Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition is today providing better support for young Australians by amending the means test for youth payments. As many parents, students and teachers in rural communities across the country will know, these tests have been a barrier to higher education for our kids. At last, our students will be the beneficiaries of common sense changes to youth allowance in order to let them be judged on their merits and not on their ability to pay. Education must be about the books not the bills—for students and parents. The system, as it stands, has prevented hundreds of young people from accessing payments and kept others from receiving the support they need. Whether through an adverse assessment of the family actual means test or the family assets test, some students are being left out in the cold in terms of the support that they are eligible for.

This bill will change the lives of hundreds of families living in rural communities in three key ways: (1) it will mean that the family farm is no longer included in the application for youth allowance; (2) families will no longer have other children kept out of means test and thereby make other children ineligible or eligible for less; and (3) it will mean that, when they do gain access to their youth allowance, students will benefit from a higher rate. For rural and regional families, supporting a child in further education is expensive. It often means that the child has to move away to university or to a TAFE to learn a trade. These young Australians cannot just nip home for lunch or to do a load of washing. The cost of living is something that they face up-front and in full.

Consider this, as we are nearly at the time of VCE exams: a student who is currently studying at a college in Wannon will no doubt take some well-earned rest after the gruelling experience of year 12. If they have done well and kept their head down, they might get into their preferred university in Melbourne or Geelong, some distance away from home. But these offers will only be sent out in January with classes starting in February. This gives our country student a month—maybe six weeks—to move their life to a brand new city. While some students their age will be making the same move out of home, few will be doing it hours of travel away in a different city. They have to pay rent, they have to try to find part-time work, they have to be able to try to get home and they have to do it between getting an offer in January and sitting down to their first class in February. All of these costs—rent, fuel et cetera—add up for these young Australians. Providing youth allowance to these people is incredibly important.

If our young students from rural areas are to be given the kinds of opportunities provided to those in the city, common sense must be applied to the challenges that face them. If we want to give our students the best start we can give them, with an equal opportunity for rural students, these measures will be passed. To the year 12s currently studying for their final exams at the end of this month I say good luck, but I also say that we will be with you when you are done. This bill will be with those students, if we can pass it this year—with the effects taking place on 1 January 2016. They are working hard for our future, so let us work hard for theirs.

In Warrnambool, in my electorate, we recently held a forum to discuss the challenges to accessing higher education for rural communities. I was joined by Senator Bridget McKenzie and representatives from the Department of Education and Training and the Department of Social Services in engaging with students, parents and teachers on this issue. The overwhelming view was that there are significant financial barriers to accessing further education for school leavers from rural and regional areas. I take a moment to thank Senator Bridget McKenzie for the work that she has done in highlighting this issue and conducting forums across the country, making sure that students, their parents and communities have had the ability to have a say on this issue.

At that Warrnambool forum, Rural Industries Skill Training Chief Executive, Bill Hamill, told the hearing that living away from home expenses concerned regional parents more than the fees to go to university. Very simply: the cost put on these students is far greater than those on their city counterparts. In relation to another major aspect to these changes—the dependency on parents after school—passing these changes will see fewer students having to rely on parents to pay for these living away from home expenses. Again, education should be about books not bills. It is particularly important for those parents who will, at stages in their lives, be dealing with this issue not just for one child but will sometimes have three or more children in higher education at the one time. In putting forward this legislation, the coalition government is doing just that. We are cutting regulation and red tape out of the support system for students and parents. By removing the family assets test, for example, around 4,100 more students will become eligible for youth allowance payments for the first time. This will mean each of these young people will on average get an extra $7,000 each year to help with their cost of living. This is a significant increase which will mean that their ability to focus on their books rather than on their bills will be the dominant theme of what they do throughout the year.

This money can go towards paying bills, getting home to see family and buying all the things that are needed to take up a trade or a degree. Education is so important, and this will help in this regard. Each one of these 4,100 students already knows that this is what their time studying should be focused on, and now their government, thanks to the coalition government, knows it too.

