Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

As you know, Madam Acting Deputy President Moore, I come from the Northern Territory. As I travel around the territory, I could unsurprisingly find myself in any place in regional or rural Australia. I could be in Katherine, Tennant Creek, Alice Springs or Nhulunbuy. Of course we are a long way from anywhere; but most particularly we are a long way from university. As you would appreciate, it is a great tragedy that in our universities—for the benefit of Senator Xenophon, who is just leaving and whom I know is very keen on scientific evidence and on this issue—those people from regional areas who go to university are outnumbered by people from metropolitan areas two to one.

I can tell you, Madam Acting Deputy President, because I know you will know and agree with this, it is not because people from rural and regional Australia are a bit thick. We have some of the brightest men and women in regional Australia. It is just the same wherever you come from. We are Australians. Given the same opportunities, this place can close that gap. We talk about gaps in this place. If you come from Tennant Creek, Alice Springs, Katherine, Nhulunbuy or any of the regional centres around Australia, you have half as much chance of attaining a higher education and, in fact, making a contribution to the economy of this country, a social contribution, a contribution to science, or one of those wonderful contributions to a breakthrough in so many of the challenges that face our community. You may come from regional Australia but you only have half as many chances of getting there and making what I consider a very special contribution.

There are a number of reasons for that. Much of it is that if you have to travel such a long way from home, it is very, very difficult in a social sense to be completely dislocated from your community, your mates and your family. It is not like you can go down to the pub with your mate: ‘How did you go today?’ ‘I did a bit of study and a couple of units on this.’ You are completely dislocated from your family. Generally as a young man or young woman starting university, you are leaving school and you have been in a very protected environment for a very long time. You are stepping out into the big wide world and it is just so important to be able to have those connections. This place cannot alter that. We know that those things you cannot change contribute to the fact that only half the people go on to higher education. There are a whole lot of wonderful reasons that they live in regional Australia, and that is their decision.

But tragically, I believe that this legislation will add to that number who do not go on to higher education. It will take away further opportunities from those people in regional and rural Australia to contribute to this great nation. There is also the financial cost, and what this legislation fundamentally does not deal with is the element of how you actually get there. Let me tell you, if you are in Katherine and you need to go to Melbourne university to make a contribution as a doctor—and I know a young lady there at the moment—it is a long way to travel. You have to find the money to travel to Darwin and then you have to get on a flight down to Melbourne via wherever. It is an expensive business. You can say: ‘It’s all right. You only have to make that twice a year.’ That would be great if it were the case.

We also know that there are a number of costs involved in setting up a home in about the same location as the university. I always used to think that living on campus was the cheapest. Obviously, I am very dated, Madam Acting Deputy President. As a young bloke, it was always cheaper to live on campus than it was to live in a shared house in Canberra, but that is not the case anymore. It is very expensive, I am led to believe, to live on campus and not the other way around.

For Senator Xenophon’s benefit, in the guide for country students published by the University of Adelaide a guide to the costs involved in living in Adelaide was provided and the cost of living estimate is stated as being between $290 and $495 a week. These are basic living costs and do not include the cost of textbooks, running a car, that are faced by all students regardless of where they have lived prior to university. If you come from one of the places that I talk about—and you know about it, Madam Acting Deputy President—that is an extra cost that is not a choice.

I might have hated mum and dad, and mum certainly hated me. I was a scruffy bugger, and she wanted me to move out, but I had a choice. I could have lived at home. But whatever the case was, the fact that I had a choice put me in a completely different demographic than someone in Tennant Creek who has to pay that. It does not matter what you do, you will be paying a significant amount of money every week simply to get the benefit of a university education. Of course, this goes to the crux of the issue which is that regional and remote students face that just to go to university where their city colleagues do not. And still we see that there are only half as many people who go. That is pretty bad. But if we change that, if we take away the capacity that people have under the current situation in legislation, it may not be perfect. If we take that existing capacity away, clearly, that number will grow, and that is not in the interests of those individuals or the contribution they will make to the nation and is clearly not in the national interest.

The financial obstacles have been mitigated in the past. They were able to take a gap year to become eligible to receive the independent youth allowance. A student was able to cover the additional expenses that they may have saved or otherwise during that time that were not faced by a city resident, and that ensured that there was at least some level of equity in the ability to access tertiary education. So whenever legislation is introduced in this place there are inevitably winners and losers. That is just part of the deal here. There will always be someone who will be on the outside. That is in the nuances and I accept that. But the role of parliament is really to ensure that the net result is good for the country as a whole. I am not talking about country. I am talking about the nation because clearly this is not going to be good for the country or the bush.

