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

Before I begin, I want to commend Senator Polley for the comments she has just made in the chamber. I think on all sides of the chamber we are very aware of the importance of this issue. I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge one person who does an awful lot of work in this area, Bronnie Taylor, from Cooma, and to thank Senator Polley for her contribution.

I want to speak today on independent youth allowance. Many of you will not be surprised, I am sure, that I should rise again today to discuss this issue. The background to this issue is that, last year, in March, the government made changes to the independent youth allowance arrangements. What that did was change the arrangements for independent youth allowance so that students living in the inner regional zone were subject to criteria for accessing independent youth allowance very different from those for those students living in other regional areas.

Students in the other regional areas could work under the old arrangements of having to take a single gap year and earn a lump sum of around $19½ thousand. The changes that the government made to the inner regional zone at that time meant that those students had to defer university for two years and had to work an average of 30 hours a week.

That is clearly wrong. At the time, as part of the deal agreed to with the government to get the good measures through, the coalition had to agree to this change taking place. We certainly did not want to do that, and indeed we moved an amendment that same day to include the inner regional zones under the same criteria as other regional zones. But what we saw from that point on was a huge financial burden being placed on regional students and their families who live in the inner regional zones. This is precluding many of those students from going on to university and further education. We should be making it easier for regional students to go on to tertiary education, not harder, which is what this Gillard Labor government is doing. I point out that it was the current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, in her role as Minister for Education, who put these changes in place, which has resulted in unfair treatment for regional students.

There has been much discussion over the last year about this and I think it is the biggest sleeper issue I have come across in my time in this place. Thousands of students have been affected by this—thousands of students who are now not going on to university or further education because of the requirements contained in the government’s current legislation. That is simply wrong. A lady from down in the south of the state said to me not long ago that she and her husband have three children and, because of the government’s current requirements for students from inner regional areas, which is where they live, they are going to have to choose which one of their children they can afford to send university. That is appalling. In this day and age that is absolutely appalling, and it lies fairly and squarely with the Prime Minister. She has to bear the responsibility for that because this was her legislation. It was her decision to treat regional students unfairly. That situation is just unacceptable.

When the Prime Minister talks about an education revolution she is obviously not including country students. Obviously, if you live in a regional area you cannot be part of the education revolution, because this government is refusing to recognise the very significant financial burden this is placing on students in those inner regional zones. The government’s argument that the changes that came in last March to the dependent youth allowance somehow cover off the financial burden that has been created for students in the inner regional zones is simply incorrect. It is simply wrong. It is like comparing apples with oranges. Many of those new students are not getting the whole rate of youth allowance—and I acknowledge that there are many more students now getting dependent youth allowance; they were some of the measures we supported last year. When you compare that to the independent rate of $388 a fortnight, you will see that some of these students might be getting very little. Indeed, I think towards the top end of the threshold it is about $1.74 a fortnight. The government is being misleading when it says to the Australian people that the changes have made it better for regional students and that regional students are better off. It is simply wrong. The Australian people need to recognise that the government is telling them a furphy on this issue.

The coalition recognises that this is an unfair measure that needs to be fixed. Recognising that, I recently introduced a bill into the Senate on behalf of the coalition that would require the government to treat inner regional students the same as other regional students. I am pleased to say that the bill passed the Senate—I thank Senator Nick Xenophon and Senator Steve Fielding for their support of that bill. I place on record my absolute disappointment with the Greens for voting with the government against my bill. The bill would have ensured that all regional students would be treated fairly when it came to independent youth allowance, but the Greens chose to walk away from those regional students they say they represent. They chose to side with the government, yet again under this new Labor-Green alliance that seems to be running the country, and vote to keep treating regional students unfairly. I think people in the community were shocked and very disappointed that the Greens chose to do that. Many people have come to me in absolute consternation as to why the Greens would have done that. I guess that is a question they will have to ask the Greens.

The bill of course then went to the House of Representatives. Interestingly, we saw the Independents—Rob Oakeshott, Tony Windsor, Andrew Wilkie and Bob Katter—vote with the government to stop debate on the bill, which did nothing more than ask for fairness for regional students, because of a ‘constitutional issue’. We said very clearly at the time, on behalf of regional students and their families, that the bill should have been allowed to be debated. It should have been a matter for the House of Representatives to debate and then for it to determine the constitutional issue. We also saw last week the extreme disappointment in the Independents’ electorates about what they had done. I have been flooded with comment from their electorates expressing a very sincere and strong disappointment that the Independents did a deal with the government.