The government will also change parental income tests in relation to applying for youth allowance. Making this system more common sense and including all family tax benefit children in the family pool will mean that 13,700 families will have children who will become eligible for around $1,100 more in their payments each year. Around 5,800 families who currently miss out on payments due to the combined higher taper rates will also become eligible for an average payment of around $1,300. The coalition government's common sense has meant that families and students will benefit from these changes and these benefits will be felt strongest in rural communities.

Do not underestimate the importance of this move. Sure, it is not exactly where we want to be when it comes to ensuring that students have the ability to know what, if they want to pursue tertiary education, they can do so in a way where the cost burden on them or their families will not be a consideration in whether they should go on to tertiary education. This bill helps get us part way down the path. I must congratulate and thank the former minister for social security for the way that he consulted with members from regional and rural communities in bringing about these changes. Both he and his office were prepared to engage, listen and take advice from those members in regional and rural communities for whom this issue is significant.

It was only through that listening that we have got to where we are, but it will require us seeing how these changes work, looking and learning from them and then looking at other aspects. For instance, there are still some anomalies for those who defer to get independent youth allowance and the time frame for which they have to defer, which means that in some cases they are better off deferring for two years rather than one year before they take up tertiary studies. We all know from the statistics that, the longer they defer, the larger the percentage that will not go on to do tertiary education. While taking a gap year is one way of overcoming the expenses of relocating to get to tertiary education, sadly, it also means that we lose people from getting a tertiary degree. As we have seen from the previous bill that just went through the parliament—the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement—for us to capitalise on agreements like that, we need to be able to do so across the board, whether it is in the services sector, the agriculture sector, the manufacturing sector or the mining sector. In particular, when it comes to the education sector, we have to make sure that our students right across this great nation are all getting the type of tertiary education that they deserve and that cost is not a factor in this.

I would like to conclude by thanking all the people in my electorate of Wannon who have made submissions to me, who have written to me, who have campaigned for change in this area, who have not let go of their campaign to ensure that there is greater fairness and social justice in ensuring that people across the board can get access to tertiary education. I have had letters from families pointing out how they have had to make significant sacrifices to get their children to tertiary studies. I have heard other stories of families having to sit down with their kids and explain to them that their financial circumstances mean that they will have to defer, work and get the money themselves if they want to go on to tertiary studies. Students have said to me how they would have liked to be able to return home more often to see family but the cost of fuel or the cost involved in getting home has meant that, whereas they would have loved to get home every couple of months, they are restricted to doing it every three to six months.

That community feedback has meant that my passion to see change in this issue has grown from day 1—grown since that dreadful time when the previous Labor government first made those shameful changes discriminating against country students some six years ago. This bill goes part way to addressing that, and I commend and congratulate all the regional and rural MPs, both National and Liberal, on the coalition side who have worked in unison to make sure that we have got the outcome that we have got before us today.

Ensuring that our young students have the choice to get to tertiary education is something which is vital to the future of this nation. We have to ensure that our children are going to have the skills and the education to set them up for life in a globalised world in the 21st century. Our businesses are not just competing across state boundaries and communities; they are competing now across the globe. We have to make sure that we are innovative. We have to make sure that we are agile. Above all else, we have to make sure that our students have the education they need to ensure they will succeed in the coming years.

John Cobb (Calare, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise with pleasure to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (More Generous Means Testing for Youth Payments) Bill 2015. I welcome the introduction of this bill to the House as it will, as it says, mean a more generous and consistent system of assessment for families with dependent young people who qualify for a variety of youth income support payments.

As my responsibility is primarily to regional and rural farming families, I would like to focus on the benefits of this bill for them. The reform will remove the family assets test and the family actual means test from the youth allowance parental means test arrangements. It will align parental income test exemptions for youth allowance with existing arrangements for family tax benefit part A and it will remove maintenance income from the youth allowance parental income test. It is extraordinarily important.