This legislation, whilst designed to provide greater assistance to those who need it will also return savings to the government over the forward estimates, and I think that is what we need to look at. Clearly, there will be a net saving of some $30 million. I understand it was some $100 million. We have allocated $70 million of that to another demographic of people who are doing their master’s. I am sorry if people are shaking their heads over there. I may have got that wrong. Anyway the net would be some $30 million—and thanks for your help. Taking this into account there is still a real bonus for the government coffers and I am not suggesting any particular mischief. The change is, if you consider the net benefit of $30 million and the net benefit to this country, that those students from rural and regional Australia, who depend on the current legislative circumstance, can continue to access independent youth allowance so that they can go and make this contribution. I think $30 million would be a pittance over the years. Forward estimates is a very short period of time but if you think about national interest and the contribution that these individuals will make over their lifetime, that will make a substantive difference to Australia and a substantive difference to those issues I have already dealt with.

Where once eligibility was gained through a gap year when you earned $18,500 in 18 months, a lot of people gained a bit of experience in that time, they could because they knew it was a contribution to allowing them to be able to move away from home and get access to a university education. It was handy. People were encouraged to do it because there is a great deal of experience you need to gain after school, which is a very protected environment. They got out and normally worked for six months or so, saved the $18,500 and then hooked it up. Who would not after a life in school? I certainly did. It was a great opportunity for people to get a bit of experience, to earn the money and demonstrate that they had independence. Under this legislation that opportunity is denied. If that is denied, families have to find between $12,000 and $15,000 just to get their child to university, before any other costs are covered.

One of the great tragedies about living in the bush is that there is a Solomon’s moment: which child do I send to get an education? It is the case even now that they have to make a decision: do I pick the brightest one? Is it the oldest? As for me, I certainly was not the brightest. It is going to get a lot tougher because they are going to have to give money to one less kid or they are going to have to compact their resources. Resources do not just come and go because you have a challenge in the bush—or in the city. Your circumstances remain the same. Through this legislation we are saying: ‘The circumstances that you’re now in have changed. I’m sorry, but the money you may have been able to earn in demonstrating independence you are now going to have to find some other way.’ Of course those parents are going to have more than a Solomon’s moment, and that is going to create a great deal of difficulty in the bush, which already has sufficient tension in so many other regards.

What is being proposed is that you have to work 30 hours every week, so you have to get a full-time job. Full-time jobs 30 hours a week are a bit thin on the ground in Tennant Creek. I will give you the drum, Madam Acting Deputy President: they are pretty hard to find. People say, ‘Move away to Darwin.’ By the time you have covered your accommodation in Darwin that is a net loss, so that is really not going to work. That is a particularly onerous aspect of this legislation and it really is not a good thing.

I said before that the notion of a gap year—just kicking up your heels and doing a bit of work—was a great thing, but sometimes it is not such a great thing. If you are working effectively full-time for 18 months, you think: ‘It’d be nice to have a car to drive to work. The donkey’s getting a bit old. I’ll trade it in, get a VW and go to work that way. How do I do it? Well, we’ll get on the murray.’ The old banks—I know they made a $16 billion profit between the four of them—are there to help you out. So you think: ‘I’ll get on the murray. I’ll buy a car to get to work. That makes it a bit easier, but I now have an obligation to keep working.’ It is funny what happens over 18 months. It is around the time where the opposite sex or the same sex are particularly attractive. I still find them very attractive, as does Senator Fifield! In the period of time after you leave school there are other distractions. Getting a full wage over 18 months in the workplace provides all these other distractions, so more and more of the people who will be required to do this—and they do not have to do this in the city; they can have all their distractions and still get to university—may well make the choice: ‘I’ve got a financial obligation. I can’t just give it away. I can’t just give it up. I’ve fallen in love with Jeremy’—or Rose or whoever it is—and suddenly their life changes. So in that demographic we are going to lose more people who make that decision simply because legislative changes ensure that they take a particular road.

The modelling and assessments about what may happen to those in regional and rural Australia have not been completed. There are probably some very good reasons for that, but if we were looking at this legislation in the context of some good scientific data—which only does not exist because it was not done by this government—we would be in a much better position to evaluate it.

There are a number of other issues. One of the government’s main selling points for this legislation is that the family means test has been relaxed, enabling more students to become eligible for full- and part-time allowance. That, coupled with the new Start-up Scholarship, is claimed to provide greater benefits for those who really need them. That is probably right but, again, we have to be careful in this place about how many losers and how many winners there are going to be. We have already supported many of the people who are now moving on to their master’s. I am not going to belt them particularly, but we have selected a group who are going to be winners. There have to be losers, given that there is a $30 million win for the government.

