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

I will not go over the ground that I covered before question time with respect to the important changes that the coalition has wrought from the government and which have allowed us to finally pass the youth allowance bills. I made the points regarding the Minister for Education saying that these changes and amendments were once impossible and suddenly a week later are doable. I was making the point that the Labor members of parliament from rural and regional Australia and, unfortunately, the three Independent members from rural seats in this place can take absolutely no credit at all for extending to thousands of new rural and regional students the old workforce participation criteria enabling them to keep their pathway to higher education. They can take no credit at all for removing all the retrospectivity from this legislation, which was a very important principle. (Extension of time granted)

I appreciate the opportunity just to finish my remarks. The members for Lingiari, Leichhardt, Dawson, Capricornia, Flynn, Richmond, Page, Hunter, Macquarie, Eden-Monaro, Corangamite, Lyons, Braddon, Bass and Franklin all need to explain to their constituents why they signed up to a youth allowance reform which cut out so many thousands of their constituents right across Australia and why it was left to the coalition to stand firm and be tough with the government.

Certainly, the minister eventually recognised the need to back down and support the coalition’s amendments. That has happened in the Senate today and we welcome her flexibility. I would not be so bold as to suggest it may be part of her campaign to be the next leader of the Labor Party. I am not sure whether she wanted to be the person who can deliver—the person who can get something through the Senate—unlike the Prime Minister, who is all talk and no action. That is certainly sticking.

Clearly the Deputy Prime Minister wanted to be able to be the minister who said, ‘Well, nobody else on our side of the House can get anything done, but we can get something through the Senate. We can negotiate with the opposition.’ That is her win, I suppose. She will be able to go out and tell her caucus colleagues that she was the person who could get something done—get something through the Senate—unlike the Prime Minister, who has manifestly failed to deliver on any of his promises from the last election.

A number of my colleagues from rural and regional seats and from the National Party wish to comment on how much more could have been done if the government had been prepared to bend even further. Then more rural and regional students, particularly from inner regional areas, would have been able to access the old workforce participation criteria for the independent youth allowance. That is the one disappointment I have with regard to the coalition allowing this bill to pass. If the government had been prepared to even bend a little bit more, more students would have been able to keep their pathway to higher education. But those students only have one party to blame, and that is the Labor Party.

It is the Labor Party that introduced this legislation and it is the Labor Party that refused to bend any further, but we were not going to stand in the way any longer of 100,000 students across Australia being able to access Commonwealth scholarships and of improving youth allowance. We got a better deal for thousands of rural and regional Australians and their families. When we are elected to government at the end of this year we will review the entire youth allowance from the ground up and we will make sure that there is a genuine pathway to higher education for a group that is already recognised as being a disadvantaged group, to give them the opportunity to have the same start and the same opportunities as people who live in the city and who can stay home with mum and dad—or with mum, or with dad or with whomever—go to university and get the kind of education that we want everybody in Australia to have the opportunity of receiving.

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

The amendments before the parliament are an improvement on the old arrangements that the government was insisting upon. The government has made some concessions, but the government itself acknowledges that those concessions are not substantial. They have removed the retrospectivity that was a part of the old arrangements. It should never have been there. It was obscene that the government sought to take away an access to independent youth allowance from people who had abided by the rules as they were advised by Centrelink and by their school counsellors, and as had been in place for quite some time. They had been working at that for a year or a year and a half, only to be told that the rules were changed. The removal of that retrospectivity is perhaps the most important change in these amendments.

However, they have made a number of concessions also in relation to a continuing access to the independent youth allowance for people who live in very remote, remote and outer regional areas. The government has made much of that but, in fact, the Deputy Prime Minister herself said in question time today that only 1,900 people are actually going to benefit from that change. There are about 30,000, we are told, who were getting the independent youth allowance, and of those around 12,000 to 15,000 were in regional areas. So fewer than 2,000 out of 12,000 to 15,000 are actually going to be eligible for any benefit as a result of the changes to the independent youth allowance, and that is a pretty paltry effort.

The government has chosen as its index for determining remoteness a geographic index which is fatally flawed. Most of those 1,900 people who will be able to access the independent youth allowance will be coming from cities like Townsville, Cairns and Darwin. They are included in the areas that will get access to the youth allowance under the old arrangements, whereas if you live in Mackay, you do not get it. If you live in Dalby or Echuca, you do not get it. The minister is actually saying that it is easier to get a job in Dalby, Echuca, Yarraman and Cherbourg than it is in Townsville, Cairns and Darwin. It is simply a nonsense that the 30-hour rule should apply in one place, but a 15-hour rule applies in the other.

You could live next door to the James Cook University in Townsville—a very fine university—and qualify for the independent youth allowance. But if you live in a town like Dalby or Echuca, hundreds of miles from your capital city, you do not qualify. The government is asking us to believe that this is a good, a reasonable and a fair deal. The reality is that students in regional areas have far less chance of completing a university education than young people who live in the cities. It is a statistical fact that about a third as many people from remote areas have university degrees as those who live in the city. About 30 per cent of rural people complete a university course, compared with the best part of 60 per cent of people who live in the cities.

That is a social injustice that must be addressed. The minister is the Minister for Social Inclusion, and that she can completely ignore this injustice leaves me absolutely in despair. The educational outcomes in regional areas are not equivalent to what occurs in the cities. There is a huge cost imposition on people who have to move from a regional area to live in the capital city.

I recognise that there needed to be some reforms made to the independent youth allowance. I do not disagree with that. But we do need to have a student assistance scheme that enables all young Australians to achieve their education potential, including those from poor families and those who come from regional areas. The government’s changes to student assistance will in fact further disadvantage those who live outside the capital cities. They have delivered an outcome with serious anomalies. The government must address those issues if it wants to be fair minded.