The changes will come into effect from the beginning of next year—in other words, at the beginning of the next education year. At the start of 2017, a separate maintenance support income test for the treatment of child support like that currently applying to family tax benefit part A will be brought in. From July 2016, where a family has a dependent child who receives an individual youth payment that is parentally income tested and younger siblings who qualify for the family tax benefit, the family pool for the youth parental income test will include all FTB-eligible children.

Access to higher education is one of those obvious areas wherein the further away you live from everyone else the more disadvantaged who are. I am the first person to put my hand up and say, 'If you want everything you can get in a city then do not come out and live where we are.' But, where possible, we do have to give an opportunity to those who are in isolated areas to have an education. While I accept that we have a far better lifestyle in regional Australia and an awful lot of advantages, obviously education and health can be—and I stress 'can be'—somewhat disadvantaged. While that will always be the case and cannot be avoided, I think we have a duty, as much as is reasonable and possible, to improve that access and make it less onerous.

The bill will particularly benefit our rural and regional families whose children are looking to continue studying beyond year 12. At the moment, some young people coming from farming families are missing out on youth allowance due to the asset testing currently in place. It makes the decision to go to university a tough one for many young people as in almost all cases they would have to move away from home. It can be very expensive and it can be very difficult to find a job quickly, especially in some university towns where there are obviously a lot of students competing for jobs.

Removing the family assets test youth allowance will allow around 4,100 additional payments. This will be the first time these young people will qualify for annual payments of around $7,000. As somebody who was involved in the education of seven children, I can tell you that they can do a lot with $7,000. Young people in the bush deserve a fair go. I hesitate to say we deserve the same access to education as our metropolitan counterparts, but we do need the encouragement and, as much as possible, the assistance of government and the taxpayer to get that access. This bill ensures that, in large part, that access can become available.

Around 1,200 more young people will be receiving youth allowance for the first time. As well, we will be increasing payments for around 5,000 existing students by about $2,000 a year. These changes mean rural and regional farming families will not have their assets counted towards the means test of their dependent children. This is a practical measure as the assets of farming families and others are not always a good representation of their income. As somebody who has depended upon agriculture my whole life and who probably will for the rest of it, I can tell you that farming families are capital bound and income poor.

There are already of a lot of pressures in rural and regional areas. Things like drought and isolation prove huge hurdles. The bill will at least help remove one of those challenges by allowing a younger regional person to choose if higher education is what they need or want. These young people should not be prevented from achieving their potential on account of the privilege of being born in the bush. They have a huge amount to contribute to our nation, and they do. If there is one thing that people in remote areas do it is contribute to the nation way above their weight. There are not many of them, but they produce a heck of a lot.

This is an investment in Australia's future, and it is particularly an investment in Australia's future for those in our society who do populate rural, remote and regional Australia and who we want to keep doing that. Let them go and get educated, learn their skills and then go back out to where we need them. Let then use that extra knowledge and experience to be even greater contributors to Australia than they currently are.

I am very proud to represent those people. My original electorate has some of the most remote places in Australia attached to it. It looks like the member for Parkes, Mark Coulton, is going to pinch all that country soon. If he does, I know he will be just as proud of that part of the world as I have always been. It is just magnificent to be out at Tibooburra and go and see the School of the Air situated in the most remote town in New South Wales. It has got 150 people—it has got two pubs, though. We do need people from that part of the world to go to Sydney to get an education and go back out there and make Tibooburra an even better place.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Education plays an integral role, a vital role, a crucial role in developing vibrant and sustainable regional communities. It is absolutely critical that we get everything right with education, and certainly the Social Services Legislation Amendment (More Generous Means Testing for Youth Payments) Bill 2015 goes part of the way towards doing that. Of course, there are so many other things that we need to do as far as education is concerned, and we, the Turnbull-Truss government, are getting on with the job of doing that.

Access to educational opportunities increases, lifts and raises the aspirations of young people and of regional communities. It is an individual thing; it is a collective thing. There is a significant divide between rural and regional students and metropolitan students, and it is not just the Great Dividing Range. It is not just that great sandstone curtain that divides the Sydney-Wollongong-Newcastle metropolitan areas from the rest of New South Wales. There is a significant divide between country folk and their metropolitan cousins. Rural and regional communities have long suffered the consequences—economically, educationally and socially.

