Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

That was a fine display by the back of Senator Sterle. I have noticed that since he has been here we all seem to have migrated to other seats but Senator Sterle is very nostalgic about staying at the back of the chamber and has remained there now for years. We heard an interesting contribution. He talked about ‘em-er-itious’ professor—I imagine that is some Portuguese professor. I have never met Emma Ritious, but when I do meet Emma Ritious I will have to find a good restaurant with her, I suppose. It was a fascinating contribution. He relied on a quote from the President of the National Union of Students, David Barrow—his friend, guide and philosopher on these issues. No doubt David Barrow comes from some wonderful confines nearby the manic monkey cafe of inner suburban nirvana-ville and he is issuing forth on regional universities.

The problem with this bill, the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009, is that we have had a retrospective change in legislation that has been completely discriminatory against those who live in regional areas. You cannot just relocate somebody from a regional area midway through the university course given the upheaval and problems that this will cause. If this goes through, if what Senator Sterle wants comes to fruition, then we are looking at a person having to work 30 hours a week for 18 months. Exactly how is somebody in Dirranbandi or in Bollon going to do that? Or do we just say that they are no longer allowed to avail themselves of a tertiary education?

The essence of work in regional areas is that when it is there you go flat out—and that gave students the capacity to earn their $19½ thousand in 12 months, and therefore they could struggle through the first six months of the second year and get themselves a university or tertiary education. I think it is absolutely amazing that Senator Sterle says this is some form of advancement. Then we had this diatribe that apparently it is all about the politics of envy. He came up with the percentage of those earning over $100,000 and those earning over 200,000—with 36 per cent earning over $100,000 and 10 per cent earning over $200,000. But he failed to talk about the other 54 per cent who do not. They were left out. They are convenient numbers that Senator Sterle puts forward to promote his cause.

I commend the work that has been done by the coalition and by my colleagues in the National Party Senator Nash and Senator Williams in bringing this to the attention of the parliament. I commend the work done by Chris Pyne in the other place in shining a light on how completely exploitative this change would be on people in regional areas. The burden of dislocating yourself from your regional town and moving down to the cities is a massive cost. Charles Sturt University analysed it as $15,000 to $20,000 a year in the Regional young people and youth allowance study.

Why is the Labor Party so intent, when it has collected so much opprobrium over this, to militantly stick to its guns and to then hold up the opinion of David Barrow from the National Union of Students as its shining light of why this is a good outcome? Surely, that shows a complete lack of capacity to find the more likely sources, which are the regional universities. I have noted that every one that Senator Sterle put forward was an overarching body that is reliant on government funding for continuation, and of course you are going to get a favourable hearing from them. It is the way of the government to go to people it funds to get opinions for political point scoring. The government likes that very much. When in doubt go to the people whose wages you pay and ask them to give an opinion about you. Of course, the opinion you get is always very favourable. What other opinion would you expect?

We now have the ridiculous proposition, the government’s interim version, that if you are 90 minutes away by public transport there is an exemption for you, but this says nothing about the people who come after this interim period. The greatest sense of parity that you can deliver to a nation is the capacity to educate with a sense of equality. There are many issues that bring about this inequality in regional areas and we should not be exacerbating that. I suggest that Senator Sterle have a more deliberate look at the inadequate resources that are currently placed in regional areas as the reason why not many people from regional areas are ending up in tertiary education. I suggest he talk to some of his state Labor colleagues and ask why the standard of education at regional high schools has to suffer because they do not have the resources. The state Labor governments have been so profligate and wasteful, and the people who have suffered as a result of that profligacy are those at regional high schools.

I also see problems in regional high schools such as bullying and a lack of education standards, yet the Labor Party close their eyes to this problem. They just wish it would go away. We have not managed to grasp the nettle that one of the main reasons we are not getting the progression from state regional high schools to university is that the state Labor governments have just dropped the ball on regional high schools. If there is no competition, students do not have the capacity to go to an alternative venue to keep some competition in the market so that the standards of all stay up; hence, the standard of the remaining school will fall. I have heard no critique from the Labor Party, although for a while Julia Gillard started moving towards a proper assessment of regional high schools. But then the left wing of the Labor Party got hold of her and she started moving away from a proper assessment of regional high schools. We do not want transparency to tell you exactly how your regional high school is going so that you, the parents, know the capacity of that high school to deliver an education to their child so they can then go onto a tertiary institution!

The Nationals have been at the forefront, since Federation, of trying to get universities into regional areas. It has been an imperative. From Earle Page and Drummond on, we understood the importance of having regional based universities. We strived to get medical schools placed in regional areas. It is absolutely imperative that we have students from regional areas educated in regional areas to keep them in regional areas to provide the doctors, the dentists, the nurses, the engineers and—dare I say it—the accountants for regional Australia. What the Labor Party has proposed with this piece of legislation is yet another blow to not just regional universities but people living in regional areas in the future to get the services that are available in metropolitan areas.

