Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No. Telling a rural and regional student they have to work full time for two years before they can receive youth allowance is akin to denying them a university education. Universities will rarely defer for two years. For many, part-time work in fast food, the local garage or even the pub is all that is available in the remote or rural centre in which they live—if they can get it. Linking the relocation scholarship to receipt of youth allowance is a double whammy for students whose goal is to attend university in the city. Labor has removed the Howard government scholarships of $5,500 per annum, which were at administered by the universities, and replaced it with a lesser, means tested student allowance administered by Centrelink. Of course, it was the former Minister for Education, Science and Training, who is beside me, who brought those scholarships in.

It is bad enough that Labor sees fit to abolish funding to the regions; it is utterly criminal that they now deny our students the income support they need to study. Regions have not been totally forgotten by Labor. Indeed, Labor has done something big for the resilient people of our great electorate. It has imposed on each and every one of them a huge debt of $220 billion that will take years to repay. Even by the most promising and generous suggestions that it will be paid off by 2022—and I do not believe that would happen under this government—under the pretext that we are going to get four or 4½ per cent growth for seven years and we are going to repay a government debt at the rate of two per cent or more of GDP for more than seven years in a row, I do not think so. All Australians, including the rural and regional people of my electorate, are paying the price of Labor’s ill-directed, reckless spending. This is a government that has recklessly spent in a way that has no precedent in our history and has imposed a stupendous level of debt on a nation that 18 months ago was completely free of debt for the first time since Federation. This is a government with all its priorities wrong.

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