The figures are alarming when it comes to education.    Only 17 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds from regional areas have a bachelor's degree or higher qualification, compared with 36 per cent from the same age group who live in the capital cities—those who live within those big city lights. In remote areas, that figure is only 15.4 per cent. We just heard from the member for Calare, who has fiercely represented many of those remote areas. He mentioned the member for Parkes, who also has. When you look at the proposed boundaries for Parkes under last week's Australian Electoral Commission redistribution, he will be representing more than 400,000 square kilometres. If it were a country, Parkes would be the 60th largest in the world under the new boundaries. So he will represent—and has represented in the past—many remote students very well.

A student from regional Australia has only a 33 per cent chance of attending university, compared to a 55 per cent chance for students from major metropolitan areas. I see the member for Rankin is nodding. He understands. He gets it. As Australians, we all understand the tyranny of distance in modern society, but its significance has not been replicated across policy. Distance has created the significant divide between capital cities and regional Australia, resulting in what I would argue are policy inequalities.

The Nationals, both in opposition and in government, have been working hard to bridge the gap and to maintain a strong voice, as they always have, advocating in the best interests of regional young people, because that is what we do as National Party members, whether we are sitting on the opposition benches or whether we are, indeed, sitting on the government benches and are able to help formulate policy and help with the financing aspect.

Senator Fiona Nash has led the charge for years. With all due respect to my colleague opposite, I have to say, against Labor, that in the past government they made it extremely difficult and unfair for regional students to access youth allowance. This was due to the changes that were made during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. Regional students struggled immensely in those six years to afford tertiary education because of what I would argue, what I would say and what I rightly believe were unfair changes made to independent youth allowance. It demonstrates how completely out of touch Labor was with regional communities in those six years between 2007 and 2013. A sustained campaign led by regional communities and the Nationals in coalition eventually forced a Labor government backflip.

In the Riverina, access to youth allowance can be the determining factor for students and their families—and we have to include families in this because it is not just about the student. It is also about the cost that it brings to bear on what are often farming families, on what often are families with small businesses. Sometimes, under what were Labor's unfair policies, it meant that only one student from a family was able to go to university. The family was only able to afford one. Students need to be able to pursue a tertiary education.

I have three children. Georgina, who is now a secondary high school teacher at Griffith, was fortunate. She studied at Charles Sturt University at Wagga Wagga and was able to live at home. Alexander, who is an accountant, is studying a course at the moment through Charles Sturt University. My and Catherine's youngest son, Nicholas, is doing an electrical apprenticeship next year, and I have always argued and always will argue that a trade certificate is every bit equal to a diploma or a degree. My children were fortunate that they were able to stay at home, but many country students do not have the good fortune to be able to do the courses that they want to do in their home town and therefore are forced to go elsewhere and to work many, many hours doing a job to help pay their way. It creates good time management skills but it also creates hardship for their families.

The Nationals recognise and understand there is a serious inequity which exists between regional and metropolitan students when it comes to accessing tertiary education, hence this bill before the parliament this afternoon. It costs between $15,000 and $20,000 a year to send a child away to a university or college of technical and further education, a cost which is greatly experienced on far more occasions by families living in regional Australia, outside of those bright city lights. The Nationals have been fighting hard for the establishment of a tertiary access allowance, a policy we developed prior to the last election. This proposal was designed to directly assist regional families and students needing to relocate significant distances to undertake tertiary studies.

Over the past three months, the Chair of the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, Victorian Senator Bridget McKenzie, has been travelling to all corners of regional Australia to host regional higher education forums to discuss the barriers that regional, rural and remote students face when accessing higher education. The 20 or so forums that Senator McKenzie has held across the country will provide—and have provided—innovative ideas and inform policy going forward to better support students from regional and remote communities.

