Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do want to refer back to the comments I made just before question time. With the leave of the Senate, I want to go back to about 1992 when I was the federal member for Ballarat. I remember that a couple came down from the top end of my electorate. We sat down and they said, ‘We’ve got a problem, Mr Ronaldson.’

We talked about their problem, and it was that they had three children; from recollection, one was 16, one was 14 and one was eight or nine. They said, ‘You are a parent, and you have got younger children such as we have?’ I did. They said: ‘We have to make a decision about which one of our children is going to go on to higher education. Can you imagine how difficult it is for us as parents to be making a decision about which of our children, who are aged between eight and 16, are going to go on to higher education? What would you do?’

This couple were remarkably calm, given the magnitude of the task that lay ahead of them. I said: ‘I don’t know what I would do in your situation. I will be confronted with the same decision that you are making, but I live in Ballarat and I suspect that my income is probably more than yours is, so while there might be some financial difficulties for me, they pale into insignificance compared to the issues that are going to confront you.’

This couple made the decision that their second child was going to be the one who would get that higher education. They went to the school to discuss with the teachers which of those children was likely to be the one who would benefit most. This was Australia in 1992, where parents were making decisions on the back of their financial position to make a determination about which of their children was going to get the chance that city kids did not have an issue with—there was no issue about a choice for them. That was 1992.

In 2009, while this bit of legislation might be innocuous in its title, it is actually taking us back to a situation where those parents in 2009 are going to be making the same decision about which of their children, potentially, will get a higher education. If this was a wealthy country in 1992, it is a far wealthier country in 2009, and yet we are putting parents in a position where they will have to make that decision.

I think there is a lack of understanding, I suspect, about the financial set up of many country families. On paper it looks all right because of the assets.

Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Asset rich and income poor.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolutely—as Senator Adams said, asset rich and income poor. To address the income issue, the only way you could do that would be to sell the asset down. And the more the asset is sold down, the less the opportunity to support the family that is coming through. So that is a nonsensical option for everyone.

I just do not know what has driven this. It could be a class based approach: a jealousy of the fact that certain groups of people have been abusing this. But if it is a class issue, we actually agree that it has been abused, and we agree with the requirement to change things to make sure that rich city families are not accessing that. We agree with the Labor Party in that regard, so if it is a class thing we think there is an issue that has been identified and we are quite prepared to support changes in that regard.

If, as I fear, it is ignorance based, then that, perversely, is even worse. I know that Senator Mason has referred to this, and I know that the shadow minister, Christopher Pyne, has—and I would be very surprised if Senator Nash and those speaking after me do not mention it—but it was interesting that the Victorian parliamentary education and training committee—chaired by a Labor member who, funnily enough, is actually the member for my home city, Ballarat East, Geoff Howard—was a committee with an effective Labor majority. They were concerned about this, and I will read into Hansard again the committee’s comment, which was unanimously supported by all participants, in relation to the disadvantage that would be caused by this legislation:

… the Committee believes that the removal of the main workforce participation route will have a disastrous effect on young people in rural and regional areas.

And again, that same committee found that the changes:

… will have a detrimental impact on many students who deferred their studies during 2009 in order to work and earn sufficient money to be eligible for Youth Allowance.

Again, the Senate committee recommended—and this is one of their many recommendations:

… that the workforce participation criteria in proposed section 1067A(10)(c)—

which is the fixed amount in 18 months aspect of the bill—

be extended beyond a transition measure, and be retained for students who are required to leave home to pursue their chosen course.

The Senate committee also found:

… the tightening of the workforce participation criteria has caused a high level of anxiety in the community, particularly to those students currently on their gap year, and those students who are completing Year 12 (or the equivalent) this year.

The committee went on to say:

The committee would like to put on the record that it believes the Government has handled the implementation of this policy reform poorly.

Poorly? Appallingly, I would say, has been the treatment in this regard. There are a whole lot of kids—and I will call them kids because they are kids—who are finishing their schooling this year who, on the back of discussions with Centrelink and on the back of discussions with their school, believed that they would be able to access a gap year, going forward. There are a whole lot of kids at the moment who are in that gap year who believed that they would be able to access that gap year and then get onto the independent youth allowance. So you have a whole group of kids who were going to study next year and who are taking the gap year this year and a whole group of kids who quite reasonably assumed when they were planning the next two years that this would continue. The minister has made absolutely minimal changes, which I think, from recollection, affected remote students only. Of about 30,000 students, five have been offered some relief. But the younger brothers and sisters of those people are in the same position as the other 25,000. There is an acknowledgement of an issue but not an acknowledgement of a long-term issue. How absolutely crass is that?

We have proposed, in my view, very sensible amendments. The minister, in her second reading speech on this bill, said that it would:

… make a difference for country kids—for rural and regional kids.

Truer words were never spoken. Will it make a difference? It will most certainly make a difference. It will make a diabolical difference to these regional and rural students. I thought it would be interesting to look through some of the submissions to the Senate committee. I will go through a couple of them. They are public documents and I am sure these people will not mind. There was a submission from Alexis Killoran, who wrote:

Due to the combined factors of my rural location and the current economic crisis I found it extremely hard to obtain a job for the first three months of my gap year. The local IGA supermarket, the biggest employer in the town closest to me, were uninterested in training someone who would shortly be leaving to attend uni. Other employers either shared the same opinion or offered only cash in hand jobs to an inexperienced young person such as myself.

Another student, Danielle Sinclair, said:

I collected papers over the last two months to see what jobs I could apply for. I come from Orange … I circled nine jobs in four weeks that I could apply for and that gave me 30 hours a week. There are another 300 kids graduating. There are just not enough jobs.

The stupidity of these new work arrangements is that there are simply not the jobs in the country towns for these kids. All of these kids who are coming out of high school are going to be going for the same minimal jobs. It is ridiculous. The lucky ones will pick up one of the very minimal jobs that are there and the rest cannot possibly comply with these requirements. Of course, they can comply if they are required to go off all over the country in search of work, but that surely was not the intention of these changes. Surely the intention was that they would be able to stay in their own area and meet these requirements and then go on and study from there.

What we quite rightly are going to move in this place is that if a student is required to move away from home to complete their studies then they should come under the old rules. Senator Adams and Senator Nash, who are in the chamber, are both country women. They know how important this is. They are mothers and they are senators. They are parents. They know what is required to give these kids the opportunity, and I think it is utterly bizarre that we are going to have a two-tier system of opportunity in this country. It is hard enough for country kids to make it in the city. The dropout rates are appalling, and they are appalling because they are kids who are away from home and they are kids who have had very limited experience with cities. So what we are going to do is take these kids out of the country and have them potentially scrounging around to put a bob together to educate themselves, when the person they are sitting beside in the classroom probably does not have that same disadvantage.

I will start to put some of these numbers into perspective. We are not talking about a couple of hundred bucks a week. We are talking, on average, about between $20,000 and $25,000 a year to have a kid living away from home. There are a lot of country people who do not have family or friends in the major capital cities, and we are potentially going to throw these kids who come from the bush into the big city. We are going to potentially put these kids into boarding houses and put them, in my view, at risk. If you want to put these kids into a university college then you can add about another $5,000 on top of that.

I want to talk in the time left to me about some who, quite frankly, I would have thought would know better. I want to talk about the current member for Corangamite, Mr Cheeseman—and I use the word ‘current’ advisedly, because he is only the current and will not be the continuing member for Corangamite after the next election. He is someone who in the truest sense of the words is Canberra’s representative in Corangamite as opposed to Corangamite’s representative in Canberra. He just plays the party line with every single issue that confronts him. He wrote an op-ed in the Geelong Advertiser. He described the bill as providing a ‘helping hand’ and as ‘positive for students and families, particularly those coming from country areas.’ What? A ‘helping hand’? ‘Positive for students and families, particularly those coming from country areas’? Where has this man been? What planet is he from with such complete and utter drivel?

I took the opportunity with Sarah Henderson, the next member for Corangamite, to have a couple of fora in both Geelong and Colac. I will tell you what: there are not too many people in Geelong or Colac who think it is positive for students and families, that they are getting a helping hand or that those coming from country areas are positive about it. Everyone who came to those fora was in exactly the situation of the couple that I referred to back in 1992.

I will finish as I started. If there is one person in this place who thinks it is reasonable to have an education differential between city and country kids in 2009 then, quite frankly, I do not think they deserve to be in this place. We have provided Minister Gillard with the opportunity to make this reasonable. We have provided her, via our amendments, with the opportunity to make sure that the legitimate concerns that she had about rich city kids abusing this are addressed without taking out the future hopes and aspirations of country kids, without taking away from them the right to share in the education experience in this country that every kid who lives in the city can have. It is an obscene piece of public policy, and I urge the Senate in the strongest possible terms to adopt what I believe are reasonable amendments which will make a poor bit of legislation a far better piece of legislation.

Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to follow my colleague Senator Ronaldson to make some comments on the youth allowance legislation, as it is loosely known, before us. I commend my colleague Senator Ronaldson for his comments, because he is right on the money. I firstly thank the committee members of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee, which looked into this legislation, for their contribution. I also thank the secretariat, who is doing an enormous amount of work on this issue.

The Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009 makes a number of changes. Some of those changes are positive. We from this side have indicated that we are supportive of the increase in the thresholds in a number of the areas and also of targeting, where it has occurred, the issue of rorting, so to speak, by rich city families. But there are also a number of negatives in this legislation, and the changes to the workforce participation criteria are among the worst.

I firstly address the issue of the gap year students. This has taken on a life of its own, because it has affected so many of our students right across the country. There was an absolute outcry when this bill came out into the public. I do not think I have ever had so many letters, emails and calls from people on an issue since I have been in the Senate, and I know that my Nationals and Liberal colleagues, particularly in the regional areas, received the same correspondence. And it was huge; we saw the submissions to the Senate inquiry. There were over 700 submissions to that inquiry, the bulk of which particularly addressed the changes to the youth allowance and the changes to the workforce participation criteria.

What we had was a cohort of students who at the end of 2008 took the advice of Centrelink and school advisers to go down the path of qualifying for independent youth allowance through the gap year provision—through earning the lump sum over the 18-month period. And the minister simply changed the goalposts halfway through, so all of these students who had in good faith embarked on this course of action to be able to access the independent youth allowance that they so desperately need were told by the minister: ‘Sorry, you can’t do it anymore. We don’t care that you’re nearly a year through your gap year. We couldn’t care less that you embarked on this in good faith; we’re just going to pull the rug out from underneath you and we’re going to start these changes on 1 January 2010.’

How unfair can you be in government? I do not think there was anything in recent times that was more unfair than saying to a student who is out there trying to get themselves a tertiary education, ‘I’m really sorry about that, but the financial assistance you thought you were going to get I am simply going to take away from you just because I feel like it, because I think retrospectivity is a really good idea!’ But it is absolutely wrong that they changed the goalposts midway, and it was only recognised because all of those students right across the country got active and absolutely lobbied their hearts out to the minister to say, ‘This is wrong’. Clearly she could not see what impact it was going to have when she brought it in in the first place.

What did we see then? The minister did a backflip. But did she do a backflip for all the students? No, she did a backflip for some of them, just some of them., just those ones who lived further than 90 minutes away by public transport from a tertiary institution—just some of them. What about those other 25,000 students currently on a gap year who entered it on good faith? Because the minister has simply changed her mind about this criteria, they are no longer going to be able to gain that financial assistance. That is just wrong. It is just wrong and it is not on. It is a retrospective change. How dare the minister say to these students, ‘I’m going to change this around because I want to do something different,’ when they in their good faith had gone out and embarked on this particular course of action because they had been told to by the relevant authorities, by the people they trusted, that this was the appropriate thing to do?

We will be moving an amendment as has been indicated already by my colleagues to ensure that all of those gap year students are not hit by the incredibly mean, retrospective nature of this particular change to the legislation. It is not fair and it is not right, and those students should be allowed to access that funding that they so desperately need to start their university and tertiary courses.

The impact on rural and regional students is enormous as a result of the removal of criteria (c) which is: employment for at least 18 months since the person last left secondary school earning the person at least the equivalent of 75 per cent of the maximum Commonwealth training award payments for the calendar year in which the 18 months started. In short, the gap year.

What we have seen is that so often there is no alternative for financial assistance for these rural and regional students. This is an equity issue. This is a fairness issue, and the government simply does not understand the inequity. We were told time and time again as our committee went across the country, because we are doing a broader access to education for rural and regional students inquiry at the same time as this specific youth allowance inquiry, that the inequity that exists between rural and regional students and metropolitan students is huge, and we know that the cost for our regional families of relocating those students is around $15,000 to $20,000 a year.

In 2007 Charles Sturt University with Monash University, the University of Western Australia and the Foundation for Young Australians funded a study titled Youth allowance and regional young people access to tertiary education, by Godden 2007, which was referred to many times during the course of the inquiry.

The study found:

Regional young people have high expenses when studying away from home—which all participants describe as the biggest challenge, and affects participation and choices. Regional families are extremely financially burdened with the expenses particularly when they are ineligible for Youth Allowance.

It went on to say:

… the annual living cost for a rural or regional young person studying away from home was between $15,000 and $20, 000, plus relocation and start-up costs of $3,000-$6,000.

Did the minister make absolutely no attempt before she came up with these changes to actually go and find out what the financial impact of relocation is for students? She obviously must not have given it a single thought because I can tell you right now the changes that are in this legislation, as much as they claim that they help country students, go nowhere near what is necessary for our regional students.

The issue is that the independent youth allowance and our youth allowance in general is a social welfare issue. It does not address this issue of equity, this issue of access to education. During the inquiry Mr Kent Spangenberg who is the principal of Loxton High School, I may inform the Senate, raised this issue with me about the inequity years ago. I quote from him:

… if you look at the inequity between two families on the same income—one in a metropolitan area and one in a rural area—the rural family, by the mere fact that they are living rural, has to find some significant additional financial income support or whatever for their child to access the same quality of tertiary education as an urban family. There has to be a baseline there or a benchmark around where that increased cost for accessing tertiary education must be addressed in any sort of solution. It does not matter whether you are earning $50,000 or $70,000 in an urban or a rural setting, the rural person has to find additional moneys to have their child study in Adelaide.

That just highlights the inequity, and the government obviously has no idea. What we have seen is that students and their families have been using this avenue of independent youth allowance because there is simply no other way for rural and regional students to access the assistance which they so desperately need. No other avenue exists.

In 2009, 12,473 regional and remote students accessed independent youth allowance. The government is going to take this away. They are simply pulling the rug out from underneath the current gappies. But as my good colleague Senator Ronaldson said, what about all those students coming after? What about all their siblings? What about all their younger brothers and sisters? What about all the new cohort of young students who are going to need to have some assistance? How many rural and regional students are going to be affected in 2010 and beyond? We have no idea. The department cannot tell us. No-one can tell us. But we know, and the regional members and senators in this place particularly know, that there are so many students who are going to be affected by this. How many will not go on to tertiary education because this government is bringing this legislation in? How many? It is on the heads of this government for every single one of those students who does not go on to tertiary education because of their changes. This government is going to have live with that every single time a student from a rural and regional area wants to access tertiary education and they are told by their family. ‘I’m really sorry, darling, I can’t send you away to tertiary because we simply can’t afford it.’

The government will say to us, ‘But that’s all covered under the new youth allowance changes.’ That is absolute rubbish. It certainly does assist the lower socioeconomic cohort. It certainly does assist them, but once you start moving up through the scale you do not have to get very far up until you do the comparison where you see that students would have been far better off on the $371.40 a fortnight under the independent youth allowance than they would be under these changes, and the government is going to have to live with it.

We know that there are so many students out there struggling. We were in Townsville earlier in the week as part of the broader inquiry and we heard some evidence there from one of the local universities about some students currently doing year 12. Those students had applied for scholarships to go on to university, but they had not even told their parents that they had applied for scholarships because they knew their parents could not afford to send them away. They knew that if they did not get that scholarship, they would not be going. They had not even told their parents because they did not want to put the burden on them of the fact that they knew that their parents could not pay if they were not successful in getting those scholarships. It is an incredibly sad indictment that we have got to the situation where we have students across the country not having the opportunity, if they so choose, to go on to tertiary education. I noticed today that the minister, Julia Gillard, has said:

This is a new system to better support students who need that support the most, including country students.

I do not know who she has been talking to, but she certainly cannot have been talking to any country students, because that is just completely wrong. There were over 700 submissions to the inquiry, most of them railing against the government’s changes. The minister has said: ‘We’re having an education revolution. We want to have an education revolution,’ but obviously that is not taking into account rural and regional students. She said back on 18 November 2007:

We want to make sure kids right across the country, irrespective of what family they’re born into, whether they’re in the centre of the city, in a regional centre or outback Australia, that they all get the support they need for their education.

