in a rural area and did over 100 kilometres of travel every day. Of course, I had to pay for my fuel and my Higher Education Contribution Scheme fees on top of that. I struggled, but I got through it. But, unlike most of my constituents, I did not have the problem of having to pay for accommodation to be able to attend. In fact, I have moved since I went to university. If I tried to go to university now, I would have to move back home, like most of the students in my electorate.

I was very pleased in 1998 when the Howard government first introduced measures to assist rural students to pay rent as part of the Youth Allowance program. It was very warmly welcomed, but it was not enough. I was elected in October 1998, after that legislation was enacted, and in the 11 years that I have had the honour of representing the electorate of Barker I have sought and been able to secure some changes that were more beneficial to rural students. One of the first changes we made, not long after I got elected, was increasing the assets test for farmers—it was virtually doubled, I think, and later we doubled it again. It enabled those cash poor but asset rich farmers in my electorate to get some help for themselves and their student children. When the Hon. Brendan Nelson was the Minister for Education, Science and Training, I and my colleagues were able to convince him that further scholarships were needed to help some of those rural people get accommodation help when they had to leave home to go to university.

Of course, those measures have now been scrapped by the Rudd Labor government and the replacement is, frankly, not going to help very much at all. We are talking about $1,000 a year in accommodation allowance from the second year onwards. If you can find accommodation in a capital city for $1,000 a year, I think you would be well advised to grab it. A $20 a week living allowance does not get you very far when you have to leave home.

I took quite a bit of interest in the contributions from the member for Capricornia and the member for Dawson. They all seemed to be singing from the same hymn sheet as the Minister for Education. I have some advice for them: they should follow what the member for Lyons did during the 2004 election, when he took on his then leader, Mark Latham, and kept his seat. Other members in electorates that support forest industries around Australia did not do that and they lost their seats. This is a huge issue in my electorate and other rural electorates. As a psephologist, I am sure there will be some studies done on this by other people who are interested in voting patterns. If you look at rural and regional electorates like Leichhardt, Capricornia, Flynn, Dawson, Page, Richmond, Corangamite, Bass, Braddon, Wakefield, Bendigo and Ballarat—there might be a couple of others—it will be very interesting to see the swings that could occur against Labor at the next election. I have no doubt in the least that that will happen, and I suspect that coalition held rural electorates will see a swing towards them on average based on this appalling decision by the government. So my advice to those Labor members in rural and regional seats is: do not get sucked in. Do not be sacrificed by this minister’s poor decision.

As I said, I rise to speak on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. I have spoken out previously on behalf of rural and regional students concerning this unfair legislation that the government introduced regarding youth allowance, and I will continue to lobby the government on behalf of these students until I am satisfied that they are being treated fairly. I support the amendments foreshadowed by the coalition to the bill to get a fairer deal for those students who would be severely disadvantaged under the bill as it stands. In my 11 proud years of being a member of this parliament I would have to say that this issue is the biggest I have come across, with the greatest response from my constituents. My office has been inundated with correspondence and I suspect—I am quite sure—that rural Labor members would have had the same response. We have been inundated with correspondence from concerned rural and regional students, parents and school councils, who all believe that the proposed changes by the Labor government will be detrimental to the future of the students.

So strong has been the response from my constituents that in August this year I submitted a 2,000-signature petition to this parliament. The anger and frustration expressed by the community over the government changes was massive. In an electorate like mine 2,000 signatures is huge. I have never seen anything like that before in my time in parliament. After the huge public outcry and continuous lobbying by me and my coalition colleagues, Minister Gillard is beginning to back-pedal. She needs to back-pedal a lot more. The government have already done one backflip to try to dig themselves out of a friendless hole on youth allowance and now they must go the rest of the way and fix rural and regional students’ future before they take it away completely.

The coalition’ proposed amendments offer rural and regional students a better deal and encourage them to strive for higher education and achieve their best. I am proud of rural and regional students. I want to see them with the same opportunities that students from the city have. One of the problems we have in rural areas face is retaining doctors and other professionals. When parents are faced with these sorts of changes they often make the decision to leave their rural area for the sake of their children’s education and move to the city. That is a brain drain from rural areas that we can ill afford. Unfortunately, I think these changes will have an even greater effect as to that happening in the future.

The government was set to treat these students second-best and that would have seen them struggling to find work and missing out on university places. It is fair to say that all students would have been worse off under the government changes. But one particular group that would have been a lot worse off would have been gap year students who were working this year to earn an income before embarking on university in 2010. Currently, students under the age of 25 can assess youth allowance as being independent of their parents by the following three workplace participation routes: if a student earns $19,532 in 18 months after finishing school; if a student has worked part time and this accounts for 15 hours per week for two years after finishing school; and if a student has worked full time and this accounts for 30 hours per week for 18 months in the two-year period after finishing school. The problem with the two-year criteria is that we can no longer have a ‘gap year’, so we have a ‘gap two years’. Many universities have simply not made the changes necessary to allow that to happen without a reapplication. It is going to be a lot harder for schoolstudents to work out how they can fit in a gap of two years from their school days to actually become part of the university system. The logistics are a lot harder than with a single gap year, which we had under the previous administration.

The government’s reforms were set to abolish the first two of these three criteria. However, following Minister Gillard’s backflip, it is about students living further away than 90 minutes by public transport, which is Centrelink’s definition. In my electorate we have not got public transport that goes to a university so how does that come into it? There is no public transport for 99 per cent of my electorate. Where there is it would be the one bus a day, I think, from Murray Bridge down to Adelaide, and the times would probably not fit in very well if you were doing a full university course. So how does this definition fit in? That criterion also says that those who have undertaken a gap year in 2009 will be eligible as long as they commence their higher education in the first half of 2010. This backflip would help approximately 5,000 current gap year students. I welcome that. But about 25,000 or 26,000 current gap year students would miss out in 2010, and from 2011 students would only be able to access youth allowance if they were above the parental income threshold as independents, if they were to reach the age threshold of independence or if they were to work full time for 18 months after finishing school. These gap year students would be far better off under the coalition’s proposed amendment which will grandfather students currently on a gap year by proposing they fall under the old workforce participation route to youth allowance, which they assumed they were when they entered the gap year. Many of these students commenced their gap year on advice from their school counsellors because they were looking at the existing legislation. They also got advice from parents and Centrelink. The coalition’s proposed amendment will let this group continue on the path they were promised.

Many rural and regional students in my electorate will find it harder to attend university with the removal of the workforce participation for youth allowance eligibility as an independent. These students will have to move to the city in pursuit of higher education, therefore incurring additional living costs that students from the city who are attending do not carry. It may not be an option for these students to rely financially on their parents as many rural and regional families are feeling the effects of drought, especially farming families. Some of the rural and regional students that come from farming families may also be deemed ineligible as youth allowance dependants due to the value of their families’ farms exceeding that required as to the level of assets in the test. So they are getting squeezed from every direction.

Their families do not have the thousands of dollars needed to set up their children in the city with suitable accommodation and to help with living expenses. These students would have been able to gain eligibility under the workforce participation route of earning $19,532 within an 18-month period, but the government is seeking to abolish this criterion. One of the problems with the new criterion of 30 hours a week for at least 18 months in a two-year period is that these sorts of employment positions are not available in many parts of my electorate and in rural electorates all around Australia. They are simply not available, so that criterion will be absolutely meaningless. What an employer is going to say is this: ‘We’ll employ this person for 18 months but we know they are going to leave, so it’s bad luck. We want someone who is going to stay in the area and keep working for us. We want to invest in that person’s future because they have got the loyalty to stay around.’ So that option is going to be taken away from a lot of rural students.

In small pockets of my electorate I have been able to get medical studies up and running, in Renmark and in Mount Gambier. That is only a very small part of the education at universities, but I welcome that. The previous speaker, the member for Herbert, representing the seat of Townsville, has said he has the same sort of thing up there. They have been great and there is a much greater chance that those students when they become doctors will actually come back and work in rural areas, which is what we want. But the criteria that the government is putting up are going to make it almost impossible for parents, except for the very rich, to support their students going to university if they have to shift home. We already have a lower participation rate at university by country students than by city students. That is not because they are dumber; it is because it is so much harder for rural students to go to university because of the extra cost.

The government proposes that the only option for these students is to work full time for 18 months in a two-year period, which means that these students would have to find employment that equates to 30 hours per week in rural communities. As I said, that is not very easy. It is not achievable for many students as on leaving school they have limited skills and are not able to fill all available positions. Many rural and regional areas have only a few avenues of employment for a school leaver to fill, and hours may not be guaranteed for 18 months or may only be seasonal—that is the way of rural life. Most rural and regional communities in my electorate do not have endless amounts of fast-food outlets, shopping centres and the like where school leavers can seek employment and possibly receive traineeships and guaranteed hours. In fact, there are only three towns in my electorate that have fast-food outlets: Murray Bridge, Mount Gambier and Renmark—and there are about 400 kilometres between each of them, so there is a lot a space in between where students do not have that option. It is time that the government treated these students fairly and offered them a level playing field with their city counterparts.

The coalition realise that it is equally as important for rural and regional students to attend university and have the help that they required to get settled away from home. We were doing that. We needed to do more, but we were doing that. In fact, under the Howard government we offered Commonwealth scholarships that assisted students with relocation. Regrettably, the Rudd government abolished this, as they have done with much important funding for rural and regional Australia. The coalition’s proposal is that these students that are not eligible for youth allowance be offered a rural and regional scholarship program worth $120 million to help them relocate to the city and attend university. This is the sort of positive enforcement that rural and regional students deserve to help them get on their way to higher education. We as a coalition are not saying we should pay all the expenses, but we should at least give them some help. The scholarships that we had in place amounted to about $5,500, perhaps $6,000 in today’s terms. That is probably, on average, about half the cost of living away from home for 12 months, but at least it would be a help. Parents and students would know they would be able to get through some of the hard times with that sort of help.

I want to encourage rural and regional students to seek higher education if they want it and I want to see them achieve this without being disadvantaged because they have to leave home. The coalition proposes amendments that will pave a clearer path for these students rather than hinder them, as the Labor government has done. I am proud to represent a rural and regional electorate. I have been passionate about this issue from the start of my term as a member of parliament and I will be there for these students until the government cuts them a fairer deal.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to address the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. The opposition has made it very clear that this bill in its current form contains provisions which will strike at the heart of students from rural and regional areas pursuing university and tertiary education. I know from my own electorate I have had complaints in quite a profound way from students and their parents and families. Whether they are from Phillip Island, Bass, San Remo, the Mornington Peninsula—in many different areas there are students that have been disadvantaged. One student, Kieran, about whom a question was asked at this very dispatch box, is from Mount Martha in my electorate, is vision impaired and has been the subject of considerable personal hardship.

The net result out of all of this is that there are 30,000 students who are facing serious consequences. We have put forward clear alternatives that are costed and funded; they are revenue neutral, although with a slight actual gain for the government, but with clear benefits. Our proposition and our principle is simple. It is, firstly, that students from rural and regional areas should be able to qualify for youth allowance. If they cannot, then we will be proposing—as other speakers have outlined—a rural and regional student scholarship program. That is a desirable step forward. It is a practical way forward. It offers equity. It does, as others have said, offer students who will not qualify under Youth Allowance a way forward through a scholarship program which specifically deals with the needs of those who have much greater costs in relocating away from their families in order to pursue their education—an important principle of equity. That is what we propose. That is what we will do. That is what we are pursuing. What we see in this legislation is that there are 30,000 students who will be hurt.

We now hear that the minister will make a partial concession and the number of students who will be seriously disadvantaged has dropped from 30,000 to 25,000. That is still not an acceptable outcome. So we see that a small number of those students who would have been hurt have now been given sanctuary, but 25,000 of 30,000 students who would have been hurt will continue to be hurt: significantly disadvantaged, their education compromised and their family circumstances made more difficult.