On 29 July I held a forum at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga with students, teachers, lecturers, career advisers and parents to discuss regional barriers our local students face. The media turned up as well, which was good because it meant that the awareness message was able to get out there. The common theme from the Wagga Wagga forum was the financial barriers regional students face when pursuing a tertiary education. I am pleased to say that the measures contained in this bill will help to alleviate and address some of the concerns and issues raised on that day.

The Nationals in government will continue to    push for equity and fairness for regional students. In coalition negotiations, Prime Minister Turnbull made the commitment to Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Nationals Warren Truss to implement a plan to address the financial barriers regional students face in pursuing higher education pathways. This is very important. It is a huge win for regional students and families and a direct result of the Nationals delivering a strong voice for regional Australia in the coalition, as we have always done and as we will continue to do.

In the budget, in May this year, the coalition announced the measures contained in this bill to assist families and to encourage more young people, particularly from rural, regional and remote Australia, into further study. Students from asset-rich but cash-poor farming families will be more than $7,000 a year better off following the removal of the family assets test when considering eligibility for youth allowance. That is important because some of these rural, regional and remote families might be asset rich but, particularly in north-west New South Wales and southern Queensland, they have been in drought conditions for four years, and that was after only a couple of years of good seasons, preceded by a decade or more of the Millennium Drought. So they have had tough times for going on 14 of the past 16 years. When they are asset rich but cash poor, it is a bit difficult to send young Johnny or young Mary off to university for a better future, for that tertiary degree.

For farming families and small businesses across the country, this removal of the family assets test will mean the value of farms and trusts will no longer be considered when people apply for youth allowance. That is an important measure. It will benefit around 4,100 dependent young people who will qualify for youth allowance. That is 4,100 young people who are going to get access to a better future and possibly a better life because of this legislation. This is a game changer for many young people, who will now qualify for the very first time. It is a positive change for the families in the regions who have for far too long been disadvantaged due to the application of the family assets test.

I have been the member for Riverina since 2010, following Kay Hull, a strident advocate for a fairer deal for young students. I know how great a priority she placed on this. I see the member for Forrest up the back, ready to speak, and she knows how important this is, because she attended the meetings that I attended when we discussed this with the relevant ministers. When it comes to this issue, she has been a strident advocate for fairer measures for many, many years, and I know she will continue to be a great advocate for young students in her regional area in Western Australia. Mrs Hull told me of the importance of this. I always knew how important it would be, but the number of phone calls, letters and emails that my electorate office received when I became the member for Riverina in 2010 and the number of people who pulled me up in Wagga Wagga, Griffith, West Wyalong, Tumbarumba, or wherever I went throughout my electorate, showed that this was an issue that was so important to people. I am glad that this legislation is before the House today so that we can do something positive about it. It is a positive change for families in the region. They have been far too long disadvantaged by the application of the family assets test.

With the removal of both the family assets test and the family actual means test from the youth allowance parental income test, the assessment of a young person's access to youth allowance will be based on a fairer measure of family income. Simplifying the parental means test will provide additional assistance for farming families—and all those others in regional areas too; they are not just farming families. Regional Australia is transforming, but farming families and small business are the great drivers of regional Australia. This is making the system fairer for students who need the support the most. Treating the family farm or business as income is illogical. Many farming families have significant assets on paper, but this does not translate to the bank balance. It is the same for small business, Mr Deputy Speaker Kelly. You know that, coming from the electorate of Hughes.

When a farmer's son or daughter is accepted into university, the cash-poor farmer cannot just sell half a paddock or hock the tractor to fully fund the extent of relocating their children to attend university. That is why it is important that the measures in this bill are implemented. They will greatly benefit young people and make a difference to families who the face geographic challenges of living and working in rural and regional Australia. I commend the work of the regional coalition MPs for the development of these measures. The government is doing what it can to lift higher education participation rates in country areas and allow regional students to be more competitive with students in the capital cities.