She should put her actions where her mouth is and make sure that these regional students are looked after, because under the current provisions they certainly are not. One of the students during the course of the inquiry said of the minister:

I would like to ask her to consider the kids in the country that want to go up to tertiary education and have to travel for five hours or so. They live out of home and pay for their own meals and for their own transport. I do not think she has really put herself in our shoes.

That was from Miss Sasha Miles, and I think she is absolutely right on the money. The minister has absolutely no ability whatsoever to put herself in the shoes of those rural and regional students to see what it is like.

The coalition understands the seriousness and the significance of this issue, which is why we have put forward the amendment to continue criteria (c), which is about earning the lump sum amount over the 18-month period. Rural and regional students have no other way of accessing assistance. There is a welfare measure, but they have to use this independent youth allowance as an equity measure to try and ensure that they have the financial assistance available to go on to tertiary education. Thirty-three per cent of regional students go on to tertiary education. Fifty-five per cent of metropolitan students go on to tertiary education. What sort of equity is that? Are we saying that it is simply okay for our regional students—and primarily because of the reason of financial burden, as we have seen from all the evidence that has come through—not to have the chance to go on to tertiary education, knowing that they are far more likely to come back to our regional communities to take up their professions?

The committee also heard a lot of evidence showing how many of our regional families in professions are simply upping out of the regional communities and going back to the cities because it is easier for them to educate their children if they are actually living in cities. How much of a drain is that going to be on our regional communities that are struggling badly enough as it is? It is just not fair and it is not right. This issue of equity has to be addressed. The government wants only the 30-hour a week criteria to remain for independent youth allowance. It is just extraordinary stuff. It is just ridiculous. If it was not so serious it would be laughable. There are no jobs out there. The students cannot average the 30 hours a week, and they have to defer for two years. We all know it is far less likely that they will go on to university if they take a year off, let alone two. It is interesting that the removal of the two criteria, including this gap year provision, is to pay for the rest of the package. The minister has stolen the money from these country kids, from these rural and regional students, to pay for the rest of the package. It is just extraordinary. I see my good colleague Senator Ronaldson shaking his head. It is extraordinary and it is absolutely wrong.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He’s nodding off!

Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He is shaking his head in despair and disbelief, thank you, Senator Sterle. It is interesting to note too that the intent of the remaining independent criteria is actually not to target—you might be interested in this, Senator Ronaldson—our regional students. The department said to the inquiry last Thursday:

The intention is to reflect that people who have been in the full-time labour market for a few years, who later form an intention to study, can return to study. Their independence—

has been

as a full-time worker over a sustained period of time …

The remaining independent criteria are not even targeted at our school leavers, so the government is taking the whole lot away. It will still exist, of course, but with the lack of jobs and the deferment of two years what student is going to be able to utilise that to gain some access? What has the minister put in the package to target the rural and regional inequity? Nothing. Not a thing. Nada. Zip. This government simply does not care about regional Australia, and we are seeing it time and time again. I certainly believe the issue of a tertiary access allowance has to be addressed.

We have seen the issue of the inequity between metropolitan and rural and regional students starkly. There is no argument. We know that the costs are around $20,000 a year more. If we are serious about making sure that our rural and regional students have every opportunity to get to tertiary education then we need to get serious about providing them with the funding. This should not be about dollars. This is about access for our students, who are the future of this country. They need to be able to have every opportunity they possibly can to go on to tertiary education whether they live in metropolitan or in rural and regional Australia. It should not make any difference. This parliament has a requirement to assist them to do that for the betterment of the future of the country.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in support of the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. As Senator Nash’s deputy chair, I too travelled around the country listening to a bevy of witnesses and reading a heap of submissions. But before I speak I must admit that I found some of the conversation coming out of Senator Nash very theatrical. I have to say quite clearly that we as a government are more than worried about the opportunity for rural and regional students, and also city students, to have a decent education. But one would think from that performance that Senator Nash is probably lining herself up for a three-cornered contest somewhere. I do not know. I would not have a clue. Crikey! With the way she performed just then, who knows? The Nationals are going through a transition period at the moment. With a fresh young face who is intelligent, a mother and a valuable community member, some of the dinosaurs from the Libs might be a little bit worried. I do not know what is happening in New South Wales. I would not have a clue. I think that, if Senator Nash were to run for Hume, she would make a fantastic candidate and a superior member too. Anyway, that is another point.

With the way Senator Nash kept referring to her esteemed colleague Senator Ronaldson, I was watching Senator Ronaldson and the poor devil was nodding off. He was not agreeing with what she was saying. But on that he can answer for himself.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, on a point of order: I know these things are said with some merriment, but I do not think that is appropriate in the Hansard. I would ask Senator Sterle to clarify for the record.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sorry. What did you ask me to do, Senator Ronaldson?

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Clarify you were nodding off!

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know it was said in a light-hearted manner, but that is not correct. I ask my friend and colleague Senator Sterle to clarify that it was said with some merriment.

The Acting Deputy President:

All right. There is no point of order.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To carry on with Senator Nash’s comments, Senator Nash referred to, I think, the Principal of Loxton High, Mr Kent—I apologise; I cannot remember his surname. Senator Nash said that he had personally raised it with her—I think these were her words—‘years ago’, and then she repeated ‘years ago’. That tells me all of a sudden that this is not a problem that has been confronting rural and regional students in the last year or so; it has been around for a long, long time, and that is why this government is doing its best to change some of those dinosaur pieces of legislation that were there under the Howard government.

On that, over the 11 years of John Howard’s coalition government we saw the continual erosion of federal government support for Australia’s higher education system—no argument; it was there. The coalition parties were a lead weight on the future of young people for the 11 years that they were in office and they are still a lead weight, unfortunately, on the backs of a lot of young Australians. They talked a lot about higher education but basically did very little. In fact, they actually reduced opportunities for young people in this country to gain a university education. They mucked up the higher education sector when they were in office and now, in regard to this bill, they want to put more obstacles in the way of young Australians who are seeking to better themselves through higher education.

At last, however, Australia has a Minister for Education that has a very clear vision for the future of higher education and has the determination and courage to make it happen. The opposition has been making a lot of noise in regard to this bill in an effort to dupe young people and their parents into believing that opposition members of this parliament are concerned about young people and their ability to afford to participate in higher education. The cruel fact is that the opposition’s proposed amendments will do the opposite.

It is not just the government saying this; it is also the heads of universities across the country and the national student body. On Friday of last week, 13 November, the Group of Eight, which is the coalition of Australia’s leading universities, called upon the Senate to pass this bill. The Chair of the Group of Eight, Professor Alan Robson, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Australia, had this to say:

The Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009 will realise important changes to student income support announced in the 2009 Budget

Professor Robson went on to say:

“Under the proposed new parental income test, a family in which two students are living away from home will be able to earn up to $140,729 before those students lose their Youth Allowance payments. Currently Youth Allowance for such a family would cut out completely at an income of just under $80,000.

“At the same time loopholes in the current legislation allow students from high-income families to access the full rate of Youth Allowance.

               …            …            …

“New start-up and relocation scholarships for all students on Youth Allowance will make a big difference for 150,000 students who have not been eligible for such support before, especially—

I emphasise ‘especially’—

for families in rural and regional areas.

               …            …            …

“The Go8 recognises that the Opposition has tried to listen to students and its rural and regional MPs. However, the Opposition’s amendments are funded by permanently cutting the new Start-Up scholarships which will leave 150,000 students worse off.

“Permanently cutting scholarship funds for a large number of students in need in order to fund a Gap Year for a small number of wealthier students should not be an acceptable solution to the Senate.”

They are pretty strong words. Again on 13 November 2009, the Australian Technology Network of Universities, the ATN, stated in a media statement:

Successful passage of the Government’s student income support package (Social Security and Other Legislation (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009) … is a crucial element in redressing university access and participation and must be passed—

I repeat ‘must be passed’—

if income support is to reach those students who need it most.

The chair of the ATN, Professor Ross Milbourne, said:

“What seems to be forgotten in this debate is that more low-income students are going to get access to Youth Allowance without having to do a gap year at all, and that the thresholds for at-home are much lower than the thresholds for away-from-home.

           …         …         …

Professor Milbourne said the ATN was also strongly opposed to Opposition amendments to slash the value of the Start-up scholarship from $2,254 to $1000 as a means of funding their proposed amendments.

On 19 October 2009, Professor Peter Coaldrake, the Chair of Universities Australia, which is the peak industry body representing Australia’s universities, had this to say in a media release:

The passage of the Social Security and Other Legislations Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009 will give effect to substantial and welcome reforms—

I will repeat that: ‘substantial and welcome reforms’—

to student income support as announced in the May Budget in response to the recommendations of the Bradley Review.

Peter Coaldrake indicated that the changes contained in the bill will mean that more students will be eligible for youth allowance and at a higher rate than previously. He concluded by saying:

… Universities Australia calls upon all members of Parliament to support the amendments proposed in this Bill.

The position being taken by the leaders of Australia’s university sector in support of the bill as it stands is backed by the findings of the recent review of Australian higher education conducted by an independent expert panel, led by Emeritus Professor Denise Bradley AC. The Bradley review found that:

… current student financial support arrangements are complex and poorly targeted.

The report went on to say:

The entire framework for provision of financial support for students needs urgent reform.

What we also found out from this review is that the Howard government in 1998 created a loophole in the eligibility criteria for student financial support. This loophole has enabled a large number of students to get around the means testing of household income in respect to eligibility for Youth Allowance. Students can become eligible for independent status so far as the payment of the relevant youth allowance is concerned by earning $18,850 in a recent 18-month period or by working a given number of hours in paid work over a specified period of time. This can be achieved by taking a gap year and working in casual employment for that period or by being—and this is really interesting—employed by their families.

The Bradley review of higher education found that as a result of this loophole 36 per cent of the students receiving youth allowance are from households with total income above $100,000 and—this is an interesting point—10 per cent are from households with total income in excess of $200,000. In other words, taxpayer funding of youth allowance payments has gone off the rails. A substantial proportion of funding that was originally supposed to support higher education opportunities for people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds has been captured by high-income households and very well off families—46 per cent, in fact. It is no wonder therefore there is strong support from the broader community and from the higher education sector for the Senate to pass this bill without amendment.

The fact is that Australia’s universities have been concerned for a number of years about the persistent underrepresentation of people from low-socioeconomic backgrounds and Indigenous people undertaking university studies. For this reason in 2007 Universities Australia commissioned the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at Melbourne university to undertake a review of the participation in higher education of people from low-socioeconomic backgrounds and Indigenous people. The review’s steering committee was chaired by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of WA and included several vice-chancellors from other Australian universities. This gives a measure of the level of concern that Australian universities have about this matter.

The Universities Australia review found that, firstly, in the six years from 2001 to 2006 under the Youth Allowance policy of the Howard government, access to university by people living in regional and rural areas declined while the access to university by people living in urban areas increased. So much for the Howard government’s concern about people living in regional and rural areas gaining access to higher education. Secondly, the review found that the level of access to university by people from low-socioeconomic backgrounds living in regional areas was much worse than for people from low-socioeconomic backgrounds who lived in urban areas. In other words, under the Howard government, if you were poor and lived in regional areas you were in a much worse position than someone from a similar background living in or near the city wishing to go to university. It is all there. It is all in black and white.

Thirdly, the review found that the likelihood of someone from a medium-socioeconomic background attending a university was only 56 per cent of that of persons from high-socioeconomic backgrounds. The same comparison between low- and high-socioeconomic backgrounds was, unfortunately, much worse. So you can see that, during the period of the Howard government, if you lived in an urban area and were well-off, your chances of gaining access to higher education were vastly better than if you lived in a regional area or came from a lower socioeconomic background.

Opposition senators have got absolutely no credibility when trying to lecture the government on the matter of rural student access to university. What we are seeing and hearing is overwhelming endorsement by the higher education sector of the measures contained in this bill to provide better and far more appropriately targeted income support for students undertaking higher education. We owe it to the large number of students for whom the Youth Allowance and other income support measures contained in this bill are vital to pass this legislation without delay.

I also have a current media release from the National Union of Students and its national president, Mr David Barrow. I would like to quote two lines from Mr Barrow’s media release so that, hopefully, we can hammer home to senators opposite and the Independent senators the importance of passing this legislation without amendment. Mr Barrow says:

This package is part of the regional solution. To block it makes it that much harder for regional students in 2010. This package is a step toward addressing regional disadvantage, not a step back.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Did the minister write it for him?

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I will take that interjection from Senator Ronaldson. He is wide awake now; I will give him that. Senator Ronaldson is wide awake now and has come up with a stupid, ridiculous comment—something about Mr Rudd.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Ronaldson interjecting—

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Through you, Mr Acting Deputy President, I would like to email this to Senator Ronaldson—as long as his colleagues do not pinch his email and run off with it.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. I know Senator Sterle should be addressing the chair but he seems to have now turned his back completely to us. He has one leg up on a chair and is about to sit on the table. The next thing I know, he is going to go to sleep on us. If he could just keep his profile to the front of the chamber then I could possibly be more engaged with what he has to say.

The Acting Deputy President:

Senator Joyce, that is not a point of order—and I think you know that.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To the leader of the Nats—in the Senate, sorry—I am taken aback by that. I am quite happy that you do like my full frontal position. There are no worries in that case: I will talk sideways to you, Mr Acting Deputy President, whilst I look at the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate. I am glad you like my profile, Senator Joyce. If it is all right with you, Mr Acting Deputy President, I will address my remarks through you.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Joyce interjecting—

The Acting Deputy President:

It is more than all right; it is appropriate that you do, Senator. Senator Joyce, please cease interjecting.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, you are hurting my feelings, Senator Joyce. I would like to quote another line from Mr Barrow, the National President of the National Union of Students, from his media release dated 16 November, I think it was. He goes on to say, and it is a message to those opposite:

If this gets blocked—

and he is talking about this legislation—

the Coalition and Senator Fielding have a lot to answer for to the school-leavers born in 1991-1992. They have blocked legislation that funds student life and representation and now they could rob over a hundred thousand of these students these new scholarships.

Those are strong words, and it would be 150,000 students if those opposite had their way. I have other press releases from the Australian Technology Network of Universities and Universities Australia. It is all here. One would think that it would not hurt opposition senators to look outside the square and have a look at what is going on out there rather than taking the emotive road on every piece of legislation. I commend the bill to the Senate.

The Acting Deputy President:

Senator Sterle, just before you resume your seat: Senator Ronaldson raised a point of order earlier in your contribution when he asked that you clarify some of your comments. I ruled at the time that that in itself was not a point of order and that I could not ask you to do that. But, on reflection, I think the comments that you made at the time were a reflection on Senator Ronaldson and I would now ask you to withdraw those remarks.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I would be more than happy to withdraw those comments about Senator Ronaldson nodding off. It was not true. It was said in jest and I am sorry if it hurt the senator that much—I will get some flowers for you, Senator Ronaldson.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was a fine display by the back of Senator Sterle. I have noticed that since he has been here we all seem to have migrated to other seats but Senator Sterle is very nostalgic about staying at the back of the chamber and has remained there now for years. We heard an interesting contribution. He talked about ‘em-er-itious’ professor—I imagine that is some Portuguese professor. I have never met Emma Ritious, but when I do meet Emma Ritious I will have to find a good restaurant with her, I suppose. It was a fascinating contribution. He relied on a quote from the President of the National Union of Students, David Barrow—his friend, guide and philosopher on these issues. No doubt David Barrow comes from some wonderful confines nearby the manic monkey cafe of inner suburban nirvana-ville and he is issuing forth on regional universities.

The problem with this bill, the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009, is that we have had a retrospective change in legislation that has been completely discriminatory against those who live in regional areas. You cannot just relocate somebody from a regional area midway through the university course given the upheaval and problems that this will cause. If this goes through, if what Senator Sterle wants comes to fruition, then we are looking at a person having to work 30 hours a week for 18 months. Exactly how is somebody in Dirranbandi or in Bollon going to do that? Or do we just say that they are no longer allowed to avail themselves of a tertiary education?

The essence of work in regional areas is that when it is there you go flat out—and that gave students the capacity to earn their $19½ thousand in 12 months, and therefore they could struggle through the first six months of the second year and get themselves a university or tertiary education. I think it is absolutely amazing that Senator Sterle says this is some form of advancement. Then we had this diatribe that apparently it is all about the politics of envy. He came up with the percentage of those earning over $100,000 and those earning over 200,000—with 36 per cent earning over $100,000 and 10 per cent earning over $200,000. But he failed to talk about the other 54 per cent who do not. They were left out. They are convenient numbers that Senator Sterle puts forward to promote his cause.

