Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Hansard source

The proposition that has been put before the chamber seeks to delay the new independence criteria by one year for all students, including those living at home, rather than endorsing the government’s much more targeted approach of a six-month push back to the current gap year for students who need to move to study. What this will effectively mean is that there will be some $700 million removed from the scholarship program. That will effectively become a permanent cut equivalent to $50 per fortnight for around 150,000 students for each year that they are at university. That is what item (4) does. As a fig leaf to certain student elements there is an attempt to establish what they call a ‘new scholarship’. There are no details on the value. There is no detail on the numbers. It is said to be worth $120 million over four years, and that is to be funded from the $700 million. So what we have is a very, very substantial gap in the opposition’s mathematics. This new scholarship will go to students who miss out on receiving youth allowance, presumably because their parents’ income is above the income test. So what we have is a series of propositions where the coalition’s numbers clearly do not add up.

The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations estimates that there are some 23 per cent of students from rural and regional areas at universities on student income support. This means that, of the almost $700 million that the Liberals want to cut out of the scholarship scheme, a significant proportion of that will mean a permanent reduction for students in regional areas. You have actually undermined your own case, Senator Mason. On our calculations, you are taking from families who are eligible for the youth allowance—those who earn less than $76,000 and have one student at home, those who earn $92,000 and have one student away from home and those who earn up to $141,000 and have two students away from home—in order to give families who earn larger sums of money than that a benefit.