For the next student year there will be a new government and a government with a different attitude to the importance of equality in education, and we will address those concerns. We agree to the passage of this bill because the student year has already begun and there are hundreds of thousands of students out there who have been left in limbo because of the unwillingness of this government to address the serious issues much earlier. But even now what has happened is only tokenism. Only 1,900 students will benefit in the longer term and that still leaves thousands of rural Australians who will in fact not be getting the university education they should have. (Time expired)

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

I rise to speak on the Senate’s requested amendments to the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009 [No. 2]. I acknowledge the Minister for Education is in the House and also the Leader of the Nationals and the member for Sturt, who has been spending quite a bit of time with the minister. We were getting worried about him, given the amount of time he was spending there, but we note that he has made some progress, which is welcome from my point of view, representing a landmass three times the size of Victoria in my seat of Maranoa.

The requested amendments remove the retrospective nature of what was in the bill, and anything that is retrospective I cannot support, so that is certainly welcome. I want to say something about when this Prime Minister was first elected. He went to my home town of Roma and I pulled up the transcript of what he said when he was out there. He said:

I said when I became Prime Minister of Australia that I intended to be Prime Minister for all of Australia, and that included being the Prime Minister for rural Australia.

Those are the direct words from a press conference he held in my home town of Roma seven days after he was sworn in and took office as Prime Minister of Australia. What we can see from this legislation is not a Prime Minister for rural Australia. He is certainly not a Prime Minister for regional Australia, and all those regional members from the other side of the House who have walked away on this issue since the budget initiative was brought forward by the minister stand condemned. They will have to answer to their constituents at the next election because we will be reminding them of where they stood on this issue.

The index that is used to determine eligibility for the independent youth allowance, the work test, is just nonsensical. I have gone to the map. The Leader of the Nationals has outlined some of the anomalies, including Dalby in my electorate of Maranoa. But I went to a village just north of Dalby on the Cooyar Road, which I know the Leader of the Nationals would know well, called Kaimkillenbun. It is a little village. About 100 people live there. There are 30 students at the school. It was once serviced by a railway line, and when you cross that railway line you head up to Cooyar on the way up to Kingaroy. On one side of the tracks in this little village you will be in an outer regional area and the work test there will be for 15 hours work per week and a certain income you have to earn. But if you are on the other side of the track you will have to work 30 hours. It is one of those classic anomalies that we see when you start drawing lines on maps.

I then went to the town of Millmerran. All the areas surrounding Millmerran, which is about 100 kilometres west of Toowoomba, are outer regional areas. The work test of 15 hours per week will apply. If you live in a rural residential area of Millmerran, a town of 2,000 people, you will be in an outer regional area, but if you happen to live in the confines of Millmerran’s boundaries you will be considered to be in an inner regional area. These boundaries are just nonsensical. That is why this government should have accepted the amendment put up by the opposition in the upper house. And shame on those Independent members and the Greens in the upper house who joined with the Labor Party to defeat a very sensible amendment that would have got rid of these stupid lines on maps. How long has it been that a pathway to affordable access to education depends on lines on maps? I represent those students from rural and regional areas, whom many on this side also represent and whom those opposite have failed to represent.

Access to post-secondary education should not be a privilege. It should be a right for all Australians to be treated in the same way as those students who live in capital cities. The great anomaly in this legislation is that, if you happen to live in Cairns or in Townsville, you will be able to gain access to the independent youth allowance with a work test of 15 hours per week, but if you live in Kaimkillenbun and you live on the wrong side of the track you will have to qualify through the 30-hour test. That is a little village of 100 people north of Dalby on the road to Kingaroy.

Before I came in here a lady from the media outlet in Kingaroy had been contacted by families in Kingaroy wanting to know whether they would be eligible under the new rules. Well, they are in one of those towns where to qualify for the independent youth allowance they will have to work 30 hours per week. But if they lived 30 kilometres up the road in Wondai they would have to work 15 hours. (Time expired)

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

I think it is interesting to look back on this debate and where it started. In the May budget last year some massive changes to the independent youth allowance were proposed by this government, including one of a retrospective nature affecting students who under the previous guidelines at the end of 2008 had decided to take a gap year in order to comply with the independent youth allowance guidelines. Those proposals were obviously so shocking that students and parents from all around Australia jumped up in outrage over these changes—a shifting of the goalposts. It would be like shifting the grand final from the MCG to the WACA for the third quarter. It certainly was not fair. I now recognise that these changes will fix that problem up.

But of course this government, against our advice, removed the Howard government’s scholarships—I believe in August 2009—and did not have anything in there to replace them. This legislation does help in some respects. I understand that in my electorate approximately 534 students will be eligible for start-up scholarships of about $1,300 in the first year and $2,100 in the second and subsequent years. That will be a little bit of help, but the fact is that for most students in my area the cost is something like $15,000 a year to leave home to attend university.

I also understand that 703 extra students will receive youth allowance. We welcome that change. There is no doubt that we support those changes. But, unfortunately, the second biggest city in South Australia, Mount Gambier—population about 24,000—will not comply with the new guidelines for ‘regional’, even though it is 400 kilometres away from Melbourne university and 400 kilometres away from Adelaide university. It is impossible for students from Mount Gambier to attend either of those universities without leaving home and without the extra cost. These new changes have withdrawn those students. It cannot apply to people in Mount Gambier because the test is done on a medical services test. It is not based on education or on the ability to afford to leave home and attend university; it is based on medical services. Yes, Mount Gambier is a reasonable centre for health, and so it falls under those federal government guidelines. It is a stupid—very stupid—boundary line for this situation, because, obviously, they will have to leave home at a cost of, as I said, about $15,000 a year to attend university. There are many families—even under the new guidelines—who simply will not be able to afford that. It is a crying shame that the second biggest city in South Australia, Mount Gambier, will not be eligible for these changes.