The principle of estoppel should apply here—that is, where students have taken a gap year on the advice of their education department, or their teachers or their career advisers, they have done so in good faith. In many cases they have given up their time and deferred their studies for a year. They have deferred their studies for a year knowing that that is the maximum amount of time that is allowed for their courses but that 18 months will be required under this new regime before they can enter. It is a classic catch 22, with no consideration given to those students who will suffer as a consequence.

Our proposition is very clear: that which has been promised must be honoured. Students who could have qualified for youth allowance by taking a gap year should be allowed to do so and should not be penalised or disadvantaged. They should be allowed to attend university and should be allowed to qualify, such as in the case of Kieran from Mount Martha, who is I note vision impaired. They should not be penalised or prevented from seeking their university education through this classic catch 22 of: you must defer for 18 months but your university course will allow you to defer for only 12 months. It is a quite flagrant example of poorly crafted policy in action, but with real and profound human consequences.

For those reasons I fully support the position outlined by the shadow minister. I support our proposal for equity in the Youth Allowance and a gap year that would honour the promise given to students who undertook the gap year—not the gap 18 months, as is now demanded, with the consequences for financial, educational and familial circumstances. I very strongly support the proposal for a rural and regional student scholarship program as outlined by Malcolm Turnbull and the coalition shadow education spokesperson.

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

I rise to speak in relation to the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009, which deals directly with the government’s proposed changes to income support for students. I say at the outset what an absolute unmitigated disaster this has been for the Minister for Education. If ever there has been an example in this place of arrogance and contempt for regional Australia, it has been the minister’s performance in relation to these changes. I do not use those words lightly. It is almost impossible to put into words the anger, disappointment, uncertainty and frustration that this minister’s actions have caused among families in my electorate.

I like to think I am a reasonably charitable man and when the minister first announced that she was pulling the rug out from students who were currently on their gap year I gave her the benefit of the doubt. I thought it must have been an unintended consequence, because regional students had followed the process as it existed at the end of their VCE year last year. The students did the right thing. As the member for Flinders just commented, they acted in good faith. They decided to take the gap year under the rules that existed because they had been advised by their principals, their teachers and even by Centrelink officers.

These students had made the decision to work hard and try to achieve the Youth Allowance criteria under the circumstances that existed when they left school and most of them were doing it with the intention of trying to help their parents out. These were not rich kids from incredibly wealthy families, from my experience. These were the students from rural and regional areas who were basically saying that they knew their mums and dads could not afford the cost of sending them to university so they were prepared to help out. Now, the minister in May this year was prepared to pull the rug out from under their feet. This, I thought, was no way for the Minister for Education to act, let alone the Minister for Social Inclusion—to risk disenfranchising a whole generation of young Australians with a decision that applied retrospectively. It was certainly an enormous disappointment for the students who have contacted my office in the past six months. My confidence that it was an unintended consequence was certainly shattered in this place on 25 May when I asked the minister to guarantee that students currently in their gap year would not be financially penalised under the government’s changes to eligibility criteria for independent youth allowance. At the height of her arrogance on this issue the minister replied:

With the greatest respect to the member, what a very silly question …

But during her second reading speech on 10 September, the minister had changed her tune and announced what she described as a transition measure.

After meeting with a broad range of students and interest groups, the minister claimed that she would delay the implementation of the new workforce criteria to allow gap year students who completed school in 2008, and who needed to move to study, until 30 June 2010 to qualify for independent status. What had been described as a ‘very silly question’ in May was in September, in the minister’s own words, a ‘sensible change’. It was a backflip but, frankly, the students in my electorate are hoping for a triple somersault in the future. I am not going to dwell too long on the politics of this decision but I am prepared to venture that the minister took action in this regard only when she realised that she had a political problem. In Gippsland alone, more than 5,000 people have signed a petition protesting against the changes and dozens of people sent me letters and emails to explain the impact of the decision. I will get to some of those messages soon. It has amazed me to hear the minister, in this place and in the media, accuse the opposition of scaremongering on this issue. And the backbenchers have been at it again over the past week as they debated this bill. ‘There is nothing wrong,’ they say. ‘We just do not understand the changes. It has all been a massive scare campaign on our behalf.’ Everything is perfect if you listen to the Rudd robots who walk in here and roll out to mechanically parrot the party lines. I urge those regional Labor MPs to start fulfilling their side of the contract with the regional communities and, as their representative, give them a voice in the House of Representatives.

If my office has been knocked over in the rush of students, mums, dads and teacher and principals raising their concerns about student income support, then you can bet that Labor MPs in regional seats are experiencing something very similar. But do they come in here and raise those concerns on behalf of their constituents? No way. Not even a whisper of discontent. They either hide in their offices and watch the debate on closed circuit television or they come in here and parrot the party lines. The media likes to pretend that there is something creditable about having party discipline in this regard. There is nothing creditable in regional communities if you have not got the guts to stand up for your constituents.

This debate is long overdue. It may surprise some of those opposite, but I am not one of those who is going to deny recent political history. I believe the previous government made some progress in relation to levelling the playing field for students from regional areas seeking to pursue a university career, but it never went far enough for my liking. I fully accept that reform is never easy; it is always a difficult process and there is always going to be more to do. The previous government was faced with a very different set of budgetary circumstances and it was a difficult process to be paying back debt and then looking at what other changes they could make on behalf of regional students. But, as I said, when addressing an area of equity and disadvantage, like this one, I would have liked to have seen the previous government go further. I take up the comments from the member for Braddon and the member for Barker, who have both spoken on this bill. They both spoke about their passion for regional students. I think we all agree across the chambers that we need to do more for regional communities and regional people, particularly students. I urge those members to speak up in other forums. If they are not prepared to speak in the chamber at least speak up in their party room in relation to the future of regional students.

In my maiden speech I talked about the need to reduce the cost barrier for students from rural and regional areas attending universities. I argued then, and I have many times since that speech, that the economic barriers to participating in higher education are a fundamental obstacle that must be addressed. Those of us with an understanding of the issue know that regional students are often forced away from home to study and the additional accommodation costs and living expenses are an underlying factor in the decision to defer or abandon studies.

I read today in the Bairnsdale Advertiser, in my own electorate, of a new report that has been released. Under the headline ‘Regional students struggle to cope financially’ the article says:

A new study has found rural and regional students are more likely to defer attending university and face more financial constraints than their city counterparts.

…            …            …

Gippsland East LLEN Executive Officer, Jacqui Bramwell, said the report proved that for most rural and regional students deferring university for a year was a necessity, not recreational.

Jacqui went on further to say:

It is a tragic loss if young people have to base their decision about attending university on whether their family can afford it. Sadly, that remains the case for too many rural and regional students.

The estimates vary, but the additional costs for regional students to attend university are in the vicinity of $12,000 to $15,000 per year if they are forced to move away from home. These are the additional costs, the costs that a city student staying at home with mum and dad does not have to pay. These are the costs that we believe we should be trying to alleviate to help level the playing field for regional students.

The disparity between metropolitan participation rates in university and the participation rates of regional students has been the subject of much debate in recent years. I spoke in the House last September and highlighted the issue of retention rates and participation in higher education as it applied to the communities of Gippsland. At that time I indicated the Gippsland region has one of the worst education retention rates in Victoria. Compared to a state and metropolitan retention rate in excess of 80 per cent in 2006, just 65 per cent of Gippsland students finished year 12. These figures naturally lead to a lower university participation rate. Many of our regional areas, including Gippsland, have comparatively low average household incomes, and it is a major barrier to participation in higher education. Lower household incomes also affect ENTER scores, parents’ capacity to support students to live away from home for study and the aspiration within families to seek higher education.

On that issue of aspiration, I assume that I am like many other MPs in that I visit schools in my electorate almost on a daily basis. It is an absolute passion of mine to get out there and meet the students and discuss the issues that concern them. My message to senior secondary students in my electorate is to always aim high and to aspire to be the absolute best they can be in their chosen field. I tell them that it does not matter if no-one else in your family has ever finished school—you can be the first one to finish Year 12; you can be the first one in your street to go on to university. For members in metropolitan electorates this may sound very basic and, frankly, absurd. But we do have a challenge in many of our regional communities to overcome the barriers of economics and the barriers of aspiration to encourage our young people to see a future for themselves beyond what they have perhaps seen with previous generations in their families. Many people in my electorate argue that increasing the aspirations of students and their families is almost as big a challenge as overcoming the economic barriers. I have a submission here from a former Gippsland school principal, Ian Whitehead, who says:

In families from low socio economic areas, the very thought of a tertiary future for their child is off the radar. Many of these families see universities as ‘here is a world with which we are not familiar; a club to which we cannot belong’. But in these families there are some clever kids. They are missing out badly.

It is undoubtedly true that, in some sections of my community, education has not always been highly valued. I believe it is important to encourage young people to achieve their best and follow the path to a university course if that is their ambition. We know that many of our young people will need to move away to advance their careers and learn new skills, but we also hope that some will return in the future and provide those skills in our communities.

As I have said before, from a social justice perspective it is a question of equity; and for the hard-nosed economists in this place it is also a question of productivity. Helping children from rural and regional areas to achieve their full potential will help to improve the skill base of country areas and reduce the skill shortages we are constantly faced with across a range of industries.

It is also worth noting, from a Gippsland perspective, that many of the children from the more remote parts of the state are Indigenous children. To give these young children the best possible start in life we must support them through the early stages of education. And we must take up the challenge to get them to school in the first place and get them learning the skills that they can then pass on and succeed in our community and their own communities.

All this helps to explain the anger and frustration in my community when the minister announced that she was not just moving the goalposts for students in their gap year; she was taking the goalposts away completely. This decision demonstrated a complete disconnect between the minister’s office and the department and the families in my electorate. Over the years students had come to depend on the opportunity to achieve independent status to secure youth allowance when they moved away from home to university. I freely acknowledge that the original intent of independent youth allowance was not as a means for regional students to secure income support after a gap year. In fact, I argued in this place, and in a letter to the minister in March this year, that the system needed to be overhauled. I argued that forcing students to undertake a gap year to achieve independent youth allowance because the other criteria for income support were too restricted was a poor system and reform was needed. And I have also acknowledged that many of the measures the minister has sought to introduce will allow more students to secure a small level of support without the need to undertake a gap year. I am on the public record acknowledging the need to stop the misuse of public funds and broaden the opportunity for students to receive support to attend university. So I reject the posturing and the lecturing from those opposite about not understanding this legislation and its intent. I fully understand what the minister was trying to do—I just happen to believe that she botched it. She botched it because she did not listen, did not understand or simply did not care abut the way it would affect regional students.

There is nothing revolutionary about these changes. This is no ‘education revolution’ as the minister and her spin doctors proudly proclaim. I am not the only one to feel this way. As Professor Geoffrey Blainey said in the Australian on 17 September:

The phrase education revolution should be quietly buried. It is unrealistic. It is still more a slogan than a blueprint

Right now the government is shovelling $16 billion out the door to build school halls in primary schools, regardless of whether they need them or not. There is nothing revolutionary about that either. The Primary Schools for the 21st Century program does not have a single educational target attached to it. It is not aimed at improving literacy or at improving numeracy; it is a spending spree of massive proportions which does not even have the decency to require the building contractors to employ local people to carry out the work. It does not even allow individual schools to decide for themselves what they need to build on their school grounds to maximise the educational outcomes for their students. I fear we will look back on this program in 10 years time and marvel at the stupidity of rushing out to build so many halls that did not meet our educational needs.

I raise that program in the context of today’s debate for good reason. The question is always going to be asked: who is going to pay for the additional support in terms of income assistance for students? The minister’s changes to the system of student income support are designed to be budget neutral—that is, she is taking from one area of the system to bolster another area. There is no new spending attached to these initiatives; there is nothing revolutionary about this. If we were serious about addressing the issues of regional disadvantage in the higher education system we would be looking beyond the current budget cycle and looking to the future of our nation. If we were serious about an education revolution we would not be throwing all of that money at the school halls program; we would have a balanced package that delivered strategic upgrades to schools which need the funding the most and we would be using some of that money to revolutionise the system of student income support. That is the debate that we should be having in this place here today. We should have every Labor regional MP, every Liberal regional MP and every Independent MP in this place, with the Nationals, arguing the case for more funding for student income support.