I commend the work that has been done by the coalition and by my colleagues in the National Party Senator Nash and Senator Williams in bringing this to the attention of the parliament. I commend the work done by Chris Pyne in the other place in shining a light on how completely exploitative this change would be on people in regional areas. The burden of dislocating yourself from your regional town and moving down to the cities is a massive cost. Charles Sturt University analysed it as $15,000 to $20,000 a year in the Regional young people and youth allowance study.

Why is the Labor Party so intent, when it has collected so much opprobrium over this, to militantly stick to its guns and to then hold up the opinion of David Barrow from the National Union of Students as its shining light of why this is a good outcome? Surely, that shows a complete lack of capacity to find the more likely sources, which are the regional universities. I have noted that every one that Senator Sterle put forward was an overarching body that is reliant on government funding for continuation, and of course you are going to get a favourable hearing from them. It is the way of the government to go to people it funds to get opinions for political point scoring. The government likes that very much. When in doubt go to the people whose wages you pay and ask them to give an opinion about you. Of course, the opinion you get is always very favourable. What other opinion would you expect?

We now have the ridiculous proposition, the government’s interim version, that if you are 90 minutes away by public transport there is an exemption for you, but this says nothing about the people who come after this interim period. The greatest sense of parity that you can deliver to a nation is the capacity to educate with a sense of equality. There are many issues that bring about this inequality in regional areas and we should not be exacerbating that. I suggest that Senator Sterle have a more deliberate look at the inadequate resources that are currently placed in regional areas as the reason why not many people from regional areas are ending up in tertiary education. I suggest he talk to some of his state Labor colleagues and ask why the standard of education at regional high schools has to suffer because they do not have the resources. The state Labor governments have been so profligate and wasteful, and the people who have suffered as a result of that profligacy are those at regional high schools.

I also see problems in regional high schools such as bullying and a lack of education standards, yet the Labor Party close their eyes to this problem. They just wish it would go away. We have not managed to grasp the nettle that one of the main reasons we are not getting the progression from state regional high schools to university is that the state Labor governments have just dropped the ball on regional high schools. If there is no competition, students do not have the capacity to go to an alternative venue to keep some competition in the market so that the standards of all stay up; hence, the standard of the remaining school will fall. I have heard no critique from the Labor Party, although for a while Julia Gillard started moving towards a proper assessment of regional high schools. But then the left wing of the Labor Party got hold of her and she started moving away from a proper assessment of regional high schools. We do not want transparency to tell you exactly how your regional high school is going so that you, the parents, know the capacity of that high school to deliver an education to their child so they can then go onto a tertiary institution!

The Nationals have been at the forefront, since Federation, of trying to get universities into regional areas. It has been an imperative. From Earle Page and Drummond on, we understood the importance of having regional based universities. We strived to get medical schools placed in regional areas. It is absolutely imperative that we have students from regional areas educated in regional areas to keep them in regional areas to provide the doctors, the dentists, the nurses, the engineers and—dare I say it—the accountants for regional Australia. What the Labor Party has proposed with this piece of legislation is yet another blow to not just regional universities but people living in regional areas in the future to get the services that are available in metropolitan areas.

This legislation will be the reason that someone who was going to go to a regional university to do medicine will stay in the workforce. If they have the capacity to work 30 hours a week for 18 months, you might just find that they stay there and they do not bother getting a tertiary education. That is fine for them. They will probably go on to make a lot of money. If they are very competent they will, but they will not go to university to become the doctor or the dentist—the person you need to look after such things as Indigenous health and dentistry in remote areas. This just goes to show the lack of capacity of the Labor Party to see the intricacy of the tapestry that is required to deliver an outcome to regional Australia. This just goes to show how arbitrary and mercenary the Labor Party can be: once they have made a mistake and the spotlight shines clearly on that mistake, they will not lose face. They insist on sticking to their guns when it is really such a simple issue that they could change.

We heard Senator Sterle talk about regional areas, but in all his figures he boxed regional and metropolitan together. He did not have the capacity to differentiate between the two because the Labor Party have not done the research between the two. They have not differentiated between the two, yet they put themselves up as the advocate for regional universities. Senator Sterle was lounging around with his foot on the chair and his backside on the table chatting to non-existent people in the gallery, but he did not have the capacity to actually tell us exactly what proportion of the figures that he delivered to this chamber are pertinent to regional Australia.

Of the 36 per cent earning over $100,000 a year, Senator Sterle, how many came from regional Australia? How many of the 10 per cent earning over $200,000, those evil families who have done the worst thing on earth and actually made a buck in life—and you can’t have that, people making a buck in life—came from regional Australia? I live in St George out in the south-west and I cannot think of too many people in my street who earn over $200,000. Maybe they are there and I am not aware of them. Maybe I should pop up to the local high school at St George, have a quick whip around the classroom and find out how many of them are earning $200,000, or even $100,000, a year. It is not many, I would presume.

What the Labor Party has done for that other 54 per cent is to make tertiary education virtually impossible. What happens? What do they do? Where do they go under this new arbitrary law of yours? In the past they would have gone flat out in the cotton season, the harvesting season or the fruit-picking season and earned the money to get across that $19½ thousand threshold in order to avail themselves of a tertiary education. You have cut that out. Now in regional Australia you are miraculously going to make the melons grow all year round! You are going to make the cotton season go all year round. You are going to make those times of working flat out to earn a buck go all year round.

Now you want 30 hours of work a week, let’s look at what the Labor Party does in those regional areas and let’s look at all the things that people used to do. Every step of the way the Labor Party has placed caveat after caveat and impost after impost to try and make it more difficult to earn a buck, not easier. These are people who do not have a tertiary education and whose work covers everything from roo shooting and abattoir work to every form of seasonal work. You have made life harder, not easier. And now you have the gall to come in here and say, ‘Even though we have made life harder, we are going to assume that everything in regional Australia is exactly the same as metropolitan Australia.’ This is fascinating. I look forward to you providing services in regional Australia in the same form and fashion as can be found in metropolitan Australia. I look forward to the same numbers of doctors and dentists and the same access to child care, public roads, public transport, health and air transport. It is just not there. Yet you have made the assumption in this piece of legislation that everything is the same. It shows a complete and utter ignorance of the form and substance of your legislation.

The National Party and the Liberal Party will continue to try and get a better deal for regional Australia. It is the only outcome. It looks like the Independents, who are generally not a bad litmus test when something is completely off the beam, will not be supporting the Labor Party either. The rational thing for a party to do, if it was not obstinate and arrogant and had not already become conceited during its short term in government, would be to change that around. It would actually change its position. It would accept that it had made a mistake—and it is only human to make a mistake—and change it. But, no, what we are getting is this belligerent and obstinate statement that it will stick to its guns and run out and find third-party endorsements from such people as David Barrow from the National Union of Students. What a benevolent recommendation that is!

I cannot understand why when it is so simple to fix you have not bothered to go out and fix it. In the meantime I imagine that this will be defeated or successful amendments will be proposed by the coalition and the Independents. Then we will have a real test of the Labor Party’s capacity to take a breath and to go back and address the problem. We will see whether it can accept there is a problem and whether it can accept the dignity of the Senate in the proposition that it has put forward. We will also see whether or not the Labor Party actually has the capacity to make progress in this issue.

Everybody in regional Australia is now watching and waiting. The students do not have the capacity to avail themselves of 30 hours per week over 18 months. You can forget that. If they are going to do that, they are going to stay in the workforce. But this is what you have suggested. And people in regional areas do not have the capacity, like they do in metropolitan areas, to go home to mum and dad at night. If you are going to a regional university in Armidale and you live in Walgett then you cannot just jump in the car and go home. You actually have to stay in Armidale. But your legislation does not recognise that. What your legislation means is that in order to work 30 hours a week over 18 months you are going to head to Sydney to do it. And guess what happens to people who go to Sydney to work? They generally stay there. Once they stay there that is the loss of another asset to help the services in regional areas. Our greatest loss is that people who have the capacity to work 30 hours a week over 18 months will decide to work 50 hours a week over 15 years. They will find themselves a new occupation and that is where they will stay. Alternatively, they will end up down the track at a metropolitan university and that is where they will stay.

I am interested to see how this dovetails into all the other Labor rhetoric on how they are going to look after people in regional and remote areas. How does it dovetail into their idea of delivering services to Indigenous communities? How does it dovetail into their idea of equity and parity across the Australian nation? What they have devised in this legislation is a little piece of nastiness for a very specific group in society—and that is the people living in regional Australia.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to comment on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. I am sure there would be nobody in this chamber who would not want to see young Australians given the opportunity to realise their potential through education, including tertiary education. As a young person from rural Western Australia, I would have had no opportunity at all to go to veterinary school in Queensland had it not been for opportunities given to me. Additional to that is the fact that I taught for some 14 years in rural universities. So I have a very keen interest. I can assure Senator Joyce that the trip from Brisbane back to Perth was only once a year if you were lucky.

Therefore, I have concerns about the move and the direction taken by the Minister for Education in her attempts to reform Youth Allowance. It lets down young people who have made decisions based on advice from Centrelink and their advisers and counsellors in schools. They have started the process of their gap year on the conditions they understood, only to see them changed. It is a fact that they have changed back as a result of the minister examining this more closely—for a limited number, but not for the lot. About 4,000 to 5,000 students will be advantaged by the changes the minister was forced to make as a result of pressure placed on her by the coalition, but there are still about 25,000 students who will miss out, particularly those students from rural, remote and regional areas. It is those about whom I have the greatest concern.

We heard our colleague Senator Sterle mount a very cogent case for the need for support for rural and regional students. He made the point about city students, urban students, and you only have to look where all the universities are in our cities—they are in higher socioeconomic areas and, therefore, obviously those who reside in the cities are going to have the greater opportunities. That will always be the case. But Senator Sterle was in fact trying to make the case—although he did not realise it—for greater support for rural and regional students. And that is the case that I want to see. Of course we want to see greater participation by lower socioeconomic youth in this country in higher education, and of course Indigenous youth. We know that the way forward for the Indigenous youth of this country is primary education followed by secondary education and, where possible, a greater participation in tertiary education. But we need to see far more of that.

Basically, the changes, as they have been suggested, will impact severely on rural and regional students. I want to address some of those impacts. We have heard in committee meetings about students in their final year at school who have gone to their principals requesting applications for scholarships, but on the basis that their parents not be told whether or not they were successful—because, if they are unsuccessful, they do not want the pressure to be put on their families to try to get them to university or higher education. There are instances in families, farming and other rural families, where guilt is a real issue for these children. Maybe others in the family will not be able to afford the sorts of education that they want. Maybe because the family farm has been affected through drought or other conditions, or because of the high value of the Australian dollar—for whatever reason—they actually do not want to put their families through this sort of burden. How terrible is that for young Australians at that stage of their lives—high achievers, often, who have overcome the natural disadvantages that often occur in Australia, where educational opportunities in rural areas are not available to the extent they are in the city? And then, having achieved well, they simply cannot realise that potential. Basically, that is what we need to see change.

It starts with parity for all Australian students, regardless of where they reside. In the main, you cannot go to university from rural or regional areas; you have to move to cities or to larger regional centres. What is absolutely essential is that we move to a circumstance in which there is parity in terms of accommodation before we look at any other issues. In other words, if you come from a rural or regional area, you cannot travel to that institution each day. The 90 minutes by public transport is one that I accept. But, if you cannot achieve that, then in this country we must have a circumstance in which every student is equal in terms of their accommodation before they start their higher studies. Whether that is residing at home, whether it is residing in rental accommodation, whether it is residing in university colleges or whatever, it is absolutely essential that we achieve that.

I have had a lot of communication coming from Western Australia from the Isolated Children’s Parents Association, a group that is naturally highly concerned that their children have the opportunity to participate in tertiary and higher studies. They are seeing very strongly the fact that their children are being denied this. The recognition of the costs of living away from home—transport back to home, as we heard earlier—must be balanced out with urban students. The Isolated Children’s Parents Association pleads for some sort of tertiary access allowance. However that is undertaken, it must absolutely, critically, be examined.

That brings me to another issue, which comes up again and again—that is, the basis on which we determine socioeconomic status. Largely, it is determined on postcodes. That may be appropriate for Australia’s cities. It might be easy to identify those suburbs by postcodes. But, if you look at rural and regional Australia, very often the one postcode covers an enormous geographic area. And it will also cover an enormous range of socioeconomic bases, from businesspeople through to people on farms, owning farms, working on farms, to those who may only have part-time jobs or may even not be employed. Therefore, the use of postcodes as a determinant must be changed.

We come then to the new workplace participation criteria. These include a requirement for a minimum of 30 hours work per week for 18 months. For somebody just leaving school, the prospect of getting 30 hours work per week minimum is remote. It is almost negligible. I have put the question in estimates: what about a scenario when the crayfish season is running, when there is fruit picking available, when a crop is going in or a crop is going off? Young people might be working 100 hours a week. Is it possible to calculate back and have an average of 30 hours a week? The answer has been no. There is some logic to a scenario in which, if you are working 100 hours a week, it is credited to you, but you only get 30 hours credit. And when in another week you work 29 hours, of course you have failed the criteria. This is unacceptable. This is nonsense. Everybody can see that those circumstances are not particularly difficult to change. What we need is to have a combination of both. We need to have a scenario where the existing terms and conditions apply for someone who decides to take a gap year—that is, 15 hours a week for two years or the 30 hours a week for 18 months. But I plead that that 30 hours be an average over time, not a minimum.

I also ask the question, as one who would have been challenged with this particular circumstance: if someone cannot actually achieve 30 hours of paid work a week, but they are so desperate that they have given up their 18 months—and, in many cases, that is really equivalent to two years, because they probably cannot start university until the following February—why couldn’t we have a circumstance in which up to five of those 30 hours might be voluntary work, inputted to accredited service providers in the social and community areas?

That is a circumstance in which effectively that person is still committing themselves to 30 hours a week and there is an added benefit hopefully to members of the community, whether in the aged-care sector, the environmental sector or wherever—there will be plenty of opportunities for us to look at and we will not need to condemn these young people to a circumstance where they are not going to be successful. In many instances these people are going to have to move away from home. We know that in rural and regional Australia we want more educated young people in our communities. If they go to cities and never come back to those country towns they are lost as young professionals, they are lost as families and they are lost as contributors to those rural communities. We cannot have that in this country, I submit to you.

Basically what I am pleading for is a circumstance in which we do not disadvantage those who have gone into their gap year based on what they believed would be the circumstances. We must have legislation that protects them and covers them, and we must also allow a circumstance in which they can continue, if they are going to move to the 30 hours a week for 18 months, and they can win. Otherwise we are setting them up to fail. I cannot for the life of me see why we would be setting them up to fail.

I want to come to the question of eligibility for youth allowance in terms of assets. Under the guidelines if a family’s assets, excluding the family home, exceed $570,000 then they are not eligible for youth allowance. In the case of primary producers in agriculture that figure is extended to $2.286 million in terms of net farm assets exclusive of debt, which would include the land, the improvements, the stock, the machinery and the plant and equipment. You might say that $2.286 million sounds a very generous figure, the argument being that if a family’s farming asset exceeds $2.286 million they can afford to have their children at universities in the cities without further assistance from the government. Let me put that into perspective for you, and rather than use any figures that might come out of my head let me give you the figures from the Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics which were released in April this year for the period 2006-07 to 2008-09. These were divided into five different farming types: wheat and other crops, mixed livestock and cropping, sheep enterprises, beef enterprises and dairy enterprises. Remember the figure of $2.28 million, because for every single solitary one of those five sectors, according to ABARE, the asset values well and truly exceed $2.28 million.

In the case of our own wheat and sheep farming enterprises in Western Australia there would be very few farms that actually do not have a net asset value of around $6 million and so you would say, ‘Gracious me, there is no need at all for any support.’ But let me relate to you the farm cash income for those enterprises—it varies from $147,000 down to $25,000 for beef enterprises. Go a stage further and talk about what you actually have to spend on your children in the city after you have paid all your costs. According to ABARE, for those five groups the farm business profit—the average of the last few years—for wheat and other cropping was $33,000 and for mixed livestock and cropping there was a loss of $25,000. You might ask why profit is so low, but you only have to have a look around Australia in the last few years to see how farming has gone. In my own state of Western Australia we will probably harvest between eight million and 12 million tonnes of wheat and yet, with the value of the Australian dollar up around US93c, the glut of wheat around Australia and the increasing cost of inputs, most of our wheat farmers will not actually make a generous profit at all despite the fact that the season in many areas is fantastic.