The government announced last week that it would bring forward a review into youth allowance arrangements, which is of course welcome, but that it would move to remove the eligibility distinction between the zones. The Independents signed up to this. They claimed it as a huge win for regional students in their electorates. What the Independents failed to do was consider properly what the government had put forward. We heard last week in Senate estimates the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations, Senator Chris Evans, say clearly on record that the government has no idea what the changes to the independent youth allowance will be from next year. Removing the distinction for eligibility between the zones could mean anything at all. There was an assumption, I think, in our regional communities that what the government had said meant that it would treat the inner regional zones in the same way as the other regional zones. But, no, colleagues; that is not the case. And that is according to the minister.

One can only ask: what was it that the Independents signed up to? They said they got this great deal for regional students; but what did they sign up to? The government cannot tell us what the changes are going to be, so how can it be some great deal that the Independents have got for their regional students? If the government does not even know what the changes are going to be, how on earth could the Independents know what they are going to be? They sold out regional students last week. They could have voted to debate my bill—voted for the bill to ensure that regional students were treated fairly—but they chose not to do that, and that is absolutely appalling. I must commend my shadow minister, Christopher Pyne, the member for Sturt; the member for Forrest, Nola Marino; the member for Gippsland, Darren Chester; and my very good colleague in this place Senator John Williams for the enormous work that they and so many of our other coalition colleagues have done on this issue to try and get the government to see sense and to realise that it is just common sense to treat all regional students fairly. It is no longer acceptable for this government to keep treating regional students unfairly.

Given that the Prime Minister was the architect of this at the time in her role as Minister for Education, perhaps she just does not want to admit she made a mistake. I can tell her that there are thousands of regional students out there who are begging for her to put her ego to one side and put the needs of and fairness for regional students first. There is no excuse not to treat them fairly. The government uses cost as the excuse to not treat these regional students fairly, to not treat inner regional students the same. This is a government that can waste and mismanage billions of dollars and spend, for example, $81 million on administering an emissions trading scheme that does not even exist and then say to regional students, ‘I’m terribly sorry but we cannot find the money to treat you fairly.’ It is not acceptable. All this government have to do is admit there have been some unintended consequences and fix the problem. They can do that very simply by bringing their legislation back, amending it—which is only the insertion of about one sentence into that legislation—and that problem will be fixed. They can find the money, they know they can find the money and it is no longer acceptable for them to use that as an excuse. Regional students are not cash cows.

The coalition is now calling on the government to fix this problem soon—not off in the never-never from 2012, as they have said, which is not fair. The government has said that those students who finished year 12 at the end of 2009 are basically stuffed. They can only operate under the current legislation and it is too bad for them. As the minister said the other night in Senate estimates:

… there will be winners and losers …

For my mind, there should not be any losers in the area of regional students’ education.

What we are calling on the government to do—and this is very clear and very simple—is make changes to the legislation from 1 July this year, not next year. We will allow the government to run the review that they want to put forward. That is fine. Run that through until 1 July but, at that point, identify the funding to make the changes. From 1 July the inner regional students should be subject to the same current criteria as those students in the other regional zones—that is, being able to take a single gap year, work over the 18-month period and earn the lump sum provision. They should all be treated exactly the same from 1 July this year. As part of that, the students that finished year 12 in 2009 who took a gap year last year, if they meet the criteria, would be eligible to access that assistance from 1 July this year. I think that is a fair and reasonable solution for the government to take up. It certainly gives them time to find a funding mechanism. The coalition has one—the Education Investment Fund. But, if the government chooses another funding mechanism, that is entirely up to them. It gives the government time to sort out the funding problem which they say is the only issue.

The government will argue this is part of a bigger picture and is not just about independent youth allowance. I totally agree. I have said all the way through this being debated that the independent youth allowance changes that we are asking for only fix the current inequity. We absolutely need to look at the bigger picture of how we can better assist regional students and assist them more fairly. That could be done through a tertiary access allowance which I shall outline another day. But the government needs to make these changes now. From the government’s own figures, the six-month period from 1 July this year to 1 January next year would cost the government only around $27 million.

The issue is one of fairness. It is no longer acceptable for this Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to treat these regional students unfairly. There is a solution. The government can adopt that solution. We recognise that perhaps these were unintended consequences, but this needs to be fixed. Regional students need to have every opportunity and every support to go on to tertiary education. This Gillard Labor government is currently making it harder for them. On behalf of all of these regional students and their families, I implore the government to recognise their plight and fix the legislation so that they can all be treated fairly.