Before those opposite start parroting the party lines once again, I invite them to read the Victorian state parliamentary inquiry report into geographical differences in the rate in which Victorian students participate in higher education. This was a report by an all-party committee, led by Labor MP Geoff Howard from Ballarat. The report took evidence around the state. This is what Mr Howard had to say in his foreword to the report:

Time and again, the Committee heard about the difficulties faced by young school leavers in rural and regional areas who are contemplating leaving home to study.

He went on to say:

Student income support is therefore a major contributing factor in university participation. While the Committee welcomes recent national reforms to enable more students from low-income families to access Youth Allowance, it is concerned that the specific circumstances of rural and regional young people still have not been adequately addressed. Already, many such students defer their studies to meet eligibility criteria for income support and this route to financial independence is set to become even more difficult under the new system. In the Committee’s view, all young people who must relocate to undertake their studies should be eligible to receive student income support.

That last line is worth repeating: all young people who must relocate to undertake their studies should be eligible to receive student income support. The report goes on to argue that the proposed changes to achieving the independent rate of youth allowance would have a ‘disastrous effect’ on young people in rural and regional areas. I believe that is the debate we should be having here today: how can we change the system to ensure that all students who are required to move away from home to pursue their studies receive a level of income support? It is the view that is held be many individuals and organisations who have contacted me in the wake of the public debate that has occurred following the announcement of the minister’s proposed changes.

The Gippsland Local Government Network has argued that, because the average taxable income of a person living in Gippsland is $15,000 lower than a person living in Melbourne, it is not uncommon for a university student to find themselves juggling multiple jobs while attempting to study full time. I have long argued that we are setting these kids up to fail. We expect them to finish VCE, secure a good mark, go through the stress of getting their drivers licence, start going out to licensed premises legally and act responsibly, and then we expect them to move several hours to Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, or wherever it may be, with very little money in their pocket. They pick up some part-time work, because their families cannot support them fully. We expect them to adjust to life in the city after years in the country, we expect them to travel several hours to come home and see us every now and then and then we expect them to excel at their chosen course. Is it any wonder that many of these young people drop out after six months and feel like they have failed? It does not have to be this hard. It should not be that difficult for a rich and prosperous nation like Australia to give our country kids a fairer go.

Just in case those opposite think I am making this up, let me reflect on some of the submissions to the Victorian parliamentary inquiry and some of the correspondence I have received from students in relation to the general issue of student income support and the more specific details of the changes proposed by the government. Orbost Secondary College in East Gippsland submitted:

The cost of living away from home to undertake tertiary study is without doubt the single greatest impediment to participation in our experience and for many families an overwhelming burden that can inflict great financial hardship.

Orbost Secondary College argue that returning to the days of affordable dormitory accommodation for regional students living in the city would reduce the cost burden and provide more support for students who are often isolated and lonely after making the move. They also support a policy initiative that I am driving within my party to provide free public transport vouchers for country students to return home more often to catch up with family and friends.

Some of the personal reflections I have received from family members and students affected by these changes have been quite alarming. This is from one young lady in Boysdale:

My fellow students and I have worked extremely hard, both academically and in employment, and I am deeply saddened by the fact that, due to the proposed revision of the allowance, much of that effort may be in vain.

Alyse said:

If changes must be made to current youth allowance eligibility, why not make it easier for those that need it most? Regional students who have to move away from their family and friends and re-establish themselves in a completely different environment surely should be entitled to assistance. If the government is striving to have more regional students attending and obtaining university qualifications, why make it harder to achieve?

Finally, Jessica said:

I don’t think Mr Rudd fully understands the damage that he has caused for thousands of gap year students like me. He has definitely tainted our future at university with doubt, financial burden and anxiety. We are at the most vulnerable stage of our lives. Surely our Prime Minister understands that by doing this some of us have nowhere to turn, that some of us are cancelling our dreams, cancelling our future. This is not justice. This is unlawful, criminal and heartless.

These are strong words from our next generation—young people being directly affected by this appalling decision, and in particular the retrospective nature of the changes proposed to the gap year.

The minister fails to understand that the students set out on these pathways several years ago. This is not some whim. They have been advised since year 10 on how to pursue their careers in the secondary education system, right through to having a gap year before going to university. They have been guided by their principals and careers advisers and are pursuing their dreams. Providing a transitional arrangement for 5,000 of the estimated 30,000 gap year students does not solve the problem. I believe that all students in regional areas who must live away from home to attend university should receive financial support as a means of levelling the playing field with their city counterparts. That is my starting point in this entire debate. We need to address the fundamental differences which exist in the levels of opportunity to participate in our university system. Income and asset testing for any additional support for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds could then be applied on top of the basic tertiary access allowance.

There is a clear economic opportunity which flows from the position that I am putting to the House. The current requirement for parents in regional areas to find $12,000 to $15,000 in after-tax income to support their students is a drain on the wealth of regional towns. As a regional development initiative, providing a tertiary access allowance to meet the accommodation costs of all regional students forced to move away from home would be a shot in the arm to regional Australia. The government likes to talk about economic stimulus. Instead of the sugar hit of $900 cheques, such a system of student support would provide sustainable economic growth for regional centres. It would also help to overcome the current skills shortage. Common sense tells us that professional people are more likely to move to regional areas if they know that university access has been improved for their children and if they know that it will not cost them an arm and a leg to send their children off to university in the future.

In the time that I have left, I want to refer briefly to the new workforce criteria and what a masterpiece of complete stupidity they have been. Quite apart from the difficult economic times we face, did anyone in the department who drafted these changes actually take a look at the workforce participation rates for country students? It is simply impossible for our country students to achieve the 30 hours per work prescribed by the new legislation. We can do better with student income support. I urge the minister to go back to the drawing board— (Time expired)

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to address the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. This bill, which purports to provide better and more equitable support for tertiary students, misses the mark by a wide margin. Instead, it makes things much worse for the core part of my constituency: students from the country and the families who support them and work to give them the opportunity to fulfil their dreams. I would be one of the first to admit that the current system of supporting disadvantaged students through university has deficiencies and in some cases the spirit of the arrangements is tested.

There are many forms of disadvantage when it comes to obtaining higher levels of education. For some, it is as simple as coming from a low-income household. For others, it may be a physical disability, a learning difficulty, an unsafe home environment or the fact that they are a parent with all the responsibilities that come with that role. For all of these and a host of others there is some form of government assistance to meet those challenges. However, there is another form of disadvantage that governments have been less willing to accept responsibility for. Those who live in the country who have to leave the parental home to attend university have an inbuilt financial disadvantage. Where other students can live at home cheaply with the support of family, country students and their families face years of extra costs amounting to tens of thousands of dollars per student.

I have had a long interest in this area, undoubtedly fired by the fact that my wife and I have managed to guide three children through the last three years of high school and university while living 500 kilometres away from both the schools and the tertiary institutions. We are far from alone in this. For thousands who live in the rural areas of Australia, local schooling options often mean that sending their children away to complete their final years of secondary schooling is all but unavoidable. For some, it is about attaining the highest possible score to gain entry to popular and desirable courses. For others, it is about achieving a standard.

It is one thing to get into university; it is another to be properly prepared for the task and equipped with the correct subject background to be able to successfully do the work. I will use a personal story to illustrate this issue. My daughter, who is now a chemical engineer, would have been required to complete every one of her chosen subjects in year 12 at our local school through Open Access education—effectively correspondence. Not even one subject could be delivered in a face-to-face situation. My wife and I decided that this was a totally unrealistic task for her and she would not be able to reach the required standard in this situation. We bit the bullet and enrolled her in a private boarding school in Adelaide. There is nothing easy about sending a 15-year-old away from your home, probably never to live with you again. But it did achieve the desired result, and I thank the school in this case for assisting us with the financial challenges.

Limited subject access in small communities is symptomatic of the small populations. As much as we may wish to offer a full range of subjects in every school, it is simply not feasible. To ask a student requiring a high entrance to rack up the points entirely by correspondence is not just a difficult option, it is almost impossible. So parents scrape together every resource they can to try and put their children on an equal footing with those who live near bigger schools with more resources and a wider choice of subjects. The extra costs involved are neither fair nor in many cases affordable. However, today is not the time to fully explore the injustice and inequity of education at senior secondary level. But it is important as a basis for understanding the effect the government’s proposed changes to youth allowance will have. We need to understand the disadvantage that many of the affected students operate under.

So just how difficult is it to support your son or daughter through university if they have to leave home in order to do so? My interest in this area predates my election to parliament by a long way because, as my family is serviced by a small regional R to 12 school and lives 500 kilometres from Adelaide, my experience mirrors that of so many others who are outraged with the government’s plans. As I said, I would be one of the first to say that the current arrangements that support regional students to attend tertiary education are far from perfect. I would welcome positive reforms. However, I view the government’s moves in totality as a worsening of the situation for country students.

In an effort to raise the profile of the plight of country families in respect of this issue in early April this year, I launched a discussion paper which clearly identifies barriers and some solutions to this shameful situation. I received a significant response to that paper and as a result I have been asked to address a number of national education groups who are vitally interested and grateful that I have helped raise the profile of this problem. Little did I know that the government was planning major changes in the budget and that those changes would actually make things much worse for a significant portion of my constituency. The paper, which I launched at an isolated children’s parents meeting at Woomera, clearly identified the financial and emotional difficulties faced by students who need to relocate. As I said, it is no easy thing emotionally to send your child away from home at the age of 15 or even 17 when you know that they are unlikely to ever live full time at home again. But it is a sacrifice that thousands of country based families make every year.

My paper clearly identified the costs involved with relocation. Boarding college fees, telephone rental, application fees and bonds total more than $13,000 per annum. This does not include travel to and from the capital city, laundry and toiletries et cetera, which would normally be utilised at home if living there. A realistic estimation of these costs is around $2,500 a year. Many students will elect to rent in shared accommodation, which can present difficult challenges if the student has not lived away from home before, with students often feeling isolated and lonely as they learn to cope with cooking and cleaning chores and living with strangers, while probably juggling work commitments—all at a time when they are trying to study in a new environment. This option is unlikely to be any cheaper than the boarding college option. Shared rent, electricity, water, food, insurance, internet and phone connections total around $12,500. So it is about the same as the boarding college options. In total, it comes to somewhere between $15,000 and $16,000 a year.

On top of all this, it just may be unavoidable that the student will need access to a car to attend outlying campuses, or late lectures, to get to late-night employment and—if suitable transport links do not exist—to get home every now and then. Once again, this is something that students who live at home can access easily when they need to. All of these costs are over and above the norm; they are all extras that families who have the luxury of having their kids live at home do not have to face. Imagine having three or more children wanting to go to university at a cost of around $16,000 per year for four years. For three students, a quick calculation tells us that the extra family commitment over the period is likely to be close to $200,000—all as a penalty for living, say, more than 75 kilometres from a university.

It is worth our while to clearly understand the current arrangements. Youth allowance is currently awarded to those between 16 and 25 where the combined parental household income is below $32,000 with a decay rate of a dollar for every $4 earned. The allowance is also subject to an assets test of approximately $535,000. There is a rigorous family actual means test for the self-employed and businesses. Alternatively, students may be deemed independent of their parents if they meet a number of different criteria, some of which include: being a refugee; it being unreasonable for them to live at home; being a member of a couple; having a dependent child; or being an orphan. Applicants will also be deemed independent of their parents if they have worked part time—15 hours a week—for at least two years after leaving school, or have worked full time—30 hours a week—for 18 months in the last two years, or have earned $19,532 in an 18-month period after they have left school, which equates to 75 per cent of the maximum pay rate under wage level A of the Australian Pay and Classification Scale. The last clause has been the means that thousands of country students have utilised to access a basic income to be able to meet some of the costs that I referred to earlier—that $16,000 discrepancy between metro and country students.

