Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and the Minister for Social Inclusion. What are the consequences of the coalition’s continued refusal to pass the student income support legislation and what commentary has there been about this legislation?

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You won’t give them any money!

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for O’Connor had been warned earlier—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for O’Connor is now warned.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Page for her question, and I thank her for the opportunity to visit her electorate last week and to meet with community leaders and local schools. I believe that the member for O’Connor has indicated what may be motivating the Liberal Party to hold up the student income support bill in the Senate; that is, they simply do not understand it and they care so little about Australian students and Australian working families that they have not bothered to familiarise themselves with the details of it.

I point out to the House that, very significantly, those who care about education are urging senators to pass this bill. Yesterday Australia’s 39 vice-chancellors each signed a letter to every senator, calling on them to pass the bill—a truly extraordinary thing. And now, as I understand it, opposition members are hurling abuse about vice-chancellors. Thirty-nine vice-chancellors sent a letter calling on senators to pass the bill. In the letter the vice-chancellors said:

We, the undersigned, write on behalf of Australia’s universities and their students to seek your support for the passage of the bill.

And they go on:

The income support for students bill properly targets less well-off students across Australia for whom income support is critical. The increases to the parental and personal income thresholds will mean that more students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds will be able to access the full rate of youth allowance.

I table a copy of the letter and the full list of 39 signatories to the letter. The government, at each and every stage of trying to reform youth allowance to make it fairer, have been willing to accept reasonable amendments. We have worked with the Greens and accepted amendments. We have worked with Senator Xenophon and accepted amendments. That means that, as of today—

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens want you to split the bill!

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Perhaps the shadow minister for education might want to contemplate this: as of today, every vice-chancellor in this country is calling on the Senate to pass the bill; every state and territory education minister in this country is calling on the Senate to pass the bill; the Australian Greens want the bill passed; Senator Xenophon wants the bill passed; the National Union of Students wants the bill passed; and every Independent member in the House of Representatives wants the bill passed. In their caterwauling and arrogance they reveal how out of touch they are. I ask members of the Liberal Party to contemplate this: in taking the stance that they are taking they are saying, in their arrogance, that they know better than every Australian vice-chancellor, that they know better than struggling students, that they know better than the Liberal minister for education in Western Australia, and that they know better than the working families who need this support.

I ask the Leader of the Opposition, who is known to feign concern about cost-of-living questions for working families: how can he justify his senators’ refusal to pass a bill which would allow a middle-income family in the bush who earn $70,000 a year and have two kids, one who is already at university and one who is about to go there, to receive $13,300 in the first year for the student starting university and $10,300 for the student already at university? Under the current scheme they would receive next to nothing. How can he say to that family, in that income range, that they should not get those benefits? I am asking the Leader of the Opposition—who is now making a catastrophic error by seeking advice from the shadow minister for education—to have the courage to think this through for himself and to ask himself: can he credibly ever again raise cost-of-living issues if he does not pass this bill?

If he truly believes that people in income ranges like $70,000 a year deserve support, he should instruct his senators to pass this bill. If he does not, then he is standing by the scheme the Howard government stood by for its term in office, where a family earning $44,000 a year does not get full youth allowance whilst a family earning $300,000 a year, with a student at home, does get full youth allowance. It would amaze me that anybody, even members of the Liberal Party, could walk out and credibly say to the Australian people, ‘That’s fair.’ A kid who lives at home in a family earning $300,000 a year gets full youth allowance, even if they live in Carlton or central Sydney, 10 steps from the university, while a kid who needs to move away from home, who is from a family that earns $40,000-odd a year, does not qualify for full youth allowance. I ask the Leader of the Opposition to seriously contemplate this himself and to think it through. It is an important question for students who are trying to go to university right now.