Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I actually quite like Senator Nash. I think she is a very dedicated hardworking senator, but on this issue she is actually dead wrong and she has seriously gilded the lily in many aspects of this independent youth allowance issue. It was part of a sweep of reforms that the government made to this whole system occurring out of the Bradley review. It was a contentious issue. It was the subject of a public campaign, which I think the Nationals promoted to their political advantage very well. It has been the subject of a comprehensive Senate inquiry, which looked at it and which resulted in intense negotiations between the Liberal spokesperson for education at the time and the Labor Party. Last March in the build up to an election an agreement was reached to overcome these issues. An agreed bill was put before the parliament and voted for.

Of course, at that time it was during the build up to an election and the Liberal-National coalition had an eye to victory and thought that they may well win this particular election, so they were probably very conscious of the costs of what Senator Nash is now proposing—some $300 million. They already suspected that they were going to have an $11 billion black hole with the promises they were making in the build up to the election and they certainly did not want to add another $300 million to it because they thought they were going to be in government and they were not going to want to spend the money.

But now, back in the luxury of opposition, why not come back and have a second bite of the cherry? ‘Now, when we don’t have to be responsible, when we don’t have to worry about our $11 billion black hole, when we don’t have to worry about where we are going to get the $300 million from, let’s go back and welsh on the deal. Let’s rat on the deal.’ This is the deal they happily agreed to and voted for last March. ‘Let’s rat on that. Let’s come back and ask for more. Doesn’t matter if it costs another $300 million, because we’re in opposition now. It doesn’t matter. The $11 billion shortfall in funding our promises doesn’t matter, an extra $300 million doesn’t matter, because the government will have to find it.’

We have done a lot in the education system, and the reforms that we have put in place will make it fairer and more equitable for all students across the country. Those reforms were well overdue, and I think that, in saner moments, you will even find some in the opposition who are aware of some of the rorts that were going on in the independent youth allowance system and who will actually acknowledge some of those rorts. They were undesirable.