This legislation will be the reason that someone who was going to go to a regional university to do medicine will stay in the workforce. If they have the capacity to work 30 hours a week for 18 months, you might just find that they stay there and they do not bother getting a tertiary education. That is fine for them. They will probably go on to make a lot of money. If they are very competent they will, but they will not go to university to become the doctor or the dentist—the person you need to look after such things as Indigenous health and dentistry in remote areas. This just goes to show the lack of capacity of the Labor Party to see the intricacy of the tapestry that is required to deliver an outcome to regional Australia. This just goes to show how arbitrary and mercenary the Labor Party can be: once they have made a mistake and the spotlight shines clearly on that mistake, they will not lose face. They insist on sticking to their guns when it is really such a simple issue that they could change.

We heard Senator Sterle talk about regional areas, but in all his figures he boxed regional and metropolitan together. He did not have the capacity to differentiate between the two because the Labor Party have not done the research between the two. They have not differentiated between the two, yet they put themselves up as the advocate for regional universities. Senator Sterle was lounging around with his foot on the chair and his backside on the table chatting to non-existent people in the gallery, but he did not have the capacity to actually tell us exactly what proportion of the figures that he delivered to this chamber are pertinent to regional Australia.

Of the 36 per cent earning over $100,000 a year, Senator Sterle, how many came from regional Australia? How many of the 10 per cent earning over $200,000, those evil families who have done the worst thing on earth and actually made a buck in life—and you can’t have that, people making a buck in life—came from regional Australia? I live in St George out in the south-west and I cannot think of too many people in my street who earn over $200,000. Maybe they are there and I am not aware of them. Maybe I should pop up to the local high school at St George, have a quick whip around the classroom and find out how many of them are earning $200,000, or even $100,000, a year. It is not many, I would presume.

What the Labor Party has done for that other 54 per cent is to make tertiary education virtually impossible. What happens? What do they do? Where do they go under this new arbitrary law of yours? In the past they would have gone flat out in the cotton season, the harvesting season or the fruit-picking season and earned the money to get across that $19½ thousand threshold in order to avail themselves of a tertiary education. You have cut that out. Now in regional Australia you are miraculously going to make the melons grow all year round! You are going to make the cotton season go all year round. You are going to make those times of working flat out to earn a buck go all year round.

Now you want 30 hours of work a week, let’s look at what the Labor Party does in those regional areas and let’s look at all the things that people used to do. Every step of the way the Labor Party has placed caveat after caveat and impost after impost to try and make it more difficult to earn a buck, not easier. These are people who do not have a tertiary education and whose work covers everything from roo shooting and abattoir work to every form of seasonal work. You have made life harder, not easier. And now you have the gall to come in here and say, ‘Even though we have made life harder, we are going to assume that everything in regional Australia is exactly the same as metropolitan Australia.’ This is fascinating. I look forward to you providing services in regional Australia in the same form and fashion as can be found in metropolitan Australia. I look forward to the same numbers of doctors and dentists and the same access to child care, public roads, public transport, health and air transport. It is just not there. Yet you have made the assumption in this piece of legislation that everything is the same. It shows a complete and utter ignorance of the form and substance of your legislation.

The National Party and the Liberal Party will continue to try and get a better deal for regional Australia. It is the only outcome. It looks like the Independents, who are generally not a bad litmus test when something is completely off the beam, will not be supporting the Labor Party either. The rational thing for a party to do, if it was not obstinate and arrogant and had not already become conceited during its short term in government, would be to change that around. It would actually change its position. It would accept that it had made a mistake—and it is only human to make a mistake—and change it. But, no, what we are getting is this belligerent and obstinate statement that it will stick to its guns and run out and find third-party endorsements from such people as David Barrow from the National Union of Students. What a benevolent recommendation that is!

I cannot understand why when it is so simple to fix you have not bothered to go out and fix it. In the meantime I imagine that this will be defeated or successful amendments will be proposed by the coalition and the Independents. Then we will have a real test of the Labor Party’s capacity to take a breath and to go back and address the problem. We will see whether it can accept there is a problem and whether it can accept the dignity of the Senate in the proposition that it has put forward. We will also see whether or not the Labor Party actually has the capacity to make progress in this issue.

Everybody in regional Australia is now watching and waiting. The students do not have the capacity to avail themselves of 30 hours per week over 18 months. You can forget that. If they are going to do that, they are going to stay in the workforce. But this is what you have suggested. And people in regional areas do not have the capacity, like they do in metropolitan areas, to go home to mum and dad at night. If you are going to a regional university in Armidale and you live in Walgett then you cannot just jump in the car and go home. You actually have to stay in Armidale. But your legislation does not recognise that. What your legislation means is that in order to work 30 hours a week over 18 months you are going to head to Sydney to do it. And guess what happens to people who go to Sydney to work? They generally stay there. Once they stay there that is the loss of another asset to help the services in regional areas. Our greatest loss is that people who have the capacity to work 30 hours a week over 18 months will decide to work 50 hours a week over 15 years. They will find themselves a new occupation and that is where they will stay. Alternatively, they will end up down the track at a metropolitan university and that is where they will stay.

I am interested to see how this dovetails into all the other Labor rhetoric on how they are going to look after people in regional and remote areas. How does it dovetail into their idea of delivering services to Indigenous communities? How does it dovetail into their idea of equity and parity across the Australian nation? What they have devised in this legislation is a little piece of nastiness for a very specific group in society—and that is the people living in regional Australia.