It is interesting to look at the towns in my electorate. Murray Bridge—yes, okay, it is 45 to 60 minutes away from university, so they do not get the ability to apply for youth allowance under these guidelines. Tailem Bend is another 15 minutes away from there and an hour and 15 minutes away from the university. Students from there will still have to either leave home or drive there and back every day—two and a half hours in a vehicle. If you go further down the road to Coomandook, that is another quarter of an hour—and, according to this, that is an hour and a half away from university. They will not be under these new guidelines. So there are anomalies due to the fact that these boundaries are not drawn in a fair way. There are still areas of my electorate that will not receive the benefits they should. I welcome some of the changes, but, obviously, when we get back in government, we will change it to make it fairer for all rural students all over Australia.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to talk on this very important bill, the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009 [No. 2]. I commend the shadow minister for education for coming up with an outcome that would not have happened if we had we let the government put through this outrageous piece of legislation when it was first introduced. As an opposition, we had to balance the interests of 100,000 students who without this legislation passing this week would not be able to access new Commonwealth scholarships or improved rates of youth allowance with those of people who, quite frankly, are going to be dudded under this rather ridiculous lines-on-maps access arrangement that the Minister for Education has attached to this bill.

I wonder, with all of the resources of the two megadepartments at the minister’s disposal, why we had to have a map that has such erroneous and misleading descriptions and definitions when it relates to access to education. It might be a good indicator of remoteness when it comes to a range of other measures and policies, but this is different. This is specific. I do not know why the departments in question could not produce a map that made access and equity to education for rural students a whole lot better. And I do not accept that it would have cost a whole lot more.

We have a list of towns and, as all members have, we have looked through this list to see which of the towns that we represent will be able to access youth allowance under what I will call ‘the old rules’—because that is what students in regional Australia want, the existing system. I accept, having seen the outcomes of the Bradley review, that changes needed to be made. I do not believe we should have kept the old system completely in place. Definitely there was rorting. Definitely changes needed to be made. But I do not accept that they were needed to the level that the government has suggested and I do not accept the taint that the government has cast over the entire youth allowance scheme, and over rural students and tertiary education as a result. That is just totally out of order.

On this alphabetical list of what is described as ‘outer regional, remote and very remote locations’, I see some of the towns in my electorate, because I represent a rural area of western New South Wales. But there are three towns that immediately I do not see. One is Albury. Yes, Albury is a large regional centre. It is about four hours from Canberra, it is about seven and a half hours from Sydney and it is a good three and a half hours from Melbourne. It does have two regional universities, and they do a great job, but they do not cater for every student in every case. Students from Albury—who made long, loud representations to me when this bill was initially introduced—would like to stay with the old rules for youth allowance. They are not in a position where they can get jobs that last for 30 hours a week for an 18-month period in two years, which is the route they will now have to take to qualify for independent youth allowance.

The other two towns are Corowa and Deniliquin. In the case of Deniliquin—a tiny town on the Murray River with no air services, no public transport, a population of 8,000 and getting smaller, a town which has struggled unbelievably in the drought over the last 10 years—it is absolutely outrageous. It is one of the most rural locations you could possibly imagine and it has been classified under this system as ‘inner regional’. I ask the Deputy Prime Minister, with all of the resources that she has at her disposal: could she please consider a better map that better categorises the towns that we as rural members of parliament represent. It is not the principle we oppose. We understand the principle. It is this map—this archaic object that has been brought down from the shelf and rolled out—which is expected to do a job which it really cannot do.

So, the towns of Albury, Corowa and Deniliquin in my electorate of Farrer are going to be seriously disadvantaged. I feel terrible for the parents that have approached me over the last six months that have signed petitions, that have poured out their hearts; for the kids who have come to me. The cases that really stick in my mind are those kids that say that, because their parents are on farms that have had declining incomes over the last five years, ‘I am not going to put my parents through this—I just won’t go to university; I will put it off to some later stage in my life.’ There are no jobs like this in a town the size of Deniliquin—there are very few jobs, but there is certainly no opportunity for students to work 30 hours a week for a period of 18 months in a two-year period in order to access youth allowance. I appreciate the income thresholds have changed, and that will make some difference—and that is a good thing. And I appreciate that the gap year students from 2008 are quarantined, and that is something that we really drew a line in the sand about, and we have achieved that. I feel pleased with that. But there is a much room for improvement. As a member of the coalition, I commit to working to change this if re-elected.

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

This is a bittersweet moment. Certainly no sense of triumph should be felt by either side of the House. There is much work still to be done in terms of student income support going into the future. This has always been about the kids; it has always been about the young people in regional Australia. There are members on both sides of the House who have approached this issue in a great deal of good faith and have endeavoured to get a result which has been in the interests of regional people right across Australia.

I do take exception to the approach of the Minister for Education to this whole debate from May last year. She announced during the May budget that basically she was going to make it retrospective; she was going to strip the gap year entitlements off students who had prepared for their time at university, had taken a year off and were working to achieve that status. The rug would be pulled out from under them. On 25 May last year I asked the minister in question time to guarantee that country students in their gap year would not be financially penalised. She said at that time, ‘What a very silly question.’ Here we are, almost nine months later, and that very silly question has come to fruition in that the minister has finally agreed that there will be no retrospectivity for students in their gap year. That is a very good thing.