To assume that a household earning $32,000 can afford $16,000 a year to support a student is ridiculous. Clearly this situation should have been fixed by previous governments, including the last. I welcome the government’s move in this area but would make the point that the new level of $44,000 a year hardly indicates a wealthy household when it comes to supporting a student away from home at those levels. However, in all this time there has been another route to some assistance—the independence test by means of earnings. This policy has led to a boom in what has become known as the gap year when students leave school and immediately start working at whatever job they can get. They have a full 18 months to earn the minimum amount of $19,532. By good management, setting clear goals, and hard work they have been able to meet the income requirements to start university in early March after their gap year and become eligible for youth allowance in about May, around about two months later.

Many will argue for the life value of a gap year and claim it as a positive experience for the student. For some, it undoubtedly is. But for many others it can lead to a drop in focus, relationships can form, financial commitments may be made, and there is a certain percentage who never get back to what they intended to do. One thing we can be sure of is that if it were not for the financial imperative most would not choose that route to income support. If their families were capable of finding the $16,000 per year plus, they would not put their education on hold for 12 months. They would not delay their graduation by 12 months. They would not delay their entry into the professional workforce by 12 months.

The government has proposed a raft of changes which the minister claims will be better for students. Unfortunately, we have winners and losers and on a per capita basis there are far more losers in my constituency than most. The government proposes to lift the parental income test to $44,000, change the taper rates so support stops at $76,000, lower the age of independence to 22, raise the personal income test, and—among other changes—a start-up scholarship will be available each year for people on youth allowance.

In themselves, these are fair reforms but there are a couple of nasties in the package. The independence by means of income clauses have been radically toughened. Also, the government’s original proposal had the effect of being retrospective for those currently on a gap year. On this particular condition, the opposition led a public revolt which has seen the minister back down and offer to protect some of these students. But the minister has not been entirely upfront on this issue and it seems that unless you live more than an hour-and-a-half from your university you will miss out on this consideration.

There has been a principle held in Australia that when someone makes a decision based on current government policy they should not be materially disadvantaged by future government decisions. Young people all around Australia made well-reasoned decisions about their future last year based on advice from school counsellors, Centrelink and career advisers. They have put their lives on hold for 12 months as a result of that advice. It is not acceptable that we should now change the rules on this group and abandon them.

The opposition is proposing to amend this legislation and guarantee that group may still access youth allowance on the same basis as they had planned. The legislation also proposes that to be deemed independent from their parents students will now have to work a minimum of 30 hours a week for 18 months of a two-year period after they leave school: a minimum of 30 hours a week—20 is not enough, and 29½ is not enough. They must work a minimum of 30 hours a week. The real question here is whether the two-year gap period is anything like a viable route to a university education. In my mind, absolutely not. This change in the legislation effectively will kill off the gap year or the gap two years. It is designed to do just that. In fact, the government and the minister are not being honest here at all. They do not want anyone to qualify for youth allowance by proving their independence from their parents but they do not want to say so publicly. They instead make that path totally unattractive and unviable.

For all the reasons that a gap year stretches the commitment and challenges for students, this policy just makes things far worse. Can we really expect people intent on a professional career to put their lives on hold for two years? In what is likely to become a rare event, if a student with no options feels they must pursue this route to income support there will also be the practical difficulty of obtaining sufficient work in regional Australia.

Jobs in regional Australia do not grow on trees. Most of our communities have higher unemployment levels than the state and national averages. Many who have historically cobbled together their $19,000 have done so by working in a number of part time and seasonal jobs. Seasonal jobs, by their very nature, often entail long hours and enable workers to accumulate significant funds. Under these provisions, though, a 50- or 60-hour week will only count as one week of 30-hour employment. Conversely, if the seasonal work amounts to less than 30 hours it does not count for a work week at all. So it is clear that the government does not want anyone to qualify under these provisions. It is its intention to shut down the independence test for youth allowance.

As I said earlier, I concede the current arrangements are far from perfect. I highlight that by pointing out that a significant number of students have been able to use the independence test to qualify for youth allowance and still remain living at home. Simply put, this means city-based students living in easy range of their university are able to stay at home with all the financial and emotional advantages this offers and still qualify for youth allowance.

While no-one is suggesting this is anything but legal, to my way of thinking it is outside the spirit of the original arrangements. As I have already said, it is something which earlier governments, and now this one as well, have had the opportunity to fix. So if the government were willing, at the same time as eliminating the financially independent criteria for Youth Allowance, to address the true, underlying disadvantage of country students, I would then be of a mind to support them. What is needed here is genuine and separate assistance for students who have to leave home in order to attend university. If there are no practical and suitable campuses within a reasonable travel distance of where a student lives, they should be eligible to apply for this assistance. The rent allowance should meet a significant proportion of the extra expenses the student faces by reason of their disadvantage—that is, the need to leave home.

That is why the opposition is seeking to amend this legislation to allow for the establishment of a rural and regional scholarship program worth $120 million. Because the nation’s finances are in such a parlous state as a result of the government’s irresponsible borrowing program, which will see every living Australian owing around $9,000 by the end of next year, we are proposing that this be a cost-neutral move, funded by reducing the government’s proposed $2,254 start-up scholarships available to youth allowance recipients to $1,000 a year. While obviously many on youth allowance would have appreciated the extra cash, its establishment has effectively seen the transfer of resources from country students, by means of the reduced funding for Youth Allowance, to a thinner slice for all, where the intake is dominated by metropolitan students. That is effectively a transfer from country to city. I am sure all students and families of a reasonable nature would recognise the equality of opportunity issue that must be addressed here.

We search in vain for a level playing field in any number of areas. They certainly can be difficult things to find. When it comes to access to tertiary education for country students, we are kicking not only uphill but into the wind as well. Some of the difficulties are: the level of secondary education needed to prepare for university; the necessity to leave home to participate; the significant and discouraging costs associated with relocation; being isolated from your traditional support base, family and friends; learning to live with strangers at a young age; coping with running a household; and juggling work and study.

Across rural and regional Australia we are constantly dealing with shortages of professionally qualified people to fill positions in our towns, to provide intellectual horsepower to our communities and to staff and drive the industries we must develop to reinvigorate our regional base. I can tell you Australia needs its regional base more than ever. By and large, the regions are the generators of wealth and the suppliers of export income. We who live in the country know what country living has to offer. Convincing others to live there is not so easy. But we do know that if a doctor, a surveyor, a teacher, a lawyer or an engineer comes from the country they are more likely to return there. So the way to address our ongoing skills shortage is to encourage more country sourced students into tertiary institutions. We know that, currently, country based students are only about 60 per cent as likely to graduate from university as city based students. If we are to address these professional deficits, as we should, we must strive to make things better, to make attending university a more attractive option for country kids.

The government claim they want to fix up inequities. In the case of this legislation, they are, unfortunately, making things worse for the demographic which stands to make the biggest impact on these shortages. Those who are, through no decision of their own, bedevilled by Australia’s natural curse—that is, the tyranny of distance—who, due to the choices made by their parents, live distant from our centres of learning, will as a result of this legislation, if passed in its entirety, be worse off. I have only been a member of parliament for two years, but I can tell you without doubt that this issue has attracted more active comment to my office than any other in that time. Hundreds of parents and students, past, present and prospective, have contacted me, outraged at the government’s deal and often asking, ‘They won’t really do this, will they?’ I will close with a statement from the discussion document which I developed earlier this year:

If there exists a significant population in one location, governments deem it the responsibility of the tax payer to provide services on site. If a smaller population exists in isolation, governments see it as the individual’s responsibility to find ways to access those same services not the tax payers.

It is a challenging proposition.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What excellent contributions from the member for Grey and, previously, the member for Gippsland. I am pleased that you are in the chair, Deputy Speaker Schultz, because nobody in this House would understand the issues better than you, being the member for Hume.

I would like to explain to the public listening to this broadcast exactly what is going on here and highlight how many members of parliament are very concerned about the issues. If there is one thing that joins us together, whether we are from an outer metropolitan, regional, rural or remote area, whether we are an Independent or whether we come from the National Party, the Liberal Party or the Labor Party, it is the future of our children, the next generation. I was reminded of this the other day by the member for Moore, Mal Washer. He said that when he goes to a public meeting he asks people: ‘Do you think you’re better off than your parents? If so, raise your hand.’ Nearly 100 per cent of the people raise their hands to say that they are better off than their parents. Then he says, ‘Do you think in the future your children will be better off than you?’ Hardly anybody raises a hand. He goes and speaks to them afterwards and asks them why. The opportunity for education is one of the issues that comes up, especially in his area, which is partly rural, like mine.

This has been an issue I have been passionate about over many years. Perhaps I will have time to go into that a bit later. I will not take up much of the House’s time, but there are a couple of points I would like to make. We have a list in front of us of all those who are going to speak on a bill. I have here the list of people who have taken an interest in this particular bill, the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009, and want to speak on it. It is very interesting. On the Labor side we have the member for Braddon, Mr Sidebottom; the member for Dawson, Mr Bidgood; the member for Lindsay, Mr Bradbury; and the member for Capricornia, Ms Livermore.

On the opposition side of the House we have the member for Forrest, Ms Marino; the member for Indi; Mrs Mirabella; the member for O’Connor, Mr Tuckey; the member for Murray, Dr Stone; the member for Farrer, Ms Ley; the member for Mayo, Mr Briggs; the member for Herbert, Mr Lindsay; the member for Barker, Mr Secker; me; the member for Grey, Mr Ramsey—whom you have just heard; the member for Gippsland, Mr Chester, who spoke previously; and the member for Pearce, Mrs Moylan. The member for Cowper, Mr Hartsuyker, is about to give his address. The member for Calare, Mr Cobb; the member for Riverina, Mrs Hull; the member for Flinders, Mr Hunt; the member for Lyne, Mr Oakeshott; the member for New England, Mr Windsor; and the member for Maranoa, Mr Scott, are also on the list. Those who took an interest in the issue outside the machinations of this debate are my old friend the member for Mallee, Mr Forrest, and an interesting one: the member for Mackellar, Mrs Bishop. She is absolutely in there, boots and all, on behalf of rural students or students from an electorate like hers who have to relocate for their education. Other members with an interest in this include the member for Kalgoorlie, Mr Haase; the member for Hume, Mr Schultz; the member for Parkes, Mr Coulton; the member for Moore, Dr Washer; and the member for McEwen, Ms Bailey. I should include the member for Paterson, who was absolutely forthright in his approach during our party discussions on this issue.

That is more than 20 per cent of the parliament who took up this issue immediately on the government announcing its changes. I am not one who is going to attack the government on this issue, because I believe the Deputy Prime Minister had the best interests of the students of Australia in mind when she suggested these changes. I believe that she wanted to stop the rorts, spread the benefits of these allowances over a greater number of people, give greater opportunities to tertiary students in the sector, bring the youth allowance support up to date and help more families. I think she was actually trying to do the right thing. But what happened? It was not her proposals but their implementation. Quite often in government the great difficulty is not the plan you have but the difficulties you fall into because you do not recognise the effect the implementation of the plan is going to have on families. I heard the member for Grey speak very honestly about the school that his daughter went to that helped the family out with finances so they were able to pay for her education. I think of my own dad, who sent four of his kids away to school in the city at the one time, away from our country town. I do not know how he did it. He was always at his best when his back was to the wall financially. It is an amazing investment, a desired investment, by families across Australia—an investment in their children and an investment in the future. That is why so many members of parliament have been so forthright and passionate about this issue.

