Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I move the amendment on sheet 3045:

(1) Clause 2, page 2 (table item 9), omit the table item, substitute:

This concerns the Commonwealth prac payment. It's an amendment which requires the government to table the eligibility and means test requirements for the Commonwealth prac payment before any new grant payment can commence. This amendment is very important because in the bill there is literally no detail about how this payment is going to be delivered. For many stakeholders and higher education providers from whom we heard during the bill inquiry, there is a lot of concern about the nature of this payment because it's not being administered through Centrelink. It's actually being administered via some grant bucket. While we support the prac payment for teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students, which will apply from 1 July 2025, we are very concerned, and we share the concerns of higher education providers about the way in which this has been proposed and will be administered.

The bill does not include critical information such as the eligibility criteria or the means test requirements, and we believe this reflects the government's rushed and chaotic approach to policymaking in the education portfolio. The higher education expert Professor Andrew Norton told our Senate inquiry into the bill:

Apart from the Prac Payment's insecure legal foundations, the decision to base the program on a legislative instrument rather than legislation means less debate about how the Prac Payment will work … The government says that the Prac Payment will be means tested, but neither this bill nor the government's public statements explain … what 'means' will disqualify students or cause their payments to be reduced.

The Regional Universities Network also raised very similar concerns, saying:

… should universities be the administering body for Commonwealth Prac Payments, then inconsistencies may arise at a national level between the individual institutions within the sector (and potentially even between the faculties of the same provider), in terms of the outcomes of administrating student eligibility and verification, the timeframes for processing payments, and dispute resolution processes.

Despite this payment being announced and the minister speaking about the benefits of this payment, this will be delivered not via Centrelink but through a grant bucket for which there is no actual obligation in the legislation to deliver this funding. You would think that, if the government were serious about delivering this payment, it would actually make a clear provision in the legislation requiring the government to do so.

While this is also not in this bill, the government has confirmed during budget estimates that eligible students will face a means test that will require them to be eligible for an income support payment and meet a need-to-work requirement. We're also concerned that there's been no consultation with state and territory governments or industry to share the costs of this measure, as the minister originally declared would happen, despite the fact that they will be the beneficiaries of the incoming teachers, nurses, midwives, social workers and the like. As I say, this amendment requires the government to table the eligibility and means test requirements, because this parliament has a right to ensure that, when the government says it will do something, that will actually happen. So we proposed this amendment as a moderate measure to give the parliament confidence that the government is on track to deliver this payment. We just can't take the minister's word when so much about this payment is actually not in the bill.

Tabling the guidelines will also provide transparency ahead of the payment commencing to ensure that students and the higher education providers which will be assessing student applications understand the requirements before the payment begins. Without clear eligibility guidelines, students will continue to remain in the dark about this payment. If the minister were able to table those guidelines now, that would be terrific. We would celebrate that, because understanding how this will apply in practice is very important, and it's just not appropriate that we're seeing, time and time again, that the government is not putting the nuts and bolts of legislation in the bill itself, limiting the oversight of the parliament. So we would welcome the minister tabling these requirements and guidelines, and, in the absence of his doing so, we would urge the Senate to support this amendment.