I do say to the minister in her presence that she does not always need to rush to the barricades and bludgeon her opponents to death when it comes to issues where there is concern or there are alternative points of view. I honestly believe that in this debate, in particular, there were people who were acting with good intentions towards the students. You do not manage to achieve 5,000 people signing a petition in 10 days in an electorate the size of Gippsland unless there is passion in the community and real concern about what is being proposed. That was repeated right throughout regional Australia. I acknowledge that the minister facilitated a meeting between me, Russell Broadbent and a member of her staff, and I thank her for that opportunity. From then on I believe we had a better working relationship in terms of trying to achieve some positive outcomes.

Having said all that, I do not believe this is an education revolution. At best, this is tinkering around the edges when a massive overhaul of student income support is required. We have not yet dealt with the fundamental issue of equity for regional students, and now we have actually created a situation where there are too many winners and losers. Under this new arrangement, people in the electorate of Gippsland living in towns like Sale, Maffra, Stratford, Yarram, Traralgon and Heyfield will not have the opportunity to use one pathway of achieving independent youth allowance, that being through the 15 hours per week and earning $19,500 over an 18-month period. These are small country towns and it can also be very difficult for these students to achieve the 30 hours per week required of them under the legislation which will be passed today. I fully accept, and the minister regularly makes the point, that that is not the only avenue for achieving income support. I do give credit to the minister in that regard—the increased income thresholds will accommodate a lot of people from the poorer socio-economic areas of my electorate, and the more generous income thresholds will be well received. I have publicly put that on the record on many occasions; that is one of the good things we are doing here with this legislation.

The fact remains that families in regional areas with multiple children going to university will face additional costs of $10,000 to $15,000. Accommodation costs are not going to be covered in any way by what is going through the House today. I referred earlier to my emotions being bittersweet. It is a sweet moment for the students who will now finally be able to access scholarships—they will have some certainty as they go into the 2010 university year. I think that is the right thing for them at this time. My bitterness relates to those students in the future who will not be accommodated by these changes, and to the simple fact that we are missing an opportunity in this place to do the revolutionary work that we hear so much about from those on the other side. We hear about the education revolution, but the students in regional Australia are really waiting to see it. They are still waiting to see when the fundamental issues of equity will be addressed, and I am concerned that they will be waiting for a very long time while this government just talks to them and spins them a line.

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

My comments are similar to those of many other members. I acknowledge the work and persistence of the shadow minister on this issue. I also acknowledge all of the members who sit in this House who have worked so ferociously to represent the concerns of their country students. If it was not for their efforts and the wonderful efforts of our constituents who lobbied constantly, who wrote to us and who begged us to act on their behalf, then we would not have these results. The Minister for Education was not going to do this voluntarily. She was dragged kicking and screaming to this point. It is the efforts of the people in this chamber and all of our constituents who are affected by this that have brought this about. I want to acknowledge my constituents who have worked so hard and have been so concerned about this on an ongoing basis.

We have heard about the map being used—this wonderful map that is entirely inappropriate as a measure for determining student regionality. I can see it in my electorate, as can each member who is here to talk about how this is going to affect their students so badly. I am already getting the emails from young people in my electorate who are going to be left out. The assumption is that it is not going to cost any more for these young people to go to university—and they have no choice but to have to move, to go to Perth, essentially, to pursue their tertiary education. There is no choice. Yet, when I looked at the map I saw a little place like Collie, in my electorate—and Collie is out but somewhere like Cairns is in. I see places like Boyanup and Dardanup and Donnybrook, and we have all these people who are reliant on seasonal work, or no work at all, as the member for Grey is very well aware. There are all these issues facing rural and regional students. Those who come from family farming backgrounds are also going to find this extremely difficult. Where on earth does a young person from Donnybrook, which is left out on this map, unlike Darwin, Dunsborough, Brunswick, Harvey and Capel, find 30 hours of work a week over that 18-month period? These young people live anything from two to 2½ hours away from a university, so they are not going to be able to qualify under the map that the minister has offered.

I, like my colleagues, am disappointed that this seems like a piecemeal, throwaway approach to these students and to the serious nature of how much focus should have been on this issue. There should have been a very diligent approach because the minister has had since May to do this. If the minister genuinely cared about making sure of equal opportunity for rural and regional students—those who genuinely need it—these are not the criteria that should have been used to determine this outcome.

I have received an email from a very concerned parent from Bunbury. Their young daughter was dux of her campus and she has to go to Perth to pursue her education, yet she is going to miss out. They are seriously devastated about this but they know that we have fought hard. They know that we have fought to make sure that that the minister did not impose problems for those on a gap year—that you would even consider excluding those currently doing their gap year is appalling.

Then we saw the 30 hours of work a week applied unilaterally—I am not sure where members on the other side imagine that their young people can find that 30 hours of work a week that is going to be necessary for so many. I can say for a lot of young people in my electorate: it is not possible. Again, we increase the disadvantage for young people in my electorate. I know that my email inbox is going to run hot and I will be continuing to let the minister know exactly about this process. We put that amendment in, but the government voted against it. I cannot believe that the places that I have mentioned in my electorate will be excluded and not considered as regional when those young people cannot go to university unless they go to Perth to attend a university. There is an assumption by this minister about regional areas, and it is incorrect.

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

I have only been a member of this House for a little over two years. There are many weeks when I go home from Canberra and wonder what on earth we can achieve from opposition, but this turnaround in the last 48 hours from the minister is a great achievement from opposition and a reward for hanging tough. I recognise that we have not got all that we wanted and I acknowledge the member for Gippsland’s comments about those that will not benefit from this turnaround.