The debate is about the reforms to student income support. Students in their final years of secondary schooling have been in limbo for more than a year—since early May 2008. The changes that the government proposes particularly affect rural, regional and remote students and even those from outer urban areas who have to transfer, for instance, from one side of Melbourne to Geelong so that they have to go and live there, as in my case. Up until now, access to the youth allowance has been gained through working a gap year. This opportunity was to be removed retrospectively. These families had no chance to plan for the changes. That is what we offer them: no chance to plan for these changes. In one case I remember a woman had had three children go through the process—a planned exercise—and the last child was to miss out because of the government’s changes. Can you imagine how devastating these changes were for the family—and I will come to the teachers and career advisers in a few minutes—because they had advised the children on the appropriate course they needed to take to get a university education? The rug was pulled out from under them.

Thousands of young people have done the right thing—planned, shown initiative and worked hard—only to find those plans in disarray. I have had a few issues, as you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, but never have I had an issue that has come with such great anxiety, such stress and such a response from students, their peers, their mothers and fathers and their grandparents because the whole of the family wishes the best for their next generation. My phone, like that of all the members whom I listed before, ran hot. We had people in the office in tears of distress about their situation because it was their kids who were involved. As I said, educators and career advisers who had advised their students to defer felt that they had completely let the student body of that year down. Their advice and their professionalism were called into question, and a palpable depression came across many of those teachers in those schools because they thought they had advised their students inappropriately. Professionals who had worked in education all their lives were aghast at the effect this would have on students in their final years. One parent wrote:

These kids have done the right thing and planned their future. They want to study to better themselves and are now left in limbo. My daughter is 18. She finished year 12 last year. She was accepted into university to study law but deferred. She deferred so that she could work this year to be eligible for independent youth allowance. My daughter will now no longer be eligible. I am quite frantic about this. If we could have afforded to send her to university we would have done it this year. The course she wants to study is not available where we live so she needs to go away to study.

That was a parent who thought they were informed and went through a lot of information to be sure that the next year their child could go. They thought they were informed. They thought they had done the right thing by their child. We have good intentions from government to do the right thing and then this situation comes and affects all of those thousands of families. I whispered across the chamber in a loud voice to the Prime Minister, ‘Prime Minister, you are going to have to make some changes,’ because it is not just the 20,000 to 30,000 young people out there that this affects; it affects their brothers and sisters, it affects their mums and dads and uncles and aunts, it affects all the plans that they had from the future and it affects their grandparents. There were a lot of people who were pretty upset by this whole issue. One thing we have offered the government they might like to consider is the provision of scholarships to students from rural and regional areas who are eligible for youth allowance but whose financial circumstances are preventing them from accessing higher education.

I said before that this issue has been on my plate for a long time. A fellow named Mick Murphy is the head of LLEN Trafalgar in our area. He is probably the strongest Labor voter I know. In fact, if he tried to vote for me, I think the piece of paper and pencil would ignite in his hand. If there is one thing he has been absolutely determined about for years, it is the provision of education and opportunities for young people. He has been absolutely dedicated to that cause. Knowing that, I asked him for help on this issue. But he was already out there, full bore, presenting to the government what could be some better options—things that they could do. He was desperate to break the chain of inequity that encumbers rural and regional students. He was desperate to give them a boost up. You heard the figures from the member for Gippsland, Darren Chester, on the numbers of young people that attend tertiary education. There are such differences in the figures. There is a view when you live in the city—probably your parents have attended university—that you will to go on to tertiary study. Those expectations are embodied in the family. And you only have to get on a tram or a train to get there. It is not an issue of relocation; it is not an issue of funds. There is greater opportunity for those that live in the cities to access all sorts of services. We know that. Mick Murphy was desperate to break that chain.

There are things that we could do. You know, Mr Deputy Speaker Shultz, within the previous government, that this issue came up time and time and time again, and we did make some changes, because we know our rural students. I want to pay tribute to Mick Murphy. He has never given up. He has been raising this issue for years and when these changes came he had to voice his opinion. At the public meetings that we had that Mick Murphy was at we recognized that the government was trying to do the right thing but that this was a mistake. He was generous in that he knew that I acknowledged that the Deputy Prime Minister, as the Minister for Education, was trying to do the right thing and, I am sure, had no idea of the effect it would have on rural and regional families. I think I have made my point. I give all credit to Mick for the support and help he has given us in this process. He has given it to the parliament. I cannot say he gave it to me, because he would be in too much trouble.

We know our students cannot live at home; they have extra travel needs and their expenses in set-up and accommodation are enormous. I went through it myself when my daughter went off to university. It is a lot of money. There is also the emotional effect. It was interesting when the member for Grey told his story. He was sending a 15-year-old away—it must have been breaking his family’s hearts. We were sending an 18-year-old away. The wrenching from my wife of her daughter was difficult at that time. It is hard enough to cope with the change of lifestyle as it is. Most rural and regional students do not move to the city until the last minute because of the expense and then they find that the jobs that might have been available for them to get have gone.

It has been made very clear by the presentations today that there are real difficulties in rural areas meeting the criteria that the government has now set down. I personally believe the government is going to have to make further changes. If they are going to give real opportunities for rural students to access university in the same way they are giving them to urban students, they are going to have to make further changes and give this further consideration. The whole parliament might like to give this some consideration—the whole parliament might like to think about this. I just want to make this point and I have made it on rural and regional issues before. I tell you what: if this country walks away from its regions and its rural communities and all the concentration is on the eastern seaboard and on the capital cities, you are cutting off your arms to the future, because regional communities and agriculture will be a very, very important part of this nation’s future. I do not have to talk about food security to you, Mr Deputy Speaker Shultz—I do not have to talk about how important our exports are.

These are the people who, after leaving their regional community and completing their tertiary education—whether they become doctors, lawyers, agronomist or whatever else—will come back and work in our regions. That is why they are important to this nation. That is why they need to get an extra helping hand. That is why we as a government and a parliament need to recognise how important it is to give regional people support. Every day in the paper you read about it. I think even Canberra is trying to find a way to get more GPs here, because they are treating themselves as a regional community, saying, ‘We need to supply more doctors into this place.’ How do we feel at Foster and Leongatha in my electorate or in outer Melbourne when we are trying to attract doctors? The people who will come to you are people born in regional communities. We need to propagate them—if can put it that way—and plant them in tertiary education, so that they will come back and be of greater benefit to this nation and greater benefit to those regional communities. They know those regional communities and will want to come back and be part of them—to grow their lives and that of the next generation in that regional community.

I have never liked retrospective legislation. This is all about equity of access, and particularly equity of access to tertiary education. Equity of access is something that rural and regional students do not enjoy. Another complication is that under the government’s plan you just about have to defer for two years. The experience of young people is that once they have deferred for two years they have probably got themselves into a decent job. I had a situation where a young fellow had been accepted at a very high level by a university. He deferred for a year, got a job as a plumber and loved it, and it is going to be his career. I have nothing against plumbers—they are more highly paid than solicitors in most cases—but what I am saying is that this guy has made a lifestyle choice that he is not going to go along with the opportunity that he had. If there was ever a time when this nation wanted the best skills and the best education for our young people—for our next generation—it is right now. When there are financial difficulties across the world we want to make our mark and we want to be a star performer. That will come through our kids—our future.

I have made my point. I have not really got to the speech that was designed for me to deliver today, but I do want the Australian people to know that more than half of this parliament is concerned about rural issues and the needs of rural communities. At the heart of that are the love, care and future of their children. As long as the Liberal and National parties are standing here we are going to promote that cause. As long as we have Liberals who come from country areas and are passionate about our communities, our constituents will know that they have a voice that will not be quieted and will not be held back. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the consideration you have given me in this address.

Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for McMillan for an excellent speech on a subject that is indeed dear to the hearts of those who represent rural and regional constituencies. As a former regional student, I am very grateful to have the opportunity to talk on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009 and to do so on behalf of the many students within the rural and regional parts of the electorate of Pearce who will be quite disastrously impacted by the proposed changes to the Youth Allowance system contained in this bill. As the member for McMillan has just outlined, there are many commendable aspects to this legislation and I think its intent was genuine. The bill’s supporters throw around words like equity and fairness, which make it seem hard to argue against, but for students in rural and remote areas the legislation would have to come into question. They would argue that people using terms such as equity and fairness would see their aspirations end at the farm gate.

I do not think that any of us doubt that we should be ensuring that legislation in this place is fair and equitable and that the integrity of these kinds of measures is not compromised by people using taxpayers’ money unfairly or unnecessarily. While I am not against improvements to the Youth Allowance scheme, and indeed I welcome those improvements, I do so only to the extent that they do not crush the aspirations of thousands of young rural Australians hoping to attend university. In the second reading speech, the Minister for Education said:

Higher education is central to achieving this government’s vision of a stronger and fairer nation.

Perhaps the minister’s vision for Australia simply fails to recognise that there is an Australia outside the metropolitan areas. It is an Australia that is desperately seeking skilled professionals and an Australia where young people are most in need of encouragement to attend higher education.

I suppose I feel strongly about this bill because as a young student in a country town, Narrogin, I did not have the opportunity to go to university, despite desperately wanting to do so. It was not until I was a mature person that I actually had that opportunity. I cannot begin to tell you how enormously grateful I was to have that opportunity. I feel very strongly about this. I think everyone should have the opportunity to educate themselves to the very best of their ability and to maximise their opportunities and talents. I think that as a country we should be doing everything to support that ambition. As I said, I grew up in rural Australia, in the country town of Narrogin, which is south-east of Perth. It was not an option for me, and indeed many of my classmates, to attend university in the city. The financial costs associated with moving to Perth and living independently were insurmountable. Since then, improvements have been made to the accessibility of university, but I fear—and I think that fear is shared by many rural students, their parents and their grandparents—that the changes proposed in this legislation will take away that option of higher education once again.

It was not so many years ago that a number of people in the electorate of Pearce who were concerned about the low participation rates of students conducted a survey within the Avon region. There were some people from Muresk Agricultural College involved in that survey. What that survey demonstrated was a low participation rate of rural students in higher education, whether it be university or TAFE. To that effect, I noticed that the minister said in her second reading speech:

Participation of regional students at university fell to 18.08 per cent by 2007 against a percentage of the population of 25.4 per cent, the remote participation rate fell to 1.12 per cent against a percentage of the population of 2.5 per cent and low-SES participation languished at around 15 per cent against a percentage of the population of 25 per cent.

The reforms outlined in this bill will help to arrest these trends by increasing access to, and better targeting, income support for students who need it the most, through a fairer and more equitable allocation of existing resources.

I see this as curious logic. I do not think that it is going to achieve its intended aim—that is, increase the participation rate. I think the good measures incorporated in this bill—the increase in the availability and value of scholarships—are great, but I think we are still going to cut out a vast number of students who would wish to go on to higher education and who will be denied that opportunity. So I am not quite sure about what I see as the skewed logic of that statement. Those figures showing the dropping participation rates of rural and remote students were brought home to me during that community survey that took place a few years ago and concerned many of us representing various constituencies at that time.

The first and most critical change proposed in this legislation is to amend the criteria by which students are considered independent for the purposes of eligibility for youth allowance. This legislation will bring down the age of independence from 25 to 22. This will increase the number of students who are automatically considered independent. At the same time, the existing workforce participation criteria have been significantly altered, which will effectively make a great many students, especially from regional Australia, ineligible for the payments. It is a kind of smoke and mirrors or pea and thimble trick, where you give on one side and then you take away on the other.

Previously a student who had earned $19,532 in 18 months after leaving high school could qualify for youth allowance as an independent. Alternatively, they could work 15 hours a week for 2 years or 30 hours a week for 18 months within 2 years of leaving school. At least this provided a great deal of flexibility for students, many of whom elected to take a gap year so that they could get some assistance while they undertook full-time study. As a consequence of this legislation, only the latter option—that is, that students must undertake full-time work for 18 months within 2 years of finishing school—will be available. This change came about because there was evidence that students from high-income families were claiming youth allowance after taking a gap year to earn enough to qualify. The idea is that by taking away from these ‘rich students’ we can give more to the ‘poor students’. On paper this is a noble aim, but when the government tries its hand at the Robin Hood act it always seems as though middle Australia are the ones who are inadvertently the worst affected. We only need to look at the ludicrously emotive discourse behind the so-called fairer private health insurance package of legislation to see this effect in action. In this case it is the rural and regional students and all those students who have no choice but to leave their family home to attend university that are the real losers.