For sheep enterprises ABARE shows a loss of $42,000, for beef enterprises a loss of $43,000 and for dairy enterprises a profit of $127,000. The point I want to make, and that everybody needs to understand, is that to turn around and say that a value of $2.28 million in some way accords to these people such a level of wealth that they do not need any financial support is absolutely and utterly wrong and must be addressed or we are going to condemn a whole generation of young people from farming enterprises to not being able to participate in our tertiary and higher education. That is a matter about which I have a great concern and I will speak further about this aspect. For a non-farming business enterprise, equity in the business of 10, 15 or 20 per cent would be normal, so there would be 80 per cent debt. If an Australian farming enterprise went in with equity less than around 80 per cent—and in many instances much more than that—it would be very dangerous for their long-term viability. I make the point again that the difference between the capitalisation of farming enterprises and non-farming enterprises in Australia is significant. I also have to make the point that there would not be too many enterprises with net assets of $2.28 million that could turn a profit unless it was an intensive horticulture or related activity.

In April 2008 Universities Australia announced some of the areas about which they had concerns for tertiary education opportunities in Australia. We have heard some of that quoted by some of our colleagues. What is interesting is that Indigenous students seem to have less opportunity and fewer advantages, and legislation must be directed towards improving those opportunities. The third group is the higher socioeconomic students, and we should not be throwing babies out with the bathwater because families in higher socioeconomic groups can afford to have their children at university. The ones in the middle are the ones we must address ourselves to, and that includes rural and regional students. The informal conclusion of the vice-chancellor chairman of that Universities Australia group was very interesting when I had a discussion with him about that topic. He made the observation that over the last 50 years, regardless of the conditions for students going to universities—whether universities charged fees or were free, and with the introduction of scholarships and the introduction of HECS—there actually has not been a significant change in the attendance of students from lower socioeconomic families when conditions have changed. What has impacted heavily over 45 or so years of government policy changes has been the capacity and participation of rural and regional students in tertiary education. I want that point to be remembered. An interesting point was made by Victorian vice-chancellors, that the objective is 20 per cent of lower socioeconomic people attending university. They made the observation that in Victoria they are already at 20 per cent for young women; they are not yet anywhere near that for young men.’

I just reflect again on a statement earlier, that everybody in this chamber wants to see young Australians given their opportunity to realise their potential through higher education. I hope earnestly that we can work with the government to achieve that goal. The point being made, of course, is that rural and regional students are likely to be disadvantaged in the proposed changes. I make the plea that we can come to an arrangement whereby that does not happen.

One of those areas is the proposed change to 30 hours work per week for up to a period of 18 months. That is practically impossible for students who are just leaving school. That provision is very good for those who have been in the workplace for a period of time; those who may have already been undertaking 30 hours work per week and who are ready to leave the workplace and go back into higher education. That needs to be applauded. The problem, of course, relates to the school leavers, for whom a minimum of 30 hours work a week in an 18-month period will be practically impossible in most instances, especially in rural and remote areas.

I conclude my discussion this evening with a plea that we need to tie funding and direction not just to participation at tertiary level but to success at tertiary level. Too often we refer to, focus on and concentrate on those policies and strategies that just get young people into places of higher education. That is critically important, but there needs to be incentives, financial and otherwise, that will ensure young people understand the commitment, obligation and sacrifice that are made by families, government and taxpayers so that they have a very strong desire to actually graduate, achieve and get back into their workplaces.

From my experience teaching in the university sector, I make the observation about what I call ‘wastage’ of students from those who leave school with the intention of going on to higher education. If we call them 100 per cent, then for those who take a year off and have a gap year the loss is around 30 per cent. For those who take two years prior to going to university, we do not know the actual figures but they are probably as high as 50 per cent of those who get into the workplace, or travel or do whatever but do not return to tertiary study. One of the concerns I have with the aspect of 30 hours a week for 18 months relates to when that 18 months may well become two years simply because they cannot start their courses until the February of the following year.

I conclude where I commenced: the opportunity for a young fellow, with a very short socioeconomic background—very difficult circumstances in my own family’s case—to go to university in Queensland through the agency of cadetships. A five-year cadetship to a state department guaranteed you employment at the end and ensured that you had to work but, of course, paid for your travel, your education and a sustenance allowance. I do make the plea in the overall circumstance that when we are looking at for the future of young people, especially in regional and rural areas, we consider the opportunity of a return to cadetships.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not intend to make a long speech about the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009, but it contains issues I am very concerned about. I commend my colleague, Senator Back, for the argument he has put forward about tertiary education and the effect on regional areas in Australia.

It is concerning that 33 per cent of regional students completing year 12 go on to tertiary education, but in the city areas that is 55 per cent. That is a concern in itself. In regional areas we are desperately short of many professional services: doctors, dentists and nurses—these people have to go to university and those people from regional areas who go to university are most likely to return to the regional areas. That is the argument we put forward this evening.

The goal for the government should be to provide opportunities for all Australians. That was the message that Mr Rudd had for the Australian people before the election: the Rudd education revolution. This is wrong, and what concerns me is that those seeking to declare themselves independent from their parents and get the independent youth allowance must look for 30 hours a week work for 18 months. Where are those jobs in those small regional communities? Go out to those regional towns—Bourke in New South Wales, or Gilgandra, Coonamble or Coonabarabran—the jobs are simply not there. On completing year 12, those students will simply take a gap year, which will now have to go to two years, and be forced to go to the cities to seek work and qualify for the independent youth allowance, which I think is $371.40 a fortnight.

To defer for two years is a problem in itself. As Senator Back just said, of those who defer for one year 30 per cent do not go on to tertiary education. If they go on to two years—and many universities will not defer for two years; that is a problem in itself—those people may well lose interest in study. Perhaps they will have a blue-collar job and simply not return to tertiary studies, and we will lose those specialists that we so desperately require. I especially relate those essential services to dentists. In rural and remote areas we only have 17 dentists per 100,000 people, but in the city areas we have 55 dentists per 100,000 people. That is a concern in itself.

I look at the asset test, and it is simply unfair. Many in rural Australia will not get youth allowance because their parents are asset rich and cash poor. Someone might have a thousand acres of land, some machinery and some stock. If they do not owe any money, they can break the threshold of the $2.286 million; hence, there will be no youth allowance for their child. But their income on 1,000 acres may be as low as $30,000 or $40,000. They are not wealthy people. They are wealthy in assets but they do not have cash, and the tens of thousands of dollars that are needed to educate their youngster through a tertiary education are simply not there.

As Mr Pyne said in the other place on 20 October 2009:

Students from farming and small business backgrounds in the country are often ineligible to receive youth allowance as dependants because the value of the average Australian family farm is significantly higher than the level of assets allowed under the test. However, the average Australian farming family cannot afford the tens of thousands of dollars required to support their child’s move and their accommodation and living expenses while studying at university.

If that child were from the city, where they could stay at home to attend uni, but their parents did not have the asset then they would be eligible for the dependent youth allowance. That is simply unfair.

I also want to bring up what the Labor member for Ballarat East, Geoff Howard, said in a Victorian inquiry into youth allowance. He said that he was:

… concerned that the specific circumstances of rural and regional young people still have not been adequately addressed. Already, many such students defer their studies to meet eligibility criteria for income support and this route to financial independence is set to become even more difficult under the new system.

That was a Labor member of the Victorian state parliament who wrote that. It was not a coalition member, but a Labor member who is the chairman of the education and training committee. The committee believes that the removal of the main workforce participation route will have a disastrous effect on young people in rural and regional areas—and how right they are.

I look forward to the amendments to this legislation proposed by the coalition. The legislation is wrong in itself because it is retrospective. Those who completed year 12 last year, 12 months ago, sought advice from organisations such as Centrelink and people who were giving advice on careers et cetera. They took a gap year believing that the $19½ thousand gross earnings would get them the independent youth allowance, but now those regulations have been changed. The goalposts have been changed halfway through the game. That is wrong, and it affects some 25,000 students currently in their gap year. The government should not introduce retrospective legislation that affects those people. It is going back on what those people genuinely believed in as to what they were doing with their future careers and tertiary educations. To me, that is wrong and should also be amended.

I look forward to the coalition putting forward those amendments to get this legislation right. It is unfair for people, especially in regional and rural Australia, who want their youngsters to get a tertiary education. I have quoted the figures and they are disastrous. There must be a fair and equitable situation in Australia in which our young have the opportunity to get a tertiary education, regardless of where they live in this country, especially so that those from regional areas can return to those areas and deliver vital services that we so desperately need.

Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. This is a bill about which, a number of months ago, I had a lot of correspondence, which I will allude to shortly. This bill has been developed in response to the Bradley review into higher education. This review focused on the current situation and future challenges facing higher education in Australia. It was led by Professor Denise Bradley, who has had a prominent and successful career in higher education, including a long stint as Vice-Chancellor of the University of South Australia.

Throughout her career, Professor Bradley has consistently advocated for those experiencing social disadvantage and, particularly while at UniSA, has sought to build professional and community links between the university and some of Australia’s most economically challenged communities in Adelaide’s northern urban fringe. One example of these kinds of links was the recently completed research project between UniSA and 10 schools in Adelaide’s north. The Australian Research Council’s linkage project between the school of education, the northern areas secondary schools principals’ network, the South Australian Education Union and SA’s social inclusion unit sought to contribute to social sustainability and regional capacity building.

In short, the redesigning of pedagogies in the north project worked with teachers in disadvantaged schools to develop new ways of teaching to address poor retention rates and engage students in their learning by connecting student learning with their lives in the community. Of the numerous innovations and findings of this project, one stands out as significant to debate on this bill. This project found that teachers who came from and lived in the community in which they taught were often more effective in engaging students in their learning. This was found to be more than having opportunities to build relationships outside of school. It was also about understanding the needs and interests of students and their communities.

While some of those communities face challenges of social disadvantage, poverty, conflict or trauma, such an understanding is vital to professionals being effective in their service to those communities. It also goes some of the way to addressing difficulties and attracting people to work in areas that are doing it tough and reducing professional churn, with the resulting challenges of retraining professionals and retaining service quality. While this study focused on teachers working in schools and urban fringe communities, the idea that people from socially disadvantaged communities received training and returned to those communities will make sense for other professions. This idea will also make sense to those living in regional communities.

I believe the issue of improving access to university to those from areas that experience social disadvantage is vital. Therefore, it is significant that the Bradley review found that there were significant barriers to entering university for Indigenous and regional youth, as well as young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. One of the major reasons stated in the review was that current levels of income support are inadequate for these students. In response, the Bradley review made a series of recommendations, several of which are taken up in this bill. Broadly, this bill changes the criteria by which a student may be deemed independent for the youth allowance, changes the means testing arrangements for payments to students and youth, introduces new scholarships for students on income support for their study and removes equity and merit based scholarships from income tests.

More specifically, in relation to changing the criteria for independence, this bill will, firstly, gradually reduce the age for being considered independent from 25 to 22 years by 2012 and, secondly, prevent a person from claiming independence through part-time work. In relation to changing the means testing arrangements for payments, this bill will lift the parental income eligibility test from $32,800 to $44,165. This will allow more young people to qualify as independent; will reduce the taper rate on parental income to 20 per cent, which will also lift the point at which students can qualify; and will increase the personal income test from $236 to $400 per fortnight, which lifts the amount that students can earn before having their payments reduced. That is something that is welcome. I thought it was very petty; at that level it was simply too low.

Finally, this bill initiates a new student start-up scholarship of $12,127 for each six months of study and a new scholarship of $4,000 in the first year and $1,000 every year after for students who need to relocate for study. As the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee report noted, the vast majority of these changes are largely uncontroversial; however, there has been much public concern about the impact of these changes on regional students, particularly those who have chosen to take a gap year to gain independent status. I share these concerns.

I first became aware of this issue in May of this year, when my office was contacted by people expressing their dissatisfaction after the measures were announced. I took these concerns to the office of the Deputy Prime Minister and requested a detailed response. Around that time, that media became aware of this issue, and my colleague Senator Sarah Hanson-Young advocated a review into these concerns—a position that I shared. My response at the time was to say that I would support such a review should the response from the Deputy Prime Minister be either not detailed enough or inadequate. I believe it was not at that time, so I supported the review by the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee which commenced on 17 August this year.

However, I was encouraged to see that the minister announced on 26 August that students who have taken a gap year and live more than 90 minutes away from university by public transport will be entitled to claim independent status for youth allowance until 30 June 2010. This is an extension of six months on the previous starting date for the new independent status arrangements. Due to these changes to the independence criteria, the government has estimated that, of the 30,700 students who would otherwise be ineligible for independent status, 5,000 will be covered by the minister’s decision to extend the start date by six months and 12,500 will still gain independence because the increases in the parental income threshold will mean that they will qualify. This leaves approximately 12½ thousand students who could miss out or receive smaller payments because they are living at home with their parents on too high an income.

The response of the coalition is that all of these 30,700 persons should be covered, and it is proposed by the coalition that the start date of the new independence criteria be pushed back by a further six months and that the size of the student start-ups be reduced. Further, the coalition estimates that rolling back the start-up by 12 months will cost some $573 million. I think that is correct, but I will stand corrected if it is not. However, the government has made it clear that it does not intend to support any amendment that is not revenue neutral. Consequently, the coalition has supplemented this change with a second measure that is estimated to raise $696 million. This change is to cut the annual student start-up scholarship by $1,254 per year. However, the government claims these changes will not be revenue neutral; rather they will cut funding significantly beyond the forward estimates. It is in this context of claim and counterclaim that I am attempting to formulate my response to this bill. I will be listening carefully in the committee stages as I wish to hear both sides substantiate these claims. Providing adequate evidence will be crucial to my final decision. An evidence based approach is always a good thing.

I also think it is appropriate to note the work done by the RRAT References Committee on the issue of regional students and indicate that I believe there is merit in the committee considering a regional tertiary entrance fund. I commend the work of members of that committee, in particular Senator Fiona Nash, the chair. It is my understanding that Senator Nash has a second reading amendment to this end, and I call on the government to give its full support with some degree of urgency to any investigation into new measures to provide specific support for regional students to start study at university.

The issue of assistance for regional students is one of the utmost importance to me. I acknowledge that some regional students will be better off under the bill due to the new scholarship arrangements, but I believe that there is a lot more that can and should be done. The disproportionate cost of relocation and living at home for country and regional students needs to be addressed, particularly for those in more remote areas. The possibility that hardship criteria for independent youth allowance status could be extended to students from remote areas is worthy of consideration. I also believe that the government should seriously consider bringing forward its review of regional loading.

My colleagues have indicated that they intend to introduce a broad range of amendments, but the theme is a common one: how do we support more regional students entering tertiary education? If the government wants the support of the Senate for this bill, the onus is on it to provide much more information as part of the committee debate to indicate its plans to address these challenges. With these things in mind, I broadly support the changes to scholarships proposed in the bill. I also note the overwhelming support for this bill voiced earlier today by university vice-chancellors and student unions.

Finally, I welcome the way that this bill embraces many of the positive recommendations of the Bradley review. I think there is considerable scope for reform. This bill addresses a number of those issues. My concerns are in relation to regional students and the whole issue of the potential retrospectivity of the bill. I understand it is a difficult policy issue. We are not dealing with a magic pudding—we have a limited amount of money to deal with this—but I think that the government needs to take up with some urgency the concerns expressed by the RRAT References Committee and the concerns expressed by Senator Nash and by others, such as Senator Hanson-Young, about how not to disadvantage and how to go forward with the issue of regional and disadvantaged students having access to our tertiary education. With those comments, I support this bill at the second reading.

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As you know, Madam Acting Deputy President Moore, I come from the Northern Territory. As I travel around the territory, I could unsurprisingly find myself in any place in regional or rural Australia. I could be in Katherine, Tennant Creek, Alice Springs or Nhulunbuy. Of course we are a long way from anywhere; but most particularly we are a long way from university. As you would appreciate, it is a great tragedy that in our universities—for the benefit of Senator Xenophon, who is just leaving and whom I know is very keen on scientific evidence and on this issue—those people from regional areas who go to university are outnumbered by people from metropolitan areas two to one.

I can tell you, Madam Acting Deputy President, because I know you will know and agree with this, it is not because people from rural and regional Australia are a bit thick. We have some of the brightest men and women in regional Australia. It is just the same wherever you come from. We are Australians. Given the same opportunities, this place can close that gap. We talk about gaps in this place. If you come from Tennant Creek, Alice Springs, Katherine, Nhulunbuy or any of the regional centres around Australia, you have half as much chance of attaining a higher education and, in fact, making a contribution to the economy of this country, a social contribution, a contribution to science, or one of those wonderful contributions to a breakthrough in so many of the challenges that face our community. You may come from regional Australia but you only have half as many chances of getting there and making what I consider a very special contribution.

There are a number of reasons for that. Much of it is that if you have to travel such a long way from home, it is very, very difficult in a social sense to be completely dislocated from your community, your mates and your family. It is not like you can go down to the pub with your mate: ‘How did you go today?’ ‘I did a bit of study and a couple of units on this.’ You are completely dislocated from your family. Generally as a young man or young woman starting university, you are leaving school and you have been in a very protected environment for a very long time. You are stepping out into the big wide world and it is just so important to be able to have those connections. This place cannot alter that. We know that those things you cannot change contribute to the fact that only half the people go on to higher education. There are a whole lot of wonderful reasons that they live in regional Australia, and that is their decision.

