Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Disability and Carers (House)) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm speaking today on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (14-month Regional Independence Criteria) Bill 2018. In 2017 the parliament passed the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Simplifying Student Payments) Bill with the support of Labor. The simplifying student payments bill included an amendment which made it easier for young people from regional and remote areas to qualify as independent for youth allowance purposes. Recipients of youth allowance are paid at either a dependent or an independent rate. The rate of youth allowance received by someone who's assessed as dependent is affected by their parents' income, whereas the rate for a recipient classed as independent is not.

There are a number of ways an applicant can qualify as independent for the purposes of youth allowance, including where they have supported themselves through paid work over an 18-month period since finishing secondary school. The Simplifying Student Payments Act reduced the existing 18-month period to 14 months for students from regional and remote Australia. As a result of the change, from 1 January 2018, full-time students from regional or remote areas who need to move from their parental home to study can qualify as independent if, since leaving secondary school, they have, firstly, over a 14-month period earned 75 per cent or more of wage level A of the national training wage schedule included in a modern award—and in the 2017-18 financial year this was equal to $24,836—or, secondly, for at least two years worked at least 15 hours each week. Their parents must also have earned less than $150,000 in the previous tax year.

It was intended that the new 14-month period be applied to existing and new youth allowance applicants; however, a drafting error meant that this has only been applied to youth allowance applicants from 1 January 2018. The bill corrects this by applying the 14-month period to young people who were receiving youth allowance prior to 1 January 2018. It is anticipated that the bill would allow around 300 young Australians to claim independence for youth allowance purposes, using the reduced 14-month period, not the original 18-month period.

Labor will support this bill because, as with the previous act, we do believe that young Australians should have the right to a tertiary education, if they wish. Although this bill will help a small number of students, and that's a good thing, this government is making other changes that will have a significant negative impact on students. This conservative government has frozen Commonwealth grants for universities, effectively ending the demand-driven system and locking some students out of education. We've also seen this government propose a lowering of the threshold for the repayment of HECS-HELP loans to $45,000, meaning that more young Australians will have to repay their HECS-HELP debt sooner.

It was of course the former Labor government that lifted the caps on the number of university places, and this has led to significant increases in the number of students able to attend university. So, since places were uncapped in 2009, there has been a 55 per cent growth in university enrolments from the poorest fifth of Australian households, and a 48 per cent growth in regional and rural students at university. In addition, we've seen an 89 per cent growth in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students attending university and a 106 per cent increase in students with disabilities. That's been a wonderful change.

The lesson, sadly, seems to be that Labor opens the door to learning and opportunity but this conservative government, in large measure, shuts it. This Prime Minister's $2.2 billion cuts to universities are hitting home. Just today, Universities Australia chair, Professor Margaret Gardner, has urged the government not to 'slam the door of opportunity shut on young Australians who aspire to a tertiary education'. Make no mistake, these cuts will hurt regional and rural Australian students. We know that the Central Queensland University, the University of the Sunshine Coast and other smaller Queensland institutions have been holding emergency meetings on whether they could continue to offer some courses or services. There are reports that some universities are turning away students. It's estimated that around 10,000 students will miss out on a place at university this year as a result of this Prime Minister's harsh cuts.

We on this side of the House want to make sure that Australians, particularly young Australians, have access to the best post-secondary opportunities in the world. Sadly, this Prime Minister wants to make it harder for young people to access post-secondary opportunities. I thank the House.

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

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (14-month Regional Independence Criteria) Bill 2018. I thank the member for Jagajaga for those comments. The first half of her speech I thought was pretty to the point and on the money. The second half, I must say, I thought was a heap of political claptrap with very little truth in it. It has been a long haul addressing the injustices that rural, regional and remote students face in accessing tertiary education. Today we take another small step, but we still have a long way to go. Regional students make up just 18.8 per cent of entry level university students, despite comprising more than 25 per cent of the population. That's something we need to fix. This parliament dealt with the issue of the implications of the 18-month period a student must face before they could access independent youth allowance last year. It was an overhang and an overreach from the first Rudd government. A group of us have been fighting ever since to undo some of the reforms that the Rudd government brought in under Julia Gillard as the education minister at the time. There were some good things in it, but there were others that greatly disadvantaged regional students, and it's been a long battle putting some of those measures back in place and trying to fix up some other injustices that sit within the system.

The system does not sufficiently recognise the cost of getting students from regional areas to university. The current estimate is around about $25,000 extra per year that country students face to access university, which city students, who can live with their families, do not face. For country students, living away from home is not an option; it's a necessity. The cost of emotional separation, the cost of accommodation, catering for oneself as opposed to being catered for by the family—I mean in the sense of food—and for most, the need to have a car of reasonable quality capable of the journey home, to go and visit family and recharge the batteries, if you like.