For a great many rural students, taking a gap year to earn the required amount was their only way of qualifying for youth allowance and they have relied on the payments to meet the costs associated with relocating closer to their university. The Victorian parliament’s Labor dominated review into these measures concluded that ‘the removal of the main workforce participation route will have a disastrous effect on young people in rural and regional areas,’ and unanimously denounced them. We cannot forget that, when a student must relocate to the city to go to university, they face an enormous financial burden that other students simply do not. One only needs to read the submissions made by numerous rural students and parents to the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs inquiry into this bill to get an impression of the immense stress that these costs cause. These measures affect rural students more so than others because in small regional towns there are limited job opportunities for unskilled workers fresh out of high school to work for 30 hours of work per week. Many rural students have traditionally relied on seasonal work to meet the eligibility requirements.

The government may defend all of this by claiming that their scholarship and relocation grants are of assistance, but this misses the point. It demonstrates the inability of the government to listen to and engage with rural and regional Australia. The problem is not with the payments that students get once they qualify for youth allowance, although no doubt the increases in this area will most certainly be welcomed by those who are eligible. The problem is that the new eligibility requirements adversely affect a whole group of students who need and deserve assistance, so they not only miss out on the allowance but also miss out on all the additional payments too.

It would clearly be unreasonable for the government to expect students to work 30 hours a week while they are undertaking full-time university study. So they must think that it is fully reasonable that students take off two years from university so that they can meet the requirement. Are they not aware that many universities and courses do not allow students to defer for two years? In some instances they will be forced to apply as mature age students because their school marks will no longer be relevant. Are they not aware that far fewer students actually take up their places at university after taking two years off instead of a single gap year? Perhaps if they took the time to listen to rural Australia they would know that jobs are not easy to come by, especially for young, unskilled workers, and that most rely on seasonal work, which rarely offers 30 hours per week and never offers 18 months worth of employment.

The government has also tried to justify these measures, by claiming that many more students will not need to prove their independence because they have raised the parental income test. These students will automatically be classed as a dependent and will be eligible for youth allowance in this way. This measure will be welcomed by those who it will benefit, but once again it is the rural students who will not be assisted.

Rural students often will not qualify because the value of the family farm or rural small business is above the threshold test for assets. What the government fails to recognise is that even where a farming family owns a property worth more than $2.286 million, which is the current cut-off, they may not have made a profit for a number of years and may indeed be cash poor. This is particularly so in areas that have undergone sustained years of drought. These properties are not readily saleable, and regional Australians with large assets may still be under enormous financial pressures. The Isolated Children’s Parents Association noted in their submission to the Senate inquiry:

A large proportion of our isolated students who come from families with little income but large asset bases will not be eligible to receive Youth Allowance or associated benefits.

So we have a situation where thousands of students, for years to come, will simply miss out on the opportunity to pursue higher education.

The Minister for Education has said that this legislation will ‘open the doors of higher education to a new generation of Australians’. But at the same time it will close the doors for rural students and it will, in the long run, close the doors of regional hospitals, law firms and other much-needed services, because it is the rural students that are more likely to take their professions back to the country. Rural and regional students who miss out on youth allowance as a direct result of these changes should still receive support to assist them in attending university. A scholarship program dedicated to these students would ensure that the doors do not close on their future.

As I said, I personally know what it feels like to be a rural student whose university aspirations are shattered or not fulfilled because of the insurmountable financial challenges associated with relocation. But I can only imagine what the parents of current regional high school students must feel when they have to tell their children that they simply cannot afford to send them to university. It is a national shame that such legislation is before us today—legislation that will force rural students into dilemmas that belong to decades past.

I would like to again quote the Federal Council of the Isolated Children’s Parents Association of Australia, from the submission they made to the Senate inquiry. They made the point:

Access and affordability to education from early childhood to tertiary education is of paramount importance to rural and remote families. There are approximately 3,500 ICPA members who reside in rural and remote Australia. These members are reporting, with increasing desperation, the difficulty they are having accessing and affording appropriate secondary and tertiary education, for their children. … Students wishing to access an appropriate education frequently must relocate from their homes and their families in order to access most education institutions. This involves substantial upfront costs which are often out of the reach of students and their families. In many cases students choose not to participate and hence do not reach their full educational potential.

Their submission also said:

Students will become less inclined to pursue higher education if they are forced to work full time first and remain away from the study environment for two years. Studies have shown that on completion of their university studies, rural and remote students are more likely to return to their communities or another rural community to seek employment than non-rural students. Rural and remote students who choose to study at TAFE or commence an apprenticeship are faced with similar challenges in accessing financial assistance for relocation and eligibility for Youth Allowance. Rural and remote students need to be encouraged to pursue post secondary education and receive financial assistance to access study options.

I listened in part to the speech by the member for Grey in this place just a short while ago and I think he made the point that it is not easy for families to make the decision to send their young people away. Emotionally it is a hard decision. That can be greatly exacerbated by the immense financial pressures in order for parents to give to their young people the opportunities that many in city areas take so much for granted. So there is a cost for families, and it is not just financial; it is an emotional cost. It is that difficulty of sending your young people away and having that fracturing of the family as well. I do not think that should be overlooked.

Offering more assistance to more students does not come without a cost. Students should not be forced to work to meet unrealistic criteria just so that they have access to youth allowance payments. We in this place need to be doing all that we can to encourage young people to pursue higher education—not creating barriers to that education and to those aspirations, not killing off that enthusiasm. I think it is great tragedy. I do not think that we pay enough attention to the issues that impact on our young people, and I am pleased to be participating at the moment in some committee work that is looking at some of the issues that impact on young people.

I am afraid that this legislation has the potential to have quite a devastating impact on people living in rural and regional Australia. I hope that the government will look very carefully at the evidence that was given to the Senate inquiry, listen to the very real concerns being expressed throughout the community, particularly by rural and regional communities, and better target this legislation to ensure the desired equity and make sure that young people do have every opportunity to pursue their aspirations to higher education.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. I commend the contribution of the member for Pearce to this debate. This bill has been the subject of much debate in my electorate for many months, and I am pleased now to have this opportunity to raise the concerns of my constituents in this parliament.

Students in Australia are supported primarily through Youth Allowance and its associated benefits and payments. Youth allowance is intended not to provide luxuries for students but to assist them in paying for the very basic necessities whilst they are studying. For students from regional areas, youth allowance is particularly important because they often have the added expense of having to travel far from home to obtain a university education.

We all know that tertiary education is vital to meeting Australia’s future skill needs. As we speak, our universities are producing the next generation of doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists and teachers. Youth allowance plays a big part in allowing young people to get access to tertiary education. We should be doing everything we can to ensure that Youth Allowance is sustainable and accessible.

This legislation will make a number of changes to the system of income support for students. From 1 January 2010, all recipients of youth allowance will be eligible for a student start-up scholarship of $2,254, which will be indexed in the following years. The government estimates that 172,600 students will access the payment from 2013. The legislation also introduces a relocation scholarship to be paid to students who have to move away from home to study. This payment will be $4,000 in the first year and $1,000 for each subsequent year. The legislation also reduces the age of independence from 25 years to 22 years, which I believe is a common-sense move.

One particular change of importance is the increase in the personal income test threshold. Currently, students start to have their youth allowance reduced if they earn more than $236 in a given fortnight. That limit will be raised to $400, allowing students to work casually or part-time without losing the certainty of their regular youth allowance payment.

The legislation also increases the parental income test threshold. Currently, a student’s youth allowance begins to taper off once his parents’ annual income reaches $32,800. This assumes that parents earning more than $32,800 have spare income to support a student away at university—an assumption which is unrealistic. The new parental income threshold will be set at $44,165 per year.

Most concerning in this legislation, however, is the changes to the workplace participation criteria. Currently there are three ways a young person can establish their independence for the purposes of receiving youth allowance. The most common way is through taking a gap year after high school in which that young person must earn at least $19,532. The legislation removes that avenue to achieving independence. Under the new system, the only way to establish independence will be by working full time for at least 18 months in the two years after completing high school.

It is concerning to note that the legislation seeks to introduce these changes on 1 January 2010, which will affect those students already in a gap year. Some of these changes are welcome and will be beneficial for young people trying to access tertiary education, but I am very concerned with the changes that are being made in relation to the gap year. I recently held a forum in my electorate to speak with young people and their parents about these changes. About 70 people came to air their concerns.

Amongst the issues raised was the fact that regional students and their families are already disadvantaged in accessing tertiary or vocational education because of the need to relocate. We in Coffs Harbour are very fortunate to have the Southern Cross University at the Coffs Harbour Education Campus, which also has a high-quality TAFE and senior high school. But many courses are not offered at that university and many students from Coffs Harbour and the surrounding area still have to travel to Brisbane or Sydney to gain education. Many metropolitan students who seek to take a course at Southern Cross University in Coffs Harbour would also be disadvantaged by these changes because they likewise would have to travel to the university on the North Coast.

Some parents have raised with me the very high costs of assisting their young people to attend a university away from home. It has been quoted to me as costing about $18,000 a year. It is rather unfortunate that students who have to move away from home are being so disadvantaged by these changes.

Also I have great concern with the fact that students are required to work 30 hours a week every week during the 18 months that they are required to gain this income. This is very difficult in regional areas, where much of the employment is seasonal and where many people who are seeking full-time employment do not gain 30 hours a week. This is extremely difficult and very unrealistic. If a student earns a reasonable amount of income, they can still fail to meet the continuity test, if you like, under this legislation. It is a significant disadvantage, a significant drawback.

This part of the legislation shows that this government has not realised the special needs of people in regional areas. It has not realised the amount of seasonal work that students are normally involved in. Those are the sorts of jobs they do. It is students who are providing extra labour in the Christmas holidays when the tourist season is in full flight. It is students who are providing the extra labour at harvest time in our agricultural areas to assist with getting the harvest in. Those jobs do not last all year round. This legislation neglects that fact, and regional and rural students are worse off for that omission.

The Minister for Education and the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations should know that there are not a lot of full-time jobs in regional areas. She chose to ignore this very important point when drafting this legislation. Like so many things this government does, this is very short on detail. It is very big on rhetoric, but very short on detail.

Also, many universities only allow 12-month deferrals. If you have to defer for two years, you may well be excluded from your course. If you have to defer for two years, you may never end up setting foot inside a university at all. It may be that many young people decide not to ultimately pursue a university education because of the legislative changes that this government is going to introduce.

Where will our professionals for the future come from? Where will the many professionals that are needed in regional and rural areas come from if they are being actively deterred from taking on tertiary studies? The government should not be contradicting its rhetoric on education by introducing measures in relation to youth allowance which positively discriminate against regional students and which positively discriminate against students seeking to increase their skills by gaining a tertiary education.

It is not only the cash. There are also the associated benefits of youth allowance. A student may no longer be able to access the benefits of a health care card. There are other benefits that flow with the actual youth allowance benefits. These changes will have a substantial impact on thousands of students who may wish to study in future years, as well as on those who are currently completing their gap year. The fact that this legislation is effectively retrospective is one of the most reprehensible factors in relation to this legislation.

The opposition is steadfastly opposed to these changes to youth allowance, which would work against the best interests of people in regional and rural areas. They are absolutely in support of youth allowance. They are in support of our regional students, to encourage them to get a tertiary education or the skills of their choice; to encourage them to meet that extra expense of moving away from home if they need to to obtain the sorts of skills that are needed in regional areas.