It is concerning that, of the one-third of the Australian population living in regional Australia, only 21 per cent make up Australia's university population. We need to change that and this bill will help. There is still a lot of hard work to undertake to close the gap between regional and city students. We must continue to work hard—I know the member for Forrest will—to increase participation rates in tertiary education and to address the unique challenges facing regional students. The removal of the Family Assets Test as well as the decision to remove the Family Actual Means Test are positive first steps in making the system fairer for regional and rural young people.

I commend the work done by Senators Nash and McKenzie, the member for Gippsland and others. The Nationals will continue to fight for fairness and deliver positive outcomes for young people across regional Australia in this parliament.

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

I am particularly pleased to speak on this bill today because it introduces measures aimed to align, more closely, the parental means testing arrangements for Youth Allowance with the arrangements for Family Tax Benefit Part A. It is not the ultimate solution, as we have heard from other speakers, for all of the issues surrounding the provision of support for students throughout rural and regional Australia, but it is a step along the way. It is another step made by this government.

This is an issue that is really critical. Other members and the previous speak spoke very eloquently about the demand for this in our rural and regional communities. There is no question that, when I travel throughout my electorate, it is one of the most common issues that families and young people talk to me about. In fact, only last week I was at Cape Naturaliste College and that was the issue that the staff and students were wanting to know most about. As members know, prior to coming into this place, this was an issue that I was working very hard on because it is so important. Young people in rural and regional areas really need the opportunities to carry on and, not only follow their dreams, but to gain the skills and the education they need to come back to our rural and regional communities and help those communities grow.

It has been a battle of regional MPs on this side of the House for as long as I have been in this place. It was my motion, on 28 October 2010, which called on the then Labor government to reverse its decision to discriminate against regional students in the changes that they had enacted, and they were discriminatory changes. Members on this side could not simply sit back and allow that to continue. The motion that I put was the first defeat on the floor of the House for an incumbent government for a long, long time and represented, I thought, a low point for Labor when they were in government. Labor had, as it is so prone to do, disadvantaged regional Australian families and students to by diverting funds meant for Youth Allowance into outer metropolitan seats that they thought were Labor strongholds in which they were desperate to find an electoral advantage.

After a two-year campaign in 2010 and 2011 to right the disgraceful discrimination that the previous Labor government had arbitrarily inflicted on students and their families, the Labor government were then shamed into making some changes. It was clear that what they had done was affecting rural and regional students and their families in a dreadful way. I met so many young people who had changed what they were planning to do with their futures. There were young people who did not bother to pursue their higher education dreams because they knew that their family could not afford to keep them in a metropolitan area to pursue their education. It was tragic. The one thing we have never been able to calculate was how many of those young people had to take an alternative pathway or never pursued their higher education dreams. That really, really hurt me at the time. I met parents in supermarkets who were literally crying: 'My husband and I have both taken a second job. We can't do any more, but we still can't afford for our young people to go onto higher education.' We need to encourage these great young people. They have every right to pursue higher education and go onto whatever it is that they are best suited for and want to do.

The Gillard government changed the rules in 2012 so that students described as 'inner regional' and 'outer regional' would be treated equally in applying for independent Youth Allowance. On the surface that sounds good, but in reality 'treated equally' probably means 'treated equally badly'. The Labor government told the Australian community that they would end their discrimination, but hid another slap in the face for students and parents by dumping the 'independent' part of the independent Youth Allowance. Students are classified as 'independent' but they are not dependent on people, including their parents, but the Labor government added a Parental Means Test to a student classified as 'independent'. Many students look to take a gap year to earn enough money to be considered independent. It especially applies to regional students, the vast majority of whom have no choice but to move away from home to pursue their higher education studies. They have boarding costs, accommodation costs, of tens of thousands of dollars. They are the sorts of costs that metropolitan students who live at home do not have to worry about and neither do their families. It is a massive impost on rural and regional families that metropolitan families simply do not have to face, which is something unfortunately that the Labor government repeatedly ignored; they ignored our kids.