The fact is the coalition has hung tough against all those who have called for us to back down in the last few months: the vice-chancellors of the major universities of Australia; the students union; the minister; and the government. We have hung firm on this, and I congratulate our shadow minister for education because on this occasion from opposition we have delivered a great improvement. The unwinding of the retrospectivity is a great improvement and it should never have been included in the first place. The new allowance for those who live in remote, very remote and outer regional areas to still be able to apply for youth allowance under the old arrangements is a great move forward.

The electorate of Grey is one of the luckier ones, I must say. There is only one community in my electorate that will not qualify under these new arrangements—that is the township of Eudunda of around 1,200 people. They could move five kilometres down the road and they would qualify. For the rest of my electorate it is without doubt a very good result, but I identify with the comments of those people who are living in the inner regional areas with arbitrary lines on the map who can have very little understanding of how they were drawn in the first place. I will have to go back to those people in the community of Eudunda and explain how they will get different treatment to the people of Robertstown who live just up the road.

Having said all that, I was in Woomera in April last year at the Isolated Children’s Parents Association where I launched a discussion paper on this issue. I have brought this up because I come from a small rural township and I have had to guide three of my children through university under the old arrangements. I understand how difficult it is for people who live in regional and rural areas. It has been a longstanding passion of mine to try and get a reasonable deal for country students. I wrote a discussion paper which I delivered to the Isolated Children’s Parents Association on 1 April in Woomera last year. The purpose of that paper was to get this subject on the discussion table. Little did I know how successful that would be because in the budget, only a matter of six weeks later, it was well and truly on the discussion table for all the wrong reasons. It was not because we were getting a better deal for country people; it was because we were going to get a worse deal.

From the outset, I have recognised in the minister’s statements the good things she was trying to do under this rearrangement: the lifting of the thresholds; the lowering of the age of automatic eligibility from 25 to 22; and the ability for students to earn a bit more money. But the kickback was that we were probably dragging $800 million in support of students who qualified under the independence test into a scholarship that was going to everyone. I saw that as a redistribution of support for country students to support for city students. That is one of the reasons I was determined to dig my heels in along with the rest of my colleagues in the coalition.

The central issue here is fairness for country students. We are starved of people with professional skills in regional areas, and we know that if we can get kids from regional areas to undertake education the opportunity of getting them back into our communities is far higher. So this is about more than just each individual student. It is about what kind of communities we are going to have in regional Australia going forward.

We now have designated intakes for doctors who come from rural areas, but there are all kinds of other professional areas where we need that kind of support. We know the take-up rates of university study from regional and rural students are lower than those from the city, so we are already operating at a disadvantage. Every time we make the situation tougher we put ourselves in a worse position.

The outcome we have achieved for those people that live in the three regions leaves us in a better position than before; I acknowledge that. But I do feel for those people who live in the inner regional areas and who will not be able to access the old independent test—(Time expired)

David Hawker (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the comments made by my colleagues in the coalition and, in particular, to commend the shadow minister, the member for Sturt, for the hard work that he has put in to get a much better arrangement; albeit, as colleagues have mentioned, that it is not ideal and not what we would really like to see. But I think the most important point to start with is that the government has agreed to get rid of the retrospectivity. It was extremely unfair. I think all colleagues had examples of people who in good faith had started their gap year and who had suddenly been told: ‘Well, that’s too bad. You’re going to miss out.’ So I commend the member for Sturt and I thank the government for accepting that point.

However, I must go on to say that we still face the same problem. The rate of take-up of tertiary study for people in the country is lower than for those in the city. The reasons for this are very clear. People from the country have to go away in order to study and they therefore have the costs of living away from home. In addition, they have the difficulties of having to settle in a strange environment, which is not easy. Many country students find that very difficult. It seems strange that the government has still not recognised the inequity that is there.

I would also like to address the issue of anomalies. The use of a map that is totally unrelated to education issues to decide whether or not you are allowed to qualify for the gap year under the old arrangements or under the new arrangements does seem to create some enormous anomalies. Some of the towns in my electorate of Wannon that will be missing out are Stawell, Ararat, Avoca, Mortlake and Camperdown. They will all miss out and they are all smaller than, say, a town like Portland that will come in. And, of course, all of those towns are much, much smaller than places like Townsville or Cairns, both of which seem to be allowed to stay under the old arrangements in terms of qualifying under the gap year.

So it is still far from satisfactory. I would urge the minister to look at how these boundaries could be improved. While I accept that the legislation has a sense of urgency about it now because there are so many students hanging on it going through, nonetheless I think it is very, very important that we remove this anomaly. It is almost like a lottery because it is based on whether you live on one side of the line or the other, despite the fact that the situation you are living in is virtually the same. I do not think that is fair by any measure, and I hope that the minister will look very carefully at this and say that we can improve on it.

It really comes back to this point: that we should be doing everything possible to encourage country students to continue their studies. We now have a situation where some are going to find it easier than others purely because of some lines on a map that do not bear much relation to each individual’s situation. So, again, I join with my colleagues to say that I see this as an improvement but that I still think there is a long way to go to improve it further. I hope that the minister will listen to the members who have, in good faith, spoken here this evening to say that we can do better. With those words, I am conscious that other colleagues would like to speak, and I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for my opportunity.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think this matter is one of the most important that has come before the parliament in my time, especially in terms of equity for country people. We get a lot of troubles in country areas with drought and floods and so on, but the one thing that we all pride ourselves in is seeing that our kids get a fair shake. I, for one, have a son who went to university and had to have four jobs to get himself through. So I know what it is like for young people to struggle to get that university degree.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why we would use a measure of medical availability as the basis for lines on maps around accessibility to a university. I just cannot see the connection. Perhaps it was just a lazy bit of work on the part of someone in the minister’s office or the bureaucracy who said: ‘We can’t quite find a map. This one is fairly close. We’ll do this.’ That decision excluded so many people that it is quite frightening. But I will acknowledge the clawing back of the young people who were excluded by retrospectivity. If that had been allowed to continue, it would have been a manifest injustice.

