Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am particularly pleased to speak on this bill today because it introduces measures aimed to align, more closely, the parental means testing arrangements for Youth Allowance with the arrangements for Family Tax Benefit Part A. It is not the ultimate solution, as we have heard from other speakers, for all of the issues surrounding the provision of support for students throughout rural and regional Australia, but it is a step along the way. It is another step made by this government.

This is an issue that is really critical. Other members and the previous speak spoke very eloquently about the demand for this in our rural and regional communities. There is no question that, when I travel throughout my electorate, it is one of the most common issues that families and young people talk to me about. In fact, only last week I was at Cape Naturaliste College and that was the issue that the staff and students were wanting to know most about. As members know, prior to coming into this place, this was an issue that I was working very hard on because it is so important. Young people in rural and regional areas really need the opportunities to carry on and, not only follow their dreams, but to gain the skills and the education they need to come back to our rural and regional communities and help those communities grow.

It has been a battle of regional MPs on this side of the House for as long as I have been in this place. It was my motion, on 28 October 2010, which called on the then Labor government to reverse its decision to discriminate against regional students in the changes that they had enacted, and they were discriminatory changes. Members on this side could not simply sit back and allow that to continue. The motion that I put was the first defeat on the floor of the House for an incumbent government for a long, long time and represented, I thought, a low point for Labor when they were in government. Labor had, as it is so prone to do, disadvantaged regional Australian families and students to by diverting funds meant for Youth Allowance into outer metropolitan seats that they thought were Labor strongholds in which they were desperate to find an electoral advantage.

After a two-year campaign in 2010 and 2011 to right the disgraceful discrimination that the previous Labor government had arbitrarily inflicted on students and their families, the Labor government were then shamed into making some changes. It was clear that what they had done was affecting rural and regional students and their families in a dreadful way. I met so many young people who had changed what they were planning to do with their futures. There were young people who did not bother to pursue their higher education dreams because they knew that their family could not afford to keep them in a metropolitan area to pursue their education. It was tragic. The one thing we have never been able to calculate was how many of those young people had to take an alternative pathway or never pursued their higher education dreams. That really, really hurt me at the time. I met parents in supermarkets who were literally crying: 'My husband and I have both taken a second job. We can't do any more, but we still can't afford for our young people to go onto higher education.' We need to encourage these great young people. They have every right to pursue higher education and go onto whatever it is that they are best suited for and want to do.

The Gillard government changed the rules in 2012 so that students described as 'inner regional' and 'outer regional' would be treated equally in applying for independent Youth Allowance. On the surface that sounds good, but in reality 'treated equally' probably means 'treated equally badly'. The Labor government told the Australian community that they would end their discrimination, but hid another slap in the face for students and parents by dumping the 'independent' part of the independent Youth Allowance. Students are classified as 'independent' but they are not dependent on people, including their parents, but the Labor government added a Parental Means Test to a student classified as 'independent'. Many students look to take a gap year to earn enough money to be considered independent. It especially applies to regional students, the vast majority of whom have no choice but to move away from home to pursue their higher education studies. They have boarding costs, accommodation costs, of tens of thousands of dollars. They are the sorts of costs that metropolitan students who live at home do not have to worry about and neither do their families. It is a massive impost on rural and regional families that metropolitan families simply do not have to face, which is something unfortunately that the Labor government repeatedly ignored; they ignored our kids.

I heard the stories over and over about families wondering if they could afford to send their children to tertiary education. The most heartbreaking thing was the families who said to me, particularly when they had more than one child, that they had to decide which one of their children they could actually afford to send on to university. Parents said, 'We actually have to choose which one of our kids can go to university.' That is a heartbreaking choice for any parent. Equally, it is a heartbreaking choice for a child who knows their family cannot afford to send them and they say to mum and dad, 'No, mum and dad, I'm actually going to do other things. I'm not even going to try. I'm going to take a different pathway, go on to do VET or go to work.' That is exactly what happens. That was really a tough time.

The payment of youth allowance is subject to an assets test. Youth allowance is not payable to a person if the assets test applies to the person and the value of the person's assets if that is more than the value limit. From January 1 2016, the assets test under part 2.11, division 2, subdivision AB will not apply to non-dependent young people. This is really an interesting thing: 'non-independent' is an interesting way of saying 'dependent'. Dependent youth allowance recipients will no longer be assets tested.

Removing the family assets test will allow around 4,100 additional dependent youth allowance young people to qualify for the first time. Can you imagine what this means to those young people? It is the first time for their family. They are going the opportunity that they otherwise would not have had. That is for 4,100 young people—how awesome is that? That is a great result. They will be able to access annual payments of more than $7,000 a year, meaning that small business families and farming families will not have their assets counted towards the means test for their children claiming youth allowance. It is an important reform and a step in the right direction. But it is for dependent—that is, non-independent—youth allowance.

The changes also impact on the income test component of youth allowance for a small section of the community. From 2016, there will be no parental income test exemption for young people with a parent who is receiving a New Enterprise Incentive Scheme Commonwealth allowance or qualifies for a low-income healthcare card. The proportion of young people living in regional areas in this category who are seeking to study is not necessarily really high, but 4,100 young people is a great result.

Removing the family actual means test will see around 1,200 more young people receiving youth allowance for the first time, as well as increasing payments for around 4,860 existing students by approximately $2,000 a year. In addition, the changes will remove maintenance such as child support from the income test equation and step 3 of the parental income test involves working out the person's combined parental income. There are other changes in this particular bill. They are all particularly important.

What I wanted to go back to is that around 5,800 families, who currently miss out on payments due to the combined higher taper rates, will also become eligible for an average payment of around $1,300 a year. With a commitment from the government of $262.7 million over the forward estimates, this bill will bring extra support to thousands of families in various ways.

But as I said earlier, I am sure that rural and regional members' offices—and there several of those members in the chamber now, such as the member for Corangamite—would be the same. They would have the same issues in their electorates of young people who are desperate to go onto higher education but whose families are in a situation where they simply cannot afford for that to happen. I see that we have other local members from Western Australia as well in this place. Equally, right around the large state of WA, this is a common issue.

What we need to understand is that we have got a lot of great young people and they do want the opportunity to go on to higher education, but they find it particularly difficult. Accommodation costs are only one part. The other things that I would mention are some of the challenges of living away from home. It can be particularly difficult for young people who head off to the city for the first time. They do need support when they are actually living away from home. If you are a student who lives with mum and dad at home, you live in a metropolitan or urban area and you are having a tough day, when you come home you can let off steam and you can find support because the people around you love you. They will put up with you saying some pretty harsh things if you are really under pressure because of your exams. I see the new member for Canning here. He will also have young people affected by this issue of youth allowance.

When the students come home, if it is their family they are coming home to, then they are going to have someone to listen to them and to support them. When they are living away from home, this also is not necessarily easiest for them because the people around them are other students. They might be people completely not related to them. They do not have that same opportunity for support. There are a number of issues that face young people who come from rural and regional Australia.

We have thought long and hard on this. I had a group of people from my electorate who came to a meeting with the two departments and actually talked about the major issues facing them with youth allowance. The debate is the same; it is ongoing. I will keep fighting on this. Yes, this is a step. But just as we said earlier, it is the first step and an ongoing step. I will continue my fight for rural and regional students right around Australia who have to move away from home to pursue their higher education dreams.

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