Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Simplifying Student Payments) Bill 2016 and discuss its impact in improving opportunities for young people from regional and remote areas. This amendment will improve access for young people from these areas to higher education, as well as entrance and retention rates, by making it easier for them to qualify as independent for youth allowance purposes. Labor is standing by this measure, as it works towards the core Labor value of equality of opportunity for regional and remote students and young people, as compared with them competing with their inner-city counterparts. The barriers faced by regional institutions and campuses, such as geographical dispersion of catchment, higher proportions of disadvantaged students and smaller participation rates, have rendered many of these institutions unviable to continue operating. An example close to home is the now defunct Rockingham campus of Murdoch University in my electorate of Brand, which closed its doors to local students in 2015, due to low enrolment and a lack of funds.

Vocational training in higher education institutes only operates effectively and efficiently with scale—there needs to be a weight of numbers. These numbers have to be present to provide the facilities, the services and the all-important teachers and lecturers, and that is not a scale that exists in my electorate of Brand. This means regional and outer suburban students travelling to inner-metropolitan campuses will be under further pressure to move out of their family homes. This is not new, though. From my own personal experience, I went to school at Safety Bay Senior High School. It is a mere 45 minute drive from Perth, but, for a young person without a car, that would mean at least a two-hour trip both ways on three buses getting out of Safety Bay to Rockingham to Perth out to the campus at Crawley. Fortunately, students these days do not have as much difficulty getting to the campus at UWA by public transport, as WA Labor built the southern suburbs a railway, and students now have an equity of access up to UWA, to Curtin and also to Murdoch University.

As financial hardship is the No. 1 reason students drop out of university, this amendment works to alleviate the pressures many of us remember as students of trying to pay rent while studying full time—and, for regional students, all this was without the luxury of sometimes dropping into your parents' place for a hot meal. However, this amendment benefits only about 3,700 students. Our young people in the regions and in outer suburbia are struggling with youth unemployment. In my electorate, that is at a staggering 14 per cent. Instead of meaningful higher education reform or embarking on job creation policies, the Prime Minister is trying to shore up his shaky leadership among the Nationals and the far right with today's sad announcement the government intends to water down the laws that seek to protect many Australians from racial discrimination. But, with regards to the Nationals, who knows what will happen come the next election. Like Colin Barnett, the Liberals under the member for Wentworth might ditch the Nationals for One Nation. I hope it is not so, but you never know.

I want to speak on universities for a moment. They are complex institutions. I had 10 years working at the University of Western Australia. Three and a half of those were in the vice-chancellery working for the then chief of staff, Professor Alan Robson. I have learnt how complex higher education funding is. It is tough to get right, it is tough to do, but it must be done. We must apply our efforts to engaging actively with all universities and all their various stakeholders—and I can tell you there are many—to fund education properly and also to fund research and science effectively and properly so that the most people get the most benefit. This government took full deregulation of higher education for students off the table but has failed to bring forward anything other than an options paper. The university sector is now faced with a policy black hole created by the Abbott and Turnbull government, and it is a real shame for the students of this country, not to mention the scientists, researchers and all the other workers in the university sector.

Returning to the topic of the students who will benefit from this legislation, I am happy for that small number who will benefit and I support this bill, but I do have to ask: why support a small group of regional students yet at the same time attack penalty rates day after day in this place. When given the chance, the Liberal-National government failed to protect penalty rates of 700,000 workers—penalty rates which many students rely on to survive and pay their rent and to perhaps get that extra serving of the two-minute noodles that we used to eat. I do not fondly remember them, but they were there! And why direct this amendment specifically toward regional students when, as reported in the Bradley review of 2008, students from a lower socioeconomic background in a metropolitan area such as my electorate have lower retention and completion rates? WA has the lowest school leaver university entrance rate in the country, sitting at just 47.6 per cent in 2015 compared with 67 per cent and 59 per cent in Victoria and New South Wales-ACT respectively. We have the lowest rate in the country, and it is getting progressively lower.

Prime Minister Turnbull is offering relief to regional students but in WA 76 per cent of our population live in the metropolitan area and we have to consider the difficulties they all face in getting into higher education. You have to look no further than my own electorate of Brand to see the impact economic background has on opportunities for education in my state. In 2015, only 33 per cent of students in Rockingham-Kwinana finished year 12 with an ATAR mark. That is well below the state average, but it is not the lowest average. Young people in Brand need support and they need a government that works for them. If the Prime Minister really wanted to support young people, he would not be pushing them into poverty with Newstart eligibility changes which mean some young people are faced with living on nothing for five weeks while others are facing a cut of almost $2,500 a year. It beggars belief and one wonders what the personal experiences of members of the government were in their own student lives.