The education cost itself is not such an issue. The majority of tertiary education funding for students in Australia is met by the taxpayer with the contribution of the fully subsidised HECS-HELP loans. That side of the equation can be managed by the families. For some students, though, just knowing that parents don't have the ability to finance their tertiary education is enough to steer them away. They don't necessarily tell their parents. They don't want to put extra pressure on their family. They don't want their parents to be in a position of denying them access to tertiary education. So they say, 'Well, actually I don't really want to go to university. I would be happy doing A, B, and C.' They leave school and go off and get a job instead.

For many youth allowance is the only way that they can get to university. It's a big help, but it still leaves a significant gap. However, once parental income reaches $57,000 a year or thereabouts, the rate of youth allowance begins to decline, until it disappears completely at around $108,000 with one child away from home. Remember, though, that these are before-tax earnings and not what parents have available as disposable income. However, regional students have been able to access independent youth allowance by showing they have been supporting themselves for a certain period of time.

There's been a major area of contest since the first Rudd government changed the arrangements for access to independent youth allowance, when fair, reasonable access was made that much more difficult. And since that time, I and a number of my like-minded colleagues—one has just jointed me to my left, the member for Forrest—have worked together as a group. I call us the rural education rump. We have worked very hard to try and undo some of the damage, and we've had some success. In some areas we have done even better than the pre-existing situation. For instance, we've managed to negotiate different treatment for regional students for the assessment of the independent youth allowance, being for outer regional, remote and very remote students, recognising at least that there is some difference and extra challenges that these students face. We've also had the parental assets test removed, relying instead quite rightly on a parental means test, which has addressed the great problem of asset-rich and income-poor businesses, particularly, but not only, in the farming industry.

The member for Jagajaga said independent youth allowance is not affected by parental income. Well, of course it's not—until you reach the point where the combined parental income is $150,000. It raises a very interesting question: what has the parents' income got to do with a student's independence? The student is either self-sufficient or not. I find that an anomaly in the system. I understand why it's there—because the $150,000 lines up with a whole lot of other cut-off areas in government assistance—but it's worth reflecting on that figure. Let's take, for example, a couple who might be a teacher and a council worker or a teacher and a policeman. With that $150,000, which is pre-tax, when you add another $25,000 per student that you are trying to get into tertiary education, it is quite a gap.

So we've also had an issue with the length of time a student is subject to justifying the independence criteria, which was 18 months. Last year we made that change. If they completed year 12 in November of the school year, the student would take a gap year to accumulate the required amount of minimum income, which at this stage is 75 per cent of the training wage level A, which is currently almost $25,000. This is a reasonable challenge but it is certainly not insurmountable. For instance, an income of $15 an hour from a retail outlet, for 35 hours a week, will accumulate that amount in 12 months. But the problem was that, even though the student might accumulate that target amount of earnings in 12 or 14 months, they couldn't qualify until the 18 months expired—about May in the second year after the student left school—pushing some to a two-year gap.

Most would concur that that was far less than ideal and students needed to be very motivated to actually get through a two-year gap without being distracted and going off and finding another job and actually finding they are making progress there and perhaps never returning to their first true love or the thing that they really wanted to do. I certainly appreciated the opposition's support when that legislation went through this House last year and brought that qualification period back to 14 months. But today's legislation addresses that one-year group who were caught up in the change of the legislation and had already started on the qualification path when the goalposts changed. This fairly simple legislation today deals with this issue in a timely manner so, hopefully, those eligible students can begin to collect their support before university resumes in March—I think it is tomorrow. So we need to get onto this to get it through not only this chamber but the other place as well.

But it's not the end. We have achieved so much, but there is still some distance to go. I spoke about the council and the retail worker and how their combined pay might be over $150,000 but it's still an enormous challenge. They can also be devilled by distance. Some of the people who earn money like this live in places like Roxby Downs or Karratha, where the cost of living can be substantially higher than in the city. I don't think we are fully recognising those extra challenges. The coalition education rump, might I say, has kept up its job. And the government has commissioned a report from Emeritus Professor John Halsey, from Flinders University, into rural, regional and remote education. Professor Halsey has a long background in rural education. His career includes significant stints as a country teacher and a principal. He is eminently qualified, with his later positions covering senior departmental and political appointments including executive officer of Rural Education Forum Australia and, most recently, Sidney Myer Chair of Rural Education and Communities at Flinders University.

