Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Simplifying Student Payments) Bill 2016. This bill seeks to amend means testing for youth allowance and Austudy recipients to make it consistent with other payments. It also creates an automatic entitlement and issue of a health care card to all recipients of youth allowance and Austudy.

Youth allowance is payable to students studying at university or TAFE, including Australian apprentices. Changes in this bill will align youth allowance and Austudy with existing rules for Abstudy, and other changes in this bill will also apply to Abstudy. This bill will also amend the Social Security Act 1991 to allow for the most recent Australian statistical geography standard remoteness structure to be applied when assessing whether an applicant for youth allowance lives remotely.

Schedule 1 amends means testing for student payments in a number of ways. Independent youth allowance and Austudy recipients are currently exempt from assets testing if they are a member of a couple and their partner receives an income support payment. This bill would remove the assets test exemption for this group of recipients. Current payment recipients will remain eligible for payment, unless they and their partner have assessable assets over $375,000.

Under existing legislation, independent youth allowance and Austudy recipients' interests in private trusts only are considered for means test purposes. This bill will make the means testing of interests held in private companies and trusts by independent youth allowance and Austudy recipients consistent with other income support payments. Currently any periodic gifts or allowances received by recipients of youth allowance or Austudy from family members are included in the means test. This bill will exempt these gifts from means testing.

Eligibility for dependent youth allowance recipients is subject to a parental income test. Currently, the parental income test does not include any tax-free pensions or benefits. This bill will change the parental income test to include tax-free pensions or benefits. This will make the test the same as the calculation of income for the purposes of family tax benefit. Families must report their income to the Department of Human Services annually for the calculation of family tax benefit. By making the two tests the same, the reporting burden on families and the department will be lessened.

This bill will create an automatic entitlement to a health care card for recipients of student payments. Student payment recipients are the only income support recipients who are not automatically entitled to receive a health care card. The health care card will entitle them to access the extended Medicare safety net threshold and discounted prescriptions under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Student payment recipients who live in remote areas of Australia can be eligible for additional benefits, such as a relocation scholarship. The Social Security Act currently refers to the 2006 remoteness structure, which is now eleven years out of date. This bill will amend the Social Security Act to instead consider the most recent remoteness structure. It will amend the Social Security Act so that it automatically considers the most recent remoteness structure, instead of requiring a legislation amendment to this effect every five years.

Since the bill was introduced into the parliament in October last year, an amendment has been added—specifically, schedule 4. This amendment will make it easier for young people from regional and remote areas to qualify as independent for youth allowance purposes. Currently, students from regional or remote areas who need to move from their parental home to study can qualify as independent if, since leaving secondary school, they have:

In the 2016-17 financial year, this amount was equal to $24,042.

Their parents must also have earned less than $150,000 in the previous tax year.

This amendment will allow applicants from regional and remote areas to qualify as independent after only 14 months of paid employment, as per the other conditions above. Claimants can check whether their address is classified as regional or remote for youth allowance purposes on the Centrelink website. It is expected that around 3,700 regional and remote students will qualify as independent as a consequence of this change. It is argued that this measure will allow students to take a gap year following the completion of school and still qualify for youth allowance as an independent in time to commence study the following year.

Labor will support these changes to youth payments, which will ensure consistency across income support. Labor welcomes changes that will ensure that all recipients of youth allowance automatically receive a health care card. Making health care cards available to all independent recipients of student payments at least acknowledges in part that young people have limited earning potential while undertaking their studies. Labor also supports reducing the period regional and remote students are required to work before qualifying as independent and thereby become eligible sooner for youth support payments.

It can be a difficult and expensive for young people to move from the country to the city to study. There is a significant regional divide in the proportion of school leavers who go on to higher education. While 37 per cent of school leavers in major cities go on to study, this drops to 20 per cent in inner regional areas, 16 per cent in outer regional areas, 13 per cent in remote areas and just four per cent in very remote areas.

Labor remains deeply concerned about a whole range of cuts to young people that this Liberal government is trying to inflict on young Australians. If the National Party is hoping that this bill will placate young people and their parents in regional areas concerns about access to quality education and training, they should think again. The Turnbull government appears to be making it easier for regional and remote students on one hand, but on the other they will make it harder much harder by slashing penalty rates.

In order to be deemed independent in the 14 months, young people will have to earn $24,000. That is made much harder when your Sunday rates have been cut. The cut to penalty rates will mean that young people take longer to earn the required amount, and some will not be able to do it in 14 months at all. If this coalition genuinely wanted to support young people then they would not be cutting penalty rates and they would not be endlessly putting forward their 2014 zombie budget measures.

Last week their social services omnibus bill was passed in the other place before being subject to secret deals with the Senate crossbench before it came before us here in this place. When Senator Cormann was in this place last week he was clear that the zombie measures would be back. He said, and I quote:

... the government is persisting with them.

And then:

Today is the next instalment. Building on the progress that we made in the initial omnibus savings bill, we will be able to secure more savings today. There will be more work to do after today, but this is as far as we believe the Senate will be prepared to go on this occasion, and that is what we are putting forward.