However, what we see now is a different form of injustice. In my electorate I have the university cities of Bundaberg and Hervey Bay. They are two very good campuses and two different universities. I find it extraordinary that those two cities are excluded but Townsville and Cairns are included in the 15-hour measure. Why should the kids in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay have to do 30 hours? I put this to the minister: it is not just a mechanical thing of 50 or 30 hours that we are talking about. What it really comes down to is the availability of jobs in some of those towns.

If you are in a town like that—especially one that has been through drought recently—it is incredibly hard to get to 15 hours much less 30. So the move now to take this whole cohort of students from the 15-hour measure to the 30-hour measure will by its very nature exclude them. I think there is a lot of work still to be done. As I said, I have a son who went to university and had to maintain four jobs to get himself through. I am intensely proud of him.

I also want to stress the importance of education in country areas. I understand that the minister at the table is the Minister for Social Inclusion. If we are talking about social inclusion, it should be a constant source of anxiety to her—I do not say this with any sense of bitterness or vindictiveness—that only 30 per cent of country kids in this nation get to university. It is only 30 per cent.

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

That is the Howard government’s legacy.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can say it was the last government’s legacy and we can say it was the Keating government’s legacy. You could run that argument for ever and ever amen. The point is, however, that you hold the reins at present and you have the ability to give more of those kids the opportunity. Not only have you not given more of those kids the opportunity; you have imposed harsh measures that will drive some of them out. I think that is something you should reflect on.

Also, we wring our hands and say we need people from country areas, especially doctors and pharmacists and so on, to go back and take up the cudgels and live and work in country areas. What we are going to do with this measure is make it all the harder to encourage students in country areas to take up those courses and in doing so take a burden from government and from the communities in which they serve—(Time expired)

Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening with great concerns. I support everything said by my colleagues on this side of the House. It is untenable that we should be confronted at almost the last moment, in my opinion, with this imposition of a limitation of $150,000 of household taxable income for students wanting to attend tertiary institutions. Students who fall outside that limit are to be denied access to independent youth allowance. It goes against the grain.

Has anyone in government, even from the Labor side of politics, ever suggested that a student’s access to HECS be means tested? No, they have not. Whether you are from a wealthy family or from a very poor battling family, no-one has suggested that you not be entitled to access HECS. When we have devised this independent youth allowance, why should a student that has qualified to be independent suddenly be saddled with the imposition of the income of their parents? Why should my students from families living in Port Hedland and Karratha where both parents are forced to work because rents are somewhere in the vicinity of $2,000 a week and the disposable income is on a par with the disposable income of families living in metropolitan areas be denied the opportunity to qualify for independent youth allowance and have an income whilst they relocate to a capital city to attend a tertiary institution?

It is an untenable proposition. I believe the minister has not realised the consequences of such an imposition. My students in Karratha, Port Hedland and in the remote areas of Western Australia are hardly living in the leafy suburbs of any of our capital cities. They are living some 1,600 to 2,000 kilometres from a suitable institution. It is not an easy move to shop in the city. It is not an easy move to take up opportunities such as are offered by large populations as far as cost-of-living reductions are concerned. These students need to be able to qualify to receive the independent youth allowance and paddle their own canoes independent of their families. That is what I thought independent youth allowance was all about. Now we are suddenly being confronted with a situation where the minister decides if your parents earn too much. We are moving here into the politics of envy, I am sure. This policy, I suggest, is just to appease Labor voters and for it to be seen that the Labor minister is doing something to stop these incredibly wealthy people from having their children attend tertiary institutions with assistance from the government.

The whole thing is based on the fallacy that $150,000 for a household taxable income in the Pilbara is somehow some vast amount. Labourers are being paid nearly $100,000 a year and out of that is a margin that allows them to live and save. Is this minister denying students from those sorts of families the opportunity for any government assistance to attend tertiary institutions? The whole situation is untenable. This government, I thought, operated in the interests of all people. I would not have expected them to promote policies that distinguish between one sector of the community and another. Surely our children, our future, have a right to be treated as individuals, especially if they are going to have a crack at qualifying for an independent youth allowance. But they cannot apply for that because they are being saddled with a classification according to their parents’ income. To have a situation where we are demanding more and more professional people move to the country and operate and not have the opportunity—(Time expired)

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

There is no argument that the youth allowance provisions needed changing. My view is that all kids who have no choice but to leave home to study their chosen pathway, be it at TAFE or university, should have access to youth allowance with a sensible asset or income test applied to it. However, that is not what we have here. We have here a Deputy Prime Minister who put together the legislation, came to the dispatch box time and time again, and defended her legislation. She said that it was right and that we were always wrong.

Then the minister realised that she had made a mistake after she got a lot of feedback and she realised that the members of the House on the opposition side were not just making this up. She then decided that she would take retrospectivity out and make some changes around the edges. Then she came back to the dispatch box and she said that she was right and we were wrong. Every time, she was right and we were wrong. We have come to the position whereby we have now argued strongly again under the leadership of the shadow minister for education, apprenticeships and training, Christopher Pyne. He has determined that we have been able to achieve more concessions from the minister, who as I said has argued at the dispatch box day after day that we are wrong and she is right and that everybody is better off under her proposal and that we are making this up.