Professor Halsey will not only look at the subject of this legislation—namely, youth allowance and the funding of rural students to get into tertiary institutions in the city—he will look at a whole raft of other issues facing students from the country. In particular, I know he has a long interest in teacher and principal quality. There's also leadership. Leadership is so important in regional facilities, and I expect his report to have a significant input on this issue.

Only last week the Minister for Education and Training, Simon Birmingham, was in my electorate, and we visited John Pieri Secondary School in Port Pirie. The principal there—I will name him, because it's all good—is Roger Nottage. He's been there six years. I've been a visitor to John Pieri Secondary School over that period and before, and, without any reflection on those who preceded Roger Nottage, the school is a completely different place to where it was five or six years ago. As the minister and I walked around the grounds with Roger Nottage, he knew every student; he knew every teacher. He was having a personal conversation as he moved around the ground. As someone from The Castle might have said: it's the vibe of the place. It's the vibe of the place, and it has completely changed. I would have thought, when I was walking around, that I was at a top-quality private school in the city. Kids were in uniform, and they were really applying themselves to their tasks.

This illustrates the very important point of what leadership can do. I have seen the opposite in schools in my electorate where we've had really good standards and a new leader has come in who didn't know much about leadership. They were unskilled, and the school has gone into a spiral of decline. I'm expecting Professor Halsey's report to focus on leadership and teacher quality because he has a long history of advocating in these areas. I would be very surprised if they were not in the report.

I think—because he has flagged this issue when I and others have spoken to him—he will also look at the expectation that some schools have of students and of how they are considered a failure if they don't access university education. This is something that we need to face up to. As Australia is expanding into a services based economy, we are going to need workers with services based skills, whether they be in nursing and aged care or manufacturing and engineering. Tertiary or university education is not for every student, and many will find their way in the world in the very highly respected trades, which I think increasingly will be well rewarded.

I'm looking forward to the Halsey report, I'm looking forward to reading it carefully, and I'm looking forward to working with my rural rump, if you like, to make sure that we, on this side of the parliament, keep pushing for a better deal for rural students. We have a little way to go. We've come a long way, but we are going to keep at it.

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

Like the member for Grey, I am very pleased to be speaking on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (14-month Regional Independence Criteria) Bill 2018, particularly as it's to do with independent youth allowance. The member for Grey and I and a number of our colleagues have worked tirelessly on this issue, virtually since we were elected to this place. This bill is directly aimed at assisting more rural and regional students—the young people who live in my and the member for Grey's electorates—to achieve their higher education.

Ever since I was elected, I've pursued equity of access to higher education for rural and regional students, who have no choice but to leave home to study. These young people have no choice. So I was absolutely horrified when the then Labor government changed the independence criteria and physically excluded students from areas defined as 'inner regional'. These were my students. Labor was diverting funds from disadvantaged regional Australian families and students and delivering the funds to outer-metropolitan seats, which were Labor-held seats. This change meant that the majority of young people in my electorate were ineligible to even apply for independent youth allowance. These are the young people who live three to four hours from Perth, where they had to go to pursue their higher education studies. I remember only too well the numbers of families and young people who came to me in absolute desperation—and it was desperation. For many, this meant they had no choice but to give up their dreams, their goals and their plans to attend university. It was just dreadful to see. It changed some of those young people's lives forever, because they took a different path at that time—different to what they would have taken had they gone on to university.

I submitted a private members' motion in 2010. It called on the then Labor government to reverse this decision that discriminated against inner-regional students. The motion was supported by the majority of members in this House at the time, and was the first defeat on the floor for an incumbent government for a long time, and well it should have been. It was a disgraceful, discriminatory decision. But, unfortunately for our rural and regional students, the process of removing the funding from them and their families and redirecting it to Labor-held seats is actually Labor's standard operating procedure. It's what Labor governments do.

We're seeing a very similar approach to education from the WA state Labor government, with announcements of $64 million of education cuts, mostly in regional and rural areas. There were cuts to the five Schools of the Air and to the gifted and talented programs in Northam Residential College. It took concerted public pressure for these particular cuts to be reversed.

More recently, the CWA actually marched on state parliament to protest against the remaining $41 million of sweeping cuts to regional education. The closure of the Moora Residential College demonstrates that regional students and regional families do not matter to Labor. However, one of the most blatant and ill conceived cash grabs is taking 20 per cent of the funds from the Agricultural Education Provisions Trust. This takes money from our agricultural colleges and the Esperance Farm Training Centre in WA. These AEPT funds are earned and generated by the colleges themselves from selling their own produce. The Harvey ag school in my electorate will lose at least $50,000 a year. These are the funds the ag school uses for farm machinery, for developing their farms, for repairing and replacing fences and for the constant recurrent costs they have to meet. Labor is cutting hundreds of thousands of dollars from these regional ag schools.