This government have no intention of backing away from their zombie measures. He has made that clear.

These measures will push young people into poverty. In this current integration of the omnibus savings bill the government are proposing that jobseekers under the age of 25 wait five weeks without any income before grudgingly paying them their Newstart allowance. In the 2014 budget the Abbott-Turnbull government wanted to make young people wait six months before accessing any income support. A six-month wait is what they really wanted. Then they decided that one month might be acceptable, in addition to the existing one-week wait. There was no basis in evidence. They just made it up.

This Liberal government wants to leave young jobseekers under 25 with nothing to live on for five weeks—just fresh air. No amount of window-dressing can hide the fact that this Liberal government has consistently squeezed young people to carve out budget savings. The Turnbull government's plan abandons young jobseekers by leaving them with nothing to live on for five weeks, which will hurt tens of thousands of young Australians and do absolutely nothing to help them get a job. This coalition government wants to force young people aged from 22 to 24 onto a lower support payment, which is a cut of $48 a week—almost $2,500 a year. How are our young people expected to live off that type of income and keep themselves in the running for decent work? It is cruel and uncaring and completely uncalled for.

Last week, with the assistance of One Nation, the Xenophon Team and Senators Hinch and Leyonhjelm, the government froze the income-free areas for all working-age and student payments, which means that for three years the income test applying to jobseekers and students will not keep pace with the costs of living. With one hand the coalition are delivering young students some concessions—and we support those—but, with the other hand, they are working relentlessly to have their zombie measures passed and to cut penalty rates. This is what young people and students have to look forward to from this federal coalition working with those crossbench senators. This is the same government that want to hand over a $50 billion tax cut to big business. How do they reconcile that in the context of their 'budget repair' agenda?

We know that access to education and training is a key predictor of future prosperity. It is vitally important to ensure that all young people are in a position to be offered and to be able to take up opportunities. Forcing young people and their families into dire financial straits limits their access to education and training. Governments have a duty to account for disadvantage where it exists and to overcome it. Arbitrary markers like the privilege people are born into and the misfortune that families may encounter should never determine their access to education and training. The Liberal's elitist $100,000 degrees are a prime example of their disregard for principles of equity and fairness in education. Let us be very clear: this government want to make it harder for young Australians to go to university unless they have money. Labor believes that your parents' bank balance and their credit card limit should not determine whether or not you go to university.

TAFEs are fundamental anchoring institutions in our vocational education and training system. They provide opportunities for young people to get a vocationally-based education and set them up for good careers. They work collaboratively with local businesses to identify skill needs and then offer the courses that link young people into those jobs. They provide a quality, second-chance education for students who struggle in a school environment. They provide tailored and quality services to improve foundation education for community members. They are the trusted deliverers of quality vocational education in the system—unlike the rorting, unethical and profiteering providers exposed under VET FEE-HELP—and they are a particularly valued and important hub in regional and rural communities where they are often the key or sole provider of vocational education and training.

At the moment in this country we are witnessing the decline of TAFE. One-third of the TAFE workforce has been cut. We have seen institutes and colleges closing and the standards of facilities degraded and declining through lack of investment. The share of government VET funding for students going to TAFE dropped 20 per cent over the five years to 2015. But, despite all of that, they remain the institutions to trust—accountable and engaged in their local communities. What is this coalition government doing to ensure the future and sustainability of the TAFE workforce and TAFE infrastructure? I would think that the National Party would show some interest given the importance of TAFE to their constituents and to the prospects of young people in regional areas. What action have we seen? Nothing.

This government have been abrogating their responsibilities in failing to make new national partnership agreements on skills and workforce development and failing to work with the state governments to take action on TAFE. The current agreement expires at the end of June. The last meeting they held to discuss the issues, in November 2016, did not even achieve a quorum. How extraordinary! What did they do? Nothing. They may try to pretend that they are the students' best friends with this bill, but Labor knows the Liberals cannot be trusted when it comes to protecting the interests of Australian students. If the government expect that young people are either earning or learning then it is their responsibility to ensure that the learning on offer is accessible, valuable and of high quality. If this government have their way, young people seeking a brighter future through their education and training will find it harder and harder to do so.

The government like to say how the measures in this bill will help students, but you do not hear them talk about all the cuts they are attempting to impose on young people or about their failure to support our key learning institutions. You do not hear them talk about plans to deregulate university fees; you do not hear them talk about the government's failure to fund the Gonski education reforms, which will ensure Australian children will get the best start in life; and you certainly have not heard them talk about their plan to support TAFEs, because they do not have one. Labor will support this bill today, but we will not lose sight of what this Liberal coalition government is really doing to young people: cuts to penalty rates, cuts to Newstart, cuts to universities, cuts to hospitals, cuts to apprentices and cuts to skills, and standing by while TAFEs are threatened. That is this government's terrible record on supporting young people. Labor will not forget it, and we will not stop fighting for young Australians.