Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a few additional comments to those of my colleagues here. It is obvious, and I do understand, that the minister is only the minister representing and probably does not have a very clear view about all of this—and that was also evident through the estimates process. This was a recommendation from the committee. One of the very clear things that came through in the committee process was the existing inequity between rural and regional students and metropolitan students. That is very easily characterised by the financial burden that exists for those families in regional Australia who are required to—make no mistake: this is not a choice—relocate their children for the purposes of attending tertiary education. That has a cost attached to it of around $20,000. There is a very serious inequity there that needs to be addressed.

Further to that, the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee are at the moment undergoing a broader inquiry into access for rural and regional students to secondary and tertiary education. We are doing very detailed work on provisions that would address that existing inequity.

In the meantime we have to deal with the legislation as it stands before us. Nowhere in this legislation is the issue of the inequity for rural and regional students addressed, which is why the coalition has moved this amendment. This amendment simply retains one of the existing criteria for the qualification for independent youth allowance criterion (c)—if you like, the gap year. But we are mindful that there were some circumstances around that where people were choosing to live at home and gain the independent rate, which is why we have added the requirement that students must live away from home and, also, the requirement that an audit process must be put in place to ensure that that is indeed the case.

So, while it is not perfect—and I do envisage that the rural and regional committee will come up with a much more comprehensive policy framework to address this inequity—it exists and the coalition is putting this forward simply because no other mechanism exists in this legislation to address the inequity in the financial burden that exists for rural and regional families and students. I commend the amendment to the Senate and I hope that our colleagues here are very much of the same view. I think that the mechanisms by which we want to get to this point may differ slightly, but we are very much of the same view that this has to be passed and has to be in place so that the inequity for rural and regional students and their families can be addressed. We know that those students need the option to get to tertiary education, because they are far more likely to come back to our regions, practise those professions and contribute to the sustainability of those regional communities.