It was interesting to note the speech the Minister for Education made on 4 March this year at the Universities Australia Conference. She said:

National participation and attainment in higher education is too low.

Later in the speech, she told the conference:

To be a stronger and fairer nation, the Australian people must be amongst the most highly educated and skilled on earth. This is a vision for all Australians not just a few Australians. Our nation will never be at its best if we ignore the skills and capacities of those who are not born into privileged positions.

This grand rhetoric sounds wonderful. It is wonderful to go into a universities conference and waffle on about a grand vision for education. But when it comes to the detail—to actually putting the policy into practice, to the rubber hitting the road—we introduce a system that is going to discriminate against the thousands upon thousands of students who have been brought up in a regional area and may have to travel a long way to get the sorts of opportunities that metropolitan students take for granted. I find it incredible that we do not hear a squeak out of the Labor regional members. We do not hear the Labor regional members standing-up for the students they represent. We do not hear them holding forums around their electorates to hear the views of the students who are being dramatically disadvantaged by these proposed changes.

The people of Cowper have spoken very loudly. They have said to me that they are concerned by these changes. They have said to me that they want to receive a tertiary education. They have said to me that they are going to put in the hard yards to get an education but they expect some assistance from this government to help them make it happen. We put a great amount of resource in this country into trying to get lower skilled people into work and yet we have a huge cohort of young people keen and eager to seek training to improve themselves and we are not maximising that benefit. We are working very hard at getting the long-term unemployed into work—and so we should—but we should be equalling that effort with making sure that we encourage every regional and rural student to achieve their best; encourage every regional and rural student to get a tertiary education or a TAFE qualification, or whatever it is they seek. We should be supporting them with independent youth allowance. We should not be deterring them in the pursuit of improving their education.

Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This evening I rise to raise my concerns and the concerns of the many hundreds of students and their families from my electorate of Riverina. It has been explained here in the House, time and time again, just exactly what the issues are that are confronting rural and regional students. When you look at the transcripts of hearings that have been held on this issue, your heart really does go out to some very clever people who have determined that the changes the government are making to the way in which youth allowance will be applied are certainly going to impact on them. So rather than them accepting what the government is saying—that this is going to be better for you; we are doing much more for the students than was done before—these are smart young people who have determined that it is not going to be better for them.

If someone applies for youth allowance under the current arrangements they will be assessed as either dependent or independent, as has been identified in the House many times. To be classified as fully dependent and receive the full amount of the youth allowance, the income of the student’s parents must fall below $33,000. For many families, this will not be the case. If students cannot be deemed dependent, they have to become independent to receive the youth allowance. To be classified as independent and receive the full amount of youth allowance, students currently have to meet one of these criteria: they have to have worked full-time—at least 30 hours a week—for at least 18 months in the last two years; or have worked part-time—at least 15 hours a week—for at least two years since leaving school; or have been out of school for at least 18 months and have earned at least 75 per cent of the maximum rate of pay under wage level A of the Australian Pay and Classification Scale in an 18-month period—about $19,500.

What we have here is a plan by the government to take away the second two options that I have just mentioned. They will have to have worked full-time—at least 30 hours a week—for at least 18 months in the last two years. That is, as all the regional members I think have raised in this House, where the problem lies. It is simply almost impossible for our regional students to do this.

I collated a few comments from the Senate committee hearings on this issue and I will quote from the Hansard. One young person, Ms Sinclair, said during the Senate hearing on Tuesday, 13 October 2009 that she believed the government had it wrong. She said:

I collected papers over the last two months to see what jobs we could apply for. I come from Orange, which is quite regional compared to these girls—

she was speaking about some other students at the time—

I circled nine jobs in four weeks that I could apply for and that gave me 30 hours a week. There are another 300 kids graduating. There are just not enough jobs. The proof is there; it is in the papers and the statistics.

This young woman had circled nine jobs she could apply for that would give her the 30 hours a week to meet what the government is going to demand, but she was going to be one of 300 kids applying for the jobs. The statistics are not adding up very well in favour of regional students. Another young person said that he believed the government was right and that the money should go to people who need and deserve it. But he said:

… it should not be done in a way that eliminates people that do need it from being able to earn their independent youth allowance. In rural areas there are not enough jobs for 30 hours a week for 18 months, especially … with our year. When the next generation of school leavers leave, we will still be here for 18 months and there will be absolutely no jobs for them because employers will not be employing. Without that, it is not that it is too hard; it is impossible. If the work is not there, the students cannot do 30 hours a week of employed work.

As we have indicated all the way through this debate, speakers from regional electorates have said how young people have qualified for this money in the past. One of the young students, when she had the question posed to her by a senator during the Senate committee hearing, said that she had calculated some of the costs at the ANU and it was one of the cheaper ones compared to, say, going to Sydney. She said:

Throwing in the basic costs, I think it was about $13½ thousand for board. When you put a bit of travel money and extra costs on top of that, it was going to be about $18,000.

The senator said to this young girl:

If you were getting the relocation scholarship, that would be $4,000 for the first year.

The young lady answered:

But how many people get the scholarships? That is it. I have two older sisters that have been through it and they apply for all the scholarships that are available, and neither of them have even got one. I understand scholarships cannot be for everybody, but why is it that, when, for example—

and she spoke about another person—

Amelia and I are exactly the same—we are exactly the same people; we are working just as hard—Amelia may get a scholarship and I may not. Why is that?

Most of the students indicated during the hearing that they were planning to earn the money they required in their holidays. They believed that they could do seasonal work in the breaks which would enable them to meet the criteria for their lifelong dream of attending university.

This whole debate has been skewed and is very, very confusing because, when the government say they are going to enable many more thousands of people to access payment, the fact is that ‘access’ could mean anything from $3 a week because it is a tapering amount. There is a tapering level that is applied to this. People are not going to be accessing more of this. Why would you spend $20,000 to get $1,000 back? It just does not make economic sense. As I said, it has been extremely confusing. The government have essentially proposed changes that tighten the criteria, which most regional students use, to access youth allowance. It is of grave concern to the people in regional areas.

I am in the Riverina electorate and I have young students in Ardlethan, Temora and Ariah Park who cannot access work. I have had parents say to me: ‘We come from a town with just a hotel and a local store. There are simply no employment options available. Our child will have to go away and work for 30 hours a week before they can qualify as being independent, and they will have to do that for two years.’ Who will meet their costs for the two years?

One of the telling things I learned from reading the Senate hearing was just how little many government members know about what it is like in rural and regional Australia, such as how long we have been in drought, and just how little understanding there is about the impact of this legislation. One of the young girls was speaking to one of the Labor senators and she said that she felt she was not going to qualify because of assets, because of land. She said:

For me it is assets.

Most of them were saying it is because of assets, because they were certainly not getting income. Senator O’Brien said:

It is the value of your rural property rather than your parental income threshold?

One of the young ladies said:

Yes, even though there may not be any income at all—nothing tangible.

One of the other senators said:

You cannot really sell a paddock to pay for school bills.

Then Senator O’Brien said:

I suppose you could debate that. Some people would suggest that, in some circumstances, some people can borrow against assets to derive an income.

I thought: how could Senator O’Brien, who was once, I think, the shadow minister for agriculture, have so little understanding about the plight that regional Australia, particularly regional New South Wales, has been in for eight years? We are heading for another crop loss and we will be holding a crisis meeting, again, in the Riverina on 3 November for the eighth crop loss in a row—would you be looking at selling off your assets or going into debt and borrowing more money against them? The fact is these people have borrowed to the hilt and have not had income for eight years. I think it was a bit of an indictment and a real eye-opener for people who were listening at the hearing or have read the transcripts—there was obviously very little understanding of how regional Australia has been working over the last eight to 10 years.

In speaking on this bill I can only say that this is a mistake—one of the most serious mistakes that has been made. I urge the minister to recognise this serious mistake, to recognise how it will impact on regional students in particular, to make the changes that are required to be made, to put the other two tiers capacity to earn income back into place and to take out this ridiculous one-size-fits-all criterion whereby you must work 30 hours a week for 18 months to two years, which really equates to full-time work. If the minister cannot see that that disadvantages regional students then, seriously, I do question her judgement. I certainly would say that this should not be supported and, basically, we should be looking to put back the tiers to enable all regional students to qualify for youth allowance so that they can get on with their studies and get onto providing the skilled resources in regional Australia that we are so desperately seeking.

John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I currently represent the largest electorate in New South Wales—though not after the next election—which takes in a very large proportion of central western and western New South Wales. The Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009 we are debating today is enormously important to the electorate because there are very few students in it who can access tertiary education without living away from home. The point is that they do not have options. The cost of living away from home is a reality for virtually every student who lives in central and western New South Wales. The Rudd government’s proposed changes to the independent youth allowance criteria are seriously flawed, which is why it is currently being reviewed as part of a Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee inquiry.

If we allow this measure—which can only be described as cruel to the people who live out there—to go through, country students will be seriously disadvantaged. Many will simply be unable to afford a tertiary education. We have to appreciate the cost for somebody who lives in Orange let alone Condobolin, Cobar, Broken Hill or anywhere west of the Blue Mountains. The further you go, obviously, the higher the costs and the greater the dislocation. Most young people who live in regional Australia have to travel away from home for tertiary studies simply because there is no university on the street corner in regional communities. Where there are universities in bigger regional cities, they may not offer the course that the student requires to fulfil their role or their designs in life.

This issue, the youth allowance, has galvanised my electorate of Calare into action, which, I have to say with a great deal of pride, is being led by young students during a time which is very busy for them because they are just starting their HSC exams. Students Cody, Daniel, Amelia and Susan travelled to Canberra just last week or the week before to give evidence to the Senate inquiry which is looking into the issue. These young people did an outstanding job representing all young people. I believe they were from government and non-government schools in Orange and Cowra. They were representing every student west of the Blue Mountains who want a tertiary education and will be disadvantaged if Labor’s changes are passed through this parliament.

The students won widespread praise from the senators in representing the students of our region and for bringing to the attention of our inquiry that working 30 hours a week for 18 months is not doable in regional Australia, where there just are not the jobs. They do not exist no matter how keen people are to meet the criteria. One of the students has been watching job advertisements in the local paper and says there are very few which she and other school leavers could apply for. With 300 or so students looking for work, I guess that clearly says it all.

They raised the point at the Senate inquiry that if they needed to work essentially for two years at 30 hours a week to qualify for the independent youth allowance then next year that will effectively wipe out any of the handful of jobs usually made available to school leavers, therefore making it even harder for the next group of year 12 leavers.

They told the inquiry that the independent youth allowance assistance is the only way they can afford to go to university and that they did not want to rely on their families to help them achieve higher study. One of them made the comment, ‘I guess if they really had to, mum and dad might be able to take out another mortgage.’ Is that really the cost you want to impose on a family who are struggling?

These young people want to work. They are not frightened to work. There is a work ethic out there and they are a part of it. But they are now facing rules where they need to get 30 hours a week for 18 months. There are not the jobs there in regional Australia for that to be possible for anyone who wants to attend university in the future. Orange student, Cody, hopes to study medicine and hopes to get a great job next year with regular weekly work but will be just short of the 30-hour threshold. Particularly, being only a few days out from their HSC exams, the students put in a big effort to attend the Senate hearing because they felt so strongly about the issue. Under some tough questioning, they certainly held their own.

