Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young said, ‘Make it easier for regional students to get to university, not harder.’ That was interesting. If you actually go back and read Sarah Hanson-Young’s speech, everything she said leads to: ‘Gosh! That would have meant supporting Senator Nash’s bill.’ But, oh no, we have this diatribe about the bigger picture. This is about addressing the current issue of unfairness for regional students. Why should one regional student be treated differently from another? I agree with Senator Hanson-Young; there is much bigger picture here. We need to delve more deeply into the issues facing regional students. But this issue can be dealt with separately and Senator Hanson-Young knows that.

The reason we know it is that she was continually telling people throughout the course of the last year how much she fought for regional students. Let me tell you what Senator Hanson-Young said on 12 August this year during the election campaign. She said:

“We know many students in regional areas have missed out on access to the full rate of Youth Allowance under the new scheme,’’ Senator Hanson-Young said.

               …            …            …

… our policy would use a simple test—if students have to travel more than 90 minutes each way to access their course, and have to move out of home to do so, they will be eligible for the full rate of Youth Allowance.

I would say to Senator Hanson-Young, ‘Why did you not just support my bill, which would have done exactly that?’ Because it would have done exactly that—provide fairness and equity for regional students across the country.

What is extraordinary is watching this government mouth words about how they support regional Australia. Indeed, we had the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, when she had her new government underway saying:

Clearly, the new Parliament will also have a focus on the needs of regional Australia.

And:

I will work tirelessly to do what we said we would do ... to deliver for regional Australia, recognising that in our nation that one size does not fit all; to redeem the hope you have placed in me and Labor; and to be faithful to the trust that has been extended to us.

If this government were at all serious about delivering for regional Australia, they would be making sure that every single regional student who lived in Australia had fair access to independent youth allowance and not cutting out thousands of them simply because they do not want to spend the money. I do have to say that it has been costed at around $90 million a year. Apparently, the government does not want to spend that, as they said in Senate estimates, but they are prepared to spend—get this—$81.9 million on employees to administer the ETS that never happened. They are very happy to spend nearly $90 million on some employees that actually did absolutely nothing, but they are not prepared to find a way to fund regional students. That is not fair, it is not right and it is not on. I have to say that Senator Xenophon has not even allowed debate on this when in the past he has said:

The issue of assistance for regional students is one of the utmost importance to me.

And:

To me the key issue here is ensuring that we have a greater degree of equity and access to territory education for our regional students.

If Senator Xenophon actually believed in what he said—if there were any truth in those words—he would have supported the bill going forward for debate and he would have supported the bill as it came to debate. I cannot believe the unfairness that has been placed on students living out in regional areas. It is simply not fair. They understand what this means to them. They understand that they are being left out and they understand that the words of Senator Hanson-Young and the Greens, the words of the Independent Nick Xenophon and the words of the Labor government under Julia Gillard mean absolutely nothing. I want to read for you an email which was sent to, I believe, all of those other senators in the chamber that I have just mentioned and which sums it up completely. This constituent said:

I have heard that you may not be voting in support of Fiona Nash’s bill on making independent youth allowance available to ‘inner regional zone’ youth under the same criteria as other regional youth.

I am shocked and surprised, as I thought you were a progressive senator on the issue of education for youth.

My son is 19 and working his guts out at Big W doing a gap year and desperate to go to Uni next year in Brisbane. We live in Ballina, New South Wales, in an area designated as ‘inner regional’. It is a 3 hour drive to Brisbane on a good day. He will have to move and live in Brisbane to study. This is beyond our family’s ability to afford to support him—have you seen the costs of staying in cities like Brisbane? We are a ‘middle income’ family with 4 kids and a mortgage on a small house. We pay tax—hell, our son Rob pays tax in his Big W job—why should we be arbitrarily cut off from youth allowance?

This is profoundly and ridiculously unfair. I urge you—I beg you—on behalf on my boy and all the other good young men and women like him, to get and Senator Nash and support these changes.

That is one of hundreds of thousands of emails like it from people who know that their children are being treated unfairly. We had the opportunity today to fix this and the Labor government, the Independents and the Greens should hang their heads in shame because they chose not to and they chose to let the current situation go on. It is simply not fair and I will not stop fighting every single day in this chamber for as long as I am here to get this fixed and to get fairness for regional students.