There is a flawed assumption by the government about families with significant assets. I will not criticise the government, as I sometimes do in this place. They have made that decision because they simply have not done the work on the impact on those people who live and work in regional and rural Australia. Of course country people have often been described as dirt rich and cash poor. Of course that is the case. You cannot necessarily make money out of the sort of equipment and machinery that people have lying around the place, but you need it to run the farm. So they are still not going to be able to get through that assets test. That reality has been either ignored or dismissed by the government, and that is very sad.

I touched on the realities of living in places like Tennant Creek and Broome. To get access to a university education under independent youth allowance you have to find a job. But those are pretty small places, and I am sure I do not have to tell you, Madam Acting Deputy President Moore, that the employment opportunities are very different. If they are going to go and make this, they are not going to move to Melbourne, Sydney or Darwin. Even in Darwin it can be pretty tight on the ground, and it is getting tighter. So people are going to miss out on a higher education not through any fault of their own or our own. But this legislation simply does not recognise the difficulties. It is like saying: climb the mountain, kill the 20 dragons and maybe you can talk to the princess or borrow her thong. There are too many obstacles in the way to ensuring that the number of students from regional and rural Australia that can make a contribution to this nation grows. It is not going to grow if it is indexed to population; it is going to shrink. I believe quite sincerely that there are barriers that are being put in the way. The reason that the government are putting forward this legislation is they either do not understand or have not done sufficient research in this particular area to find out about these areas, which I do not think they understand at all.

I am sure that, being from regional and rural Australia yourself, Madam Acting Deputy President Moore, you would know that, if you live in a country area and your son has a bit of a speech impediment, you do not stay there if there are no speechies in town. You want the best for your son, so you shift. Many of our health professionals in Alice Springs are wonderful people from Kenya. They are fantastic, and I commend them for the wonderful contribution they make. We would probably like to grow a few of our own, but it is very difficult getting people in regional and rural Australia in any of the services. That is a choice about how we live there. There is contraction of services in regional and rural Australia. I know everybody in this place that knows anything about this country or about regional and rural Australia will understand. Yet this legislation will ensure that those people in regional and rural Australia will be able to grow fewer professionals of our own because of all the issues I have discussed.

It is bad enough normally when you go away to university. You may meet someone at university and fall in love or get a good job or whatever you do; you are less likely to return. So it is bad enough anyway, because that is why we are under the pump and do not have a lot of professionals. But this is going to make it worse, because people from regional and rural Australia will not have doctors, nurses, accountants, lawyers, schoolteachers or any of the professionals that are part of a vibrant community. I see that this legislation, if put in place unamended, will not be able to provide that. We need to put in place policies and programs that ensure that we remove the disadvantage of distance—the tyranny of distance that is evident now and that this legislation will make a lot worse. We need to ensure that those fundamentals of access to higher education should be based on academic achievement rather than geographic location. If you run the rule over this legislation and what it will do, will it ensure that you get rewarded and that you get higher education because you worked hard or because of where you live? I suspect the obvious answer is: more likely where you live.

I know this legislation has been proposed to address a problem where some recipients of independent youth allowance were neither independent nor financially disadvantaged, and I have to say I agree. I think we are starting from the same place. Frankly, I believe that, if you are living at home, you should not receive any allowance. It is just tough nowadays. We should be able to choose to go down the road. I think that we are probably not starting off with a bad premise. The circumstances at the time could have been improved. We certainly need to improve the aspirations of young Australians who live in regional and rural Australia. We need to improve their lot, but this legislation is not the way.

As I suspect, there is no mischief from government apart from the fact that they have not done the right research. We have had a look at some of the research they have done. I know the RRAT committee has had a very close look at that, but it has also identified that there was absolutely no work or modelling done on the impact on those people in regional and rural Australia. That is clear from the legislation that is before us. Country students are going to have to leave home; there is no doubt about that. They are now going to be fighting for jobs in places where there are no jobs. They are going to be exposed to much longer periods of time for their chosen profession, their vision and their capacity to help Australia and particularly the areas that they come from, the regions. I think that they are going to face considerable extra cost simply to walk through the door of a university campus, and more and more parents are going to have to bear that cost. People are living at home longer. As I said, that quiet moment around the dinner table is Solomon’s moment: ‘Which one of our children will go to university? Which one will not?’ I think that is a disturbing decision that people at more and more tables around regional Australia will have to be making.

In view of all that, I cannot really support the legislation as drafted, and I do not support any action that pushes university further out of the reach of our young men and women in Australia that have the capacity to make such a fantastic contribution. I will not support legislation that does not support their vision or their aspirations.