Under the leadership and guidance of the shadow minister, the opposition has been able to get more concessions for regional students. However, we have come to a point where the concessions are for some and not for others. That is a fundamental problem. It is a fundamental problem when the minister continually comes to the dispatch box and argues that her policy is right and her legislation is right and then it continually gets changed. It was a fundamental problem when the Deputy Prime Minister stood up at the dispatch box—I took exception to this—and told everybody in Australia who was listening that families who earn up to $140,000 per annum could access youth allowance to help support their children at university.

What the Deputy Prime Minister did not say was, ‘Okay, if you’ve got two children at university, you will receive $2.80 per fortnight of the youth allowance.’ No. She led the Australian people to believe through those comments that students would get the full youth allowance if their families earned $140,000 per annum. I see that she has honed her press release and rectified her comments. She now says the parental income test will be raised so that families with two children studying away from home can earn more than $140,000 before the allowance is cut completely. In fact, the truth is that they will receive $2.80 per fortnight per child. What do you get if you have one child at university and the parents earn $140,000? If you have one dependent child at university and the parents earn more than $140,000, you get zero. That is the minister’s own calculation.

I am proud of the Nationals and I am proud of Fiona Nash and her carriage of this through her inquiry on this issue and through listening to the students of Australia telling her what the problems are. The problem that we have now is that some will get access to something that they previously did not have—they will get access to the scholarships on offer that the minister talks about and they will get access to youth allowance—but others will have access to youth allowance removed from them. That is the problem: some will get access to something they never had, but others will have taken away what they currently have.

That is the wrong part of this legislation. That is the part we would like to see changed. Inner regional areas should be included within this proposal and the minister should again agree that she has made a mistake and that the members of the opposition are standing up in earnest for the people that they represent. They are not crying wolf; they are crying the reality of living in regional Australia. They would like to see all students—(Time expired)

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

Ensuring that we have the skills base in regional Australia is vital for our economic prosperity. It is vital for the prosperity of this nation because education is the key to meeting the future skills needs in regional areas. But there is, in this country, great inequality in access to education. The ability to live at home and study your course of choice is an option available to all too few regional students. That is why the Deputy Prime Minister’s decision to eliminate the gap year pathway to independent youth allowance was so short-sighted. Educational costs for regional people are so much more when they have to live away from home because they have no choice.

Many regional students are not just choosing between one education institution and another. They have to leave their home towns to study their course of choice, which provides the skills needed in their home towns. It is kids from regional areas that are the most likely to return and provide the future accountants, doctors, lawyers and highly skilled trades professionals that those regional areas need. Many courses are not offered in regional centres, even the larger ones.

Fortunately, under the pressure from the Nationals and our coalition partners, the Liberals, the minister has done a welcome backflip indeed. We have a long way to go to deliver equity for regional students, but the minister’s backdown certainly has addressed the very worst elements of her original legislation. Getting rid of the retrospective elements in the legislation was an important, positive step. I think retrospective legislation in any form is always a problem. When people have made plans based on the situation that existed at the time and then they have the rug pulled out from under their feet, it is just unacceptable. This original legislation was definitely unacceptable.

The government has, to its credit, agreed to retain the original gap-year pathway for people living within certain boundaries but, unfortunately, drawing lines on a map has meant that the devil is in the detail of this proposal. We welcome the youth allowance pathway being retained in centres in my electorate such as Bellingen, Bowraville, Dorrigo, Macksville, Nambucca Heads, South West Rocks and Wooli. Those centres retain access to the youth allowance gap-year pathway. However, people living in centres such as Coffs Harbour, Urunga, Arrawarra, Kempsey, Port Macquarie and, in Madam Deputy Speaker Saffin’s electorate, Grafton will miss out. There are winners and there are losers under these changes and, unfortunately, there are many losers.

The minister claimed that there was great equity in the new income test. As the member for Riverina has rightly pointed out, a family on $140,000 a year with two young people at university will get the princely sum of $2.80 a fortnight each. I have to say that, from talking to university students in my electorate, $2.80 a fortnight is not going to go very far toward ensuring their continued participation in further education. If the family has one child at uni they get zero. We have to encourage regional youth to go to university. It is good economic policy and it is good social policy, and these measures, whilst an improvement on what was originally put forward by the minister, fall far short of what is required to reform the system to support youth in further study.

We see billions of dollars wasted on a home insulation program. We see the shonkies ripping off the government. We see the charlatans entering the industry. They are everywhere. Much of $2½ billion has been wasted. We see billions being wasted under the Building the Education Revolution program because we are paying far too much for our school buildings—in many cases, 100 per cent over what should have been paid. The waste from these two programs alone would have financed a high-quality youth support system at university for years into the future.

This bill has been improved, but this country has a long way to go before we will have a system of support for our youth at university that is a 21st-century outcome. I certainly welcome the improvements and will undertake as a member of a coalition government to put in place the changes that will be needed to support our youth in going on to further education.

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

To summarise this debate, I find it intriguing that, in opposition, members of the coalition have found their voice and the only tune they know is hypocrisy. When they were in government the participation rates of country students in tertiary education at universities went backwards. Where was all this passion for equity and rural participation then? Where was all this spirit of reform and support for students from country areas in universities then? Where was it? Of course they did not do one thing about it. Anybody in this House in this debate tonight who was a member of the Howard government deserves to bear the brand ‘hypocrite’ because they did not do anything about it.

