Dana Wortley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will come back to that, Senator Nash—a tighter workforce participation test to target students genuinely in need of assistance and the creation of new scholarship payments. As a key outcome of these reforms the parental income test has become the main criterion for students to qualify for youth allowance. Under the changes, the parental income test threshold was increased from $33,300 to $44,165 and the 20 per cent family taper was introduced. So that threshold for the parental income test was increased and as a result over 100,000 students, including students from regional areas, will benefit because more students will be eligible for youth allowance as dependants.

So it is now the case that many students who previously had to prove independence will have automatic access to support. Already 25,000 additional students from low- and middle-income families have improved access to youth allowance. The proportion of students from regional, rural and remote areas receiving income support has increased. This is because of the changes to the parental income test. These are students who may well not have otherwise been able to undertake tertiary studies. The parental income test changes have removed an existing barrier for those students. In addition to these reforms, the workforce participation criterion was also tightened. The changes to the youth allowance eligibility criteria only comprise one element of the student income support reforms, the ones that those opposite voted on and supported.

Also introduced were the new student start-up scholarship and the relocation scholarship, which improves access and equity for rural and regional students who need to relocate to attend their place of study. To date nearly 180,000 higher education students who receive student income support have received at least one instalment of the new student start-up scholarship. In addition, since April this year nearly 23,000 students who have relocated from their home to a place closer to where they study have also received an additional relocation scholarship—23,000 students. And the government is also progressively lowering—through you, Madam Acting Deputy President, I urge those on the opposite side to listen—the age of independence, with more than 2,600 students achieving independent status since April this year, when the age of independence was lowered from 25 to 24 years. This will be reduced to the age of 22 on 1 January 2012, further recognising the increasing self-sufficiency of young people.

In stark contrast, the needs of regional students were neglected by the Liberal-National coalition for more than a decade. I have said it. Interestingly, it was the coalition government in 1998—