There is no doubt that agricultural is critical to the WA and Australian economies. It is worth $8.2 million to the WA economy alone. I'm unashamedly a farmer. Our future farmers—our young people—need the best possible education with the most current innovations and training technologies: the machinery, the tools and the trades equipment. The Harvey ag school's trades training centre is exceptional. The students currently have access to very well-equipped workshops. They are training on the machinery and tools currently being used in the relevant industries: automotive, construction, furnishing, metals and engineering. They also offer ATAR and general academic pathways for students. The ag school is an economic contributor to our local economy, providing employment and sourcing inputs from local businesses. Over 600 students attend these colleges.

Unfortunately, this is a pattern of behaviour from Labor governments, whether federal or state. We saw it at the federal level with the changes to youth allowance. It was devastating—directly and deliberately removing funding from rural and regional students and redistributing it into the cities. In contrast, the Turnbull government has made a number of improvements and changes to youth allowance to assist more of our students in rural and regional areas.

We know how important the changes have been. We know that students from regional areas are significantly underrepresented in tertiary education. A far greater percentage of metro students go on with their tertiary education, compared to our young people from rural and regional areas. One of the major barriers is the extra cost, which is around $25,000 a year. Accommodation is one of those costs. Regional students can't just go home to mum and dad for the night. They also need to have a car to get to the city from where they live in the country. They need to fund their daily living expenses while they're away from home. There are far greater costs for tertiary education for our kids and families.

Some students I've met, as the member for Grey rightly said, have made conscious decisions to not aspire to attend university in Perth or elsewhere, because they know their families simply can't afford it. What a tragedy this is! And it was a tragedy back in 2010 as well when Labor changed the rules and excluded those great young people. Some parents in my area have two jobs to support their children's higher education. These are the reasons I and my colleagues will continue to do everything we can to help our great young people get the education and training they need to pursue their talents, their ambitions and their dreams.

Another barrier for some students has been the requirement to wait for 18 months after leaving school to qualify for independent youth allowance. We, on this side, have worked consistently to change this requirement. In practical terms it has meant that students have had to take two years away from their study, working to earn the amount required to demonstrate their independence so they can qualify for youth allowance. Parents and students have repeatedly sought this change. I've heard about it over and over. Effectively, it will mean that students finishing high school at the end of 2018 will be able to qualify for youth allowance and start uni in 2020 instead of having to wait till 2021, as they would have previously. So, instead of taking two gap years, they will only have to take one. This bill actually helps 300 students who have not been able to take advantage of the reduced 14-month period: those that remained in the transition under the old 18-month rule. This reduction in time was an election commitment that we made and that we're very proud of, member for Grey. You called us—

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

The rural education rump.

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

the rural education rump. It is a very appropriate description of us, because we have been absolutely committed to this and we have been absolutely persistent. We have made several changes to improve the access for rural and regional students, but as I, the member for Grey and my colleagues know there is more work to be done.

I have worked consistently and persistently—I think they're the two words we would use, member for Grey—with my regional colleagues on this issue. The Minister for Education and Training, Senator Simon Birmingham, responded to what we knew needed to be done by asking Professor John Halsey to conduct an independent review into regional, rural and remote education. These are the fresh eyes that we've believed for some time were needed to look at what is the appropriate way to assist our young people in their education challenges. The review considered key ideas in the challenges and the barriers that affect students' learning outcomes. I've been pushing for and am very keen to see a fresh approach. It's what we've been seeking, and it's what the minister has responded to, through Professor Halsey. It would be a fresh approach that actually supports better access and better achievement for rural, regional and remote students. We want to see the transition to further study, training and work. These are all issues we've been working on for some time.

The review is actually going to investigate the gap in educational achievement between rural, regional and remote students and metropolitan students; the key barriers and challenges that I've talked about; the appropriateness and effectiveness of current modes of education delivered to regional, rural and remote students, including the use of information and communication technology; and the effectiveness of public policies and programs. This is where, I think, we're looking for that fresh approach to bridge the gaps and opportunities to help students successfully move from school to further study, training and employment. It will also critically look at new approaches—something we've sought for some time. It will look at a new approach that actually supports regional, rural and remote students to succeed in school and in their transition to further study, training and employment.