Now, having listened to so much hypocrisy, let us deal with the factual assertions made during these speeches—these so-called ‘factual’ assertions, which are 100 per cent wrong. What is in this package? One hundred and fifty thousand scholarships. That is 29 times more than anything that was offered under the Howard government in the Commonwealth Scholarships Program they talk about. One hundred thousand students around the country will benefit. Some will get youth allowance for the first time. Some will get a greater rate of youth allowance. Coalition members speaking in this debate continue to distort it by pretending that the only way a student can get youth allowance is by becoming independent. That is completely untrue, 100 per cent nonsense, a complete distortion. The primary way of getting youth allowance under this package is qualifying on your parental income. You do not have to take a gap year. You can be in a family on, say, $70,000 a year and have kids who need to move away from home. They will get benefits, and they would have missed out under the Howard government’s scheme. The prime way of becoming eligible for youth allowance is directly on parental income.

Of course we are talking about bringing the independence age down from 25 to 22. I was amazed by the contribution from the member for Kalgoorlie, who said students should be judged on their own income. We are the party that has brought to the parliament the proposition to bring the independence age down. He sat in a government with an independence age that was put up to 25 and would have voted for every piece of that legislation.

Then members like the member for Kalgoorlie ask, ‘Why do you means test?’ We means test to put dollars into the pockets of people who need it the most. The pension is means tested. Family tax benefit is means tested. Every social security benefit in this country is means tested. If the Liberal Party now stands for a universalist system of welfare payments for every income category, I will be amazed; we will be hearing more from John Howard and Peter Costello if that has happened—if their new vision is that we should wake up in Sweden with the associated tax rates. What a load of nonsense! In government everything they did was means tested. Indeed, the grand new paid parental leave scheme of the Leader of the Opposition is what? It is means tested at $150,000—the same income cut-off in these amendments. So, if the member for Kalgoorlie and others reckon means testing is wrong, they had better get on to the Leader of the Opposition about his paid parental leave scheme, because obviously they do not support that either, let alone our current pension arrangements, let alone our current family tax benefit arrangements—and the list goes on.

What else is in this package? There are $4,000 relocation scholarships to make a difference to kids and the start-up scholarships that I have spoken about. This is a package that will benefit students across the country. When you run the geographic spread, every electorate is a winner. More people in every electorate qualify for youth allowance under this package than under the old Howard government arrangements. They are the facts, not the hypocrisy that we have heard from the other side.

On the question of amendments to this bill I freely acknowledge that when this bill was first brought to the parliament there were legitimate concerns about students who had made their arrangements before it could have been known that the student income support scheme was going to change. (Extension of time granted) When we brought this bill to the parliament, yes, there was a problem for students in the transition between the old and the new schemes. It was raised by members of the government backbench. To be fair, it was raised by some members of the coalition backbench. It was raised by the rural Independents in the parliament. It was raised by the Greens and by Senator Xenophon and it was fixed in negotiation with the Greens and Senator Xenophon—fully and completely fixed. The opposition are now trying to take credit for those amendments. They had absolutely nothing to do with those amendments. Those amendments that made sure that people were not caught in transition problems were wholly agreed between the government and the Greens and Senator Xenophon, and I thank them for their maturity in dealing with those amendments. They are the ones who deserve the credit for having negotiated those amendments for a problem that was raised by Labor backbenchers and rural Independents in this House.

Listening to the speeches that have just been given, one would be absolutely amazed to know—when coalition speaker after coalition speaker has got up and bagged these amendments—these amendments are before this House because they were agreed with the coalition. There is no other reason they are here. They are before this House because they were agreed with the coalition. If the coalition does not like them, why did you agree with them? What a load of old cobblers! They were agreed with the coalition and then speaker after speaker has got up and said, ‘We do not like the index.’ The index is the index that has been used across government for geographic divisions of this country since 2001. If you do not like this index, I am very happy for any member of the coalition to say, ‘Every minute I was a member of the Howard government since 2001 I supported this index and I was wrong every minute that I did it.’ To construe this index as something that is only used for health programs is 100 per cent wrong. It is used for other programs, including education and child care. I have not put any lines on a map. I have got the index that has been accepted as the appropriate index across government, across departments, across the Howard government, across the Rudd Labor government—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop interjecting

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

since 2001, and no amount of caterwauling by the member for Mackellar will change that simple truth.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop interjecting

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

The member for Mackellar may find herself amusing but others do not.

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

On the question of the delivery of these benefits, opposition members now say there is something with wrong with the index. Well, it is their index. Then we had the member for Hinkler suggest that somehow it is neglectful that my department or my office did not come up with a purpose-specific map of Australia for student income support. It is a pretty tough thing to do when the first time the opposition ever raised with us that they would accept a geographic division of the country on these questions was last Tuesday. How was one to do a purpose-specific map from last Tuesday? Obviously, we used the map that is across government. The change to the map—the so-called great victory that the opposition have had on all of this—is to change the circumstances for 1,900 students in a revenue neutral change that is being paid for with a small reduction in student start-up scholarships. They fought all these months, caused all these uncertainties, promulgated a billion dollar plan; they have settled for an amendment of less than $100 million for 1,900 students.

I conclude by saying that, in respect of the coalition contributions, they say this is not enough. Well, if they do not think it is enough, make a promise to the electorate that if they are elected as the government at the next election they will spend half a billion or a billion more to deliver what they say they want to deliver. The only political promise from the opposition at the moment is that, in government, they would have a review. Every opposition member who has spoken in this debate and said they would fix this in government is not telling the truth. The only thing that they have committed to is a review. All of this expectation raising and now they are walking away from the students whose expectations they have raised. It is a dreadful and cruel hoax.

I conclude by thanking the people who have worked hard on this package in my department and ought not to have been the subject of criticism in this debate: Robyn Shannon, Diane Peacock, Alison Moorehead, Colin Caldwell, Oliver Caddick, Robert Grew, Brett Harris, Danny Edmonds and Marg Simmons. And of course thanks to my own staff, particularly to Jim Round, for their work on delivering these beneficial changes for Australian students.

Question agreed to.