I heard the stories over and over about families wondering if they could afford to send their children to tertiary education. The most heartbreaking thing was the families who said to me, particularly when they had more than one child, that they had to decide which one of their children they could actually afford to send on to university. Parents said, 'We actually have to choose which one of our kids can go to university.' That is a heartbreaking choice for any parent. Equally, it is a heartbreaking choice for a child who knows their family cannot afford to send them and they say to mum and dad, 'No, mum and dad, I'm actually going to do other things. I'm not even going to try. I'm going to take a different pathway, go on to do VET or go to work.' That is exactly what happens. That was really a tough time.

The payment of youth allowance is subject to an assets test. Youth allowance is not payable to a person if the assets test applies to the person and the value of the person's assets if that is more than the value limit. From January 1 2016, the assets test under part 2.11, division 2, subdivision AB will not apply to non-dependent young people. This is really an interesting thing: 'non-independent' is an interesting way of saying 'dependent'. Dependent youth allowance recipients will no longer be assets tested.

Removing the family assets test will allow around 4,100 additional dependent youth allowance young people to qualify for the first time. Can you imagine what this means to those young people? It is the first time for their family. They are going the opportunity that they otherwise would not have had. That is for 4,100 young people—how awesome is that? That is a great result. They will be able to access annual payments of more than $7,000 a year, meaning that small business families and farming families will not have their assets counted towards the means test for their children claiming youth allowance. It is an important reform and a step in the right direction. But it is for dependent—that is, non-independent—youth allowance.

The changes also impact on the income test component of youth allowance for a small section of the community. From 2016, there will be no parental income test exemption for young people with a parent who is receiving a New Enterprise Incentive Scheme Commonwealth allowance or qualifies for a low-income healthcare card. The proportion of young people living in regional areas in this category who are seeking to study is not necessarily really high, but 4,100 young people is a great result.

Removing the family actual means test will see around 1,200 more young people receiving youth allowance for the first time, as well as increasing payments for around 4,860 existing students by approximately $2,000 a year. In addition, the changes will remove maintenance such as child support from the income test equation and step 3 of the parental income test involves working out the person's combined parental income. There are other changes in this particular bill. They are all particularly important.

What I wanted to go back to is that around 5,800 families, who currently miss out on payments due to the combined higher taper rates, will also become eligible for an average payment of around $1,300 a year. With a commitment from the government of $262.7 million over the forward estimates, this bill will bring extra support to thousands of families in various ways.

But as I said earlier, I am sure that rural and regional members' offices—and there several of those members in the chamber now, such as the member for Corangamite—would be the same. They would have the same issues in their electorates of young people who are desperate to go onto higher education but whose families are in a situation where they simply cannot afford for that to happen. I see that we have other local members from Western Australia as well in this place. Equally, right around the large state of WA, this is a common issue.

What we need to understand is that we have got a lot of great young people and they do want the opportunity to go on to higher education, but they find it particularly difficult. Accommodation costs are only one part. The other things that I would mention are some of the challenges of living away from home. It can be particularly difficult for young people who head off to the city for the first time. They do need support when they are actually living away from home. If you are a student who lives with mum and dad at home, you live in a metropolitan or urban area and you are having a tough day, when you come home you can let off steam and you can find support because the people around you love you. They will put up with you saying some pretty harsh things if you are really under pressure because of your exams. I see the new member for Canning here. He will also have young people affected by this issue of youth allowance.

When the students come home, if it is their family they are coming home to, then they are going to have someone to listen to them and to support them. When they are living away from home, this also is not necessarily easiest for them because the people around them are other students. They might be people completely not related to them. They do not have that same opportunity for support. There are a number of issues that face young people who come from rural and regional Australia.

We have thought long and hard on this. I had a group of people from my electorate who came to a meeting with the two departments and actually talked about the major issues facing them with youth allowance. The debate is the same; it is ongoing. I will keep fighting on this. Yes, this is a step. But just as we said earlier, it is the first step and an ongoing step. I will continue my fight for rural and regional students right around Australia who have to move away from home to pursue their higher education dreams.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.