But tragically, I believe that this legislation will add to that number who do not go on to higher education. It will take away further opportunities from those people in regional and rural Australia to contribute to this great nation. There is also the financial cost, and what this legislation fundamentally does not deal with is the element of how you actually get there. Let me tell you, if you are in Katherine and you need to go to Melbourne university to make a contribution as a doctor—and I know a young lady there at the moment—it is a long way to travel. You have to find the money to travel to Darwin and then you have to get on a flight down to Melbourne via wherever. It is an expensive business. You can say: ‘It’s all right. You only have to make that twice a year.’ That would be great if it were the case.

We also know that there are a number of costs involved in setting up a home in about the same location as the university. I always used to think that living on campus was the cheapest. Obviously, I am very dated, Madam Acting Deputy President. As a young bloke, it was always cheaper to live on campus than it was to live in a shared house in Canberra, but that is not the case anymore. It is very expensive, I am led to believe, to live on campus and not the other way around.

For Senator Xenophon’s benefit, in the guide for country students published by the University of Adelaide a guide to the costs involved in living in Adelaide was provided and the cost of living estimate is stated as being between $290 and $495 a week. These are basic living costs and do not include the cost of textbooks, running a car, that are faced by all students regardless of where they have lived prior to university. If you come from one of the places that I talk about—and you know about it, Madam Acting Deputy President—that is an extra cost that is not a choice.

I might have hated mum and dad, and mum certainly hated me. I was a scruffy bugger, and she wanted me to move out, but I had a choice. I could have lived at home. But whatever the case was, the fact that I had a choice put me in a completely different demographic than someone in Tennant Creek who has to pay that. It does not matter what you do, you will be paying a significant amount of money every week simply to get the benefit of a university education. Of course, this goes to the crux of the issue which is that regional and remote students face that just to go to university where their city colleagues do not. And still we see that there are only half as many people who go. That is pretty bad. But if we change that, if we take away the capacity that people have under the current situation in legislation, it may not be perfect. If we take that existing capacity away, clearly, that number will grow, and that is not in the interests of those individuals or the contribution they will make to the nation and is clearly not in the national interest.

The financial obstacles have been mitigated in the past. They were able to take a gap year to become eligible to receive the independent youth allowance. A student was able to cover the additional expenses that they may have saved or otherwise during that time that were not faced by a city resident, and that ensured that there was at least some level of equity in the ability to access tertiary education. So whenever legislation is introduced in this place there are inevitably winners and losers. That is just part of the deal here. There will always be someone who will be on the outside. That is in the nuances and I accept that. But the role of parliament is really to ensure that the net result is good for the country as a whole. I am not talking about country. I am talking about the nation because clearly this is not going to be good for the country or the bush.

This legislation, whilst designed to provide greater assistance to those who need it will also return savings to the government over the forward estimates, and I think that is what we need to look at. Clearly, there will be a net saving of some $30 million. I understand it was some $100 million. We have allocated $70 million of that to another demographic of people who are doing their master’s. I am sorry if people are shaking their heads over there. I may have got that wrong. Anyway the net would be some $30 million—and thanks for your help. Taking this into account there is still a real bonus for the government coffers and I am not suggesting any particular mischief. The change is, if you consider the net benefit of $30 million and the net benefit to this country, that those students from rural and regional Australia, who depend on the current legislative circumstance, can continue to access independent youth allowance so that they can go and make this contribution. I think $30 million would be a pittance over the years. Forward estimates is a very short period of time but if you think about national interest and the contribution that these individuals will make over their lifetime, that will make a substantive difference to Australia and a substantive difference to those issues I have already dealt with.

Where once eligibility was gained through a gap year when you earned $18,500 in 18 months, a lot of people gained a bit of experience in that time, they could because they knew it was a contribution to allowing them to be able to move away from home and get access to a university education. It was handy. People were encouraged to do it because there is a great deal of experience you need to gain after school, which is a very protected environment. They got out and normally worked for six months or so, saved the $18,500 and then hooked it up. Who would not after a life in school? I certainly did. It was a great opportunity for people to get a bit of experience, to earn the money and demonstrate that they had independence. Under this legislation that opportunity is denied. If that is denied, families have to find between $12,000 and $15,000 just to get their child to university, before any other costs are covered.

One of the great tragedies about living in the bush is that there is a Solomon’s moment: which child do I send to get an education? It is the case even now that they have to make a decision: do I pick the brightest one? Is it the oldest? As for me, I certainly was not the brightest. It is going to get a lot tougher because they are going to have to give money to one less kid or they are going to have to compact their resources. Resources do not just come and go because you have a challenge in the bush—or in the city. Your circumstances remain the same. Through this legislation we are saying: ‘The circumstances that you’re now in have changed. I’m sorry, but the money you may have been able to earn in demonstrating independence you are now going to have to find some other way.’ Of course those parents are going to have more than a Solomon’s moment, and that is going to create a great deal of difficulty in the bush, which already has sufficient tension in so many other regards.

What is being proposed is that you have to work 30 hours every week, so you have to get a full-time job. Full-time jobs 30 hours a week are a bit thin on the ground in Tennant Creek. I will give you the drum, Madam Acting Deputy President: they are pretty hard to find. People say, ‘Move away to Darwin.’ By the time you have covered your accommodation in Darwin that is a net loss, so that is really not going to work. That is a particularly onerous aspect of this legislation and it really is not a good thing.

I said before that the notion of a gap year—just kicking up your heels and doing a bit of work—was a great thing, but sometimes it is not such a great thing. If you are working effectively full-time for 18 months, you think: ‘It’d be nice to have a car to drive to work. The donkey’s getting a bit old. I’ll trade it in, get a VW and go to work that way. How do I do it? Well, we’ll get on the murray.’ The old banks—I know they made a $16 billion profit between the four of them—are there to help you out. So you think: ‘I’ll get on the murray. I’ll buy a car to get to work. That makes it a bit easier, but I now have an obligation to keep working.’ It is funny what happens over 18 months. It is around the time where the opposite sex or the same sex are particularly attractive. I still find them very attractive, as does Senator Fifield! In the period of time after you leave school there are other distractions. Getting a full wage over 18 months in the workplace provides all these other distractions, so more and more of the people who will be required to do this—and they do not have to do this in the city; they can have all their distractions and still get to university—may well make the choice: ‘I’ve got a financial obligation. I can’t just give it away. I can’t just give it up. I’ve fallen in love with Jeremy’—or Rose or whoever it is—and suddenly their life changes. So in that demographic we are going to lose more people who make that decision simply because legislative changes ensure that they take a particular road.

The modelling and assessments about what may happen to those in regional and rural Australia have not been completed. There are probably some very good reasons for that, but if we were looking at this legislation in the context of some good scientific data—which only does not exist because it was not done by this government—we would be in a much better position to evaluate it.

There are a number of other issues. One of the government’s main selling points for this legislation is that the family means test has been relaxed, enabling more students to become eligible for full- and part-time allowance. That, coupled with the new Start-up Scholarship, is claimed to provide greater benefits for those who really need them. That is probably right but, again, we have to be careful in this place about how many losers and how many winners there are going to be. We have already supported many of the people who are now moving on to their master’s. I am not going to belt them particularly, but we have selected a group who are going to be winners. There have to be losers, given that there is a $30 million win for the government.

There is a flawed assumption by the government about families with significant assets. I will not criticise the government, as I sometimes do in this place. They have made that decision because they simply have not done the work on the impact on those people who live and work in regional and rural Australia. Of course country people have often been described as dirt rich and cash poor. Of course that is the case. You cannot necessarily make money out of the sort of equipment and machinery that people have lying around the place, but you need it to run the farm. So they are still not going to be able to get through that assets test. That reality has been either ignored or dismissed by the government, and that is very sad.

I touched on the realities of living in places like Tennant Creek and Broome. To get access to a university education under independent youth allowance you have to find a job. But those are pretty small places, and I am sure I do not have to tell you, Madam Acting Deputy President Moore, that the employment opportunities are very different. If they are going to go and make this, they are not going to move to Melbourne, Sydney or Darwin. Even in Darwin it can be pretty tight on the ground, and it is getting tighter. So people are going to miss out on a higher education not through any fault of their own or our own. But this legislation simply does not recognise the difficulties. It is like saying: climb the mountain, kill the 20 dragons and maybe you can talk to the princess or borrow her thong. There are too many obstacles in the way to ensuring that the number of students from regional and rural Australia that can make a contribution to this nation grows. It is not going to grow if it is indexed to population; it is going to shrink. I believe quite sincerely that there are barriers that are being put in the way. The reason that the government are putting forward this legislation is they either do not understand or have not done sufficient research in this particular area to find out about these areas, which I do not think they understand at all.

I am sure that, being from regional and rural Australia yourself, Madam Acting Deputy President Moore, you would know that, if you live in a country area and your son has a bit of a speech impediment, you do not stay there if there are no speechies in town. You want the best for your son, so you shift. Many of our health professionals in Alice Springs are wonderful people from Kenya. They are fantastic, and I commend them for the wonderful contribution they make. We would probably like to grow a few of our own, but it is very difficult getting people in regional and rural Australia in any of the services. That is a choice about how we live there. There is contraction of services in regional and rural Australia. I know everybody in this place that knows anything about this country or about regional and rural Australia will understand. Yet this legislation will ensure that those people in regional and rural Australia will be able to grow fewer professionals of our own because of all the issues I have discussed.

It is bad enough normally when you go away to university. You may meet someone at university and fall in love or get a good job or whatever you do; you are less likely to return. So it is bad enough anyway, because that is why we are under the pump and do not have a lot of professionals. But this is going to make it worse, because people from regional and rural Australia will not have doctors, nurses, accountants, lawyers, schoolteachers or any of the professionals that are part of a vibrant community. I see that this legislation, if put in place unamended, will not be able to provide that. We need to put in place policies and programs that ensure that we remove the disadvantage of distance—the tyranny of distance that is evident now and that this legislation will make a lot worse. We need to ensure that those fundamentals of access to higher education should be based on academic achievement rather than geographic location. If you run the rule over this legislation and what it will do, will it ensure that you get rewarded and that you get higher education because you worked hard or because of where you live? I suspect the obvious answer is: more likely where you live.

I know this legislation has been proposed to address a problem where some recipients of independent youth allowance were neither independent nor financially disadvantaged, and I have to say I agree. I think we are starting from the same place. Frankly, I believe that, if you are living at home, you should not receive any allowance. It is just tough nowadays. We should be able to choose to go down the road. I think that we are probably not starting off with a bad premise. The circumstances at the time could have been improved. We certainly need to improve the aspirations of young Australians who live in regional and rural Australia. We need to improve their lot, but this legislation is not the way.

As I suspect, there is no mischief from government apart from the fact that they have not done the right research. We have had a look at some of the research they have done. I know the RRAT committee has had a very close look at that, but it has also identified that there was absolutely no work or modelling done on the impact on those people in regional and rural Australia. That is clear from the legislation that is before us. Country students are going to have to leave home; there is no doubt about that. They are now going to be fighting for jobs in places where there are no jobs. They are going to be exposed to much longer periods of time for their chosen profession, their vision and their capacity to help Australia and particularly the areas that they come from, the regions. I think that they are going to face considerable extra cost simply to walk through the door of a university campus, and more and more parents are going to have to bear that cost. People are living at home longer. As I said, that quiet moment around the dinner table is Solomon’s moment: ‘Which one of our children will go to university? Which one will not?’ I think that is a disturbing decision that people at more and more tables around regional Australia will have to be making.

In view of all that, I cannot really support the legislation as drafted, and I do not support any action that pushes university further out of the reach of our young men and women in Australia that have the capacity to make such a fantastic contribution. I will not support legislation that does not support their vision or their aspirations.

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I stand to speak on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. I dedicate my address to the Senate tonight to Jess Baikie, Rachael Wilkinson and Hunter Peterson, all students from Launceston College in the city of Launceston, where I reside. I congratulate them and say, ‘Well done,’ to them on their advocacy for and on behalf of their fellow students and those who are adversely impacted by the legislation before us.

This bill as it is currently framed is bad legislation. The students to whom I referred, as I say, are all students at Launceston College, and they have run a campaign to address the concerns set out in this bill. I first met them earlier this year once the legislation became public. They were very active and proactive. They expressed their views not just to me but to their local member, the federal Labor member for Bass, Jodie Campbell, and to their local senators, including Senator O’Brien and others in Northern Tasmania in particular.

They organised a public meeting on Wednesday, 22 July 2009, which was a very successful public meeting. It was a meeting which I attended. Senator Bob Brown attended. Indeed, other federal members of parliament were invited, including, I understand, the federal member for Bass. But, even if she was not invited, it was very much promoted publicly. Unfortunately she was not present and was not available to express her views with respect to this legislation or to receive representations from those three students.

Nevertheless, it was an exciting and very informative and enjoyable public meeting. Those three students I referred to, Jess, Rachael and Hunter, all spoke eloquently and to the point, together with many others, including concerned family members and others in rural, regional and remote Tasmania. I am sure the towns that are going to be disadvantaged by this legislation were represented on that night and in other respects. The families affected come from towns like Longford and Cressy, Flinders Island, King Island, Campbell Town in Northern Tasmania, the east and west coasts of Tasmania, the Central Highlands, the Derwent Valley and no doubt many other rural and remote parts of Tasmania. The sad thing is that it appears that Labor have not listened to the concerns that have been expressed in a very conciliatory, thoughtful and proactive manner not just by the students but by the families as well.

On behalf of the students and that public meeting that night, I wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, with their concerns and with a summary of all the papers presented that night and a copy of the speeches—the testimonials of the students and parents who attended the Launceston forum. I wrote on 28 July, setting out their concerns. The Deputy Prime Minister kindly responded on 23 September 2009. But the response clearly has not addressed the concerns, as can be seen in the bill before us in the Senate tonight. The Deputy Prime Minister in a barely comprehensive manner in a 1¾-page letter in response trots out the Labor Party line to say that it is fair and reasonable and that it will not be a problem for rural and remote students in Tasmania or elsewhere around Australia. The fact is that it is and will be. Unless this legislation is amended, there will be people who will suffer adversely as a result of this bill. It should be fixed, and I hope the amendments that have been foreshadowed and that will be put forward by the coalition will be accepted because otherwise rural and remote Australia will be adversely affected as a result.

I want to refer in particular to the petition that was prepared by the students at Launceston College. The principal petitioner was Hunter Christian Peterson of 60 Trevallyn Road, Trevallyn, Tasmania. They set out 10 key points as to why they were upset and concerned with the legislation as it was earlier this year, in July. That petition was signed by copious numbers of students, families and members of the public in Northern Tasmania in particular. I thank the shadow minister for education for tabling that petition in the House of Representatives on my behalf and on behalf of those students who pulled that petition together and got all those signatures. I again congratulate those students for the work that they did.

That petition certainly sets out their concerns, but they also wrote to their local members of parliament. They wrote to and had meetings with their local senator, which was good. I respect and thank Senator Kerry O’Brien for meeting with them and listening to their concerns. I cannot say the same for the federal member for Bass. I wish she had more of a listening ear for the concerns of her local constituents and was prepared to stand up for them when she knows what is right, fair and in their best interests. Sometimes you just have to do it. But they have written extensively to me and to others and I have had meetings with them. I would like to also commend Mary Dean from my office, who has been in close contact with them throughout this whole saga.

At this point, I would like to commend and thank Trudi Lister, who is a teacher and facilitator at Launceston College. She has been a tremendous support to the students—Jess, Rachael and Hunter—throughout this campaign that they have waged. In fact, they were teleconferenced into a Senate committee hearing last Thursday, 12 November, when the committee was meeting in Melbourne. That was the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee, chaired by Senator Fiona Nash. It was also that committee, of which I was a participating member, that delivered its report in October. That was again chaired by Senator Nash, and I thank her for her leadership and her speech earlier in the day in the Senate commending the coalition amendments and the report that was tabled in October. I note also Senator Bill Heffernan and Senator Julian McGauran, who were active members of the committee, and the other participating members from the coalition were Senator Chris Back from Western Australia and me from Tasmania. I also thank Jeanette Radcliffe, the secretary, and the secretariat for pulling together the Senate report, which is available as a public document.