Why would this government try to ram such changes through when young people of low socioeconomic background identify financial problems as the stress point in their university experience at a rate of 69 per cent in comparison with those in higher income brackets, which was reported by Monash University in 2013 to be an average of 53 per cent. It is a considerably higher rate of stress for students from those lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Monash University also found that lower socioeconomic students access student support services such as accommodation services, financial counselling and legal advice more frequently. Yet not only is this government directing money from the budget to the regions, which I do respect; it is also cutting funding to community legal centres. We all know where that is getting us. There are people who are in economic stress who need to access these legal centres more often than they used to, and that funding is being cut as well. Those of low SES background have always accessed these legal centres, and that is the reason they are there. I believe the Abbott-Turnbull government does not fairly represent the young and disadvantaged of Brand. Young people need support to finish their studies or find a job, not face savage attacks that make it harder for them to find work. Western Australians do not want a government which leaves young people with nothing to live on.

If this government were truly concerned about opportunities for young people it would emphatically rule out university deregulation and the potential of $100,000 degrees. There are already enough barriers for young people in Brand to access tertiary education, even with the great Labor initiatives of HECS and HELP and with of course cost caps and positions opened. With the Liberals' commitment to higher fee degrees the government will tilt the board against Australian students trying to get a better education. ATAR rates in Brand are, as I said, at 33 per cent—what will they be once Mr Turnbull and his team implement their neoliberal agendas in our higher education system? What is Mr Turnbull saying to potential students other than education is just out of reach for people from their economic background? It is hard enough even becoming eligible to go to university, to get through school, without coming up against such extraordinary fees. No wonder young people sometimes cannot see uni as an option for them—no wonder they sometimes give up.

The young people of Brand have been ignored for too long, and I will do all I can to help them participate in vocational education and higher education. I support this amendment because I support equality of opportunity and bridging the gap between the disadvantaged and the privileged in this country, but with particular respect to education. This does not discount the fact that I think young people in my electorate and young people Australia wide have been failed by successive Liberal governments. Only the Labor Party truly values the effect of a strong education and the effect it can have on transforming a person's life. My own experience in higher education policy, as I said, was working at the University of Western Australia for a number of years. Many good policies have been put up to respective governments.

I note a policy I helped develop in relation to the WA Nationals' Royalties for Regions scheme, which sadly was not funded because the Nationals leader at the time insisted on universities building campuses in the far regions, and we know it is very difficult not only to build them there in the first place but also to make them economical and viable. Instead, there are novel propositions—they are not even that novel, quite frankly—about giving students from the reasons opportunities to undertake scholarships which support them through their time living in the city, in the metro area, which support their parents in visiting the students and support the students being able to return several times a year to their family farms or wherever the places are that they come from. These things are important—the connection to home and to family for regional students is critical for their ongoing mental health, especially in their first couple of years at university, when they are living outside the place they call home and all that is familiar. I know we implored the then Nationals leader, Mr Brendon Grylls, to support this initiative but sadly we had no luck. I only hope that the new state Labor government will look at this prospect again and perhaps seek to support regional students as they do go off on their adventures to university.

One thing I would say about the gift that education can bring is: often there is a sentiment among people from the regions that they want to keep young people in the regions and in their home town. That is understandable. They love their children. The young people give a vibrancy to the community. But the greatest gift we can give as people that provide education is a good education with all the services and all the facilities. Rural students deserve that as much as city students. I urge these communities to be more free of spirit, let their young people go and support them in their adventures when they go into the main population centres. They will enjoy better access to better facilities, all the services and all the community that a university can offer. It is a worthwhile gift and something that they should support. We all know that when you help people achieve their best they are more inclined to return the favour and return to their home town.

In concluding, I would note that the government has not put forward many speakers to support this bill. It probably says a bit about how the government views social services legislation. I note the minister is now in the chamber. I hope we hear from him soon. So to conclude I would state that we support the bill, but I do hope that the government would seek to do more, especially in higher education reform and in support for students from low SES backgrounds.

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