There have been a lot of consultations. As members on my side will know, I certainly insisted that Professor Halsey come to my electorate to hear firsthand the issues facing students, parents and educators in my electorate. As the member for Grey has said, Professor Halsey came to Bunbury. His focus on leadership and teacher quality is a key part of what we will see out of the Halsey report, in my view. Again, leadership in rural and regional areas is critically important. We have some amazing leaders in our schools, and they face additional challenges in rural, regional and even remote areas. As we on this side have said repeatedly, we understand directly how, unfortunately, the changes made by a Labor government many years ago have created an ongoing problem. We have made a number of changes that have improved the access for rural, regional and remote students. But there is more work to be done. With the persistence and the focus that my colleagues and I have on this matter, along with the support of the minister, I'm very sure there will be much we can use from what Professor Halsey delivers to make sure our students get fairer access, access that they need, to be able to pursue their higher education.

I deal with a number of families on a regular basis who find it incredibly challenging to meet the additional costs of sending students away to university. It is significant. It is very difficult for a couple who may be on an income just above the parental income test of $150,000. During the time that Labor had made the changes, I remember a woman came to see me and said, 'I've had to make a dreadful choice.' I said, 'What was your choice?' She said: 'I have five wonderful kids. They are all capable and are achieving wonderful ATAR scores, and all five want to train to be GPs.' We have a shortage of GPs in regional areas. She said, 'I have to make a choice as to which one of those is able to go to university.' That concerns me greatly. These families live and work and contribute so significantly to the economics and the prosperity that comes out of our region, which supports much of Australia, especially when you look at our exports. I am very pleased to support this bill and every measure ahead that we will take to improve access for rural and regional students. I thank and commend all of my colleagues who stayed with us in this whole process to make sure we reverse some of those changes made by Labor and look at new opportunities ahead for our rural and regional students.

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Digital Transformation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Social Services Legislation Amendment (14-month Regional Independence Criteria) Bill 2018 makes a minor technical amendment to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Simplifying Student Payments) Act 2017. The act supported regional and remote students by amending the rules governing when a person will be regarded as independent for the purposes of youth allowance. It intended to reduce from 18 months to 14 months the period young people from regional and remote areas of Australia have to earn the amount required to satisfy the workforce independence provisions. This measure commenced from 1 January this year.

The reduction to 14 months was an election commitment and part of a package to support regional students' access to education. Students whose family home is in a regional or remote location can access youth allowance on the basis of being independent under concessional workforce participation arrangements. One way in which students can demonstrate they have supported themselves is through a period or periods of employment over 14 months since leaving secondary school, with earnings totalling at least 75 per cent of the wage level A of the national training wage. This is $24,836 for the 2017-18 financial year. In addition, to access these arrangements, students' parental income must be below $150,000, they must be undertaking full-time study and they must be required to live away from home to study.

This measure recognised that regional and remote students face additional costs in pursuing tertiary education and have much lower participation rates in higher education than students from major cities. The reduced period from 18 months to 14 months allows students to qualify for youth allowance four months sooner than under previous arrangements. Students are now able to take a gap year at the end of secondary school and, subject to them satisfying the other qualification requirements for youth allowance, receive payment as independent the following year. Students who are considered independent for youth allowance purposes do not have their rate of payment affected by parental income, as is the case for dependent recipients. Previously, students who qualified for youth allowance under these arrangements may have commenced study prior to qualifying for student payments or have taken two gap years in order to satisfy the 18-month criteria before commencing study and qualifying for payment.

The longer students are disengaged from study after completing secondary school, such as for more than a year, the less likely they will be to commence or complete tertiary study. It is estimated that, over the forward estimates, approximately 3,700 regional and remote students will qualify for youth allowance as independent under the 14-month period. Approximately 2½ thousand would become eligible for payment as independent four months earlier than under the previous 18-month period. Approximately 1,200 would become eligible for payment as independent who otherwise would not have met the independence criteria. This includes students who choose to take a gap year, who may have not undertaken a gap year otherwise. These young people are expected to change their employment and study patterns in order to earn the required amount in 14 months.

Despite this measure commencing on 1 January this year, an unintended consequence of the act has meant that a small group of approximately 300 students has not been able to take advantage of the reduced 14-month period. Young people who were receiving youth allowance prior to 1 January this year were unintentionally left behind. This group remained under the old 18-month rule. For example, a young person who finished school in 2016 and worked throughout 2017, hoping to qualify as independent and went on youth allowance as a dependent recipient, would have the 18-month period apply to them. For a young person from a regional area who requires the full rate of youth allowance in order to move away from home to study, having the 18-month period apply to them could mean that they have to delay university for an extra year. This bill will correct the unintended consequence of the act and will mean that the 14-month period is available to all students seeking independence for youth allowance under the workforce independence provisions for regional and remote tertiary students. This bill will insure that the 14-month period is applied consistently to all tertiary students from regional areas. I therefore commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.