I would like to commend the coalition amendments to the Senate, to senators and to members of the public. No doubt this campaign will continue in the hours and days ahead until this matter is sorted. Certainly our aim here and the objective behind these amendments is to ensure that students achieve their potential. That is what we want. Surely that is the objective of all members and senators in this federal parliament. We want them to be the best that they can be. This is the sort of message I share with schools and students when I meet with them from time to time as a senator standing up for Tasmania. That is what we want. We want the best. We want them to be the best. We want them to have opportunities, to have a choice, to be the best they can be, to achieve their dreams and to have a go. This legislation will deny students the opportunity to have a go, to express a choice and to participate.

What is most offensive about the government’s legislation is its retrospectivity. This is the thing that really gets my goat, and I know it is the same for others on the coalition side and elsewhere in the community. The fact is that the government has changed the rules partway through. The goalposts have moved. So, in summary, I can say that the amendments that will be put forward will allow all students on youth allowance to be better off, receiving for the first time ever a $1,000 start-up scholarship. Rural and regional students will have a clear route to university available to them.

Those students currently on their gap year preparing to enter university next year and to claim youth allowance will have the rug pulled out from under their feet. It is that latter point that I would like to address in particular. Thousands of students and parents are frankly distraught and very upset. I have had letters from a whole range of them, particularly from Northern Tasmania—people who went to that public meeting in July in Launceston. They are very upset for and on behalf of their children and for and on behalf of themselves, because it has not only a financial consequence but a consequence for their kids in terms of achieving their dreams. Of course they are distraught and concerned. The government’s legislation does make retrospective changes to the youth allowance, meaning that over 25,000 students all around Australia currently undertaking their gap year are set to not receive the youth allowance in 2010. That is wrong. That is unfair. It should be changed by amendments to this bill that are going to be put in the Senate. The retrospective nature of the legislation is a shocking approach to legislation and to good public policy.

The government did try to fix this with a half-baked approach. Initially there were an estimated 30,000 students who would have been affected by this retrospective changing of the goalposts halfway through. Yes, the government have now reduced that from 30,000 to an estimated 25,000 young people who will be affected—people who, in good faith, followed the advice of the Centrelink advisers and followed the advice and guidance of counsellors to defer their studies and to undertake a gap year. We want to make sure those students are not disadvantaged. Exactly how many there are in Tasmania I do not know, but we do know there are an estimated 25,000 around Australia. It is simply wrong. Yes, there was a backflip—but I would call it a half-baked backflip—by the federal minister and Deputy Prime Minister some time ago, but it was not good enough. So, with respect to that, if they have taken their gap year then why change the rules part-way through it? That is wrong.

The legislation will have a start date of 1 January 2010. That means all students currently undertaking a gap year in order to earn the required threshold to demonstrate independence will no longer be eligible as that criterion has been axed under this bill. We know that many of those students undertook a gap year based on advice from their schools, from counsellors and from Centrelink advisers. This is a government department and I do not mean to attribute any offensive cause to them whatsoever in whatever shape or form. They were simply acting on the advice that they had at the time, or the rules that they had at the time, but now that has all been turned on its head. The fact is that not only me but also other coalition members and senators around the country have been inundated with emails, text messages, letters and phone calls from concerned parents and upset students. That is entirely understandable, because the legislation is retrospective, it is wrong and it should be changed.

The government’s plan for scholarships should be supported in its thrust of making sure that those most in need do get support, and of course I would like to express my support for that part of the legislation that determines that those most in need receive that support. But changing the rules part-way through is not on. In terms of the effect on the scholarships, what we do know is that this government has a track record now which is systemic throughout the government—that is, the profligate approach to spending and the profligate approach to managing matters within the government. The waste and mismanagement throughout the government and government departments, one and all, is a shocking record—whether it is in the schools area with the $1.7 billion overrun of the education revolution or whether it is the Abbotsford Public School, which I visited some months ago in Sydney. There the government wanted to spend $2.5 million tearing down four classrooms to rebuild four classrooms. It was absolutely absurd.

I want to put on record my thanks to the parents and citizens association and the school council—including Robert Vellar, his colleagues at the school and the principal as well—for their support and for their efforts on behalf of their students and the families concerned. I know that they have now come to an agreed outcome as a result of lobbying, public pressure and good common sense. It is not ideal, but they have a mutually agreeable outcome. I thank them for the recent response and appreciate their efforts to ensure a good outcome for their students. So I say congratulations to them and well done to them for fighting against the waste and mismanagement of the federal Labor government. I say to them: good on you.

There are some sensible parts of the bill but all in all I simply cannot support the bill as it stands unless these amendments are made. I hope that they are passed together with the support of the Independents and the cross benches. In conclusion I say congratulations and well done to Jess Baikie, Rachael Wilkinson and Hunter Peterson. Thank you for your advocacy and your leadership on behalf of the students and their families in and around Launceston and Northern Tasmania. You have put in a stellar performance. You should be congratulated. You have done the job, and let us see if we can finish the job for you and on your behalf here in the Senate. I thank the Senate.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak tonight on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009 with somewhat of a heavy heart. When a government goes to an election, when it goes to the people, and has much to say and proclaims much about an education revolution and its vision for what it will do for education and for young Australians and for their opportunities into the future it is reasonable to hope that it will deliver on those aspirations and put in place action on those beliefs.

People can expect an education revolution to deliver more than bricks and mortar and to deliver more than the occasional laptop—to deliver throughout every level of education: to deliver for young students, to deliver for those in preschool and primary school, and to deliver for those in secondary school; to deliver through improved teacher standards; to deliver through an improved curriculum; and to deliver through improvements in the whole range of areas where education could and should be improved. Education can be improved by taking advantage of the things which are not bricks and mortar but which could make a real education revolution. Indeed, we could improve the opportunities that are available to young people to go on and pursue whatever their educational dreams may be, be they in vocational educational arenas or higher educational arenas in a more academic field.

It is with a heavy heart that I speak to this legislation tonight because it is another area where the government’s rhetoric and the hope and the promises that it took to the last election have not been delivered. It has let down young Australians, especially in this instance young Australians from rural and regional Australia who will now find their pathways to educational opportunity and to pursue those dreams and ambitions they may have of higher education all the more difficult thanks to the proposals in this legislation. This is another classic instance of the government giving with one hand while taking with the other—talking big about all its other education proposals, yet making this pathway to higher education so much harder for young Australians. It is, as I said, particularly unfair for country students. It is typical of so many areas that this government pursues, where its total failure to understand the importance and the unique challenges faced by rural and regional Australia is so evident. Its total failure to grasp these unique challenges of rural Australians stands out and this is yet again another instance of that failure.

These changes to the youth allowance by the government will pull the rug out from under the feet of 25,000 young Australians preparing to go to university just next year. That is 25,000 young Australians just in one year who will face increased difficulties thanks to the proposals in this legislation. They face the prospect of seeing a year of their lives that they put on hold to set themselves up for their university education potentially wasted because the gap year that they planned as a pathway to secure an independent youth allowance will now be shut off if the government gets its way.

This legislation has been investigated by the usual processes of the Senate—by the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport, who delivered their report recently. The coalition, as the Senate has heard from other speakers, intends to move amendments in line with the committee’s key recommendations. We will move those amendments to provide these country students with the opportunity to continue accessing youth allowance. We will remove the retrospective aspects of this legislation that particularly punish those 25,000 gap year students. These are the changes that the coalition is championing tonight on behalf of rural and regional young people.

The main issue facing rural and regional students is the abolition of the workforce participation route for youth allowance eligibility. That route is important to qualify as an independent student and therefore provides a pathway for so many young people from rural and regional backgrounds to access youth allowance and survive independently from their parents in the pursuit of their studies. That is important because an overwhelming number of young people outside of metropolitan areas find that they have to move to pursue their higher education dreams. In the vast majority of instances they have to move from home and into cities to pursue those dreams. This need to move is a much greater burden than any of us who grew up in closer proximity to urban areas usually face. Certainly, many people face struggles to go onto higher education. They face struggles in finding the right income and the right support to assist them through this. But young people from rural and regional areas face a far more defined and greater difficulty than those of us who grew up closer to the cities.

Students from farming and small business backgrounds in the country often find themselves ineligible to receive youth allowance as dependants because the value of the average Australian family farm is often significantly higher than the level of assets allowed under that test. Yet the average Australian farming family cannot afford the tens of thousands of dollars required to support their children’s moving, accommodation and living expenses while studying at university. It is a simple reality that the situation is difficult when you have to set up a totally different home and living arrangement, and that that is a necessity of your pursuit of higher education. If the child was from the city they would have the opportunity—or the choice at least—of staying at home. That does not work out for everybody and I am the first to recognise that, but at least that choice would provide for some greater chance for young people from metropolitan areas to pursue those higher education dreams, unlike those from rural and regional areas.

Because of this, significant cohorts of students from the country who are ineligible to receive the dependant youth allowance choose an alternative pathway. Thousands every year currently gain eligibility for youth allowance under the workforce participation criterion. This criterion, as it currently stands, means that they must earn $19,532 within an 18-month period, which most do during a now commonly accepted gap year approach. This government is seeking to abolish that alternative pathway that has been used so effectively to provide better opportunities for so many rural and regional young Australians. In doing so, the government claims that it is simply because it was being exploited by a small cohort of wealthy city families. Like so many of the proposals that have come from this government, it is fine to perhaps have a valid reason behind your proposal, but you need to consider all of the consequences. All of the consequences of these changes impact on thousands upon thousands of young Australians in rural and regional areas every single year. This is not a one-off impact. Certainly, there is a very particular one-off impact for those people who are already in the middle of their gap year, but it will be a recurring impact on young Australians year in, year out into the future if this legislation is passed.

These changes fly in the face of the government’s claims that they are interested in increasing higher education participation from all sections of the community. This will not increase participation from one key section—from those young people living in rural and regional Australia. It will do the exact opposite when it comes to those young people’s opportunity to participate in higher education. It will disadvantage them, and in doing so it risks decreasing their participation in higher education.

It is not only the Australian parliament that has looked at these changes. The Victorian parliament has taken a look at them as well. The Victorian parliament’s Education and Training Committee has investigated the issue of rural disadvantage in relation to the government’s Youth Allowance measures, and that committee’s report was supported unanimously by all participants across a range of parties. On the issue of criteria of independence for rural and regional young people, this committee of the Victorian parliament found that ‘the removal of the main workforce participation route will have a disastrous effect on young people in rural and regional areas’. This committee, chaired by a Victorian Labor MP, found that the changes that the Rudd government wants this Senate to pass tonight would have ‘a disastrous effect’. Our own Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee also investigated this bill. It found that the removal of the workforce participation criteria would have a particular impact on students who are required to leave home to pursue their chosen course of study and, ultimately, career.

As I indicated earlier, the government is putting in place a change that will affect students for many years to come. There is also, however, a particular impact on students who have taken a gap year in between the conclusion of their secondary studies and the commencement of their tertiary studies. This legislation is particularly damaging to those students in its effects on their plans for study and their chosen pathway through life. The legislation is planned to have a start date of 1 January 2010. That means that all those students currently undertaking a gap year, and who are doing so in order to earn the income required under the threshold to demonstrate that they meet the independence criteria, will no longer be eligible. They will no longer be eligible because this criterion has been axed.

Many of these students undertook a gap year based on advice from their schools and from Centrelink. They decided this was the best pathway for them to be able to gain the independence required. I, and all coalition MPs, and I am sure crossbench and indeed government MPs, have been inundated by what must be thousands of contacts from distraught students who feel like the government has pulled the rug out from under their feet. They made their plans. They had their dreams of going to uni and of studying. They made what seemed to be wise plans to choose to study the area of their dreams and then to set themselves up by taking a gap year and by earning the required income threshold. They believed that this would provide them with the opportunity to enjoy independence while studying. Yet now, in many, many cases, they find that having taken a year out and having not gone immediately into university has left them with no advantage. There is no advantage because this opportunity for so many of these students undertaking the gap year has been closed off.

In August, the Minister for Education admitted that there was a problem with the retrospectivity of this legislation. She acknowledged that there was an impact on rural disadvantage and she said the government would do something to try to address it. Once again, the action does not live up to the rhetoric. The commitment to address it is not a wholehearted commitment. It is not a fully fledged commitment that will ensure that all young Australians in rural and regional areas who have taken this gap year and who meet the existing threshold will be able to qualify under the independence category and fulfil their plans as they set them out. The government’s actions only go part way. The measures are once again half baked and provide a stay of execution simply for remote students in 2010. It is not for all rural and regional students but just for those in the remote category as defined by the government.

It is estimated that some 25,000 gap year students would be left out in the cold. Some 25,000 young Australians of around 17, 18 or 19, in every corner of this country, who have made their plans based on what they thought was a reasonable expectation of certainty that the government would not go changing the rules on them halfway through, now find that the government is changing the rules on them. There was a window there, in August, where they thought they were going to be saved. They heard that the government had listened to the problem of the retrospective action impacting on young people who had already set their lives up based on the existing criteria. But we find that there is only partial salvation for a cohort of affected students rather than a recognition that all who finished school last year and who set themselves on a particular pathway should be able to enjoy that pathway and not have the government go and change their plans for them part way through.

The Victorian parliament’s Labor dominated Education and Training Committee found that these changes ‘will have a detrimental impact on many students who deferred their studies during 2009 in order to work and earn sufficient money to be eligible for Youth Allowance’. That is a Labor dominated committee from the Victorian parliament that talks of detrimental impacts and disastrous effects, and still the government seems deaf to these criticisms of its treatment of young Australians from rural and regional areas.

The Senate rural and regional affairs and transport committee recognised the high level of anxiety that would be caused in the community and went on to say that the implementation of this policy by the government had been ‘handled poorly’. That is, of course, a polite understatement—especially if you are one of those young people who have been impacted around Australia.

The coalition parties are pursuing a range of amendments to this legislation. To deal with the issue of retrospectivity the coalition moved an amendment in the House which was opposed by the government. But we will move a similar amendment here in the Senate to move the start date for this legislation from 1 January 2010 to 1 January 2011, to ensure that when it comes to the workforce criteria for independent youth allowance we do not disadvantage anybody who has set their lives on a particular pathway already, so that they can enjoy the certainty they deserve from having made decisions at the end of their schooling before they go and start their university lives and not find that, a few months out from starting at university, the whole world has been turned upside down on their plans, their aims and their aspirations.

Secondly, to assist rural and regional students who do not qualify for youth allowance but who are unable to afford the cost of moving to attend university, we will move an amendment along the lines recommended by the Senate inquiry that investigated this bill. This amendment will provide for rural students who must leave home in order to study to continue to access independent youth allowance by allowing them to access the same gap-year provisions that are available at the moment, to stop the ongoing effects that these proposed changes would have on many rural and regional young people throughout Australia.

We will also move an amendment following the Senate inquiry recommendations to put in place auditing processes to ensure that, once students have received independent youth allowance, they do not then return to live at home while claiming this allowance—to stop the rorting, to make sure that those areas where the government had some intentions of clamping down on rorting are indeed tackled without disadvantaging thousands of other young people. And we have proposed alternative ways to pay for these measures, by reducing the rate of the student start-up scholarship, a scholarship that has not yet been paid so will not disadvantage anybody, has none of the retrospective elements of this provision and of course will not stop the massive decline in access to education that this legislation will lead to for rural and regional Australians.

I hope the government will listen to the opposition’s concerns, will accept these amendments, that the Senate as a whole will accept them and that we will see a fair outcome rather than the grossly unfair proposal that the government has before the Senate at present.

Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unfortunately, I have to say that Senator Birmingham had better ask his staff to have another look at the facts that they based his submission on, because they got so much wrong. Just as this debate has been characterised by misunderstandings, misrepresentations and ignorance, so has the coalition position in relation to the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. It was not always so. Last year the then shadow education minister, Tony Smith, panned the system that the opposition now seeks to support, when he said:

Overall, the evidence seems to suggest that it has become too easy for students from affluent backgrounds to qualify and too difficult for students from modest backgrounds.

He further agreed with the government’s approach when he said:

This means that students from a family earning an average weekly income cannot effectively go straight from school to university and be supported. It particularly disadvantages many students—particularly those from the country—who have to leave home to study …with many of them taking a year off to earn enough money to qualify for independence for Youth Allowance and possibly not retuning.

That is what he told the Australian Liberal Students Federation federal council on 7 July last year. Of course, the government does agree. In fact, we know that 30 per cent of kids who take a gap year do not end up going on to university. That is why under the new system many students will be able to access support immediately under a higher parental income test, rather than having to wait 18 months to prove their independence.

The propositions which are to come before this chamber arising from the Senate committee report, frankly, will do very little to redress the disadvantage situation that exists at the present time under the former government’s legislation. What the Bradley report found was that many students from affluent backgrounds were able to make arrangements under one of the criteria laid down in the legislation—welfare legislation, I might say; social security legislation—entitling the student the benefit of taxpayer support. The three provisions in the legislation that might be targeted to avoid the consequence of parental income tests and parental asset tests are for a student to establish that they are independent. There are some other grounds, but for the purpose of this debate they are the most important ones. What the government is targeting is the measure that has been used very successfully by students from very affluent backgrounds.

