Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

If the government was listening to students they would hear that what they're doing is not enough. They've given paltry rises in rent assistance when rents are going through the roof. They are failing to address student poverty by not raising income support to levels above the poverty line. They are talking about balance when billionaires, the wealthy and politicians are going to get $9,000 in tax cuts whilst income support for students is still below the poverty line. I'm sorry, but it's not okay to say that it is a campaign to stand up for young people who are living in poverty and drowning in student debt, which has been indexed to the point where one young person said to me, 'That indexation wiped out my last three years worth of payments.' To be accused of standing up for those young people just to campaign is an insult to the young people who have been telling you repeatedly that they need more support. How dare you? We are loading students up with thousands of dollars in student debt at the same time that they're dealing with exorbitant rent increases that far outstrip the paltry rise in rent assistance.

They're also dealing with prohibitive dental and mental health costs, which the government is doing nothing about. While the government is splurging on tax cuts and nuclear submarines, the message that you are sending to students is that you don't care. If it's not the message you think you're sending, it's the one they are receiving. You are telling them that you don't care about their welfare, you are telling them that you don't care about their dental and mental health, and you are definitely telling them that you don't care about their education.

Students populate some of our lowest-paid workforces. They are subject to endless waves of wage theft in hospitality and retail. The government is standing by while they are endlessly exploited. They also work in many of our sectors that have the most extensive workforce shortages right now, like nursing, social work and teaching, yet they're required to engage in weeks upon weeks, sometimes months, of unpaid work while they barely subsist on a poverty stipend. Unpaid internships are rife. These lengthy unpaid internships suppress and limit the potential of students and force some students to drop out under the weight of poverty or punitive jobseeking requirements. We are making those students choose between fuel and food for the week and even staying in university. We see this extend to how we undermine the education sector writ large. Increased fast-tracking of interns into classrooms on Permission to Teach only serves to entrench education inequality and push out a workforce that is underprepared. A decades-long bipartisan commitment to the privatisation of education has driven thousands of passionate, experienced teachers out of the public school system. Rather than properly and fully funding the needs of the workforce and actually acknowledging the complexity of work undertaken by teachers, the burden falls onto students, who are shunted out too early without the full support and benefit of their degrees.

Labor is refusing to support students, who are bearing the brunt of this cost-of-living crisis, while splurging hundreds of billions of dollars on tax cuts and nuclear submarines. If we want a future for this country that is prosperous and safe, instead of abandoning students, we need to go back to genuinely caring about and investing in them.