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

I move:

That the requested amendments be made.

This is the return to this House of the student income support legislation. We are now in a position to secure passage of this piece of legislation today, which is good news. It is good news for university students and their families who have been waiting anxiously for the outcome of this bill. It is good news for the 150,000 students who will now receive student start-up scholarships. It is good news for the 100,000 students who will receive youth allowance for the first time or more youth allowance. It is good news for students in country Australia because the old system of student income support was one in which the participation rate of country kids was going down.

I would like to thank those who have played a constructive role in ensuring passage of this bill. First, I would like to thank members of the government backbench who have worked with me, reflecting the views of their community to me about the contents of this bill. I would like to thank the three Independents in the House of Representatives. Each of them represents a rural constituency and each of them worked with the government to secure passage of this bill because they understand what is good for country students. I would like to thank the Greens and Senator Nick Xenophon. At all stages, they have been honest and straightforward in their dealings with the government. They have been clear on their objectives. They have been prepared to work with us constructively.

Had the opposition taken a comparable approach then passage of this bill could have been secured at the end of last year, avoiding these many months of uncertainty and delay. However, finally, in the last sitting fortnight before we adjourn prior to the budget session, the opposition have managed to do something constructive. I thank the shadow minister for abandoning the opposition’s absurd amendments, where they sought to spend an extra billion dollars on student income support—a billion dollars they never saw fit to expend on student income support over 12 long years in government. I thank the shadow minister for abandoning a proposition which would have meant that a student from the home of a multimillion dollar family could have accessed full youth allowance if they had chosen to move from Melbourne to Brisbane to study. This was the original proposition of the opposition, costing more than a billion dollars.

Finally, after all of these months of delay, that proposition has been abandoned in favour of the following very limited proposition which cost something less than $100 million. This limited proposition is that students who come from the outer regional Australia, remote Australia or very remote Australia classifications under the Australian Standard Geographical Classification index and whose parents’ income is less than $150,000 per annum will be able to access the old independence test criteria. This is a proposition for change that applies to around 1,900 students around the country.

Delay is bad enough but, despite the opposition having entered into an arrangement with the government to deliver this bill, today we have seen unnecessary continued politicking from the opposition, who have always been more concerned about the politics of this than the outcome for students. Despite having entered an arrangement with the government that this new change would apply to students in outer regional Australia, remote Australia or very remote Australia, today the opposition have gone through the farce of moving amendments in the Senate they up-front said they would never insist on to play politics with other country areas. This is a disgraceful thing to do.

The final disgraceful thing done by the opposition is that they have now campaigned up and down the length and breadth of the country promising an extra billion dollars for student income support but, as the shadow minister has made clear, in government they have no intention of delivering it. Their only promise to Australian students is a review. It would have been better for the opposition to have taken a straightforward approach (Extension of time granted) and this could have been achieved last year. I will conclude in one minute’s time and then I understand the shadow minister will take equal time and we will be able to dispose of this matter before question time.

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I want to speak on it too.

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

Well, we will not dispose of it before question time and we can have an extensive debate if you like.

I conclude with the following. I say to the students of places like Shepparton, places where the opposition went and campaigned, understand this: the proposition agreed to by the opposition does not change youth allowance arrangements for you. The amendments being moved by the opposition today that apply to places like Shepparton are amendments that they up-front said to the government today that they would not insist on—that is, they are a pure piece of political theatre. And the opposition are not saying to those students in places like Shepparton that if they are elected as the government they will provide youth allowance under the old independence criteria to those students. They are providing them with a review.

Argy-bargy between politicians is one thing, but this is cruel expectation-raising around the country, only to then abandon those students, to move theatrical amendments they know that they are not going to insist on, to abandon them now and to abandon them as a matter of substance, because the opposition will not go to the next election promising those students extra money. This has been a cruel exercise in delay and ultimately it is a cruel exercise in substance from the opposition because they have raised the expectation of those students and their families. The opposition will do nothing today and, if they are ever elected as government, they will do nothing then to actually assist those students. I am not sure that the National Party leader actually understands this, but that is precisely what his shadow minister has agreed to. With those words I say: let us get this done and get some money into the hands of students, which is where it always should have been and could have been at the end of last year had the opposition taken a more responsible approach.

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

In May last year the opposition first raised its very real concerns about the government’s reforms to youth allowance and the Commonwealth scholarships, which subsequently became a problem because of the mishandling of this matter by the Minister for Education in abolishing the Commonwealth scholarships before she had replaced them with the new scholarships. We raised these problems in May, we raised them throughout the last calendar year, and right through to the end of the year the minister refused to negotiate with the opposition. I think this was under the misapprehension that somehow the opposition was not committed to its decision and its position of supporting rural and regional students in particular and removing retrospectivity as a fundamental principle.

We did stick to our guns throughout the entire year. The minister refused to discuss this with us, in spite of the many offers I made to meet with her. I told her my door was open and I would be happy to speak to her last year between about August and December. At no stage did the minister make any effort at all to speak to the opposition. That is why we are still here, in March, with students missing out on their scholarships and missing out on their improved youth allowance. It is because the government did not negotiate. We asked for three things. We asked for all retrospectivity to be removed from this bill. We asked for a pathway to higher education to be included in this legislation for people from rural, regional and remote Australia, who are already a disadvantaged group in terms of higher education and would have been more disadvantaged by the government’s changes. We also proposed a savings measure to pay for those amendments that was to reduce the start-up scholarships by whatever cost was necessary in order for this change to be budget-neutral. In February the minister said that that was impossible. All of those changes were utterly impossible. They were out of the question; they simply could not be done.

Something changed between February and March—it might perhaps have been the new interest and heightened view of the Deputy Prime Minister as the replacement for the Prime Minister—and in March this year the minister decided that in fact these seemingly impossible changes were all utterly doable. We met twice last week and got impossible changes apparently accepted and now doable. As a consequence, this bill has been amended in the Senate to remove all retrospectivity and to ensure that there is a pathway to higher education for students from rural, remote and regional Australia in three of the categories that the ABS uses to determine remoteness, and we believe the government could have gone further and should have gone further. We have committed, if we are elected at the end of this year, to reviewing the entire youth allowance from the ground up to ensure that there is a proper pathway for students from regional areas. The coalition achieved this—not the member for Flynn, not the member for Dawson, not the member for Braddon, not the member for Capricornia, not the member for Bendigo, not the member for Ballarat, not the member for Leichhardt. None of the Labor members stood up for their constituents.

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

Order! It being 2 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 97. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member for Sturt will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.