I have condemned before this the aggressive questioning by Labor senator Kerry O’Brien. To have an extremely experienced politician such as Senator O’Brien bombard 17-year-olds with questions about their parents’ personal situation and their opinions on an appropriate threshold for parental income was not on. Before they came down I met with them in Orange. They were very nervous, and why wouldn’t they be? They are facing their exams. Okay, those of us in this place may not think it that big a deal to appear before a Senate inquiry, but we are used to it. These are kids working their guts out, getting ready to do the biggest exam of their lives, and they are coming down to meet with the Senate. I said to them: ‘Don’t be nervous. The senators will do everything in their power to put you at ease. They will simply ask you to tell your story.’ I was wrong. One of those people did bombard them with questions, did give them a hard time and did ask them questions that I do not believe you should ask a 17-year-old student. But, to their credit—I am incredibly proud, as I believe all western New South Wales and regional people, be they in Indi or anywhere else in Australia, should be, of these four students—they handled themselves extremely well, better than many of the seasoned campaigners of this process. They turned the table on one of the committee’s most senior members. For Senator Brian to put himself in a position where he was not only asked by a 17-year-old what his question is but pulled up by the committee chair for asking personal information is simply proof that the Rudd government has no idea what impact its changes are going to have on Australia’s regional future and the ability of regional students to be educated and to take that knowledge back to their homes.

Before our students gave evidence to the senators, they raised the issue in every way possible. They tried to organise a protest rally, which, without doubt, would have had 500 or 1,000 students in the city of Orange. But because these students are law-abiding and believe in doing the right thing—some of us would not have bothered—they went to the police to check that everything was okay. They were told they had to have signatures from somebody taking responsibility for what they would all do. They were not able to get them. I would have signed it myself, but I could not because you had to be the organiser to sign it. These same people, within 24 hours of the issue first coming to light, had organised 1,600 signatures opposing the changes and putt forward not just a belief but the facts and the reasons why this would be so tough, so hard, for the students of regional Australia. It does not matter whether you are in Orange, Wilcannia or Kalgoorlie: this is going to be awfully tough. Despite these setbacks, our young regional students did not give up. They kept going, and they made their concerns and their protests—let us not be fooled about what this is about—heard at the highest levels. Hopefully, their efforts will pay off for country kids right around Australia. I hope so, because I have never been as proud of any of my constituents of any age, whether they were old enough to vote or not, than I am of those four students representing everybody west of the mountains.

Any young person from an average farming family will be ineligible to receive youth allowance because the value of the average family farm exceeds the asset test for the dependent rate of youth allowance. This is the case for an awful lot of students in my electorate of Calare. We all know that the average farming family income is nowhere near enough to support a child’s move to the city plus rent and living expenses where that student is at university. And, as the four high-school students told the Senate inquiry, the independent youth allowance is the only way they will be able to leave home and afford a tertiary education.

It has got me beat, to put it in an Australian way, why the Rudd government would want to make it harder for rural students. Rural Australia needs education as much as anywhere—more, in fact, because they do not have the opportunities, they do not have the alternatives, that exist within the metropolitan areas. I understand the federal government thinks it will save about $1.8 billion from people not accessing youth allowance through the workforce participation criteria. This is penny-pinching of the worst kind. At least 30,000 young people are likely to lose eligibility under the new rules. It is a well-known fact that country kids are most likely to return and practise what they learn back where it is needed the most. That has been proven in medicine. In the time of our government, we were able to increase the percentage of country kids attending medical school from a mere eight per cent to more than 26 per cent. All of that work we did all of those years ago to get more country kids into medicine and nursing is slowly starting to pay dividends. And we all know the only answer to having professionals—doctors, nurses or whatever it might be—in sufficient quantities out in the bush is to train our own kids. I am sure the member for Indi would agree nursing is the same: if we train our own, we have far more chance of keeping our own. That is a very big issue with the youth allowance. It does not matter whether you want to be a tradesperson or a professional. Every time I speak to schoolchildren or university students, I say: ‘Go away and learn what you have to learn. Take every opportunity you are given to reach the criteria of your chosen profession. But, whether you become a carpenter, a welder, a teacher, a policeman or whatever, come back to regional Australia, where you are needed the most, and make use of those skills.’

The youth allowance requirements set out that kids cannot have a gap year of 12 months, even if they could fit the required hours within 12 months. It is designed to prevent kids being able to take advantage of the youth allowance. The kids are aware of that. It is very obvious. You are denying them the chance to plan their education through the youth allowance. That is pretty sad because it has been an extraordinarily successful program. If you think extraordinarily wealthy people are taking advantage of it then put some fences in, but do not kill it. The way it is now, only those from regional Australia who are in particularly humble circumstances, or those who are particularly wealthy, will be able to take advantage of youth allowance. Only they will be able to leave home and get a tertiary education for the betterment not just of rural Australia but of our whole country.

I have people coming into my office and phoning regularly just checking to see where this is up to. They are either worried about themselves, their kids or their grandkids and whether or not a tertiary education for country people will be out of reach. I guess, by and large, that the political persuasion of younger people and a lot of teachers is no great secret but I have never seen a lot of those same teachers get as upset with a Labor government as they have over this issue. I have never seen parents so galvanised. I have certainly—and I can say this standing here without the slightest shadow of a doubt—never seen students so upset. In fact, at a breakfast meeting at which we invited some 20 to 30 students the other day from five different high schools around Orange one of them got up and said, ‘Is this the Rudd education revolution?’.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like other members of the Liberal-National team, I am very strongly in favour of making sure that students from around Australia, including students from rural and regional Australia, have fair and equitable access to higher education. On the Sunshine Coast, which I am privileged to represent in this place, we have a local university—the University of the Sunshine Coast—which has been extraordinarily successful in attracting students from not only around the area but around the state, the country and, indeed, overseas. There are many students on the Sunshine Coast who live with their families, or who have lived with their families, who have to move away to undertake study disciplines not offered by the University of the Sunshine Coast. Many of those students will be disadvantaged by the provisions currently before the chamber.

I am very strongly in favour of making sure that young people—who are, of course, Australia’s future—gain the most solid, valuable and useful education that they can. To enable this to happen in an equitable and compassionate society, it really is important to make sure that there are in place support systems that encourage and assist those students to gain their desired educational qualifications. If we provide the necessary ingredients and support services for students, then, provided the students are diligent and determined, they will be successful in achieving their educational goals. Our nation is immensely richer if more of our young Australians acquire these educational goals.

Youth has benefited as a group specifically from the Youth Allowance support provisions under the Social Security Act 1991 and the Youth Allowance program provides students with financial support during their studies, enabling them to focus more effectively on achieving their educational goals rather than simply on how they are able to exist, to survive, to pay rent, to put food on the table and shoes on their feet, and maybe to pay their bus or other public transport fares.

The Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009 contains a number of provisions; however, the Liberal-National opposition proposes amendments: that the age at which students are deemed to be independent be reduced from 25 to 22 over several years, stepping down to 24 from 2010 and 23 the following year and so on; and that students will not necessarily be deemed independent if they draw wages from a part-time job. The argument is that these changes will ensure that funds from the Youth Allowance kitty money will be better directed to those students who need it. Under this arrangement, students who are currently in the system will not be affected and the bill proposes the same scenario, which in this situation the Liberal-National opposition opposes, for those who last studied in 2008 and who propose to return to study in 2010.

Unfortunately, under the current makeup of this bill, some 25,000 students will not qualify for support from Youth Allowance in 2010 and the following year because the criteria will be narrowed significantly. Students will have to satisfy income threshold requirements as an independent, satisfy age requirements or have worked for 18 months full time prior to returning to study. For those currently in their gap year, the Liberal-National opposition suggests a better way to go is to retain the workforce participation criteria as this would allow the student to access support funds regardless of their parents’ income and assets.

The honourable member for Calare in his contribution emphasised that many rural and regional parents might be asset rich but income poor. They might well have a farm property which is valued at a substantial amount of money but unfortunately the income they derive is simply not sufficient to be able to personally support and maintain students at tertiary institutions, particularly as many rural and regional students are forced to move away from the family home to access educational opportunities.

The removal of the two workforce participation criteria as a result of this bill will, as I said, disadvantage rural and regional students, some of whom who will find themselves ineligible for youth allowance. To counteract this problem, the Liberal-National opposition proposes an amendment that introduces a new funding program that will assist those students and families who do not have the financial capability and who would otherwise be unable to afford the relocation cost of moving to university. Many prospective students from farming backgrounds are precluded, under the new arrangements, from qualification for youth allowance due to the fact that the family farm is valued above the threshold at which the youth allowance cuts out. They used to instead qualify for the youth allowance through the alternative workforce participation routes, but those doors will be closed by this bill as it currently stands.

Given the fact that the government now holds a substantial number of rural and regional seats, I simply do not understand why it has not been more responsive to the pleas of those people who will be seriously disadvantaged by the legislation before the chamber. All members of parliament are supposed to listen to their constituents. I believe that most of us do, but it seems amazing that the rural and regional members of the government party have been unable to convince the Minister for Education, the Deputy Prime Minister, to vary the legislation to ensure that the inequity which this legislation introduces is removed. We have a situation where, increasingly, families who are asset rich yet cash poor might well see their children precluded from having an education if they are from rural or regional areas. As the member for Calare pointed out, we have not had very many medical graduates who originate from rural and regional areas. Over recent years this situation has been redressed to an extent, particularly with the establishment of new medical schools by the Howard government. Unfortunately, the legislation before the chamber will roll this back and it will be increasingly difficult for rural and regional students to qualify in medicine.

The bill includes a new start-up scholarship of $2,254 for new students in 2010—proposed to be indexed in future years—which is a significant cost that, alone, will add up to more than $330 million in the first year. There is obvious benefit in providing financial support for those students as they settle into university life and a new format of education. However, the Liberal-National opposition propose that this allocation be reduced to $1,000 per student, which will ensure that students get a reasonable and significant amount of financial support while also saving the community $696 million over four years. The opposition have been very careful to be financially responsible, and that is why the amendments which will be moved in the chamber will be cost neutral. We saw that what the government was introducing was grossly inequitable. We sought to vary those arrangements to bring about the equity which is not currently present and we had to make sure that the whole scheme remained revenue neutral.

The University of the Sunshine Coast, which I mentioned earlier, has been returned to the electorate of Fisher with the latest boundary redistribution. That will be gazetted, I understand, on 15 December. The University of the Sunshine Coast is an incredible institution and it bounds ahead under the leadership of Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Thomas. In fact, this university was only recognised as an independent institution, some 10 years ahead of what would otherwise have been the case, through the intervention that I made on the part of the university, accompanied by my colleague the honourable member for Fairfax. We went to see the then education minister, Dr David Kemp, who overruled the recommendations from his own department and gave the university the opportunity to convince him that the department’s recommendations were wrong. The university representatives went away, did the necessary homework and came back to see the minister. I have to say that I will eternally respect David Kemp because he was a minister who was prepared to stand up to his department. He saw that the case put forward by the university was compelling. He made administrative arrangements so that the University of the Sunshine Coast could be Australia’s newest greenfields university. It has simply not looked back.

Madam Deputy Speaker Bird, I know that in your own area you have the University of Wollongong. Professor Gerard Sutton, the vice-chancellor there, also does an amazing job. When we have vice-chancellors of institutions who go out there and take on governments and are prepared to say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done to guarantee success for their institution and success for the students they serve, then obviously those people deserve our great admiration.

As I said, there are some students from the Sunshine Coast who do have to travel to Brisbane or elsewhere to pursue courses not offered locally. These students will potentially be affected by the draconian provisions included in the legislation currently being debated in the chamber. I intend to support the amendments moved by the Liberal-National opposition, which will hopefully ameliorate the worst excesses of this bill. If the government is not prepared to be reasonable, if the government is not prepared to accept the amendments moved by the Liberal-National opposition, then the opposition will not hesitate to oppose the bill before the House.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009, which if passed will have a significant impact on current gap year students and, indeed, all high school students not only in my electorate but right across Australia. As students are doing exams right now, they are wondering what the future holds in relation to access to Commonwealth support. It is very confusing scene out there for so many students. It is rather ironic that this legislation has been introduced by the Minister for Social Inclusion, because this bill will exclude—not include—so many rural and regional students whose parents just do not have the money to foot the bill for their own children’s tertiary education. These are students who have to leave home to gain access to post-secondary education.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 8.30 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 34. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting. The  member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.