Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on behalf of the Labor Party in relation to the Student Assistance Legislation Amendment Bill 2005. On the face of it, the major reason for the bill before the Senate today is to enable the government to legislatively close a student loans scheme that it had earlier shut by administrative means. But, in moving to strip from legislation this student income support measure, the Howard government lays bare the absence of any suitable alternatives. This bill is a testament to the bankruptcy of this government’s policies in relation to student income support.

Before I traverse the details of this government’s sad and sorry record in the area of student financial assistance, it would be good for the chamber to consider the circumstances that have led to the Senate considering this bill today. Back in October 2003, the Howard government attempted to shut the Student Financial Supplement Scheme by legislation and it failed—it failed to muster sufficient support from non-government senators. Seeing the writing on the wall, the government chose not to proceed with the bill. However, the saga did not end there. Following the withdrawal of the bill, the government announced that it would close the scheme using administrative means. And so it was in December 2003 that the then minister for education announced that there would be no new loans from the Student Financial Supplement Scheme from 31 December of that year. Effectively, the government thumbed its nose at the parliament, and at the Senate in particular, and simply decreed that this scheme was no longer open for business.

The present bill is yet another attempt by the government to expunge from the statutes all references to the Student Financial Supplement Scheme—a scheme which filled a particular need for students requiring additional income support. This scheme provided extra options for students in ways that could be tailored to suit the individual circumstances of the students.

In 1993, the first year of the operation of the Student Financial Supplement Scheme, some 44,000 students took advantage of the new financial supplement. By 1996, the number of students with a financial supplement loan had grown to some 68,000—around 13 per cent of all Austudy and Abstudy recipients. Although it is correct that most loans were accessed through the scheme between 1995 and 1999, a large number of students were assisted by this flexible facility beyond those years. In fact, in excess of 200,000 loans were made available through the scheme in the last five years of its operation, between 1999 and 2003.

In 2002, just under 40,000 students applied for and accepted these loans. It is worth while considering who these people were when one looks at the impact of the closure of this scheme. Of these students, 15.6 per cent were Indigenous, 1.6 per cent were from remote regions, just over 15 per cent were recorded as single parenting payment recipients, 12.2 per cent were not born in Australia and some 54.7 per cent—the great majority of the applicants who received loans—were women.

These figures reinforce 2003 data provided by the government that disclosed that the largest beneficiaries of these loans were low-income earners—students who were single parents, disabled or Indigenous—who could not access support from other sources such as their parents or who faced other constraints in the labour market. It is clear that the scheme was of greatest assistance to the most financially vulnerable students. Without it they were at grave risk of not being able to complete their studies. It was no great shock that, when the Howard government pulled the rug from beneath the feet of these students in 2003 through the sudden closure of the scheme, many were left in a difficult situation.

Whilst we in opposition accept the reality that the government has effectively closed the Student Financial Supplement Scheme, we are not prepared to meekly accept that a student income support scheme should be jettisoned without anything being put in place to fill the void. That this void has been permitted and in fact created is completely consistent with the track record of the Howard government, its manifest lack of adequate income support for students and its seeming disinterest in the real hardships faced by many students during their studies.

The June 2005 report of the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education References Committee on student income support exposed the severe shortcomings of the government in this particular area of public policy. The report’s preface states:

Over the last decade the student income support system has operated in a policy vacuum. It is now showing the signs of this neglect. The government’s preoccupation with program efficiency over policy effectiveness and continuing problems with Centrelink’s delivery of payments have taken their toll on students. The current level of income support does not come close to providing students with a decent living wage to cover the cost of accommodation, food, bills and transport. The level of income support has been falling steadily behind the rising cost of living. This has resulted in many students experiencing severe financial hardship and poverty.

The evidence from the Senate inquiry, from numerous reports on student finances and the experiences of students is clear—more students are working and more students are working more. Student income support policy has simply been neglected by the Howard government.

At the same time, a whole range of other student welfare and support services are set to disappear following the passage last year of the VSU legislation. We have already seen evidence of the ways in which this legislation and the abolition of student unions will make life tougher for students, particularly those who are in dire need of support. The harsh reality on many campuses right now is that these services are already closing down. As we in the opposition and other parties in this chamber predicted, student welfare and support services have been amongst the first to go. I will not canvass in detail here the generally detrimental effects of VSU legislation. They have been well canvassed in many places, not the least of which is this chamber.

The Howard government cannot rely on the excuse that it was not given volumes of credible evidence about the disastrous effects its policies are having on a range of disadvantaged students, such as those from rural areas. A national report by the University of Melbourne’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education released in June last year showed that students from rural backgrounds are twice as likely as their urban counterparts to defer studies at university. The research report was entitled The first year experience in Australian universities: findings from a decade of national studies. It showed that nearly one in five rural students deferred university compared to one in 10 students in the broader population. The report found:

The reason for this difference is ... likely to be the greater need for rural students to accumulate savings to meet their additional costs of attending university.

The research concludes that students from rural backgrounds are being forced to delay commencement of their university studies because the Howard government’s income support is nowhere near enough to keep up with the living costs faced by these students. I would welcome some contribution to this debate, and to the issue of access to university by rural students, from the National Party—the great defenders of rural and regional Australia. Evidence has come before the Senate on a number of occasions about the harsh ways in which this government’s higher education policies negatively impact on students from rural and regional Australia. What do we hear from the National Party about access to tertiary education for the constituency they profess to represent?

Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Stott Despoja interjecting—

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As Senator Stott Despoja points out, we in fact have no National Party senators in the chamber currently for this debate! I will now turn to another recent report, The impact of drought on secondary education access in Australia’s rural and remote areas, by Margaret Alston and Jenny Kent of Charles Sturt University. That study similarly found that rural young people simply cannot afford to go to university anymore. The report said that many families are unable to support their young people away from home and that there is a huge sense of frustration that university education is no longer available on a merit basis. The remedy to this problem is, of course, in the government’s hands, but we in the Labor opposition will not hold our breath. We will not hold our breath waiting for the Howard government to break its long-held habit of 10 years and do the right and decent thing by students of this country.

The Labor Party have demonstrated our commitment to policies which will provide much needed relief from the financial pressures on students in higher education today. For example, at the last election, Labor proposed fully costed and responsible policies to better support struggling students by extending rental assistance to Austudy recipients and by reducing the age of independence for students on Youth Allowance from 25 to 23. We on this side of politics believe that students need better support if they are to get the best out of their studies and we believe that, if Australia is to get the best out of them, we need to do more. In contrast, all we see from the Howard government is a deepening void. We see the cancellation of financial support schemes which could potentially make the difference between continuing to graduation and deferring or dropping out altogether.

This bill also contains a clause that is unrelated to the closure of the Student Financial Supplement Scheme but is potentially of significant moment in relation to two further income support schemes. There is a clause in the bill which would appear to remove the need to make new regulations each time the guidelines for Abstudy and Assistance for Isolated Children schemes are altered. Such revision is described by the government as a ‘minor technical amendment’, but advice received from the Parliamentary Library indicates it is not minor at all and may have major consequences for parliamentary oversight of important elements of these two schemes.

One of the proper roles for any legislature is to ensure sufficient scrutiny of the proposals advanced by the executive in enactments. Appropriate levels of accountability demand that such scrutiny and oversight occur in relation to all instruments of legislative authority. This is particularly the case for non-statutory programs such as Abstudy. In fact, in relation to Abstudy, it seems that the only opportunity for the parliament to be aware of changes to certain important components of the scheme in the past was via the process of notification from time to time of the date of changes to the relevant Abstudy policy manual, which is in effect the compendium of guidelines made under the scheme. I say that this was the case in the past, because the department of education has advised the relevant Senate committee which conducted an inquiry into this bill that references to Abstudy and the Assistance for Isolated Children Scheme have recently been removed altogether from the regulations. Where that particular act leaves parliamentary scrutiny of these schemes is entirely unclear.

I recognise that this issue is legally complex and difficult. We in the opposition are relying on the expertise of the Parliamentary Library’s research service to set out the two competing interpretations of the bill’s provisions in this regard. I would like to quote at some length from the Bills Digest prepared on this bill. It says:

The changes to section 48 of the SAA will modify the way in which notification obligations are to be defined. Under the new regime, the scope of the obligation can be defined by the Executive. These changes have an immediate influence upon the offence provision, section 49. Accordingly, the proposed amendment in Schedule 2, Part 2, item 10 is not without difficulties. In particular, should the broad view be followed, the proposed amendment could:

• remove parliamentary scrutiny with respect to the scope of the obligation and, as result, of the offence, and
• erode the rule of law because it has the potential to remove certainty from the obligation and the matching offence.

Parliament may want to consider whether the proposed law should be amended to put beyond doubt that the expansion of the regulation-making power does not include the determination of ‘prescribed events’, but is limited to the prescription of the notification process.

I wish to make it clear to the chamber that it is this advice, as contained in the Bills Digest, which has formed the basis for Labor’s amendment which I will move during the committee stage of the bill. For the reasons I have set out, and in particular because of the competing and valid legal interpretations of the consequences of the bill, I urge the government to consider the serious grounds that Labor has for proposing this amendment. Our view is that continued oversight of legislative instruments which can effect changes in access and eligibility criteria is a crucial function of this parliament. They should not be watered down under the cover of a so-called technical amendment. I fear this is yet another example of the way in which this government draws more power to the executive and reduces the power of the legislature.

I also note with interest that the Department of Education, Science and Training has informed the Senate committee that they are prepared to make a recommendation to the minister—and I quote from the department’s evidence—to:

... include an express statement that, to remove doubt, the power in proposed subsection 48(2) is not intended to permit the determination of prescribed events in extrinsic materials and that prescribed events may only be determined expressly in the Regulations.

Immediately prior to consideration of this bill in the House of Representatives, the new Minister for Education, Science and Training tabled an amended explanatory memorandum which contained a statement in precisely those terms. Of course, the statement itself would now constitute extrinsic material for any court considering any case brought under the act as amended by this bill. However, during the debate in the House, the minister was asked to explicitly state whether this statement had exactly the same effect as the substantive amendment moved by the opposition. The minister would not, or could not, provide such an assurance. For this reason, the opposition intends to move the same amendment during the committee stage here in the Senate, and the minister responsible for the bill would be well advised to seek advice from officers on whether the added statement in the explanatory memorandum does indeed fully address the issues of concern raised by the opposition.

I stress that these concerns, while technical and legal in nature, go to fundamental issues of the powers of the parliament to adequately scrutinise legislation which impacts on the entitlement of Australians to income support benefits. In conclusion, this bill as a whole will enshrine a much diminished set of options for student income support, against the backdrop of a government record of unalloyed policy failure in an area that is vital to the success of so many students who are in genuine need of assistance. Other provisions of this bill attack the role of the parliament as a watchdog on untrammelled executive power, and these are utterly unacceptable. For these reasons, the opposition cannot possibly support this bill in its current form.

Debate interrupted.