The Bradley report found that students from families with incomes of $150,000, $200,000, $300,000 per year were, by earning an amount of money within 18 months—which I think currently stands at about $19,532 but which has been indexed over time—were able to establish that they were independent. That did not actually require them to move away from home. The Bradley report found that a great many students actually did not move away from home, yet established independence and received taxpayer support, even, in a substantial percentage of cases—I think it was about 36 per cent of cases—where the parental income was over $100,000; and a very significant amount, around 10 per cent of cases, when the parental income was over $150,000 and approaching $200,000.

This is hardly the sort of measure that would indicate that it was operating in the best interests of the taxpayer, and certainly not in the best interests of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, because at the same time, under the current legislation, the assistance started to phase out where parental income was a princely $32,000 approximately at the rate of 25c in the dollar beyond that. The Deputy Prime Minister proposes a system where the parental income threshold increases to $44,000 approximately, where the taper, as they call it—the rate at which the benefit declines—has been reduced from 25c to 20c in the dollar. The result of that is to dramatically extend the parental income thresholds where some benefit is payable. In addition, some other measures are being introduced which provide more widespread benefits to students, particularly those who need to move away from home, and that generally applies to students from rural and regional backgrounds but also applies to students from some cities who need to move to another city to study the course of their choice.

Initially, the attack on this measure was from that cohort of students who was currently undertaking a gap year—that is, the students had finished their studies in 2008, they were working through 2009, intending to start university in 2010 and targeting that magical figure of $19,532 as the loophole, if I can call it that, which they needed to jump through to access youth allowance support for their studies. What I think was erroneously referred to by Senator Birmingham, who preceded me, as an extension of the benefit only for remote students is actually a proposal of the Deputy Prime Minister for those students who need to live away from home under the tests currently laid down in the legislation—that is, they must attend a university which is at least 90 minutes by public transport from their place of residence. Those students would still be able to access the independence test measure. That means that the government has extended the cost of the package which was, when it was first envisaged with a number of changes which are encapsulated and which were set out in evidence before the Senate committee, essentially a revenue-neutral and cost-neutral package. With this measure the government has extended the cost and, by doing that, adjusted some other measures contained within the package. For example, one of the other improvements to the system that the government is proposing is to extend the income threshold available to students—that is, the amount of money they can earn within a fortnight before their benefit is affected. The proposal was to extend it from $236 to $400. The other measure included in the original package was the reduction of the age at which independence was automatically determined coming down from 25 to 22 years. The result of those additional costs that the gap year measure that the Deputy Prime Minister announced, if I can call it that, is to phase in at a slower rate those two new improved benefits for students in their ability to earn income or be deemed independent under this bill now before the Senate.

The government has been keen to deal with the inequity that the current legislation and its implementation has led to—that is, excluding young people from families with average or lower than average incomes and permitting access to a welfare benefit for higher income families because they are able to organise their affairs, get work or live in an area where there is plenty of work to enable them to earn the magical figure and be assessed as independent, even though they did not have to leave home. The government has come up with a measure which will benefit, it is estimated, 68,000 additional students as being eligible for the dependent youth allowance benefit. That is, without establishing independence, approximately 68,000 more students next year would be eligible to go straight to uni with the youth allowance benefit, no gap year, no requirement to take time out of university, less risk of those students not completing a university degree and making university accessible to many more students from lower income families. In addition to that, it is believed that approximately 36,000 students would gain a greater benefit under the government’s proposals than would currently exist for them under the existing legislation of the coalition. That means that over 100,000 students would be better off under this legislation than they would be under the existing legislation.

Of course, when you make changes there are people who are not better off; some people will be worse off. A family, despite the thresholds increasing substantially, still with an income at a higher level—bearing in mind that under the previous system without independence all benefits would have ceased at a parental income threshold of $79,000—now with two children at university can earn up to $140,000 if they have two students living away from home and can still get substantial benefits. Those benefits include, for example, a start-up cost benefit of $4,000 per annum for each student to assist them to move away from home in the first year of university. That benefit reduces to $1,000 in subsequent years, the higher benefit being structured to assist with the initial costs of moving away from home and the initial set-up costs of any such arrangement.

I travelled with the Senate inquiry extensively through Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and here in the ACT taking evidence on this matter, and there were parents with two children who would be at university at the same time and who had incomes under $100,000 who would be very much better off under this legislation than they would have been under the other legislation—without the need to establish independence, or for both students to take a gap year under the current legislation if the work is available.

The other thing that seems to be forgotten in this debate is that when people are focusing on the ability to earn the $19½ thousand in a gap year, everyone assumes that in the current economic circumstances things will be the same as they may have been in the boom, and that the work availability will mean that in some cases people will just as easily be able to earn the $19,532. I think what the Senate inquiry has established, as far as I am concerned, is that there are many parts of this country where it will be far from easy to earn $19,532, and to do that, let alone to establish real independence, would require the young person to move away from home.

But if you look at the evidence we took, I am mindful of our experience when we were in Townsville last week—last Tuesday, as a matter of fact—where we had principals from Charters Towers, Ayr, the north coast of Townsville and Ingham. They all agreed that the majority of the parents in those schools would come from lower income groups. When we tested it, and when I spoke to them afterwards, it was very clear that many of the students in those schools would be the beneficiaries of the new legislation. But, of course, that is not what they had been given to understand. The story that is being spread by those who perceive that they are disadvantaged by this, or by those who do not understand it, is convincing people who are really beneficiaries of the new system that the new system will not be good for them.

That is the problem we have. There are a lot of people whom I have encountered from various walks of life in my own constituency and on this inquiry who have a view of the legislation which is quite disconnected from the reality of the legislation. When they are brought to understand it, they really are saying, ‘Why didn’t we know this before?’ The problem the department indicated is that they cannot sell the legislation and the benefits of it until it is actually passed.

What we have seen, in some cases, is a somewhat hysterical campaign—but I would not want to categorise people as hysterical on the basis that they somehow, with all of the facts before them came to wrong decision and became hysterical about it. What I am really saying is that people have been misled, they have misunderstood the legislation and, when they assess it, in many cases they find that they are not badly off at all, that there are significant benefits and what the government is putting forward is a system which will actually benefit the people that we would want a welfare legislation measure to benefit—that is, low-income and middle-income families right throughout Australia.

The other reality is that in regional Australia students need to move away from home to study. Looking at the material that the department provided for us, there are a great many people from regional Australia who already use the system. I believe, given a chance to operate, there will be a great many more who will benefit from this. The fact is that if you move away from home, the youth allowance benefit is higher. As I said earlier, there are start-up benefits for those who do move away from home of $4,000 in the first year and $1,000 in each subsequent year. There is also the youth allowance—that may reduce depending on the family income—and there is also rent assistance on top of that. So, significant benefits are still available for students. The important thing is that for many of them there is no need to take a gap year; because of the increased parental income thresholds, many of those students will be able to finish high school this year and start uni next year if this legislation is passed.

On the basis of departmental advice we say that approximately 100,000 students will be better off under this legislation. I think there may be a quarter of that number who are not better off, and who are, in fact, worse off. I think with the changes that the Deputy Prime Minister announced, which deal with the so-called 2009 gap year students, the reality is that an additional 4,700 of those students will benefit from the extension of the definition of ‘independent’ which allows them to earn that $19,532 and qualify as independent. The Deputy Prime Minister listened to the student community and parents who had concerns about the plans those students had made. The government has made the decision that those students should not be effectively disadvantaged by the change of the system after they had actually made the decision to take the gap year. That has been attended to, but only for those students who need to move away from home, because, frankly, the disadvantage for students who do not need to move away from home is far less, if anything at all. If those students who do not need to move away from home are from a higher income family, they will have the benefit of parental support and also the benefit of the ability to work part time, as many would in any case in that university setting. That is clearly the evidence that we have received from right around the country.

The important thing that we should take from the assessment of this legislation in this debate is that it is, I suppose, all right to say that sometimes we play politics with these issues. But the reality here is that we have an opportunity to help many, many more young people go straight from school to university. Many of those will be in regional Australia and many of those will receive higher benefits because of the changes that this government is making. What we will stop is a lot of people, particularly in the cities, who do not need to move away from home and who have access to work in any case, having access to these benefits any longer where their parental incomes are high. There are other things that no doubt need to be done, but one of the big problems that I have with the coalition’s approach on this issue is this: they were in government for nearly 12 years, they talked about disadvantage in regional Australia but, when it came down to it, you had to skate through this loophole in the legislation to get a benefit and if you did not, you were on your own. Now it is all too hard and they want to blame this government for their own failings.

Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today as I rise to speak on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009 I feel a sense of deja vu, as this Senate meets again to vote on legislation affecting our higher education sector that will actually put rural students at a huge disadvantage compared to their city cousins. This bill has sold out rural and regional Australians because the Rudd government has taken a sledgehammer to the Youth Allowance scheme. Just over a month ago the Senate passed the Higher Education Support Amendment (2009 Budget Measures) Bill. I said at the time that it was ridiculous to be debating that bill, the support amendment bill, while we did not at the same time start to cover this current bill, the social security bill. The bills are completely linked and they address similar issues. I said that to have them debated separately was the wrong way of going about it.

The support amendment bill abolished the existing Commonwealth scholarships, while the current bill provides for their replacement. But, importantly, the current bill also does something else. It makes a number of changes to the youth allowance system that will make it even harder for kids in the country to go to university and harder for all those kids who need to relocate to go to university. A clever country would make it easier for our kids to get to uni, not harder. The government did not have the guts to put all of their changes to the parliament at once, rather putting them separately. They knew that if they put them together, they would end up having the debate that we are probably going to have today which would have been tied up with the other bill. What the government are now trying to do is hold this Senate to ransom and to say that the measures of their Commonwealth scholarships will not be in there next year if this bill does not proceed. I am hoping that tonight we will make changes to the bill. It may even be rejected in order to force the government back to the negotiating table to fix the current bill.

The government have gone out, ripped out all of the scholarships that used to be available to students who depend on government funding and said, ‘If you want them back, you had better pass this bill, even though its youth allowance cutbacks will hurt 26,000 Australian kids who are trying to get to university.’ The government’s actions are reckless and have put the welfare of students, particularly those from rural and regional areas, in jeopardy. They have sold out the bush; they have sold out regional and rural kids wanting to get university. For all the government spin and polish on its education revolution, there is nothing more than education wreckage. The Rudd government know they got it wrong, and that is why they did an embarrassing backflip. But the Rudd government did not fix the problem; they just deferred it by exempting this year’s gap students. The government have stuffed up with their changes to youth allowance, and for months on end they have refused to listen to anyone on the issue. In the end, the government have been left with egg on their face.

If the government had not been so arrogant and had not insisted for months on pressing ahead with its changes to the youth allowance and not listening to anyone on changes, just allowing a quick change at the end to exempt this year’s gap year students, it would not have suffered such an embarrassment as it has so far on this issue. It did not need to come at this issue with a sledgehammer, but that is what is has done. In the end, it took a roundtable discussion that was organised by Family First and where the Deputy Prime Minister got a chance to meet with a group of interested adults and students from rural and regional Victoria to set the record straight on some of these changes to the youth allowance. I want to acknowledge and thank the Deputy Prime Minister for making herself available to hear this group and for taking the time to actually listen to their concerns. But it is a shame that this type of roundtable discussion did not happen early enough. In the end, it was left for others to step in to try to get some real discussions happening with real people to enable them to share with the government first hand how these changes would affect them greatly.

In less than an hour at this meeting the students and parents whose lives were going to be detrimentally affected by the proposed changes to youth allowance were able to at least allow the Deputy Prime Minister to see that there was an enormous mistake being made. These parents and students highlighted how the changes to the youth allowance eligibility criteria would see rural and regional kids left two years behind their city counterparts. That is because the government wants to force school leavers to work 30 hours per week for 18 months to prove their independence to qualify for youth allowance. But instead of coming up with a proper solution, the government came up with a quick fix bandaid solution that only deferred the problem but did not fix it—that is, the government just delayed the introduction of these youth allowance changes by six months but left the whole system in a mess. The government gave a reprieve to those students currently on a gap year but condemned all future students from rural and regional Australia to a youth allowance system in need of urgent repair. The government has sold out rural and regional Australians in this bill. The changes to the youth allowance eligibility criteria are blatantly unfair and will see fewer people from country Australia heading to university instead of promoting university education for more Australians.

We already have a situation in which there is a huge discrepancy between the number of people from the city who go to university and the number of people from the country who go to university. Twenty-nine per cent of the population aged between 25 and 34 hold a university degree, but out in the rural and regional areas this figure is much lower: only 17 per cent. What is the reason for this difference? People who live in rural and regional Australia are no less intelligent, no less capable and no less ambitious than the people living in major cities, so why is there such a big gap between the number of people living in the metro areas who go to university and the number of people living in the bush who go to university?

A lot of it is because of a huge financial burden for students who are forced to relocate to other areas or to the city to try to get by while studying full time. It is also because the government is not doing enough to make it easier for these rural and regional students. Instead of making it easier for our kids in the country to go to uni, the government wants to do the exact opposite: to make it even harder for rural and regional students to get to uni. The government’s changes to youth allowance are absolutely ridiculous, and it ought to be embarrassed with itself. A clever country would be making it easier, not harder, for our kids to go to university, but the Rudd government’s proposed youth allowance changes are citycentric and force rural students to abandon their university dreams.

The government’s changes to youth allowance would disadvantage rural and regional students and put them two years behind people living in the city. They will force school leavers from rural and regional areas to delay their study plans by two years in order to go to university. Many of them may well decide not to bother going to a university if it means having to wait so long. It is already hard enough for rural and regional students to get into university with the extra costs of having to live away from home, and now the government wants to put them two years behind their city counterparts. Sometimes it seems the government is more interested in making it easier for kids from overseas to come study in Australia than doing all it can to help our own rural and regional students get to university.

In just a few short months we have had both the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Trade visit India to try to encourage Indian students to keep coming to Australia. That is well and good, but what about making it easier for our own kids from rural and regional areas to get to university? A decade ago, Australia was ranked seventh in the OECD for the proportion of the population aged 25 to 34 with a university degree. Since then, we have slipped to ninth. The government’s changes to youth allowance will push us even further down these rankings. It remains a fact that Australian university students receive among the lowest levels of income support in the OECD.

The government has claimed that there are some students who are rorting the current youth allowance eligibility requirements to get government assistance when they do not really deserve it, but instead of tackling that concern sensibly and responsibly the government has taken a sledgehammer approach and overturned the youth allowance eligibility criteria without properly considering all of the consequences. The government’s proposed changes to youth allowance are not real solutions; they are not solutions at all. Family First will be moving an amendment for a 100-kilometre relocation clause which would keep the current eligibility requirements for youth allowance if a student were forced to move more than 100 kilometres away from home. This will mean that students who are forced to relocate from home to go to university will still qualify for youth allowance under the old criteria. The 100-kilometre relocation clause amendment will make sure that those students who really need government assistance will continue to be eligible for youth allowance. It will ensure that rural and regional students are not forced to defer their studies by two years, so they are not left behind their city neighbours.

The government needs to understand that we are talking about real people and real kids’ university futures here. We are not just talking about names and numbers on a piece of paper. Take, for example, one letter I received from a concerned mother called Lisa, who wrote:

Financially, I have grave concerns for how we are going to be able to support the girls at university. My husband is a teacher and I work two days a week as an early intervention teacher. We are a middle income earning family with a home mortgage. I also have another daughter who will be attending university before Claire and Hayley will gain independence under the new scheme.

Before the changes to Youth Allowance were made this year, Claire and Hayley were initially going to take a gap year (to claim independence) as they knew we could not solely financially support both going to university. Under the new scheme this is not an option as they would be unable to get a guaranteed 30 hours a week of work, as we live in a high unemployment area.

What about another letter, this from a mother from rural Australia called Jacky, who wrote:

I have a very stressed 17 year old, about to commence his year 12 and his whole future has been thrown into turmoil. It is a difficult time for him and thousands of other students in the same situation, he doesn't know what his next move will be because of the youth allowance situation.

These are real lives that the government is messing about with here. The government needs to get these changes right; otherwise, it will put education of our kids at risk.

I was listening to the debate before, and one of the other senators referred to the youth allowance as a ‘loophole’. I would like that senator to go out to the rural and regional parts of Australia and call it a loophole. Look in the eyes of those kids who actually need the income support from youth allowance to get to university. How dare this government label it as a loophole that they can claim? I think the senator would regret saying that to rural and regional Australia, treating them with such contempt. A loophole! These people are struggling to get their kids to uni, and you are calling it a loophole for those people out there? That is outrageous, to say the least. The same senator would then say, ‘In these times, it may be tough to go and get the $19,500.’ How tough will it be to get 30 hours a week for 18 months? That is even tougher. I do not think you realise what you are doing to the next generation. I do not think you really have gone out to the rural and regional areas and spoken to people, looked people in the eye and said, ‘These changes will make it worse; they will make it harder.’ A clever country does not make it harder for its kids to get to university; it makes it easier. You are pinching pennies in the wrong area.

Most of us got our education for free, and you are making these kids sound like they are being greedy. It is just wrong. It remains a fact that Australian university students receive among the lowest levels of income support across the OECD countries; they are not greedy. Do not be so stingy. Education is important. You could have made some changes and not taken a sledgehammer approach to youth allowance. You could have made some changes. You are being so stingy; I just cannot believe it. You have to come to your senses and make some changes, and I am hoping that tonight or when we get to vote on this particular bill that we stand up for rural and regional kids and we force the government back to the negotiation table.

If this bill does not get up, you will make a claim that we are being reckless because the Commonwealth scholarships will not be provided next year. You folks took them away in a previous bill. I said at the time that you should have brought this bill in at the same time and had them both debated on. But no, you waited until the last two weeks of the sitting year to try and force it through, hide it late at night. What a joke. You should have had the guts to bring these two bills in together, have them debated together and let us see then where they fell. But to try and hold us to ransom and say: ‘If you don’t pass this bill, you’re being reckless. If this bill doesn’t pass, there’ll be no Commonwealth scholarships’, that is your fault—no-one else’s except your own.

You should be making it easier for our kids to get to university. Yes, the changes do allow some others to get some support. But 26,000 kids will be worse off. It is wrong. Many of the people who rely on youth allowance are from rural and regional areas where we need the doctors, we need the nurses, we need the accountants and we need the professional services. They are short in those areas because they need people from the area to get their degrees and then go back to where they have come from. As I was saying, a clever country would make it easier for our kids to get to university, and you turn your back on the rural and regional areas at your own peril. You have a chance now to fix it; you have a chance not to be so stingy. You say you are happy to look at changes as long as they are within budget parameters. But when you wake up one day you are quite happy to spend 43 billion bucks. You are happy to have lots of money going out the door but when it comes to our kids’ university education or making it easier for kids from rural and regional areas, you say ‘Let’s cut back here.’

You should not have taken a sledgehammer approach to it. We have been saying this for a little while now. A lot of these issues were raised back when the first bill came through. You have yourselves in a mess here, so you can try and go out to rural and regional areas and the Australian public and say that we are holding back Commonwealth scholarships, but you are. You have a chance to change what you are putting forward here tonight—and you really should. Let us do the right thing by the next generation and make it easier for our kids to get to uni not harder. Stop penny pinching.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Rudd government’s attempt to restructure the way in which student income support is offered to those undertaking tertiary study in the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. I would like to point out from the outset that the Greens have been upfront from the beginning, from budget night, about how we do support some of the positive measures contained within this bill but that we have ongoing concerns with the negative measures that we feel will have an unfair consequence on students from rural and regional Australia.

Various speakers in this place tonight have alluded to a number of those concerns. They are strong concerns. They are held not only by people in this chamber but also by the people we represent, rural and regional students around the country, their families, educators, teachers—the people in those rural and regional communities who are concerned about what this means for the education of their young people.

The need for adequate student income support is particularly acute for those who have no other choice but to leave home in order to take their place in a higher education institution and to fulfil the potential they have demonstrated in earning that university place. At a time when young people are under increasing financial pressure, students and those in guaranteed training places need to be better supported if they are to stay on and excel in their chosen path.

For young people in rural and regional Australia the obstacles in accessing higher education are even more pronounced. Many prospective students wishing to pursue tertiary studies who have no other choice but to leave home to do so are forced to take a gap year following secondary school in order to earn the required money to access the independent rate of youth allowance. Our big concern is the removal of the workplace participation criteria without replacing it with something comparable.

Even the Bradley review into higher education, which the government continues to reference as its point of call on this issue, identified the obstacles for country kids in accessing higher education, with the report noting the decline in the participation rate in tertiary education from 25.4 per cent down to 18.1 per cent for rural and remote students. Surely these figures should be ringing alarm bells within the government as to how we can ensure that the most disadvantaged students from these areas are provided with appropriate levels of support to participate and fulfil their potential? I understand the government’s claim and its will to deal with the system and retarget youth allowance for those most in need, and I believe in many of the measures it has been able to do this. But in its targeting it has overshot and missed those who are going to incur extra cost simply because of where their family is geographically located. They are, of course, the rural and regional students.

I am also concerned that, whenever we talk about this issue, question the amounts and look at the numbers, the government insists that the scholarships provided will indeed add to that extra fortnightly amount. But let us not forget what these scholarships are for. These scholarships are things for which organisations right around the country—student groups, political parties like the Greens and others—have been pushing for quite some time. We are quite committed to the scholarships scheme. We know that students need that extra money at the beginning of each semester to cover their educational costs, their textbooks, their ancillary fees—all the things that you need to set up for the semester. But it should not be considered by anyone, particularly not the government, as part of their fortnightly allowance, because it is not part of their living costs. It is part of their educational costs. That is the difference. It is not good enough for the government to suggest that, just because students are going to get some extra money through a scholarship fund, that means it can cut their fortnightly rate, which effectively is what the government’s package of reforms will do for 30,000-odd students. Some will get less and some will get nothing, but there are 30,000 students, on the government’s own figures, that are going to be worse off under this scheme. It is not good enough just to say that they will get some extra money at beginning of semester, because we know that this is for educational costs and is not a living allowance.

As part of its reform package the government announced that two of the three workforce participation criteria for a young person to qualify as independent and therefore get the maximum rate, $371.40, of youth allowance as income support while they study will be removed from 1 January 2010. As I have already mentioned, the government’s own estimates suggest that 30,700 young people will be caught short by these changes. While the moving of the goalposts was originally intended to commence on 1 January 2010, the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has since announced that the commencement of this change would be delayed for six months, finally acknowledging—after months of hard campaigning and awareness-raising from the young people affected, who have done an outstanding job at having their voices heard—the unfairness of this proposed budget measure, which would have had a retrospective effect on those thousands of students currently working towards qualifying for student income support next year. The government has addressed some of those concerns but clearly not all of them. While I want to place on record our support for the improved targeting of income support payments and scholarships, we remain concerned that the government’s approach to better targeting has resulted in a negative impact on students from rural and regional Australia. Those students arguably are among the most in need of support and will be disproportionately affected by the independence criteria, as they are the way in which most students who have to move out of home to go to university access the income that they need.

During the public inquiry Universities Australia informed the committee that if you compare the income support of Australian students against the OECD benchmarks, we rate very lowly. It just puts before us the speculation—and perhaps it is more than speculation; it is a probability—that being revenue neutral in relation to these expenditures will just shift pockets of inequality rather than address inequality on a structural basis, and that is precisely the point here. The government has said, ‘We want to be able to give more people some type of support without putting any extra money into the pot.’ I have heard the minister say numerous times: ‘We’re going to be helping 100,000 extra students.’ But they have not put any more money into the pot, so they are spreading it more thinly. They are spreading it amongst a large number of people, which means that ultimately everybody gets less. Those students who need the maximum amount are students who are independent because they do not live at home. They cannot rely on their parents and have to move out of home in order to go to university. Those students primarily are from rural and regional Australia.

This idea of shifting the pockets of inequality from one place to another and not dealing with the issue of inequality really sums up the root of the problem with this package of reforms. There was not one extra dollar put into the pot for student income support in the 2009-10 budget by a government who went to the electorate saying, ‘We will be the party of the education revolution.’ We are all still waiting. At the moment it is purely rhetoric. At this time we know we need to be investing in the education of our next generation to ensure that the recovery that we have had over the last 12 months will not just be a blip but will drive us into the future and set us up for the future. We need to be training and educating our young people. We know that when unemployment levels rise the desire for upskilling and training rises. We need to capture those people and not leave them in limbo. This is the time to be investing in education and investing in the support that we give to students, because without supporting students there will be no education revolution. It will all be words and it will all be semantics. It will not actually be a generation of trained, upskilled, educated young people who can go back to their communities and be the professionals we so desperately need.

While the government has been more forthcoming with producing figures on how many students will benefit from this reform package, the department have failed to adequately identify just how many students will be worse off or in fact will miss out on payments altogether and have not advised what type of economic modelling, if any, they have used and relied upon to derive this budget package. The government continues to tell us that this is a budget neutral package, yet it cannot show us the modelling. I question whether you can honestly tell the electorate it is budget neutral without actually giving us the figures. What we are continuously being told is that some of the estimated 30,700 young people affected—and this is the only real figure the government has been able to come up with—by the proposed change will still benefit under the proposed changes to the parental income threshold. But of course we know you cannot give more people the same amount of money without putting more money in or cutting people’s payments. These kids are not going to get the full amount of youth allowance that they need to get them through their university careers. It is just mathematics: you cannot cut the same bit of pie of into smaller pieces and assume you have more.

This is not a magic pudding; this is the government saying they have a budget-neutral package and that we should all be proud of that. Well, I am not. This is the time when we need to be investing in education, not making students carry the can for the government’s budget issues and the economic crisis. We need to be investing in the education of our young people.

Given Universities Australia’s own estimates that suggest the average cost of being a student is about $670 per fortnight—and that is a very conservative figure—the fact that we have not seen one increase in the fortnightly youth allowance rate of $371.40 aside from the annual indexation is appalling. This is not just a reflection on the current government; this is clearly a reflection on the coalition as well. For 12 years the coalition ripped money out of universities, expected students to skimp and save in order to get themselves through their basic living costs and made it very difficult for young people who honestly wanted to get an education, get through their university career and move on to being wonderful workers in our workforce and participating in the productivity of the economy.

The coalition also have a lot of responsibility to take here, and perhaps this is the time for them to make it up. Perhaps it is time for them to say: ‘Yes, we need to see more investment in education. We need to be supporting our students, so not only are we going to deal with the retrospectivity aspect of these youth allowance changes; let us make it fairer. With those people who need the maximum amount because they have higher costs because of where they come from—generally rural and regional areas—we will support those kids in getting to university.’

An increase of the budget to bring the youth allowance to at least somewhere in the realm of the Henderson poverty line, which is $673.12 per fortnight, or at least to bring the current youth allowance up to the rate of Newstart, which is $456, as opposed to the maximum youth allowance rate, which is $371, would be a start in order to address the real costs of education for students. This would be very welcome. In saying that, I now move my second reading amendment, which deals with that exact issue:

At the end of the motion, add: ‘but the Senate calls on the Government to commit to an increase in the 2010-11 Budget to bring Youth Allowance in line with other social welfare payments such as Newstart, which provides a maximum fortnightly payment of $456.’

These concerns are not new to government, and nor are they new to the coalition. The Greens, and formerly the Democrats, have long championed the need for the government to provide better support for young people in pursuing higher education, particularly for those students from rural and regional Australia, yet we still find our students receiving amongst the lowest of income support in the OECD.

We know that the response from students around the country to this budget measure has been loud and very clear. They feel gypped that the government has decided to change the rules halfway through. It is not good policy for any government to be making changes that are retrospective. At the very least the government should deal with the retrospectivity aspect. Let us not deal with that simply by making changes that rip off other students who desperately need support; let us see some honest investment in the education revolution.

The feedback from the community around the country has been loud and clear. Students, their parents, their teachers, their communities, their local councillors, their parent and teacher school councils, their employers and people around the country are very concerned at the impact that these changes will have in the long term. Of course, they also welcome some of the good things. The scholarships are fantastic. Let us keep them there and get them started. Let us work across both sides of the chamber and get this legislation to a point where we remove the bad policy—the ‘scribble on the back of the envelope’ approach to the retrospectivity aspect. Let us ensure that we do give support to students who need it because they have no other choice but to leave because their university is in the city and they happen to live in the bush. Let us make sure we see a proper investment in educating our young people.

We cannot just take away two of the workforce participation criteria without replacing them with something comparable. If as a student you are required to move out of home to go to university and there is a 90-minute travelling time back home at a minimum—that is a suggestion—then you should automatically qualify for the independent rate for the purposes of youth allowance. If you have to move out of home then you are no longer living with your parents. If the one thing that is going to stop young people from rural Australia from going to university is the fact that they are not going to be able to support themselves through their university career because the government will not give them the income support they need, we need to seriously question what we are doing. We need to review it.

A number of students gave evidence during the Senate inquiry into this legislation, and I just want to read a quote from one student, relating to the fact that the only workforce participation criterion left in this legislation is the one that says you have to work 30 hours a week for 18 months in order to prove yourself independent. She was puzzled at the idea that the government could think that this would even be possible for a young person—somebody on a junior wage trying to find that type of work in a rural and regional area. She said:

I collected papers over the last two months to see what jobs we could apply for—

to suit this criterion.

I come from Orange, which is quite regional—

in comparison to some of the remote areas these girls are from.

I circled nine jobs in four weeks that I could apply for and that gave me 30 hours a week.

Just nine in four weeks!

There are another 300 kids graduating—

from year 12.

There are just not enough jobs. The proof is there; it is in the papers and the statistics.

There is a young woman who has taken the initiative to say, ‘Okay, let’s see if I can do this and get the 30 hours a week.’ She has gone out and bought the paper and gone through the paper every day for the last two months to try and find a job. She came up with nine, and she understood that there are 300 other kids in year 12 who are going to be in the same situation. The jobs simply are not there.

The government has not given a comparable option to those students who currently rely on being able to earn the $19½ thousand, take their gap year and then qualify for the full amount—they need the full amount because they are the ones who incur the highest costs because they have to move out of home. The geographical location argument seems to be the one of most concern to prospective students, and it is a valid one. It is why the Greens will be seeking to amend the legislation before us to remedy what we have seen as being an unfair disadvantage for some of the most vulnerable students.

The principal of Loxton High School, in my home state of South Australia, highlighted to the committee during the course of the inquiry into access to rural education the inequalities in accessing education between metro and non-metro students. He said:

… if you look at the inequity between two families on the same income—one in a metropolitan area and one in a rural area—the rural family, by the mere fact that they are living rural, has to find some significant additional financial income support or whatever for their child to access the same quality of tertiary education as an urban family.

They have to find some significant additional financial income support to allow their kids to go to university. We are putting barriers in place. We are putting barriers in front of kids from rural and regional areas that are going to make it much more difficult for them and much more difficult for their families to get them to university.

Unfortunately for our country kids, they are the ones who are being forced to pay for the government’s budget savings. It is not good enough to simply say that this is a budget neutral package. It should not be. We need to be investing in the education of our children. We need to be investing in the education of the next generation. We need to be investing in the education of those kids, wherever they are from—metropolitan areas, country areas, remote areas, regional areas or rural areas. This package, because it has been so poorly drafted, misses the boat.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wanted to make a small contribution to this debate on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009 and to again highlight the value of remote students to our regional universities and the particular importance that regional universities play in getting kids from more remote areas into tertiary education and, more importantly, sending them back to those areas once they have qualified.

Just recently, the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee held a hearing into student accommodation and remuneration at James Cook University in Townsville. I was pleased to be able to go along for a little while to hear evidence from students Anna-Jane Gordon and Heather Ann Hanks and also from Associate Professor Richard Murray, the Head of the School of Medicine and Dentistry there. The two students are members of what is called RHINO, which is the Rural Health in the Northern Outback organisation. They are a great group operating out of James Cook University in Townsville and Cairns. They do a lot to support young people coming in from the bush, going into what is for many of them a strange environment and then undertaking studies. This pair and their organisation, as its name suggests, deal with rural health. The organisation did quite a large survey of students at James Cook University. They found that 11 per cent of people who responded were from urban areas, 46 per cent were from regional areas, 30 per cent were from rural areas and 11 per cent were from a remote location. The research showed that the people who responded had to face barriers to university education. Ninety-six per cent of those who responded to the survey had reported that they would like to return to a regional, rural or remote area upon graduation in the health area.

I will just pause to pay tribute to former health minister Dr Wooldridge—

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Good man.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

a very good man—who was the one who recognised the importance of getting kids from country areas into regional universities in the hope and expectation that they would be more likely to return to the bush. You, Madam Acting Deputy President Moore, would remember that when Dr Wooldridge was health minister he took over from a government that prior to 1996 had little interest in rural and regional students or rural and regional health. Because of that, there was a huge shortage of doctors and other medical personnel in country Australia. It was getting to a crisis point.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Traveston Crossing dam?

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nowhere near the Traveston Crossing dam, no, but perhaps in more remote areas. Dr Wooldridge, with the help of a lot of the then members of parliament and the medical profession, realised that you needed to establish medical schools in regional universities.

Debate interrupted.